#other than severing any remaining ties to landed society and the hope of going back to an old life )

[emcads]

what if instead of how we think Esme passed her piece of eight to Jack in a dramatic mentor/student way (or a lovers), she actually made it very hard for him to get the lordship and that’s why he gets pissed whenever someone earns the title so easily (like Liz and Barbossa)?

short answer: it's my personal headcanon that Esmeralda died, and that's why Jack received the piece of eight after her. so in some respects very hard for him, but in others, easy. ( sure, no one likes losing a sometimes-girlfriend, but there's no job promotion so easy as someone else murdering your predecessor and your hands staying clean in it. figuratively. ) it's always been my belief that he's a little bitter and overall just sad when the court convenes because his own title has a very heavy sense of loss to it, which is not something elizabeth and barbossa endured when sao feng/borya died. he sacrificed a lover, friend, and mentor to become pirate lord of the caribbean, much as esmeralda lost her grandfather, captain, and father-figure.

longer answer: if Esmeralda were to give it to Jack, I think you're absolutely right that she would make it hard for him to achieve. she values the esteem of the court and the responsibility of the position very highly –– shipwreck cove is as equal, if not more so, to the prestige and respect due to any european-style court that she might have found herself in. the key difference being that pirate court is more or less a meritocracy, where you at least have to prove yourself worthy of some respect of a pirate lord to be given the title, or at least good enough to take out a very powerful captain and steal the title for yourself (and not get murdered by those loyal to them). so she wouldn't be handing it out to jack arbitrarily. and it's not that she doesn't think he's a good captain, she knows that he is, and she says as much, but this is jack well before any of the accomplishments elizabeth knows him for (sacking nassau, etc), things that are worthy of the legend of a pirate lord. but not some twenty-something who just spent half a decade playing capitalist and winning the favor of the caribbean's jeff bezos.

what i don't think she would do is hand him down a set of tasks as if he were hercules to prove himself "worthy," which i highly doubt jack would be remotely interested in, anyway. instead it would have to be after some really difficult event –– a skirmish at sea, a raid on a port, even treasure hunting –– where she conceded that he had the makings of a legend of the court and a "worthy" successor of the de Sevilla pirate lineage. he's a better pirate than Esmeralda is, in some ways, when it comes to keeping his cool as well as out-maneuvering his opponent as opposed to just being "better" in terms of skill with the sword or the superior vessel / crew, so I don't doubt that she'd be able to see that, or that he might wind up saving her life instead of losing it. ( good ending )

on the opposite angst-end of things, i could absolutely see jack being driven to revenge if someone had killed esmeralda, and taken the lordship with it –– if he killed her killer in retribution, he'd wind up pirate lord without really meaning to, but at tremendous effort and personal loss. he's shown to be more than ruthless when it comes to enacting revenge on barbossa for the pearl, and his final killing blow on christophe is done in Esmeralda’s name, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to think that he’d want to see her avenged and her illegitimate successor stripped from their ill-gotten gains.

tldr: yes, jack suffered quite a lot and had to work hard to become pirate lord, so his frustration at elizabeth & barbossa is fairly well-reasoned.

[misterewrites]

A Part of Something Bigger (Welcome to the Underground!)

Hello everyone! E here, hoping you are safe and sound and doing good! The new chapter of the Underground is here and I'm excited for this and the next chapter. I am so happy I finally get to reveal something I’ve had in my head since I first started creating the Underground! Man am I cheek E. oh puns, I’m terrible. 

:D

I hope you are all have a great week! Stay safe, wash your hands, take care of each other, get the vaccine if you can, push for companies to give it world wide all that jazz. Feel free to comment (I love feedback) tell your friends, reblog I appreciate it all!

If you’re new and curious what the heck I’m talking about, feel free to check out the whole story and have access to my other work right in the link below (cuz I’m 95% Tumblr has shadowbanned me) 

https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrE42/pseuds/MrE42

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27814297/chapters/68094967 (first chapter)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27814297/chapters/78927370 (latest chapter) 

Have a great week, E is out!

Summary:  Turns out Oliver is a part of the Choir, a secret organization that operates within the Underground. Something big is happening tonight and It's up to Oliver and his allies to ensure it does not. However, the bard has to figure out what's going on before anything else.

-----

Oliver had been many things in the 18 years of his begrudging existence: An orphan, a thief, a con-kid, hopelessly in love, a scout, fry cook that one week and an aspiring minstrel. Many masks and different roles to survive each new day.

The one he took a quiet pride in was being a member of the Choir, a secret organization whose goal was to keep the Underground free from malicious and devious intent.

Every society had their dark, treacherous shadows where evil did its business (Oliver assumed. He only really ever lived in the Underground but you know universal constants and such.) The Choir’s purpose was to ensure those plans never came to fruition.

Rather than being an openly known identity, the Choir was more a loose collection of independent agents operating under secrecy. The organization employed any and everyone who was willing to fight for the cause, each in their own way: Merchants passed coded information, tavernkeepers offered safe havens, those with some level of magical proficiency gathered to study abnormal phenomenon. Fighters fought, clerics healed with lords and ladies used their influence for the greater good.

Sometimes, as is the case now, one individual was too limited for what was required of the organization’s purpose. In these rare moments, agents were granted permission to request help, often leaving hidden messages and imagery for other wandering members to respond to.

That’s what brought Oliver here to this dark alley in the middle of the night: When he first arrived to the capital, he caught sight of the coded symbol asking for any Choir member to lend their skill set to a mission tonight. No details added but that was par for the course.

Terri was the first to recover, her slivers eyes wide with wonder “A soprano? No joke?!Flora, he’s like you!”

Terri was tall, taller than anyone else here. She wore a red vest with torn off sleeves, probably because her muscles were too thick to actually allow them to exist in the first place. Her long jet black hair was elegantly tied into braids with her dark blue leggings tucked into thick hiking boots.

Flora pursed her lips thoughtfully, irises of lavender giving Oliver a curious look “A fellow magic user? Interesting. Wizard?”

“Bard” Oliver corrected “You?”

“Druid.” Flora spoke before drifting into an uncomfortable silence. Oliver suspected she wasn’t impressed by his response.

Flora seemed unassuming but Oliver knew better than to be lured in by appearances: Long silvery hair with petals of green and yellow flowers scattered within. She wore a white blouse with splotches of brown dirt and a long green skirt. Her feet were bare and free to be soiled by the floor.

Terri rushed over to the petrified Tyrell, dragging him into a bone crunching hug “Tyrell here is a baritone like me!”

Tyrell, the youngest beside Oliver, shifted his brown eyes away from anyone’s gaze. He wore rather well kept clothes: A tunic of purple tucked under a leather vest, his leggings were dark gray that blended fairly well in the darkness. His footwear seemed a little too fancy to be workman’s shoes.

“Fighters” Oliver nodded in understanding “Always useful. And you mysterious stranger in the darkness?”

The cloaked figure had pulled back deeper into the shadows, red eyes gleaming in the shades of night. They were trying to hard to hide their appearance but Oliver caught sight of a smooth featureless bronze face. Metallic armor of a matching color and sheen covered the rest of their body, an automaton it seems.

“You may call me Sel. I’m a tenor.” the figure responded, their voice tinged with scratchy static.

“You are going very useful. Lockpicking?”

Sel shrugged casually “Among other less savory techniques. As per usual for tenors.”

Oliver nodded “Okay, fill me in.”

Flora took a step forward, pulling a letter out of her pocket as she did so “Are you aware of one Reiner Brambleoak?”

“Oh fucking hell” Oliver rubbed his eyes tiredly “Him again? What’s he planning this time: Gonna burn an orphanage? Or maybe sell moldy food to the poor? Wait, I know!” Oliver snapped his finger “He’s going to be a terrible piece of shit.”

“Right on the money!” Terri growled.

Sel let out a mechanical click “He is planning to tear down several homes in West Haven.”

Oliver narrowed his eyes “I thought it was illegal to tear down homes in that area?”

“Not if the owners signed them over.” Flora explained “Then he would have the authority to do whatever he wished with them.”

“Let me guess, he tricked them?”

Terri flexed her muscles angrily “His representatives would change languages and double talk when they spoke to the poor folks. Most hadn’t the slightest idea what was going on and the orc thugs his people brought didn’t exactly make them feel warm and safe.”

“So.” Oliver stretched his arms “He’s strong armed his way into property, going to evict helpless folks onto the street and probably fill them with his own thugs to get the rest of the neighborhood to fall in line.”

“Unless we stop him.” Sel spoke with righteous fury.

“Tonight.” Oliver chimed in “Throwing another party?”

“You are good.” Tyrell whistled.

Oliver gave a playful wink “Naturally. What’s the plan?”

Flora reached into her pack and handed Oliver a letter: it was written in such a fancy hand he swore he was getting a headache just looking at it.

“One for each of us.” Flora explained, distributing the rest to the others “A fellow Choir member secured these tonight’s mission.”

“Helpful. Alright here’s the plan….”

“Wait” Flora interrupted “Who said you are in charge bard?”

“Me” Oliver countered with a grin “Because I’ve been to these types of festivities. Have any of you?”

Flora opened her mouth then promptly closed it, irritation in her glance. Tyrell gave a sheepish but unhelpful smile, Sel remained silent while Terri gave a thoughtful scratch of her chin.

“Thought so.” Oliver tried to keep the smugness out of his voice “Look we just need to work together for tonight.”

“Agreed.” Flora spoke with a softness that did not match her glare.

Sel inched closer to the group “What is the plan Oliver?”

“Where’s the party? Merchant Ward? I assume he’s using his office to host it.”

“Correct” Sel confirmed “His office has been chosen as the venue. He claims to be throwing the party as some sort of fundraiser for a charity that is no doubt a front for his illegal operations.”

Terri huffed, crossing her arms furiously “Probably making some more deals to trick people out of their hard earn money.”

“Without a doubt” Oliver agreed “But without any hard proof, we’re not taking him down tonight. Our mission is to ensure those contracts he forced people to sign mysteriously disappear.”

“Will that actually stop him?” Tyrell frowned unhappily “What’s stop him from forging new ones? Or just bullying people again?”

“He can’t forge new ones” Oliver explained carefully “They’re a special type of document only found here in Haven’s Nest. You can only get them from city hall and they’re magically enchanted to be untamperable with. He’ll need to get the ones he has to city hall on open court day which I assume is soon.”

“Indeed. Tomorrow in fact.”

Oliver continued on “So since open court day is the only day any major changes are allowed to be introduced to the city, if we grab them he’ll have to wait a month for another chance of snatching up that land. He’ll no doubt try to bully the folks again but now that they know what he’s up to, hopefully they’ll won’t be as easily pressured and if a few rough looking folks who can take punches and give them back start hanging around the neighborhood when his goons come knocking again…”

“They’re gonna be less eager” Terri cracked her knuckles cheerfully, already savoring the feel of bruised skin and broken bones that would bless her hands.

Oliver caught Tyrell’s eyes “One problem at a time. If you look at the mountain, you’re going to get scared.”

Tyrell nodded timidly in agreement.

“So.” Sel’s voice crackled with curiosity “What is the plan bard?”

Oliver closed his eyes, mentally mapping out the Brambleoak bank: three stories of corrupted, immoral finance who preyed on the helpless and lost. He could still see the faded green hue and cracked paint of the building in his mind’s eye. The ground floor would no doubt be where the bulk of the party would be taking place: a large space with an elevated stage normally reserved for long winded speeches could easily repurposed for a band or some sort of entertainment. His guests would range from any and everyone with any amount of influence or wealth. The second floor were the offices of his lecherous employees while his office took up the entirety of the third floor.

“Alright” Oliver spoke after a moment “I have a good idea what to expect. We’re going to break up into two teams.”

Everyone stared him expectedly.

Oliver gestured to Terri and Tyrell “You two are going to hang out at the bar across the street: The Stinkeye. Charming place, ran by a former pirate captain. Sunday is sea shanty night I think."

“Whoa, wait a minute” Terri grumbled unhappily “I am not letting Flora go into that place without me! It’s enemy turf and I don’t feel comfortable with the idea."

Flora took Terri’s hand within her own “Agreed sweetie.”

“Look this isn’t exactly a fist loaded, knives out situation. Any sort of brawling inside will be dealt with swiftly and painfully. Brambleoak doesn’t like anything scaring away the prey and causing a scene inside won’t accomplish anything. Outside, however.”

Terri’s eyes knowingly sparkled, Tyrell just looked dumbfounded.

Oliver gestured with his hand, muttering a phrase under his breath as magic formed around his hand in a golden light. A small image appeared in his palm: A heavily scarred elf with ashy blonde hair, one eye a brilliant forest green the other dull and cloudy. He wore an elegant officer’s uniform, dark green with various medals pinned to his chest with a long flowing red cape that trailed behind.

Oliver opened mouth to speak but Terri’s low snarl beat him to the punch.

“Lea Foot.”

“Acquaintance I guess?””

Flora nodded, gently squeezing Terri’s hand to get her to calm down “Lea has been a constant thorn in our sides. I believe he suspects we are a part of some greater organization. He has never seen us but he sends his underlings to bully us.”

“So I don’t need to explain his whole mercenaries for hire deal. Been exclusive to Brambleoak for a while now.”

“Can I punch him?” Terri murmured darkly.

“Yes, can she?” Flora chimed in, unable to keep the plead out of her voice.

Oliver shook his head “Maybe but we’ll see. He’s gotta show up at some point but I doubt he’ll be there right at the start. Likes to push old people around, probably eat a child or two before ‘working.’ Your job is to keep him distracted at all costs. He’s a sick man that likes to watch a good fight and the longer he’s out there, the better chance we’ll have.”

Sel tilted their head quizzically “Why is it important to keep him outside?”

“Basically” Oliver cracked his fingers “He’s very perceptive and the person most likely to catch our plan in action. His crew is made up of a nobodies with a perchance for cruelty and a thirst for violence but Lea is an old hand. Keeping himself outside is the best chance for success and if you guys accidentally get too close and managed to stray a hit his way…”

Terri chuckled manically the idea. Tyrell just looked sick.

“Meanwhile Flora, Sel and I will be inside. We’ll be looking for a chance to get Sel into the stairway so he can break into Brambleoak’s office. Without any sort of information, there’s no point to flesh out a full plan but we’ll make it up as we go. It’s a giant party of people who think they’re special. Shouldn’t be too hard to cause some drama and distractions.”

Flora said silent for a moment before speaking up “It’s not a lot to work with but admittedly better than anything I would’ve come up with.”

“Agreed.” Sel added “Without proper intel, it would be pointless to attempt to formulate any sort of long term plan. This works best to our strengths. Wait and create an opportunity,”

“That’s on us.” Oliver cut in “Your job is to get in and out. Preferably without being seen but who knows what will happen.”

The group, previously lost and anxious, glowed with renew sense of purpose and determination: 10 minutes ago they had no plan and now they were ready to do what they signed up for.

“Get ready team” Oliver gestured about “We leave in five.”

Everyone broke away to prepare for the mission: Terri cracked every bone in her body, ready for any brawl she would start. Sel slunk back into the shadows and remained still among the darkness. Tyrell held leaned unevenly against the brick building nearby, trying to steady his breathing.

Flora, on the other hand, approached Oliver, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“Oliver.”

“Flora.”

“I have a question for you.”

Oliver was confused “I’m not sure what about but go ahead.”

Flora pursed her lips “You were coming from West End, delivering a package to a Choir member out there correct?”

“Yeeeeees.” Oliver unsure where this was going “The old man. Lady Rozalin said it was the upmost importance.”

Flora bit her cheek nervously “Before you left, did you see him?”

His stomach turned cold as he remembered how uneasy he felt the day he left with Archie and Abigail, the chill that ran down his spine “No, why?”

“We haven’t been able to contact him. He is not responding to our wizards long range message spells. We’re…..worried.”

Oliver could feel his skin crawl with anxiety, his pulse raced as a horrible realization dawned on him.

“He’s missing.” Oliver spoke what Flora did not.

She nodded in response “As a high ranking member, he is important to our cause and since you were the last person to see him, the higher ups were wondering if anything suspicious happened the last day you spoke with him.”

Oliver remembered it clearly: The free money, rushing them out the door, his ‘tiredness.’ There was no such thing as free money in his mentor’s eyes and Roland was never known for pushing a guest out of his house or being tired in the middle of the day. He was attempting to get them to leave to prevent something from happening.

“He was acting weird.” Oliver admitted “At the time I found it strange but he gave me little room to argue. Now I’m wishing I had.”

Flora’s face was indifferent but Oliver could hear the sincerity in her voice “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. If you need a moment…”

“No” Oliver cut her off quickly “I’m good. We have a mission to do and we need to focus on that now. Afterwards we can talk about finding out what happened to the old man.”

Flora gave a simple nod before wandering over to Terri’s side, lightly kissing her cheek with affection.

Oliver took a deep calming breath: There was no point to let his mind wander, to worry about things out of his control. Even if he wanted to do something, he was needed here and now. Besides the Choir would investigate Roland’s disappearance and there were agents far more experienced than he about.

He would leave it up to them. For the moment he needed to balance out the universe and root out the evil that laid in the shadows.

[lilflowerpot]

Soulmate AU where the marks on one person's skin show up on the other, but obviously they can't understand each other's writing, so Keith mostly just tries to express himself through art instead. So naturally, when he starts investigating the Blue Lion he starts drawing THAT too. Which is why, when Voltron shows up, Lotor is Dead Certain that the blue paladin is his soulmate, and he desperately tries to force himself to fall in love with Lance even while he's like "... Really? THIS guy?"

Lotor’s soulmate is not illiterate, but they may as well be. He’s compared their careless scrawl against every language in the Imperial data banks - thrice! - and it’s simply... not there.

“They’re a primitive,” Ezor nods sagely from where she’s half draped over his shoulder, eyeing the illegible lettering on his wrist with an entertained curl to her lips, “must be. Guess the universe wanted to counterbalance all your insufferable braininess.”

When Lotor shrugs her off with a snarl, she has the audacity to laugh.

Acxa’s kinder, or she tries to be, comforting him with the notion that if his soulmate is a primitive, they’re at the very least an educated one, or better yet of a more evolved society wherein knowledge of scripture is commonplace, so... they’re not feral.

Zethrid seems to half wish that they were, if only for the thrill of it.

“And the sex,” Ezor tacks on with an evil little grin, “the sex would have been fantastic.”

Her soulmate’s raucous glee drowns out any further discussion of the topic.

-

So they can’t communicate, not with words, but if Lotor’s soulmate is anything it’s tenacious (and the Prince can’t help but admire that). They come to the conclusion that pictures are the way to go, painting Lotor’s forearms with a veritable rainbow of quadrilaterals, each containing varying stripes and symbols, and then a series of dotted squiggles that Lotor is beginning to recognise as their approximation of a question.

The problem being he doesn’t actually know what it is that they’re asking.

There’s one rectangle - the majority of which is striped red and white, with a one contrasting quarter of stars in a blue sky - that his soulmate keeps coming back to, and Lotor realises it must be a clan symbol of a sort, indicative of their own people and culture, but... once again scouring Imperial logs turns up nothing of import. Frustrated, Lotor practically carves the hateful Imperial emblem into his palm with jagged lines of ink - Vrepit Sa - and turns in for the night.

In the morning, his arms are wiped clean.

They stay that way for a quintent.

Two.

On the third, he hears back, and it rocks his entire world view.

Kraliept Sa.

The lines are careful, deliberate, as if someone unfamiliar with the old scripture had taken great pains to transcribe that singular character, and Lotor quite simply can’t believe his eyes, because that would mean... that would mean that the only two things he knows of his soulmate are in direct contrast with one another: the first being that they are completely isolated from the Empire, and the second more impossible yet, that they have ties to the Blade of Marmora.

-

They continue this way for almost a decaphoeb, and it’s not perfect, but it’s something.

Lotor sends renderings of the stars, his ship, Kova, and in return his soulmate replies with sketches of the animals and sunsets and vast expanses of desert on an alien world.

One evening, they blur blues and greens into a perfect little marble on the inside of Lotor’s knee, an arrow pointing to one of the green patches labeled with a sequence of characters that the galra Prince is beginning to recognise as his soulmate’s name - though he can’t so much as begin to guess at how they might be pronounced - and so on the opposite knee Lotor paints Daibazaal, and then, because that feels inadequate, smears his thumb through the centre of the planet he no longer calls home, doodling a battalion of ships leaving the wreckage in a mass exodus, the children of an orphaned world.

And once more, his soulmate falls quiet.

-

It’s almost a full phoeb until they reach out again, and when they do Lotor finds them franctic, frightened, their little blue-green marble only the beginning; an entire solar system follows, complete with details such as what Lotor assumes must be an accurate number of moons on each planet for how deliberately they’re marked out, and then-

A ship.

It’s small and unassuming and positively archaic in design, but it’s a ship nonetheless, and as Lotor watches, his soulmate draws and erases and re-draws that same design until it’s traveled the length of his leg - thigh to ankle - and ‘lands’ on an unassuming moon of the most distant planet. They circle it with agitation, jabbing whatever implement they’re using to mark their own skin so violently that Lotor’s quite sure they must bleed under the force of it, but he doesn’t know what to say, let alone know how to say it if he did.

The next morning, his soulmate’s mural has gone.

The phantom ache of it remains.

-

They call him Champion.

Lotor only takes interest because of the timing, because of the circumstance, because it’s Sendak’s fleet that located these new lifeforms on a desolate moon in some distant corner of the universe, and of all Zarkon’s commanders he most of all has something of a reputation for toeing the line between cruelty and outright sadism.

The odds are one in a million, but that’s not a risk Lotor is willing to take.

He paints an obnoxious criss-cross of colour onto his own face that will be impossible to hide or mistake for anything other than what it is, and sends his generals to ascertain whether the Champion or either of the two lifeforms that accompanied him - soon to be subject to the work camps - share the mark.

They don’t, not one of them, and so Lotor chalks it up to coincidence and moves on.

Finding what could almost be mistaken for the legendary Blue Lion on the back of his hand only for Voltron proper to re-emerge into the universe after thousands of decaphoebs with the Champion himself allegedly at the helm, is not so easily written off.

And this time, when his soulmate abandons him to cold silence, it feels final.

-

Thayserix was very much a spur of the moment decision, but Lotor has never been so glad of such impulsivity as he is now, with the blue Lion of Voltron having been stolen from the thick mists and safely in his grasp.

Though, it’s not the lion that interests him.

Yes she’s a beautiful beast of considerable power, but in this case it is quite literally what’s on the inside that counts, that being of course Lotor’s soulmate... or so he’d thought.

Princess Allura of Altea cannot be them.

At least he certainly hopes not.

She’s lovely, in theory, but they’ve been in a stalemate for the past varga with her sullenly refusing to so much as consider entertaining Lotor’s attempts at hospitality, let alone conversation, and instead quite stubbornly standing with both her guard and weapon raised.

“I really would simply like to speak with-”

“Release me.”

Her end of things has consisted solely of those two words, and the monotony of it all really is growing rather tiresome.

Narti saves him from another repetitive bout, slinking into his mind and whispering that the rest of Voltron have located them far more quickly than Lotor would have thought possible.

The worst part is he’s almost grateful.

“Very well,” he growls, temper wearing thin, “your friends are here to collect you Princess, perhaps they will be more amenable to a little tête-à-tête, hm?”

They are not.

“Release Allura,” is the first thing to pass the dark-haired Paladin’s lips, teeth bared and tongue sharp, and it takes everything Lotor is not to simply concede on the spot.

“Frankly, I would love to,” he spits, gratified by how completely this blindsides the lot of them, every face on the holoscreen struck blank by his immediate compliance. “I do not believe she is the individual I am looking for, nor does she seem inclined to assist me in locating whosoever is. Answer my questions, and you are welcome to her and the blue Lion both.”

“We... We are?” It’s an older gentleman who speaks up, the only other altean among them.

“Absolutely,” Lotor hisses, and then graciously concedes: “the mistake was mine. I simply wished to open a dialogue with who I had assumed to be the blue Paladin, but as she is of a background that would doubtless have allowed us to communicate in galra script, that no longer seems the case.”

Their group look like they’re going to ask him to further explain what must sound to the lot of them nonsense... all except the black Paladin whose eyes have gone wide on some personal revelation, whispering “you,” as if he can’t believe his ears, only to spit out an obscenity before repeating himself with all the fury of an imploding star. “You!”

There are several exclamations of “Keith-!” as those violet eyes narrow to slits, the man smacking his hand down and cutting their com-line dead.

Ezor, helpful as ever, mumbles: “Well that went well,” quiet enough that it’s almost as if she doesn’t mean for everyone in the otherwise silent cockpit to hear her.

-

For the first time in ten thousand decaphoebs, the black Lion is - technically - in Imperial hands.

Lotor couldn’t care less.

The man who strides out of her is a veritable firestorm, all dark brows and snarling lips, and in a heartbeat Lotor knows, he just knows, who he is.

What he is.

Galra, for one, almost certainly a hybrid like Lotor - it’s the eyes that betray him, half luminescent with rage - and there’s a gorgeous poeticism to that.

Reckless for another, and behind him from where she’s been brought to stand witness, Princess Allura is clearly horrified to see her companion step from Voltron’s keystone and leave it completely unprotected, but the Paladin doesn’t seem to care, and neither does Lotor.

“Release Allura,” he growls again, voice like thunder and just as electrifying as he storms across the landing bay without hesitation, not even stopping to glance in his fellow Paladin’s direction and affirm that Zethrid has, in fact, released her as instructed.

No, Lotor’s soulmate simply fists pale fingers into paler hair and hisses, “fuck you,” into his mouth before kissing the Prince senseless.

-

Later - much, much later - Lotor is pleased to report back to Ezor that the sex is, in fact, fantastic.

[poptod]

The Game (Baxter x Reader)

Description: You’re either a weirdo or a psychopath. Or both.

Notes: so this is um. kind of weird. but i guess thats kind of my thing at this point WC: 1.7k

+

"Didn't think this was how it'd go, did'ja?"

"I would really like it if you took these handcuffs off."

"Why? Cause they're yours?"

You stepped closer to his chair, dragging your gaze over every knot you tied around his body. The rope around his ankles and chest, the metal handcuffs behind the back, the gag unceremoniously hung round his neck ever since he wrestled it off.

"Does that bother you?" You asked as you bent in front of him, a wide, toothy grin spreading across your lips. "Being tied up by your own tools?"

"Shut. The fuck. Up," he hissed out beneath his breath, staring straight forward with a glare that could kill. As usual he completely avoided your own eyes.

"Aww, tiny cop is a little testy today, isn't he?"

Shooting up from your position on the floor, you wandered into a darker corner of the room, where the fluorescent light shining over Baxter couldn't quite reach. There you kept your bookcase stocked full of a variety of your tools. Mostly books, but several of the shelves held cases for knives and bug specimens, two of the most beautiful things you imagined one could have. The white light reflected off the glass case and into the detective's eyes.

"I think you need to calm down," you said as you dug into one of the bookcase drawers, feeling around for a lighter and cigarette. "You smoke, right?"

He remained quiet, that glare still piercing the wall in front of him.

"Doesn't matter. I've seen you smoke. I watch you a lot, you know," you spoke through the cig, clicking on the lighter in your hands before a flame burst.

The steps you took towards him were small, calculated, and gentle with your tapping shoes on the cement floor. This room didn't have the best sound quality, and every little noise was magnified by the stone walls. The minimum amount of furniture had made way for the same echo.

"You're very interesting to watch. You're the only cop that's actually interesting. Did you know that?"

With how low his seat was on the ground his face was right in front of your hips, and you spared him no mercy. Instead you stepped even closer, till he was forced to lean back with uneven breath, ire lacing his stare that had nowhere else to rest but you now.

"I've met a lot of cops in a lot of different countries," you admitted thoughtlessly, taking a long drag from your cigarette. "But you're fun. And so fuckin' pretty."

You knelt once more, this time nearly sat between his legs, and blew smoke into his face. His nose scrunched up as his eyes shut, annoyance clear on his pursed lips.

"What the hell do you want from me?" He said in a low, quiet voice that you had already come to know quite well. The moment you recognized it another smile spread across your face, big and unsettlingly happy.

"A good time, hopefully," you said, raising your hand to his face. At first he flinched, twitching away from you, but your need was relentless. Your palm landed on his cheek, allowing you to stroke the small cut along his cheekbone.

When at last he raised his eye to meet yours, the first thing you noted was fear. Fear permeates every emotion––it raises itself above all else, tells on itself before any other emotion can. There were other things beneath that, of course; anger, contempt, the usual when someone is forcefully tied to a chair in the middle of a nondescript room with no windows.

"Don't worry," you chirped. "I won't hurt you. Much. I just... I have these cravings."

Before turning back to your bookcase, you took another slow drag from your cig, watching the end burn till it nearly touched your lips. The smoke you blew out was half in his face and half not, though by his expression it might as well have been all of it.

You reached into your pocket, pulling out the key to one of your glass cases. It wasn't a terribly secure location for the contents, but that little bit of danger was always thrilling––never knowing if your prey will manage to reach those knives. 

Your largest was closer to a sword than a dagger, and though it did its' job of intimidation, the easier tool was the small silver knife engraved with cuneiform. The most painful was the jagged-toothed blade, who tore at skin instead of slicing it. That was for another time.

With the silver knife in hand you turned back around, a knowing smirk on your face as you once more approached the detective.

"Jim Baxter. James. Jimmy-boy. How ya feeling? Good?"

No reaction from him. Perfect.

"You want to know something? Little tid-bit of information. Little fun fact about me," you said with a sigh as you knelt. "I don't like your line of work. Not just because you guys are always tryin' to bust my ass and ruin the fun, but I don't like the government in general. The perfect society is an anarchal society. It's probably too much to ask what your leaning on this is, right? I think I know anyway."

You fiddled with the knife in your hands, toying with the handle and picking at the blade.

"White-picket fence boy," you added.

"The hell does that mean?"

"You know exactly what it means. It's just––I think it's a little funny. All around you're such a law-abiding person, so nice, so plain, and you've got all this flavor on your face."

By the way his eyes widened, you could tell what came to his mind. It was what came to most people's minds when you tried to explain the essence of flavor in human personality; cannibalism.

"I'm not going to eat you," you clarified, chuckling when his breathing returned to normal. "I could, though. I have no qualms against it. Peel off the skin of your face, fillet that shit... probably taste like chips."

"Why are you doing this? What – what even are you doing?" He finally asked, succumbing to the confusion and curiosity that had plagued him ever since he woke up here.

"Intimidation. Kidnapping. Those are still illegal, right?"

"Yes."

"Right. Well, anyway, those are just some crimes that I by no means on purpose committed. It was just the only way to get what I really want," you said as the tip of your knife pressed into his clothed knee, running down the fabric and leaving a small scratch mark in his pant leg. He jerked away, but you only pressed harder, keeping him in place with a tight hand around his ankle.

"Don't be shy now," you grinned.

"You think you're hot shit –"

"I am."

"– but I'll find you, and –"

"It seems to me you already have."

"Would you shut the fuck up?!"

"Sorry. Go on."

"I'm gonna put you in jail, where creeps like you belong," he said through gritted teeth, his jaw set as he met your awaiting eyes.

"You think I'm a creep? I'm the most sane out of all my friends. Though, I do suppose we live in two different worlds," you said with a shrug.

His type lived in the light. Sunny-day type people, warm homes to come to at the end of the day, dark green grass and clean highways. Yours is more in the style of broken down street lamps––burning rubber from car wheels and the warmth of a lighter. At least that's the way you liked to put it, romanticized into the sweetest fashion so it's easier to swallow.

Honestly, most of your friends are coke dealers. There's one that sells guns to minors, but he's not a friend of yours. Just someone you know. All of them are good people, you can't deny that, but it's not a gentle environment.

Not that you're any bit unlike them. You do, after all, kidnap people and taunt them for fun.

"Alright. Question for you. Ever had sex?"

Nothing. You giggled, crossing your arms on his knees.

"Ever kissed someone? You don't seem like the person who would like any of that stuff. I'll still be surprised if you haven't, though. The idea that no one tried to jump your bones? Yeesh. I don’t think that's possible," you rambled on, making a few vague hand gestures as his glare never faded.

The surly twist in his face reached a high point, ending with him spitting onto your face with a deep irritation in his expression. It took a second or two before you quite processed what had just happened, but when you did you had no hesitation in your response; licking the flat of your tongue up from his jaw to his temple.

"You like that? Into that kinda thing?" You asked in a booming laugh as he spluttered, desperately trying to worm away from you. "That was on you, buddy. Come on. Admit it."

"I'm not going to –"

"Come on, say it! You deserved that. Right?"

You grabbed his chin in a tight grip, forcing him to look at you.

"You get everything that's coming to you. You deserve everything you'll receive within the next... hmm, let's say, three months? Depends on when I get bored of you," you hummed, glancing to the side as you thought.

"The next three months? What are you gonna do in that time?" He asked almost softly, brow furrowed in the same consternation as his eyes.

"Have a little bit of fun, for once. I hope you prove to be more entertaining than the last girl," you said with a grunt, pushing yourself to your feet. "In the meantime... you can't be missing for too long, baby."

"Wh –"

With the butt of your dagger in hand, you whirled back around, hitting him right in his temple. The hit of the massive gem on his skull knocked him out, muscles untensing as he fell limp in his restraints.

You smiled and breathed a sigh of happy relief, as though you had finished swimming in the brisk water of a lake.

"Ah... he seems nice."

Thirty minutes and he's waking up, waves of pain throbbing from his cranium. He hissed as he tried to sit up, realizing with much comfort that he was back in the linen sheets of his bed, the comforter all tangled and mussed beneath him. By the look of the clock, it was the morning of his first shift of the week.

And the first thing he has to tell his boss is that there's another psycho on the loose.

[newstfionline]

Monday, September 20, 2021

Biden’s Entire Presidential Agenda Rests on Expansive Spending Bill (NYT) Biden’s entire presidential agenda is riding on the reconciliation bill being crafted in Congress right now. No president has ever packed as much of his agenda, domestic and foreign, into a single piece of legislation as President Biden has with the $3.5 trillion spending plan that Democrats are trying to wrangle through Congress over the next six weeks,” Tankersley writes. “It is almost as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had stuffed his entire New Deal into one piece of legislation, or if President Lyndon B. Johnson had done the same with his Great Society, instead of pushing through individual components over several years. If he succeeds, Biden’s far-reaching attempt could result in a presidency-defining victory that delivers on a decades-long campaign by Democrats to expand the federal government to combat social problems and spread the gains of a growing economy to workers. If he fails, he could end up with nothing. As Democrats are increasingly seeing, the sheer weight of Mr. Biden’s progressive push could cause it to collapse, leaving the party empty-handed, with the president’s top priorities going unfulfilled. … If Mr. Biden’s party cannot find consensus on those issues and the bill dies, the president will have little immediate recourse to advance almost any of those priorities.

Child care in the US is a ‘broken market,’ Treasury report finds (Yahoo Money) A Treasury Department report this week characterized the U.S. child care system as “unworkable” as Democrats push reform that experts say is an “overdue and critical investment.” The average American family with at least one child under age 5 uses 13% of their income to pay for child care, according to the report, nearly double the 7% that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers affordable. Additionally, less than 20% of the children eligible for the Child Care and Development Fund—a federal assistance program for low-income families—are getting that funding. “Child care is a textbook example of a broken market, and one reason is that when you pay for it, the price does not account for all the positive things it confers on our society,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement on Wednesday. “When we underinvest in child care, we forgo that; we give up a happier, healthier, more prosperous labor force in the future.”

Inspiration4 Astronauts Beam After Return From 3-Day Journey to Orbit (NYT) After three days in orbit, a physician assistant, a community college professor, a data engineer and the billionaire who financed their trip arrived back on Earth, heralding a new era of space travel with a dramatic and successful Saturday evening landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The mission, which is known as Inspiration4, splashed down off the Florida coast at 7:06 p.m. on Saturday. Each step of the return unfolded on schedule, without problems. Within an hour, all four crew members walked out of the spacecraft, one at a time, each beaming with excitement as recovery crews assisted them.

Haitians on Texas border undeterred by US plan to expel them (AP) Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their home country said they will not be deterred by U.S. plans to speedily send them back, as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border Saturday after crossing from Mexico. Scores of people waded back and forth across the Rio Grande on Saturday afternoon, re-entering Mexico to purchase water, food and diapers in Ciudad Acuña before returning to the Texas encampment under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio. Junior Jean, a 32-year-old man from Haiti, watched as people cautiously carried cases of water or bags of food through the knee-high river water. Jean said he lived on the streets in Chile the past four years, resigned to searching for food in garbage cans. “We are all looking for a better life,” he said.

Three Weeks After Hurricane Ida, Parts of Southeast Louisiana Are Still Dark (NYT) For Tiffany Brown, the drive home from New Orleans begins as usual: She can see the lights on in the city’s central business district and people gathering in bars and restaurants. But as she drives west along Interstate 10, signs of Hurricane Ida’s destruction emerge. Trees with missing limbs fill the swamp on either side of the highway. With each passing mile, more blue tarps appear on rooftops, and more electric poles lay fallen by the road, some snapped in half. By the time Ms. Brown gets to her exit in Destrehan 30 minutes later, the lights illuminating the highway have disappeared, and another night of total darkness has fallen on her suburban subdivision. For Ms. Brown, who works as an office manager at a pediatric clinic, life at work can feel nearly normal. But at home, with no electricity, it is anything but. “I keep hoping every day that I’m going to go home and it’ll be on,” she said. Three weeks have passed since Hurricane Ida knocked down electric wires, poles and transmission towers serving more than one million people in southeast Louisiana. In New Orleans, power was almost entirely restored by Sept. 10, and businesses and schools have reopened. But outside the city, more than 100,000 customers were without lights through Sept. 13. As of Friday evening there were still about 38,000 customers without power, and many people remained displaced from damaged homes.

Favela centennial shows Brazil communities’ endurance (AP) Dozens of children lined up at a community center in Sao Paulo for a slice of creamy, blue cake. None was celebrating a birthday; their poor neighborhood, the favela of Paraisopolis, was commemorating 100 years of existence. “People started coming (to the city) for construction jobs and settled in,” community leader Gilson Rodrigues said. “There was no planning, not even streets. People started growing crops. It was all disorganized. Authorities didn’t do much, so we learned to organize ourselves.” The favela’s centennial, which was marked on Thursday, underscores the permanence of its roots and of other communities like it, even as Brazilians in wealthier parts of town often view them as temporary and precarious. Favelas struggle to shed that stigma as they defy simple definition, not least because they evolved over decades. Paraisopolis is Sao Paulo’s second-biggest favela, home to 43,000 people, according to the most-recent census, in 2010. Recent, unofficial counts put its population around 100,000.

The barbecue king: British royals praise Philip’s deft touch (AP) When Prince Philip died nearly six months ago at 99, the tributes poured in from far and wide, praising him for his supportive role at the side of Queen Elizabeth II over her near 70-year reign. Now, it has emerged that Philip had another crucial role within the royal family. He was the family’s barbecue king—perhaps testament to his Greek heritage. “He adored barbecuing and he turned that into an interesting art form,” his oldest son Prince Charles said in a BBC tribute program that will be broadcast on Wednesday. “And if I ever tried to do it he ... I could never get the fire to light or something ghastly, so (he’d say): ‘Go away!’” In excerpts of ‘Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers’ released late Saturday, members of the royal family spoke admiringly of the late Duke of Edinburgh’s barbecuing skills. “Every barbecue that I’ve ever been on, the Duke of Edinburgh has been there cooking,” said Prince William, Philip’s oldest grandson. “He’s definitely a dab hand at the barbecue ... I can safely say there’s never been a case of food poisoning in the family that’s attributed to the Duke of Edinburgh.” The program, which was filmed before and after Philip’s death on April 9, was originally conceived to mark his 100th birthday in June.

Relations between France and the U.S. have sunk to their lowest level in decades. (NYT) The U.S. and Australia went to extraordinary lengths to keep Paris in the dark as they secretly negotiated a plan to build nuclear submarines, scuttling a defense contract worth at least $60 billion. President Emmanuel Macron of France was so enraged that he recalled the country’s ambassadors to both nations. Australia approached the new administration soon after President Biden’s inauguration. The conventionally powered French subs, the Australians feared, would be obsolete by the time they were delivered. The Biden administration, bent on containing China, saw the deal as a way to cement ties with a Pacific ally. But the unlikely winner is Britain, who played an early role in brokering the alliance. For its prime minister, Boris Johnson, who will meet this coming week with Biden at the White House and speak at the U.N., it is his first tangible victory in a campaign to make post-Brexit Britain a player on the global stage.

Hong Kong’s first ‘patriots-only’ election kicks off (Reuters) Fewer than 5,000 Hong Kong people from mostly pro-establishment circles began voting on Sunday for candidates to an election committee, vetted as loyal to Beijing, who will pick the city’s next China-backed leader and some of its legislature. Pro-democracy candidates are nearly absent from Hong Kong’s first election since Beijing overhauled the city’s electoral system to ensure that “only patriots” rule China’s freest city. The election committee will select 40 seats in the revamped Legislative Council in December, and choose a chief executive in March. Changes to the political system are the latest in a string of moves—including a national security law that punishes anything Beijing deems as subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces—that have placed the international financial hub on an authoritarian path. Most prominent democratic activists and politicians are now in jail or have fled abroad.

The Remote-Control Killing Machine (Politico/NYT) For 14 years, Israel wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist. Then they came up with a way to do it while using a trained sniper who was more than 1,000 miles away—and fired remotely. It was also the debut test of a high-tech, computerized sharpshooter kitted out with artificial intelligence and multiple-camera eyes, operated via satellite and capable of firing 600 rounds a minute. The souped-up, remote-controlled machine gun now joins the combat drone in the arsenal of high-tech weapons for remote targeted killing. But unlike a drone, the robotic machine gun draws no attention in the sky, where a drone could be shot down, and can be situated anywhere, qualities likely to reshape the worlds of security and espionage.

Israeli army arrests last 2 of 6 Palestinian prison escapees (AP) Israeli forces on Sunday arrested the last two of six Palestinian prisoners who escaped a maximum-security Israeli prison two weeks ago, closing an intense, embarrassing episode that exposed deep security flaws in Israel and turned the fugitives into Palestinian heroes. The Israeli military said the two men surrendered in Jenin, their hometown in the occupied West Bank, after they were surrounded at a hideout that had been located with the help of “accurate intelligence.” The prisoners all managed to tunnel out of a maximum-security prison in northern Israel on Sept. 6. The bold escape dominated newscasts for days and sparked heavy criticism of Israel’s prison service. According to various reports, the men dug a hole in the floor of their shared cell undetected over several months and managed to slip past a sleeping prison guard after emerging through a hole outside the facility. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have celebrated the escape and held demonstrations in support of the prisoners. Taking part in attacks against the Israeli military or even civilians is a source of pride for many Palestinians, who view it as legitimate resistance to military occupation.

Jaw-dropping moments in WSJ's bombshell Facebook investigation (CNN Business) This week the Wall Street Journal released a series of scathing articles about Facebook, citing leaked internal documents that detail in remarkably frank terms how the company is not only well aware of its platforms’ negative effects on users but also how it has repeatedly failed to address them. Here are some of the more jaw-dropping moments from the Journal’s series. In the Journal’s report on Instagram’s impact on teens, it cites Facebook’s own researchers’ slide deck, stating the app harms mental health. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, according to the WSJ. Another reads: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression ... This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” In 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said a change in Facebook’s algorithm was intended to improve interactions among friends and family and reduce the amount of professionally produced content in their feeds. But according to the documents published by the Journal, staffers warned the change was having the opposite effect: Facebook was becoming an angrier place. A team of data scientists put it bluntly: “Misinformation, toxicity and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares,” they said, according to the Journal’s report.

[floatingbook]

The place of lesbians in women’s liberation and lesbophobia (1/2)

- Reading: Tales of the Lavender Menace by Karla Jay (part 2 here) At Karla Jay’s first Redstockings gathering:

“I would have never dared to question the leaders of a group I wanted to join. But after the [Redstockings] manifesto had been handed around, a woman named Rita Mae Brown, whom I knew slightly from NYU, pushed into the center of the room from her position in the doorway to take issue with Redstockings, even though it was her first meeting. Why, she demanded, didn’t Redstockings have a position on gay women? She began to argue that lesbian relationships were as important for a feminist group to embrace as the struggle to change men.” p. 43-44

The Redstockings completely forgetting to mention lesbians or to even have an opinion on the subject ready to be shared show how much of an afterthought we lesbians have always been in women’s liberation movement. We might only represent a fraction of women, but we still are women, and as such deserve liberation as much as any other straight women. The “struggle to change men” means having to interact, having to implicate oneself in reforming them. And what of women who would have nothing to do with their oppressors? What of women who do not want to spend all their energy and strength on the thankless task of making men understand that women are humans too?

“Rita [Mae Brown] alone had the courage to speak up at that Redstockings’ meeting, long before anyone else in New York’s feminist circles dared to be openly gay. Back then, apart from early activists such as Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, and the other pioneering women of Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), few dared to admit in a public setting that they were lesbians. It was one thing to hang out in a gay bar where anyone simply assumed similar sexual proclivities or to be open in a gay student organization. It was quite another to announce one’s lesbianism and then demand it take center stage in a room full of straight feminists who were likely to be heterosexist (the word “homophobia” came later) and who had just issued an ultimatum to keep on sleeping with men as part of a program to mend the oppressors’ ways. Rita’s sharp challenge made Redstockings’ program seem quixotic to the point of being delusional: Were these women the oppressed or the oppressors?” p. 44

It’s a shame that being a lesbian had to remain a secret, on pain of being discriminated against. As lesbians, we have a unique outlook on the world around us and on men especially. We have way less interest in maintaining the status quo or in retaining any kind of ties with men. Our outlook on relationships with men are less tinted by the rosy lenses of the patriarchal promise of a happy-ever-after made of marriage and a brood of kids. Our very reasoning when it comes to women’s liberation is often less reformist than separatist; and as such our ideas are despised. Straight women wishing for romantic love cannot accept our conclusions that women would be better off independent from our oppressors.

“The leaders of Redstockings were disturbed and threatened by Rita [Mae Brown]’s behavior. They turned the conversation back around to men as our oppressors. Still, they looked uncomfortable. After all, Rita was calling them her oppressors when they were insisting that women like them (and us) were the most oppressed on earth. One of the main tenets of the “Redstockings Manifesto” was, “We identify the agents of our oppression as men… All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc. ) are extensions of male supremacy: men dominate women, a few men dominate the rest.” Although the group’s members identified with “the poorest, most brutally exploited women,” they would have found it counter productive, to put it mildly, to be forced to contemplate the ways that working-class women, disabled women, or Third World women (as we called women of coloraturas) were far worse off than someone like Kathie [Sarachild], who had attended Radcliffe College. By formulating a Marxist class analysis that emphasized unity among all women and foregrounded sexism as the tool to analyze other oppressions, they had hoped to quell demands by other women that double and triple oppressions receive priority.” p. 45

This kind of behaviour is obviously one of the reasons that led Kimberlé Crenshaw to pen down her vision of intersectionality in feminism. The founders of Redstockings and writers of its manifesto were mostly white, straight, university-educated women who had never and would never be oppressed on account of their sexual orientation, skin colour, social class or disability. As a result, the conclusions they draw in their theory can only be flawed and short-sighted. Their conclusions might be insightful, but only for a specific type of women. And according to Karla Jay, they seemed reluctant to widen their scope or take into account the experience of women different from them. While Rita Mae Brown (and other lesbians that later spoke up) offered them the opportunity to reflect on what they had concluded and make their reasoning better, more pragmatic, more adapted to the various circumstances of the women around them, they stood on their positions and dismissed lesbian concerns.

“Lesbianism was a more widely discussed issue than clashs and labor. Rita Mae Brown’s vociferous arrival in Redstockings had sparked discussion in Group X [the founding Redstockings cell], although reactions were mixed. Irene Peslikis, for one, was emboldened to admit to a long-term lesbian affair that Group X knew nothing about. But other members of Group X, echoing Betty Friedan’s assertion that lesbians were a “lavender menace,” began to blame gay women for causing dissension in the group and accused them of being “antifeminists.” Katie Sarachild wrote in Feminist Revolution that “many lesbians complained that they were excluded from the movement in the beginning often by simple virtue of the fact that the women in it spent so much time talking about such boring or irrelevant or disturbing to them subjects as sex with men, getting men to do the housework, and such related problems as abortions and childcare.”

What she and many other heterosexist Redstockings overlooked was that lesbians had been raised in families with men, had usually had sexual relationships with men, had worked with men, and sometimes lived with male roommates. Several lesbians I knew had children from previous marriages. What the straight women couldn’t see was that many Redstockings talked about men all the time the way dieters obsess about food. There were times when some of us, including a few of the heterosexuals, felt it would be more productive to focus on ways in which women could interact with one another positively.

The current of homophobia made many new members, including me, reluctant to mention homosexual experiences to the group. “ p. 65-66

Some straight members of Redstockings dismissed lesbians experiences as irrelevant to women’s liberation under the assumptions that because lesbians are not attracted to men and therefore would not engage in relationships with them in an ideal world, and so were not interacting with the male oppressor. In our world, this is a completely delusional assertion. Even in separatist communes, lesbians still have to deal with the law of the land, which has so far mostly been written and enacted by men. Lesbians too have fathers and brothers; lesbians too get sick and need to go to the hospital; lesbians too go out and use the amenities offered by society; lesbians too can be harassed and attacked by men. So women’s liberation concerns us as much as it does straight women, and our experiences with men and of sexism should not be dismissed as irrelevant.

And our experiences as lesbians tell us that straight women concerned with women’s liberation are most likely wasting their energy when they focus on trying to change men. Yes, these kind of discussions should take place, especially between women who do not want to renounce relationships with men; but lesbians are right to wonder why such subjects often take center place in women’s liberation movement.

Continued here in part 2.

[sage-nebula]

So since you're taking fandom asks uhhhh do you have any more thoughts/ideas about your pokemon fantasy au? Specifically about Alan? I just love him and that au a lot<3

Just so you know, I am always taking fandom asks. I might not answer them right away because I haven’t spent as much time on tumblr ever since I got my new job last year (because tumblr is blocked there for being a “video sharing site,” hilarious though that is), but I love talking about fandoms and am always down to take questions about them.

That said, I sure do!

I don’t know how much of this I’ve shared here before, and if I repeat anything you already know then my bad, but what I have so far is:

— Alan hails from the Kingdom of Kalos, and is one of the Keepers of the Spirit of a Mythical Pokémon — in his case, Keldeo.

— And on that note, before we proceed further, that is a change I made. I originally had him as the Keeper of Victini, but I decided to change it to Keldeo because even though Victini is my favorite mythical and fire-type suits him more than water-type, Keldeo fits Alan to a T. Orphaned at a young age but happily adopted, determination to become stronger, so determined it has a resolute form, and Alan’s leitmotif in The Strongest Mega Evolution / XY&Z is actually sampled from Keldeo’s theme from its movie, “The Legend of the Sacred Swordsman”. Everything fits. So in conclusion, the boy is the Keeper of Keldeo, I don’t make the rules. I mean, I do, but my hands are pretty tied on this one. Moving on . . . 

— Soon after his birth, one of King Lysandre’s mages, Xerosic, identified infant Alan as the Keeper of Keldeo. Highly motivated to bring as many Keepers into his service as he could (and raising one from infancy to be loyal to him was the best situation he could ask for), Lysandre sent his knights along with Xerosic to obtain the child and bring him back. Lysandre’s knights did find baby Alan and his parents living in a remote town, but unlike in canon, Alan’s parents were not willing to hand their baby over to the king and a fight broke out. Alan’s mother’s family’s guards fought against the knights, and ultimately, were unsuccessful. Many of the guards and pretty much all of Alan’s family, his parents included, were slain. But somehow, Alan himself was lost in the battle. Lysandre’s knights searched through all corpses and burnt wreckage, but they couldn’t find the infant anywhere. Assuming him to have died and his body too mangled to identify, they reluctantly returned to the castle to deliver the news.

— In reality, what actually happened is that Alan’s mother, knowing that the battle was going to be lost and not wanting her son raised by the king, did what any panicked and terrified mother would do and put her son in a sling around the neck and shoulders of one of the family’s Charizard and sent the dragon away with baby Alan and the Charizard’s own baby Charmander (who, incidentally, hatched from his egg the very same day Alan was born). The Charizard was offended — she felt she should get to stay and fight — but ultimately the safety of the babies won out (particularly since, like any other pokémon, the Charizard could sense the Spirit of Keldeo within baby Alan and knew that he was someone to be protected) and so she took off with both human infant and Charizard baby in tow.

— And so, for the next few years, Alan was raised by a Charizard in the mountains, an absolute feral child. He didn’t know how to speak human language, nor did he know how to speak Charmander / Charizard (he made growls and similar sounds, but that’s not the same as language), though he could communicate with them well enough. Mama Charizard made sure that Alan stayed fed, fed him curing berries when he got sick (which didn’t work as well as they did for pokémon, but she tried), and he grew up with her baby as his brother. The two often wrestled and play-sparred, which resulted in quite a few injuries for Alan at first as the Charmander didn’t quite realize that Alan’s human skin wasn’t as tough as a fellow Charmander’s scales, but the two bonded exceedingly quickly and would remain inseparable for the rest of their lives.

— However, as mentioned, this only lasted for a few years. Neither King Lysandre nor Xerosic truly believed that Alan had perished in that battle, and so Xerosic had continued scrying for him ever since while Lysandre sent out search parties to the mountains. Every time they got near, Mama Charizard took both her babies and flew to another remote location, deeper and deeper into the mountains. It was deep in a cavernous ravine that tragedy struck; an earthquake triggered by Lysandre’s knights battling wild Tyranitar caused a rockslide, and though Mama Charizard managed to get her sons out of the way, she didn’t manage to escape herself. Boulders too heavy for her to move and at too awkward a position for her to melt pinned her to the ground. Her wings were crushed; she wouldn’t be able to properly defend her babies if danger came.

— Fortunately, danger did not come, but help did. A powerful sage named Olympia foresaw this tragedy, and though she knew that she couldn’t do anything to interfere with it happening because that would put the future too far off course, she could prevent it from getting any worse. She arrived soon after the tragedy struck, and though Mama Charizard was at first very defensive against her (believing her to be one of the humans out to hurt her human son), Olympia was able to convince her that she was there to help. Olympia’s psychic pokémon moved the boulders pinning Mama Charizard, freeing her so that she could move again . . . but only in limited capacity, given the breaks and tears in her wings. It was then that Olympia told Mama Charizard that she could take her and her babies to someone who would keep all three of them safe. Still wary, but with no other options, Mama Charizard relented. 

— It was a long journey, given that Mama Charizard could not fly and would not consent to a pokéball, but eventually Olympia moved all three safely to a quiet village — and, more specifically, to the home of an alchemist named Augustine Sycamore. Sycamore was, of course, pretty shocked to see Olympia show up with a severely wounded Charizard, a toddler Charmander, and a feral human toddler in tow, but after Olympia explained the situation (Mama Charizard was too injured to survive in the wild anymore, the toddlers wouldn’t survive on their own either, the human boy should probably become civilized and was also the Keeper of Keldeo and needed to be protected by a trustworthy guardian), Sycamore agreed to take them all in.

— As an alchemist rather than a monster trainer, Sycamore didn’t exactly have the qualifications to care for injured dragons. Despite this, he had a very spacious plot of land that he had inherited from his family, and as such Mama Charizard had more than enough room to recover, even if she would never be able to leave again due to her injured wings. Additionally, Sycamore made sure she knew that he wasn’t intending to take her babies from her, although in the eyes of the law he was adopting the human boy, but that didn’t mean he would prevent Mama Charizard from being part of his life. (Also, Mama Charizard could not fly, but she could still melt boulders, so Sycamore wasn’t going to push his luck on that one.)

— That said, if he was going to be adopted by a human parent, the feral child did need a name, and calling him “Keeper of Keldeo” would do the exact opposite of what Olympia said needed to be done to ensure his secrecy and safety. As such, Sycamore named him “Alan”, and set about teaching him how to do things like read, write, speak, and otherwise live in human society.

— When it came to being civilized, three-year-old Alan did not go quietly into the good night.

— For starters, he hated clothing. He’d never worn clothing before in his memory before Olympia found him and yanked things over his legs and tugged something over his head, and he’d been just fine. He didn’t understand why Olympia or Sycamore wanted to put him in clothes all the time and thus took them off at every opportunity. He also pitched a fit every single night he had to sleep indoors in a bed versus outside with his mother and brother. Eventually a compromise was made that both Alan and the Charmander would sleep indoors in the bed, but even then, Sycamore woke up no few mornings to find them both outside with Mama Charizard again. (And Mama Charizard was of no help in this department; if nothing else, she looked Smug when Sycamore saw the boys curled up against her chest beneath her wing.) Additionally, for the longest time Sycamore thought he was making no progress teaching Alan human language; he went over books with him every single day, but still Alan wouldn’t say a single word to him, with his only vocalizations being growls instead. It wasn’t until a full six months had passed before Alan looked at Sycamore one day and said, “Why don’t you call my brother anything?”

Sycamore stared at him for a long moment before he sputtered, “You can talk?”

“Yes.” Alan’s glare was unwavering. “Why doesn’t my brother have a name?”

Sycamore didn’t know whether to be elated the lessons had worked, bewildered why it took Alan so long to show that the lessons had worked, or a bit defensive at being so suddenly interrogated.

— Eventually, Sycamore told Alan that he and the Charmander should work out a name for said Charmander together, along with Mama Charizard’s input perhaps, and the name the two eventually came back with was Lizardon.

— Although Alan put up a stubborn fight pretty much every step of the way, by the time he was five he’d mostly acclimated to living like a human, and by the time he was six he took an active interest in Sycamore’s alchemic studies. By age seven he was helping with some of the experiments, and by age nine he considered himself Sycamore’s apprentice and hoped to one day become an alchemist himself. In other words, though it took time, the two bonded and came to love each other as father and son, and Alan came to be quite embarrassed about all the times he bit Sycamore when they first met. (It was quite a bit. He really didn’t like that whole “wearing clothes” thing.)

— As for Mama Charizard, she too gradually warmed up to letting Sycamore co-parent the boys. She also came to fall in love with Sycamore’s Garchomp, Gabrielle, so soon Alan and Lizardon basically had two moms and a dad. All in all, things were going quite well for them.

— And then, as it always does . . . misfortune, steered by destiny, came knocking.

— All these years, Xerosic never stopped searching for the Keeper of Keldeo, and by the time Alan was 13, Xerosic finally found him. This time, Lysandre took a more measured approach to things; at age 13, Alan would not be as malleable as he would have been had Lysandre been able to take him as an infant. If Lysandre had his soldiers abduct Alan now, no doubt he would put up a fight, and the Spirit of Keldeo was one of Determination. If the Keeper wanted to leave, he would leave. Lysandre had to find a way to make him want to stay. As such, he decided to stage a danger that would convince Alan that he needed to join Lysandre’s knights. Once he did that, everything would fall into place.

— So Lysandre sent his spies, led by Malva, to gather recon. They returned with intel that Alan was being raised by an alchemist and aspired to become one himself. They reported that he seemed very attached to his family and his home, and that it would be unlikely that he’d want to leave . . . but that there was a high probability he’d want to protect his family and his home. As a result, Lysandre staged things in three parts:

1.) He and his knights visited the village so that they could “check in” to see if there was anything they could do to enrich the lives of the people there. When Lysandre spotted Alan in the crowd, he made particular note to introduce himself to the boy, and make a comment about how perhaps Alan would like to join the knights one day, to help protect the kingdom. With Sycamore’s hand on his shoulder, Alan replied that he wanted to be an alchemist. Lysandre smiled and said, “Well, you never know what the future will hold.”

2.) A few days after that, he staged a disaster; I don’t have a clear idea in mind for what the disaster was at the moment, but it was something that put Sycamore, Mama Charizard, Gabrielle, and others in danger. Alan and Lizardon did their best to defend but they didn’t have training to do very much. I think Lysandre probably staged this so that it looked like an attack from one of the neighboring nations (perhaps the Kingdom of Galar) to make it extra clear why it would be wise for Alan to join the knights to protect his family and his home.

3.) A few days after that, Lysandre and the knights visited again to help the village recover from the attack. He also, while there, once again suggested that Alan could learn to defend against attacks like these if he joined the knights.

— And that was all it took. Alan didn’t want to leave home, but he also couldn’t stand the thought of anything terrible happening to his family. So he asked Sycamore if he could join the knights—pleaded, even. Sycamore didn’t want to say yes for multiple reasons, the warning Olympia had given him about Alan being a Keeper and thus needing to be kept away from those who might use him in mind—but he could also tell by the fire in Alan’s eyes that he was not really going to take “no” for an answer, and so he relented on the condition that Alan write weekly letters. Alan agreed without hesitation. Mama Charizard, meanwhile, had no use for letters, but she agreed only so long as Lizardon went with Alan, because she believed them stronger together. Of course, neither Alan nor Lizardon had a problem with this, and as such they both left with Lysandre that afternoon. Just as planned.

— Things changed for both of them pretty quickly once they got back to the castle. For one, Lysandre forced Alan and Lizardon to begin using a pokéball, as was kingdom law. For another, while Alan was technically a squire like any other beginning knight, he was also much younger than the rest and thus would receive personal lessons from Lysandre himself in order to get him where he needed to be in terms of strength and training. Alan had no qualms about this, of course; he wanted to get as strong as he could as fast as he could.

— The first bit of training they went through was Alan testing out different weapons to see which one he was best suited to using. In honesty, he had aptitude for multiple; his sharp eyesight made him proficient with a bow, and he wasn’t half bad with a sword and shield. Ultimately he chose to specialize in polearm, though he would still practice with sword and bow semi-regularly in the years to follow.

— Other forms of training included Alan sparring with Lysandre himself (which especially in the early years consisted mostly of Lysandre kicking Alan around the training grounds), and melee matches with other knights and their pokémon. It was in one of these matches that Alan was seriously injured; Lizardon, a Charmeleon now, let out a startled cry as one of the knights hit him with the blunt end of an axe and knocked him to the ground. Distracted, Alan rushed to Lizardon’s aid, only to be hit by Lysandre’s Pyroar from his blind spot. Pyroar’s claws raked down the side of Alan’s face, blood everywhere, and the training session was halted. Lysandre scolded Alan, telling him this was what happened when he got distracted in battle, before he sent him off to the infirmary for treatment. The wounds healed, but scars remained down his cheek from then on.

— For what it’s worth, Alan did write weekly letters back home. But after a year of never receiving a response he stopped, figuring that Sycamore must be too upset with him for leaving in the first place to want to write back. In truth, Sycamore never received those letters. Lysandre ensured that they were never sent.

— Ultimately, harsh and cruel though it was, the training paid off. By the time he was fifteen Alan could best most of the other knights in combat, including the generals, earning him the rank of General himself (as well as Lysandre’s top General, though that was due to his nature as a Keeper in all honesty; Lysandre wanted to keep him on a short leash). This, naturally, made him very unpopular with the other knights, who felt he was an upstart who didn’t deserve such a high rank, but Alan didn’t join the knights to make friends and so he mostly ignored their scorn.

— While he had standard armor at first, Lysandre’s training fast-tracked Lizardon’s evolution, as well as his and Alan’s ability to Mega Evolve. Charizard scales shed naturally, and by the time Alan was 17 enough scales were collected from Charizard’s mega evolved form that they were able to forge custom armor from them. This armor, naturally, was fireproof, and his ability to withstand flames—along with the Spirit of Keldeo giving him unnatural determination that allows him to keep fighting even after sustaining what should be life-threatening injuries, that fire inside him only burning out once the battle is through—earned him a fearsome reputation. Being sighted standing engulfed in flames, his refusal to go down . . . both of these earned him a reputation as a “demon knight.”

— Once Lizardon evolved into Charizard, he became Alan’s sole sparring partner. Unlike the play wrestling of their youth, Alan and Lizardon’s sparring was much more skilled now, with Alan using his polearm and Lizardon deftly avoiding strikes while trying to pin Alan to the ground. So far, Lizardon has ultimately won every spar, successfully pinning Alan to the ground and drenching his face with kisses. These moments are pretty much the only time Alan really laughs after joining the knights.

— At the time the story kicks off, Alan is Lysandre’s top general and he does not know that he is the Keeper of Keldeo. He is also completely unaware of Lysandre’s sinister machinations and aims. Sycamore is incredibly worried about him and has been ever since he went to the castle never to be heard from again, and has been making contacts across the kingdom to get as much information as he can. (He has tried to seek out Olympia for her console, but her whereabouts are unknown.) Lastly, Alan ends up saving a young aspiring bard named Manon when she’s attacked by brigands, and she immediately attaches herself to him, deciding that he is the perfect inspiration for her ballads and stories, no matter how many times Alan stresses to her that he is King Lysandre’s top general and he goes into battle a lot and she will get hurt and die if she continues to follow him. 

“If you’re a general, then where’s your platoon?” 

“I don’t have one.”

“Then how’re you a general?”

“It’s just a title. A rank. I’m different from the others.”

“And that’s why you’ll be great epic poem material!”

“[long suffering sigh]”

Eventually, Alan will learn the truth about the king’s intentions, but whether he learns the truth in time or not . . . that remains to be seen.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: You sound like a remarkable woman out of her time. Your posts suggest you are modern and feminine yet your cultured intelligence and cleverness seems from an earlier lost time. Would you prefer to be living in 18th Century Georgian England? One imagines you would fit right in as a heroine in Jane Austen’s Regency world of aristocratic manners and clever barbs over tea in the drawing room.

I had to smile to myself a little because the last thing I ever saw myself was a Jane Austen character. I certainly don’t see myself as heroine of Austen’s world. After all don’t most if not all of Austen’s literary heroines spend their time pathetically pining away for the socially aloof and yet heroically vulnerable gentlemen they profess to love, men who are usually too dense to know that these whining women have childish schoolgirl crushes on them? I know I’m going to angry mails now from pouting Austen fans but I have to speak my mind.

Like most people I do profess to liking a nice, cosy Jane Austen adaptation on television. The fabulous frocks, fans, feathers and finery soothe us with images of a gentler, well-mannered time when gentlemen in cravats and breeches wooed perfumed ladies across ballrooms and well-manicured lawns.

However the reality was not quite so lovely. It’s not that women - like Austen’s literary women - were caught up in the social constraints of their time but also I would get restless just sitting down all day to tea and gossip. I would sooner catch the first ship bound for India and have adventures in the Orient along the way. Tea with Mr Darcy in well stuffed breeches might not be enough for me but then again a well stocked library as most landed gentry homes had would make me reconsider.

I’m fortunate that within my family we have a wealth of diaries, correspondence, private papers, and other family heirlooms that go back a few centuries which we have scrupulously stored to hopefully pass onto future generations.

So when I can decipher some letters of my ancestors it gives me some insight into what life was like for them as men and women of their time. It’s not always easy to read as they loved to scribble in ink (now faded) in the margins on nearly every page of the books they read. And so the penmanship is stylish but minuscule and therefore sometimes hard to make out. The letters are somewhat more legible but it requires patience and perseverance to make sense of what they were writing about. It’s a wonderful way to flesh out the genealogical tree with titbits of personal anecdotes that could be perfunctory, mundane, scandalous, salacious, romantic, and even political.

I’ve read Jane Austen like every other girl at boarding school I imagine. I like her writings but I wouldn’t say my heart is in it to actually live through that time.

Life for Georgian women, even of high birth, was harsh enough in a time when men still held all the power and husbands could beat and even rape their wives. Noblewomen caught diseases passed on from their husband's prostitutes and were still subjected to confinement and the barbaric medical practice of bleeding when pregnant. Even their fashions and frippery provided cold comfort when their make-up poisoned them, unwashed dresses and undergarments stank and their fancy foods made their teeth rot and fall out.

The fact that women did survive and even thrive is a testament to their strength and fortitude which I find admirable. 

I’m used to mud and sweat and even living rough because as ex-army officer I was trained to suck it up but it’s also in my nature because I love going rough when I hike or climb mountains or trek to other places off the beaten track. So I’m not squeamish so long as at the end of the day I can bathe or shower my aches away and I can put on a fresh change of clothing. However even I recoil in some horror when I consider that despite their elegant appearance, Georgian women carried a world of stench. While hands and faces would be washed daily, immersive bathing was considered bad for the health and was only indulged in occasionally.

The heavy gowns of the period would have caused the wearer to sweat profusely, with only perfumes such as rose water and orange blossom to mask the smell. The clothes themselves would also be pungent. Due to the huge amount of work involved in laundering, most households would have a maximum of one wash-day a month. Linen undergarments were changed as often as possible, but their "clean" smell would still be unappealing to us. Linen was often bleached in chamber lye, a kind of soap made from ashes and urine.

As if bodily odour was not bad enough, there was also the whiff of rotting teeth. A sugar-rich diet led to frequent tooth-decay in the upper classes. Cleansing tooth-powders had started to emerge but most of these featured "spirit of vitriol", known to us as sulphuric acid, and stripped teeth of their enamel. Often the best remedy for smelling teeth and bad breath was to chew herbs such as parsley. Where a tooth was past hope of redemption, it would be pulled with pliers or a tooth key, a claw that would fix to the teeth so it could be loosened in the jaw. To avoid a gummy smile, ladies of fashion sought false teeth made from ivory or porcelain but, where possible, they preferred to have "live" teeth in their dentures. Poor people were encouraged to sell healthy teeth for this purpose. While such a practice was unethical, it was better than the other method of sourcing human teeth: pillaging them battlefields and graveyards.

Georgian women were renowned for their snowy faces and dark eyebrows but achieving the fashionable skin tone could be extremely dangerous. White face powders were lead-based and some also featured vinegar and horse manure. Years of coating the entire face, shoulders and neck with such a mixture could lead to catastrophic consequences. Society beauty Maria Gunning died at the age of just 27, having spent her life addicted to cosmetics. Lead-poisoning could cause hair loss and tooth decay but ingeniously, these problems were elegantly adapted into the fashion and it became desirable to have a high forehead and pencil-thin eyebrows. If your own eyebrows failed you completely, you could always trap a mouse in the kitchen and use its fur to make a new artificial pair.

I usually wear my hair straight or tied up in a bun so I don’t fuss too much over my hair. This would certainly be out of place if I lived in Georgian times. Georgian ladies were the mistresses of big hair. They piled their frizzed and curled locks over pads or wires to create show pieces for the drawing room. Often their own hair was not sufficient and had to be supplemented by horse hair and false pieces. Styles from the 1760s were domed or egg-shaped, elongating into the pouf in the 1780s. But Georgiana, the infamous Duchess of Devonshire, had to take things a step further. She introduced the three-foot hair tower, ornamented with stuffed birds, waxed fruit and model ships. Following her example, women competed with one another to make the tallest headdress. Since these styles were costly and took hours to arrange, they were worn for several weeks. Ladies had to sleep sitting up and travel on the carriage floor to avoid spoiling their creations. With no combing possible, lice were inevitable so a special scratching rod was invented for irritated ladies to poke into their piled up hair.

It wasn’t any real fun being a woman and I often think Jane Austen is selling a false bill of goods in her books. You never see women in her novels deal with their menstrual problems. No one has proved for certain what they did, if anything, for sanitary hygiene. With no knickers to hold in strips of linen or rag, they were left to Mother Nature’s mercy. I can imagine that being a conversation stopper in the drawing room over tea with the vicar and his prissy wife. Their toilet habits were a little more civilised. When ladies at the royal court were caught short, they resorted to porcelain jugs much like a modern-day gravy boat. This contraption, called a bourdaloue, was stuffed up beneath the skirts and clenched beneath the thighs. Apparently it was quite normal for a lady to continue her conversation while urinating into the device! I think Jane Austen missed a trick by not having at least one scene with Elizabeth Bennet urinating under her skirts whilst trading clever barbs with Mr Darcy.

Speaking of which marriage was not a box of chocolates in the early 18th Century or indeed later in Austen’s day. Upon marriage, a lady and all her worldly goods would become property of her husband. It was therefore essential to guard a well-to-do bride’s interests with a legal marriage settlement before the ceremony took place. I read somewhere that Henrietta Hobart, later mistress to George II, had reason to be thankful for the settlement drawn up before her marriage to Charles Howard in 1706. It stipulated that two thirds of her dowry should be invested, with the interest at her sole disposal. Should Henrietta die, the funds were to pass to her children. This arrangement was to prove life-saving when her husband became an abusive gambling-addict and alcoholic.

Lower class women were known to take extreme measures to protect their future husbands from their own debts. "Smock weddings" were intended to show that the bride brought no clothes or property to the union, thus exempting each spouse from the other’s financial liabilities. The woman would be married wearing only her undergarment or smock – or sometimes nothing at all. Of course no marriage settlement, however generous, could save a woman from a violent husband and it remained legal for a man to rape or kidnap his wife. While excessive beating was frowned upon, whipping was considered a reasonable measure to discipline a wife.  Even so, it would appear many men pushed their rights beyond the limit, for laws were later amended to say a man could only beat his wife with a stick "no thicker than his thumb".

Escaping an abusive marriage then was well-nigh impossible. Divorces were so expensive that they remained the privilege of the very rich. Even if a lady did have the money to appeal for divorce, she was by no means certain of success. She would have to prove both adultery and "life-threatening cruelty". And if she won her freedom, it would come with more than just a social cost - any children from the marriage would remain property of the husband. Certainly in my family - on my father’s English side of the family - they had their fair share of scandalous behaviour that didn’t reflect well to our 21st Century minds.

Certainly the Georgians were not sexless and they enjoyed their carnal pleasures but of course being aristocratic they never did things that would publicly expose them to scandal. I was reading one such letter of an ancestor who was writing to her older sister about how hard it was for her to conceive her first child - a son naturally - that her rakish husband first took to prostitutes in an era when such things were common and the risk of infection from sexually transmitted diseases was rife. And then later settled on one mistress whom he seriously gave thought to impregnate her. However the mistress was an actress and thus such a union was frowned upon in landed gentry circles and so he was shamed back to his high born wife and to ‘try harder by God’s Providence’. The duty of any aristocratic wife was to produce a healthy son and heir but if nature did not take its course, they could seek help and so these ancestors of mine did.

Like many other aristocratic couples with trouble conceiving children they sought out quacks who made promises to cure infertility. One such person was a Dr James Graham who had invented what he called ‘The Celestial Bed’ that guaranteed conception and unearthly sexual pleasure. The bed itself was electrified and stood on insulating glass legs. The mattress was stuffed with stallion hair to increase potency. Mirrored floors and music from a glass harmonica heightened the experience, while the air swirled with exotic perfumes. Having made love on this bizarre contraption, the couple were encouraged to take ice baths and have a firm massage. The lady would also be advised to douse her genitals with champagne.

It must have worked because the family line did not die out but flourished. It proves to me that champagne is the answer to almost every question in life. A woman’s travails were not over just because she was successfully pregnant. More hazards lay in her path. Despite advances in medicine, a shocking number of medieval practices remained in the Georgian birthing chamber. The long period of rest or "confinement" leading up to the birth was still enforced for wealthy women. The rooms would be kept dark and sweltering with the expectant mother wrapped up in fustian waistcoats and petticoats. As soon as she had given birth, the room was made even hotter, with the curtains round the bed pinned and even the keyhole in the door stopped to prevent a draft. When I lived in China I discovered this is what Chinese mothers did and still do to this day. So I wasn’t so surprised when I read such a practice happened in other cultures like my own.

Those more fortunate might find themselves in a birthing chair. This had a sloped back and a semi-circle cut from the seat, designed to let gravity aid nature. It was certainly a better option than staining expensive bedding and linen. With only female relatives and an unofficially trained midwife to help, many women and their babies died in childbed, as it was known. Even when male surgeons became involved in obstetrics toward the end of the century, treatments were woefully inadequate. I read in the correspondence of one of my female ancestors that she was frequently ‘bled’ during her pregnancy. Somehow she survived any risk of post-partum haemorrhage.

Even when a birth was successful without complication the wife/mother was not out of the woods just yet. In keeping with custom in landed gentry circles of the times, the new mother would not suckle their own babies. In keeping its custom this taks was given over to a wet nurse. In the case of one of my ancestors whose correspondence I read she got a village girl from the family estates to breast feed the baby. The reason for doing so was brutally simple. Firstly, it was to ensure that the lady could conceive again as soon as possible. And secondly, Wealthier women often had difficulty breastfeeding due to their tight corsets or stays. It was also believed that a child would grow up stronger and hardier with a country-woman’s milk.

But even when the baby sprog was weaned, it was common practice for it to be handed to foster-parents until it was old enough to run about and talk. Interestingly enough Jane Austen and her siblings were fostered by a cottager in Deane village, two miles from their family home.

So overall I’m no so sure I would be thrilled to be living in the Georgian and Regency era even if it meant challenging that scoundrel Mr Wickham to a sword duel (and kicking his arse), match making with Emma, or even missing out on the pleasure of taking tea with Mr Darcy.

Sorry Mr Darcy.

Of course I’m fascinated with history and one sometimes wonder what it might be like to live in a particular time. However it’s just a flight of the imagination because to paraphrase Sir Roger Scruton I prefer to live in “the pastness of the present” rather than the past itself. This is the difference between being an historically illiterate reactionary and being a true conservative.

Thanks for your question

[witcherdoaks]

Spring Day: Ghost

Word Count: 2,080

Warnings: None, just a short intermittent chapter 

Previous post in the series: A Brief Reunion

Masterlist: Spring Day

Ciri located Geralt and Yennefer along the path when word reached her of the bard’s passing. The young woman refused to leave Geralt’s side for which Yennefer was thankful. To Ciri, Jaskier had been an odd comfort, a tie to her royal life with all his fussiness and knowledge of high society manners, but more than that, he was a reminder to fuck all and live life. She was no stranger to death, so his death meant she’d have one more name to carry with her until her own demise. Now it was her turn to look out for Geralt as best as she could without making the witcher feel claustrophobic.  

For his part, Geralt pulled off a convincing act if one wasn’t paying attention. More than once his shoulders would tense, and he would quickly excuse himself whenever a different bard attempted renditions of Jaskier’s songs at taverns. Then there were the people who knew the bard would travel with him in spring and summer telling him it was such a shame the talented young man had passed. Ciri noted all of this and the manner with which the Witcher avoided towns and people even more, so she was relieved when they made it to Kaer Morhen that winter, especially after that trip to Oxenfurt. 

The famed academy had received news of the bard’s passing in mid spring. They sent word for Geralt to head to the campus by the beginning of summer, so the pair reached Oxenfurt some weeks after that. Geralt looked positively green as he was led through the halls to Jaskier’s living quarters. Ciri had offered to deal with the officials and everything else about the visit, but the white wolf turned her down. He had to do this himself, he said. 

“Professor Pankratz left you his possessions in the event of his passing, lord knows why,” the stick thin old man said in a tone that revealed he knew the why and very much disapproved of it.

Geralt only nodded stiffly while Ciri glared daggers at the man. Eventually they reached their destination, and the old man told them that any items left behind would be repurposed for the university or would be discarded. They had only four days to go through everything. For the size of the office and living quarters, it was a lot. Books were piled high on every corner of the rooms, most of which Geralt knew he would never need but had to convince himself not to take as they would serve the university well. There was also no possible way Roach and Ciri’s stallion would be able to take everything. The young woman recommended rifling through the tomes regardless; it had been her grandmother's habit to place papers or other in between pages of books. Maybe Jaskier was the same. 

Several books later, they had many dried flowers in between sheets of paper and cotton. Eventually Geralt found a rather large book where the dried flowers were probably destined for. As Geralt turned the pages, he realized there were herbs and other dried medicinal plants  placed carefully in pockets on each side of a page. Annotations and captions filled the pages next to the specimens, detailed descriptions of their properties and the occasional wayward comment. The bard must have spent a great deal of time developing the book. 

“We should take that one,” Ciri said, looking at the contents from over his shoulder. Maybe it would prove useful in the future. 

The Witcher agreed and set the book aside. As he glanced around the room, there were still piles of unsearched tomes everywhere and a disarray of parchments strewn all over Jaskier’s desk. Geralt sighed, tired of looking through tomes in a place that was saturated with Jaskier’s scent. Even with his Witcher senses, he would get accustomed to the smell, chamomile and apple blossom faded into the background, bringing with it unacknowledged comfort. Only for him to notice the scent again and be reminded that the bard was gone. It made Geralt’s throat constrict in that familiar way, yet his eyes were no longer able to express his sorrow. 

“Why don’t you take a break, Geralt?” Ciri asked, placing a hand on his shoulder, bringing him out of his thoughts.  

He glanced at her, and she squeezed his shoulder, giving him a slight nod. Geralt knew he wouldn’t be away for long; he couldn’t let Ciri do all the work, but stepping out of those quarters was quite literally a breath of fresh air. 

Every step took him farther away from the bard’s living quarters, making it easier to breathe and settle his thoughts. There were very few students roaming the passageways. Those that were gave secretive glances in his direction when they thought he wasn’t looking, for which Geralt was grateful. 

He hadn’t been paying much attention where he was going and found himself walking along one of the bridges connecting the two islands eventually. There he stopped, leaning on the stone parapet. The view before him was idyllic, blue hued mountain ranges were peaking above the forest line. His sharp eyes could make out the crystalline snow caps at the apex before they shifted back to the river‘s water, impossibly opaque but not in a murky, muddy way. The Witcher wondered if Jaskier had ever stood here, overlooking the same scene. Would he come here to clear his head, to get away from the students who surely filled the halls in the winter? What would occupy the bard’s mind when he stood here?

“Witcher!” 

Geralt turned in the direction of which his title was called. A woman dressed in orange and green was walking down the bridge toward him. The feather in her red-orange beret was fanning out every so often. 

“I heard you were here,” she cheerfully explained her approach. “It’s nice to meet you in the flesh instead of in a ballad.” 

Her cheerful demeanor slipped from her face as he continued to stare at her, wondering why she had approached him at all. None of the other students had done it. Still she continued past the mounting silence. 

“If you require assistance sorting things out, I’d be happy to extend my stay.” The woman looked almost hopeful as if she wanted him to ask her the favor, “I was passing through to retrieve any parcels Dandelion may have left me.” 

Her voice went soft at the end, and she looked wary now. 

“Dandelion?” Geralt asked, tilting his head. 

“That was what we called him here at the Academy,” she cleared her throat and looked away, “Jaskier, I mean.” 

Ah, here it was. Another facet of Jaskier’s life that Geralt didn’t know. A trivial detail of the bard’s life, which Geralt would have never known had he not met this stranger. THis knowledge left an acrid taste in his mouth. He’d never again be able to discover tidbits of Jaskier from the source itself. All new knowledge of Jaskier would be received from those that knew him. 

Geralt must have been glaring when the woman glanced at him because she took a step away.

“Yes, well, I must be going,” she hurriedly excused herself, “my offer stands, Witcher.” 

A pool of guilt seeped into Geralt’s core, making him grimace. She hadn’t been at fault, and she was only being kind by offering to help. Yet he scared her off. He sighed and started walking back to the living quarters. In the distance, a flash of red orange made a turn into one of the buildings, but he kept walking. It was too late to do anything now, he convinced himself and continued walking.  

When he got back to Ciri, the young woman had made considerable progress with the books and even had some of the students cart off the items they had already inspected. The two of them continued their perusal of the quarters. That which they didn’t need or felt immediately attached to was donated to the academy. Geralt was left with a sparsely used journal, the tome and other nicknacks of the bard’s while Ciri took with her a small ornate table mirror and a scarf she had gifted the bard some years prior. 

It was late evening on their last night at the Academy that Geralt saw the woman again, looking to deliver a package to him. He took the package in hand and accepted the words of comfort that left her mouth, wondering how much of Jaskier she knew, before closing the door on her. 

At night when the candle allotted to him had burned a quarter of the way down, Geralt sat with the bundle in front of him on the table. Ciri had gone to sleep some time ago. It was just him and his thoughts now. The bundle beckoned him, and he reached out to hold it in his hands. It barely weighed anything. The scents coming off it were smoke from a hearth, ink and that woman. It had been with her person for a couple of days at least, so that made sense.

Gently he untied the strings holding the parcel together. As the fabric fell open, the smell of dried ink intensified, yet it now mingled with chamomile and apple blossoms. At the very top of everything was a folded piece of parchment. With one hand Geralt unfolded it and his eyes landed on the topmost line in the bard’s script.

My dear Priscilla 

And that’s all he read. The parchment malformed and wrinkled with the force he used to fold it. The bundle now felt like lead in his hands, but he knew he couldn’t be rid of it. It was still a piece of Jaskier after all, so he rewrapped it and tied the string as securely as he could before shoving the entire thing into his satchel. 

Geralt blew out the candle and went to sleep.  

Even weeks later, Jaskier’s scent lingered on his belongings. 

Of course it did, Geralt had carefully wrapped them in cotton sheets to stow away in his travel bag. He had transferred them to a chest as soon as they reached Kaer Morhen. The bundle the woman gave him lay on the table of his room again. It remained there for a better part of the winter, purposely forgotten in favor of training and renovation of the castle. By now the scent of her was nearly gone, overwritten by the Witcher keep.

It was at this time, months after the incident, that Geralt took the parcel in his hands and unwrapped it with utmost care. Letting the chamomile and apple blossom soothe over his nerves and pounding hear. He smoothed out the wrinkled parchment and opened it to read. 

My dear Priscilla, 

Fate must have smitted me if you are reading this letter. I would hope I’d have died without regrets, but I rather doubt that is the case — at least where our infamous white wolf is concerned in the time I write this letter. 

I could shower you with praises for your natural beauty and talent. Except I fear that would be a waste of time as you already know how even the proudest of songbirds stop to hear you sing. 

Instead I will call upon your vast intellect and sensitivity to make the choice you feel is best, both for him and for my legacy. I leave to you some of my most private compositions. Many of these have not been finished or if they have, are not composed to my quality of my liking. I know you value an artist's integrity and would never betray this trust which I have in you. Unlike that pompous idiot Valdo Marx, seriously beware of him and kick him on his miniscule family jewels  the next time you see him in my honor. 

Back on topic, I’ll leave it up to you whether you wish to keep these writings or hand them off to Geralt of Rivia, who for the last couple of decades has occupied my heart and mind and is the subject of many of the present compositions. 

Please don’t punch him. He has apologized as I’ve told you countless times, and you would only be breaking a hand or wrist if you carry out vengeance in my name. I do not wish for him to hurt more than he is. He hides it well, Priscilla. 

Thank you, dear Callonetta. 

Sincerely yours,

Dandelion 

[skgway]

1828 Dec, Fri. 26

6

11 35/60

From 7 1/2 to 7 50/60 reading Dr. Hutton’s excellent and most temperate speech in last Saturday’s Mercury in favour of emancipation. His sentiments on the subject, my own –

Breakfast at 7 50/60 in 20 minutes – Went out at 8 1/4 to Lightcliffe to pay Mrs. William P– [Priestley] for carriage of the parcel of books I paid for yesterday – Got there in about 1/2 – Sat talking. Mentioned the inconvenience of my being here, my fathers oddity of temper. To live with my mother was much to be pitied, and excused my father. Wont let me put stoves in the North parlour and room, tho my aunts coming here depends on it. A hundred a year would be enough to pay for her board and that of George and MacD[onald]. Did not see Mr. P– [Priestley]. Mrs. P– [Priestley] walked with me as far as the Hipperholme bar, I then went back with her to her own gate, and we parted there at 11 50/60 –

In returning, met the Saltmarshes (Mr. & Mrs. Christopher S– [Saltmarshe) in their carriage – Had passed Shibden – Thought from my manner of speaking of it yesterday they could not get there – Jno [John] – said it was no worse than usual – and took Mrs. S– [Saltmarshe]’s card for Marian instead of a call – 

Then went up Barraclough-lane to George Naylor’s – Took him to shew me what Joseph Hall wanted – Haigh has bought the bit of waste there of Mr. Rawson, wants to enclose it, make a garden of it, and block me up – Has already abused Joseph Hall’s son for carting across it – Said I would consider about it – But that I could not be thus blocked up – I had nothing to do with Haigh – Should speak to Mr. Rawson – He had no right to sell it – 

Then a good deal of conversation with George N– [Naylor] as to raising his farm etc. He must give me his opinion as to the rest and I should not hurt him. Pearsons and Hardcastles each worth fifty and Hilltop forty five, and to raise Hemingway twenty guineas fair to take cottages at half the actual rents. The man that George wishes me to take for the next vacant farm is John Kurten who married a Miss Priestley of Halifax has for three or four years been a preacher, but would give it up. Has a hundred a year of his own and wants a farm for his lads. Would be advised in all things at first by George. 

Said I should give Balmfirth notice to quit. He thought I could not get rid of him. We will try, said I. For that, explained that it was to get rid of a bad tenant with less trouble, for which I mainly had agreements, because then I could quit them in 6 months from the time instead of 3 times that time – Balmfirth has just sold off 500 stalks of hay to a man who is bankrupt and will therefore get nothing for it – 

Then walked along the top of the hill and got down into the plantation at 2 1/4. Nobody there – Went to the cunnery – The men Throp and Nathan came from dinner at 2 1/2 – Throp cleaning trees in the Hall wood, Nathan helping Jno [John] and William to clear the plantation, and Robert walling with James Smith for my father, a bit of Jno [John] Bottomley’s wall near the pit road gate at the too of the old bank that had come down – 

Staid a little in the plantation – From 3 20/60 to 5 with Throp – Planted out 2 little yews from the plantation and removed the 2 cypresses lower down, next to the wood – A pity to move them, they were beginning to strike out little roots so nicely – 

Came in at 5 10/60 – Dressed – Wrote the 1st 7 lines of yesterday – Dinner at 6 1/4 – Afterwards till 10 asleep on the sofa – Then sat talking 1/2 hour about the bit of waste near Joseph Hall’s, raising rents etc. and discharging James Travis – 

On going up Barraclough lane to George N– [Naylor]’s saw 3 or 4 men one with a gun and dog, in George N– [Naylor]’s field or Balmfirth’s – Asked his name (lives near the bridge?) discharged him – He would have a written discharge – Was qualified – Had a certificate – I could only make him pay for trespassing – At last, he was for asking leave to come – No! Said I, you are too late now – You shall have a written discharge – and it is your peril you come shooting on my ground without my leave – On inquiry James Greenwood junior at the Cunnery told me he had discharged him several times – Jno [John] has often seen him in the fields – 

Came up to bed at 10 1/2 – Till 11 looking over rent roll, and making, rough draft calculation of what the farms and pews would bear raising – Can now manage something upwards of sixty pounds and b[y] and b[y] can get about eighty or ninety, that I shall make what I now have, altogether thirteen hundred a year – Fine day – Frosty – Farenheit in the library 9 degrees colder this morning than yesterday – 

[sideways in margin] Musing this morning as I walked to Lightcliffe (first time the idea ever struck me) that as much is done for the rights of the Roman Catholics why not something for the rights of single women to vote for members of parliament? Write on this, on the good of raising women to a proper rank in society, their influence, their general education and manners in different countries in times past and present, their relative degrees of respectability.

[More on Dr. Hutton’s Speech]

Dr. Hutton’s Speech - Leeds Mercury Dec. 20, 1828

We have great pleasure in laying before our readers the following excellent speech, which was indeed to have been delivered at the Leeds Meeting to Address His Majesty in favour of the Catholic Claims. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, – In the cause which has assembled us together this day I cannot but feel deeply interested. As a man and a Briton, I must be anxious to see the rights of men and Britons freely and fully participated by all my fellow-countrymen and as a Christian desirous that the truth may have free course amongst us I must wish that all the stumbling blocks of party prejudice and passion, with which our own frailty and folly, or those of our ancestors, have strewed the path of religious inquiry may be removed, and that we may all rejoice in the liberty wherewith it was the design of Christ to make us free. But, I stand in the midst of my fellow-men and my fellow-Christians many of whom I know to be as willing as myself; and more competent, to plead our common cause; their love of liberty, civil and religious, I believe to be not [insurdent?] than my own, and however we may differ on other subjects, I am assured of their entire sympathy with me in the wish to banish the temporal power altogether from the field of religious controversy; and to leave Truth – omnipotent Truth – to fight her own battles, with “the sword of the spirit; which is the word of God” In the character of a man and a Christian, therefore, I could have gladly remained silent, satisfied to say, “God speed,” with all my heart, to my friends and brethren around me, one of whom I cannot forget, has within the last few days nobly vindicated the rights of his fellow-men on Christian grounds, with a spirit and an eloquence, which multitudes have felt as deeply as myself, and which it would be superfluous therefore for me to panegyrize. There is a character, however, in which others cannot speak for me, and in which therefore I would embrace the opportunity of saying a word or two for myself. I appear amongst you; my fellow-townsmen, not only as an inhabitant of Leeds, bound to you by the strong ties of hospitality, and an absentee in the body from the land of my nativity, yet often-present with her in the spirit, with a heart that bleeds for her miseries, and kindles into indignation at her wrongs, and rejoices

in my hope, however faint, of seeing those miseries relieved, and those wrongs redressed. You have assembled, I trust, to express to our gracious King, your cordial acquiescence in a measure, should it be his good pleasure, in concurrence with the other branches of the legislature to sanction it, which I am not indeed so sanguine as to think will prove a panacea for all the numerous ills under which my unhappy country has so long suffered; but which, nevertheless, I am convinced will do something for her; – will help at least to soften and soothe the animosities, by which, while the present system of parish favour, proscription, and exclusion [?] she must continue to be torn asunder; a measure which will remove at least one material cause of dissension estrangement, and will tend in facilitate, if it does not absolutely produce that union of hearts amongst Irishmen, without which there can be no union of minds to any good purpose.

You have met, Gentlemen, to do what you can to alleviate to do what you can to alleviate the wretchedness and promote the future welfare of my suffering country, and I cam anxious, I confess, to express to you the deep interest that I take in a cause which the [?ctive] feelings of nature combine with reason and reflection to render dear to me. I should indeed be worthy of reprobation if I could stand by an uninterested spectator, where others, who have less reason, manifest so fervent a zeal. Gentlemen, if there still remain doubt and indecision amongst you on the subject before us, I cannot but think that it arises, rather from those prejudices and prepossesions of which we all carry about with us too large a share, – rather from the fluctuations of excited feeling, than from any serious difficulty suggested by the understanding. If the decision had rested with reason alone, it would have been long since made, and Fox and Barke, and Pitt and Canning, those master minds of various moulds, supported by almost all the intellectual strength of the houses of Peers and Commons, would not have addressed their powerful arguments to the British people in vain. But that people have a strong hatred of oppression, a powerful sympathy with suffering. Of Roman Catholics as they exist in the present day, either in the Sister Island or elsewhere, Englishmen know little, but they have many of them read tho fearful ties, and inspected the no less fearful prints in Fox’s book of Martyrs, and the have all heard of sundry wicked Popes, and more formidable still, of bloody Mary! Often, I am persuaded most Roman Catholics have been affected towards her, as an excellent preiste of the Church of England is said to have been towards a certain creed, and wished, alas! in vain, that they could be well rid of her. In truth I cannot but think it is somewhat unkind, when people are evidently ashamed of their relations, to be always putting them in mind of them, and I must say I feel some pity for my Roman Catholic brethren, when I see the blood brought into their countenances by the perpetual obtrusion of that bloody queen on their reluctant memories. But what proof have we that Roman Catholics either love or have any inclination to imitate that wicked woman? Earnestly do they disclaim all approbation of her conduct, and loudly do they protest against the injustice and cruelty of making them answerable for the crimes of their ancestors, whether of noble or ignoble blood.

True it is that Mary was a bloody persecutor; but it is prejudice and bigotry alone that dwell exclusively upon her atrocities, and contrive at the same time to forget the less numerous perhaps, but still bloody persecutions of her protestant sister Elizabeth – not in this connection certainly though a Rev. Gentleman has styled her so “of happy memory.” Few indeed are the sects that have not at one time or other swelled the annals of persecution, and we should all of us perhaps have reason to tremble if Heaven were to visit upon our heads the sins of our fathers in this respect. Calvin persecuted Servetus to death. Is there a Calvinist living now that pretends to vindicate the deed? Archbishop Cranmer persuaded King Edward against his will to condemn to the stake Joan Bocher and George Paris, one for denying the humanity, and the other for dyeing the divinity of Christ. What member of the Church of England will come forward to prove that Cranmer was justified in doing so? Luther, the father of the Reformation though he was against punishing heretics with death, thought that other punishments less severe might be lawfully hindered on them. “It is sufficient,” says he in one place, “that they should be banished.” In another passage he allows that “heretics may be corrected and lured to silence, if they publicly deny any of the articles received by all Christians, and particularly that Christ is God.” In a third passage he goes further, and says “that heretics, though they may not be put to death, may however be confined, and shut up in some certain place and put under restraint as madmen.” What think you, my fellow-townsmen, ought we to be satisfied with Luther’s toleration, and rest contented to enjoy our liberty of conscience in a gaol, or what might be called perhaps a heretic’s asylum. Though we are most of us Protestants, and as such have no small reverence for the great reformer, I rather think we shall none of us agree with him on this subject. Once more, that you may not think me partial, I may just mention, that Socinus, whom you probably think a great favourite of mine, and for, whose genius and virtues I will not deny that I feel a sincere respect, in a letter of his still extant vows [?] his opinion that “obstinate heretics” or, as he explains the epithet, “heretics who will pay no attention to their adversaries arguments, may be properly prevented from reading then opinions, if it cannot be otherwise done by chains and a prison.”  According to which doctrine I fear there are not a few in Leeds, whom, if I and my friends were in power, we should be under the painful necessity of placing under restraint. On this subject however, as on several others, I have the pleasure of assuring you that we take the liberty of dissenting from Socinus, and that you need be under no alarm on this head even if we should be called to rule over you. The truth is, that in the former days of ignorance, the spirit of persecution was to be found, in a greater or less degree, in almost every church. The Emancipationists say some of their opponents, cannot have read history: I answer, that they would have read it to little purpose, if they had not learned from it, that persecution of all kinds and in every degree is detestable, and that to persecute Roman Catholics a little now, because they persecuted our ancestors a good deal formerly, is neither wise nor Christian conduct. The church of Rome, I grant, was more deeply stained by the guilt of persecution than most of the churches that have seceded from her; but this is easily accounted for without supposing that it is essential to her nature to persecute, and that, no lapse of time, or alteration of circumstances can enable her to purge off this stain. It should be remembered, that she had long been in the possession of unrivalled and almost unbounded power; It was to be expected therefore, in consistency with all that we know of human nature, that, when the first attack was made up on that power, pride, and anger, and every other malignant passion should instantaneously rise up in arms, against those whom, as supreme judge in her own cause, she would naturally regard as rebellious schismatics and wicked innovators.

The Church of England on the contrary, chastised in her infant days by her aged parent, and surrounded almost from the first by Dissenters, was early taught wisdom and mercy by her own sufferings. Had she stood as long without a rival as the Church of Rome, it is at least possible that she might have persecuted as bitterly. The hostile spirit which some of her sons have manifested and still manifest to Dissenters as such, and the high tone which they assume, as if the mere act of their tempora establishment qualified them to take spiritual precedence of  those around them, would lead one to apprehend that even the Church of England meekly as, I grant, she has for the most part carried her faculties, might have abused, if she had enjoyed, enresisted, and unbounded power. In truth such power is good for none of us. We are all, not merely liable but likely to abuse it. The Church of Rome in power, however, and the same Church out of power, are very different. B[?] the terror of Europe, at St. Helens was a quiet gentlemanly, and somewhat [?] man: and so it is with the Pope in these days. As [?] as we are concerned, he might as well be at Helena as where he [?] an ocean flows between us and him; – the ocean of knowledge – which he can never cross to set foot in a hostile manner on our shores. Were he to do so, were he to threaten either our civil or religious liberties, I will pledge myself for my countrymen, yes, for my Roman Catholic countrymen; that they would be amongst the first to assist in driving him back to his snug hole and corner in Italy. Except as a peaceful ecclesiastic, a kind of Archbishop of Canterbury of the Church of Rome, the Pope neither has, nor can ever any substantial power in this realm. The greatest power he enjoys here at present is that which our No-Popery friends so kindly confer upon him, of frightening the grown-up children, who are not ashamed to listen to the horrible stories which they tell about him. What says our able townsman, Mr. M. Sadler, of these Papists, – this people who have been brought up under this murderous system, – who have imbibed, with their mothers milk, these doctrines, which according to our Brunswickers, not only forbid them to keep faith with heretics, but would lend them to commit murder upon all such? You shall hear “In the character of the inhabitants of Ireland!” says Mr. S. “there are the elements of whatever is elevated and bole.” These, however [?] down and hidden, are indicated whenever their development is not rendered impossible. Their courage in the [?] and panegyric of min, and has never been surpassed; their charity, notwithstanding their poverty, never equalled.” “Even while I am thus writing,” says Mr. Sadler, “I will dare to assert, that in many a cabin of that country, the godlike act of our immortal Alfred,” (who by the way, was a Roman Catholic too) “which will be transmitted down to the remotest generations – the dividing his last meal with the beggar, is this instant being repeated; – and their gratitude for kindnesses received equals the ready warmth with which they are ever conferred.” I mean not to contend” Mr. S proceeds, “that they have not faults and grievous ones, but these are mainly attributable” (I agree with him cordially) “to the condition to which they have been so long treated.” He then proposes his remedies, some of them well, worthy of attention, for Ireland’s calamities, and anticipates a time when “the Social edifice compact together and at unity in itself shall never again be shaken.” I thank Mr. M. Sadler in the name of my country, – I warmly thank him for his eloquent panegyric upon her sons, whom Popers, it seems, has not altogether corrupted, and whom unequaled charity I should hope, – charity that divides with the beggar his last meal should not be banished or transformed into the [?]-like spirit of malignity, and murder, by a little more kindness. Their “gratitude for kindnesses received,” Mr. S tells us equals the [?] warmth with which they are ever conferred.” Take Mr. S’s word for it, if you will not take mine. Though I too know something of the Irish heart – take the world of both of us, that they will not abuse your favours – that they will not violate your generous confidence – no, not for all the Popes and Priests that the word can contain, – but, on the contrary, will return [?] your  and your [?] every deal of kindness as you shall mete out to them. But what does Mr. S. say of emancipation in his work on the grievances of Ireland?

Of Emancipation Mr. S professes to say nothing. He merely intimates – and here too I agree with him – that Ireland has other grievances of a very serious nature to complain of to neglect those latter [?] talk of Emancipation only is in his mind, to pay tithe of mint and anise, and cumin, and to omit the weightier [?] of the saw of patriotism– judgment, mercy, and idolity supposes it to be so allow that Emancipation resembles the small tithes yes Mr. S. I should think would be one of the last persons to recommend our not paying them – he will doubtless remember the words, “these things ought the to have done, but not to leave the others undone.” – Having had [?] her tithe of [?] which she did not ask for, poor Ireland might perhaps be grateful for what she would deem a tithe of [?], in the form of Emancipation. I have read Mr. S’s book on Ireland with some attention: I admire the spirit of [?] and generous feeling in which it is written; I think that he has taken a true view of some of the sources of Ireland’s mystery, and I approve of some of the remedies which he proposes but I cannot agree with him that little good would be effected by pinning all sects on the same [?] of equality in respect to civil rights and privileges, and thus doing away the bitter jealous with which a depressed [?] always regard a dominant and domineering party, especially if the former be, as in the present instance, the more numerous. Does Mr. S. think that any good could be effected by it? If so, he ought not to be a Runswicker, and in his book certainly we may look in vain for the spirit of that party. Gentlemen, you are many of you anxious and so I confess am I, how can any honest and consistent Protestant be otherwise? – to see our Roman Catholic brethren brought over to Protestantism. Is this your real wish? Remove then the barriers which sever them from you in mind as well as body. Remove the party prejudices which dender their understandings and their heards inaccessible to any arguments or pleadings, however powerful and just, that you can address to them, I solemnly warn you, Gentlemen, that in perpetuating their persons and party hostility, you will necessarily obstruct their conversion to what you deem truth and in so doing, may find hereafter that you have “fought against God.” There is little change that we shall convince or persuade those with our lips, whom by our actions we are degrading and insulting. And is it not a degradation and an insult to brand your fellow-countrymen as persons whose patriotism a breath from Rome can disperse, at any moment, into thin air – whose oaths of allegiance and fidelity are not to be believed – and who are not to be allowed to serve their king and country in a civil capacity because they acknowledge an ecclesiastical superior in the supposed successor of St. Peter? The Roman Catholics are clamouring for power, say the Brunswickers. No, Sir – It is for eligibility to power, a right to which our Constitution supposes every Brion entitled who is not incapable of exercising it, or who has not forfeited his right to do so by his misconduct. Minors, aliens, criminals, and Roman Catholics, with a few other Sectarians, (who scruple to take the oaths prescribed) are the classes of persons noted by Blackstone as incapacitated from serving in Parliament. And is there no injury, no insult, in this association? I contend Sir, that there is, and that neither Roman Catholics nor any other class of sincere religionists whatsoever, ought, as such, to be ranked with [?], aliens, and criminals. If Protestant Englishmen were thus associated, the blood would boil in their veins; and can they wonder, then, that it runs in a quickened current through the body of the Irish Catholic, constitutionally hot in temper as he is warm in heart? As for the danger likely to result from admitting Roman Catholics into the legislative body, it is really childish to talk of it. While the comparative strength of the two parties throughout the United Kingdom remains as it is, there cannot, obviously, be the shadow of danger of Popish domination if all the Catholic Members without an exception) were Catholic barristers, as clever as O’Connell, and us eloquent as Shell, and if in the fervour of a zeal, such as few Protestants feel for the 39 Articles, they were to bring the questions of Transubstantiation and the Papal supremacy before the House every Session, which is not highly probable, I will leave it to any Brunswicker possessed of a decent portion of common sense, to compute the probable number of their converts, within any given time. And as for the House of Lords, their ease there would be still more hopeless, their advocates being still fewer in number, and the prejudices of [?]; we know, peculiarly strong. The Earl of Shrewsbury, it is true, has written a book in defence of his creed, but he will find some difficulty in persuading the Lords Temporal to read it – find the Lords Spiritual will, of course, find it easy to refute anything that a hymn can have urged upon the subject. On the whole nothing can be made ridiculous than the pretended apprehension of Poplar legislation, [?] weak heads may possibly entertain it; but when men of sense pretend to feel it, the purest candour must fear that it is their object to frighten and delude those whom they know to be ignorant, and therefore expect to be credulous. But say some really good men, the Roman Catholic religion is so attractive to the imagination, from the antiquity of its origin, and the splendour of its ritual; its doctrine of absolution, purgatory, &c. are so well calculated to make fail man easy under the burden of his frailties; and, in short, it is so skillfully accommodated throughout to the weakness of our nature, that we cannot but fear that if placed on an equality in other respects, with Protestantism, it may have superior charms for the multitude, and may even in time win over our princes and our rules by its seductions. So long, I would reply, as the Establishment retains its rich endowments, and enjoys the exclusive patronage of the Crown, there can be little fear of such a catastrophe. The majority, of the higher class especially, will long feel the sacred duty of conforming to an Established Church, of the truth of which they will require no surer voucher than the simple fact that it is established. I mean no disrespect to the Church of England, as a church, when I assert, that religion so well endowed as here – a religion that, in the phrase of Burke, can “raise a mitred head in Courts and Parliaments,” be its forms and doctrines and theological merits what they may, need be under little apprehension of any sudden or material defection of its wealthy and powerful adherents. But this, it will be said, is a mere argumentum ad hominem, addressed to the worldly wise, which will not satisfy those who are upon conviction piously attached to Protestantism, and seriously apprehensive of a revival of Popers. 

To objectors of this class, those worthy and pious men, for I doubt not there are many such, – who not having studied the subject in its political bearings, ground their hostility to Catholic Emancipation solely on their fears of the future prevalence of what they deem a dangerously erroneous creed, I would reply by this simple question, “– whether they can seriously think; that in a fair and equal contest with error, truth is in any danger of being defeated; or that with the favour of God on her side she can fall of being victorious? For my own part I am well persuaded that she needs none of the weapons, either defensive or offensive, with which the rulers of this world are so troublesomely axous to supply her. If she might have her own will she would cast them all from her, as David cast from him the armour of Saul. Like that brave champion of the Lord of Hosts, she would go forth to the battle free and unencumbered, trusting for her defense to God’s favour and her own unfettered movements, and asking for no weapons of more destructive power than a few sound and solid arguments, smooth pebbles well rounded from Silaos brooke, with the sling of natural eloquence, to send them home to their destination. Reflection I think will soon convince the pious and the good that error can be no match for truth, when they stand on equal ground, and that to pretend to guard the latter by pains and penalties is to discover want of faith in her native resources, and in reality to encumber her with aid. In conclusion I would say with my esteemed and respected brother, to our friends of the Church of England, “Be just and fear not.” – Be generous and fear not. You have relieved the Dissenters from their shackles. You have elevated them to equality with yourselves. I trust you will reap the good fruits of having done so; and that you will find in us your cordial and zealous co-adjustors in every just, humane, and virtuous enterprise. But let us pead with you, – gratitude should be like that of the manumitted slave, the first effect of whose recovered liberty is to render Him indifferent to the sorrows and the sufferings of the former companions of his bondage, gratitude, I say, which in our ethical system is not that frosty kind of feeling which some seem to imagine it, having ore affinity to cold than heat, and exerting a contractile rather than an expansive influence, gratitude for our own success excites us to plead with you for the brothers of the family who are still excluded, still degraded. Try my Roman Catholic countrymen, and, trust me, you will find them also capable and worthy of being connected with you in the equal bonds of brotherhood. If you thought them your enemies it were a noble and Christian experiment, and experiment justified by a wiser and better policy than that of this world, – to try to subdue them by your kindness. “If thine enemy hunger feed him, if he thirst give him drink,” says an apostle. ‘Absurd policy!’ says a Brunswicker; food will strengthen, and drink refresh him, and his power to do you mischief will be greater than ever. Christ however and Paul thought otherwise and foreold that by so doing we should “heap coals of fire on his head,” and melt or [?] him into friendship with us. This is human nature in this opinion; and Mr. M. Sadler has told you that my countrymen are not an exception to the general rule, but that they are as capable of gratitude as they are of kindness. All that I wish, my friends, is that you would try them. 

[rainkandysux]

Lost Siblings

Paring: Dabi X FemReader

Rating: E

Word Count: 2,039

Summary: Siblings can only hold a family together if they’re there.

Warnings: 17+ explicit content, death

You watched your younger sister play with another girl close in age. The white and red highlighted hair of her playmate contrasted your sister’s onyx curls. You sigh as you check the time: 05:03PM. You two were overdue at getting back to the house you shared with several other orphans trying to stay out of the streets. Before you could reach your sister, a tallish, lanky redhead with two more of his siblings approached the thirteen-year-old girls.  

“Let’s go, Fuyumi. Say bye to your new friend,” the boy requested politely despite his bored tone.  

“I’m not her new friend. We play here every Friday,” your sister tartly replied.  

The boy’s eyes squinted in irritation. That was when you noticed their brilliant shade of turquoise, catching your breath as they turned to your direction. The stunning color wasn’t the only thing you noticed though. Bandages peeked from underneath his collar and long sleeves.  

“Oh, um, sorry about her attitude...” you trailed in discomfort.  

“I told you to hurry up, Touya!” A large man yelled towards the group of kids.  

The boy in question sighed in disgust before returning his attention to you. He studied your odd reaction to Endeavor. Most people's faces would brighten at seeing the Number Two Hero out of uniform and posing as a domesticated father, but your face appeared drained of color.  

“Come on, sis, we really need to go,” you mumbled as you snatched your sister’s hand to lead her away. You were too late though. The beast of a hero had already spotted your retreating form.  

“Hey, wait you little brat! Weren’t you the one I caught stealing from the market downtown?” Enji Todoroki shouted, his orange flames already cloaking him.  

She was stealing from a market? Was she taking food? Touya thought as he finally took note of your shaggy appearance as you ran away.  

You and your sister managed to get out of Endeavor’s reach before he made it to where his children stood by in uncertainty.  

“Fuyumi, you need to learn to stay away from garbage. Those girls are nothing more than trash. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get caught up in worse than the petty thieving they’ve been doing recently. The oldest one has a quirk that lets her powerup for short bursts of time. That’s how she was able to get away from your old man,” Endeavor laughed as he packed his kids into the family car.  

“Powerup? Like getting stronger and faster? Does she get bigger when she does that?” Shouto asked solemnly as he watched his sister cry. The girl she was playing with didn’t look like a bad guy. Neither did her older sister that his father criminalized.

“Her body glows like a lantern and the next thing you know, she’s able to break free from any type of restraint,” his dad elaborated for him.  

“So, what was it that she stole? What did she take that required you to be forceful?” Touya voiced, the grit in his tone made his questions sound as harsh as he intended them to.  

“...the um, store owner said she had taken some instant meals...”

“Way to go dad. I wonder what they ate for supper last night,” Natsuo added, taking Touya’s side.  

TEN YEARS LATER

Your younger sister died exactly one year ago, and you weren’t accepting it very well. A drug deal had gone wrong and you weren’t there to protect her. You still waited on the balcony of your apartment for her to twinkle her fingertip lights to let you know that her mission was a success, not the failure it had been.

One whole year you did this, waiting for her to shine her starlight beams to let you know that you weren’t alone. Every night you had perched there, desperately begging for her beautiful glow to brighten the blackness around you.  

You knew that wasn’t going to happen though. You remembered how cold she felt as her firefly soul burned away from her when you found her. You remembered, but you didn’t want to accept it.  

Now, you had only yourself to provide for. It was financially easier. Physically easier? No. Emotionally? Absolutely not. You had gotten sloppy after your sister’s death. As a result, you had gotten caught one too many times and now heroes were on your trail. You even had to relocate to a slummier place which was where you found yourself now, balancing on the balcony of the cheapest place you could find.  

No one recognized you here and if they did, you knew their own criminal records exceeded your own. Since you botched too many thefts, you now got money investing in drugs and worse— prostitution. Neither was something you were proud of, but at least you were surviving.  

Tonight was one of the sleezy ones. Usually, you’d find some businesspeople in their late fifties to mess around with. They always seemed to like how cute you were compared to the other options in the area. Just because you fucked your way through life didn’t mean that you didn’t take care of your looks. You wanted to be presentable in case you ever got a second chance at living a normal life.  

You were in your mid-twenties, so that dream of working as a schoolteacher was pretty much null. Still, you had aged gracefully. You could pull off as a ripe eighteen-year-old fresh out of high school if you ever decided to form a new identity.  

Your youthfulness is what helped you land some wealthy clients too. The uppity men liked your babyface. You sighed as you made your way out of your apartment and towards the now booming club down the street.  

Your eyes picked through the line outside the club in search of your next plaything. You were about to settle for a grey-haired man in a black suit when a lean figure slouching on a box in the back alley caught your attention.  

His startling blue eyes glanced over you as he lit the cigarette balancing between his scarred lips. You knew those eyes even if they were on a face hidden behind purple flesh and dyed, black hair. What had happened to him? What had happened to Endeavor’s son?

Before you even knew what you were doing, you were already slouching on a box opposite of him.  

“How much?” He asked, cyan eyes never leaving the cleavage you had poking free from your low-cut top.  

“Oh...I...really don’t need much...” you trailed, embarrassed that he had figured out your current profession. You weren’t planning on doing anything other than question him about why he was here and obviously damaged. You hoped he didn’t recognize you.  

He shrugged before he hopped down to lead you away. Soon, you were in his room that held a single bed, a nightstand, and an open suitcase.  

You were used to all types of sexual positions and appetites. Still, you weren’t prepared for this man’s roughness. Maybe it was the fact that you had known him when you were young teenagers and expected him to behave as one would.  

However, he wasn’t fifteen anymore. He was a decade older just like you. If his scarring was anything to go by, those ten years had been just as bad for him as it had been for you.  

Dabi knew what you wanted. He knew you came to him, seeing his youth as a nice break from the old creeps you were used to. He knew you assumed that he wouldn’t ask for your body, but you were stupid and naïve to think he wouldn’t. You were an idiot if you thought he would be gentle just because your little sisters had been friends.  

You were foolish if you thought you were going to get any form of intimacy from this interaction. He wanted to punish you for proving his father right. You were trash that had gotten involved in more than ‘petty thieving’ as his old man had phrased it. How you could do that? How you could prove that bastard right?

Touya was dead and so was his compassion. He burned your clothes off your shivering body and roughly bent you over facedown on the bed. He wouldn’t be able to punish you properly if your beautiful eyes looked at him.  

He took your hair into his fist and held your head down so that you couldn’t look back at him. You gasped into the mattress he smothered you in. His free hand didn’t even stimulate you before you felt his hardened cock force its way into your unprepared slit.  

He hoped his lack of care prevented you from getting off, that his unprecedented harshness left you bruised and unsatisfied. What he did not plan for was for you to twitch in pleasure and groan his fucking name out so casually.  

“Mmm, Touya,” you accidentally muttered as you felt your walls clench around his thrusting dick. You didn’t even know why you said it.  

He pulled out irritably to stop your orgasm. The hand that was tangled in your hair jerked your head to his cock. Your eyes widened at the size, unsure if you would be able to handle it without gagging. You weren’t ready, but he popped open your mouth with the tip of it as pre-cum dripped from it. Minutes later, he exploded and you felt the cum slide down your throat as you swallowed.  

You quickly pulled free, wiping your mouth. You pushed him away as the shame you felt filled you up fuller than his seed. You were in his bathroom now, examining the mascara that sloppily ran down your face thanks to the tears you were not able to hold back trickled down your cheeks.  

You washed your face, tied your hair up into a messy bun, and put on V-neck t-shirt and sweatpants you found on the floor. You waited a few minutes to gather whatever remained of your dignity before you reopened the door to his room.  

Fortunately, he wasn’t there. A wad of cash waited on the bed for you. Despite your wish to simply leave it there, you didn’t feel like going hungry that weekend.  

You took it and all but ran from the building, hoping to never see those ocean eyes again. Dabi watched your retreating form in slight regret. He had been touch-deprived for a long time and he knew you would have shown him the affection his broken soul craved. He didn’t have time be soft, though, and neither did you if you were going to make it in this crooked hero society.  

Still, he felt guilty for being so cruel, so he followed you. He watched your previously pouting face light up as you counted the amount he gave you. He had given you enough to pay rent and get enough food to last you a week. This meant that you could stay off your back (and knees and stomach for god’s sake) for a while!  

You wished your sister was here to celebrate the haul with you. You decided to splurge and buy her favorite type of strawberry cake. Little did you know that the man that had given you more than you expected was shadowing you as you talked to your deceased sister.  

Soon, you were back on your balcony and sitting in silent solitude. You lit the single candle to symbolize the one year she was gone as you stuffed it into the cake.  

“It’s been a miserable fucking year, sis. I hope you’re flying high. I hope you’re happier now that you don’t have to hurt anymore. I love and miss you,” you choked as you finally accepted her death. Tears fell freely as you pulled your knees up to your chest.  

Touya watched as you mourned your sister’s death. He thought of his own siblings and how he wished he could have been stronger for them. He wished he could forget who he was. Maybe he should have been kinder to you. He knew your routes, your dealers. He couldn’t fix his family, but he could try to undo the damage he inflicted on you.  Yes, he’d be much kinder next time.  

[ksngdom]

make me yours (ch. 1)

summary. life on the run is never easy, but it's even harder when you've got an assassin stalking you, a government agency on your tail and a billionaire turning up on your doorstep every few years -- like a vagabond cat she'd fed one too many times.

god, darcy lewis hates her life (she really doesn't).

authors note. a bdsm au with a fuck ton of plot. i know what i'm about, son.

word count. 2.5k

read this on ao3!

In the early winter months of 1965, bitter air and tendrils of ice gracing the point of every shard of grass in the expansive field, seven-year-old Darlene Lewis often spent her days chasing Elsie, her German Shepherd, around the grounds of Lewis Farm. The ranges of land and wood reached far and wide. Never did a day pass without the young girl spending hours exploring nature and losing herself in the depth of the land. It was okay, though; whenever Darlene got lost, Elsie always knew the best way to get them back home. 

Born in August 1958, Darlene’s parents had been informed of her classification when she was three days old. 

It was unheard of for a neutral to marry any classification other than their own, so when Janice, a neutral, announced her engagement to Ken, a dom, the news spread fast and wide. Nobody could quite believe that any self-respecting dom would ever agree to settle down with a non-sub, since it was often told that doms were hardwired to necessitate a sub in their lives. Some conspired about the true nature of their relationship and whether it was a cover for something much more complicated, but it became quickly clear that Ken and Janice were simply in love despite all of the odds stacked against them. 

The Lewis family had been defying norms since the very beginning. 

When their daughter was born, the couple swore to never force their girl to be anything she didn’t want to be. They’d experienced enough oppression during their life together to know certainly that they’d never wish it upon their daughter. 

On paper, Darlene Lewis was a sub, but in actuality, she was so much more than her classification. 

The little girl was a free spirit. She preferred trousers to skirts (much to her mother’s perpetual suffering) and took after her papa when it came to getting her hands dirty. Her mornings were spent feeding the livestock and riding on the back of the tractor before her mama would give her a shower and get her dressed for a day of homeschool and exploring. 

The decision to privately educate their girl hadn’t been one that the Lewis’ had made easily, but once they’d weighed up the pros and cons and taken a cold hard look at the local school’s policies when it came to educating subs, keeping her home swiftly became an easy decision. 

They ensured that she never lacked social contact and offered her a more enriched education than any of the public institutions ever would. Each subject was approached with sensitivity, especially the ones that delved into the history of subs and the harm they often faced in society, but each lesson had a purpose. By the time Darlene was five, she could say ‘no’ to her father without hesitation and held a stronger head on her shoulders than the vast majority of subs triple her age. 

Though the farm was well-removed from the nearest town, hidden away beyond miles and miles of winding roads and cobbled paths, the Lewis family were cherished by the local community. Their vegetables were the brightest to grace the shelves of the local grocers during the spring and summer months and their cuts of meat were highly sought after throughout the entirety of the year. 

Much to her parents’ unhinged delight, Darlene thrived at the farm. Her skin was tan and constellations of freckles adorned her cheeks. Her mother styled her hair every morning but by late afternoon it’d be hanging over her shoulder in its natural curls. Her skirts were only worn on special occasions, though she constantly complained until her mama gave in or her papa snuck her away to get her changed. Her dungarees were worn until they were hanging on by thin threads and she had more pairs of patterned wellington boots than she could possibly count.

The winter was always that little bit tougher at the farm. It took more effort to harvest the fields and the livestock needed to be kept well cared for even on the coldest of days. Preparation for the spring season started in November. Ken Lewis spent his days working hard, often with his little helper (Darlene) by his side, whilst Janice Lewis took care of the house and ensured that her family didn’t spend too long working without reprise. 

It was during the second week of November when the initial symptom of things to come arose. Like she often managed to do, Darlene finished her studies early and begged her mama to let her go and explore the fields with Elsie. By the time she was wrapped up warm, a scarf around her neck, gloves on and a heavy thermal coat wrapped around her body, the fields were screaming her name. 

Two hours of playing chase with a German Shepherd was bound to leave anyone exhausted, but Darlene had always had seemingly endless bounds of energy. Days working hard as a farmhands assistant and sprinting for hours on end meant that she had the stamina of a professional sportsman, easily. 

That was why it was such a concern when after only ten minutes of chasing Elsie through the meadow, Darlene’s vision whited out and she collapsed into a heap on the frostbitten grass.  

Her parents were quick to rush to her aid once they’d been alerted that something was wrong by Elsie’s remarkably powerful barks and howls. Janice had sobbed in terror, holding the limp girl in her arms as Ken did his best to remain calm and composed as he did his best to analyse the severity of the situation. To their aching relief, Darlene stirred after only five minutes, bleary-eyed and complaining of a headache so painful that it was making her eyes throb. 

It took five months of exams and inquests before Darlene was officially diagnosed with acute childhood Leukemia. 

In 1965, though the field of medical research was thriving, Leukemia survival rates in children remained abysmal. Ken and Janice were told that their daughter, once so full of energy and now bedbound with fatigue and sickness, wouldn’t live to see her eighth birthday. 

It felt like all hope was lost.

Lewis farm closed down that summer season for the first time in three decades. 

***

It was the summer of 1976. The Outer Space Treaty had been signed and the twenty-fifth amendment had been added to the Constitution. In Somerville, Massachusetts, the sun was setting and the coral hues of the scene were encompassing a wide range of land. A family of three stand together, lost for words as they take shallow breaths of warm air. The whistling summertime breeze sweeping through the shrubs and trees reverberates gently throughout the sparse meadow, enclosing the farm in a blanket of false pretences.

Darlene Lewis, twenty-one years old, swallows roughly. 

There's so much that needs to be said but not nearly enough time. 

At eighteen, the progression of age developing her physical appearance had halted without warning. In what her mama termed disbelief and her papa declared to be chosen-ignorance, it took two years for her to discern the undeniable fact that her body was stuck in time. At twenty she looked as young as she had two years ago and there was little expectation for that to change anytime soon. 

Denial was sour. 

Darlene Lewis stares down at the tombstone and swallows roughly.

A terrible boating accident -- that was the narrative her parents had fed to the town and the state, respectively. Darlene had been sailing with her father, dipping her feet into the ocean when a harsh current had swept her into the unforgiving depths of the rough waters. Her body would be impossible to find; the sea offered no second chances. It was a devastating, perfect cover story. 

Nobody could question the empty wicker casket, nor could they wonder why they couldn’t bid a final farewell to the girl who’d become a special part of the local community over the years. It was a seamless cover-story that was undoubtedly plausible. After all, the percentage of boating accidents that ended in tragedy was considerable. 

The grey-toned stone stands upon a freshly filled burial ground, cursive writing adorning the face of the plaque drilled onto the face. 

Darlene May Lewis. Beloved daughter and friend. Gone but never forgotten. 

A shiver of guilt climbs up Darlene’s spine as her hazel eyes trace the lettering.

The Lewis family had requested privacy during their period of mourning; far from unusual in such an unexpected circumstance. Their farm was blanketed in a wave of grief, though for a far different reason than everyone believed. 

Darlene Lewis wasn’t dead but was having to say goodbye to her parents anyway. 

On her left, long hair tied into a loose plait, her mother stands with red-tinged eyes. On her right, her father stands tall but keeps a grounding hand on Darlene’s shoulder steadily. 

They stand in taciturnity as a wave of impassioned tautness encompasses them. 

When her father draws in a sharp breath, Darlene knows what he's thinking and that nothing she says will halt his self-deprecating train of thought. Remaining quiet, she pushes her lips together and purposefully re-directs her gaze away from the gravestone. 

Attending her own mock funeral was going to give her a complex, no doubt about it. 

"I love you, Darlene." Janice Lewis says. The silence that envelops the trio is heavy. She's speaking to the headstone, as though her daughter isn't stood by her side. Darlene’ss heart twinges. "And I will love you for the rest of eternity."

The woman takes a deep breath when her mother begins to cry soundlessly.

"If I had done things differently--" 

"Don’t do this to yourself." Darlene interrupts, voice unsteady as she spares a glance up at her father. "If you'd done things differently, I wouldn't be stood here today."

Ken Lewis grunts, sweeping away a stray tear with the back of his hand. "You can't know that for sure, Darcy-girl." He speaks. "I should've found another way. I could’ve found another way. But you were so small and so sick. They told me you were dying and I swear my heart truly broke into millions of pieces.” 

Janice Lewis weeps into her hand at the memory. 

"And then you saved me." Darlene reminds him, tenderly. She reaches out blindly to take her mother’s hand, desperate to give the woman as much comfort as she could. Her chest burns. "You gave me the chance to live a normal life, papa."

Because no matter what anyone in the past of future had to say about it, Darlene Lewis had defied all odds and lived a normal childhood. She’d eventually entered the public school system and made friends and memories that she’d remember for the rest of her life. She’d babysat for people in their town and saved up her allowance for two years in order to buy the perfect prom dress. She’d lost her virginity to a neutral (all of the teenaged doms in town had given her the heebie-jeebies). She’d graduated with a 3.5 GPA and decided to forgo college, which is where the majority of her friends had flocked to following the completion of high-school.

For argument’s sake, there were certain aspects to her life that were more unusual than others. Her heightened senses and agility were the most prominent as she was growing up, but the no-ageing thing had hit hard at eighteen and taken the mantle as the most apparent anomaly that separated her from the general population.   

"There is nothing normal about you, Darlene." Her father says, shaking his head. The woman almost cracks a small smile, desperate for a sense of normalcy, but his defeated tone is deplorable. "I will never forgive myself for what I did to you. I was reckless and desperate but I should’ve known better."

Momentarily, Darlene lets her gaze flicker to the horizon. She briefly wonders whether a comparable metaphor can be drawn from the sun setting below the horizon and marking the end of a day, a week, an era. 

Leaving everything behind wouldn’t be easy, she’d always known that, but they’d be safe. That was what she had to keep reminding herself, again and again. Loneliness was a small price to pay in order to keep the two people she loved most in the world safe.

"You saved me," Darlene repeats, meeting her father’s eyes. "You loved me too much to let me die. You loved me so much that you spent a fortnight in a lab finding a way to save my life and you actually did. You loved me so much that you recreated the serum that made Captain America and used it to cure my cancer, papa. You did that for me and I won't ever be able to thank you enough for it."

A lull falls over the meadow. In the far distance, a flock of birds begin to chirp and a deer sniffs at the trunk of a tree. Darlene gets lost in the depth of her senses until her mother sets a gentle hand on her arm and squeezes. 

"Where will you go?" She asks. Her voice is raw with emotion as, for the first time in what feels like centuries, she fixes her eyes on her daughter. 

Darlene breathes softly. "I'll go anywhere. Everywhere."

The possibilities were endless and though she painted a smile on her face to appease her worrisome parents, her stomach twisted uneasily at the concept. 

She'd always wanted to travel the globe but never imagined having to do it alone.

Her mom’s hand falls from her arm to grasp her hand and Darlene forces herself to breathe evenly.

They'll be safe when she's gone. They'll be safe when she's gone. 

She repeats the phrase like a mantra in her head. Again and again, until her temples begin to throb. It hurts but she doesn't stop, she can’t stop, because if she doesn't keep reminding herself why she's doing this, walking away will be impossible. 

They'll be safe when she's gone. 

"Will we ever see you again?" Her father asks, solemn. It's selfish to ask, he knows it, but the strained words fall from his mouth before he can filter them.

"I love you both," Darlene says. Her parents wince at the obvious deflection. It hurts her and it hurts them just as much. "I always will."

"Be safe, my girl." Her father places a kiss on her forehead, an act of familial dominance that makes her heart warm. Being a sub in a society governed by the two other secondary-genders had always been tough, but her papa had never let anyone treat her like anything less than the smart, beautiful woman she was. "If you ever need anything, we'll be here."

Her throat tightens when her mother leans in and kisses her cheek but doesn't manage a word between her silent sobs.

On June 18th, 1976, Darlene Lewis was officially registered dead with the state.

On June 23rd, 1976, Darcy Mae was born.

[wordcubed-writes]

Alternate history timeline for my AFO!Izuku fic

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Fanfic: untitled AFO!Izuku fic

Context: This is the history timeline I’m using for my villain!Inko and AFO!Izuku fics. It’s definitely not compatible with… whatever canon thinks it’s doing.

What I’m trying to do with this is make the My Hero Academia world feel bigger (there is an entire world! It’s not just Japan!) and ground its history in… I know “historical materialism” sounds really pretentious, so I’ll just go with “shit happens for a reason”. I’m also trying to answer obvious problems that are never addressed in canon, like “how come heroes get to do the things they do?” or “Why are they considered separate from the police?”

It’s so fucking long. I’m sorry. Yes this did take me a week to hammer out.

____________________

• 1948 First confirmed Quirk. This is considered the start of the “First Generation” of quirks. Most are barely noticeable, and would only be verified after extensive demographic studies a century later. Some are very noticeable. A few dozen are immensely powerful.

• 1950 All For One born.

• 1954 All For One's younger brother born.

• 1950s The rest of the 1st wave of eventual-supervillains, including the Machine Queen, born. Many governments start projects to weaponize Quirks for both the military and as a new form of domestic control.

• 1962 US government openly starts using Quirks to speed up moon landing project, and as attempt to calm public anxieties about Quirks. (All of the Quirk-users to appear are still children.) Reaction against this leads to eventual exposure of other, more-harmful projects using Quirks.

• 1963 By this time, every Quirk-user who would eventually become a supervillain is a part of some kind of government project.

• 1966 Meta Liberation Society (MLS) founded as a response to reactionary attacks against Quirk users. (The oldest Quirk-users are about 18 years old at this point.)

• 1967 “Second generation” of Quirk users considered to start here. None of them are as powerful as the hundred or so first-gen Quirk-users who would eventually become supervillains, but their Quirks’ strength is more evenly-distributed; almost all of them have a noticeable quirk that affects their lives.

• 1968 Quirk Liberation Army (QLA) founded as more militant splinter group of MLS.

• 1970 QLA assassinates both the Soviet Union premier and the United States president. The strongest government-project Quirk-users attempt to seize power in both countries.

• 1970-1981 The Bleeding Years: civil wars become norm; most national governments fail; lots of major infrastructure is left to decay or is destroyed in violent conflicts. Around this time, All For One finds and steals an immortality Quirk.

• 1971 All For One forces a Quirk on his younger brother, ostensibly to protect him, accidentally creating One For All.

• 1981 All For One becomes dictator of Japan. Age of Supervillains begins. Various immensely powerful quirk-users have successfully carved up the world between themselves. (Technological progress is much slower than it otherwise would be, as most dictators focus on consolidating power more than anything else.)

• 1980s Due to his interest in collecting Quirks, All For One allows any Quirk-user to immigrate to Japan, and offers generous benefit programs to further encourage this. This has three major consequences:

‣ ‣ Japan becomes substantially more diverse and has a much higher population than it otherwise would, and has a far higher Quirked-to-Quirkless ratio than other countries.

‣ ‣ As Quirks become an integral part of the economy, other countries attempt to copy Japan. These pro-Quirk benefit programs would be pared back decades later, as more and more of the population is Quirked anyways, but they leave an important legacy: if you’re Quirkless, you get less.

‣ ‣ Across the world, demand for specific Quirks (both from employers and consumers) and the search for communities that can better support Quirks leads to populations rapidly urbanizing and densifying. Rural areas eventually hold most of the Quirkless, the elderly, and socially-unacceptable-Quirk populations.

• 1983 The Consortium is formed by Machine Queen to mediate between various supervillain-ruled nations in order to prevent any major wars.

• 1990s Supervillains’ children are noticeably weaker than their parents. The Consortium attempts to genetically engineer a Quirk.

• 2002 First genetically-engineered Quirk-user born. Code-named “Cesium” due to how volatile their Quirk is.

• 2010s Arranged “Quirk Marriages” become popular to compensate for weaker Quirks of second-generation supervillains, and hopefully ensure 3rd-gen supervillains will still be powerful enough to rule.

• 2016 Genetic engineering of Quirks is banned in most countries after Cesium’s Quirk proves too powerful to control and too unstable to be reliable.

• 2020s The Consortium orchestrates a peaceful transition of power between the aging first-gen supervillains and their children. (Excepting All For One, who is immortal and has no living family.) The Machine Queen has developed her technomancy Quirk enough that she goes full transhuman and, like All For One, is effectively immortal.

• 2028 Cesium marries a Quirk researcher with one of the earliest-known Quirk-disabling Quirks. They live a relatively normal life.

• 2030s Cesium’s son, Platinum, proves to have a remarkably powerful and stable quirk. This is widely credited to the mixture of his parents’ Quirks, further boosting the popularity of Quirk Marriages.

• 2050s 3rd generation supervillains come to power (again, arranged by the Consortium) and are still noticeably weaker than second-gen supervillains despite quirk marriages.

• 2055 Platinum founds the Renaissance Project, a training program for the elite, intending to overcome younger supervillains’ lack of inherent power by developing the Quirks they do have as much as possible (and usher in a “Supervillain Renaissance”).

• 2070s Fourth-generation supervillains also much weaker than their parents despite quirk marriages. Skill and creativity with Quirks becomes more important for maintaining power, and Platinum solidifies his position as the headmaster who guided a generation of dictators.

‣ ‣ A new theory suggests that the vastly-above-average Quirks of the first supervillains will continue to "regress to the mean" and weaken each generation, while the overall population's average Quirk strength will continue to increase.

‣ ‣ Supervillains fear a "crossover point" where their citizens are as strong as them, and begin massive crackdowns on Quirk usage. The phrase "Quirk Singularity" is coined to describe when the average person's Quirk strength will match that of the god-like first supervillains, thought to happen sometime in the 25th century.

‣ ‣ Supervillains start recruiting some stronger Quirk-users to enforce their will, as they can no longer singlehandedly control a whole country without extensive support. These were the forerunners to the first hero organizations.

• 2078 A man called Earthmover is imprisoned for illegal quirk use after he rescues hundreds from a landslide. This sparks protests and Japan’s League of Ten—previously government enforcers—side with the protestors and rebel. Age of Supervillains ends, Golden Age of Heroes begins.

• 2080s The crackdown on Quirk usage combines with a severe economic downturn and uprisings break out across the world. Many Quirked state enforcers side with the rebels.

• 2080 By this point, the majority of the world population has a Quirk.

• 2086 Nana Shimura born.

• 2090s Various supervillain dictators fall to uprisings. The Consortium shifts from preserving the status quo to building up underground villain organizations in the face of the new "heroic" society.

• 2092 All For One abandons the Japanese government to the rebels, hoping to continue exerting control through more discrete means than as public dictator. His new underground organization starts absorbing the remnants of other deposed supervillains and becomes the League of Villains. Earthmover & other condemned “heroes” are rescued from prison.

• 2097 The Consortium negotiates with various provisional governments, working to preserve the status quo as much as possible by simply swapping out supervillain dictators with democratically-elected “unitary presidents”.

‣ ‣ This is more or less accepted with a major compromise: No major rebel-hero groups formally dissolve or surrender, they are just in détente with the state. Furthermore, “hero” becomes an official title, and heroes form a parallel pseudo-government, determined by popular vote and with effective veto power over many major state actions. This is rejected by groups like the Meta Liberation Society, who want Quirk regulations abolished, and the Quirk Liberation Army, who want a true revolution.

• 2098 Japan's first Top Ten heroes are selected. Golden Age of Heroes ends, Silver Age of Heroes begins.

• 2099 Earthmover elected first President of Japan.

• 2100s Tensions mount between surviving villain groups.

‣ ‣ The Consortium is largely obsolete without supervillain rulers to coordinate with. The villainous Renaissance Project has been replaced with various hero training schools. Both groups are weakened and rapidly fading, meanwhile, the League of Villains is larger than ever, and All For One’s influence is no longer limited to Japan. All three groups hate heroes, but the other two blame All For One for “giving” Japan to the heroes and empowering other uprisings across the world. (All For One is removed from the Consortium’s board of directors, ending its official ties to the League of Villains and further weakening it.)

‣ ‣ Platinum revamps his organization to become CORE (Counter-Revolution), with the express goal of destroying the hero system.

‣ ‣ The Consortium openly allies with the few remaining villain dictators (no longer “super” after six generations of regressing to the mean), and discretely allies with newer governments that are increasingly nervous about hardline rebels like the QLA.

• 2100 Quirk marriages made illegal in Japan. Most other countries soon follow.

• 2101 UA is founded. Platinum (re)starts genetic engineering program to create super-soldiers for a counter-revolutionary army.

• 2105 Earthmover reelected.

• 2106 Earthmover drafts almost every geokinetic Quirked in Japan to physically expand Japan’s landmass to counter rising sea levels. (Yes, global warming is still happening in this timeline.) This is very popular with the general public, though the actual results are mixed. The project is only half-finished by the time a different president is elected. Within a couple decades, the western coast expansions become a haven for the wealthy while the eastern coast expansions are unfinished and regularly-flooded slums.

• 2109 Nana Shimura becomes 7th holder of OFA. Earthmover announces his retirement before third Japanese presidential elections.

• 2110 Second President of Japan inaugurated.

• 2110s Quirkless discrimination is growing worse. Many believe Quirkless people are naturally going extinct. Employers start preferring any Quirk at all—even an unhelpful or mediocre one—as being better than no Quirk at all.

• 2111 Toshinori Yagi born, Quirkless.

• 2120s Protests by the Meta Liberation Society against the harsh and byzantine Quirk licensing system (including the special status of hero licenses) lead to major police crackdowns on unlicensed quirk usage, fueling the growth of the more radical Quirk Liberation Army. Several countries near civil war as reactionary movements, including old supervillain loyalists, CORE, and the League of Villains, clash both with each other and with groups like the QLA.

‣ ‣ Due to their status as non-state entities, most heroes don’t strictly enforce Quirk regulations, preferring to preserve their popular image as benevolent and non-political guardians, but they are, by now, very invested in the status quo, and merciless in dealing with any perceived violence by the QLA.

• 2125 Toshinori meets Nana Shimura.

• 2128 Toshinori becomes 8th holder of One For All.

• 2130 Nana confronts All For One; he kills her. Toshinori—now going by the hero name All Might—is sent to America to assist in destroying the League of Villains branch there. Second Age of Villains begins.

• 2131 Platinum destroys San Francisco Bay Area. CORE guerillas attack and kill major heroes in Europe (the region where the League of Villains is weakest), planning to crush the hero system there and rebuild a supervillain society outside of AFO’s influence. Quirk Liberation Army and League of Villains clash in Tokyo.

• 2132 All Might stops Platinum from destroying Los Angeles. This incident makes All Might globally renowned, and encourages more international cooperation between heroes.

• 2133 CORE forces start attacking heroes in Russia. An international union of heroes confronts and kills the strongest CORE Quirked in Moscow.

• 2135 At over 100 years old, Platinum is increasingly reliant on Quirk-made support tech to continue working. Though other major villains consider the CORE super-soldier project a failure, he still quietly restarts CORE’s genetic engineering program, this time to produce “perfect” successors to continue his legacy.

• 2138 International cooperation between heroes is now routine, and the League of Villains splinters into hundreds of isolated local groups as All For One fails to keep his organization whole in the face of global coordinated attacks.

• 2139 Quirk Liberation Army collapses under pressure from heroes, who consider them villains. Current Japanese President discovered to be under mind control and peacefully removed from power by vote of the Top Ten heroes. Age of Peace begins.

• 2140s Japan is the heart of the hero system. Its heroes are considered the best, and heroes are effectively Japan’s biggest export to other countries.

• 2150 Izuku Midoriya born, Quirkless.

• 2159 All Might successfully hunts down All For One, but is grievously injured while (seemingly) killing him.

• 2164 Izuku meets All Might.

• 2165 Izuku starts at UA. Technology equivalent to about 2020-level in our world, with the exception of special Quirk-made tech.

‣ ‣ Japan’s population: 250 million.

‣ ‣ World population: 12 billion.

‣ ‣ At 136 years old, Platinum is reaching the limits of what support tech can accomplish, and begins plotting to kill as many heroes as he can before he dies.

• 2166 All Might's final fight with All For One, and retirement. Age of Peace ends.

____________________

Other Notes: This timeline isn’t just abstract worldbuilding; most stuff I wrote here is referenced by characters in-story or directly affects the circumstances characters find themselves in.

For example: the Consortium is villain!Inko’s biggest ally, and later on she moves her base of operations to Japan’s aforementioned east coast slums. The Machine Queen is AFO’s only remaining peer from his dictator days, and serves as a frenemy he can, like, actually talk to. CORE serves as a looming threat from overseas—if/when AFO falls, they will move in. Platinum’s genetically-engineered successors are intended as a villainous mirror to Endeavor’s family. I’ll go further into my villain OCs in this story in a follow-up post.

The countries that the various supervillains ruled over had very different borders than our world’s. Bigger countries tended to get split up between rival dictators, and smaller countries with no major geographical barriers between them often got subsumed and ruled as a single country. (Japan was lucky in that it was already an island nation, and stayed whole before and during All For One’s rule.)

The Public Safety Commission (and its equivalents in other countries) is the official interface between the Japanese government and the parallel pseudo-governments that heroes represent. It is both important and fiendishly complicated.

As a result of the unitary president system most countries run, most governments are hilariously corrupt and barely functional. Heroes are mostly okay with this because, hey, if it’s broke it can’t be tyranny! Neoliberalism still sucks, even in alternate universes, so welfare barely exists, and most people in need have to search for a hero-sponsored charity that caters to their specific circumstances.

There is no World Wide Web. The Consortium encouraged isolationism, trying to limit each supervillain’s ambition to their own fiefdoms. As a result, there are dozens of incompatible networks and computing architectures. (This also made censorship MUCH easier.)

Social media sites like Twitter still exist, because I want to use them as a narrative tool like other fics I’ve seen. But there are no globe-spanning networks of servers, just local subsidiaries running servers dedicated to a single country, and there is no physical infrastructure enabling them to talk to each other. This does become a plot point a couple times.

(It’s considered a big deal that UA has a special computer capable of directly communicating with overseas computers. At another point, All Might has to physically mail a recording of something to another country, because it’s literally the only way he can guarantee somebody across the planet can view the same footage.)

My “technology develops 2 to 3 times slower in this AU than it does in our timeline” rule of thumb suggests, frighteningly, that Twitter has existed for around 30 years in this timeline. (Their technological equivalent of 2007 would be about 2133, while their technological equivalent of 2019 would be in 2163 or so.)

I left out all of Inko’s villain adventures and Izuku’s upbringing, because… I haven’t settled on a timeline for them yet. Also, at a certain point, it just becomes a summary of the fic itself, which isn’t the point of posting this timeline.

[tiredandineffable]

A Proposal

Now I’m Very behind on fictober, as this is still entry #7 (prompt: “Can you stay?”; I had to adapt this one slightly). This one just ended up being an immense entry for me with so much I wanted to throw in. It’s also quite possibly the longest single scene I’ve written in a good while. 

This is a continuation of the past three entries (part 1, part 2, part 3). One part left, y’all!

A huge thank you to my amazing beta, @eunyisadoran, for all her amazing work! This chapter literally could not have been done without you!

Rated G.

Summary for the whole work: Aziraphale just wanted to get her parents off her back about her love life. She did not plan on falling in love with her best friend and fake girlfriend along the way. Nor did she plan on getting fake engaged. But such is life, she supposes. Ineffable wives, fake dating au that Escalates to fake engagement au. All around, a good time to be had.

..............................

2 Years Ago

“Did she say what she was looking for?” Mr. Eliot called, perching neatly on the stool behind the counter.

“Tolstoy. Zira dropped Sevastopol Sketches in the bath and she’s panicking because she teaches pre-Soviet literature this Monday, well before library hours,” Crowley explained, taking the stairs two at a time and all but throwing herself into the classic literature section. War and Peace, Anna Karinina, but where’s the rest? “Do you keep Tolstoy in Classic Lit, or is he under general fiction?”

“I’m afraid that whole second floor would be labeled classic literature if it contained everything I believed to be classic literature,” Mr. Eliot sighed. There’s the sound of another box of books landing on the counter and a smile tugs at Crowley’s lips. This place can’t fit any more books, but then he goes and buys them by the box full. “I keep popular Tolstoy works under classic literature, but Sevastopol Sketches is under politics. If it refuses to be found, I’ll come up. Can’t very well have you going home to Aziraphale empty handed, now can we?”

Crowley trailed her fingers along the spines, letting the warmth of the shop settle in as she worked her way to Politics. “Definitely can’t have that. I think the dissertation is already getting to her. You won’t believe how rude her advisor’s comments were. He claimed she was romanticising Oscar Wilde.”

When she found the book, the cover was torn and water damage had built up from what was likely years of reading in the rain, but it was legible and beggars can’t be choosers so close to a deadline. Knowing that nerd, she’ll probably just call it well-loved.

“Did the man not romanticize himself?” Mr. Eliot asked. “Was his entire life not one grand aesthetic movement? One decadence upon another?”

“Exactly!” Crowley wandered about the second floor, finding herself once again in classic lit. Victorian literature is comfortable, she realized, because it remains one of the only things she and Aziraphale share. She might never understand how a point in time so overstudied in literature could feel so personal, but it did, somehow. Ours, she thought, fingers trailing over a green spine with gold embossing.

“At times I wonder if this dissertation is about Wilde at all,” Aziraphale had said, closing her computer with the certainty of someone who has finished, but the sigh of someone who never will.

Crowley looked up from her book with a raised brow. “How is your dissertation on the translational history of Salome not about Wilde?”

“It’s so much more than that. The first English edition? Alfred translated it from Wilde’s French, even though Wilde could have easily translated it himself. To even accept its publication in Britain was to accept the censorship of its illustrations. It wasn’t true to the French version, the version Wilde himself had created. It was all a compromise,” she said. Aziraphale laid back on the carpet, short hair falling about her like a halo, and Crowley was acutely aware of the tightness in her own throat.

“But after Wilde’s death, Robert Ross took on the thankless job of purchasing back the rights on every one of Wilde’s works, including Salome," Aziraphale continued. "Cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Crowley finally shut her book to lay beside her on the carpet, looking up to the ceiling to avoid staring right at her. Aziraphale was beautiful like this. Her usual perfect posture had been swapped out for a much more casual sprawl, a symbol of some unspoken trust. They'd seen the worst of each other, Crowley supposed, so letting her guard down made sense. "Seems like a lot of money to spend. Was he hoping for royalties?"

Aziraphale had lit up at the question, shaking her head and rolling onto her side to look at Crowley. "That's the thing. There was no promise the books would even still sell after the trial. But Oscar had hated some of the changes made for publishing and Ross decided to fix them after his death. Salome in particular. Robbie made sure the illustrations weren’t censored this time, confirmed that the cover was as self-indulgent in its beauty as Wilde would have wanted, took out Alfred's name. My dissertation focuses on the translation, sure, but it is a study in Ross’s choices, not Wilde’s.”

Crowley brushed her fingers along the cover, the floral pattern larger than life under her touch. A cover as decadent as Wilde would have wanted. The restored illustrations are in such direct opposition to turn-of-the-century rules of propriety that it's any wonder the uncensored form got published in Britain at all. From cover to cover, the only credit Crowley found was to Wilde; Alfred's ties to the play had been severed completely. Ross's choices.

It's a tribute, Crowley realized. In her hands is a testament to Ross's self-sacrificing love. It is the product of countless fights against King, country, and publishing houses until Ross was sure Wilde would have been pleased. All this done in the memory of a man who had never loved him back. A man who never would.

An act of self-sacrificing, unrequited love.

She paid for both books quickly and tried not to read too deeply into the purchase on the walk home.

……………….

Present day

“Don’t see why this couldn’t have waited,” Aziraphale said, brow raised to emphasize the edge of doubt in her words. Part of the benefit of their agreement was that they could toss ideas for their theses back and forth without having to worry about classes the next morning or Crowley’s commute back to her own apartment. That’s where they should be, sitting on Aziraphale’s bedroom floor, brainstorming or complaining about whatever it was they had to write next.

Instead, she’s sitting at the front door, straight-backed despite her exhaustion and tugging on her boots for an excursion that is likely not appropriate for the time of night. “It’s nine PM, Crowley. The bookstore closes in less than an hour and I am very certain that you can simply download Jekyll and Hyde online instead of harassing the bookshop owner who, quite frankly, is likely already at his wits’ end with regards to our visits. And it’s very unlike you to go out of your way to purchase a book.”

Crowley rolled her eyes, reaching over Aziraphale for her bag. “Firstly, download? What kind of English student are you? There’s no romance in sitting around with my eyes burning, reading on my computer like some amateur. There are notes to be made through the margins, stolen glances to be had over the top.”

“This isn’t Dead Poets Society, Crowley. I’m rather certain your romanticism is not worth the trouble to Mr Eliot.”

“He likes us, Zira. He’s probably bored. It’s why he always asks us about our theses and gives us discounts when we go.” She pauses then, squinting down at Aziraphale as she tugs on her sweater. “Wait. Are those my boots?”

Aziraphale considered it, looking down at the boots before getting up to smooth her skirt out. There are so many things she’d borrowed and so many things Crowley had borrowed in turn. “Likely. I don’t believe I remember buying them. Although that sweater is mine, so I’d say we’re evenly matched.”

Crowley shrugged, lips curling up in a way that leaves Aziraphale’s chest aching with fondness. She’s fond of the way Crowley turns and steps through the door, swaying as if she has both too many bones and not nearly enough. She’s fond of how Crowley all but swims in that sweater, of how she’s rolled the arms up neatly to the elbows in order to compensate for the size. Most of all, she’s fond of the unspoken intimacy they’ve cultivated over the years. She rarely lets herself dwell on that last part; no sense in misconstruing friendly actions for romantic ones when her feelings are so clearly not reciprocated.

The sweater suits Crowley, she supposes.

God, Zira, don’t focus on that either.

……………….

She stepped into the bookshop and immediately forgot why she had protested this book run. It is utterly deserted and blessedly quiet, filled only with the dusty scent of well-loved books. She has spent countless hours sitting amongst the books with Crowley, debating the potential symbolism of some minutiae of Atwood’s latest novel or the relevance of Orwell in modern society. The bookstore holds both her most infuriating and most beloved memories of Crowley, tucked comfortably between its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

In the middle of it all, Mr Eliot sits perched behind the counter, passively accepting the shenanigans and arguments with learned patience. He looks up as she and Crowley step in. “Ah, such illustrious visitors at such a late hour,” he says, looking up from a pile of collectible Beatrix Potter paperbacks. “May I help you find anything?”

Aziraphale shakes her head automatically, speaking before Crowley can start up an inevitably long conversation. There’s no sense in holding up Mr Eliot more than they already have. “No, no. Crowley simply forgot a book and insisted she needed it tonight. Apologies for the late hour. I assure you, we won’t be a bother.”

“Nonsense. You two are always welcome to come in,” he insists, returning his attention to the books, while Aziraphale turns hers to Crowley.

Crowley, to her credit, has made no move to engage Mr. Eliot in literary conversation. Rather, Crowley is already halfway up the steps, bounding up the stairs two steps at a time. How could anyone still be so enraptured by the subject of their dissertation after so many years? Aziraphale sighs, ignores the pang of jealousy, and ascends the stairs at a pace better suited to individuals who were not long-legged beanpoles. Maybe I should have focused on Victorian horror too.

Crowley looks over at Aziraphale as she finally reaches the top, a handful of books already in her lanky arms. All are clearly too large to be the sought-after Stevenson novella.

“How are there no copies of Jekyll and Hyde under classic lit?” Crowley asks, her shoulders back, and hips tipped a little too far forward. Forced nonchalance. Crowley’s tension is clearly the result of far more than just a misshelved book. Between the kiss and the proposal, Aziraphale has put too much on her shoulders and this is the result. Guilt settles into Aziraphale’s chest, stamping out the bookshop-induced calm.

“You check horror and I’ll check general fiction? It has to be here, Zira. I have to get this shit emailed to my advisor by the morning or he might literally crucify me.”

“We’ll find it, Crowley.” She bites her lip as she walks through the bookstore, finding her way through on muscle memory alone as she worries. Crowley had insisted it was fine, even talking her into the not-proposal. But Crowley always did this, sacrificing her mental health to save Aziraphale, and in the grand scheme of that week, it all made sense. Crowley had listened to the “80’s Songs for Self-Pitying Dumbasses” playlist no less than 14 times in half as many days on their shared account and Aziraphale, perhaps the true dumbass in this whole situation, had assumed Crowley was beating herself up over her latest publication draft. Aziraphale has to call this off. She can’t keep taking advantage of Crowley’s kindness.

Book first, sort-of-breakup second.

Stevenson should be an easy find. She brushes her fingers along the spines as she moves through the horror section. Jackson, Lovecraft, Poe, Rice, Shelley, Wilde.

Wilde?

She looks curiously at the misshelved book, running her thumb over gilded letters. Salome. The warm bookshop lighting illuminates the delicate gold floral pattern of the cover, brightens its soft green background, and Aziraphale’s hands shake not out of anxiety but out of overwhelming excitement. She flips through it with quick, light touches to the first few pages and inhales the words just as she exhales the breath she didn’t realize she was holding. She skips over decadent illustrations, over publication details. And, impossibly, there it is.

A Note on “Salome” by Robert Ross.

“Crowley!”

“Did you find it?”

Something drops out as Aziraphale flips through the book, and she reaches for it just as Crowley turns the corner. She looks...hopeful, worried. Aziraphale looked down at the small envelope and then back up to Crowley, tears forming in her eyes because this is it, isn’t it? The proposal, ineffably cruel in its perfection.

Because it is perfect. It’s intimate and thoughtful and literary. She has no idea where Crowley would have found this edition in such perfect condition, nor does she have a clue how Crowley would have been able to afford it.

And then there’s the bookshop itself. It has borne witness to their very history, from the earliest days of whatever this is, cataloguing every laugh and shelving every fight. If this were real, if Aziraphale and Crowley had actually been together for three years and Crowley had proposed right then, things would be fine. Because the library would have been theirs. Ours.

It’s where I fell in love with you. With your red curls and your too-loud laugh and the way you complain about books with bad covers. Its where I realized that every bookshop felt too quiet without your commentary. Did you notice how I dragged you here whenever I felt like shit, because I wanted my favourite person in my favourite place? How I snuck glances at you while you read because I’ve spent every school holiday over three years just fighting the urge to kiss you against the shelves? I have ached and I have ached and I have ached for any of this to be real, for you to feel even an iota of the love I do for you. I have done so amongst these books, these shelves, and these words.  

And now you mock me with it.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale sounds about ready to break and she knows it. “Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

Watching Crowley’s face in that moment is like watching a person simultaneously go through the five stages of grief. She wets her lips, parting them to say something but seemingly not finding the words, her brows furrowing only to smooth out. Instead, she stands frozen, sharp edges barely held together, quiet as if deciding how to act without pushing Aziraphale any further. She finally takes a step, tentative and awkward with stiff knees, looking down at her feet.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”

Aziraphale almost laughs despite the tears rolling down her cheeks. “Dearest Crowley, how the hell was it supposed to be, then? Had you intended to hurt me more, to make things worse? Was there some silly detail you missed that would have truly put the nail in this coffin? I can’t imagine there’s much else you can do to toy with my emotions. You truly did your homework, checked all the boxes. Bravo. Perfect show. You outdid yourself with this one.”

“Is that what you think this is? Do you think any of this has been easy for me?” Crowley’s entire demeanor has changed, her shoulders rising not with their usual anxiety but with the frustration that comes with years of suppressed hurt, exploding all at once. “I almost drove home three times this week because the thought of doing this and seeing you react the way I had imagined was excruciating.” Crowley reaches for the envelope on the ground and pockets it, not looking back as she walked down the stairs. “Congrats on somehow making it fucking worse.”

“Can’t you stay and address your mistakes like an actual adult?” Aziraphale calls back. She won’t give her the satisfaction of running after her.

“My mistakes?” Crowley stops on the last step at the bottom of the stairs. “Want to hear about my mistakes? I fell in love with you. Not even a year into this. I stayed because it wasn’t fair that you’d have to deal with your parents just because I got a crush. Then I stayed because I couldn’t risk losing my one shot at doing all the dumb little romantic shit that I wanted to do with you, even if it didn’t really mean anything. Then I stayed because I thought maybe, one day, it might actually mean something.” Crowley sighs, tugging her coat on a little tighter with her hands clenched in the fabric, her voice too thick. “So no, I won’t stay.”

“Would you stay if I said I did too?” Aziraphale doesn’t know where those words came from, how she spoke them so confidently despite her wet lashes and shaking hands. She takes a breath as she slowly works her way down the steps, leaning on the hardwood railing. Now she’s the one being overcareful, stopping a few steps short of where a tightly wound Crowley still stands. Aziraphale is suddenly very aware of how ready Crowley is to run.

“Don’t say things you don’t mean, angel.”

Aziraphale laughs, short and bittersweet. “We were here one night, just upstairs. Mr. Eliot said we could stay as late as we wanted so long as we locked up before going home. You wanted to power through, finish up some presentation in time to get comments from your advisor because you insisted we should get some time to ourselves on this trip. So you sat there and you worked, but I didn’t. I couldn’t, really, because I kept thinking of what it would be like to crawl over and just kiss you. Which is ridiculous, because we’d kissed a handful of times that day for show. But I wanted…” She feels the curl of her lips, a breath escape between words. “I wanted to kiss you until you forgot about that presentation entirely. Until it meant something to us both.”

Crowley turns a bit towards her, wiping roughly at her face with shaky hands and God, even looking like an emotional wreck, Crowley is somehow the most beautiful person Aziraphale has ever seen. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You could right now,” Crowley says, looking into the otherwise empty shop beside her in a desperate attempt to avoid eye contact. The soft hiccuping breaths, a remnant of some shouting they’ve both come to regret, have squandered any attempts at looking cool and collected. Crowley is trying all the same. “Kiss me, I mean.”

“Could I, hmm?” Aziraphale steps forward, her pinky reaching for Crowley’s own. Crowley, to her credit, takes her whole hand instead.

“Better do it fast or-”

There’s a little choked sound from Crowley as Aziraphale finally presses in, letting her hand tangle up in Crowley’s curls, pulling her in as she’d only dreamed of doing for...God, too damn long. Her lips press in hard, a little too eager, but neither of them is up for complaining when this is so long overdue, and it’s all more than smoothed over by Crowley’s tender brush of a thumb along Aziraphale’s cheek. She had imagined how this might feel before, extrapolating from the limited data of their meaningless embraces, but she’d never before noticed the little things: the cherry taste of Crowley’s lip balm, the way she somehow eternally smells like coffee, the way she miraculously manages to be tender and hurried all at once. Too much and not enough.

She pulls Crowley in tighter but miscalculates the trajectory, accidentally bumping their glasses together. They’re both laughing by the time they pull apart.

“Wanna get out of here?” Crowley asks. She’s a little a little dishevelled and a little breathless, but she’s still brimming with her trademark teasing and Aziraphale wouldn’t have it any other way.  

Aziraphale hugs the book to her chest. “Wherever you want to go.”

[robbyrobinson]

Doctor Sleep: Birth of Evil

Everything has its origin.

Hundreds of years ago in the country of Hungary, a young girl found herself in a tight fit. A foreigner from another country orphaned at an immature age, she snuck her way onto a ship heading for this new land. She got in through the goods shipped for Hungary. She hid in a box of rice and remained in the box until the ship officially made land at the docks. As the box was getting lifted out, one of the crew members noted how the box felt lighter. "Sir, do you feel that there is something peculiar about this box?" a crewmate asked another.

"This is just a box of rice, nothing more, nothing less."

The girl kept herself deathly quiet. She was able to breathe through the small holes in the top of the box. The two men inquired more on the now lightweight box until they were informed that the nobles were waiting impatiently for their deliveries. Lest they faced spending a night evolving to weeks in their "torture chamber," they had better forget their complaints on the box and go. The girl was tossed here and there around the empty box. She felt herself getting picked up and tossed onto the back of a carriage. With a whipping of the rope and the horses' neighs, she was off.

The journey was long and bitter. The post-digested rice within the young girl's stomach sloshed around, compelling her to almost vomit up the contents of her bowels. There were a few pitstops on the way. While the men were distracted, the girl quietly abandoned the box to steal crumbs of food and to relieve herself. There was a time when she was so blocked up from the non-nutritious food, she almost missed the carriage's exit. Sleeping inside of the box was bothersome and discomforting, but to her, she thought it was better than sleeping in the dead of winter in alleyways with hardly anything to cover her for warmth.

The time for the permanent delivery came short of 1 PM in the evening. Sunlight peaked into the minuscule holes, tickling the young girl's eyes. During one of their pitstops, the girl had collected a small knife and tentatively carved a hole through the box around a time the traders were distracted. The sights fascinated her. In front of her was a castle. It was one of the Gothic build popular at the time and unspeakably massive. It had a long history behind it: before its remodeling, it had a horseshoe shape and a Romanesque style. The men stopped at the entrance of the castle and began unloading their massive hauls.

"About time you had gotten here" a feminine voiced rang out with a clear hint of malice.

The men gulped nervously and placed the packages in front of the woman. Their fingers flailed around from the anxiety, but they started to open each one. One box contained silk. Another one contained tea that was shipped in from one of the neighboring countries. The last one was the box of rice. The men wrapped their fingers around the lid of the box, pulling on it slowly. The girl reacted immediately firmly holding onto the bottom.

"What is this!?" one of the crewmates yelled. He and his partner wrestled with the lid, but the girl refused to allow the box lid to budge. They both situated themselves on opposite ends of the box and gave it one, bold heave-ho. The girl was forced out of the box, landing on her face. The men and the noblewoman stood there in surprise.

"You!" the second crewmate yelled, "you ate her rice, hadn't you!?" He took hold of the girl's black hair, bending her neck backward. She writhed from his grip.

"No, no, please, sir," the girl begged, "I was just so hungry!"

The noblewoman held her hand up, alarming the men. She gave them a deadly glance as toxic as the worse of known poisons; worse than any cyanide. They shivered and released the girl. The girl was frightened by the noblewoman as well. But when the woman made a motioning gesture for her to get at her right hand, she obeyed her order wordlessly.

"I relieve both of you from your duties."

She sent them away back on horseback. She gazed at the young girl, eyeballing her curiously. The young girl felt violated by the noblewoman, even if she was simply observing her. After what felt like endless sessions of quietly interrogating her, a half-smile formed on the woman's face. "You must have come from such a far land," she finally said. Some of her servants walked into the room, and she ordered them to stage a grand feast.

"Do you have a name, if I may inquire of you?" she asked again.

"My Mom named me Rose after her favorite flower," the girl said. She was being directed into the dining room by the servants.

"Delighted to meet you, Rose," the woman said, "you must be starving after such a long journey." She sat Rose at the foot of the dining table. Huge slabs of meat were flopped down in front of the young girl alongside large vegetables like potatoes and beets. Rose found herself salivating at the mouth. "Well, eat up; I'm more than happy to have you in the family."

The woman identified herself as the countess Elizabeth Bathory and throughout a few months, she raised Rose alongside her other children. Rose found herself playing along with her stepsiblings in the courts of the Čachtice Castle and growing to enjoy the good life. Oftentimes, she saw Elizabeth send for peasant women to attend her massive feasts or to become employees at her castle. But for the faintest of reasons, Rose never saw these women again. Dozens of young virgin women would be invited to the castle with the promise of employment that they hoped to use to provide for their families. And yet, Rose never saw them during the day nor did Bathory's staff ever acknowledge that they were missing, Hundreds of women couldn't have just vanished overnight? Could they? It lasted for about a year until Bathory decided to fill Rose in on her secrets. Rose was around 12 at the time. She was fondly looking out of a window at the water across when Bathory entered the room. Rose's eyes lit up.

"You're saying that there's a secret room that you wanted to show me?"

Bathory nodded. "I believe that you are ready for it."

She took her down into the basement; a rusted lock was firmly placed on the door, forbidding entrance into it from anyone other than Bathory. She moved her hair back and drew out a key from a necklace. She held the key in front of Rose's face. It was a golden instrument. Bathory inserted the key into the keyhole of the lock and turned it clockwise. A small click emitted, and the room droned open. A putrid smell leaped out of the room assaulting Rose's nostrils. Bathory smiled. "Welcome to my personal playhouse."

Inside the room, several of the peasant women that were promised jobs were hanging from chains. Multiple women were strung up, getting vivisected with their guts and entrails being exposed. One such woman was a 16-year-old whose lower intestines were wrapped around a spinning wheel. Attached was a crank that from the slightest push, the woman's entrails would be ripped out painfully and as slowly as Mrs. Bathory pleased.

Other women had the skin of their backs ripped off because of nail-laced whips. The crudely placed nails glistened in the sunlight from the remnants of blood that did not dry. The faces of 10 women were grotesquely removed along with other segments of their bodies. Rose looked at Bathory with closer inspection. A tinge of red was on her bottom lip.

"Rose," Bathory began, "what if I were to tell you that there was a way to live forever?"

Live forever? Everything felt like a dream sequence from here on out. The women were moaning in pain, with some strange vapor rising out of their mouths. Bathory walked over to one of the women. Seeing that she had a wound on her arm, Bathory knelt and pushed the wound in. The woman screamed again in pain. More ghostly vapor flowed from her mouth. Bathory hungrily lapped up the substance as the woman's eyes illuminated. The woman's cries gradually faded before she crumbled down into a bloodied heap. "This, Rose, is the secret to a long life."

Rose was intimidated at first, but she was also intrigued by the whole notion of living forever. Bathory beckoned her to lie down on the floor while she walked across the room with a jar in hand. It also contained that gaseous substance. She got on top of Rose and opened the jar.

"You see, Rose," she said turning the jar counterclockwise, "I delight myself in torturing these women because my society devalues them making it easier for me to spirit them away and indulge in my sinful habits. When one of my servants got her accursed blood on my hand, the blood reverted my aging body. From that day onward, I devoted myself to achieving eternal beauty."

She tipped the jar onto Rose's lips. "These women had this strange mental power when I killed them. I found myself accidentally ingesting the vapor and my body felt alive. To my knowledge, no one else made this life-altering discovery, and I proudly call it 'steam.' " Rose breathed in the steam. The pain was excruciating as she felt her body contorting between the past and the present. She felt younger while she was still mentally 12. Lady Bathory was right: she felt invigorated. "Repeat after me, Rose," Bathory said. She recited some cryptic words apparently; she came up with on the spot:

"Lodsam hanti, we are the chosen ones. Cahanna risone hanti, we are the fortunate ones. Sabbatha hanti, sabbatha hanti, sabbatha hanti. We are the True Knot, and we endure. What is tied may never be untied."

And then it was over. Bathory removed herself from Rose allowing her to regain composure. As they exited the room of horrors, Bathory grabbed hold of Rose's arm and leaned her close to her face to meet her at eye level. "I want you to succeed me, Rose, but I will inform you that if you as much as to share what I have done with anyone else, I will not only call you a liar, but I will condemn you to the same pain and torment those women downstairs have faced at my hands. Understand?"

Rose gulped and nodded fervently at her demand. She and Bathory spent years luring women into the torture room and killing them in ways indescribable. There was one that was like Rose in that she was also an orphan who was strapped to the spinning wheel.

"Please, let me go," the orphan sobbed, "I just want to live."

Rose looked at the woman in observation. She knew what it was like to be alone and having to rummage for scraps. It was something that she would dear not to even consider reliving that nightmare. And yet, Rose slashed her throat with a brandished knife. The blood gushed out like a geyser. Fresh blood spewed in her face. Rose licked the blood around her lips. "Cherry," she thought.

While most of her assisting Bathory was largely under the threat of death, Rose found herself enraptured by the idea of living long and eating well. Soon, she found herself being elevated above mankind, much like in Bathory's case. It remained that way until one eventful day.

Rose was in the town when news got out about Bathory's actions. She had gotten lazy with her murders and in her hunger, she targeted noblewomen. In 1611, Bathory was found guilty of over 80 murders yet escaped execution by getting locked away in a room of her own castle. Rose had vanished during the sentencing, remaining gone for three years. Bathory was slipping away because of her deprival of steam. Food was still being served to her, but nevertheless, her dreams of eternal life were botched.

Sitting in her empty room, Bathory's eyes grew heavy and she began to drift off to sleep. A clicking stirred her awake. The door opens, she saw her adopted daughter Rose standing there. At first, she was relieved. "I've been waiting for so long, Rose," Bathory exclaimed, "free me and together we will rule all."

Rose shook her head. "Sorry, but I have better ideas for you."

A scream sent the guards running up the stairs. When they got there, they saw Bathory as a pile of dust. Rose had since vanished back into thin air.

(More to come)

[newstfionline]

Headlines: Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Radioactive lunar soil (AP) New measurements from a Chinese-German team analyzing data from the Chang’e 4 lander on the far side of the moon finds that the lunar surface is radioactive as all heck, with astronauts getting 200 to 1,000 times more radiation on the moon than experienced on Earth, or about five to 10 times the amount absorbed by passengers on a trans-Atlantic flight. This is not a problem for a quick visit, but if the objective is to land astronauts and have them settle in for a bit, they could sustain sufficient damage to cause health problems down the line.

Coronavirus pandemic on the brink of a grim new milestone: 1 million dead (Washington Post) The covid-19 death toll is on the brink of hitting 1 million. That’s as many as live in San Jose, Calif.; Volgograd, Russia; or Qom, Iran. It is a disease that peppers grieving families with indignities—no funerals, hurried burials, barely a chance to mourn. It is a pandemic that has divided countries from within, yet unites the world in common anguish and loss. In the United States, a son in Sacramento can only listen to a description of his mother’s burial in New Jersey via his daughter, the only relative permitted to attend. The dead are poor—in an Indian village, a man’s family borrows a wooden cart that a neighbor used to sell fish and carries his body to his funeral pyre. And the dead are workers—in Brazil, a man who works in a meatpacking plant does everything he can think of to protect himself, yet he brings the bug home and now his wife is dead. Across the oceans and into the biggest cities and the tiniest villages, the coronavirus has torn apart families, left children hungry, evaporated jobs and wrecked economies.

As Covid-19 Closes Schools, the World’s Children Go to Work (NYT) Every morning in front of the Devaraj Urs public housing apartment blocks on the outskirts of the city of Tumakuru, India, a swarm of children pours into the street. They are not going to school. Instead of backpacks or books, each child carries a filthy plastic sack. These children, from 6 to 14 years old, have been sent by their parents to rummage through garbage dumps littered with broken glass and concrete shards in search of recyclable plastic. In many parts of the developing world, school closures put children on the streets. Families are desperate for money. Children are an easy source of cheap labor. While the United States and other developed countries debate the effectiveness of online schooling, hundreds of millions of children in poorer countries lack computers or the internet and have no schooling at all. United Nations officials estimate that at least 24 million children will drop out and that millions could be sucked into work.

Trump’s tax revelation could tarnish image that fueled rise (AP) The bombshell revelations that President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for office and paid no income taxes at all in many others threaten to undercut a pillar of his appeal among blue-collar voters and provide a new opening for his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, on the eve of the first presidential debate. Trump has worked for decades to build an image of himself as a hugely successful businessman—even choosing “mogul” as his Secret Service code name. But The New York Times on Sunday revealed that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, the year he won the presidency, and in 2017, his first year in office. He paid no income taxes whatsoever in 10 of the previous 15 years, largely because he reported losing more money than he made, according to the Times, which obtained years’ worth of tax return data that the president had long fought to keep private. At this point in the race, with voting already underway in many states and so few voters still undecided, it is unclear whether any new discoveries about Trump would make any difference. Trump’s support over the years has remained remarkably consistent, polls over the course of his presidency have found.

Ransomware Attacks Take On New Urgency Ahead of Vote (NYT) A Texas company that sells software that cities and states use to display results on election night was hit by ransomware last week, the latest of nearly a thousand such attacks over the past year against small towns, big cities and the contractors who run their voting systems. But the attack on Tyler Technologies, which continued on Friday night with efforts by outsiders to log into its clients’ systems around the country, was particularly rattling less than 40 days before the election. While Tyler does not actually tally votes, it is used by election officials to aggregate and report them in at least 20 places around the country—making it exactly the kind of soft target that the Department of Homeland Security, the F.B.I. and United States Cyber Command worry could be struck by anyone trying to sow chaos and uncertainty on election night.

Massacre in Mexican bar leaves 11 people dead (Reuters) A massacre in a bar left 11 people dead on Sunday, Mexican authorities said, as the country grapples with a record homicide rate despite the government’s pledge to stop gang violence. The attorney general’s office of the central Mexican state of Guanajuato said the bodies of seven men and four women were found in the bar in the early hours of Sunday morning in the city of Jaral del Progreso. Guanajuato, a major carmaking hub, has become a recurring scene of criminal violence in Mexico, ravaged by a turf war between the local Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Backers turn on Britain’s PM (AFP) Boris Johnson, called dejected and dogmatic even by his partisans, is enduring a torrid time in his tumultuous premiership, and worse may lie ahead. The coronavirus pandemic is testing all world leaders. But Britain has suffered more than any other country in Europe, and now the prime minister faces a revolt by Conservative colleagues who accuse him of governing by diktat. If the Covid-19 crisis has dictated the need for emergency policies on the hoof, the government has had plenty of time to prepare for life outside the European Union. But there too, an air of mutiny hangs over parliament after Johnson picked a Brexit fight with Brussels that puts Britain on the wrong side of international law. “Conservative MPs didn’t elect Boris Johnson as their leader because they thought he’d make a great prime minister,” Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, told AFP. “They elected him as their leader because they were desperate to win an election,” he said. “There’s probably always a hope that someone will grow into the job. There’s some alarm that hasn’t happened.”

Britain is part of 'arc of instability' around the EU, chairman says (Reuters) Brexit Britain is part of an “arc of instability” that has emerged around the European Union, the bloc’s chairman said on Monday, ranking London’s decision to leave the EU along with threats from Turkey, Russia, Libya and Syria. “An arc of instability has developed all around us,” European Council President Charles Michel, who chairs EU summits, said in an online address for the Bruegel think-tank. “The truth is, the British face a dilemma. What model of society do they want??” Britain left the EU, the world’s largest trading bloc, on Jan. 31 after 47 years of partnership to the huge regret of EU leaders who now insist that London accept the economic consequences of looser ties. The process of negotiating a new trade relationship and finding Britain’s new place in the world is proving complicated and has revealed divisions within political parties, society and the government itself.

India’s confirmed coronavirus tally reaches 6 million cases (AP) India’s confirmed coronavirus tally reached 6 million cases on Monday, keeping the country second to the United States in number of reported cases since the pandemic began. New infections in India are currently being reported faster than anywhere else in the world. The world’s second-most populous country is expected to become the pandemic’s worst-hit country in coming weeks, surpassing the U.S., where more than 7.1 million infections have been reported. Yet even as infections mount, India has the highest number of recovered patients in the world. More than 5 million people have recovered from COVID-19 in India and the country’s recovery rate stands at 82%, according to the Health Ministry.

Fighting Flares Between Azerbaijan and Armenia (NYT) Fighting that was reported to be fierce broke out on Sunday between Azerbaijan and Armenia and quickly escalated, with the two sides claiming action with artillery, helicopter and tanks along a disputed border. The military action centered on the breakaway province of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian separatist enclave in Azerbaijan. Ethnic tensions and historical grievances in the mountainous area north of Turkey and Iran have made kindling for conflict for decades. The fighting on Sunday, however, was reportedly more severe than the typical periodic border skirmishes, and both governments used military language describing the events as war. By early afternoon, Azerbaijan said its forces had advanced to capture seven villages and had surrounded an unspecified number of Armenian troops it was threatening to kill if they did not surrender. Armenia claimed it was holding fast and had destroyed Azerbaijani tanks and helicopters. Nikol Pashinyan, the Armenian prime minister, declared a state of emergency and mobilized the country’s male population. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country has long been at odds with Armenia, strongly backed Azerbaijan. Russia, on the other hand, is a long-standing ally of Armenia, and it has supplied the country with enormous supplies of arms since the end of its war with Azerbaijan in 1994.

Rabbis ponder COVID-19 queries of ultra-Orthodox Jewish life (AP) Must an observant Jew who has lost his sense of taste and smell because of COVID-19 recite blessings for food and drink? Can one bend the metal nosepiece of a surgical face mask on the Sabbath? May one participate in communal prayers held in a courtyard from a nearby balcony? Months into the coronavirus pandemic, ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel are addressing questions like these as their legions of followers seek advice on how to maintain proper Jewish observance under the restrictions of the outbreak. Social distancing and nationwide lockdowns have become a reality around the globe in 2020, but for religious Jews they can further complicate rites and customs that form the fabric of daily life in Orthodox communities. Many of these customs are performed in groups and public gatherings, making it especially challenging for the religious public to maintain its lifestyle. One religious publisher in Jerusalem released a book in July with over 600 pages of guidance from 46 prominent rabbis. Topics range from socially distanced circumcisions (allowed) to Passover Seders over Zoom (forbidden) to praying with a quorum from a balcony (it’s complicated).