#outside of liberal-enough cities experience

[allthepresidentsmen1976]

have been thinking about this a lot lately and i do just want to say that i think a lot of people Online™ really don't realise how genuinely dangerous being gay offline is. and even when it isn't physically dangerous, how profoundly uncomfortable being gay makes straight people. i need you to understand that though the online world is part of real life, it is not the whole scope of things and i do believe that to forget that can be very very unwise both for yourself and for other people.

i'm not saying the world isn't getting better or that being gay is something you need to be aware of at all times, i'm just saying it is absolutely a disservice to yourself and everyone else by refusing to acknowledge that at this point in time, society even in more progressive spaces has not moved past cold hard homophobia. and even if you haven't experienced it yourself, you need to know that your experiences aren't universal. if you assume that they are, it will harm people in one way or another. i'm not saying be scared, i'm saying know that there are still many, many significant steps to take even in more progressive places wrt to lgbt rights, let alone places where that's not so much a thing. i just think it's essential to understanding the world you're living in as a gay person, to understand this.

[doublesunsets]

Experiment 002

Tech x Reader PWP - NSFW - Explicit Word Count: 3.1K

Summary: If he thought that your pleasure was worth exploring, you were not going to contradict him. If his analytical mind found your moans interesting enough, you will provide them gladly.

Warnings: reader POV, smut, oral sex female receiving, liberal use of the word 'fascinating', (slightly) overstimulation, did I say smut? Self-indulgent smut

Author's note: Still, I don't even know, mate. Some people asked for seconds, and who am I to get in the way of science. I gave Tech a hair-pulling kink, I'm not sorry. There's no beta, I apologise if there are any mistakes. I also apologise for my pretensions of knowing how to write sex, I'm just trying to have fun. -Sunset

part I & part III

✩ AO3 link

You stood on your toes at the top of the lifting platform, trying to force the hydrospanner to move with the weight of your body, but the angle wasn’t right, and you groaned out loud in frustration. You twisted your body trying to find a good position, but inside the hull there wasn’t that much space around, so when you hit your elbow against some metal part you retaliated saying something about its mother. You were definitely not throwing your frustration at the ship, not of course. 

The Havoc Marauder was stationed at the outskirts of a nice and quiet city that the squad knew to be safe. It had been a couple of intense weeks, some bounty hunter had got sight of the group and there had been some pretty nasty gunfights, but it was all solved now. They were not coming back for any of you. Not for anyone else, for that matter. Besides some scratches already healed, everyone got out of it unscathed, and you were glad for it, you really were. It was a time to feel happy and not other feelings were in the way.  You were definitely not mourning the lack of alone time with Tech, not of course.

When everyone decided to go into the city earlier, Tech announced that he wanted to run a diagnostics on his ship, just to make sure everything was in pristine conditions. As you noticed that Echo was about to volunteer to stay back with him, you stopped him, and told him that you would do it, no problem at all, and even if he hesitated at first, Omega grabbing his hand was all he needed to concede. Tech had been crouched over his datapad already and didn’t notice any of the exchange, so when you let him know that you had stayed behind to help, he startled at your voice, his eyes wide behind his goggles. You let him space, and went to check your usual things, while he kept looking at you, datapad clutched in his hands, like a mynock in headlights. You were definitely not expecting him to be overwhelmed by scientific curiosity again, not of course. 

So far he had been busy plugging and checking, and paying little to no attention to you, but that was to expect. You were quite sure that this piece of junk, that was definitely not mocking you right now, came first to him. Your only hope was that once he finished all his tasks, you came second, and judging by the small movement of the platform, you were right.

“It seems you are having difficulties up there,” Tech’s voice came from some place in front of you, outside the hull.

“I cannot reach it properly!” you growled at the bolt. “The angle is wrong, so I don’t have enough leverage.”

“I have already finished with my diagnostics, allow me to help you.”

“I don’t think we can both fit in here, Tech, don’t wo–,” two firm hands on your hips made you gasp and you almost bit your tongue.

“Two work better than one, darling.” He had climbed onto the platform and was pushing you a little, so he could squeeze himself in between you and the ship. You looked down and instantly regretted it, the visual of Tech on his knees grasping your hips was more than you could handle at the moment with the limited oxygen you had inside the hull.

He pushed himself inside, his head and shoulders managing to fit in, up to your stomach. Your shirt had slid up from your movements, and now his breath was hitting your skin, making your heart pound so hard that it was hard to listen to what he was saying.

“I am quite positive that I can lift you up enough and stabilise you, so you can secure the bolt. Are you prepared?”

“Yes, I–” you cleared your throat, taking a deep breath to focus your thoughts. “Sure, I am ready.”

You were not.

Tech surrounded your hips and looped his arms under your butt, and then stood slowly, lifting you carefully. He was basically hugging you, your mind unhelpfully provided, his face pressed against your stomach, and your left hand flew to his head to ground you. 

“Can you reach it properly now?” His words were spoken directly into you, his breath scorching your skin.

You gulped and forced yourself to look up again, trying to locate the blasted bolt. “Yes, I can. Just, don’t move.” Without thinking, you grasped his head more firmly, his soft hair between your fingers, and focused on your task.

Certainly it was easier from this angle. On the other hand, it was harder, mostly because you were hyper-aware of Tech’s strong arms hugging your thighs and his breath tickling your navel. You attached the hydrospanner to the bolt and started unscrewing it.

“This is a very intimate position,” Tech’s voice broke your concentration, and you almost dropped the hydrospanner on his head.

You snorted. “Are you realising that just now?” 

“I searched for the most efficient way of helping you, I didn’t stop to think about the logistics of it, nor the consequences of you grabbing my hair either, if I’m being honest.”

“The consequences of–” You stopped and finished removing the loose bolt, changing it for the new one in your pocket. When it was done, you grabbed Tech’s hair again, this time a little bit harder, and he hissed. “What kind of consequences, Tech?”

“It seems that proximity to your skin intoxicates my senses,” he muttered almost to himself.

Oh, you knew this tone of voice already. His voice was sharper, meticulous, as calculations rolled around in his mind. You looked down at him, but he was not looking at you, his forehead leaned on your stomach. 

“And that’s all?” He didn’t respond, so you tried again. “Are there any other variables, Tech?”

You punctuated your question with another soft tugging of his hair, the vibrations of his moan straight to your core.

“It also seems that I deeply enjoy the sensation of your hand pulling my hair.”

You felt through your grip how he tilted his head and pressed his face further into you, starting to leave kisses on every patch of skin he could reach. He started with small peaks that soon enough evolved into open-mouthed kisses that left a wet trail. The hydrospanner and his head were your only support points, and they were quickly becoming not enough.

“Maker, Tech,” you breathed out his name like a prayer. “I am not complaining, but do you think I could finish this first?”

“You are perfectly capable of carrying on with your task with what I am doing right now.”

As if to exemplify the opposite of his point, Tech ran his tongue slowly through your navel, and you let out a frustrated groan. His assumptions about how capable you were of working while he was kissing your stomach were highly inaccurate, and as he bit your hipbone, you jerked on his embrace, your hand slipping from the handle of your tool, that luckily stayed secured by its hold on the bolt. He continued kissing and biting at a leisurely pace, completely oblivious of the magnitude of his effect on you. You took another deep breath and managed to take hold of the hydrospanner again, finishing tightening the bolt.

“Okay,” you let him know with a trembling voice, patting his head. “Job’s done, let me down.”

Tech crouched again on the platform floor and took you down with him, but after the tension, your legs failed you, and you fell on your knees the moment he released you. He quickly held you again, stopping your fall, and secured you against his chest. He searched your eyes, a look of concern on his face, but before he could say anything you took the momentum and closed the distance, kissing his lips firmly. Without hesitation, his arms tightened around you, rendering yours useless, trapped between your bodies. When you moved your head back, there was a nice blush on his cheeks, and he looked at you with wide eyes.

“Did you enjoy the sensation of my lips as well?” You asked him cheekily. 

“I am going to need more evidence,” his dazed voice made you smile, but it was short-lived.

He pounced at you and kissed your smile away, leaving only fire. Tech didn’t do anything half-heartedly, and that included kissing. You freed your arms and crept them around his neck while he moved his lips against yours with an insistence that made you arch your back, his firm embrace the only thing keeping you upright. Your fingers entangled with his hair once more, and you were definitely taking a liking to this recently discovered outcome, taking advantage of his gasp to intrude his mouth with your tongue and taste him in an experiment of your own. Your mind couldn’t grasp how such a sharp tongue could be so warm and soft, pliant at your motions, and you could have stayed there, under the open hull of the Marauder, kissing him forever, if it weren’t for his comlink going off at your back.

He moved away and answered over your shoulder, Hunter’s voice coming loud and clear from his vambrace, “Tech. How are those repairs going?”

“Problem?” His clipped tone sounded annoyed, and you started kissing his jawline. Hopefully, the comm didn’t catch his gasp.

“No, no problem at all. We just found a nice place, and were going to grab something decent for once, you two coming?”

“No. I haven’t— we haven’t finished yet. There is no reason to wait for us.” You raised your eyebrows, surprised, but he didn’t look at you.

“Sure, see you later then.” Hunter sounded wary, but didn’t mention anything else and closed the communication.

“I thought you had finished already with the diagnostics,” you observed innocently.

“That is correct. Nonetheless, there is another pressing matter at the moment that requires my attention.” 

“Is that so? Another experiment?”

“Indeed. I just thought about something and would like to test a theory.”

“Which one?”

“I want to check how you cum quicker, with my fingers or my mouth.”

———

Surely all the repairs were done, you hoped, because none of you spared a second glance while going back inside and entering the cockpit. Tech was silent, methodically removing his upper body armour, with a look of concentration of someone who was calculating the best hyperspace route and not the logistics of sex inside a battleship.

You were giddy, your body remembering what it was to be the focus of his attention, currents of electricity travelling through your veins. If he thought that your pleasure was worth exploring, you were not going to contradict him. If his analytical mind found your moans interesting enough, you will provide them gladly. You removed your boots and sat on the pilot chair, turning it to face him, his back to you, and delighted for a moment in the view without the extra layers; even if he hadn't removed his blacks, they left little to the imagination. He looked at you over his shoulder and hummed approvingly at your sitting spot choice.

“What do you want me to do?” Your breathy voice wavered in anticipation, and the corners of his lips turned slightly upward at the sound.

“Well, for the sake of the experiment I am going to need you naked, but allow me,” he strode over you and kneeled on the floor.

Tech reached out and grabbed your knees, blood rushed to your ears while his hands slid up your thighs slowly, until he reached the waist of your trousers. He hooked his fingers under your clothes and tugged both of them down, stopping for you to lift your ass a little, so he could remove them completely. He grabbed your knees again, opening them this time, and the cold air hit your wet cunt, making you hiss between your teeth.

“You are already wet for me, darling. Is it due to the kisses? Or the anticipation?” He glanced at you, 

“Ah, both, I guess. Your hands on my skin are also helping,” you breathed out, eyeing how those hands drew patterns on the inside of your thighs.

“I see.” He grabbed your thigh tightly, his fingers pressing enough to make indentations but stopping on the good side of hurting. “Do you like my hands, then?”

“Maker, yes.” 

“Yes, of course you do,” he tugged, stopping when you were on the edge of the seat. “But for the sake of science, we have to deviate from what we already know. The search for knowledge is insatiable, you know?”

A shudder went through your body at his words, and instinctively opened your legs further, exposing yourself more and giving him all the permission he needed. Not that he seemed to hesitate at his actions, his movements had the usual confidence with which he carried himself, even if under his googles you could see him blushing at your reaction. His whole demeanour was a mixture of cockiness and vulnerability, and it made you want to submit and coddle him in equal parts. You reached with your hand to his jawline, crooking your fingers under his chin.

“And what about you, Tech?” you whispered, looking into his eyes. “Can you be satisfied?”

To your surprise, he shook his head, “Not in the slightest, darling. Since the first time you allowed me to touch you, I have come to realise that I will always want more, you are too fascinating,” your chest tightened, and a whimper escaped your lips. “Right now, though, I’ll be satisfied as soon as I see you come in my mouth.” 

He bowed his head and started kissing up your leg to the apex of your thigh, and stopped there, looking up at you, gauging your reaction. His hot breath hit your cunt, and you squirmed, breathing heavily, unable to stay still. Those brown eyes were scrutinizing you, as if he was trying to discover the very fibre of your existence, it made you feel drunk of a liquor never tasted, seeing him there, kneeled between your legs, his hands clutching your thighs like a lifeline, and for a moment you had the illusion of being the only creature in the galaxy who could capture his attention.

You were not far from begging him to move, forward or backward, you didn’t care, but being on the edge of falling was making your whole body tremble. Your mouth opened, but before you could utter a word, he turned his head and gave an open-mouthed kiss to your cunt, turning your begging into a loud moan.

“Fascinating,” he spoke without moving back, his lips spelling the word into you, and the shiver that went down your spine left you trying to grasp into something, so you wouldn’t slide down to the floor. “Such a good experiment subject, such a good girl.”

Your cunt clenched around nothing at his words, while he took one of your hands and put it on his head. A part of you remembered what he told you earlier and instinctively tangled up your fingers into his hair. His tongue delved down into your folds, and you sobbed at his wet heat. He dragged his tongue back to your clit and closed his lips around it, you moaned and pulled, making him close his eyes and groan, the vibrations going straight through your clit.

Tech seemed intent on only using his mouth this time, but you could feel his fingers pressing harder into your skin with every new gasp falling from your lips, inching closer to your core. His whole focus was on you, away from his own body, and he kept sucking your clit and flickering it steadily with his tongue. When your body was starting to get used to the rhythm, on a clear path to your release, he let it go, and you whimpered at the lost.

You didn’t have much time to recover, as he murmured something that didn’t reach your ears and pushed your legs open as far as the pilot seat allowed him. You could feel your wetness and his spit sliding down, and the knowledge of the state you were leaving his seat in pushed shamefully closer to the edge. He licked down around your entrance, dragging his nose against your clit every time he moved his head, and your other hand went to his nape, trying to hold him against you, to pull him impossibly closer. You weren’t sure if he was indulging your unspoken petition or himself, but he then penetrated you with his tongue, and you moaned obscenely loud while he continued fucking you with it.

Your whole body was a tense wire that needed to be released, you were right there teetering on the edge, shaking and vibrating out of your skin, while Tech continued devouring you without restrains. You tried to speak to no avail, the only thing coming out of your mouth a high-pitched whine, so you pulled his hair once more trying to get him up, until his mouth was back on your clit. He closed his lips around it and sucked, and your whine turned into a cry as your orgasm broke free.

You flew above the seat and came back without even moving, your senses coming back to you one by one. The cold durasteel floor under your feet; the leather seat creaking under the pressure of your body; the bright sun coming from the cockpit windows; and Tech’s warm presence still between your legs. He rested his head on your thigh, panting, his mouth and chin glistening, and you whimpered at the visual. He noticed you looking at him, turned his head and gave you a soft kiss, followed by a smile pressed into your skin.

“You were amazing, such a good girl,” his reassuring words distracted you enough that you didn’t notice his creeping fingers, until they reached your centre and played around gathering your wetness. You were too sensitive after your orgasm and recoiled, but he kissed your thigh again to soothe you. “Shh, it’s fine, darling. You did a truly magnificent job, I believe we broke the record.” 

“How do you know?” your eyes fell shut, and you felt so drained that you could have fallen asleep if only his fingers stopped playing with your cunt as if it was another of his tinkering projects.

“I’ve been timing it in my head, of course.”

“Of course!” You laughed, or chuckled really, your body still under a blissful spell. 

“Now, do you want me to clean you up and go meet the others?” he proposed nonchalantly first, and then without missing a beat buried his index finger up your cunt slowly, your eyes and mouth flew open at the sudden but not unwelcomed intrusion. “Or do you think we could try another experiment? I couldn’t stop thinking about—”

+++++++

Hope you enjoyed! Thank you for reading, commenting, liking, sharing, and existing, basically. Tech loves you, and so do I.

Tag list: (in case anyone wants to be tagged for any future shenanigans, just let me know)

@fenharel-enaste

[sethshead]

The surge of anti-Semitism is a symptom of the decay of democratic habits, a leading indicator of rising authoritarianism. When anti-Semitism takes hold, conspiracy theory hardens into conventional wisdom, embedding violence in thought and then in deadly action. A society that holds its Jews at arm’s length is likely to be more intent on hunting down scapegoats than addressing underlying defects. Although it is hardly an iron law of history, such societies are prone to decline. England entered a long dark age after expelling its Jews in 1290. Czarist Russia limped toward revolution after the pogroms of the 1880s. If America persists on its current course, it would be the end of the Golden Age not just for the Jews, but for the country that nurtured them.

I also began my undergraduate studies in the late-'90s, just a few short blocks from Columbia University. My memories of the time and place are not so rosy as are Mr. Foer's. I remember a humanities lecture being disrupted by a student revolt because it focused on the Holocaust. This was back when everything was called a "Holocaust" except the actual Holocaust, and unsurprisingly the Holocaust was equated with New York State's prison system. Bad as carceral culture is, it is not the Holocaust. Columbia had its LaRouchists camped forever outside. Friends at CCNY were taught that people like me were fake Jews and responsible for slavery by faculty approved by the likes of Leonard Jeffries. Academia, even then, was a setting where antisemitism retained respectability, provided it was couched in radical enough theory and jargon.

Yes, Jews are the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to liberal backsliding, the first to be othered, antisemitism the first bigotry to be destigmatized. But it has likewise been a very long time since American academia has been committed to the liberal project; longer than I've been alive, I'd reckon. My experience is of an academic humanities and some social sciences mobilized to problematize, deconstruct, and dismantle liberalism; of instructors who had appointed themselves radicalizers and indoctrinators, not critical guides in teaching how to think, how to interrogate all texts.

This conflict between the university's traditional liberal role of hosting reasoned debate among a diversity of ideas, and faculty and students who wish to create intellectual monocultures of goodthink on campus, will ultimately cause the collapse of the Ivory Tower. It has for too long tolerated doctrines intolerant of dissent or argument. The Fourth Estate tried to hold the lines of liberal democracy, until the internet democratized media and the mob went where it could find the maximum bias confirmation, be pointed towards the old classic villains to explain all personal and social failings. Now both demagogical extremes may blame different Jews, but in the end, they both blame Jews for America's problems. And where are our old defenders? Where have they ever been? Have we ever had defenders?

In 1968, when a local New York City public school board tried to fire an almost-entirely Jewish group of teachers, who defended them? The largely Jewish-led union. But unions don't care as much about Jews anymore, not when they're more preoccupied with international events than with the welfare of their members here at home - just ask the Jewish teachers harassed and threatened at Hillcrest and Origin High Schools how vocal their union has been in their defense, and against DOE attempts to whitewash bias incidents.

American Jews sought influence in our liberal environment for our own protection, but that liberalism has required us to cede some influence to those who also know marginalization. At the local level, this has made us again vulnerable.

That said, liberalism is a mixed blessing for Jews. It offers us the opportunity for individual advancement as far as our talents will allow, without having to renounce our Jewish identity. Yet at the same time, Jewish identity isn't really individual, it's grounded in community, in family and public ritual. At heart, ours is a tribal and insular culture. The more we're accepted, the more diffuse our connection to the community becomes; when under disability and persecution, we huddle together and renew our dedication to our people and to the intergenerational transfer that is our future. Whatever happens in America, we will survive - Am Yisrael hai. American liberal democracy, and that of any country that turns on its Jews? About that I'm not so sanguine.

[rom-e-o]

Among the Leaves (NSFW)(Constance/Ebenezer fic)

Fall is here. A themed drabble is in order.

Ebenezer takes his first ever 'holiday' off of work and goes to the English countryside with Constance. Without the prying eyes of coworkers and family, the two use the opportunity to catch up on quality time.

This is an explicit, 18+ story. Minors, I ask that you DO NOT INTERACT.

The story is under the cut. Enjoy!

The sweltering London heat finally boiled over in early September. By the third week of the month, the leaves were golden and the air held a telltale crispness.

Gentle zephyrs that smelled of cinnamon and apples funneled down the country roads, each one gentle enough to send petticoats and top hats for those who weren’t cautious.

Constance adored windy weather. It allowed her unbound hair to whip about and blow freely, a sensation she found liberating and cleansing. Her dress, low-cut and made of spearmint linen, danced around her legs with every step, adding to the delight. Ebenezer, dressed in breeches and a simple white shirt, walked alongside her with a chipper gait. In the rolling hills outside the city limits, they were anonymous. Not a banker and socialite – not a scandal for retired folk to gossip about over tea. They were just another couple, stealing embraces and lingering glances, amidst the red and ember-colored trees.

“It’s gorgeous out here,” Constance said, looking around the golden fields that seemed to stretch in every direction.

“Yes, it’s a different world from the city,” Ebenezer agreed. He looked more handsome than usual, she thought, with his hair slightly windblown and his face lit with golden light. He had an almost boyish glow that she hadn’t seen around him yet, thanks to the city’s low ceilings and reliance on gas lamps.

As if reading her mind, he closed he eyes and basked in the autumnal calm. Tipping his head back, he inhaled slowly. “Serene. Quiet.”

Her cloak danced upon her heels with every spritely step, the tassels heavy enough to crunch the deadened leaves that her heels boots missed.

“It reminds me of home.” Her voice was almost ghostly, as if she was uneager to disturb the quiet that enveloped them.

“New York?”

“Yes,” she said,” Oh, don’t get me wrong, London is beautiful in the winter. But…New York in fall. Tarrytown. Hudson Valley. It’s something transcendental.”

“I believe you,” he said, taking moving his hand from her elbow to twine their fingers. “Washington Irving waxes beautiful stories of the area."

“Oh! You’ve read Irving?”

“I hadn’t before I met you,” he confided somewhat shyly, “But once we started courting, I wanted to know everyone I could about where you came from.”

The woman found herself grinning in pure excitement at the romantic confession. He’d kept that venture a secret from her.

He continued, albeit somewhat bashfully, “I found his works in a local bookshop. They are…quite popular this time of year, and it makes sense – the Dutch settlements. Fields of fragrant grain. The orchards. Throwing cinnamon chips atop crackling tavern fires. Lovers walking together on foggy nights amidst the gravestones. It’s all very autumnal and American …delightfully so.”

She flushed and nodded. “Yes. That last one is particularly dangerous, I must say.”

The two were a mere half-mile away from their temporary abode for the coming weekend. It was a small cabin with a hitching post for the horse and a small well out front. It was a comfortable lodge, and in the British countryside, finding their way back would not be difficult. Nonetheless, being out too late would be unwise, and both knew it.

“I can see why,” he agreed. “The stories and legends of the American wilderness are exciting enough for me, thank you very much. I’ll leave its true secrets to those knowledgeable enough to keep them. The prospect of getting spirited away by some ghostly Hessian soldier is, frankly, not an experience I’d like to entertain with you, dear. No offense.”

“Erudite and logical,” Constance teased. “None taken. I have no intention of getting spirited away on this very lovely afternoon. I quite like your company.”

He chuckled. “A very agreeable statement, my dear.”

Pausing momentarily, he snuck a quick look over his shoulder to peek at the road behind them. He squinted his icy eyes, as if trying to peer into the distance as much as possible. The moment Constance observed this behavior and tried to follow his gaze, he turned back her with a smirk. With the gentlest of shoves, he nudged her against an oak tree off the path until her back was flush with the bark.

There, he kissed her hard, tipping her head back so their mouths could meet fully. She reciprocated eagerly, hands roaming up his band, fingertips pressing into his back and through the flimsy material of his shirt.

She tugged the fabric tucked into his breeches free so she could slip her hands beneath the material and caress the skin of his bare back. Flanks of long, lean muscle met her eager fingertips. His towering, 6-foot-4 frame was impressive and weighty against her, but not in an unpleasantly smothering way.

As she did that, Ebenezer rolled his hips against hers, earning a thankful moan in return. He reached down to lift one of her shapely legs and wrap it around his waist. After it was secured, his hand skimmed up her skirts and past the edge of her stocking, exploring the tops of her thighs. Her skin quickly warmed under his skilled touch.

“Ebenezer…” she husked, eyes glassy as their kiss became more physical. Their bodies swayed and rutted together until even the flimsy barrier of their thin clothes was too much to bear.

He pulled back long enough to ask a breathless question, resting his forehead against hers. “D-Do you want to…”

Connie nodded eagerly, the heat in her lower belly too persistent to ignore. “We can use my cloak.”

Their hands tangled and they darted into the woods like excited teenagers. It took a few moments to find a clearing that was concealed by trees but was even enough for them to sprawl upon.

Ebenezer carefully unlaced the cloak from her freckled shoulders before laying it on the ground, smoothing it like one might do with a blanket before a picnic. Once he was satisfied, he turned around to see the pleasant sight of Constance already unfastening her dress.

When the fabric pooled around her ankles, she took great pleasure in drinking in the amorous expression on his face. The glow from before was this present, softening his features even further. With deliberate slowness, she slipped her hands over her ample breasts and down her corset, nails pulling and tugging the laces until she could remove it, her smalls and her stockings in one motion. The entire time, he never broke her gaze away from his.

When she rose again, Ebenezer’s gaze smoldered like twin diamonds.

“My gods,” he breathed, standing slowly and moving to her. He took her bare hips in his rough hands and pulled her close. “Look at you.”

She shuffled under his gaze, hands drifting behind her back.

“What about me?” she asked sweetly, tilting her head so her copper pooled over one shoulder.

“Bathed in this golden light…you’re like a sun goddess,” he breathed, his breath unsteady as his grip upon her tightened. “My goddess.”

The possessive lilt to his voice made her swoon, and she was suddenly very thankful for his arms being there to hold her.

“Well, Mr. Scrooge, don’t keep a goddess waiting,” she tried to tease, but her voice vacillated too much to sound as coquettish as she desired. They’d done this routine of teasing and flirting many times, yet her blood pounded with excitement as if it was their first time.

Judging by her lover’s matching smirk, he felt similar. “Mm. Eager, are we?”

“Well, it’s not very gentlemanly to leave me standing alone and nude without company,” she reasoned, crossing her hands over her breasts for playful emphasis.

This made his chest rumble, laughter as warm as summer thunder thumbling forth.

“You have a very unique idea of what a gentleman should do,” he said.

Despite his vague reply, he didn’t hesitate un unlacing the remainder of his shirt and tossing it aside. The action tousled his hair further, and as he pushed the silver-straked coif off his face, she was struck yet again by how damnably handsome he was. With his lean muscle from years of survival to his broad chest, covered in a spelt of salt-and-pepper hair, he was nothing short of a human Adonis. Then there was his face ... maker, his face. A strong Roman nose and sculpted cheekbones that could cut diamonds, nothing was as incredible to her was his icy-blue eyes. They glittered like mica in instances like this, when he stared at her as if she was the most precious being to him in the world.

It was her turn to ogle him as he unlaced his breeches and kicked them off him his socks and shoes.

He was all long-legged, toned glory. A trail of dark hair ran from his chest and down his belly, all the way to the reddened erection between his legs. His cock was already half-mast, heavy with arousal against his thigh, a clear pearl of liquid appearing at the top. She wetted her lips at the sight, suddenly desperate to take him into her mouth.

However, this occasion wasn’t the time for the lengthy foreplay that both could stretch on for hours. They had to be fast, less they be discovered by some unsuspecting travelers or merchants off the road. That scandal would follow them back to London easily.

With urgency that bordered on primal, Ebenezer closed the distance between them and wrapped two strong arms around her. She followed his lead, feeling him dip her into a kiss that forced her to cling onto him to prevent her from toppling over. The effect made their bellies and chests rub together. Her breasts, already heavy with desire, practically burned as his chair hair scrubbed her nipples.

Ebenezer lowered them both onto the cloak, with Constance laying supine beneath him.

They continued to kiss, moaning ang gasping as their hands roamed each other’s bodies. Relief flooded her when his hands finally lifted to her breasts and gave them a squeeze, helping to ebb some of the tension she’d felt buzzing in her nerves.

Arching her back into his hands, she was rewarded for her keening with the swipe of his deft tongue across the sensitive tips. She cried out from the pleasant combination of warmth and wetness. Her legs opened without a thought, already seeking his familiar girth to fill her and bring her to the edge of ecstasy.

After savoring the womanly musk of her breasts, he kissed a path down her stomach, hands moving down to cup her ass. With a hand on each cheek, he began to massage the flesh in circles, easing her body open further and further.

“E-Ebenezer, please, just…”

“Not yet,” he replied, kissing her belly button. Gods, she could feel his breath against her quim, already hot and eager and dripping for him.

She bit back a moan of frustration, for she knew that the delay of pleasure was all for a good reason.

Ebenezer was many things, but among the long list, he wasn’t a selfish lover. When it came to making sure his woman was satisfied, he wanted to know when he finally slid into her that she was wet and ready for him. Friction would be smooth, and his approach would be slow until he found that perfect spot inside her that milked the prettiest trembles and screams. Then, and only then, would he ferociously pick up the pace and drive into her, making sure to tilt his hips at the angle that kept her screaming for more.

Even when they’d first laid together, knowing she wasn’t a virgin, he’d treated her as such. He carried her to bed, taken her clothes off, kissed her slowly, savored the taste of her clit against his tongue … all of it to make sure that she was trembling and aching for him by the time they could finally come together in a moment of glory.

“I’m ready,” Constance said, hips lifting off the cloak and swaying. “Oh, please…love, please…”

Ebenezer was weak to her pleading, especially when she called him pet names.

“F—uck, do you have any idea how you look when we're together like this?” he whispered, moving his lips back up her sternum so he could whisper in her ear. “Once we get back to the cabin, I’m throwing you on that bed and making love to you until you can’t walk.”

She moaned loudly, her entire head tipping back at the sound of his promise. “Oh, please…yes!”

“Another beautiful sound,” he said, lips caressing her forehead as he placed a kiss right between her brows. ‘You, begging for me. It’s so hard to not give you what you want…”

“Please, Ebenezer!” she practically wept. Lifting a leg, she shakily wrapped it around his waist to bring his hips down. Feeling his tip right of her entrance, pressing inside slightly, made both release a collective sigh of yearning.

“A-Are you certain?” he stuttered.

She nodded. “Yes.”

With a roll of the hips, he slid inside, and … it was perfection. His cock filled her so perfectly. He wasn’t too big or too small. He knew when to speed up his pace, and when to slow down and keep her teetering on the edge. Best of all, he knew her body and knew what made her scream.

When he bucked his hips and arced right into the spongy G-spot on the roof of her sheath, her entire body went as taut as if she’d been seared by electrocution.

“Y-Yes, right there!” she begged. Her other leg shot up to cradle his body, his narrow hips fitting perfectly between her trembling thighs.

Platitudes fell from her lips as he continued his steady rhythm. With one hand supporting her lower back so he didn’t drive her too hard into the ground, he rutted into her with the same desire he felt the first time they’d slept together.

The entire time, he whispered comments into her ear: about her beauty, about how good she felt, about how lucky he was to share these moments with her. For a man who fancied numbers more than words, he was an incredible poet.

When she finally came crashed down from her high a minute later, her spine kinked and she dug her nails into his skin. He growled in pleasure, a smirk never leaving his visage as he watched her beautiful features spasm in bliss.

“There we go,” he commended, hands combing through her coppery strands. “That’s a good girl. Just like that.”

Tears in her eyes from the power of her orgasm, she let out one last cry as she felt her body close around his cock like a hot fist.

As he went to pull out and finish outside of her, she kept her legs locked around his waist, keeping him in place.

“S-Stay inside…” she begged, hands flying to squeeze his shoulders. “Finish in me.”

His eyes softened instantly, then glazed with the telltale signs of happiness. “M-My Constance, a-are you…are you sure?”

Again, she nodded. “I’ve never been more certain.”

This certainly of her love for him and confidence in him as a potential father to her children…it was too much. His brow furrowed as a surge of pleasure shot through him, and he shifted his angle to thrust back inside her.

Constance let Ebenezer move her body as needed to find the perfect angle that would apply to best pressure to his cock. Once he found it, she saw his eyes practically roll back.

“I-I love you…” he stuttered, already breathless after just two thrusts. On the third, he laughed and practically collapsed. “Connie, I love you so, so much.”

She nodded, her heart swelling with each beautiful declaration. “I love you, Ebenezer…my Ebenezer…”

The last of his restraint snapped, and with a growl, he shuddered and filled her with a hefty load of his seed. He frantically pumped his cock as deep as he could, filling her until droplets seeped onto the cloak below, before he let out an exhausted sigh.

He slumped beside her, a sheen of sweat covering his chest and forehead. Wiping the moisture away, he rallied himself for only a moment before he rolled atop her and kissed her again.

“You’re my radiance, my map to grace…” he said, rambling breathlessly. “I-I…could not be without you. I’m sure of that.”

It was a somber declaration, and it made her ribs go soft.

“I can’t be without you, either,” she said. “I’ll make sure we’re never apart. I never want to be taken from you.”

“I would perish before allowing that,” he whispered. Again, he reached down and twined their fingers.

Constance smiled and rolled into his embrace. She wrapped the cloak around them as a partial blanket for the moment.

“Well, perhaps we should hurry back then,” she teased. “We don’t want the ghosts to come out, right?”

He flattened his chest so she could use it as a pillow, which she greatly appreciated. As she nestled herself into place with a smile, he rolled his eyes.

“If there were any specters lurking in the trees, I’m quite certain we scared them off,” he said. Then, a beat later, he added, “Or … I hope.”

Constance giggled. “I hear no rattling chains.”

“Don't tease.”

She giggled and glanced up at him.

“I won’t let the ghosts take you away,” she promised. “After all …”

A hand drifted to her belly.

“Who knows what the future has in store?”

The two decided to stay in each other’s arms as they drank in the sunset in each other’s arms. With each passing minute, Scrooge dropped another tender kiss upon her, never wanting to let her go.

Thankfully, as long as the world around them stayed as calm and tranquil as this…he would never have to.

Tag list: @quill-pen @crimson-phantom-designs

[unbidden-yidden]

how are the Hanukkah preps going for u ?? do u feel safe enough to share what it’s like in the diaspora ?? (im super curious to see what it’s like outside of israel !!)

Hi there! An early chag sameach! 😊

So I can only really speak for my area, but so far so good on the "being visibly Jewish in my area" thing. My situation is weird, in that I live in a rather blue (liberal) big city that happens to be in a deep red (very conservative) state. As a queer/trans person and reproductive rights advocate, it's been rough and feels like a powder keg waiting to explode. My queer/trans spouse and I may need to flee the state if things get worse for somewhere more liberal overall (and hopefully not violently antisemitic) but we'll see what happens.

As a person who dresses visibly Jewish though, it's been reasonably fine so far? I haven't wandered onto the liberal campus area since 7/10 and I imagine that would be a lot different of an experience. We have all gathered as a community several times since 7/10 in order to express our grief and prayers and advocate for the US to help Israel recover the hostages. On 10/10, I gathered with the local frum community to daven tehillim and so far that has been my favorite gathering/the one I felt most comfortable at. It was very focused on our grief for our brothers and sisters and siblings in Israel who were killed and captured, and davening for a swift and just resolution. I also attended a much larger community-wide event some days later that was a lot more nationalistic, but at least it was still focused on the human concern. There was another community event I went to at the shloshim mark, and it was a lot more organized (for obvious reasons) but vibed a lot more like it was geared towards the kind of liberal Jew that actively wants the American flag and the Israeli flag on the bimah (idk if that makes sense to you, but it's a very specific Vibe™️ of Jew here.) I could not go to the march in D.C. but people in my community were strongly encouraged to go if they were able.

There have been several talking groups, Peace-oriented Shabbatot, and pro-Palestinian protests happening as well. The first two seem to be going well, but I have no idea about the last one, as the rhetoric from that leadership has become very antisemitic so I have not engaged them at all. I have been able to avoid them in public. Most recently, there was a pro-Israel protest that was supposed to be focused on the captives, but enough people couldn't stay on message that I considered leaving and am still a little conflicted about if I should have. That was the first time I've seen counter-protesting, and it was just one guy yelling a lot of offensive and antisemitic things. There's another rally coming up that I suspect will result in some kind of confrontation or violence because it's right near campus and it's organized by the same people who couldn't stay on message. It's also in an area where there are a lot of cops and has historically been used to kettle protesters. I am more worried about the counter-protesters to be honest, but I also think that if it turns violent it would likely be started by them. I really hope I'm wrong and everything remains peaceful in its protest.

I have yet to find a local group that is analogous to Standing Together, which is unfortunate, because that's effectively my position. I am hopeful I will find the other people that are deeply invested in the safety and freedom of the people of Gaza as well as Israelis.

So in light of that backdrop, it's shocking normal. Chanukah is going forward as usual - if anything with even more vigor than normal. Large, public, annual events are still happening and so far seem well-attended and there has not been harassment. We will see if that continues. I am planning on eating latkes with many a creative topping and proudly displaying my menorah in the window. I plan on going to some of the large public events (Chabad does several of them, but so does the broader community) dressed as I normally do and I refuse to be intimidated. So far I have thankfully not been given a reason to be.

B'ezrat Hashem that continues, and that we all see a just and peaceful resolution to the war soon.

[whitedemon-ladydeath]

yeah see seeing all these ✨️city people✨️ and people with a lot of privilege and classism routinely calling rural iowans (SPECIFICALLY iowans) 'hicks' makes me angry and it makes me sad

we're not fucking STUPID. and a lot of the "stupidity" is often intentionally CREATED by making sure our schools are underfunded without access to proper education to build critical thinking skills and proper RESEARCH skills and limited access to news outside of newspapers and fox news. it's intentional. it's by design.

Educated rural folks who have the luxury (yes LUXURY and PRIVILEGE) to go to college to get educated LEAVE the areas where they could be the most beneficial for change and making communities diverse and more progressive and it furthers right wing, republican agendas by keeping people without access to resources and desperate and angry with the wrong people

"well you have access to the internet" yeah and the internet is full of misinformation and a lot of people are not taught how to look for credible sources or websites or how to look at biased language in writing so they ARE more susceptible to propaganda via fox News and the internet. you know what the internet also has? targeted ads and algorithms making sure you keep seeing the same kind of content and people who don't know DON'T know

however a lot of practical skills? knowledge that isn't BOOK SMART? I know plenty and they're so, so, so smart. but all I see from liberals and leftists is the refusal to use layman and simplified terms and "um! actually you need to educate yourself ☝🏻" and use unnecessarily difficult phrases

you say "defund the police" and people hear "be lawless and have no safety networks to prevent crime" instead of trying to find less #edgy slogans for what you ACTUALLY mean

you don't know what you don't know and calling us fucking hicks and ignorant isn't helping anyone. Tumblr was my first experience outside of Facebook where I learned about asexuality? it Didn't have an algorithm so I'll was able to be immersed in different cultures and view points

I'm not trying to make excuses for anyone being in rural Iowa for being hateful or racist or queerphobic but after living in the city for the last few years, I still see the same shit. it's just less covert in rural Iowa and in your face and I see leftists and liberals using their proximity to cities, and the problems in rural america as a Shield for their own bigoted and hateful behavior

I remember being on Tumblr, slowly inching into the queer community spaces, bec I wasn't used to online spaces, i was too poor at the time to have access to computers [2013+] and I came across the terms "trans man" and "trans woman" and I thought that meant a someone assigned male at birth who was trans and identified as a woman was called a 'trans man' bec I didn't know the terminology or how it was supposed to be used. I didn't know "transsexual" was considered a slur and I got attacked online for accidently using the wrong terminology because I couldn't remember the term transgender

I was from rural Iowa, a notoriously white, cis het area, fairly religious area, without a lot of access to the internet so I just. didn't know. and then i was afraid of ever saying anything again or asking questions. pls for the love of God use discernment and don't immediately vilify and attack well meaning people for not knowing what they don't know. that is EXACTLY how you can prevent people from ever being willing to grow and become educated

I remember watching the movie "Boys Don't Cry" with my mom about Brandon Teena, a trans man, and we both didn't know enough or understand enough about trans people we were unintentionally misgendering him when we talked about it but we both were so empathetic and heart broken for him

rural people I know are Prideful! they're constantly working to make ends meet and they have pride in themselves and their communities, often to the point it's at their own detriment and republican law makers KEEP it that way and rely on the classism and anger and diversion to keep it that way

a yt rural American in Appalachia is going to have more in common with a black American living in the city in the Projects more than we ever will with upper class yt folks. the wealthy yt #liberals will mock us and call us fucking stupid and ignorant and get in their own way of wanting any kind of progression. it! is never! black and white!!! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BE KIND

why do you think rural Republicans don't trust the government? couldn't possibly have anything to do with the government IGNORING us or preying on poor folks who live paycheck to paycheck. of COURSE it makes sense they'd be leery about government wide programs. the government DOESNT CARE ABOUT US. and most rural "Republicans" I know aren't even republican. they don't have the time to invest in politics when we have to Work and can't Miss Work to go vote or find ways around road blocks.

most people don't know enough and vote for people they know and most don't Know democrats or their policies or their progressive goals and you know WHY that often happens? BECAUSE DEMOCRATS IGNORE THEM IN FAVOR OF CITIESSSSS. they call them STUPID and IGNORANT and can you really blame people for "not voting in their best interest" when the people who "care about their best interest" are people calling them stupid and ignorant and HICKS

I've been around Republicans in the city and Republicans in rural Iowa and if you look and listen close enough the *reasoning* for their racism (especially) tends to differ. racism is a social construct (that does NOT mean it isn't real or not important) and it was used specifically as a tool to create tension and a divide between the poor yt folks and the poc *by* yt, wealthy capitalists. the Irish were finally allowed to be #white bec they were identifying with the struggles of the marginalized folks being targeted just like THEY were in Ireland by Europe

the cold hatred I have seen from rural Republicans vs city, wealthy Republicans has been vastly different. don't get me wrong there are plenty of rural Republicans that are just as disgusting (I'm related to some lmao). often a lot of racism i see from rural folks is tied to anger and desperation from the lack of jobs and its designed that way. a lot of the racism from yt wealthy folks is tied to greed and wealth and capitalism. Donald Trump is a blaring example of an unchecked, racist, vile, classist man

I'm sorry I've had a REALLY bad week and living in a city with people who are so self centered and selfish and refuse to help has only made me miss home and despite all of the raging issues of rural america, I know a lot of kind and well meaning people who are just doing their best and willing to help you because we fucking know the government doesn't care about us

just. be kind. you don't know what you don't know and I think a lot of well meaning people shouldn't be getting attacked for it. empathy and grace should be given (when able) and people should be allowed to grow from innocent ignorance and mistakes

intersectionality and empathy and grace are so important and honestly rural america can be really beautiful and it really sucks to see it given up on in such a cruel way

I follow a person on tiktok who really embraces the idea of radical love and I think more people should too

[justforbooks]

Henry Kissinger, who has died at the age of 100, was the most controversial US foreign policy practitioner of the last half-century, the architect of American detente with the Soviet Union, the orchestrator of Washington’s opening to communist China, the broker of the first peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, and the man who led the US team in the protracted talks with North Vietnam which resulted in US forces leaving Indochina after America’s longest foreign war.

Feted for these accomplishments as national security adviser and later secretary of state under Richard Nixon, Kissinger achieved global celebrity status and in 1973 was awarded the Nobel peace prize. But it later emerged via leaked documents and tapes and former officials’ memoirs that behind his diplomatic skills and tireless energy as a negotiator there lurked an inordinate love of secrecy and manipulation and a ruthless desire to protect US national and corporate interests at any price. His contempt for human rights prompted him to ask the FBI to tap his own staff’s telephones and, more seriously, to give the nod to Indonesia’s military dictator for the invasion of East Timor, to condone the actions of the apartheid regime in South Africa in invading Angola, and to use the CIA to help topple the elected government of Chile.

A formidable academic before he worked for the government, Kissinger reached greater heights of political influence than any previous immigrant to the US. His nasal German accent never left him, an eternal reminder to his adopted countrymen that he was a European by origin. To Kissinger himself, the fact that a man born outside the US, and a Jew to boot, could become its secretary of state was a never-ending source of pride.

Although Kissinger was often seen as a supreme believer in a world order based on realpolitik and a balance of power, at heart he was ultra-loyal to the individualistic American ideal. In love with his adopted country, he was infused with a missionary zeal to maintain American hegemony in a shifting world.

Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born to a comfortable, middle-class family in Fürth in Bavaria. His father, Louis, was a teacher, his mother, Paula (nee Stern), a housewife. As a boy, he was old enough to comprehend the collapse of their domestic stability when the Nazis came to power. He and his younger brother were beaten up on the way to school, and eventually expelled. His father lost his job. The family emigrated to New York in 1938.

Kissinger rarely discussed his refugee past, and once told an interviewer to reject any psychoanalytical link between his views and his childhood, but some observers argued that his personal experience of nazism led to his horror of revolutionary changes as well as to the underlying pessimism of his analysis of world affairs.

After George Washington high school in Manhattan, his accountancy course at the City College of New York was interrupted in 1943 when he was conscripted. He was with the US army in Germany for the Nazi surrender and the first months of occupation. He won a bronze star for his role in capturing Gestapo officers and saboteurs in Hanover. In 1946 he went to Harvard, where he stayed intermittently for the next quarter of a century. He received his PhD in 1954 with a study of the 19th-century European conservatives Metternich and Castlereagh, which he turned into a book entitled A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-1822 (1957).

His subsequent studies led him to become a specialist on nuclear weapons, who caught the eye of Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York and a bastion of east coast liberal Republicanism. Kissinger’s desire for influence on policy was already leading him to spend time in Washington, and he combined his academic work with consultancies for various government departments and agencies, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council under Dwight Eisenhower.

Kissinger’s patron, Rockefeller, failed to make much headway in the presidential campaigns of 1960 and 1964, but after Nixon won the presidency for the Republicans in 1968, Kissinger was appointed national security adviser, with an office in the White House. His intellectual drive, as well as geographical closeness to the president, allowed him to turn what had previously been a backroom job into a high-profile, decision-making post.

Kissinger knew that access is power, and that the relationship goes both ways. Having the ear of the president gave him the ear of a competitive, news-hungry Washington press corps which admired his charm and brilliance and eagerly printed a generous amount of his on-the-record comments while finding ways to divulge unattributably the confidential titbits and insider gossip that he loved to drop.

A battle developed between Kissinger and the secretary of state, William Rogers, the nominal architect of US foreign policy, during Nixon’s first term. Kissinger won it easily. Rogers was excluded not only from the administration’s central concerns – Vietnam, the Soviet Union and China – but even the Middle East, the one area where he achieved some praise in 1970 with the so-called Rogers plan. The plan was a US effort to impose a settlement between Egypt and Israel with the backing of the Soviet Union. Israel rejected it while Kissinger felt that the goal of US policy in the region, as indeed throughout the developing world, should be to reduce the Kremlin’s influence rather than give Moscow equal status.

When Rogers eventually resigned a few months after the start of Nixon’s second term, Kissinger got the job he coveted most. Four years of private advice and back-channel negotiating were to be crowned by formal acceptance as Washington’s senior international representative and America’s major speechmaker on foreign affairs. Kissinger had already scored the two biggest coups of his career, proving that he was more than just an academic consultant and bureaucratic in-fighter, but a cunning negotiator. He ran the secret diplomacy which culminated in July 1971 with the stunning announcement that Nixon was to go to China to meet Mao Zedong the following year. He also led the negotiations in Paris with Hanoi for the peace treaty that sealed the departure of American troops from Vietnam. For the second of these feats, he shared the Nobel peace prize with Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese negotiator, though the latter refused to accept it.

The award aroused a huge controversy since it coincided with revelations that Kissinger had supported Nixon’s decisions to mount a secret campaign of bombing Cambodia in 1969. Cambodia had long been used by North Vietnamese troops for bases and supply depots, but Nixon’s predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, resisted pleas from the joint chiefs of staff to bomb them. The country was officially neutral and its leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was desperately trying not to take sides.

But the Nixon administration wanted to send a strong message to North Vietnam that the new president would be tougher than Johnson. Tapes of White House conversations (the Watergate tapes) revealed that Nixon called it the “madman theory” – “I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war,” he told his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman. Kissinger endorsed the concept, though he preferred to put it in more academic language by arguing that US policy must always retain an element of unpredictability.

In March 1969 Nixon and Kissinger ignored the reluctance of Rogers and launched waves of B52s on carpet-bombing missions over Cambodia, as they had already done in Vietnam. The raids went on for 14 months, although officially the administration pretended the targets were all in South Vietnam. Initially, Kissinger did not even want the pilots to know they were striking Cambodia, but he was advised that they would soon find out and be more likely to leak the information unless sworn to secrecy ahead of the raids.

The bombing remained secret in Washington for an astonishing four years, becoming public only when a military whistleblower wrote to Senator William Proxmire, a prominent critic of the Vietnam war, and urged him to investigate. In Cambodia the campaign led to an estimated 700,000 deaths as well as 2 million people being forced to flee their homes. It also led a pro-US army general, Lon Nol, to seize power from Sihanouk in 1970 and align the country with the US. The bombing and the coup fuelled popular unrest, added to the strength of Cambodia’s communist guerrillas, the Khmer Rouge, and paved their way to power in 1975.

The Paris peace talks on Vietnam also coincided with an escalation of US bombing in Vietnam itself. At the height of the negotiations at the end of 1972, Nixon and Kissinger took the war to new heights with the “Christmas bombing” campaign, comprising targets across North Vietnam. It enraged the US peace movement and provoked a huge wave of new protests and draft-card burning by conscripts. Kissinger’s aim was not so much to intimidate Hanoi as to persuade Washington’s ally, South Vietnam’s president Nguyen Van Thieu, to accept the accords which the US was making with the North. The bombing was meant to assure him that if there were any North Vietnamese violations after the accords came into effect, they would be met with all-out American force.

Kissinger was aware that the Paris deal was flawed, and might well lead to Thieu’s replacement by a communist government. His goal was merely to win a “decent interval” between the pull-out of US troops and the inevitable collapse of the regime in Saigon so that the US could escape any perception of defeat. The phrase “decent interval” appeared in the briefing papers for Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing in 1971 that were later declassified. They show he told the Chinese that this was US strategy in Vietnam. A year later he informed China’s prime minister, Zhou Enlai: “If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.”

When the North Vietnamese army and its southern allies, the Vietcong, stormed into Saigon in April 1975, forcing the US ambassador into a humiliating helicopter escape, the image was clearly one of defeat, in spite of the two-year interval since the departure of most US troops. But Kissinger blamed Congress, claiming it had undermined the peace deal by refusing to finance new arms shipments to Thieu. This was a favourite refrain. He continually attacked Congress for interfering in foreign policy, apparently never recognising the value of democratic checks on strong executive power.

Turning his skills to the Middle East, Kissinger gave birth to the concept of shuttle diplomacy, a term first used to the press by his close aide Joe Sisco. He flew between Jerusalem and Cairo during the October 1973 war to hammer out a ceasefire after the Israelis had sent their troops across the Suez canal and come close to the Egyptian capital. He later secured Israel’s withdrawal back across the canal, and shuttled to and from Damascus to make a deal with Syria for the Israelis to withdraw from a small part of the Golan Heights.

Behind all three issues lay the Americans’ competition with the Soviet Union, then at the height of its international power. The US opening to China was designed to wrong-foot the Russians by turning what they thought was an evolving, bilateral relationship of parity and mutual respect with Washington into an unnerving triangle which seemed to ally China and the US against them. Kissinger hoped to exploit the two communist powers’ rivalry to persuade both of them to abandon the Vietnamese, thus making it easier for the US to win the peace, if not the war. So he threatened Moscow and Peking (now Beijing) with the argument that they would lose the benefits of dialogue and trade with Washington if they did not stop their arms supplies to Hanoi.

In the Middle East, Kissinger’s aim was to exclude the Russians, who had been longtime allies of Egypt and Syria. By extracting concessions from Israel and brokering a ceasefire in the 1973 war, Kissinger persuaded Cairo and Damascus that only the US could achieve movement from the Israelis, thanks to its unique influence. A year before the war, Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, had shown his distrust of Moscow by asking thousands of Russian advisers to leave Egypt. The move was meant as a signal to Washington that Egypt preferred good relations with the US, provided Washington put pressure on Israel. Kissinger missed the signal and did nothing until Sadat, in desperation, launched his attack on Israel in October 1973.

Kissinger’s strategy of detente with the Soviet Union was also designed to reduce Moscow’s room for manoeuvre. Although rightwing Republicans criticised it as appeasement, he argued that Washington should not just contain the Soviet Union, as previous American administrations had sought to do. The US should tame it by giving it a stake in the status quo. Instead of going for ad hoc deals with the Kremlin, Kissinger was the first senior American to try to establish a complex of agreements with a range of penalties and rewards for bad and good behaviour. This, he argued, would limit Soviet adventurism. Sometimes he called it a network, at other times a web, but in both cases the aim was to provide the Soviet Union with benefits from expanded trade, investment and political consultation with Washington.

The strategy failed to produce a new world order because Kissinger was not willing to abandon adventurism on the American side. In the developing world, in particular, Kissinger pursued policies of confrontation with Moscow, often based on faulty analysis of what the Russians were doing or exaggerated claims of the extent of their influence. The successful US effort to overthrow the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, in 1973 fitted into the long US history of intervening in Latin America against leftwing governments that nationalised US corporations (in this case, the big copper companies). But Kissinger also disliked Allende’s closeness to Moscow’s ally, Cuba. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,” he commented.

By 1974 Kissinger’s boss was being engulfed by the Watergate scandal. Although Kissinger was involved in secretly taping his own staff, he was not connected to Nixon’s decision to burgle the headquarters of the Democratic party at the Watergate apartment complex in 1972 and then cover up the truth – the charges that brought the president down. In spite of the scandal – or perhaps because of it – Nixon’s relationship with Kissinger remained close, in large part because the beleaguered president saw Kissinger as his best ally in foreign policy, the area where Nixon felt that he had been most successful. He wanted Kissinger to be the man to preserve his legacy.

In his memoirs, Kissinger described how Nixon virtually clung to him during his last hours in the White House in August 1974. The disgraced president asked him to pray beside him in the Lincoln bedroom for half an hour. “Nixon’s recollection is that he invited me to kneel with him and that I did so. My own recollection is less clear on whether I actually knelt. It is a trivial distinction. In whatever posture, I was filled with a deep sense of awe,” Kissinger wrote.

Although Kissinger was not charged over Watergate, his image nonetheless became tarnished. Damaged by revelations of the secret bombing of Cambodia, the favourable media bubble burst. Kissinger’s path from miracle worker to being perceived as a cynical trickster proved short. If Nixon was a serial liar on the domestic stage, Kissinger was seen as a similar villain on the international one. Nevertheless the next president, Gerald Ford, who had limited foreign experience, kept Kissinger on as secretary of state as a symbol of continuity. But Kissinger’s star was in decline. He tried to change his focus by shifting his attention to Africa, which he had ignored until then.

His results were far from positive. He may well have set back the fall of apartheid by several years by approving the involvement of the CIA in the Angolan civil war and giving the nod to South Africa’s invasion in 1975 as the Portuguese withdrew from their erstwhile colony and granted it independence. The South African intervention prompted Cuba to send hundreds of troops to support the Angolan government, thereby launching one of the bloodiest “proxy wars” between the superpowers.

When the Republicans lost the White House to the Democrats under Jimmy Carter in 1976, Kissinger’s time was up. He spent the next decades as a consultant to multinational corporations, and speaking on the international lecture circuit. In 1982 he founded his own firm, Kissinger Associates.

Although he had brief hopes of a comeback when Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, the new president and his men did not feel comfortable with Kissinger’s image or the strength of his personality. His public persona of pragmatism did not fit their crusading ideology of anti-communism and their constant claims of Soviet expansionism. They were from the school which felt his contacts with the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, during the period of detente, had smacked of appeasement.

The charge was absurd. It reflected the difference between subtlety and simplicity, as I discovered at one of the occasional deep-background “non-lunches” which Kissinger gave for representatives of European newspapers. Europe was never a high priority for Kissinger, in large part because it was not a region of US-Soviet competition. He favoured a strong and united western Europe so as to keep Germany in check, hence his much-quoted comment: “If I want to call Europe, who do I call?”

But he seemed to like meeting European correspondents, flattering us with the sense that we asked deeper questions than our American colleagues. At one such lunch, I was staggered by Kissinger’s emotional outburst when someone delicately raised the appeasement charge that rightwing senators were making. “Do you really think a man who stopped Allende wouldn’t want to stop Brezhnev?” he retorted.

If ever there was an American super-patriot, it was Kissinger. As a European intellectual, he knew better than his adopted compatriots how to run an empire. The bedrock of his policies was fear of a resurgent, “unanchored” Germany, a firm desire to keep western Europe closely tied to the US, and a fierce determination to outwit the Soviet Union and maintain American dominance, if necessary through the use of military might. It was no surprise that in his 80s, long after the Soviet Union had collapsed, he became a close consultant of George W Bush, supporting his invasion of Iraq.

Kissinger’s private life was a tempestuous subject in the Washington gossip columns, at least in the interval between his two marriages, which happened to coincide with his years at the apex of power. His first, to Ann Fleischer, with whom he had two children, Elizabeth and David, ended in divorce in 1964. Ten years later, he married Nancy Maginnes, one of his former researchers. She and his children survive him.

🔔 Henry Alfred Kissinger, statesman, born 27 May 1923; died 29 November 2023.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[haggishlyhagging]

The Counter-Inaugural was a traumatic experience for virtually all the women involved in organizing the feminist action. Many of the problems stemmed from the difficulties inherent in planning an action from four different cities. . . . The New York women feared that the D.C. women might sell out women's liberation in their negotiations with the Mobe organizers. And the D.C. women worried that the New York women might be planning an action which would alienate large segments of the Movement.

The New York women felt their fears were justified when they met with a chilly reception from the New York Mobe office, and when they discovered that Mobe had failed to mention women's liberation in the Guardian ad for the Counter-Inaugural. They became even more suspicious when they learned that [Marilyn] Webb had decided that men should be included in their planned action. . . .

By the time the New York women arrived on Saturday afternoon the situation had degenerated even further. The New York contingent learned that Webb had arranged with Mobe that she would speak for women's liberation during the serious part of the rally, but had, in Firestone's words, scheduled the New York women "after the rally and even after the whole march . . . as a kind of dessert performance, a tap dance at the end of the Show." The New York women demanded that the workshop planned for that evening be cancelled and an emergency meeting held so that they could alter the plans for Sunday's action. As a compromise, it was agreed that both Webb and Firestone would deliver speeches during the rally. However, many women felt that Webb's speech was too conciliatory and that Firestone's was too antagonistic toward Movement men. Webb's speech was decidedly politico and she carefully avoided criticizing Movement men:

“We, as supposedly the most privileged in this society, are mutilated as human beings so that we will learn to function within a Capitalist system. So that we will reinforce that system. We will not! Our minds have been permanently drugged—the media controls our thoughts. . . . This will stop!”

Firestone's speech, by contrast, excoriated radical men and derogated the politico explanation of women's oppression:

“And it isn't just nasty capitalism doing it all either. Though certainly that must be eliminated if we are to get it pulled out at the root. But let's start talking about where you live, baby, and wonder whether capitalism and all those systems of exploitation might not just begin there . . . at home. Because you've got it ass backwards. And you won't have your revolution 'till you start seeing straight. . . . We women often have to wonder if you mean what you say about revolution or whether you just want more power for yourselves. This time we aren't going to wait for your revolutionary clarity . . . we've learned better.” . . .

Almost as soon as Webb began speaking some men began chanting, “Take it off!” and “Take her off the stage and fuck her!” Webb recalls, “it was like a riot was breaking out.” The crowd became even more feral when Firestone spoke. . . .

For women like Firestone, the D.C. experience deepened their resolve to build an independent women's movement outside the left. Immediately following the action, Firestone wrote a letter to the Guardian in which she declared:

“We say to the left: in this past decade you have failed to live up to your rhetoric of revolution. You have not reached the people. And we won't hitch ourselves to your poor donkey. There are millions of women out there desperate enough to rise. Women's liberation is dynamite. And we have more important things to do than to try to get you to come around. You will come around when you have to, because you need us more than we need you. . . . The message being: Fuck off, left. You can examine your navel by yourself from now on. We're starting our own movement.”

-Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America: 1967-75

[ambiguouspuzuma]

Life drawing

We took inspiration from each other. Resurrection was as much an art as a science, and - just as a life drawing class might each take turn to sit as model, for the rest to capture in charcoal and ink - we had no better muse than our peers. I watched the way that Hugo walked, studied anatomy at Sebastian's feet. We learnt to draw life in a different way, channelling it into our constructed bodies, and we always made them in the image of our classmates.

They were a good bunch of chaps, more or less. I had arrived at the College not knowing what to expect, but they soon had me feeling right at home. That was day one, and for three years it has been: the Royal College of Resurrectionists, with me among their number. It sounds awfully grand, but then I suppose it has to. There would always be those who questioned our trade, if it we didn't have the Crown's seal of approval on the doors.

We were never grave robbers. They took pains to make that clear. Not robbers of any kind, any more than those who plumbed the Earth for the coal of withered conifers, the crude oil of a million shellfish. We simply extracted a natural resource, and turned it towards industry: animating bodies to work the turbines, deep within the city's catacombs, or to serve in a workhouse production line. It was more ethical, they said, than making the living suffer that. We were the liberators of the working poor, and their puppeteers in death.

Our corpses were simple automatons, but we had to make them as functional as possible. There had been... experiments, before our time, but the College had long since settled on a normal human form. I suppose they couldn't argue with millennia of evolution. Where bodies were damaged, we had to patch them back together, with parts from elsewhere. The deceased mind never returned, but there was no excuse not to find four working limbs.

It was seen as a respectable career. Most of us were the second or third sons of wealthy families, you see, sent to make something of ourselves, or at least out of parts of other people. It wasn't that we needed the money. But then there was Vincent. He arrived with nothing but the clothes on his back, some orphan from the city come to try his luck. He thought he'd find his fortune here, I supposed at the time. I perhaps didn't think on that enough.

Vincent was an odd fish. Out of place amongst the old boys, certainly, when he arrived in our second year. He spoke, moved, held himself in different ways - at first, anyway. Henry was the son of a viscount, and Vincent didn't even know who his father had been. Not that there was any speculation. If he had any aristocratic blood, it was in the samples in his vials. A wretched creature from the street, playing at academia.

Oh, but he was an artist. Gifted in a way that none of us had ever been, even with a year longer to learn. He had the neatest, most delicate stitches, and the vision to do things the hard way, combining fragments from a dozen bodies into a single masterpiece. Our corpses were poor imitations of life; Vincent's creations were almost something better. He knew exactly how to mix the paint to capture something new.

Not that he had nothing to learn from us. I helped him to find his feet, even lent a hand from time to time, when there were none left in the ice house. Within a week, he'd learnt my walk; after a month, I heard his accent change. He became one of us. A resurrectionist, and a gentleman. We might not always have been as welcoming as gentlemen should, but we embraced him then: an outsider no more. Things were easier, all being on equal footing. If anything, his footwork was better.

Whilst we all tried to capture each other in flesh, sorting through the assembled body parts for eyes that were Sebastian's particular blue, a character study to hone our craft, only Vincent could capture my essence. It was as much about impression as accuracy, he told me once: in the way that a good caricature is more recognisable than a poor attempt at realism. After a dozen tries, he got my smile just right, as if he'd studied it for a thousand years. He became my artist, and I found myself his muse.

"I should cut my hair," I told him, looking down at the slab like a mirror. We were in the icehouse, where we're standing now. The College had its own catacombs, and filled them with our choice of body parts, a sort of delicatessen-cum-morgue. "It falls too much over my eyes."

"Don't you dare," he said, adopting that well-bred tone of playful arrogance. My tone, perhaps. The rest of us all sounded the same. "I want you exactly as you are."

He couldn't help but make me blush. Whilst the others moved on from such imitation, trying to challenge themselves with different forms, Vincent's bodies always seemed to mirror mine, as if his mind was always pregnant with those thoughts of me. I reddened at this sincerest form of flattery, and his mimics learned to flush their cheeks as well. He fell behind in his other studies, and I fell deeper for his charms.

We often met in the icehouse, a way to repress my blush at his words, and I suppose that's where this story ends. He invited me to meet him there on some pretence: a project gone awry, perhaps, as if that were ever likely to be the case. I do not remember; may not have even cared for the details at the time. I confess I was an easy catch. If I had stopped listening after 'Vincent needs you', I would not now be surprised. At that stage, he had me dancing in the palm of his hand. It's such a shame that wasn't enough.

"You are due to graduate soon," he said. No introduction. It felt that this was something he had been meaning to speak about for some time, and I felt my heart swell at the thought. Vincent was never carefree with his emotions. Would he admit to missing me? Implore me to stay?

"I am," I admitted. "I have a role lined up with an old chum of my uncle's. He owns some form of factory. Glovemaking, I think. But it will only be a year before you are free to leave as well, and I'm sure you'll have your choice of offers."

"I fear I am impoverished when it comes to uncles, relative to some. Not to mention chums."

"Oh," I said. I often forgot about him humble beginnings, so skilled was he at disguising them. "Well, if it's doors you need opened, you can come straight to me."

"You know, that is precisely why I have invited you here today."

"It is?" I reacted as if he'd given me a gift. I was still so eager to help.

"I have no desire for some second-string role, to labour under you or any of your kin. One aspect of your role is not enough. Having worked alongside you and the others for these past two years, I have observed such laziness, such privilege, that no amount of hard work seems to overcome. It seems far easier to dispense with you and live off your inheritance."

"Dispense with me?" Finally, I felt the chill in the air. "You mean to kill me, Vincent?"

"Alas, no," he said, in that tone which would be called well-bred on anybody else's tongue, and had been well-purloined on his. "We have mastered the art of replicating the human body, but still lag behind when it comes to the mind. I must keep you here, at least until you've told me everything: your childhood memories with your family, the heart of your relationships, the levers I might pull. All that your replacement needs to truly take your place."

"A replacement?"

"After many failed attempts, which you have so gallantly helped me to hone, I have finally perfected your simulacrum. He will keep your head down in the meantime, whilst I extract the information I will need. Then you can die, and I'll take your spare parts for storage, and drain away your blood. But have to siphon off your memories first. It would be such a waste to take your life, without first taking it for my own."

"I won't talk," I said, eyeing the various tools the icehouse held. Meat hooks. Rib spreaders. Scalpels. Bone saws. "Even if I do, how you can trust that what I say won't be a lie?"

"Please," he snorted in Sebastian's derision. He'd always had a habit of acquiring habits from others, as if trying them on, learning how and who to replicate. "Your body holds no secrets from me! I, who have taken it apart a dozen times, and put it back together again. I have studied your tells with your manner of breathing, your frequency of blinks, all in the interests of fidelity. I know what your truth looks like, and I will recognise your lies - even if I have to peel open your cranium and check your prefrontal cortex for myself. I think I'll start by taking your pulse, and, if I think you're lying, I'll start taking your skin instead."

"Then I'll never tell the truth!" I told him. "You promise to kill me when I give you what you need? Forgive me, but that seems an odd bargain indeed. Under those terms, my survival depends upon retaining the very secrets you desire. How long can you keep me hidden, I wonder? Longer than I can hide the truth? My incentive is surely to keep silent, or to offer you only my screams."

"If it's death that you fear," he shrugged, a gesture he'd learnt from Hugo. "I'd be loathe damage your body too much, as you know. If your echo doesn't pass muster, I might need to supplement with one or two authentic parts - and of course it's always good to keep a spare. But I can take those parts off, to pack in the ice for a rainy day. It's your choice whether I do that after you die, or whilst you're still alive. I know your body better than anyone. I estimate that I will barely begin taking you apart before it starts to beg for death."

"Please," I said. He was right. He was always right, and I already knew that I couldn't even throw myself upon his mercy. Vincent had always been the least squeamish in his work. Cold but beautiful. Beautiful but cold. I tried to meet his gaze, but his own grey eyes simply stared back at me, as if assessing mine for quality.

"Tell me everything," he said. "We'll start with your life story, running up to this moment. Even our time together: your impressions of me, when I arrive at the College, in case my clone needs to introduce me later on. Speak as if I was a stranger. Leave nothing out."

[siderealscribblings]

LeBlanc Coffee and Curry Honolulu, Hawaii 

Jimmy Tanaka’s Japanese was godawful, but he had grandparents that lived in Okinawa so Sojiro made an effort to help him practice. He had done so much evil in his life that a handful of good deeds would do little to cleanse his soul, but Sojiro hoped that the occasional act of kindness would at least earn him a kinder form of damnation. 

Jimmy spoke Japanese with all the hallmarks of a young man alienated from his parents’ culture, drawing out the u in Sojiro’s last name until it sounded like he was saying “Sah-KOO-rah” despite his gentle admonishments. Still, he was a breath of fresh air among the aging Japanese expats and locals that typically flooded his cafe. They would cluster around the front stoop, grousing about tourists and playing cards while they smoked and waited for their orders to arrive.  It wasn’t too popular; Sojiro never made it a point to advertise. Advertising invited unwanted attention, which Sojiro had avoided successfully for years. 

Hiding in a bustling tourist city on American soil offered him more protection than hunkering down in a bolt-hole somewhere in Japan. S.E.E.S. might be bold enough to march armed into hell, but not bold enough to provoke a response from the United States. The rather liberal Yankee gun-policy meant that Sojiro could reliably stow a weapon under his register without too many eyebrows being raised. He had never been a field operative and would likely die in any fair gunfight. But he kept it meticulously oiled and loaded and never far from reach. The other shoe was going to drop someday, and Sojiro would be ready for it when it finally did. 

Until then, he had work to do; at home, and at the restaurant slinging plates of warm curry and hot coffee. 

“Jimmy, order for Table 2!” Sojiro called in Japanese, sliding two katsu curry plates onto a tray and ringing the doorbell. 

“Table…” The young man’s brow furrowed, trying to remember his Japanese. “Ah, naruhodo!” 

Do you really? Sojiro thought, watching the young man walk to Tables 3, 4, and 5 before finally remembering what the Japanese word for two was. Then again Sojiro’s English was only adequate after nearly a decade abroad. Between the two of them, they had enough English and Japanese experience to carry on a full conversation in two broken languages. 

“You get the overseas news, Sa-ku-ra-san?” Jimmy asked as he returned behind the counter. 

“Nah…been busy,” Sojiro grunted in English, cracking open a glass coke bottle and taking a sip. Synthesizing baalsulfuric aether with components outside the Metaverse was impossible, so naturally it took a whole week of sleepless nights to figure out how to do it. “Anything interesting?” 

“Some hella yabai stuff going on,” Jimmy whistled. “Bunch of…uh… thieves?” 

“Thieves?” Sojiro snorted. “What did they steal?” 

“Nothing yet; they’re like crazy, uh… hacker thieves,” Jimmy said after a moment of fumbling with the pronunciation. “Took over a radio station or something I guess; started making threats to the police and a bunch of famous people.” 

“That so?” Sojiro chuckled. Everyone is a drama queen these days. 

“They got a couple of babes with them though,” Jimmy said, scrolling through his phone and pulling up an image clipped from one of the broadcasts. “Check out the blonde in the catsuit.” 

Sojiro sighed, leaning over to look at Jimmy’s phone for a moment before turning back to the stove. “She’s a bit young for me, but I guess she’s up your- wait! ” 

Panic raced through Sojiro as he suddenly reached out and grabbed Jimmy’s phone before he could tuck it away. “Let me see that again.” 

Jimmy’s smirk spread as he passed Sojiro the phone. “Told ya she was hot…though the chick in the biker gear has some nice legs too.” 

Sojiro was half listening, eyes tracing the lines of glowing energy that snaked under the thieves’ masks in disbelief. “H-How long have they been robbing people?! Have they appeared in public or just on the news?! When did they show up?!” 

“Uh…” Jimmy blinked, struggling with the flood of Japanese. “I don’t really know…maybe a few weeks, or so ago? The forums are all buzzing with gossip but- hey!” 

“Watch the shop!” Sojiro called over his shoulder, grabbing his pistol and tucking it into the waistband of his slacks. “And send me that link!” 

Sojiro heard his protegee call something back to him but couldn’t hear what over the pounding in his own ears. The afternoon sun cast long shadows on the sidewalk as he made it towards his car parked in a side-alley. He whipped out a pocket mirror, carefully inspecting the undercarriage for misplaced wiring or lumpy blocks of C4 before sliding into the driver’s seat and tearing out onto the main road. 

Traffic was infuriatingly dense on the way back to his unassuming white house tucked away in the corner of an unassuming neighborhood. The money from his previous career could have furnished beachfront property, yet the small, overgrown home far away from the tourist spots had been perfect. Neighbors were friendly, but old, blind, and hard of hearing; if the gadget in the basement blew up, it would only kill those who had lived full lives already. Heavy iron bars rattled on the front door as Sojiro’s hands shook trying to open it, the eye of a single security camera following him into the house as he slammed and bolted the door behind him. 

"Hey!" Sojiro called into the house. "Get up here; you need to see this!" 

Read More...

Start from the Beginning

[mariacallous]

CHEMNITZ, Germany—Werner enthusiastically waved a white, red, and blue Russian tricolor flag—with the added imperial crest of the tsars—as we talked outside the former Stasi headquarters of what was once Karl Marx City, now Chemnitz, in eastern Germany.

“The current German state is worse than what we had during communist times, and America, not [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, is the true evil of this world,” he said, aggressively thrusting his finger in my face, our conversation eavesdropped on by a giant statue of Marx. 

A retired bricklayer in his 70s, Werner might be expected to have mellowed with age. He’s old enough to have been briefly interrogated by the Stasi in the 1980s and to remember his father, a former Nazi soldier, returning disheveled from Soviet imprisonment in the 1950s. But none of that has stemmed his apparent sympathy for Russian imperialism, nor his anger at the West. 

“German reunification benefited only the West Germans, and Germany should leave us Saxons alone,” he said. “Germany should also leave Putin alone, as it was far worse to Russia in World War II than Putin is to Ukraine now.” 

Meet the Free Saxons movement. Werner has been attending every Monday rally of the secessionist right-wing monarchist movement that seeks to restore the kingdom of Saxony, which historically never had much weight beyond its own borders during its 112-year existence that ended with World War I. And like much of the German political fringe, it finds curious common ground with Putin’s Russia.

The Russian president has exerted influence over East German attitudes toward Russia since he arrived in Dresden, Saxony’s regional capital, on his first posting as a young KGB agent in the mid-1980s. His foreign assignment in East Germany came to an abrupt end on Dec. 5, 1989, when demonstrators occupied the Stasi headquarters. Another crowd rushed to the nearby KGB office where he had a close encounter as they came close to storming the building. His subsequent calls to the Red Army for protection and reinforcements were met with silence, something Putin has never forgiven or forgotten.

In perhaps his most famous quote, Putin told the Russian parliament in 2005 that the collapse of the USSR was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.” To him, it was an experience of personal humiliation. In 1990, he returned with his young family to his hometown of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, where he claimed to have had to drive a taxi to make ends meet, before landing a more lucrative gig as the serial president, sometimes prime minister, of Russia.

But almost 40 years later he still finds receptive ears in the former Soviet satellite where a curious alliance of elements from across the political spectrum has voiced sympathy or support for his invasion of Ukraine. A survey conducted last October suggests that 40 percent of Germans fully or partially believe that NATO provoked Russia into invading Ukraine; that number increases to 59 percent in provinces that were once part of communist East Germany. Saxony, East Germany’s most populous federal state, falls slap bang in the middle of that anti-NATO heartland. 

In his vendetta against the West, Putin has sought to erode Western liberal democracies and the Euro-Atlanticist compact, boosting destabilizing political candidates and supporting local separatist groups regardless of their ideological alignment. Russian disinformation campaigns have been linked to, among other events, the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, the Scottish and Catalonian independence referendums, and Brexit.

Here in Chemnitz, it seems that Saxony is next on the list. 

On a camping table set up next to Werner, political brochures and stickers called for an alliance between Saxony and Russia. There were flags of the historical Kingdom of Saxony and calls for “Säxit”—à la Brexit—far-reaching autonomy from Germany or even Saxony’s secession. 

The Free Saxons, while nominally preoccupied with regional secessionism, offer a broad church of pro-Russian sentiment that has variously united far-right extremists, Soviet nostalgics, and marginalized anti-government cranks who rant about everything from vaccines to 5G to the war in Ukraine.

“Saxony has always had a public opinion different from the rest. We want good relations with Russia. No weapons for Ukraine,” said Michael Brück, a Free Saxons spokesman who sees the war in Ukraine as one between “Slavic peoples” and one in which Germany has no business.

“The people here think of [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky as an actor, a criminal, and a puppet of the United States. Putin is his counterpart. He stands up to U.S. imperialism. Most people here are anti-U.S. Here in Saxony, the people remember the Dresden firebombing [in early 1945, a joint Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Forces operation]. For the people here, the Americans are warmongers.”

That history, plus decades of economic deprivation, sowed the seeds of dissent and even radicalism in Saxony. Notably, it was a member of the Saxon-Thuringia aristocracy who planned an attempted coup in Germany in 2022. Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss joined with the Reichsbürger—a far-right imperial revivalist movement—in its attempt to overthrow the government. The plot was uncovered in December when prosecutors arrested 25 Reichsbürger plotters, including Reuss and current and former security service members. The putsch was derided for its grandiose ambition and dead-on-arrival failure. But it was a sobering reminder of the resurgence of the German far right and its apparent willingness to commit violent revolutionary acts. The killing of two police officers in January 2022 was also tied to the Reichsbürger, while in April 2022 a Reichsbürger member tried to kill several police officers while they attempted to execute a search warrant for the illegal possession of firearms. The ringleader, Reuss, reportedly celebrated the 2022 Russia National Day in Russia’s consulate general in Leipzig.

As Russia did with the Trump campaign and Brexit, Saxony has become a target of pro-Russian messaging and misinformation, which flourishes in a post-truth media landscape.

“Nobody believes the [mainstream] media here. If the German media says tomorrow it is going to be sunny, we Saxons will put our raincoats on. That’s why people turn to Telegram,” a social media platform widely used in Russia and Ukraine, Brück said.

Since the government enforced closure of the Russia Today (RT) operation in Germany, Kremlin sympathizers have tuned in to Russian-linked independent media and influencers. “Anti-Spiegel,” a play on German newspaper Der Spiegel, is run by Thomas Röper, a German blogger living in St. Petersburg, a Kremlin-loyal peddler of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and Russian propaganda. Russian media reports are also translated and published for a German audience. It has 110,000 Telegram subscribers. Another German blogger, Alina Lipp—a former German language correspondent for RT—plays an important role chirruping Russian propaganda to her 196,000 Telegram subscribers. Her widest-reaching posts reportedly receive over 2 million views. 

Their messages are finding their mark. In February, the Berlin-based Center for Monitoring, Analysis, and Strategy (CeMAS) released a paper on the role of Russian disinformation in Germany, finding that between the spring and autumn of 2022, approval of pro-Russian propaganda narratives increased significantly, especially in the east. 

Putin’s disinformation warriors have coincided with the rise of anti-technocratic movements on both sides of the ideological divide, a boon to those in Moscow looking to destabilize the centrist consensus that has dominated German politics for decades. The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has within a year doubled its average poll numbers, riding a wave of populist outrage over immigrants and energy prices. The AfD, whose delegations occasionally visit Moscow, wants to dissolve the EU, strengthen Germany’s individual national military posture at the expense of Germany’s NATO engagement, and end all sanctions against Russia.

Recent national polling put the AfD at 22 percent, ahead of the ruling Social Democratic Party, and trailing only the conservative Christian Democratic Union, at 27 percent. In several eastern states, the AfD polls above 30 percent and has grabbed one mayorship and one district administrator post. 

The AfD, like many others in the east, has a big crush on the Kremlin. A regional legislator, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, founded an association called East Wind, seeking to forge closer ties with Russia. He tried to visit Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine late last year, before even AfD leadership balked at the optics. Tillschneider has said before that Russia was the liberator of Germany in World War II, unlike the United States. 

“There are still tens of thousands American soldiers occupying our country,” he said, referring to U.S. troops who have spent decades there as part of NATO’s defense against that very same Russia. “The USA wants to make us pawns on the Ukrainian battlefield to expand its ‘rainbow [LGBT] empire.’”

The German far right loves that kind of talk. But the German left is on board, too, reasoning that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Alliance for Peace in Brandenburg holds vigils on leftist outrage topics, like the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 or NATO nuclear drills, and lobbies against Western arms deliveries to Ukraine. Dominik Mikhalkevich, the Alliance’s Belarus-born spokesman, said NATO drills are escalatory and Germany’s defense mandate should be just to protect its own territory.

“Sanctions against Russia should be dropped, as sanctions always play in the wrong hands,” Mikhalkevich said. “I am from Belarus, a country where Western sanctions have always caused the opposite they were designed to achieve, as illustrated by [Belarusian President Aleksandr] Lukashenko still being around.”

Much like what happened in the United States, the special trick with Russian misinformation is how it manages to appeal to both the far right and the far left. German rightists love—and cite—Russia’s gripes about alleged Ukrainian oppression of Russian speakers in the country’s east and south and its claimed defense of white Christian European culture, said Jakub Wondreys, of the Hannah Arendt Institute for the Research on Totalitarianism in Dresden. Yet they are curiously quiet about Russia’s claims to be “de-Nazifying” Ukraine, for obvious reasons.

The left, meanwhile, is happy to ape Putin’s anti-NATO rhetoric but overlooks his social conservatism. “Both sides are cherry-picking their arguments from the Russian disinformation campaign,” Wondreys said.

But Germany’s left, split between Putin supporters and opponents, is in free fall. It’s the right that is ascendant. An AfD win in the next parliamentary election in 2025 could turn Germany into a big Hungary, said Wolfgang Muno, a political scientist at the University of Rostock. Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban is Russia’s Trojan horse inside the European Union, consistently backing Moscow while blocking Brussels’s efforts to impose sanctions or wean off Russian energy.

“We can see what happens when Putin lackeys rule in Hungary,” Munro said. If the AfD joins a ruling coalition, he said, sanctions on Russia, and perhaps large-scale German arms deliveries to Ukraine such as Leopard tanks, would be on the chopping block, and Putin would get a lifeline.

[moremysteriesthantragedies]

Happy WBW! What's the harshest part of your world? Be it a place, a law, something character-created or otherwise, what is just HARSH?

Look no further than The Dreaded and its system of asylums over jail.

Tw for discussed ableism, demonization, acephobia, and poor treatment of mental health.

The dog society there doesn't have any police stations, rather they have asylums or "hospitals", set out with the goal to rehabilitate criminals, probably thanks to their focus on productivity and encouraging others to all "play their part".

This sounds nice and all, until you realize, "Wait, they're literally just connecting mental illnesses and disorders to criminal behavior". which is dangerous because, unlike human society, dog society seems to be very loose about what is considered a disorder with different practices having various different opinions, especially where the idea (and fear) of becoming "feral" is concerned. Dogs that are neurodivergent are also often overlooked because, not only do dogs have sharper senses as it is, but, there's also this big idea that not teaching dogs to take hold of their senses in their youth leads to these problems (yes, dog society really do be like, "just concentrate better!", unfortunately).

People can end up getting feral assessments for ridiculous reasons, be treated as suspects for turning feral due to certain biases (mostly those who go against traditions in some areas, along with drugs and alcohol), be tricked into acting violently to be institutionalized for some time, so on and so forth. And don't even get me started on how they treat asexuality because it ain't pretty.

That being said, it also depends on the area. Conservative areas can have very strict enforcement of things while more liberal areas tend to be pretty lenient. The city the story takes place in is definitely more on the liberal side, being a place that encourages all different kinds of business. They have enough experience to know that a lot of the things assumed to make others go feral (crime, drugs, and, in some areas, going against what is deemed as the traditional or "natural" way of life) absolutely don't turn dogs feral, otherwise, literally everyone there would be feral! In that way, it is a safe place for the characters who have all pretty much been screwed over by these institutions in the past, or risk being screwed over outside of the city walls.

So, a lot of the criminals in the city and the doctors there just know to stay out of each other's way if they don't want trouble, with said criminals not afraid to let said doctors in on a few things to keep this relationship friendly.

[assassinnumber9]

Spy x Family: Family Portrait - Yuri’s Vacation Summary

Notes: Recently, I read a translated version of the Spy x Family LN, courtesy of Google Translate and the Vietnamese translation (here is the source, however it brings up pop ups pretty much every time you click, or at least it did for me). As it was Google Translate, it was pretty difficult to read, but easy enough to understand what it was, at the very least, trying to say. That being said, not everyone wants to try to wrap their head around a poorly translated chapter, and so I decided to write a summary of one of the chapters. I plan to do the rest of the LN, but for now please accept this one. This is for all you Yuri fans!

@gliding-hazard did a translation (not just a summary) of the Nature Class chapter as well, so please show them some love and support!

The chapter starts out with Yuri right before he arrests a suspect – Thomas Bellman. It lightly recaps who Yuri is and what his goals are, which then cuts back to him talking to his superior (Max?) outside of the interrogation room with blood on his gloves (from beating up the suspect either to death or near death). His superior then orders him to take a vacation, which in the end he reluctantly complies.

Cue Yuri sitting in his home, wondering what to do before remembering that it was a holiday, so City Hall and the hospital would be closed (Loid being the thing stopping him from visiting his sister). He then thinks about how beautiful his sister is before shit-talking Loid in his head because he stole Yor from him (right after he thinks that Loid is a rare type of guy who’s tall, smart, thoughtful, and liberal). You know, normal Yuri things.

Yuri then gets a phone call from Yor asking him to come over, telling him that Loid had an emergency and had to leave. He happily runs over to the apartment (he comes in asking what she needs and one of the things he asks if she needs done is a signature in the witness section of a divorce petition lol).

After greeting Yor, he notices Anya behind her, and Yor tells him that there was an event scheduled that day where Millie was originally going to work but ended up getting a cold, so she had to take over. Yor then asks Yuri if he’d be willing to babysit Anya, since Loid was gone, and Franky was unavailable.

Yuri reluctantly agrees because it’s Yor.

Cut to Anya being bored while Yuri reads a magazine. Yuri then tells her to bring out her textbooks and notebooks, so they could study together. Anya shuts this down quickly. She then goes to retrieve a notebook and writes in it before handing it to Yuri, who manages to decipher it even with her poor handwriting. It basically says that Anya was unhappy because she was stuck with Yuri and 1) he wasn’t Franky 2) he told her to sleep like Bond and 3) he wouldn’t let her go out.

This pretty much forces his hand as if Yor saw the note she wouldn’t be happy with him. So, he takes her out and tells her that they are going to a place called Step Work Kid (not sure if this is a very good translation, but this is exactly how it was said when it was translated), where kids get to experience what careers are like to help them decide on what they want to do in their future. As Yuri says, it’s like studying and playing at the same time.

When they get there, it’s explained again that the facility is for kids to learn about different careers. Yuri notices that all the parents seem tired and hears a dad telling his daughter that he doesn’t want to go try the modeling career because he’s fat, which confuses him.

Yuri then suggests a couple of fields before Anya tells him she wants to try the cop simulation. He agrees, and the two of them make their way over to the location.

They run into a father and son duo, the latter being excited he got to try shooting and shows Anya the paper he shot. This makes Anya get excited and start babbling about two-eights ammunition and guns, which Yuri takes as a sign to let her do anything but handling a gun.

The employee then tells them that the interrogation room is open, and she could try that. Anya agrees, and the employee then tells her and Yuri to get changed into the uniforms (the employee also mistakes the two as siblings here, and Yuri reluctantly has to say he’s her uncle as not doing so would draw suspicion). Yuri then realizes why all the parents were tired and why the man earlier was saying how he was too fat for the modeling simulation – guardians also had to partake in the activities. So, Yuri tries to tell Anya to go in without him, only for the employee to tell him that he had to accompany her, or they couldn’t use the facility’s services.

When they get in the interrogation room, Anya (of course) creates a crazy scenario that the actor of the suspect plays along with, and he ends up “confessing” to the crime. The staff then clap and praise Anya for the way she interrogated him and how she was sympathetic.

The actors then switch out, and the suspect is now young with a handsome face, the crime he’s being accused of being beating his wife after she failed to cook properly. Yuri then gets way too into character as he sees Loid in the suspect (because of the actor’s good looks) and ends up scaring this poor man so much he both confesses and breaks character (Yuri threatened with violence and execution and even grabbed the guy’s neck). The staff then sit there frozen for a bit before praising Yuri for his “acting” skills, and Yuri goes along with it to cover the fact that he’s actually a secret policeman.

Anya and Yuri then spend awhile trying other careers, doing so many that they ended up having a late lunch. Yuri asks Anya what career was her favorite, and she says she’d rather do nothing and be a bird or a cloud. Yuri, of course, thinks that bringing her there was a waste of time before Anya says she wants to be a fashion designer (or rather, go to the fashion designer station).

Yuri asks her why, and she explains that she wants to make something for her mama because she ended up having to go to work on her day off. Yuri then tells Anya to eat her food quickly, so they can hurry up and make something for Yor. When they begin to make their way over, he notices that he took her hand without having to be asked or told to do so.

It finally cuts to Yor at home, waiting for Yuri and Anya as they haven’t arrived home yet, and she becomes happy when thinking about the two of them having an outing together. When they finally come in, the two are arguing about who’s hairpiece (the gifts they made for Yor) is better and who’s Yor will love more. The chapter then ends with Yor greeting them and saying how Yuri is like a child whenever he’s with her daughter.

[vatican3]

i would once again love to hear your thoughts

See when I posted that it did not occur to me how hard it would be to explain this.

AU to consider:

- Nihil is an exceptionally sheltered little weirdo raised Pentecostal who is, in her teen years, completely relying on Bestie to figure out things Outside of the church. So like. All of their sexual experimenting was with each other.

- For those of you unaware about Pentecostalism’s whole deal they’re very big on feeling the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, possession, it’s a very charismatic (in the religious sense) and high energy religion.

- Family is absolutely not dealing with her intersex situation gracefully and is raising her as a boy but not at all trying to educate her in any helpful way about her own body or. Anyone else’s. Which is how this falls on Bestie which is kind of funny because he’s an idiot.

- Nihil and Bestie inevitably get to fucking around and Nihil is having a Pentecostal meltdown about going to hell but not enough to make her stop. So. (She asks if he ever worries about going to hell and he’s like. No I’m kind of focused on the hot girl* I’m kissing.)

*Nihil still hasn’t really figured out she’s a girl but she’s getting there. There’s some kind of discomfort that she isn’t putting together yet.

- After they graduate they end up moving more into the city into an apartment together totally not dating but also not not dating. They’re confused.

- Nihil is interested in furthering her rebellion against her parents and separating from her Christian upbringing and would like to do this via Tattoos & Piercings. Thankfully Bestie knows a gal (Imperator).

- Imp is many of Nihil’s awakenings. Imp is how Nihil figures out she’s a girl. Imp has done every single one of Nihil’s (quickly numerous) tattoos. (Nihil’s working as a receptionist for a doctor’s office. It’s not exciting but it’s liberating to have her own money. And she can use it to get the pretty girl to decorate her.)

- She barely even comes in with ideas anymore, she just lets Imp try out whatever designs she’s itching to put on flesh. They’re clearly hitting on each other but being terrible at approaching the situation until Imp asks her out for drinks. They get absolutely sloshed. They fuck in a gross bar bathroom. And then again back at Imp’s apartment on her couch.

- It’s exactly Nihil’s luck that she gets knocked up from the first risk she has ever taken in her life. Calls family about it. They tell her they have to get married. Imp is so on board for this. They go from not dating to being married in like a month span.

- Imp’s family is all cool. Eccentric atheists and Satanists and a smattering of Pagans. Nihil’s family fucking hates them. Imp’s family is very understanding about Nihil’s gender situation. They are very thrilled for Imp’s new wife!

- Bestie is Nihil’s best man, obviously. He is only a little bit spiritually crushed by the fact that he cucked himself by introducing his best friend that he’s in love with to the girl she ended up marrying.

- When the baby is born Bestie is their go-to babysitter and it does Not take Imp very long to notice how he looks at Nihil and is like ohhhh okay they’re in love with each other. Got it. Instead of being upset she’s just like, well Nihil deserves happiness and I’m willing to share! So they discuss. And become a throuple. (You can imagine how thrilled Nihil’s family is about this development.)

- Imp isn’t sold on Bestie personally yet. But he grows on her. And it’s way easier to parent with three of them. She’s happy to adjust to this kind of life! She is MORE than happy to watch what kind of effect Bestie has on Nihil.

etc:

- All of Nihil’s tattoos are traditional or woodcut style. She went and got someone from someone else one time to see if she was really into the tattooing or just really into Imp—it ended up being some kind of fineline nonsense she hated and begged Imp to rework to be bolder. Usually Imp doesn’t like to fuck around with other people’s work but she can make an exception for Nihil, especially considering how possessive she is (she was not happy when she learned Nihil went to someone else).

- Nihil. Septum. So many ear piercings. VCH. Are you listening. She’s running out of places to put metal in her body. Her parents fucking hate it.

[shepfax]

let's brainstorm together online gays:

there is often discussion about the lack of gay spaces outside of bars and clubs. I understand that completely. but two major notes;

a) I wish those bars and clubs were more common to begin with. I had not lived in a city with a gay bar until I was in my 20s. even if I wasn't old enough to get in, there were LGBTQ adults in those previous cities who would have loved to have that bare minimum of a sanctuary. please, remember to step out of the urban bubble when talking about things like gay libraries or community centers, since even the more liberal cities across the US are without such luxuries.

b) I don't like how often this narrative reaches sex-shaming puritan bullshit about how bars and clubs are all about hooking up and public sex. who cares if they are? sexuality is core to the LGBTQ experience and should not be suppressed.

my main reason to ask for non-bar spaces is neither of these: I want these spaces to exist because I'm sober. the LGBTQ community, like the population at large, has recovering addicts/alcoholics who deserve a place free of the expectations of social drinking. (even outside those parameters I think we need to make space for adults who don't drink for literally any reason -- medical, spiritual, personal, etc)

what do yall think? what would be your ideal sober-friendly LGBTQ meeting place? I'm a classic bistro believer and huuuugely hungry for more libraries/museums, but also excited to hear other suggestions

[erics-meep-morps]

So Many Tries

A self-ship fic with Lapis and Peridot

This story is partly based on what I’m dealing with in real life right now, and it’s my way of comfort and venting, but also the usual enjoyment of writing these stories. To anyone who reads this story I hope you enjoy. 💙💚

After a year and a half of working for Beach City Public Transit Authority (BCPTA) I was laid off due to funding cuts. Receiving the news wasn’t surprising to be honest. Beginning a few months prior there were signs that people would need to be let go, and my position wasn’t a high priority to be kept. If it were up to BCPTA then everyone would keep their jobs, but the funding they receive to pay workers was being cut by Delmarva’s government, which now leaned conservative after the recent election. Without going into politics too much, in general conservatives focus on funding for roads and highways. Liberals do so too, but they also usually allocate just enough funding to public transit to keep it running. The odds are stacked against people like me in America who work in the mass transit industry and want mass transit service to be better. It’s an unfair reality.

I had plenty of money saved up, so finding another job wasn’t an urgent task. I would need to be careful with spending money, but nothing extreme like skipping meals. A huge savings for me was not having to pay rent for an apartment anymore ever since I started living with Lapis and Peridot at Little Homeworld. I did offer them money for their hospitality, but they didn’t have a need for money like humans do. However, I wanted to give them something in return, so I helped out at Little Homeworld anyway I could. For the most part it was janitorial tasks, but also being an assistant for Lapis and Peridot’s classes at Little Homeschool. It was a good arrangement, and I’m extremely thankful for them.

Jobs that I wanted were very few, especially because I didn’t want to be too far away from Beach City. The handful of employers I applied to seemed impressed with my work and educational experience, but I was rejected by all of them. The typical reason was hiring someone else with better qualifications. It was disappointing, but I wasn’t discouraged. Not yet anyways.

The less money I had, the more my anxiety rose. With each interview I felt more pressure, and with each rejection I felt more depressed and frustrated. Four months later I still didn’t have a job, and at that point I started directing my anger towards myself. Depressive thoughts like feeling useless and a waste of space swirled in my head. Anytime Lapis and Peridot overheard me saying something mean about myself they would say, “Excuse me, that’s my boyfriend you’re talking about.” That would snap me back into thinking calmly and rationally about my situation. I was also helped by my therapist to keep my irrational thoughts under control and figuring out ways to improve in interviews. 

Eventually I needed to get a job even if it was a position I was only doing for the money. I told myself it would only be short term and I would continue looking for jobs I actually wanted. Just outside of Beach City I took a job at a warehouse, which typically involved packing and sorting items to be shipped out. Immediately I realized the poor and stressful conditions of the job, and with lower pay than what I received at BCPTA. I only worked there part time in order to keep my sanity, but after a few months I couldn’t do it anymore. On the bright side I left on a good note from coworkers there who would gladly rehire me if I decided to come back, though I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.

I became so desperate for a job I wanted that I was starting to think of extreme ways to perform perfectly in interviews. There’s no such thing as perfect of course, but my irrational thinking convinced me I either had to do perfect or I would be a complete failure. I felt that my social anxiety and Aspergers were holding me back from performing well in interviews, which I tried to mitigate by reminding myself to talk slowly, take my time thinking of responses to interview questions, and breathing normally. However, that didn’t seem to be enough. I was even considering drinking a little bit of alcohol before interviews to loosen myself up, so in theory I would be less nervous to talk. I didn’t actually do that, but the thought was there. I tried other strategies to improve in interviews, but it never seemed to be enough. 

One day I had an intense therapy session in which I emotionally broke down over my thoughts of hopelessness due to still not having a job. Many tears were shed and tissues used. Upon returning home to Little Homeworld I hoped there would be no more tears for the day. I made lunch for myself, which consisted only of buttered toast since I was trying to save money on food, but I also wasn’t very hungry. As I slowly ate, Lapis and Peridot came home and sat with me on the couch. Thoughts from the therapy session stayed in my mind and I had forgotten about the piece of toast still in my hand. 

“Eric. Hey Eric,” Peridot said.

“Huh? Oh! Yeah,” I said awkwardly as I snapped back to reality.

“Are you not hungry? You’ve been holding that piece of toast for a couple minutes,” Lapis pointed out.

“Oh! Y- yeah, I’m going to eat it,” I responded quickly with my voice cracking. My hand slightly shook as I put the rest of the toast in my mouth.

Peridot looked at me with concern. “Are you okay?” 

Lapis shared the concern. “You seem... kind of on edge. Is something wrong?”

“N- no, no problems,” I replied, and failed miserably to sound relaxed. 

Lapis gently placed a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, if you ever feel hopeless, let us know,” she said in a comforting tone.

“We’re your partners. You can tell us anything,” Peridot assured me.

“Exactly. You’ve been there for us, and we’ll be there for you,” Lapis said.

As they were saying this I could feel tears rushing to my eyes. I tried to hold them back, but it was a losing battle. With a burst of tears, I nestled my head on their shoulders and they hugged me tightly.

In a shaky voice I said, “I just keep trying and failing. There always seems to be someone better than me.”

“You’re trying your best, and we love you for it,” Lapis said calmly. 

“There’s no rush to find a job,” Peridot said. “I know you’re worried about your financial situation, but we and others can help as you keep looking for a job.” 

I was breathing heavily and choking on tears while trying to speak.

“Take deep breaths, Eric,” Peridot instructed calmly. 

I did as she said and started to relax. “I may have to look farther outside of Beach City. Like Empire City, or even farther.”

“You do what you need to do, and we’ll support you,” Lapis said.

“What if I have to move?” I asked with concern.

“Then we’re going with you,” Peridot replied.

I was surprised at the response. “And leave here?”

“You’re talking to two gems who can fly, and we have warp pads. Trust me, we could be living on another planet and still not be far from Beach City,” Lapis explained. 

“We may not be able to teach here as often, but we can still visit occasionally,” Peridot said.

I sighed. “Alright, as long as you two are okay with it.”

They both nodded. 

“I should get started on applications then,” I said and tried to get up. However, Lapis and Peridot held me firmly.

“Shhh, it’s snuggle time now,” Lapis said soothingly.

“Plus you need rest,” Peridot added.

“You’re right. It’s been a long day,” I said and thought for a moment as I was embraced by them. “Thank you for helping me calm down, by the way.”

“Of course,” Lapis said and smooched my cheek.

“We love you, Eric,” Peridot said and smooched my other cheek.

I smiled and hugged them. “I love you both too.”

The next day I started expanding my job search to other areas, primarily in Delmarva, Empire State, Keystone, and, reluctantly, Jersey. My limited choice of positions suddenly became dozens with several organizations and companies. The main difficulty now was getting the motivation to apply for these positions. After so many tries and failures my motivation was near zero, and there were the worries in my head of applying to all of these places and still not getting a job. There was also the long process of writing each application. 

A couple weeks went by and I had applied to most positions I was interested in. With each application I submitted the more nervous I became as I waited for a response. The first response was a rejection, which definitely didn’t help my mood and my motivation to keep applying. 

The second response came from Empire State Central Railway, which operates most of the passenger trains in Empire State. I applied for a few positions with them, but the one they wanted to interview me for was being part of the Service Improvement Board, who oversees improving their existing service and planning for new services. I nervously agreed to the online interview, and in the meantime I tried to stay calm and do some research on their organization and the position.

On the morning of the interview, Lapis and Peridot headed to Little Homeschool. They wished me luck, hugged me tightly, and assured me I would do okay. 

At the beginning of the interview they asked, “How are you doing?” Probably the most common question in an interview. 

Normally I simply respond, “Good,” but this time I decided to open up a little more. I said I was nervous since I’ve applied to many places for awhile and haven’t gotten any job offers. Obviously I didn’t go into details like my depression, feeling useless, breaking down in therapy, etc. I only expressed my general mood going into the interview. They were understanding and made sure to give me plenty of time to answer their questions. 

They explained the position, and if hired I would be working in Newborough, which is kind of close to Empire City, but far enough away that it’s considered its own city instead of a suburb. The interview lasted half an hour, and they said they would get back to me within a week. I didn’t get my hopes up on that since many places I interviewed at took way longer than promised or they just never got back to me. Overall I thought the interview went well, but I didn’t want to get optimistic after so many failures.

One week and a day later I saw a familiar number calling me and immediately picked up. My heart was already racing and I had to control my breathing. When I spoke I could see Lapis and Peridot peering from the art room out of the corner of my eye. When I was offered the job with Empire State Central Railway I had to contain my excitement and calmly accepted the offer. Upon informing me when the position started and congratulating me they hung up, and I turned to Lapis and Peridot with starry eyes. All three of us cried tears of joy at the news. I was anxious about moving to Newborough since the position began in a few weeks, likely not enough time to find a new home and move in, but Lapis and Peridot assured me to not worry about it. Our only focus now was celebrating. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Switching back to reality (rambling and venting ahead):

Unfortunately I still haven’t gotten a job yet, and the struggle and depression is so real. I know I just need to keep trying, but it’s so difficult after so many rejections. In the past I thought I had my young adult years planned out, but that’s mostly gone off the rails. I’m not even sure if my home city will be where I develop my career. Part of me wants that to happen, but another part of me wonders if a different place is where I need to go. I probably shouldn’t worry about all of this too much, especially with how hard I’m trying to find a job. I know I won’t find the perfect job because all work sucks, but there are jobs I’m actually interested in doing for the long term. However, that requires an employer giving me a chance, which hasn’t happened so far. I hope it happens soon.