#to jump right to 'the senate will pay and i will grant you my parents back'

[chernabogs]

Malleus' immediate response to learning of Lilia giving a portion of his life for Malleus'—arguably one of the most sincere acts of love someone can do for another—being that of violence and a blind want to enforce into reality his own perception of what he believes Lilia's happiness to be is one of the most tragic things yet

[everythinggeeky]

a fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi | Anakin Skywalker PART II

“A precipice in front, wolves behind”

Suitless! Darth Vader x dark side! reader

Warnings: angsty, a ‘lil smutty, canon-typical violence, slight canon divergence, (as always) anakin never gets crispy, 

Word Count: 2.3k

Summary: You are finally deployed on the rebel base. After getting cozy with the leader, you slip up on the job. The Empire crushes the tricklings of the rebel force, bringing you back as their Empress. 

masterlist

A/N: this is part two! read part one here! tag lists are open! 

Waking up the next morning was invigorating; this was your moment to assert your power in the Galactic Empire. Facing yourself in the mirror, you were forced to confront the woman you were now. You are strong and capable of completing the destiny of the Empire. 

However, there was a moment of hesitation, which seemed to come more often these days. Much like Anakin, your past as a Jedi often haunted you, threatening to pull you away from the dark side. 

You needed to prepare yourself to jump off the cliff and embrace your new role here. Rolling your shoulders back and standing tall, you looked into the mirror again. A strong woman who is soft around the edges must become hardened. It will happen in time.

You dressed in simple clothes to blend in with those on the rebellion base. Earth tones and neutral colors would disguise you in just the right way to complete the mission. You hid your lightsaber away and prepared for departure. Anakin had a few words for you before he let you go.

“Eliminate the scum, remind them of who rules them.”

“Yes, Lord Vader.”

He nodded to dismiss you, as you longed for more of a personal goodbye, you chose to push the feelings down instead. You boarded your shuttle and departed for the rebel base. 

The ride was smooth. You spent time thinking about what your future as empress would look like. You picture yourself in an elaborate gown, side-by-side with Anakin, complete in his Darth Vader persona. This is true power. You smile at the thought, pushing it away when it is time to land.

After your shuttle landed on the surface of the planet, you square your shoulders back and pocket the gifted lightsaber, preparing to trek the surface. Shifting into a softer persona to befriend the rebels, you exit your ship and start looking around for a sign of life.

You walk for what feels like miles through the greenery of Yavin 4, exhaustion weighing heavy on your body. As your feet grow increasingly weary, you find a collection of rebels seated around a fire, carrying on in a conversation. 

“Hello there….is this the rebel base? I heard tricklings from my system that you were looking for some help,” you said in mock innocence, your voice in a higher pitch than normal.

The rebels looked between one another and nodded, signaling for you to join their group with an open palmed wave.

“Looking to join the rebellion, eh?” A man speaks up.

“That’s the goal,” you chuckled, taking a seat.

“What brings you here, then?” Another voice spoke up from around the campfire.

“Not really a huge fan of dictatorship, I suppose,” your mind wandered to the Emporer, how he had been playing both sides of the Senate for long overdue. 

You had been pulled from the good side; your desire to follow love much stronger than your desire to reassert good in the galaxy. Was this weakness? 

Your time on the rebel base was sure to tell. As of this moment, Anakin insisted that there was a plan for you. The struggle between light and dark defined your existence these days. Eventually, you believed you would settle on one side or the other. And hopefully not betray Anakin in the meantime. 

“There are tricklings from our sources in the Empire that the Emporer is planning to do something viler than anyone has seen before in the galaxy,” a younger man spoke up from his seat. 

“Oh?” you inquired, not even you have heard of these plans. Perhaps as Anakin’s Empress, you were not granted such power.

“The Empire is gearing up for destruction and total control over our sector of the galaxy, with many more in the plans.”

You nodded, thinking over what you know, “how do they plan to do this?”

“The rumor is there’s a weapon.”

“A weapon?”

“The planet-destroying kind.”

“Huh,” and that was it. 

Keep to yourself. Eliminate the rebels. That was your mission. Establish what they know and what they don’t.

You sat with the group for hours, getting to know one another. Your sides hurt by the end of the night from passing jokes between one another. With the gentle ache in your diaphragm, you retired to your cot in the camp with the rebels. The leader promised you special training over the course of the week. 

The next day was spent training with rebel leaders on the base. 

The remains of the Jedi Order were unknown here, many of the rebels specialized in hand-to-hand combat or piloting. You squared off with the head leader, Val. You settled your feet into the ground about a foot apart from one another. As you settled into your stance, you thought back to your training with Anakin; your thoughts were calculated and precise. Here, you felt distracted, you reached out through the force for Anakin, with no response.

Anakin had taught you how to use a saber, to defend yourself but also to attack. Applying your strategies with simple punches and kicks, Val was impressed by your ability to fight off a threat.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that, kid?” she asked after you had landed a particularly nasty punch to her upper arm.

“My dad always said ladies should know how to fight.”

“Sounds like a good man,” she dismissed you, breaking her fighting stance to brush herself off.

“Yeah...he was,” you sighed, remember your father who had been the one to encourage you to join the Jedi, recognizing the power you had as a child.

You thought back to your youth when other children were playing with blocks, you were busy manipulating objects in space, amazed with the power that flowed through your fingers. Your parents were initially afraid of it; hiding you away, keeping you from the other children that ran through the streets. Eventually, they began to understand that they could no longer raise you considering the gifts you had.

You didn’t have much of a choice as you boarded the shuttle. Force-sensitive, they called it. As you grew from a youngling to padawan, eventually graduating, you had learned to master the force like the Jedi beside you. Here, on Yavin, you had to hide your force abilities, although they are much weaker than some beings, such as your own lover.

Anakin was the chosen one; he had brought balance to the force. The Jedi ruled for years with more control and numerous Jedi, outnumbering the few Sith that lived on. This is why the Emporer’s plan was so crucial to the galaxy. It was the true reading of the prophecy, after all. Anakin and you would work together to fulfill the destiny for the galaxy. In power and in love, you could conquer all.

You felt these feelings of passion take over your body as you again, tried to force them down. This was the reason for your expedition to the rebel base. The scum must be eliminated, per the Emporer’s direction, through Anakin’s command. Destiny fulfilled.

As you trained on the rebel base, you began to understand your role in the Empire. The rebels were disorganized and disillusioned. They were idealistic about the future of the galaxy. If they had known the plan that was in store for them, they would begin to understand that their future was a prophecy that was written many years ago by an intelligent maker beyond knowledge.

The Empire represented balance and truth. And you were here to maintain that.

You tossed in turned in your cot that night for what felt like hours. The feeling was indescribable. An all-consuming knowing is what you attributed it to. You felt a sense of purpose and a clear path of action.

You swung your legs over the side of the canvas cot, dug for your lightsaber in the layers of clothing, and ignited the hilt. The angry, unstable red of the blade ignited the room, shining upon the sleeping faces of the rebels. With fierce, determined steps you hovered over the cots of the rebels.

Such innocent, delirious sleeping faces, you thought to yourself. Their naivety was a weakness that must be eliminated. With one slash forward, you cut through the chest of one of the rebels, moving to the next with the same passion.

Finally, you landed upon Val’s cot. Raising the blade of your saber over your head, you prepared to land the blade into her chest when she turned to meet you. 

“I knew you were angry…” she whispered into the dark night, dripping bodies of her fellow rebels lying restless in their cots.

“The rebels are disillusioned. The Empire knows what is in store for you.”

“There will always be rulers like you,” she spits, rising to reach for her own weapon, “but there will always be those that will fight for justice,” she finishes as she raises her weapon to collide with your blade.

“And there will always be those who are too foolish to see the truth!” you exclaim, bringing the blade into her ribs as she stumbled to the ground.

You pin the blade to her neck. The silver floral hilt glimmers in the pale light; you take a moment to admire the gift.

“You lack the courage to beg for mercy…” you purr.

“The rebellion will hear of my death at the hands of the Empire’s empress. We will not go unnoticed. The Empire will pay for what it has done…”

“Oh shut up,” you hiss, finally slashing through the neck of the rebel that sparred with you as cohorts mere hours before.

You disengaged the blade of your saber once again before leaving the scene. You trekked through the same green path as you did when you landed yesterday, picking up the commlink to get in touch with the Empire once you’ve made it a safe distance.

“This is the Empress. I need to speak with the Apprentice.”

Anakin’s modified breaths filled the space before his voice, “my queen.”

“The mission was a success, Anakin. The rebels have been eliminated. Weak and foolish. Dead in their own beds…” you replayed the memory of your lightsaber piercing through flesh in your mind. The memory filled your bloodstream with adrenaline.

You boarded the ship as Anakin replied, “very good, my empress. Come back to us. We will receive you proudly,” he stated, the line going immediately dead.

Sitting, you smirked to yourself, punching in the correct coordinates, flying away to reunite with your lover once again.

Your shuttle docked and you left the ship, walking back onto the Star Destroyer. Anakin was there to meet you, helmet and all.

“It is good to see you again, my queen. Let’s wash the blood from your hands…” he held his hand out to you.

You took it, allowing him to guide you through the halls of the Destroyer to your shared quarters. As you were safely hidden away in the security of your own room, he shed the heavy gear that consumed his alter ego. He sighed sitting down the helmet, turning to you.

“I missed you, Anakin,” you said softly, stepping up to him, to reach your arms around him.

He hugged you back, resting his chin gently on the top of your head, “I missed you too, my dear, but I am very proud of the work that you have done for the Empire.”

“Thank you…”

“Of course,” he tips your chin up to meet his face, leaning in for a gentle yet passionate kiss.

You reciprocated the kiss, growing more passionate by the moment. Hands began to wander each other’s bodies as you continued to kiss him with immense passion. As two souls reunite, you made your way to the bed. 

Anakin laid you down gently on your back, lips leaving your lips to kiss over your jaw and then down your neck. Finding any exposed skin that he could, he made sure to pepper it with light kisses. He glided his hands in between the layers of neutral clothing that disguised you.

“My queen…”

“Ani…”

“Yes, my dear..?”

“Touch me…” you whined.

He chuckled, pulling your clothes from your body, littering the floor around the bed. In his wake, he continued the trail of kisses, accenting with the occasional nip. Your fingers twisted their way into his curls, tugging slightly to beg for more.

Without another word, Anakin rolled over onto his back, pulling you atop his now bare waist.

“Show your emperor what you can do…”

“Yes, my lord,” you smirked, rolling yourself onto him.

Your pace was smooth, Anakin gripped onto your hips as he leaned his head back in pleasure. Accenting your moans that filled the room with quiet groans.

Anakin praised you over and over that night, affirming your place by his side as his queen. He showered you in “I love yous” and so much more. Warmth radiated inside you, building as you approach climax. 

With a hand spread on Anakin’s abdomen, you reciprocate his praises to him, admiring his strength as the Emperor’s apprentice. This was his true place in the galaxy; with you, ruling over those beneath him. 

You fell over the edge of the precipice together, huffing and sighing heavily from the overwhelming pleasure seizing through your bones. Rolling off of Anakin to lay beside him, he turned to face you.

“The Empire will surely have great plans for you, my dear. Right beside me.”

tagged: @kenobee @hxldmxdxwn @smokahuntis @obiwkenobi @jbarnesss @takenbymyfandoms @ilovesupersoldiers​ @outofdaylight​ @maximumninjavoid​

[thecloserkin]

book review: Mira Grant, Feed (2010)

Genre: Sci-Fi

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: No

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: Hell to the yes

Bottom line: Creepily Codependent Siblings Survive the Zombie Apocalypse! They are adopted but the way they refer to each other as “my brother” and “my sister” when they could have used given names instead? I am here for it. While tight plotting is not one of this book’s strengths, you should slog through the infodumps to the ending which packs one hydrogen bomb of an emotional wallop.

This is the first book in the “Newsflash” trilogy about a pair of journalists, Georgia and Shaun Mason, who begin by blogging out of their parents’ basement and end by uncovering a vast governmental conspiracy subtended by various alphabet-soup agencies. The zombie apocalypse itself happened 23 years ago, and it happened the way these things invariably happen: Scientists try to cure cancer/the common cold, unleash freak virus on humanity, cue end of the world as we know it. Georgia and Shaun are the paradigmic products of this remade world: They, like many children born in and around the chaos of the outbreak, were orphans. On their adoption papers their birthdays are given as the same day—an arbitrary made-up date, but it makes them twins even if George is def a few months older. She acts older too, acting as the business brains of their fledgling journalistic operation while Shaun’s job is to “poke dead things with sticks” and look good while doing it. There is a performative aspect to Shaun’s mugging for the camera and flirting with anything in a skirt. He’s doing it because outrageous behavior garners them more hits, obviously, but he’s also doing it for George who gets a kick out of watching him charm the pants off people. She is bemused but not remotely threatened. George is all-business all the time, emotionally guarded and wary of physical contact, and one time when someone tried to hug her Shaun smoothly stepped up to intercept the hug to spare her the discomfort of enduring it. I SCREAMED. Note that George doesn’t mind being touched if it’s Shaun doing it:

I shuddered. Shaun caught the gesture and put a hand at the small of my back, steadying me. I flashed him a smile.

Shaun put a hand on my knee, steadying me, and I covered it with my own.

These small moments of tenderness punctuate an endearingly banterful sibling rapport. This is them reacting to the news of their big break—they’ve been tapped to cover the presidential campaign of an idealistic Wyoming senator:

Shaun was sure we’d get it. I was sure we wouldn’t. Now, staring at the monitor, Shaun said, “George?” “Yeah?” “You owe me twenty bucks.”

This is George shooing Shaun out of her room so she can change her clothes:

I pointed to the door. “Get out. There’s about to be nudity, and you’ll just complicate things.” “Finally, adult content! Should I turn the webcams on?”

This is big sister Georgia mocking Shaun for his youthful indiscretions:

”Remember how pissed you got when we had to do all that reading about the Rising back in sixth grade? I thought you were going to get us both expelled.”

In conclusion I love them sfm they are perfect.

As an aside, the people tagging this book “horror” on Goodreads have either not read the book (which is legit, TBR piles are a thing) or don’t understand what horror is? It’s like they saw the word “zombies” and just auto-completed the genre. What defines horror is not blood, gore, or violence but the fear and loss of agency engendered by that violence. That’s why so many horror film protagonists are women, who experience loss of agency in large and small ways on a daily basis and must learn to survive in the face of it; it’s cathartic to watch them take back control. The point of this digression is that THIS IS NOT A HORROR NOVEL. It’s not about that kind of fear!!! This is a political thriller so buckle in kids we’re going for a ride.

Twenty-three years ago during the outbreak, Georgia and Shaun’s parents lost their eight-year-old biological son. He was bitten by the neighbors’ dog. This was before it was widely understood that the virus could jump between mammalian species, and that anything surpassing the 40 pound threshold was susceptible to its effects. The dog weighed over 40 pounds. The Masons, who were award-winning reporters in their own right, dealt with their grief by channeling their emotional resources into chasing the news ratings. They continued to be phenomenally successful journalists as well as shitty parents to Shaun and Georgia, whom they seem to have adopted entirely for publicity purposes. The narrative invites us to draw the comparison between George and Shaun, who have chosen to pursue this career out of a thirst for THE TRUTH, and their parents who have less lofty motivations. Not to put too fine a point on it but their parents are mercenary motherfuckers. These kids survived their childhood by building an emotional bunker that they never learned to climb out of. This line from the very first chapter is so telling because they’re out in the field and Shaun is being chased by a zombie right?:

I screamed, images of my inevitable future as an only child filling my mind.

When Shaun’s in mortal peril, Georgia doesn’t think of him as “the center of my universe”— which he is—she thinks of the void that would result in the loss of her brother. That’s how they fit together, that’s what they are to each other, and all the other stuff is layered on top of the shared trauma of their childhood. Ffs they even have a ritual for administering each other’s blood tests—you know that thing at wedding toasts where the bride and groom loop their arms together and tip the champagne flute into the other’s mouth? Like that:

Moving with synchronicity born of long practice, we broke the biohazard seals and popped the plastic lids off our testing units

So the protocol for taking blood tests, which everyone has to do all day long to prove they’re not infected, is to come into the foyer/antechamber/vestibule one at a time and once you test clean you proceed into the building while the next person cycles into the chamber. That way, if anyone is found to be infected, they can be isolated. Georgia and Shaun have never once complied with this rule:

Our next-door-neighbor used to call Child Protective Services every six months because our folks wouldn’t stop us from coming in together. But what’s the point of life if you can’t take risks now and then, like coming into the damn house with your brother?

Implying that if one of them ever got bitten by a zombie the other one would rather spend the rest of their short life trapped in a garage with the shambling corpse of their sibling than die in their sleep at a ripe old age. Talk about ride or die.

I said before that this presidential campaign, this is their big break as much as it is the candidate’s. Up till now George and Shaun have been blogging under the umbrella of news aggregation entities (sort of like how BuzzFeed and HuffPost and Medium are populated by user-generated content that isn’t necessarily making the content creator an appreciable pile of money), but now they’ve finally landed the story that will let them strike out on their own. One of the sharpest things about this book is how it depicts journalism as a job, and a tough one to do right. Nashville does the same thing for the music industry, and as over-the-top as that show is, it shows you the nuts and bolts of success in a profession where practitioners are supposedly driven by “passion” alone. Here the distribution of labor is skewed pretty heavily towards George:

I get the administrative junk that Shaun’s too much of a jerk and Buffy’s too much of a flake to deal with.

Buffy is their business partner and some kind of auteur hacker + tech whiz. Shaun is the public face of their media brand. But make no mistake, George is the heart and soul and brains of this operation. You see her business acumen in drive-by observations like “Replacing that much equipment would kill our operating budget for months,” or when she talks about i n s u r a n c e. And George talks about insurance a lot. She mentions how a certain camera covered in zombie body fluids is an insurance write-off, how being present in designated high-risk zones during certain times of day can triple your insurance premium, how a certain treatment for her chronic vision condition isn’t covered by health insurance. I … just wanna point out that the human race has survived a flippin’ zombie apocalypse, but the United States remains wedded to private for-profit health insurance where who and what are “covered” remains a game of Russian roulette?!! Whoever said it was “easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” was onto something. This society is functioning cohesively enough that elections are a thing (thus, nation-states are still a thing). If you want to tell me our fragmented, inefficient, fee-for service model of paying for medical care that routinely bankrupts & kills our citizens has weathered the end of civlization and emerged intact from its ashes, you better look me dead in the eye and bring receipts.

What’s really impressive about Georgia is she’ll rattle off exactly what kind of activities (those forbidden by her journalistic licensing) will invalidate her life insurance if she’s stupid enough to get killed while doing them. From which I surmise that she and Shaun are both covered by pretty hefty policies of which they are each other’s sole beneficiary. Which makes sense, they’re in a dangerous line of work, but I feel like it’s a poor investment since whoever was left behind would be doing their damnedest to climb into the grave next to their sibling lol.

Another little requirement of the household insurance—since we leave safe zones all the time in order to do our jobs, we have to be able to prove we’ve been properly sterilized, and that means logged computer verification of our sterilizations.

George is talking about the AI that is apparently located in her showerhead that douses her with a bleach & antiseptic compound when she comes back from being in the field?? That sounds painful but what concerns me is the breathtaking scope of the Internet of Things’ penetration into her life. The AI is in the bathroom. It knows exactly where she’s been bc ofc her GPS location can be tracked via her phone, and it’s merrily sending packets of information off to …. somewhere, where it will doubtless be aggregated with all the data collected about George from other sources, and combed for patterns to predict future behavior. That’s how surveillance capitalism works. if this sounds chillingly familiar it’s because it’s already happening, it’s what the tech giants are already doing—gobbling up as much data about as many people in as many contexts as possible—and leveraging that data for profit. Privacy is a joke. George is not unaware of this, but what choice does she have? It’s either install the damn AI in her showerhead or get her parents’ homeowners’ insurance policy cancelled for being too “high risk.”

I want to circle back to George’s chronic medical condition for a sec. She’s got a disability—what’s a called a “reservoir condition” where the virus takes up residence in a body organ, in her case the retina—meaning essentially that she has zombie vision; she can see ridiculously well in low light situations but direct sunlight will blind her. She has to wear shades even indoors and is literally incapable of crying since her tear ducts are inoperative. So there’s a testy situation where a federal agent tries to get her to take off her sunglasses so he can verify her identity with a retinal scan right? And because they’re standing outside this is obviously a recipe for permanent blindness, quite aside from the fact you wouldn’t be able to get a valid scan anyway due to the virus over-dilating George pupils. But instead of checking George’s files, where her disability & its effects are prominently listed, this grunt insists on making her remove her glasses because Procedure. It’s a pretty tense moment. Shaun goes ballistic. He doesn’t physically threaten the dude, or insult his mom or anything. No, Shaun understands that he needs to make this pencil-pusher more afraid of the consequences of taking George’s glasses than of Not Following Procedure. And it works. YEET.

On the campaign trail the Senator’s aides arrange for sex-segregated hotel rooms but Shaun and George are having none of it:

On the few occasions when I’ve tried sleeping without Shaun in the next room, well, let’s just say that I can go a long way on a six-pack of Coke.

The ostensible reason the sleeping arrangements need to be reshuffled is, Buffy can’t sleep without a nightlight and George’s eyes can’t tolerate a nightlight. Clearly the real reason is George and Shaun are c l i n g y and codependent as FUCK. One night after a zombie attack and the long grueling hours of cleanup/decontamination that followed it, they actually climb into the same bed—I guess this room only had a double instead of two singles?? The scene the next morning, the two of them having predictably overslept:

“Fuck a duck, Buffy, what are you trying to do, blind her?” … Shaun, clad only in his boxer shorts, staring at an unrepentant Buffy.

So Shaun’s beef with Buffy is not that she barged in on them while they were asleep & half-naked but that she opened the curtains, thereby triggering a painful migraine for George’s sensitive eyes. Buffy explains she didn’t shake them awake because they both sleep armed, lmao. George’s disability and Shaun’s practiced ability to help her maneuver around it (like a trusty prosthetic, he’s an extension of herself) serves to highlight how in this partnership they are one unit and they know each other inside out. This is them after their close shave with the dunce who tried to take George’s glasses:

“Fuck you, too,” I muttered as Shaun got his arm around me and hoisted me away from the barn. “You kiss our mother with that mouth?” “Our mother and you both, dickhead. Give me my sunglasses.”

And this is George waking up in their hotel room, eyes squeezed shut against the glare of multiple computer screens:

He touched my hand with the tips of his fingers before he pressed my sunglasses against my palm.

This is absurdly, spine-tinglingly intimate. First he touches her hand with the tip of his fingers, the most fleeting of touches to let her know it’s him, and then he presses the glasses into her palm to restore her agency so she can, you know, open her eyes. And that earlier scene with him guiding her by the elbow in broad daylight!!! I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING

Sometimes I can hardly believe that George and Shaun are twenty-three years old. When I was twenty-three I … was not adulting half so well as these kids. But then, giving their barbarous upbringing, that’s not surprising; my parents loved and nurtured me. When I look at George and Shaun and the successful business they’ve built and the professional relationships they’ve cultivated and their expertise and their bravery I just feel this proud parental glow you know?

I want to say a word about Senator Ryman before we move onto spoiler territory. There’s a big controversy initially about whether the Senator is “genuine” or not (spoiler alert: he is). But what does that even mean, genuine? He’s a good egg, sure, but what are his policies, none of which are explored in depth except his support for horse farms??? I’m not kidding. In a world where any animal weighing over 40 pounds is a zombie outbreak waiting to happen, it’s a controversial position to say people should be able to keep pets in residential zones. Here is how George describes our Candidate:

He’s like a big, friendly Boy Scout who just woke up one day and decided to become the President of the United States of America.

I see two major problems with this: One, they say “Personnel is Policy” so who the hell is he planning to appoint to key Cabinet positions and can he trust them to pursue rather than undermine his objectives (and does he even have a deep enough bench of people to draw on)? Two, the Boy Scouts of America are not exactly, er, unproblematic, and while it’s safe to say our faves are always problematic, I think “Boy Scout” is shorthand here for “no skeletons in his closet,” which again puts the focus squarely on his personal qualities rather than what policies he espouses. It’s great that he hasn’t cheated on his wife or his taxes. But morality and ethics are not the same thing:

Morals are how you treat people you know. Ethics are how you treat people you don’t know. Your morality is what makes you a good spouse/friend … Your ethics are what makes you a good politician … Morality dictates that you take care of your family, friends and even acquaintances first … For a large society—a society where you can’t know everyone—to work, ethics must come before morality, or ethics and morality must have a great deal of overlap. By acting morally, you must be able to act ethically.

I think we can all agree that this does not describe how our society is currently constituted, and it doesn’t describe George and Shaun’s America either. So this narrow fixation on whether individual candidates are “genuine” or corrupt imo kinda misses the point. George says:

I haven’t even been able to find proof that his campaign received funding from the tobacco companies, and everyone’s campaign receives funding from the tobacco companies.

I don’t want to undersell how important it is the guy is not taking tobacco money. But is he also eschewing Wall Street money, Big Pharma money, defense contractor money? How could George possibly have time to investigate all this dark money if she is supposed to be covering the actual campaign? Seems like it would be a lot easier to reform the campaign finance laws than to vet every single single candidate’s funding sources.

I think one reason the Senator is long on identity & personal charisma and short on policy is that he’s up against an opponent whose base of support is millenarian-fundamentalist “the Rapture is here, we’re all going to hell”:

it was either Ryman’s brand of “we should all get along while we’re here,” or Tate’s hellfire and damnation.

If that is the main faultline in society, I guess half the voters don’t really wanna hear how a given politician is planning to make a material difference in their lives, since they’ve already got eyes on the prize aka the next life.

So there you have it. George and Shaun are scrappy independent muckrakers digging for the truth. Time and again their allegiance to that holy grail overrides their concern for trivial aims like idk personal safety. There’s a vast, shady conspiracy afoot, and as our heroes get closer to it they start getting shot at. They lose comrades. None of this deters them because they are after THE TRUTH. Oh wait there is in fact one thing George values more than the truth:

”You’re more interested in your brother than figuring out the truth?” “Shaun’s the only thing that concerns me more than the truth does.”

And later:

The sight of him was enough to make my heart beat faster and my throat get tight. I knew he was wearing Kevlar underneath his clothes, but Kevlar wouldn’t protect him from a headshot.

Her first concern is always, always, for him.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

George gets infected. That’s the denouement. George is infected and Shaun has to shoot her before she turns all the way. Every single person who makes it to this scene is just bawling by the end of it:

His lips brushed the top of my head as he bent forward and pressed them to my hair. I wanted to yell at him to get away from me, but I didn’t. The barrel of the gun remained a cool, constant pressure on the back of my neck. When I turned, when I stopped being me, he would end it. He loved me enough to end it. Has any girl ever been luckier than I am?

The reassuring pressure of the gun on the base of her neck??? Has there been a more romantic moment in cinematic history??? I THINK NOT. Shaun is a crack shot—he’s the kind of guy who caresses his guns, names them after pretty women, causes his sister to grouse about digging through a suitcaseful of his weaponry to find her clothes—and yet here he is using his gun to kill the woman he loves most in the world.

It was supposed to be Shaun. They both took it as a given that Shaun would be the one to die first. Now he has to find a reason to continue living other than the obvious (vengeance). Stay tuned for the next installment, narrated by Shaun!

[deniseyallen]

On Senate Floor, Portman Highlights Need to Pass Bipartisan JOBS Act to Increase Access to Job Training Programs

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) spoke on the Senate Floor highlighting his bipartisan Jumpstart Our Businesses By Supporting Students (JOBS) Act, legislation he introduced with Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) that would help students access training for the 7.3 million vacant jobs that are unfilled in part due to a shortage of qualified workers. The JOBS Act would close this “skills gap” by expanding eligibility for Pell Grants to cover high-quality and rigorous short-term job training programs so workers can afford the skills training and credentials that are in high-demand in today’s job market. 

A transcript of his remarks is below and a video can be found here. 

  “I’m here on the floor today to talk about career and technical education and specifically legislation we’ve introduced that would provide a lot more training opportunities for people who need these in-demand jobs that are out there. When people hear about career and technical education sometimes they wonder what we’re referring to. This is really high school programs, used to be called vocational education for many in my generation, they might remember it as that. But it’s not your father’s Oldsmobile, it’s not the old Voc-Ed programs you might remember. 

“In fact, it’s really impressive. If you go to these CTE schools today, and Ohio luckily has a lot of great career and technical academies and schools, you’ll see something amazing. You’ll see young people being trained up for some of the most sophisticated jobs out there: in bioscience, technology, welding of course, and manufacturing in Ohio is a big deal. But also truck drivers to get a CDL, a commercial truck driving license. You might see somebody there who is interested in going into firefighting or EMS. This morning I had a chance to visit with a young man who is in a CTE program where he immediately is going to be hired by a fire department. These are great opportunities for our young people. 

“Right now, these CTE schools are incredibly important because the skills are needed, the training is needed. One of the challenges that we’ve had is sometimes parents who are advising their kids are saying, ‘You need to go to a four-year college or university like I did or maybe like your uncle or aunt did,’ or maybe that’s the goal they have for their kids, and that’s fine. For many young people that’s appropriate. But for others, what a great opportunity to be able to get out of high school, get a job immediately, a good-paying job with good benefits and then at some point, because often in these schools, including in Ohio, you get college credit while you’re in high school to go on to college later. And perhaps your employer will pay for that. 

“This morning I was with a young woman named Jordan. She is at the Great Oaks Career and Technical Center in Southwest Ohio. Jordan is becoming a welder. She is going to have amazing opportunities. She does. She’s got plenty of job opportunities for her because she is going to have the skill so badly needed in Ohio right now. Our manufacturing sector is desperate for welders and they’re willing to pay good money for welders so she can make $45,000, $50,000 a year with good benefits at 18 years old as a welder instead of taking on student debt, and in Ohio it is about $27,000 on average, somebody graduating from community college or a four-year college or university is taking on significant debt. So this is an opportunity for us to get more young people into career and technical education. I think we ought to do it. 

“We have a good economy right now, thanks to tax reform and regulatory relief. There’s a lot of hiring going on. There’s actually higher wages right now. In Ohio, we have a number of people who are looking for employees. The help wanted signs are out there. We have about 148,000 jobs available in the state, if you look at Ohiomeansjobs.com, a website that offers these positions. There are about 250,000 Ohioans out of work. How does that make sense? It makes sense because if you look at the jobs that are being offered many of them are jobs where you have to have a skill, you have to be a coder or you have to be a machine operator or a welder or you have to have some bioscience background to be a tech. If we had the skills training, we’d be able to fill these jobs, which would be great for the companies and for the economy, but also just, again, a great opportunity for these young people. In 2018, our economy added 223,000 jobs per month on average. That’s about twice what the pre-tax reform baseline was from the Congressional Budget Office of only 107,000 jobs per month. We more than doubled the job growth. We’ve also had strong wage growth over the last 12 months. Wage growth in the last year is higher than any time in the last decade. 

“In Ohio, frankly, for a decade and a half we’ve had flat wages. Finally, we’re now seeing wages going up. Last month the average was about 3.4 percent growth for private-sector workers. By the way, more for blue-collar workers than for white-collar workers, supervisory workers, which is all good news. 

“So we’ve got a lot of good things going on in terms of increasing jobs, increasing wages, increasing benefits. Much of that just due to tax reform. I have gone around our state and talked to folks at roundtable discussions. I’ve been to more than 25 businesses to ask specifically, ‘What did you do with the tax savings?’ Every one of them has a great story. But with all of these pro-growth policies kicking in, again the thing I’m hearing now is that ‘tax reform helped us, the regulatory relief was a good idea, but we need workers, we need people and we need them to have the skills to fill the jobs that we have.’ This mismatch between the skills that are out there and these jobs, that skills gap is what we need to close. There are lots of ways to do that. 

“If you look at the National Skills Coalition, they’ll estimate that nearly half of all job openings between now and 2022 will be middle-skill jobs that require education beyond high school but not a four-year degree. So again, career and technical opportunities in high school. And then when you get out of high school to have a certificate where you can get into a course where you can learn how to do one of these skills. Although you’re not getting an associate’s degree or bachelor’s degree, you’re getting a certificate, often a stackable certificate, that can lead to a degree later. That’s what’s going to be really needed. If you look at the skills gap right now, Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute have highlighted that fact that there are so many jobs out there that need these skills. They estimate there are about 2.4 million positions that will likely be unfilled between 2018 and 2028. And this economic impact, not having these jobs filled, is about a $2.5 trillion hit to our economy. This is why all of this is so important. 

“About six years ago we started the Career and Technical Caucus here in the Senate. There was two of us, Senator Kaine from Virginia and myself and now we are have 27 senators on the CTE Caucus. Why? Because members are hearing back home about this and this has been good to raise awareness for career and technical education. It’s been helpful for us to be able to put together some bipartisan legislation that helps to promote career and technical education. Last year in the Perkins bill, for instance, Senator Kaine and I got legislation in that helps to improve the quality of CTE programs all around the country, ensuring again that college credit can be offered helping to hold up these programs to make sure that young people and their parents know about this opportunity. 

“Just a couple of week ago, Senator Kaine and I reintroduced legislation called Jump-start Our Businesses by Supporting Students Act. That acronym is the JOBS Act. And the JOBS Act is something we’ve introduced in the last couple of Congresses. But I really feel like its time has come. I feel like it’s an opportunity right now for us to move forward with the JOBS Act. One, because we’re hearing from all around the country the need for this, but, second, because we have the likelihood of a higher education bill moving this year, which would be a perfect place to put the JOBS Act. It’s a really common-sense solution to help solve this skills gap problem we’re talking about because it says very simply with regard to Pell grants, which is for low-income students, instead of just making them available for community college or for four-year colleges, universities or for longer-term courses, why not allow Pell Grants to be used for shorter-term training programs. That is what is needed right now. 

“I think this is really a fairness issue. When I talk to students, as I did this morning here in Washington, as I do back in the state of Ohio, what they tell me is, ‘Rob, I don’t have the money to get a driver’s license sometimes, to go through that process much less to get a certificate to become a welder or to become a coder or a tech in a hospital setting. And yet the government will give me a Pell Grant for me to go to a junior college or a community college or a university, but I can’t get a Pell Grant to help me get the training I need to actually get out there to get a job that I know is right there ready, good pay, good benefits.’ To me, that shows how our system is not working with regard to the modern economy and the needs that we have right now. And it’s not fair to those students. So I think we ought to be able to allow those students to use those Pell Grants for theses shorter-term training programs of less than 15 weeks. 

“I also think it is a matter of efficiency for the Pell Grant and the taxpayer. Unfortunately with regard to Pell most people who take a Pell who go to school, go to a college, don’t graduate, and there are lots of reasons for that. I think the main reason is many of them have to drop out because they have to work, but in the meantime they don’t have the degree. So they have the Pell but they don’t get the degree, not even a certificate, whereas in the short-term training programs, 15-week training programs, trust me, if somebody starts off one of these training programs, it is much more likely that they’re going to wind up getting the certificate. Again, they can see just around the corner where the job is. The certificate is, in a sense, the ticket to that job and it is a shorter-term prospect. So I think it’s a very efficient use also of the Pell Grant and we should expand the Pell Grant. Let’s not take it away from colleges and universities, not at all. The Pell Grant is an important program, but let’s allow it to be used for the short-term training programs. 

“I was at the CT program in Akron, Ohio recently. I also went to Stark State community college. They have a new campus there. We had a roundtable on workforce development. We had a lot of local businesses there who were talking about how great these programs have been for them. We had students there, we had the Chamber of Commerce and the Mayor of Akron, Dan Horrigan was there and Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro. I heard from some of those students who were already working, in high school and in college in this community college for some of the local employers. Businesses like the K company which is a HVAC company based in Akron, they work with Stark State and local high schools and get young people on the right educational track to be able to work in the HVAC field, where there are plenty of jobs right now. If you’re an HVAC tech, you can get a job. It’s been a great example where they are helping the economy, they are helping this particular business, they are really helping these students to be able to get a great job. 

“The Stark State president, Dr. Para Jones, is very innovative and working again with our high schools and working with the business community trying to ensure we’re all working together on this. I’ll tell you, Dr. Jones, the employers who were around that table, the educators around the table, the students around the table, all of them were really excited about the JOBS Act. Because they know it will work. They know this will help them deal with exactly the kind of problems they are seeing in the local community. 

“Last week I also toured a company in Hubbard, Ohio, called Warren Fabricating and Machining. As always, I heard about the need for skilled workers. It’s a great example of a company that has taken full advantage of the tax reform and tax cuts. They bought a beautiful new machine that is incredibly important for their effectiveness as a company to be table to compete with China and others, they’ve been able to raise people’s salaries and increase the benefits with their tax savings. But their issue now is getting the workforce. They want to operate at full capacity but they can’t find the people. They’ve got openings right now. 

“I also visited an advanced manufacturer called Rhinestahl Corporation in Mason, right outside of Cincinnati. They manufacture high precision parts for the aerospace and defense industry. Other employers were there, as well as Butler Tech, which is a local CTE program which has done real incredible work, really innovative. There I had an opportunity to meet with a lot of students and one of them was a high school student named Jake. He’s a chemical operator at a nearby manufacturer called Pilot. He’s a veteran, he’s completed his certificate training and his employer is now paying for him to continue his education and to be able to get a degree while he is working for them. 

“Connor was there, a high school student running machines and learning advanced manufacturing while working at a place called RB Tool. Torres, a 19 year old who went through that program, is now in charge of calibration and making sure precision tools are up to speed at these company called Rhinestahl. The teacher of all these students, a guy named Dave Fox was there. He said that his last class of 28 graduates had a combined total of 100 job offers. Think about this. These are young people going through these certificate programs, 28 young people, they had more than 100 job offers. Again, these are good job offers, we’re talking about $40,000, $50,000 a year, jobs that pay $18-$20 an hour and good benefits. And again a lot of employers will also continue to pay for them to continue their education, should they choose to do so. 

“Just last week, President Trump came to the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima, Ohio. This is an incredible manufacturing company that does something pretty unique in America, which is they build tanks. So the kind of welding they have to be trained on is incredibly sophisticated, difficult to do. The kind of machine work they have to do is really difficult, cutting the tanks’ steel is an incredibly difficult task plus some other alloys that they use to protect our troops out in the field. They need to hire about 400 additional workers in the next year or so. Partly because with the defense buildup we’re putting more money into the plant, and I’m very pleased to say that President Trump in his budget put more funding into the Lima Tank plant for this year, but we need workers. They need help training people. They need skilled welders, machinists, assembly workers, various types of engineers. Again, these are good-paying jobs, great opportunities for young people whether they are coming up through the ranks, through their high school or mid-career and changing jobs, it would be great for us to help them get the people they need.  And the JOBS Act, they all say, would be exactly what they need to help do that. 

“At a roundtable discussion at Staub Manufacturing in Dayton recently, the CEO of the company told me that he believes welders coming out of high school will be better off financially than many attorneys or doctors. I asked him what he meant by that. He pointed out that while an attorney or another professional might make more coming out of school, by the time they get out of school, law school as an example, and get out of debt and start investing, that welders are well on their way to building a significant nest egg. That’s true when you think about it.  A welder makes $50,000 a year starting at age 18. Let’s say no student debt because, again, through the certificate program and through a Pell if we get the JOBS Act passed in particular, this person’s able to be table to do so without any student debt.  

“Using an online calculator and assuming about 8 percent growth, that individual sets aside 10 percent of their income for retirement at the age of 18 up to age 67. This assumes that a person gets no raise at all, which of course that’s not going to happen. The person will get a higher salary over time as that person gets more seniority. But assuming no raise, $50,000 a year, $2.8 million in retirement savings at age 67. That is a nice nest egg to be able to live comfortably in retirement with peace of mind. Compare that to an attorney making $100,000 a year at a big law firm, starts investing it at 30 years old after getting through school, paying off debt.  That person sets aside 10 percent of his or her income will produce $2.2 million by age 67. Even though the attorney had a higher salary and was investing twice as much each month, it’s the welder making $50,000 a year that will be better off. 

“Part of this is getting people into these jobs, getting them into these jobs when they are young where they can make investments in their retirement, but also make investments in a car, be able to buy a house, able to put money aside for their kids’ education.  Just to be able to have that peace of mind that comes with knowing that you will have this profession and this opportunity to get ahead early in life. So I’m hoping that we can get the JOBS Act passed because it will help provide so many people, particularly young people, these opportunities if we can shift the paradigm. You know, stop this notion of thinking that everybody who is going through high school needs to go to a four-year college or university right away. 

“Instead think about how do you ensure that this young person can have an opportunity to get ahead in life and learn a skill where there is an immediate need and actually help our economy, because our biggest challenge right now as I see, not just in the manufacturing sector where it is particularly obvious, but across the board in bioscience certainly moving, truck driving and other professions, the biggest challenge we have right now is workforce. So this would do both. The JOBS Act has been endorsed now by the National Skills Coalition, the Association of Career and Technical Education, and the Association of Community Colleges. I know the community colleges have put this highest on their list. And the American Association of Community Colleges and other groups. 

“I’m also pleased to say again it’s in President Trump’s budget. This year’s budget actually has our JOBS Act included in it. So it’s one that is totally bipartisan. Senator Kaine from Virginia and I have been co-authors of this legislation over the years, we continue to work closely together on this. We have 10 cosponsors already, having just introduced this a couple of weeks ago. It’s a bipartisan group, mixed Republican and Democrat. We also have a lot of outside stakeholders supporting it and, again, now in the president’s budget. 

“The reason we’re getting all this support is that it works. It works. It will cover programs that at a minimum require 150 hours and eight weeks to complete. There’s some alternative programs that limit the programs by requiring them to be 320 hours. I will just tell you our community colleges tell us that none of their short-term training programs would qualify for that higher number of hours. Programs like welding, precision machining, electrical trades, all those programs will fit in the JOBS Act but not in some of the alternatives that are being discussed. 

“We need the JOBS Act now, and we think there is a great vehicle for it, which is the Higher Education Act this year. By the way, a big fan of career and technical education is the chairman of that committee, Senator Lamar Alexander. He understands the need for us to provide the kind of skills training that’s needed to fill the jobs that are out there that companies are desperate to fill. He sees this in his own state of Tennessee where he has a lot of manufacturing jobs, including auto manufacturers who are looking for more skilled workers every day. 

“As we work to reauthorize that legislation, the Higher Education Act, my hope is that colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join us in ensuring that the JOBS Act is included in that. Let’s be sure that we do deal with the fairness issue here, that we have a sense of understanding about our economy and what the needs are right now and a lot of that need is in skills and the kind of skills that the JOBS Act would provide. It just makes too much sense. 

“If we make career and technical education a priority, if we enact the JOBS Act I just discussed today, we will help tens of thousands of our young people be able to achieve their dreams, have better opportunities and just as important we’re going to be able to help our economy. Help to ensure that we do have, here in the United States, a growing economy where we have better tax policy, better regulation policy but also the workers to ensure companies don’t pick up and move because they don’t have the workforce here. 

“As companies tell me in Ohio, ‘Rob, we could do what we’re doing here in other places and not just Indiana which is next to Ohio but maybe India.’ We don’t want that. We want to have the workforce here that is needed to be able to keep these good jobs and keep these companies here in this country to ensure we can keep moving in a positive direction. And again, ensure that Ohioans can develop the skills they need to grow the career of their choice and to fulfill their potential in life.” 

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from Rob Portman http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=8C60B123-1DA5-4CD9-9F2A-BABFD3B80515