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blkkizzat · 1 year ago

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ღ𝐖𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐨𝐥𝐟!𝐓𝐨𝐣𝐢 ღ

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟏 𝐨𝐟 𝟐

18+ONLY MDNI

kizzatober series: Thrilling Ghouls

Kinktober Prompts: Breeding, Dacryphilia, Aphrodisiac Synopsis: Catching him in a lie, you suspect your boyfriend Toji is cheating on you. Where does he keep disappearing to once a month that keeps him away for often days at a time. You're fed up. You've made up your mind this time to follow him but are you ready for what you discover? CW: AU. Most warnings for P2 really. Slightly dubcon-y. Bully/mean/teasing Toji. Bratty/crazy gf reader. Rough sex. Drug ref. Werewolf transformation but this isn't that furry shit lol. Omegaverse themes I borrow heavily from but I'm not following the rules of it faithfully (I don't even know them myself lol) WC: 4k of 10.4k Lightly black fem coded but no descriptors.

A/N: This one took a bit longer expected as I recently caught a cold, boooo! But I'm realizing even in my fics I intend to be PWPs I still need to set the mood and a plot springs forth lmfao. Plus I had fun actually trying to write a bit of horror in too! I decided to split into 2 parts because of the delay already.

Big shout out to an irl bestie @sairotonin for drawing a sketch of Werewolf!Toji for her inktober for me to use in my gfx. TY sis you a real one!!

Enjoy!

“In the next 500ft, turn left.”

This was going to be the third goddamn left the car navigation told you to take in the last 20 minutes. You were ninety-nine percent sure you had been going in circles and were now lost as shit at night in the middle of nowhere.

You glance at your phone sitting in the dash-caddy.

One measly bar.

The further you traveled, the more the service bars were dwindling as well.

Shit, you had 3 full bars last time you looked.

Opting to keep ahead straight instead of turning, you cross-check your destination via the spy monitoring app you had shamelessly downloaded on your boyfriend Toji’s phone.

Toji’s current location was 45 miles outside of the city and it had been a good 10 miles since you last saw any kind of highway. The area you were in was a mix between nature reserve and private property so not even GPS could pin down the exact directions to his whereabouts.

Sigh.

You had never wanted to be That Girl™.

You know, the ones who would sneak peaks at their boyfriend’s phones, were super insecure about any interaction their man had with the opposite sex and ran down on them while they were out to catch them in the act of cheating.

But you were a woman at the end of her rope.

What else could you do?

For a few days every month Toji would simply disappear.

The various excuses he gave usually centered around his work. You didn’t know exactly what he did, but you knew enough to know most of it was dangerous and wasn’t what good society would consider legal.

Toji had scolded you before for asking too many details.

For your own safety.

He would say with an arrogant smirk.

But even when working you had always been able to get a hold of him after a few hours. It was just this one particular job he would completely drop off the face of the earth for. It annoyed you, sure, but Toij’s work never followed him home so you didn't have complaints.

That is, until you had finally moved-in with him and Megumi.

Truly, you were already like a little family.

Megumi, who had just recently started preschool, had been quick to warm up to you ever since you and Toji first introduced you to him a few months prior to that.

But living together pushed things to a whole other level. Megumi would follow you around like a lost pup and often opted to sit in your lap rather than Toji’s.

Not to mention throw a near fit if you weren’t the one to tuck him in goodnight. (Toji would never admit he was a bit jealous and would only grumble slightly that it was less of a hassle for him if you did it so you should just do it from now on).

You never even realized you had such a mothering instinct, being on the same page as Toji about no more kids, until you looked into those little emerald eyes of Gumi’s and absolutely melted.

You had grown so close that the little boy unknowingly let it slip once while Toji was MIA on that job, that he was glad Daddy went on his daddy breaks once a month so you both could have fun together by yourselves.

You tried to keep your reactions in check for Megumi but that revelation completely shook you.

A “daddy break” didn’t sound much like a work trip to you which spiked your anxiety and caused you to spiral into overthinking.

Did he need a break from you too as well?

You couldn't very well grill a 4-year old and you didn’t have the nerve to just ask Toji straight out.

So you did the only thing you could think of at the time and that was to complain to your good friend Tsukumo over drinks a few days later after Toji returned.

Tsukumo, who always seemed to have the wrong answer for everything, simply told you to do the ‘smart’ thing and download a monitoring app on his phone that would log is calls, texts and whereabouts.

You initially balked at her.

Tracking Toji had never crossed your mind.

Outside of this, Toji had never given you a reason to doubt him and you wanted to respect his privacy and trust, especially trust as you knew he didn’t let many people get close to him at all.

True, he wasn’t exactly the most forthcoming man you ever dated. You were well aware he had his many skeletons as well as ex-hookups. But Toji for the most part had been content with his gambling then coming home to you and Megumi.

He wasn’t the type to ‘run the streets with the boys (he had no boys tbh), you had only ever known him to have the occasional drink with Shiu when he wasn’t out gambling.

You had almost refused to do such a thing… That is until Tsukumo posed the question:

What’s more important Y/N– your peace of mind or his trust?

And Y/N, is trust really what’s important here at all if he is in fact already taking advantage of yours?

Touché.

Tsukumo had you there.

“Besides, you think that old dinosaur is even going to notice an extra app on his phone in the first place?”

Tsukumo quipped, throwing back a shot of sake and jiggling the empty container at the bartender for more.

“You just got rid of his old flip phone last year. I’m surprised he can even use a touchscreen without punching a hole through it. Just delete the app once you’ve seen what you needed to see.”

Tsukumo gave you this advice like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Ignoring her digs at Toji’s age, and maybe it was the 3 bottles of sake the both of you had blown through in the last hour, but you were starting to think she might be onto something.

“Mmm, on second thought, might as well keep it on there. Men like Fushiguro are dogs that need to be kept on tight leashes.”

Tsukumo grinned at you with a wink before turning her attention back to the bartender.

You still didn’t know then if you would actually go through with it.

Nevertheless, here you are now at 11:15 PM at night about to pull up on your boyfriend thanks to Tsukumo’s advice to find out once and for all if Toji was cheating on you.

You had dropped Megumi off at his best friend Yuji’s for the night, thanking Yuji’s parents for watching him and feeling guilty for lying to them that you and Toji had a date night.

Almost there.

You are within 2 miles of arriving at the vicinity of where the monitoring app says Toji is.

However, your anxieties were getting the best of you as you drove in near tears.

You turn up your music louder, the booming bass distracting you from how much darker and creepier it gets the further you drive into the wooded area.

Sighing again, you had no idea how this would turn out but you knew the result would determine whether you would be listening to Positions by Ariana Grande or Playing Games by Summer Walker on repeat during the drive back.

☠

Barely a half mile later, you see the engine light of your car flash. The pungent odor of burning oil fills the car as a plume of smoke escapes out from under the hood.

Goddamn it, Toji.

“Y/N, make sure to go get ‘er an oil change while I’m gone. Ya got like 15 good miles left on ‘er.” Toji’s voice rang in your mind.

Well the big lunk he was wrong.

You had driven at least 33 miles so far.

You mentally cussed him again.

Toji was the one who was supposed to change your oil, he used your car more than you did. Only opting to use his own blacked out unplated and unlicensed car for jobs like he was on now.

You wouldn’t have even left the house if it wasn’t for his sketchy cheating headass.

Okay, so you hadn’t exactly confirmed that just yet, but you were pissed and until you confirmed otherwise, right now he was a cheater and everything about this situation was his fault.

Pulling over to the side of the dirt road before you caused further damage to your car, you weighed your options.

Option 1: Call AAA

You had zero bars though.

Fuck.

Option 2: Wait here in the safety of the car until morning.

You would still have zero bars and you might miss Toji, making this whole trip fruitless.

If he beat you home in the morning and found you gone with Megumi at Yuji’s with the sad excuse for a 'date night' lie you gave, you would never hear the end of it.

He would taunt you into oblivion that your silly ass drove all the way up here unto the woods for your car to break down cause you were too busy being a psycho bitch to remember to get an oil change.

Option 3: Walk on foot the rest of the way to Toji.

Really the only viable option you had.

It was a good 12 miles or so back to the highway, you didn’t know how many turns you had made since then and you doubt you could make it back on foot anyway. If you were going to walk a few miles to get service again you might as well walk to where Toji was.

Sure if he wasn’t cheating you would still get ridiculed, but at least you could get a ride home.

And if he was cheating, you would hot wire his car (one of the few useful things he did teach you) and that motherfucker and his whore could find their own way home.

Resolving yourself to walk, you put on Toji's hoodie that fortunately was still in the backseat from him last using your car to go to the gym.

You really should have put more thought into planning this before you left. Besides Toji’s oversized worn hoodie that reached your mid-thighs all you were wearing was a thin white shirt and black spandex shorts.

You didn’t even have sneakers or boots, as you looked down at your fuzzy black slippers you mostly only wore outside to run short errands like dropping off Megumi at preschool or picking up groceries.

Thankfully, you did have a small flashlight in the glove compartment though in case of emergencies like this.

Flashlight in tow, you step outside of your stalled car and immediately suck in a worried breath as the weight of the chilly night settles over you like a heavy cloak.

You only have a mile and a half trek but the dirt road that stretches out before you looks endless as it disappears into the obscurity of the thick shroud of fog surrounding you.

The flashlight doesn’t do much to cut through the intense density of condensation. You had only made it a mere 20 feet from your car but you can just barely make out its faint outline.

Swallowing, you put on your bravest face and fix your gaze forward.

The reflections of your flashlight casts shifty patterns on the mist in your peripheral vision and you do your best to ignore the chill that creeps up your shoulders.

“Fuck you, Toji.”

You mumble half-heartedly, pulling the hood over head.

You didn’t really mean it though. Would-be-cheater or not more than anything you wished he was here with you now.

You were freezing, tired and all you could think about was how warm and safe you would feel in Toji’s arms. Even if you were mad at him.

You pick up the pace, wanting to get to him sooner.

Almost more unnerving than the fog itself, the forest around you is as quiet as a grave.

There are no chirps of crickets, nor hoots of owls.

Not even in the crisp cold of fall does the wind rustle through the trees, everything is silent.

The haunting nature around you seems to hold its breath as if it knows you're an unwelcome intruder who has trespassed too far.

You don’t dare peer into the trees which look taller in the darkness, closing in tightly on the dirt road. They are ghastly silhouettes of their former selves blocking any moonlight to help guide your way.

You shiver as you feel as if you are being watched from a distance.

The only noise you hear is the soft crunching of rocks and leaves beneath your feet with every unsure step you take forward.

You can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of dread as a stray tear runs down your cheek.

You couldn’t get to Toji soon enough.

Though you still didn’t have any service the GPS updated as much as it could in roaming, you were so close.

As you continue forward a shadow on the path catches your eye in the foggy distance.

Your heart quickens as you inch closer, your anticipation mingling with fear.

Shapes soon begin to take form and the harsh reality dawns upon you.

A pack of wolves.

Their shadowy figures coalesce before you through the fog as they take stock of you.

You start to feel queasy as you see their red-stained muzzles dripping with the blood of their latest kill. The grotesque carcass of a deer practically stripped to the bone lay lifeless under their enormous paws.

Their eyes, fierce and predatory, meet yours with a chilling intensity as the feeble beam of your flashlight washes over them. The deer, although large, you know is not enough to quell hunger from beasts of their size.

With a shaky breath you slowly retreat, not wanting to further agitate their already aggravated predatory senses.

Then you hear it.

From what seems to be the darkest reaches of the night, a sound reverberates from the trees, through the forest and beyond that's unlike anything you've ever heard before.

The howl that tears through the stillness is so chilling you instantly feel the lamentation that carries the weight of centuries of primal power down in the very marrow of your bones.

Even the wolves snap their heads to attention and bow their heads as if the sound announced the presence of a creature much higher on the food chain... something more ancient and malevolent…

...something terrifyingly unhuman.

The body racking shiver you experience is so intense it has you sprinting at full speed before your mind, frozen from fear, can even process you are moving.

You burst through the dense trees, leaving the road as your heart pounds like a drum in your chest and tears stream freely down your cheeks to soak the edge of Toji’s sweatshirt.

The tangled underbrush of the forest whips the soft skin of your legs and the forest itself seems to conspire against you as you navigate the obstacle course of branches, logs and large rocks all seemingly with a mission to slow you down.

You can hear the chilling howls of the wolves you saw on the road call out behind you, giving chase.

The sounds of their footfalls grow closer with every passing second.

Terrifying as they are, they hold no candle against the howl that sent you running and your body continues to propel you forward.

Panic frazzles your senses and you make the tragic error of trying to steal a glance back behind you before directly colliding with a large cedar.

Groaning from the impact you reel as you try to gather yourself, clinging to the tree for support.

You hear a twig snap behind you and you whirl around as you are faced with a largest gray wolf out of the pack who had been chasing you.

The alpha wolf’s teeth glint menacingly as their breath escapes in visible puffs in the frigid night air.

Too late to try to make a run for it again, you whimper as you resign yourself to your fate. You slid down the large tree to bury your face in your knees.

Was this it?

Was this how you died?

You weren’t even able to see Toji after coming all this way.

You also wanted to be able to hug Megumi one last time and maybe knock the daylights out of Tsukumo for her horrible ass idea.

But ultimately this was all your fault.

You could be snuggled up with Gumi on the sofa with snacks watching Anpanman but your dumbass had to go galavanting off into the middle of the woods like a fucking lunatic and now you’re about to be eaten by a wolf.

You could feel the wolf’s overbearing presence as it approached you but you couldn’t bear to look up. You’d rather spend your final moments thinking of Toji and Megumi.

Yet despite your impending doom, your head did snap up once you felt a rough tongue gently lick your ankles and curiously sniff at the ends of Toji's hoodie covering your legs.

The wolf was more than intimidating up close as its giant muzzle was the size of your entire head.

However the wolf regarded you cautiously like it almost recognized you before releasing its own chillingly deep howl and promptly running off.

Wait– T-The hell?!

You sat there at the trunk of the tree trying to process the interaction that just took place but you didn’t have much time to ponder as you heard something else approaching you rapidly.

The sound of snapping twigs and heavy, uneven footfalls don’t seem to be that of a wolf, renewing the sensation of dread through your body.

Your heart races in your chest as the ominous sounds of the being looming evermore closer become more pronounced.

From the shadows emerges a monstrous figure.

The fog doesn’t reach this deep into the forest and the moonlight that peeks between the trees glimmers on its enlarged taut muscles.

Its eyes, red, burn like fiery amber.

Fierce and resolute you can see them pierce through the darkness long before you can make out any features of the creature's face.

What you think upon first glance must be a demonic apparition from your worst nightmares ends up being–

Toji?!

As he steps into a beam of moonlight, the transformation before you is complete.

Toji’s once-human and feet hands have become formidable claws with nails like blades, his face remains mostly unchanged with the exception of his mouth which in his snarl reveals rows of gleaming, razor-sharp teeth.

He is still mostly human in appearance but you can tell he stands taller, nearly 8 feet.

The thicker body hair on his forearms bristles with raw power.

He was completely bare save for the tattered jeans barely hanging on his body that had torn from the sheer size of his enormous muscularity in this form.

Each step he takes towards you makes your heart skip a beat yet you stare transfixed, unable to look away and your tears increase.

Was this terrifying otherworldly apparition the boyfriend you had been searching for?

Time stands still in that haunting moment as Toji’s eyes bore into your soul with a predatory intensity.

His hunger and primal instincts radiates off of him like a palpable force.

“T-T-Toji?”

You cautiously inquire through your quiet sobs.

“Y/N?! What the fuck do you think y’er doing out here?”

Toji snarls back at you. His growl seems to cause the very atmosphere to vibrate and the earth beneath you quakes as your body involuntarily quivered with fear.

Toji thought he must have been losing his goddamn mind when he caught onto your scent earlier but here you were like a lost little lamb to the slaughter before him.

He came out onto the woods to be alone, away from civilization and away from you and Megumi during his monthly transformations.

It was safer that way, for all of you.

You had been fortunate the local wolf pack had acknowledged him as their Alpha and recognized his scent on you.

But there were far worse dangers in the forest besides them.

Toji wouldn’t be able to protect you like he was now.

Not with you needing protection from him too.

Protection from him as not only was it a full moon, it was a harvest moon, a mating moon.

The primal urge to rip you apart was only truncated by the more intense carnal urge to mate with you. Toji wanted to claim you as his and fuck you so hard into the girthy cedar behind you the entire tree would topple over by its roots.

He had wanted to claim you as his mate for a while now.

Even moved you in with him and Megumi as the final step but you couldn’t wait for that, could you?

You had managed to track him somehow all the way out here and throw his whole plan into the shitter.

He could barely control himself in this form as it is and now your scent, blubbering cries and the fucking harvest moon were sending him with full force into a fierce rut.

“T-Toji w-what is this!? W-what’s happened to you!? W-what are you doing out here?!”

Worry saturates your voice as you choke out your questions in rapid fire cries not giving him time to even respond.

Toji fights the predatory instinct in him who sees you as his prey and if your gaze wasn’t so focused on trying to read his face for answers you surely would have noticed him fully bricked near bursting out of his worn jeans.

You looked so appetizing.

He needed you.

However, Toji could tell your nerves were completely shot and the slightest twitch of his muscles toward you had you almost jumping out of your skin like a little bunny rabbit.

“Y-Y/N…”

His voice strained itself into a murmur as he attempted to do his best to lull you into some sort of security so he could explain things calmly to you.

Yet the way he was near salivating, drool dripping from his canines as he panted and towered over you did anything but make you feel secure.

You mistook his lust for bloodthirstiness.

“Just calm down. It’s OK.”

Toji needed you to be calm like he needed you to take steadier breaths if he was going to successfully win the tumultuous war he was fighting against his instincts to pounce on you.

There is an oppressive tension between the two of you and he can tell you are also fighting against your fight or flight reflexes.

Good girl.

It would be disastrous if you did something foolish, no telling what might happen then.

But unfortunately for the both of you, your fits of emotion and impulses are what had your crazy ass out here in the first place.

The pressure had officially gotten to you.

Toji’s lies, your car, the woods, the wolves, everything leading up to this point bubbled over because the last thing you wanted to be told right now was to ‘just calm down’.

You snapped.

“Ok? OK?! OKAY?!...TOJI WHAT THE FUCK ABOUT THIS IS O.K. RIGHT NOW!?”

You were practically hysterical as you yelled at him, momentarily forgetting your fears of Toji’s new form.

The trigger of being told to 'calm down' in a situation where you clearly had every right to feel every fucking emotion you wanted won out over everything else.

“MY CAR BROKE DOWN BECAUSE OF YOU DOING GOD KNOWS WHAT WITH WHOEVER THE FUCK OUT HERE, I LITERALLY WAS JUST CHASED BY WOLVES, ALMOST EATEN, AND Y-YOU… Y-YOU-”

A crackling snap came from above you and you realized Toji’s claws had completely ripped a large chunk out of the tree right above your head.

Your tantrum had in turn pushed him over the edge as well.

His irises flared intensely at you as you quivered under his gaze in fear.

He would have you but first, he would play with you a bit.

Things never happened the easy way with you.

Yet, that’s also exactly the way Toji liked it too. That's why he'd put up with you thus far.

A malevolent smirk dons Toji's features as his simple command issues an unsettling tremor running down into the depths of your being.

“Run.”

P2 HERE!

© ʙʟᴋᴋɪᴢᴢᴀᴛ 2023. ᴀʟʟ ʀɪɢʜᴛꜱ ʀᴇꜱᴇʀᴠᴇᴅ. ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ꜱᴛᴇᴀʟ, ᴛʀᴀɴꜱʟᴀᴛᴇ, ᴄᴏᴘʏ ᴏʀ ᴄʜᴀɴɢᴇ ᴀɴʏ ᴏꜰ ᴍʏ ᴡᴏʀᴋꜱ. ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪɴ��ʟᴜᴅᴇꜱ ꜰɪᴄꜱ, ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇꜱ, & ɢʀᴀᴘʜɪᴄꜱ. ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀʟʟ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ʙʏ ᴍᴇ ᴜɴʟᴇꜱꜱ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀᴡɪꜱᴇ ꜱᴛᴀᴛᴇᴅ. ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ

A/N: Count on Tsukumo to always given the wrong fuckin’ advice. Lmfao! Or was it the right advice in this case? Hmm we will see what happens next!

Smutty goodness in the next part. This part was just to set the horror mood!

I promise this fic isn't as nearly as long as Ghostface!Choso. It's looking to be about 8k total and I have 3.5k of P2 finished lol.

Reblog if you are both submissive and breedable for Werewolf!Toji, but likes and comments are appreciated all the same!

ღTaglistღ:

@callm3senpaii @arxliana @jujutsualy @luxiethefairy @fredswh0re @missphanosaur18 @moon-esque @briefrebelfanalmond @nikkitc0703 & @dancingwithdeities (prone bone coming in p2 just for u sweets!) LMK below if you would like to be tagged in P2. For all kizzatober fic tags comment on m.list.

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unknought · 6 months ago

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In 2007 the US Department of Housing and Urban Development started reporting homelessness rates:

As you can see in this chart (from Statista) there was a fairly steady decrease in the number of homeless people from then until 2016. It flattened out for a couple years in 2017 and 2018, and then rose in 2019 and 2020. No data was collected in 2021 (due to COVID) and the increase from 2020 to 2022 was negligible, so one might hope based on the data from this chart that the upward trend was flipping around, and that by now by now it might be on its way back down, but this does not appear to be the case.

For 2023 the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported a homelessness count of 653,104. This is a dramatic increase which blows previous annual changes out of the water. It's a 12.1% increase relative to 2022, an 18.7% increase relative to the low in 2016, and the highest absolute number of homeless people since data started being collected in 2007.

So this is one way, at least, in which standard economic metrics being up has not translated to people doing well.

An objection one can make here is that even this new high is only about 0.2% of the national population, and while things may have gotten worse for the people in the very worst of economic straits, this doesn't say much about what things are like for the rest of us.

I agree with this up to a point. (Probably not the implied argument about what we should care about but let's not get into that for now.) It's probably true that homelessness rates don't shed a lot of light on how the median American is doing. But I think they are relevant to the well-being of a lot more than 0.2% of the population.

Even though only a small proportion of Americans are homeless at any given time, there a lot more for whom the threat of homelessness looms very large in their financial considerations, not irrationally. More people who are homeless probably means more people who can just barely make rent as long as they skip a few meals, more people who stay with an abuser because they wouldn't have anywhere else to stay, more people who can't quit their job to find a better one because they couldn't afford to miss a month's rent, more people who can't move out of a mold-infested apartment, more people who are just struggling with anxiety about whether they're going to be able to make rent every month. It also almost certainly means more people couch-surfing and more people who were homeless for part of the year that happened not to include late January, neither of which would be counted in the official statistics.

How much of an impact does this end up meaning, on how many people? I'm pretty unsure, but here's a suggestive statistic from the Federal Reserve:

> Challenges paying rent increased in 2023. The median monthly rent payment was $1,100 in 2023, up 10 percent from 2022. In addition, 19 percent of renters reported being behind on their rent at some point in the past year, up 2 percentage points from 2022.

It seems at least very plausible to me that claims about how great the US economy is doing merit a substantial asterisk.

#economics

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tanadrin · 1 year ago

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It is also common to hear criticism of Israel described as antisemitic, a fact that has resulted in the paradox of the German state actively suppressing those Jewish voices that do not conform to their expectations. A state-owned cultural center, Oyoun, faces defunding by the Berlin Senate for hosting an evening of “mourning and hope” put together by Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East, a Jewish organization. On November 9, the city of Frankfurt on Main forbade a planned rally called “Never again fascism – remembering Kristallnacht, fighting anti-Semitism,” apparently due to the organizer’s past support for Palestine. The police continue to selectively enforce bans on such phrases as “stop genocide,” “free Palestine,” and “stop the war,” often with no prior announcement. A sanctioned protest in Berlin on November 10, organized by a coalition of Jewish and Israeli groups, resulted in several arrests due to the sudden mid-protest banning of some of these phrases. They included the arrest of a Jewish-Israeli woman who held a sign that read: “As a Jew and Israeli: Stop the Genocide in Gaza.” The war in Gaza comes at a moment when every major political party in Germany is lurching rightward on the issue of migration, embracing xenophobic and Islamophobic policies once reserved for the marginalized far right. “Germany cannot accept any more refugees,” Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Merkel, said. “We have enough antisemitic men in this country.�� Scholz, a Social Democrat, appeared on the cover of Der Spiegel in a determined portrait framed by the quote: “We must finally deport on a grand scale.” The specter of antisemitism has proved opportune for mainstream parties, which are threatened by a surge in popularity for the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, whose platform is proudly anti-immigrant. ... Just as reports of attacks on mosques have risen since October 7, recent incidents of antisemitic crimes have produced fear among Jews in Germany. Stars of David have been painted outside Jewish homes; a synagogue in Berlin was firebombed, albeit with no injuries or property damage. These are not isolated events; the number of antisemitic incidents in 2021 was the highest since authorities began tracking them. Yet politicians’ focus on Muslims and migrants as their source runs contrary to the facts. According to the federal police, the “vast majority” of antisemitic crimes – more than 80 percent — are committed by the far right.

#germany #politics

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demifiendrsa · 1 year ago

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The 2023 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike has officially ended after 148 days on September 27, 2023 at 12:01AM.

Some details from the contract:

AI can’t write or rewrite literary material, and AI-generated material will not be considered source material .

A writer can choose to use AI but the studio can’t require the writer to use AI software

Studios must disclose to writers if any materials given to them have been generated by AI or incorporate AI-generated material.

The WGA reserves the right to assert that exploitation of writers’ material to train AI is prohibited by the agreement or other law.

The tentative agreement includes a minimum staff size of three writer-producers for a first-season show for development rooms running 20 weeks or longer, with a formula for additional seasons tied to the number of episodes.

Other gains included span — the length of time writers will be employed on scripted shows — with development rooms now guaranteed at least 10 consecutive weeks, post-greenlight rooms securing 20 weeks or the duration of the room. These terms will apply to seasons where the first episode is written after Dec. 1, 2023, which means pre-existing programs do not have to adhere to the room size or span requirements.

The WGA entered the strike asking for a cumulative 16 percent increase in residuals over the three-year MBA and wound up with 12.5 percent.

#Writers Guild of America #WGA #WGA strike #film #television

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farfromstrange · 8 months ago

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Do No Harm

CHAPTER TEN: Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don’t

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Summary: Matt thinks back to your date that afternoon, and Foggy and Karen can't help but tease him about you. When a stranger comes to the office with the promise of money and a case, Matt gets suspicious. Later that night, when he can't stand it anymore, he calls you for comfort and answers.

Warnings for this chapter: Angst, Matt's self-deprecating thoughts, hurt/comfort, flirting, slight fluff, suggestive themes

Word Count: 4.7k

A/n: I'm so sorry that this took so long! The past few days have been so busy, and then I forgot I promised to post this on Friday. But you're getting it now!

Read Chapter 10: Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don’t here on AO3

Matt can’t stop smiling.

You smell of nature and yourself. He doesn’t pay much attention to the layers of artificial scents most products contain because to him, your natural scent is all that matters, and he knows how to tune out everything else that isn’t one-hundred percent yours. It is a fact you are so blissfully unaware of. How could you know? You have no idea just how heightened his senses are. To him, your scent is as distinctive as your heartbeat. It’s stuck to the tiny hairs in his nose; every time he takes a deep breath, he can smell you.

From the moment you stepped off the bus that afternoon, he could smell the salt on your skin, the antibacterial soap you use, and the particularly sensitive body lotion that makes your skin soft to the touch. You slathered your hands with an excessive amount of moisturizer, but it was in no way obnoxious. Matt enjoyed how the earthy tones suited you compared to the medicinal moisturizer you wear at the hospital. He enjoyed it so much, in fact, that he now can’t stop thinking about it. Even with cracked knuckles, your hands are the most delicate.

He should have kissed you. The way your heartbeat was speeding up when you bid your goodbyes told him that you would have wanted him to, but he was afraid of crossing that line. He isn’t playing a fair game, after all. You only know half of him. Anything beyond the stoic lawyer he presents on the outside could put you in danger, and he is afraid of losing you. God knows what would happen if he allowed you any closer.

Matt is drawn to you. He doesn’t want to be, but he can’t help the way he feels whenever he is around you. You offer a reprieve from the chaos that surrounds him. The world grows quiet for a moment when you’re around, and he finally has something beautiful to focus on.

The world isn’t beautiful. It’s ugly and vile, and most human beings make his experience excruciatingly painful. You take away the agony and instead replace it with a sense of giddiness that fills him with a gentle warmth. You consume him. As much as he wants to, and as much as he knows he should, he can’t stay away from you.

Foggy told him that he deserves to be happy; he has yet to realize that. Every time he tries to allow himself to feel joy, the fire in his heart moves into the shadow of a mountain of guilt, and it threatens to run out of oxygen.

You are a lot more reserved than he first expected, and when you told him the truth about your childhood, it broke him. It broke him to hear how much pain you are in. You were radiating waves of trauma, and they hit him all at once. He may relate to you, in a way, but still, he can’t fathom how bad it must have been, growing up with no one to take care of you while you had to take care of everyone else.

Something Matt is grappling with is the fact that your heartbeat was so erratic at times he feared it might break your ribs. He wasn’t misinterpreting the signs. He couldn’t have. And you weren’t lying, he is sure of that. Perhaps you were keeping something from him. If that’s the case, what does that mean for the two of you? He can’t expect you to trust him—he has no right to expect anything from anyone, especially not from someone he barely knows—but he has learned that when someone tries to hide the truth, it is worse than an unpopular opinion he might disagree on.

He wants to hold your hand again. He wants to be close to you. He wants to smell your skin, feel it under his calloused fingertips, and he wants to hear the sweet sound of your voice serenading him. If he could hold you, just for a minute, he’s sure his problems will fade away. The world will go quiet, and he can focus on you. The urge to keep you safe consumes him, but he doesn’t know what he wants to protect you from.

Matt only knows that he wants you, all of you, and it kills him that he can’t have you. To know all of you, he has to share all of him with you, and he would much rather crucify himself than drag you down with him.

As his thoughts turn dark, his smile fades. He was foolish to believe that the warmth of the sun wouldn’t be overshadowed by black clouds waiting to rain hell down on him. And Matt begins to wonder once again, if he deserves to be happy, why did God put the devil in him?

“Dude, you’re whipped!” Foggy says from the doorway to Matt’s office, leaning against it with his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

Matt raises his eyebrows. He wasn’t paying attention. When he walked in with a big grin on his face an hour ago, Foggy cheekily asked him how lunch was, and Matt only replied with, “Satisfying.”

He wants to keep you to himself. You shouldn’t become subject to his friend’s desperate need to find Matt’s one true love. Foggy doesn’t know you. It was one date that might not even go anywhere, not if Matt keeps sabotaging himself. You deserve better. He knows that. You deserve someone who treats you like the goddess you are; someone who doesn’t lie to you and can give you what you need. He isn’t sure if he can be that person. The last thing he wants is to hurt you.

“Sorry?” Matt tilts his head away from the window. The city is particularly loud this afternoon.

“Your doctor friend,” Foggy clarifies. “Your lunch date.” The grin in his voice is audible. A teasing grin. “She’s got you whipped.”

“Oh, I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His fingers start sliding over the documents in front of him, a breathless chuckle passing from his lips.

He cocks an eyebrow. “Mhm. Is that why you’re blushing?”

“I don’t blush,” Matt counters. Though he can’t deny that the blood rushes to his cheeks whenever he thinks of you. The way you smell. The way your heartbeat sounds in his ears. It is addictive. You are addictive—a drug—and that makes the guilt grow larger than life because as bad as he is for you, he knows staying away from you is a losing game.

“Sure,” says Foggy. He doesn’t believe him, not one bit. “Do I need to dust off the old tux? You know, I’d make a dashing best man.”

Matt forces a chuckle. “It was just coffee.”

“It always starts with just coffee. Before you know it, you’re having dinner, and then you’re taking her to bed before asking her to marry you.”

He throws his head back, groaning in pure exasperation. The chair creaks. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he says. “We had coffee, she walked me back to the office, and that’s it. No time for a tux yet. If you really wanna wear it, attend a ball or something.”

“Okay, first of all, she walked you back to the office?!” Foggy opens his arms. “That’s not a small thing, Matt. Only someone who wants to spend time with you walks you back to the office on her day off.”

Matt rolls his eyes behind his glasses. He would much rather continue marinating in his self-misery than fantasize about things that may not ever happen. It hurts too much. What he wants and what he believes he can have are at war.

“And second of all, Foggy says, “we’re living in the twenty-first century; balls are not a regular occurrence anymore, and I don’t have friends in higher places that could get me into one.”

Sensing an opportunity, Matt’s lips curl into a smirk. “You could ask Marci. Landman & Zack sometimes attend banquets, you know that.”

Foggy seems taken aback for a second. His heartbeat stutters. “Why Marci?” the panic in his voice is hilarious, in a way.

“Oh, so you can tease me about my relationships,” Matt retorts, “but I can’t tease you about your ex?”

“That’s different, okay?”

“Oh, how’s that different?”

“Your potential future girlfriend and my ex who is working for the same million-dollar law firm we left behind to chase the dream of independence are two different things that do not correlate!”

He’s speechless. Matt repeats his friend’s words in his mind a few times before he admits, “Yeah, no, I can’t… I can’t argue with that.”

Foggy sighs. “Thank you.”

The door to the bathroom closes, and Karen returns to her desk. Her heels click against the linoleum floors in a steady rhythm. Her steps are always light and careful. Matt could recognize them anywhere.

“Hey–” he tips his chin at the sound of Foggy’s voice again. “If things work out between you and Miss McDreamy, you won’t need a dog anymore because she can help you take out the trash.”

Karen catches that, and she laughs. “Are you comparing Matt’s girlfriend to a dog now?” she quips.

Matt is quick to cut in. “She’s not my girlfriend!” he says.

She appears in the doorway next to Foggy, placing her hands on her hips as she stands there. “Really? I thought people skipped first base and went straight to getting shared tombstones after the first date these days.”

Foggy’s laugh resembles a howl. “Can you imagine Matt sharing a tombstone with someone who holds a doctorate? People would be talking about them like, here lies Hell’s Kitchen’s greatest trauma surgeon…and Matt Murdock.”

Her fist collides with his shoulder, but she can’t stop herself from laughing regardless. Matt sighs. “Very funny,” he deadpans. It’s not that he can’t take a joke; he’s simply not in the mood for it right now.

The letters blur under his fingers. His jaw clenches when a car backfires somewhere down the block, and someone else honks four times in a row before yelling at a passerby to get out of his way.

“Seriously,” Foggy asks, “What do you have against dogs?”

“I think dogs are great,” says Karen.

“I don’t need a dog,” Matt states. He tries to regulate his breathing, tearing his focus away from the noise that surrounds him. “And I don’t need anyone to help me take out the trash. Not a dog and certainly not a girlfriend.” He chuckles forcedly at the last part.

Imagining you helping him do the things that are supposed to be easy makes him recoil. Even with heightened senses, he is still blind. Taking out the trash is harder than it should be when he doesn’t focus, and even then he could easily miss a step. It has happened a few times before, but he would never admit it.

He can use his clumsiness as an excuse for the cuts, bumps, and bruises he suffers every night on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen at the hands of criminals, but if he were to take a tumble down or up the stairs again, he would have to find a different excuse. There is nothing bad about needing help—about just not being able to do certain things—but Matt has never been good at accepting help, let alone asking for it.

A knock on the door interrupts the conversation. Matt raises his eyebrows. Foggy and Karen exchange a look of surprise.

The heartbeat belongs to a healthy male, but he doesn’t recognize the presence standing in front of their office door. Could it be…a client? The thought never even crossed their minds.

“Is that—” Foggy leaves the question hanging in the air.

Matt rises from his chair, pursing his lips as he nods. “Karen?” he asks.

She realizes that he is asking her to open the door, and her heart skips a beat. “Right,” she stammers. “Okay.”

He follows the two of them out of his office, his hands guiding him along the familiar space. The door clicks as it opens, and Karen nervously greets the stranger on the other side.

“Hi,” the voice says, deep with a hint of mischief he hides under the disguise of kindness.

The hairs on Matt’s arm stand up, reaching toward the sky. His stomach drops. Something shifts in the air when he smells the expensive cologne and the laundry detergent on the man’s suit. He carries himself with a kind of confidence that puts everyone around him in his shadow, and that is terrifying.

Matt instantly knows that they should not trust him.

The man passes the threshold and steps into their office, his eyes trailing around. Karen takes a step back. Foggy straightens his shoulders. He must look as intimidating as he sounds and smells. A rich man who radiates power like a bonfire.

“Do you take walk-ins?” he asks then.

Matt can feel Foggy’s eyes on him. He shrugs, his reaction barely visible. If he said no, he wouldn’t know how to explain it to them.

In hindsight, they should have kept the door closed.

He doesn’t tell them his name, he only hands them a check and tells them that he works for an independent contractor. Judging by Foggy’s reaction, the numbers on the check are higher than any of them are used to. But all of this money for a surprise at the police station?

If he hadn’t found him suspicious before, the alarms are certainly blaring now. Foggy is blinded by the money, and Karen seems torn, but Matt knows that they shouldn’t trust this man. Especially not for blood money.

He follows him out, only enough space between them so he won’t be caught. The stranger gets into a car, and he starts to realize that this man might be caught up in more than he thought.

The lines between the lawyer and the devil start to blur. Matt reaches into his suit jacket. The pain in his rib cage burns slowly through his flesh as the skin parts. His shirt is drenched in a deep maroon where the Russians drilled a knife into him a few nights ago. The blood coats his fingertips, that’s how he knows.

He has no choice. He and Foggy need to take the case they were presented with. If he wants to understand what’s happening, he needs to dive into the cold water. He needs to make a decision he despises with his whole being. It pains him physically to even think about doing it, but clearly, he has no other choice. He’s backed into a corner.

When he returns from the precinct that night with a guilty client demanding a jury trial and a check with money from a stranger he still doesn’t know the name of and that he told Karen not to deposit, the silence brings along an unbearable weight on his shoulders.

Stress can lead any addict into a relapse. The phone line rings. Matt sent Foggy and Karen home, telling them that they should rather recoup in the morning when they’re all rested. It has been a long day. His friends only hesitantly left him behind after he had to promise to call it a night soon. An hour later, he’s still sitting at his desk. The city is calling for him, but he can’t bring himself to move. Instead of going home, instead of going out, he is now looking for a fix—after telling himself all afternoon that it would be for the best if he didn’t because you deserve better.

“This is Dr. Clarke, who am I speaking with?” you answer.

His veins open to a release of dopamine. He relaxes into his chair. He could listen to you talk forever and never grow tired of the sound of your voice.

“Hello?” you ask again.

Matt clears his throat. “Um, hi,” he says. “It’s–it’s me. Matthew.”

“Matt! Hi. Hold on a second.” You’re not alone. Voices overlap in the background, and your clothes rustle as you try to find a quiet spot to hide.

He runs a hand through his hair. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No! No, not at all. I’m at the ER. Working, I mean,” you clarify, and the way you stumble over your words is so endearing to him. “MVC downtown. They needed all hands on deck, so I came in. It was a fucking mess.”

Your voice is laced with exhaustion, but you don’t sound too stressed, so he figures that the worst must be over. It’s like part of him knew to get his fix now. Not earlier or later but now. Your heartbeat is faint through the speaker.

“I, uh, didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

“You want me to hang up?” Matt asks.

“No.” He can hear you smirk. “Just wondering if you missed me.”

He leans forward on his elbows. “What if I did?”

Maybe if he thinks really hard, he can imagine you standing in front of him instead of miles away.

“I’d tell you I missed you too,” you murmur. “But only if you admit it first.”

“In that case, I’m saying it. I missed you,” he says.

“Good, ‘cause I missed you too.”

He fidgets with the brim of his glasses. They’re resting on his desk, his hazel eyes unfocused yet directed toward the empty space before him.

It’s a curse how enigmatic you are. You’re a magnet, similar yet the polar opposite of him, and it involuntarily draws him closer to you. Matt feels a strange flutter in his heart whenever he is near you. Even now, over the phone, the butterflies betray him. Rationally, this is a bad idea. Rationally, he should hang up. Right now though, rationality has no place in his mind.

He can’t lie; he did miss you. But that isn’t entirely the reason why he called you.

His tired eyes flutter shut. The sound of your breathing in his ear wraps around him like a gentle embrace. “How’re you holding up?” he dares to ask.

“My feet hurt, my head hurts, and I’m starving. Other than that, I’m okay,” you say. “How’s it going with you? It’s pretty late for you to be calling, isn’t it?”

“Depends on how you look at it.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass.”

He laughs. “Sorry.”

You seem to relish in the sound for a moment. His laughter dies down, and with it, your smile fades. “What’s really going on?” you ask.

Matt can’t keep anything from you. You’re perceptive, even more so than him.

“We caught a case today,” he says. “A bad one.”

“Oh.”

He imagines that your features soften with the sound of your voice. If he could get his hands on your face, he could paint a picture of what you look like, but you’re too far away, and he shouldn’t touch something he is sure he will break if he does.

You break through the fog, trying to rescue him from his mind. “Wanna talk about it?” you offer, but it’s useless.

“I wish I could, but I’d be breaking attorney-client confidentiality.”

“Ah, Lawyer Version HIPAA. I see.”

He pats the file he and Foggy took back with them after meeting with Healy, a clear account of the events that conspired at the bowling alley.

After going blind, his mind has grown increasingly more animate. When he thinks about what might have happened—what their client might have done—he can smell the copper of the other man’s blood in the air, the stench of sweat stuck to the inside of bowling shoes, and the substance they use to oil the bowling balls. He can smell plastic and junk food, and the linoleum of the floorboards. The way he sees it, their client is guilty, and even he knows it, but to understand what is happening around them, Matt needed to take the bait when it was presented to them.

Matt runs a hand over the stubble on his chin. “You could answer a question for me though,” he swiftly changes the subject.

You answer without missing a beat, “Shoot.”

“How much force would it take to crush a human skull with a bowling ball?”

His question renders you speechless. For a brief moment, he only hears the steady thudding of your heartbeat against your ribcage, and a soft smile finds its way on his lips. You’re smart, and you’re witty, but when it comes to him, you tend to lose control of the steering wheel.

He threw a bowling ball right at the pins you meticulously sorted in your mind, dispersing them. Now, you’re grappling with the words on your tongue.

“A bowling ball,” you repeat. “I’m sorry, what?”

You seem to shiver again when he chuckles. “I need your expert medical opinion,” Matt states. “Off the record, of course.”

“On how to crush a human skull with a bowling ball?”

“Not really the how but the kinda force it requires.”.

“Well,” you try to gather yourself, “I didn’t exactly study the physics of smashing a human skull with a bowling ball. They don’t cover that in med school.”

“Not even physics?” he questions.

“To a certain extent. I don’t remember that much…”

He senses a conjunction. “But?”

“Based on bike-helmet studies, it takes between 520 to 1,100 pounds,” you tell him. “That’s roughly twice as much as human hands can muster. Add to that the weight of a bowling ball, which takes away human force but adds artificial weight in the form of a foreign object to the skull, the person doing the beating would have to hit quite a few times to actually crush it.”

“So a 5’10” man of average build–” Matt prompts.

You shrug, your scrubs brushing against the speaker of your phone. “If his testosterone and adrenaline were high enough, it could have taken him a few seconds, especially if there were no signs of hesitation, but that’s just a technical assumption. In practicality, a lot of factors play into how long it takes to break the bone.”

“Could it have been self-defense?”

“If you want my opinion, it requires a lot of strength to do that kind of damage, which means it is more likely for it to have been a premeditated crime or a very sick person in a bloodthirsty rage. But that’s not my area of expertise,” you add.

“I know,” Matt assures you. He exhales. The answer isn’t completely useless, but it hardly solves anything either. “Thank you, anyway,” he says.

“Anything to help make sure justice is served.” You’re smiling again.

A scoff rumbles through his chest. “I wish it were that easy.”

“You sound a bit…sad,” you point out.

“It’s—I don’t know, it’s complicated. I don’t want to be a bother.”

You cut him off, “You’re not a bother.”

“Liv,” he says, your name a mere breath rolling off his tongue.

If he told you that he’s not sad, he’s miserable, but not because of the case; he’s miserable because of how much he wants you—how much he needs you—and he is lying to you, so his thoughts are eating him alive like little demons, and it is them in a bloodthirsty rage, not the man who crushed another man’s skull with a bowling ball. He can’t tell you that he feels as though God is out to get him. Even a sliver of the truth could hurt you, and he refuses to put you in that position.

But then you put him on the spot again, without even realizing it, and he has no other choice but to cave.

“I may not be a psychiatrist, but I’ve been told that I have a very good shoulder to cry on,” you say. “Maybe we could grab dinner on Friday and you can, um, decide for yourself?”

That is mighty bold of you.

Matt processes your offer slower than an old, used car would drive on the highway. “Dinner?” he stammers.

“Dinner,” you agree.

He has two options: go for it or say no. He has to be honest with himself though; he can’t deny you anything.

His mouth opens and closes before he finally answers, “Dinner sounds good, yeah.”

“Alright,” you sound surprised yourself. “Dinner then!”

He smiles, but the decision leaves a bitter aftertaste on his tongue. “Dinner then.”

“Maybe you should put down the gravel now and go home.”

“If you promise to put down the stethoscope and the scalpel and do the same.”

“Yes, sir.” You start moving on the other end of the line. “I’m already on my way to the locker room.”

Matt doesn’t intend to say it, but it slips his lips anyway. “Good girl,” he says.

He doesn’t have to be near you to be painfully aware of your reaction. You freeze, and with you, the blood in your veins. Your brain backfires when it tries to form a coherent train of thought, and it is loud enough for Matt to hear.

A few seconds tick by without as much as a breath from you. “Okay,” you murmur, breaking the loaded silence. You’re trying to gather your bearings and make sense of the shift in the atmosphere.

He wishes he could melt into the ground. Taking it back won’t work. He already said it. But there is nothing wrong with calling you a good girl, right? It is the truth.

To him, you are good. Beautiful, even. And you are more than anything he could have ever asked for. You’re ethereal. You deserve to know that, but he is starting to think that you may have misinterpreted his intentions.

“I didn’t mean–” he begins to explain himself, but you interrupt him.

“I know,” you say.

You clear your throat, though Matt doesn’t miss the slight edge to your voice. It’s not nerves, per se. Your voice is thick with something else, and it sends a shiver down the sensitive skin of his spine.

Do you wish he meant it the way your mind made you believe he did?

His fingers dig into the edge of his worn-down wooden desk. “So, I’ll, uh, see you Friday?” he asks, his voice hovering just barely above a hopeful whisper.

Can you hear how hard he is trying not to sound too sultry? Are you aware of what you are doing to him, even though it is a bad idea for him to even be close to you? You make him want to claw up the walls of his office and eat them. It’s scary, the things he would do for you—to you—but at the same time it fills him with intense exhilaration.

You swallow. Your tongue darts out to wet your bottom lip. “Friday, yes. I’m, uh, looking forward to seeing you again,” you reply.

If he could only take your voice and imprint it on his mind for all eternity, he would do so without hesitation.

The wood starts to splinter under his fingernails. “Me too.” Matt withdraws his hand.

You bid him goodnight, and that is the last thing you say to him before you hang up.

Silence engulfs him. The prospect of seeing you again settles over him like a warm blanket, but it only lasts for a few minutes before the comfort disappears, and he is left freezing again. Without you. Alone.

Matt tries to tell himself that Friday will be the last time, but that night, he finds himself on the rooftop across Metro General, black fabric dangling from his hand as he listens to the distinctive sound of your footsteps exiting the emergency room. You say good night to the nurses, wishing them a peaceful rest of their shift, and then you’re heading out to catch your Uber.

You took a shower, he can smell it. And you changed your scrubs for the same outfit you wore when you met this afternoon. He follows you with a tilt of his head until you’re safely inside the car, and once he’s sure that the night won’t catch up with you, he pulls the mask over his head.

He told himself Friday would be the last time, but as long as the streets aren’t safe, he can’t stay away from you. It is an awful excuse to keep lying to you, he is well aware of that, but you have drawn him in like like no other, and he would be damned if he let you go.

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dandelionsresilience · 24 days ago

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Dandelion News - October 15-21

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles on Patreon!

1. EV owners volunteer to drive voters to the polls in 11 states (and you can too)

“ChargeTheVote.org is a nonpartisan voter education and engagement initiative to enhance voter turnout in the 2024 election by providing zero-emission transportation in electric vehicles (EVs) to local polling locations. ChargeTheVote will also host a webinar for those who are interested in participating this coming Tuesday, October 22 at 7pm Eastern time.”

2. Kenya moves 50 elephants to a larger park, says it’s a sign poaching is low

“The elephant population in the […”Mwea National Reserve”…] has flourished from its capacity of 50 to a whopping 156 […] requiring the relocation of about 100 of [them…. The] overpopulation in Mwea highlighted the success of conservation efforts over the last three decades.”

3. Australian start-up secures $9m for mine-based gravity energy storage technology

““We expect to configure the gravitational storage technology [which the company “hopes to deploy in disused mines”] for mid-duration storage applications of 4 to 24 hours, deliver 80% energy efficiency and to enable reuse of critical grid infrastructure.“”

4. Africa’s little-known golden cat gets a conservation boost, with community help

“[H]unting households were given a pregnant sow [… so that they] had access to meat without needing to trap it in the wild. […] To address income needs, Embaka started […] a savings and loan co-op[… and an] incentive for the locals to give up hunting in exchange for regular dental care.”

5. 4.8M borrowers — including 1M in public service — have had student debt forgiven

“That brings the total amount of student debt relief under the administration to $175 billion[….] The Education Department said that before Biden's presidency, only 7,000 public servants had ever received student debt relief through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. […] "That’s an increase of more than 14,000% in less than four years.””

6. Puerto Rico closes $861M DOE loan guarantee for huge solar, battery project

“The solar plants combined will have 200 megawatts of solar capacity — enough to power 43,000 homes — while the battery systems are expected to provide up to 285 megawatts of storage capacity. [… O]ver the next 10 years, more than 90 percent of solar capacity in Puerto Rico will come from distributed resources like rooftop solar.”

7. Tim Walz Defends Queer And Trans Youth At Length In Interview With Glennon Doyle

“Walz discussed positive legislative actions, such as codifying hate crime laws and increasing education[.… “We] need to appoint judges who uphold the right to marriage, uphold the right to be who you are [… and] to get the medical care that you need.””

8. Next-Generation Geothermal Development Important Tool for Clean Energy Economy

““The newest forms of geothermal energy hold the promise of generating electricity 24 hours a day using an endlessly renewable, pollution-free resource[… that] causes less disturbance to public lands and wildlife habitat […] than many other forms of energy development[….]”

9. Sarah McBride hopes bid to be first transgender congresswoman encourages ’empathy’ for trans people

““Folks know I am personally invested in equality as an LGBTQ person. But my priorities are going to be affordable child care, paid family and medical leave, housing, health care, reproductive freedom. […] We know throughout history that the power of proximity has opened even the most-closed of hearts and minds.”“

10. At Mexico’s school for jaguars, big cats learn skills to return to the wild

“[A team of scientists] have successfully released two jaguars, and are currently working to reintroduce two other jaguars and three pumas (Puma concolor). [… “Wildlife simulation”] “keeps the jaguars active and reduces the impact of captivity and a sedentary lifestyle[….]””

October 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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On July 29, a day before rioting by anti-immigrant protesters broke out in Britain in the wake of a deadly stabbing attack, dozens of Israeli right-wingers stormed two army facilities to protest the arrest of soldiers for allegedly abusing a Palestinian prisoner. What the two incidents had in common was the role of social media in organizing and fanning the flames of far-right violence and an underlying foundation of populist distrust of government. But they differed in one very important way: In Israel, the protesters were openly backed by some government officials and lawmakers; indeed, at least two Knesset lawmakers and a junior cabinet minister were among the rioters. The events in Israel thus were more analogous to those in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.

The ordeal in Israel began when military police came to arrest nine reserve-duty soldiers at the Sde Teiman detention facility, where Hamas prisoners are held. Dozens of civilian activists answered calls broadcast on social media to protest and were soon storming the base. Later that day, the rioters moved on to Beit Lid in central Israel, the base where the military court was to hear the charges against the arrested soldiers, and briefly forced their way in.

Rather than expressing concern about a vigilante attack on a military facility, far-right leaders condemned the army. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, alongside Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, demanded that the military prosecutor “take her hands off the reservists.” The police—which are under Ben-Gvir’s authority—took nearly two weeks before beginning an investigation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken no action against members of his government who took part in the riots.

The Sde Teiman incident was an unusual case of far-right violence inside Israel proper. The West Bank has long been a wild west, with extremist settlers not only directing their attacks against Palestinians but against the army, too, when they feel it is interfering with their interests. That the lawlessness and violence have now spilled over the border into Israel, aided and abetted by some in the government, should come as no surprise: The far-right elements in Netanyahu’s government value chaos not only as a vehicle for promoting annexation of the West Bank but as a means of undermining institutions at home to better secure their grip on power.

How did these extremists come to wield so much power so quickly? The far right in Israel doesn’t have anything close to popular backing for its agenda: In the 2022 election, it captured just 10.8 percent of the vote (considerably less than the 37.1 percent for France’s National Rally and its allies and 23.5 percent for Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, to name two recent European elections). But it has managed to exploit an unusual situation in Israel: a combination of Netanyahu’s political vulnerability and Hamas’s devastating success on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israel has been under almost continuous right-wing rule for the past half-century, but the government formed by Netanyahu at the end of 2022 was right-wing in a very different way. The Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit parties, together with much of Netanyahu’s once center-right Likud party, not only take a traditional right-wing hard line on national security issues, but they also distrust the institutions of government and the people who work in them—what, in the United States, Trump supporters call the “deep state.” Everyone from the attorney general and army generals to officials in the Finance Ministry are seen as ideological enemies, perhaps even traitors. Thus, it’s no surprise that when the army, which is ordinarily regarded in Israel as sacrosanct, finds itself in conflict with extremist settlers in the West Bank or rioters at Sde Teiman, the far right sides with the latter.

This worldview is not very different from the anarchical, archly anti-establishment, and paranoid strain of Trumpism. In the Israeli context, however, the religious element is paramount; indeed, it is rare to find people on the extreme right who are not religiously observant. Thus, the far right’s program seeks not only to undermine the country’s liberal and democratic foundation and replace it with a more authoritarian government but to turn Israel into a religious state. Many even hold that the war and violence now besetting Israel will bring the Messiah and redemption. They want to encourage it.

The early months of the Netanyahu government saw the far right try to undermine the state from the inside. The judicial overhaul, which sought to subordinate the judicial system to politicians, was the centerpiece of that campaign. But it was not the only one. Ben-Gvir wrested personal control over the police, turning it into an instrument for protecting the right and repressing anti-government protests. Taking control of civilian affairs in the West Bank, Smotrich unilaterally advanced a policy of de facto annexation, illegal land grabs, and settlement-building.

As far-right leaders have grown more assured of their grip on power, their followers have come to feel freer to take their agenda to the street. There is no evidence that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are personally directing this violence and vigilantism, but they are encouraging it. Ben-Gvir ensures that the police avoid confronting and investigating far-right violence. He has eased the rules for handing out gun licenses, enabling more than 100,000 to be issued since Oct. 7, in many cases with little or no vetting.

It is unlikely that there is any grand strategy to spread the violence from the West Bank into Israel, but the occupied territories have served as a testing ground. Under the current government, extremist settlers have felt a new sense of empowerment and immunity in the knowledge that many of those in power back them while the rest remain silent. The result is that far-right violence has soared.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that in the first 10 months of the war, settlers were responsible for some 1,250 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, of which around 120 led to death or injury. Most of those incidents have been relatively small, but from time to time they involve dozens of rioters or more. The most recent mass rampage occurred on Aug. 15, when some 100 masked settlers stormed the Palestinian village of Jit, shooting, torching vehicles and homes, and throwing stones. One Palestinian was killed. An army investigation revealed that troops arriving at the scene initially failed to stop the rioters, who appear to have included off-duty reserve soldiers, in uniform and carrying army-issued weapons.

There’s no indication that this violence is condoned by a majority of Israelis or even a majority of religiously observant Jews, who make up less than a quarter of Israelis. But none of this matters because the far right has gained control over large swaths of the government. Spurned by the center right, Netanyahu saw the far right as the only way he could return to power in the 2022 election and engineered a merger between Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit to ensure that they amassed as many votes as possible. Today, they have the power to make or break the government and have established their authority over the police, the state budget, and West Bank policy. Determined to stay in power at all costs, Netanyahu turns a blind eye to their provocations and their repeated affronts to his authority.

Since Oct. 7, the far right has also set its sights on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as another establishment bulwark of secular values. Traumatized by its failures during the Hamas assault of Oct. 7 and preoccupied by fighting the war, the IDF was slow to respond to the surging violence in the West Bank and the penetration of far-right values into its ranks, especially among reservists.

The defense establishment has finally woken up. “Nationalist crime has reared its head under the cover of war and has led to revenge and sowed calamity and fear in Palestinian residents who do not pose any threat,” Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs warned in a parting address to troops in July before stepping down as army chief for the West Bank. In a letter to ministers in August, Ronen Bar, the director of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, warned about “vengeful attacks that are sparking another front in the multi-front war we are in; putting more players into the cycle of terror; a slippery slope to the feeling of a lack of governance.” The United States and some other Western powers have also sought to contain the violence by imposing sanctions against known perpetrators.

But the pushback is unlikely to have any profound effect on a government that sees the defense establishment and Israel’s allies as enemies. In any case, the IDF’s hands are largely tied since it’s subordinate to the civilian politicians who are creating the problem to begin with. Inside Israel, the army has no authority to act, and the police now appear firmly in Ben-Gvir’s hands.

Where will it lead? Having gotten away with it once at Sde Teiman and Beit Lid, violent right-wingers will no doubt try to strike again inside Israel. Polls show that Israelis increasingly distrust institutions, and social media can be effective at bringing out crowds. Whether they can scale up the anarchy by enlisting hundreds or thousands of people to join them remains to be seen. The far right has yet to create a mass organization capable of mounting a sustained campaign of chaos. But with its iron grip on power, it might not need one.

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neon-junkie · 2 years ago

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In the Heat of the Moment - Chpt.3

Summary: “Less than ten percent of domesticated species go into heats,” accord to Tech and his research, and (un)fortunately, you’re one of that 10 percent. What else are you meant to do? Trapped during a heat cycle with five men - five willing men who are happy to help relieve you, but not all have the confidence to say so.

Relationship: The Bad Batch x fem!Reader (she/her)

Tags: Heats, Mating, Sex pollen, Friends with benefits, Friends to lovers, Slow burn, Sex, Jealousy, Pining, Scents, slightly A/B/O, Oral (giving), Wet dreams, Inappropriate use of the force, Tags to be added.

Word count: 2k

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 4]

Chapter 3 - Sweet dreams are made of this

The following days have been... strange.

Whilst your squad has been calm and collective on the battlefield, as soon as they're off the clock, they become tense, awkward men. It's an unspoken fact that you're off, in more ways than one, and even Wrecker has come to realise why you smell the way that you do.

Well, it's not like Wrecker can help being slow, seeing as he's suffered from one too many head injuries...

Regardless, tension is starting to thicken in the air, and finding moments to satisfy yourself is becoming scarce, whether it's alone, or with company.

And to make matters even worse, you've noticed how Hunter has become snappy and reserved, most of his frustration being targeted towards Tech. Surely he's noticed something different in both of your behaviour, or scents, seeing as you two must smell of each other?

The first incident happened when the Batch returned from their supply run, a few hours after you and Tech had your most recent encounter. As soon as they entered the Marauder, Hunter's mood seemed to shift into a sulk, directing his frustration to both of you.

You had noticed the way his nostrils were flaring, and the fact that he barked at Tech for not completing all the repairs? Something that he has never done before? Hmm, strange.

Hunter knows what's up.

The others know what's up, but not who you're finding relief in.

Hunter is frustrated that you're not only in heat, but not seeking relief with him.

The others are simply frustrated because you're frustrated.

End of.

Speaking of the others, they're currently sound asleep, with yourself on watch during this fine evening. The Marauder is resting on the outskirts of Mos Espa, hidden in plain sight, after following a series of civil missions within the city.

Civil, meaning there was no fighting, but there certainly was a lot of threatening.

The Batch have been rather grouchy due to the heat, but Echo is, surprisingly, the worst, seeing as he has sand in between his joints, and he's "sick and tired of cleaning this kriff!"

Can you blame him? Poor man.

He's barely left his room, storming in there after spending hours in the refresher, attempting to clean himself up. His outburst disturbed yours and Wrecker's game of sabacc, but that wasn't a bother - you knew Wrecker was cheating anyway.

Now, they're all sound asleep, confined to their small, Military standard rooms within the tiny confinement of the Marauder. As for you, you're cooped up in the cockpit, giving you a perfect view of the city, and with the scanners on, any potential threats that may be heading your way.

Hours into your shift, and everything is clear. You're sick and tired of scrolling through the holoweb, draining the life out of Tech's data pad - the same data pad that he swears nobody else can touch, but has recently become accustomed to you touching it, all due to... reasons.

After closing all of your apps, you lock it, and let out a deep sigh, bored as ever. You rest his datapad on the co-pilot's seat, and to your amusement, spin around in the pilot's seat, trying to find any form of entertainment during the midst of the night.

That is, until you sense someone calling out to you.

Well, it's an indirect mention, almost like over-hearing your name during a conversation. You're on somebody's mind, so much so that your force sensitive scanners are picking it up, and how can you resist the urge to investigate?

Pushing yourself up onto your feet, you tip-toe down the Marauder's hallway, paying no mind to the dimly lit sensor screens, inactive for the last few hours. The dorms soon appear, and you linger in the hallways, now tapping into your abilities to see who has you caught up in their thoughts.

It takes a few moments, but you appear again, hidden in the confinement of somebody's room.

After some deep focus, you tap into their thoughts, and begin envisioning their thoughts of you.

Ah, their thoughts are not pure.

To your surprise, your favourite sniper has you on his mind, and you seem to have him down your throat. Crosshair is thinking about you - no, dreaming - wet dreaming, to be precise.

You can see it so clearly from Crosshair's perspective, and oh! you're much cuter than you realise, through Crosshair's eyes.

You're on your knees, your lips wrapped playfully around Crosshair's cock. Maker, he's thick, tenderly girthy, the perfect size that already has you rubbing your thighs together in your night wear.

If you don't leave his thoughts now, then your heat is bound to start playing up, not that it hasn't already been for the last week.

Crosshair is softly groaning as you begin taking him into your mouth, keeping eye contact, gawking up at him with nothing but admiration. He's mumbling something now... "thank you, General," before you gently nod, hum, and take him down your throat.

Oh, so he's into that, is he?

Crosshair's hands meet the wall, his palms pressing out flat, but his fingertips curve, as if he's attempting to find stability on the durasteel surface. He soon finds his bearings, and moves a hand down to hold the back of your head, only to keep you steady as he begins slamming his cock down your throat.

Okay, let's tap out for a moment.

With a deep breath, you come back to your current position - lingering in the Marauder's hallway. You're panting, your heartbeat is racing, and you're almost certain that you're about to become overwhelmed with another wave of your heat.

But the fact is - Crosshair is having a wet dream about you.

Either he's always felt this way, or your recent shift in behaviour is having an effect on him.

You don't mind, how could you? Crosshair has always been sweet on you. Well, you assumed he was just a tender, yet sarcastic guy, until Echo made a comment that, "Crosshair seems awfully soft on you. Don't get used to it," as if it were some form of warning.

His sweetness now makes sense.

And seeing as you've never sensed this from him before, it must mean that your recent shift has had an effect on him, so much so that the stubborn sniper has caved in his sleep, and his subconscious brain is seeking any form of relief.

Your back meets the wall as you rest against it, deciding what to do about the situation. Is there any harm in playing along? It's not like you two are actually doing anything, yet, you feel bad for Tech. He truly is a sweetheart, someone who has gone out of his way to aid you through these trying times. However, like Tech said, it's alright to find relief in others.

Even if you do feel awful for it.

The growing burn in your groin says otherwise. You want - no, need - to put your foot in the door, and the first step is to play along with Crosshair's little fantasy.

Your eyes flutter shut, and you tap into his mind, sensing the way that he's tossing and turning in the confinement of his bunk. You're still swallowing down his cock, far better than your actual self can, but hey, if that's what Crosshair wants?

After letting out a deep breath, you tap in even deeper, and begin taking control of your imaginary self. It's clear that Crosshair is only seeing what he wants to see, but you intend to make this vision as realistic as possible.

"Mhm!" you moan as Crosshair continues bucking his hips, thrusting his cock down your throat, letting out the filthiest sounds that you've ever heard from him. Maker, what you'd do to hear the real thing!

Your hand wraps around his cock, and with it, you free your lips. "Cross-" you grumble before taking a deep breath. "You were incredible on that mission," you bat your lashes, gawking up at him. "I can't believe you're that skilled!"

Crosshair almost collapses then and there, his knees threatening to buckle under his weight. You know damn well that praise is his weakness, seeing as you platonically praised him after your first mission together, and you could sense the way his stomach turned out of sheer excitement.

"Could you..." you pause, sucking in a deep breath, your eyes trailing to his thick cock before looking back up at him. "Could you kriff my face, please?" you coo.

Crosshair shifts in his sleep, groaning into his pillow as his hips automatically rut against his mattress. He's on the verge of tears, engulfed in the pleasures of his dream. "Of course," he pants, and crumbles as he adds, "General."

With that, your mouth finds the tip of his cock, and you barely get a second to breathe before Crosshair is slamming into you, using your throat as if his life depends on it.

Coming back to your physical self, you feel like you're about to collapse. Crosshair's dirty fantasy has caught you too, and your heat has decided that now - in the dead of night - is the perfect time to play up. That burning sensation returns to your groin, and with sin, you decide to shift your hands beneath your sleeping short to begin relieving yourself.

If any of the others leave their dorms, then all they'll see is you pathetically touching yourself in the corridor, with Crosshair's grumbles drifting faintly in the background.

But you won't let that happen, will you?

Shifting back into Crosshair's dream only makes you worse. You have to bite on your knuckles to calm your groans, and you curse the gods, for you don't have the nerve, nor confidence to march into Crosshair's room, and wake him up with the real thing.

He's close, and you can sense it. He's desperate, pathetically desperate, slamming his cock down your throat as his knees threaten to give way. To your surprise, dirty talking his way through it, mumbling half of it in his sleep. "S-such a good, General. Ah! T-Thank you, kriff, letting me use you like t-this!"

You climax before he does, slumping down against the corridor with your hands between your pants, almost drawing blood from how hard you're biting on your knuckles. Crosshair followed shortly after, and as soon as he climaxes, he wakes up, a confused groan being overheard from his dorm room.

You can sense his heavy breaths, confused state, and half-lidded eyes, gorming down at the mess on his stomach as he rolls onto his back. "Karking hell," he curses through gritted teeth as he comes to realise what happened - he had a wet dream about you, and it was so intense, that he climaxed during his sleep.

And yet, it felt so real, as if you were genuinely there, gulping him down your throat in between soft moans and words of praise. Crosshair lets out a deep sigh, a regretful one, instantly feeling bad for thinking about you in such a way, despite the fact that his conscious state didn't come up with it.

It seems you're on his mind more than he realises.

You sense him getting out of bed, and on tip-toes, you dart down the hallway, back into the cockpit, just in the nick of time. Crosshair exits his dorm whilst grasping onto both sides of his door frame, stabilising himself, still dazed from the wild ride that he's just sat through. He lets out a grumble before slowly making his way to the refresher, sleep swarming most of his semi-conscious state.

As for you, you shuffle down into the pilot's chair, your hand no longer in your sleep shorts. Sure, that was a wild, and intoxicating turn of events, but kirff- what just happened?

Seriously, what the hell just happened?!

#tbbwriting #in the heat of the moment #the bad batch x reader #tbb #tbb x reader #crosshair x reader #reader insert #f!reader #lemons #smut #bad batch #tbb fanfic #the bad batch fanfic #tbb crosshair x reader

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