#Assembler: ADA

[idealdieselmarine]

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[okitanoniisan]

having a normal one with blender

[fangirloverlode]

Ada Wong applying ligament/kinesiology tape! This was a very random idea that hit me while playing re6. She’s getting old, she needs some support if she’s gonna be grappling around everywhere. I don’t even know if KT would actually help with that but eh.

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

LIE: Rosemary Winters is captured by a group of cannibals who worship Lord Saddler

[zablife]

A Loving Wife

Tommy Shelby x Natasha Shelby (OC)

Summary: When Tommy finds the perfect woman his family encourages him to marry her and bring her into the family business, but what do they really know about his loving wife?

Author’s Note: Requested by the lovely @l1-14. I’ve changed canon timeline to suit my whims. Michael’s storyline has been delayed.

Warnings: drinking, language, manipulation, drugging, threat with a gun, murder, mention of blood

“I like this one, Tommy,” Ada said with a look of approval in her eye. It wasn’t a feeling she expected to have after so many bad decisions her brother had made over the years, but she had a good feeling about his new relationship. 

“Could that be because you picked her for me?” Tommy asked, a smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth before bringing an unlit cigarette to his lips.

Ada rolled her eyes playfully. “That’s not how it happened. I merely suggested—”

“You insisted I take her for dinner if I recall correctly,” Tommy said with a chuckle, recalling the excitement in his sister’s voice the day she’d called to tell him about the young woman with the dazzling smile and heart of gold he had to meet.

“Well, however it happened, I’m happy for you,” Ada said, touching his arm lightly for emphasis as he reached for his lighter. He could hear the sincerity in her voice and it touched him. He didn’t need his younger sister’s blessing to marry the woman of his dreams, but it would make her entry into the family much smoother if she did. Now if Polly felt the same he knew he’d found a rare creature.

He spied them talking across the room and held his breath momentarily. He could easily tell from this distance whether or not Polly liked her. Her body language would give her away.  To his great astonishment, the animated way she spoke, gesturing with her hands so openly and carefree told him what he wanted to know. 

Approaching them slowly, he listened as Natasha answered, “I’ll take you there sometime. My treat, Aunt Pol.”

“I see you two are getting on like a house on fire,” Tommy said with a grin. Looking at Polly he asked, “Aunt Pol?” with a quirked eyebrow.

“Tommy if you don’t put a ring on this girl’s finger and make her a part of this family, I’ll shoot you myself,” she said, pulling him in for a hug. He accepted, holding his cigarette out so as not to burn her. 

Turning to look at Natasha, he gave a wink over Polly’s shoulder asking, “Has she spoiled the surprise?”

“Not a bit. I was thinking now is the perfect time actually,” she said, pulling a diamond from her pocket and placing it on her finger. Polly clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling a scream. She hit Tommy squarely on the shoulder as she shouted, “You bastard!”

Turning to Natasha she grabbed for her hand, examining the ring. “When?” Was all she managed to say as she looked between them in complete shock.

“Last week when I went to London,” Tommy replied. Seeing his chance to make an announcement, Tommy motioned for the maids to bring out the champagne and made it official, telling everyone assembled his intention to marry Natasha.

Arthur was the only person who didn’t immediately congratulate the couple, sitting alone on the sofa, nursing a glass of whisky. Tommy thought it might be because he was preoccupied with thoughts of his own crumbling marriage. However, it was something more. Natasha was smart, beautiful and charming, but there was an odd way about her that didn’t sit well with Arthur. Her fingertips on Tommy’s shoulder, shifting his position slightly, and the way she removed the whisky glass from his hand without him noticing. Before he laughed at a joke, he looked to her.  However, the more Arthur drank, the further he was from a conclusion and reconciled himself to the fact that Tommy knew best.

—————————————————

“Last item of business,” Tommy said, rushing through his agenda for the day, eager to get home to his new bride. “The advertisement for the new accountant,” he said, extending his hand out to Lizzie for the typed notice that would run in the paper. 

Polly cocked her head and held up her hand before he could pass it to her. “Tommy, this is ridiculous. Natasha is perfectly qualified with her education. Why aren’t we using family?”

Tommy pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled. He didn’t want another lecture from his aunt about women in the modern work place, but he could tell she was going to insist on Natasha for the job. He knew it was partly because she wanted someone to gossip with now that Ada was working in Boston, but she also admired Natasha’s sharp mind. 

Tommy bit the inside of his cheek, not wanting to admit how much of the company business he kept from his wife, thus inciting another lecture about trust. In his defense, Natasha was clear when they married she desired nothing more than a role as wife and stepmother to Charlie. Tommy couldn’t argue with that position as Arrow House was his sanctuary and he didn’t want that peace disturbed. 

“Natasha has other things on her mind, Pol,” Tommy said vaguely as he tried to push the paper before his aunt.

She accepted, but didn’t read it, looking over the parchment to arch an eyebrow. “A child?” she said with barely contained enthusiasm. 

Tommy’s mouth quirked at one end in a half hearted smile. He wanted children with Natasha, but it hadn’t happened yet. He hated giving his aunt false hope so he shook his head. 

“Then give her something to occupy her in the meantime,” Polly said. “All in favor of offering the position to our Natasha?” Polly asked, quickly usurping Tommy’s authority. Tommy stood, mouth agape as the motion passed unanimously.

Regaining control of the meeting, he swiftly brought proceedings to a close and everyone filed out except for Polly who lingered by Tommy’s desk hesitantly. She had one more item of business, but had trouble voicing it as she wasn’t accustomed to keeping secrets from her nephew. Clearing her throat she began, “Tommy, there's something I'd like to discuss.”

Tommy flicked his eyes to her, irritation evident in his brisk movements, arranging and shuffling papers to take with him. “I told you I’d speak with her, Pol. Now let me get home,” he said briskly, tucking the documents away in his brief case.

“No, it’s not about the job,” she said with a wave of her hand. She paused before continuing on haltingly as she attempted to gauge Tommy’s reaction. “Natasha’s told me about the good deed you’ve done. The search for my son and daughter.” She took a deep breath to steady herself, feeling tears welling in her eyes as she said, “She says you might have found Micheal.”

Tommy froze in place, uncertain if he should say anymore than what Polly already knew. He had wanted to keep it quiet until it was certain because he knew she couldn’t bear any more disappointments. However, Natasha said she received confirmation of the young man's whereabouts two days ago and he realized it was time to tell her.

Tommy looked into his aunts watery eyes and gave a small nod. “Yeah, it’s true. He’s alive.” Polly collapsed into the chair opposite him, a tear slipping down her cheek as she asked, “I still don’t understand how…” she trailed off, wiping the tear away gently. 

Tommy came to sit beside her, offering a handkerchief. “Natasha’s connections in the council, people who keep the parish records. That’s all I know.”

Polly nodded quickly. “When can I see him?”

“We’ll know something soon,” Tommy promised with a reassuring nod. 

Taking Tommy's hand in hers, Polly searched Tommy's face as she said, "We got lucky with this one, Tommy. She's an angel, you know."

"She really is," Tommy agreed.

——————————-

“Tommy!” Natasha called excitedly when she heard him arrive. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him before he had a chance to remove his overcoat. He chuckled at her eagerness for him even after a year of marriage. Humming with satisfaction, he held her away from him to look at her beaming smile.

“I have the most wonderful news about the plans for the children’s home! Just this afternoon I met with Father Hughes and we reviewed the offices and drawings of the grounds with a beautiful area for the children to play. Oh, and we’ve received permission to remove the three rotten floorboards upstairs. We’ll be granted a license within a month,” she added with a little squeal of delight. Stopping to take a breath she looked at Tommy ruefully. “I’m sorry, darling, should I ask you how your day was like a good wife?” she asked, biting her lip.

Tommy shook his head as he took her face in his hands gently. “You’re perfect, you know that?” he murmured before rubbing his nose against hers and kissing her tenderly.

Later that evening as he sat with one arm around Natasha in front of a roaring fire, he asked, “Darling, do you ever feel restless here during the day?”

Natasha laced her fingers through his and rubbed her cheek along his shoulder. He felt her smirk against him as she replied, “Is this a way of asking if I miss you?”

Tommy chuckled. “Perhaps….or if you’d ever think of joining Shelby Company Limited,” he said, spilling the news quickly before he had a chance to overthink it. 

Natasha pulled away to study his face, trying to determine if her were actually serious about the offer. “Me? What would I do?” she inquired.

“You’d be our new accountant,” Tommy said matter-of-factly, wondering if she would consider it.

“I see. And what about my charity work? I couldn’t forget about that,” she reminded her husband.

“Of course not. I’d be sure you had plenty of time for that. No long hours for you,” he promised, tilting her chin to look up at him.

“Well I do know the boss so that would earn some special privileges, would it not?” she teased.

“I can think of a few,” Tommy said, dipping his head to capture her lips. She giggled into his mouth and he deepened the kiss, taking her enthusiasm as a yes. 

——————————————-

“But why, Tom?” Arthur asked, running to catch up to his brother. “You know I’d look after the lad if you’d only asked.”

Tommy looked back at his brother incredulously. “Arthur, you can barely look after yourself. Linda is God knows where with Billy and you want to look after my son?” he scoffed.

“It’d be better than shipping him off to strangers,” Arthur argued.

“It’s a boarding school, Arthur, not an orphanage,” Tommy countered, shaking his head.

“Raised by a bunch of bloody toffs who’ll teach him to hate ya,” Arthur spat. He disliked the notion and he was sure Tommy did as well. The idea of his nephew leaving the family at such a young age was unthinkable, especially when Tommy had always been against it.

“Natasha and I are doing what’s best for our son and if you don’t like it, you can fuck off,” Tommy said dismissively, picking up his pace.

“So that’s it. This came from Natasha,” Arthur said accusingly, finally understanding the logic behind Tommy’s decision to send away his only child. “Like everything else that’s rotten around here,” he added, quietly.

Hearing his brother’s remark, Tommy stopped mid-stride. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean, eh?”

Arthur stepped toward him with a smug look asking, “You’re the smart one, ain’t ya? Well ask yourself something, brother. Why would a charming, educated woman want a Birmingham gangster?”

Tommy sucked his teeth, “Someone like me?” He raised his eyebrows in question to Arthur, his anger reaching a boiling point. 

“Yeah, a pawn she can use. But you still trust her more than you trust any of us, don’t ya?” he asked jamming a finger into Tommy’s chest, the hurt evident in his voice.

“Yeah, I do,” Tommy said, pushing his brother away harshly. “And why shouldn’t I? She’s certainly got more brains than you have.”

“She’s been here less than two years. You barely know her Tommy!” he shouted.

“She’s my fucking wife, Arthur! And you’re nothing but a bloody foot soldier,” Tommy yelled, turning to leave. Smoothing over his hair, he regained his composure and after a deep breath, he added icily, “Don’t speak about Natasha again or I will cut you from this family. Understood?”

“Yes, sir, sergeant major,” Arthur answered through gritted teeth, bitterness seeping from his tongue as he stalked away.

————————————————

A sharp knock on the glass of Polly’s office door had her straightening in her chair and reaching for her top drawer where she kept her gun. As her hand hovered over the weapon, the door swung open to reveal an exhausted looking Natasha, a stack of files in her arm.

“What are you doing here so late, love?” Polly asked, shutting the drawer and motioning for Natasha to sit.

“Finishing bloody paperwork,” Natasha huffed, dropping the folders onto Polly’s desk. She looked utterly exhausted and Polly couldn’t help but take pity on the poor girl.

Polly came to sit at the edge of her desk and offered a cigarette as a show of camaraderie. As she fished her lighter from her pocket and lit their cigarettes, she reassured Natasha by saying, “I know there’s a lot going on with the new business in America, but that will all be sorted soon.”

“Well if Tommy weren’t so insistent on protecting my delicate ears, I could do more,” Natasha said with a laugh. 

“He wants to keep your hands clean. Keep you safe, dear,” Polly said gently.

“That might be true, but I have to know as much as possible to protect our interests and Tommy isn’t always focused on the larger picture,” Natasha hinted.

“How do you mean?” Polly asked, leaning forward to show her concern.

Running a manicured hand over a manila folder by her side Natasha explained, “Tommy’s being obstinate about the financial plan I’ve proposed for next year and if I knew what he was working on in America, I could be sure the company is secure.” Sensing Polly’s hesitation she assumed a sweet smile, adding, "Tommy thinks he can do this all on his own, but we women have more sense. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Polly took a drag of her cigarette, blowing the smoke up toward the ceiling as she thought. She didn’t like the idea of disclosing company secrets without Tommy’s permission, no matter how close she and Natasha had become. Tapping the ash of her cigarette into the crystal ashtray, Polly took her time answering as she attempted to be diplomatic.  “I think this can wait for you husband, dear. Don’t you?”

It was clearly not the answer Natasha hoped for as she pursed her lips and exhaled heavily through her nose, a thick plume of smoke emitting from her nostrils. She shoved her chair from Polly’s desk harshly and stood as though she meant to leave. “Honestly, Pol, I don’t know why you thought I could make a difference here if no one listens to my advice,” she said, speech harsh and clipped. Crossing to the bar in the corner she poured herself a drink, silence once again building along with an uncomfortable pressure in Polly’s chest. She felt a decided shift in Natasha’s attitude that concerned her.

Polly wondered why she was suddenly so keen on having her own way. Natasha was agreeable and polite, never rude or pushy. However, Polly thought it must be the fatigue and desire to finish up for the evening. She pitied her new niece with everything she put up with at home. Despite the love he showed for his wife, Tommy was not an easy man.

In an attempt to show she understood her frustrations, Polly broke the tension in the room with an airy laugh. “You’re right, Tommy’s never had the best set of ears. Perhaps—“

But she was unable to finish as Natasha whipped around, slamming her drink on the bar and sloshing its contents. “No! Perhaps if you listened more, you’d see that I’m the one whose favor you need to earn if you’ve any hope of seeing your son again. You see, I’ll have the information I desire one way or another, but you need me to find Michael,” she said smugly.

Polly shook her head slowly. “We’ve had all sorts in here, trying to ruin this family, but I never thought it would be you, Natasha.” She took a deep breath as she let the pain sink in fully, then her protective instinct took hold and she raged at the younger woman. 

“You think you’re clever don’t you, love? Well, don’t think you’re the first one of Tommy’s women to try and shake us down. You might just get a few pounds for your trouble, but I will personally see to it that Tommy knows exactly what you are. And even if he forgives you, I never will,” Polly said, returning Natasha’s threats with her own venom.

“We’ll have to do something about that then, won’t we?” Natasha asked menacingly.

——————————————-

Tommy exited his hotel, ducking his head to shield himself from the driving rain. Arthur and John had gone ahead hours ago and he promised to follow in the Bentley when he was finished with the last of his meetings. It had been a long two weeks away from his wife and all he wanted was to return to her. 

He didn’t get more than a few paces from the hotel before he felt someone close at his side, the barrel of a gun jabbed into his ribs. “Get in the car,” a deep voice commanded. Without seeing a way out, Tommy complied, wondering which of his enemies had found him this time.

As soon as he had been shoved into the backseat of the waiting coupe, a man in the front seat spoke from under the brim of his hat. “You disappoint me, Mr. Shelby. I had heard you’d be a much more formidable adversary, but alas you are a mortal man.” 

The discomfort from the bitter cold and drenched clothing were enough to remind him of this fact, but the insult to his reputation was far worse, unnerving him greatly as he raised his eyes to the rearview mirror. Shining white teeth and thin pale lips annunciated the next few words perfectly and Tommy found himself unable to draw his attention away from the glint in the mirror. The figure in the shadows held Tommy with rapt attention promising, “We can reach anyone at anytime, Mr. Shelby. Our people are everywhere, even in your own home at this very moment.” 

The words still reverberated painfully as Tommy thought of Natasha alone with the staff at Arrow House.  There were a number of new faces in their ranks he hadn’t properly vetted and his lapse in recent judgement was making him ill. He’d left the household to Natasha after their marriage when he should have looked after her more carefully. 

He soon found himself forcing the words through clenched jaw, trying to keep some semblance of control even as the rage built inside himself, “Tell me what you want me to do and it will surely be done.”

An amused chuckle rose from the throat of his enemy as the car engine roared to life. “Yes, I’m sure you will. When the time comes, my associate will instruct you and you will do whatever I ask.” Without further explanation, Tommy was unceremoniously dumped onto the pavement, the car speeding away from him in the dense fog.

———————————————

Tommy rushed up the steps of Arrow House two at a time, calling for Natasha despite the late hour. The house was dark and silent, no one, not even Mary coming to greet him. The stillness haunted him until he came upon the master bedroom, lit only by the warm glow of the fireplace. The eery shadows it cast on the walls made it difficult to tell if anyone were in the room and he entered cautiously. His shaking palm rested on the butt of his revolver tucked into the leather holster at his side, fingers twitching as his rational mind fought his paranoia.

The fire crackled pleasantly and a drink awaited on the side table, ice clinking against the side of the glass as it melted. The whole scene was rather peaceful and domestic, and for a moment Tommy wondered if the events of the afternoon had been nothing more than scare tactics. Frozen with indecision, Tommy caught the sound of Natasha’s melodic voice wafting from the bathroom and his shoulders sagged in relief.

“Darling, are you alright? You don’t look well,” Natasha said, approaching him in her pink satin dressing gown. 

“I’m fine…everything’s fine,” Tommy said, taking in lungfuls of air as he attempted to calm himself. His throat was dry and the room was suddenly far too warm. As he worked to remove his jacket and tie, Natasha’s fingers slipped under his gun holster and carefully laid it on the mantle. 

“Why don’t you relax, hmm?” she asked, fetching him his whisky and guiding him to sit.

Tommy slumped into the chair furthest from the fireplace as he took a large gulp of his drink. Natasha stood over him, massaging his neck and shoulders until she felt the tension begin to subside.

Tommy placed a hand over hers and squeezed as he demanded, “Natasha, I want all members of staff fired tomorrow. They’ll be paid their wages for the month and then I want them gone. Is that understood?” He stared ahead as he waited for his wife to agree.

Natasha’s only response was to remove her fingertips from the long sections of hair she’d been carding, stepping aside to take a seat on the ottoman. She shook her head as she reached for the empty glass in Tommy’s hand. “That won’t be necessary,” she said quietly. 

“So something did happen,” Tommy said, paranoia returning as he attempted to sit up straight. His head swam with the effort and he lurched forward in an uncoordinated jolt. 

“Careful, you drank too quickly, darling,” Natasha said, placing her hand to his chest and urging him to sit back. Tommy’s eyes darted to the whisky bottle and back at his wife as she explained, “It’s not poison, just a mild sedative. We both know you don’t like to be told what to do and I couldn’t take the risk of you running off before I’ve explained what I need from you.”

Tommy was unable to respond, his tongue growing thick in his mouth. He willed his hands to move toward his wife, but found his limbs woefully uncooperative. However, his mind was alive with thoughts of betrayal.

“You might be interested to know I had a little chat with Polly this evening,” Natasha hinted, peeking up at Tommy through the curtain of her hair. "I had a few questions for her, but I'm afraid we didn't get very far," she pouted, tracing her fingers along Tommy’s thigh before pulling away.

“She remained loyal to you to the end. It was truly extraordinary that she would rather give up her son and her own life rather than betray you.” Tommy’s eyes went wild and he made a guttural noise in protest, but Natasha hushed him. Standing to pace toward the fireplace, she continued, “You’ve leaned on her too long, my darling, a crutch that needed to be kicked away. But you needn’t worry, you’ll have me from now on.” She turned to face the fire and Tommy was horrified by her looming shadow, the drugs taking full effect now.

Feeling triumphant in her day’s work, Natasha turned to see Tommy standing on wobbly legs and her face fell. “Tommy, I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re a monster,” he slurred.

“No, don’t you see? I’m just like you, ambitious and opportunistic. I thought you would be proud of me,” she said, biting her lip. “When Section D assigned me to you, I was thrilled to be by the side of a powerful man I admired, but I knew I could make you more. Won’t you let me help you?”

“Ch-Charlie…” Tommy stuttered. “Where’s my son?” he asked, terrified at the notion of his only child unprotected in London.

“He’s under the care of our best people. I told you I’d take care of everything and I have,” Natasha said, coming to hold Tommy’s arm. He shook her off as best he could and she furrowed her brow with a frown. 

“If he’s going to become a distraction to our work, I’ll have to change the orders,” she warned. Tommy’s nostrils flared at the mention of harm to his boy and he lunged for Natasha, hands grappling for her throat.

“Don’t…you…dare,” he managed, throttling her with all his effort. Still in a weakened condition he couldn't hold on and Natasha managed to roll away, scrambling for the gun holster she’d removed from him. As she fumbled for the gun, Tommy pushed onto this knees, heaving for breath. The sound of the safety being released alerted him to danger and his head whipped to the side, taking in the sight of his wife aiming the barrel straight at his head.

“Natasha, no,” he called, attempting to disarm her as a gunshot rang out. 

Her face registered shock momentarily before she slumped to the floor, releasing the gun she held and clutching her blood stained chest. Tommy turned to face the direction of the shot and found Arthur standing in the doorway, smoking gun in hand as he watched his sister-in-law draw her last breaths. Tommy could only stare at his wife’s lifeless body, wondering how he had been so blinded by her charms.

“I’m…I’m sorry, Tom,” Arthur finally uttered.

Tommy shuffled to his brother’s side and clapped a hand to his back. “It’s alright, brother,” he whispered.

They stood in silence for a few moments before Tommy felt the adrenaline subside and the rational thought of finding Charlie returned. “Arthur, I need your help getting to Charlie tonight. Call Finn and Isaiah,” he ordered as he gathered his coat.

Arthur pulled him back as he said, “Tommy, wait. I’ve something to tell ya.” He swallowed harshly before admitting, “Charlie’s on the road with Aberama Gold.”

Tommy stopped suddenly, cocking his head at his brother. “What? Why?” 

“I didn’t have a good feeling before so I told the lads there’d been a change of plans,” Arthur explained, as he looked down at his shoes. He felt badly at the time disobeying his brother’s orders, but his instincts had been too strong to ignore. Now he was glad of his decision, but worried his brother might still hold the insubordination against him. To Arthur’s great relief Tommy looked grateful when he ventured a glance into his eyes.

“Thank you,” Tommy said quietly as relief washed over him. His son was safely underground and outside the reach of Section D. However, his heart still ached for Polly and he knew he would have to reveal Natasha’s despicable actions.

“Arthur, there’s one more thing and I don’t know how to tell you. Earlier Natasha confessed that she…”

“Did she say she killed, Polly?” Arthur asked stiffly. Tommy nodded. “Well, fuck her. One thing you should know about Natasha is that she’s bloody useless with a gun, Tommy,” Arthur said, a smile creeping onto this face.

Tommy's head shot up, a glint of hope dancing in his blue eyes, “You mean, she’s alright?”

"Ada's got the best doctors looking after her at the hospital. I’ll take you there now," Arthur said, taking Tommy under the arm to support some of his weight. "We should probably have someone take a look at you too. You look like shit,” he added and Tommy huffed out a laugh.

“This business is only going to get worse, Arthur. We have a new enemy,” Tommy warned as he glanced back at Natasha's body.

“Yeah? What else is new?” Arthur replied, helping him to the stairs.

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

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[deaths-presence]

Two of a Kind || Dazai x Reader Part 2: Don't Look Back

Story Summary: The search for your brother has led you into conflict between the Armed Detective Agency of Yokohama and the Guild. Fitzgerald keeps you involuntarily, that is until you finally find your chance of escape. Will you find strength within the ADA, or will you only become more astray? Word Count: 1,622 Characters Featured: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Mitchell, small ADA assembly, small Port Mafia assembly Warnings: afab!reader, slowburn, plot heavy to build up romance, hints of Fitzgerald being Yikes and abusive, usual Port Mafia violence, lmk if I happened to miss anything please

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

The next day you discovered that the Guild had arrived in Yokohama. You were still waking up from a horrible slumber when Hawthorne came to escort you out of your room. You pushed through your fatigue to get dressed, your fingers dancing over the China blue tulle that was decorated in beautiful pink flower embroidery. The dress was comfortable and easy to put on, hugging the top half of your body perfectly while the rest flowed out without being too high maintenance to walk in. You hastily put your hair up in a ponytail after brushing it before meeting Hawthorne at your door.

You politely walked side-by-side with him after he closed the door behind you. The silence between the two of you was comfortable, but you could recognize the feeling that surrounded you. Something was going to happen today, and the thought alone made the anxiety swell in your chest. It didn’t seem like it was just to have a meeting with Fitzgerald either. No, not with the prospect of reaching Yokohama.

“We are to be leaving the Moby Dick and making headquarters on land,” Hawthorne spoke quietly as if reading your mind. His eyes did not move to look at you. Everything in his expression told you that there was a storm brewing on the horizon. You didn’t quite know what Fitzgerald’s plan was, but he was never simple and respectful with obstacles in his way.

“I am to understand that there is something Lord Francis wants in this city?” You grimaced, the name poison on your tongue.

“He went to negotiate with one of the local organizations yesterday,” Hawthorne replied.

“It did not go well. Not like his other business deals that money manages to fix.”

You swore you caught a flicker of a smirk on his face. If so, it disappeared as quickly as it was shown. On your way to presumably meet with Fitzgerald, you gradually ran into more Guild members that followed behind you and Hawthorne. Your eyes catch the mint ballgown from Lady Margaret, looking refined and proper as always; Lucy with her two thick braids of red hair that bounced with each turn of her head; Melville, who was a quiet old soul that you had only caught glimpses of since being with the Guild. Even Twain with his shirt barely covering his chest would be joining you today.

Your eyes caught sight of the door you had come to loathe throughout your forced stay. It was the door where Fitzgerald spent most of his time when he had to be behind a desk, but for you it was a reminder of the physical abuse; the items thrown at you and demands to change into the person they belonged to; the hands around your throat whenever you refused to push yourself further; the threats of finding your brother and capturing him in order to make you cooperate. Fitzgerald wasn’t afraid to show his true colors. His behavior was what had gotten him so far.

You weren’t aware of the way your body was involuntarily shaking until Lady Margaret made a haughty, discontented noise. You always felt so small in her presence, especially when she turned up her nose. “Heavens to Betsy, are you gonna do that the entire time we’re here?”

Many people would rise to the occasion and become snarky in response, but you knew how Margaret could be. She came across as arrogant whether you were a highly respected colleague or low on the totem pole in the Guild. You had to admire her diligence and the way she carried herself, an air of confidence constantly around her. If she ordered something to be done, it was completed with no questions asked. It is a personality trait you wish you had more of.

You took a deep breath before slowly exhaling, some of your shaking moderately disappearing by momentarily escaping your train of thought. You offered Margaret a small smile. “I apologize, Lady Margaret. I know it can be quite distracting.”

Your words soothed her apparent irritation, seeming to approve of your apology. You both entered once the door was opened by James, the rest of the Guild filing in behind you. All eyes were on their leader that had been waiting behind the door. Though you would’ve loved to keep your body from shaking, Fitzgerald’s eyes on you were enough to destroy the momentary walls of protection you gave yourself.

“Good, the remainder of you are here,” Fitzgerald started with his usual cocky smirk, threading his fingers together and leaning forward on his desk. “We need to begin groundwork in Yokohama. Seeing as this is hardly a good proposition for central headquarters, I will be sending a couple of you to prepare the Zelda to become the head of this operation.”

Hawthorne was correct before, then. You had no doubts about the religious man after how well he had treated you so far, but it allowed you to realize that Fitzgerald must have already made his decision of who he was sending if Hawthorne knew about it.

“Margaret and Nathaniel, I entrust the Zelda to you, along with our dear new friend.” Fitzgerald’s grin brought thoughts of jumping off the Moby Dick, but you didn’t linger on the thought long before he spoke again. “The rest of you will be divided on making moves on the Detective Agency and the Port Mafia. I already have John and Lovecraft down there as we speak.”

Not a word was said. Not even a nod of acknowledgement was seen. The sound of feet shuffling to follow orders was the only thing heard, and you soon found yourself standing between Hawthorne and Lady Margaret afterwards. You were to depart with them and the others before going your own way to fulfill Fitzgerald’s wishes. There was no need to pack anything, as your belongings would be brought to the Zelda. Half of you was screaming for joy that you would be kept elsewhere, but you knew that you would still be suffering surveillance. You had observed Hawthorne and Lady Margaret long enough to know you could not escape them if you wanted to.

Your chest was mixed with several emotions as you prepared for leaving the Moby Dick.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

You didn’t expect to be involved in a fight so soon, but it just so happened that you and the other Guild members landed into a match between the Armed Detective Agency and the ruthless Port Mafia. The several eyes trained on you in shock made you want to squirm, but you only stood quietly. You noted the addition of Steinbeck and Lovecraft to your group now.

“Really? Fire!”

The woman in the pink kimono brought you out of your uncomfortable disposition, your body reacting before your brain as the gunfire reached you. The fountain behind you made your decision, activating your ability and taking on the appearance of a woman you had managed to touch in passing per Fitzgerald’s request. It didn’t take much focus since it had become a default one for you, and within seconds the men firing at you were wiped out by a wave of water that knocked them off their feet. The power of water manipulation was one of the strongest you had in your mental closet of appearance changes.

Your natural hair color was now replaced by dark, blue-toned hair that was almost black, and your eyes were now a striking ocean blue as they surveyed the rest of the area. The people who you considered colleagues despite the circumstances had already started making their own moves of attack. You continued your defensive tactic, even knocking some of the guns out of their hands before your eyes caught sight of brilliant colors that stunned you.

His eyes reminded you of watching the sunset back in the countryside where you came from, the long summer nights where the sky would turn yellow, orange, and purple before bringing forth a pitch-black sky littered with stars. You couldn’t help but stare at the boy, and despite him already sustaining injuries from before, he paused at your own hesitation. Neither of you dared move until Hawthorne broke your connection with his own ambush. You tried to hide the gasp that escaped from your lips as the boy with white choppy hair spat blood, the new injury rendering him to his knees.

The shock was enough for you to lose your shapeshifted appearance, returning to your normal one as you watched the boy collapse. You realized with dread that he wasn’t much younger than you, and you nearly knelt to help him before Hawthorne quickly stepped in your way. Those cold icy eyes of his pierced into you as they always did, but this time they felt like a warning.

“We have our own duties. Let us go.”

You were quiet before stiffly nodding in agreement, though as you started to walk away you looked back towards the boy that had given you a slice of mercy in exchange for his own life. You tore your eyes away to look at the rest of the scene. Your colleagues had swiftly left them bleeding and injured, your gaze hovering over the blonde your age with blood on his tan attire and glasses that were askew; then to the blonde who was lifeless and appeared even younger than the boy you had faced. Your stomach twisted and turned at the bodies.The Guild is not necessarily a nice organization. You do what you’re told, and that’s it. Take care to remember that if nothing else. Steinbeck’s words from yesterday rang through your head while you robotically followed Hawthorne and Lady Margaret to prepare for the Zelda.

[kurniawangunadi]

Lengkap sudah Dinamicduo Yara Bira berurusan dengan laptop. Setelah beberapa bulan lalu, Yara dengan polosnya menuang segelas air ke atas keyboard laptop dan alhamdulillah bisa diservice seketika sebelum menjalar ke mana-mana. Minggu lalu, Bira tidak sengaja meninggalkan satu manik-manik di sela-sela keyboard. Layar di tutup, pas dibuka lagi, pixelnya sudah pecah XD. Layarnya sudah bergaris-garis separuhnya.

Ngontak service center, harga perbaikannya mahal banget. Beneran hampir separuh harga baru laptopnya, nyesek banget. Menimbang sepekan, akhirnya coba kontak counter service kecil untuk nyari suku cadang copotan dari unit lain. Layar full-assembly sekalian. Akhirnya ketemu dan dapet. Meski, tetep harganya juga masih nyesek rasanya. Heuheu... tapi tidak semahal kalau ganti di Service Center Resminya. Layar copotanya yang sudah rusak pengin kubingkai, jadi pajangan. Soalnya sampah elektronik seperti ini, susah sekali buangnya. Jadi, mari kita jadikan barang kenangan. Mudah-mudahan, tidak ada kejadian "menakjubkan" lainnya lagi XD.

[obsolescent]

Kinktober - Day 17

Prompt: Shining shoes

Pairing: Trans!Ada Wong x Reader

Author’s Notes: Not me putting my experience as a cobbler into a kinktober prompt LMAO anyways. I infodump about it before the porn lol, enjoy!

Content Warnings: Inappropriate ways to clean and use shoes, P in V unprotected sex, trans!Ada, no gendered language used for reader, slight glove kink, creampie, begging, praising, use of ma'am, orgasm denial.

Kinktober Masterlist

Offering to shine your girlfriend’s shoes shouldn’t have ended you up in this situation. 

It started when you noticed some of her shoes had scuffs on them, others looking more dull than they should have. You had been organizing the closet when you spotted them, and with the knowledge gained from your job, you decided to surprise her by cleaning and polishing them.

Grabbing the ones that need it the most to begin with, you take them downstairs to the basement/your work area, where your cleaning and repair supplies are kept. Setting her shoes into a crate, you grab your apron from its hook and tie it in place, pulling on some nitrile gloves to keep any polish off your skin.

You get to work, working like an assembly line, you wipe each of her shoes down with a leather cleaner, letting them dry, before going in with a conditioner. Once that’s done, you grab a cream based shoe polish, one that can get into the scratches on the surfaces of the shoes, working it into the leather. 

Buffing off the excess leaves the shoes with a bright sheen, which can be built up over time with even more shining and buffing. Finishing with the pairs of boots and heels, you carry back upstairs in the crate, heading towards the bedroom.

Entering the space, you almost drop all your hard work when you hear a voice say, “Is my cobbler busy at work?” Gasping, you whirl in the direction of the words, finding Ada perched on the edge of the bed, legs crossed.

“Ada!” You exclaim, still trying to calm your heart rate but excited to see her home. She had been gone for a couple days due to work, unfortunately not knowing what all she does, you know it leaves her shoes worse for wear sometimes.

She cocks her head to the side, smiling. “Trying to surprise me?” She questions, standing and sauntering over to you. “Yeah, actually! Saw some of your shoes needed some cleaning and polishing, so I took them downstairs and they look good as new!” You hold out the crate to her, beaming with pride at your handiwork. “Cute,” she says, propping her chin up with one of her hands, the other held against her elbow. “But, you know, I could think of a better way to polish them.” 

So here you are, stripped bare before her, hands tied behind your back, grinding your pussy against her knee high leather boots. Ada has one hand threaded through your hair, the other tugging on your nipple. Keening, you nuzzle your face into her hand, trying to keep a steady rhythm against her outstretched foot. 

“See? This is so much better, wouldn’t you think?” She says, staring down at the mess you’ve become. “Y-yes ma’am, so much b-better,” stuttering your words out, brain murky with lust. She hums, “So good,” gloved fingers trailing down your body, ticking here and there. Squirming against the touches, whimpering at the sounds of your drooling cunt is creating against her.

“Now, for the other one,” Ada says, shifting her feet. She moves the slick coated boot away from your throbbing pussy, replacing it with the other. Knees braced against the rug, the burning feeling numb to you as you use them as leverage to continue your original pace, grinding yourself across the surface area of the leather. 

Ada leans back, taking you in. Eyes shut in concentration and pleasure, still wanting to do a good job for her, even if it’s just making more of a mess to clean up later. ‘So devoted’ Ada thinks to herself, knowing this wouldn’t get you off but being eager to please nonetheless.

She moves her foot away once more. You let out a pitiful noise, thighs rubbing together for friction. Ada tsks, “Now, don’t you want more?” You nod, looking up at her with adoration and longing, for her and her touch. She helps you stand before sitting herself back down against the bed, sliding up her dress. 

Spreading her legs, she moves her panties to the side, keeping them, her stockings, and garter belt on, she frees her cock from its confines. You whine at seeing her exposed, desperate to feel her inside you again. Ada giggles, propping herself up on her elbows, “Well, what are you waiting for? Hop on.” 

You don’t hesitate after hearing her consent, maneuvering on top of her to the best of your abilities while your hands are still tied behind you, bound with her ruby red scarf she had been wearing. Once situated, Ada’s hands keep you steady, rubbing yourself against her dick, slicking it up.

“Now you know I don’t like a tease,” She warns, feeling her nails digging into your skin through the gloves, her clutch on your waist becoming firm. “N-not trying to…” You trail off, wanting this as bad as her. She hums, allowing you to continue, before you’re letting yourself sink down. You let out a loud moan at her breaching, Ada merely sighing at the warmth of your walls grasping at her.

Keeping Ada’s length fully inside, grinding down further to allow her tip to press into your cervix. You missed this connection with her, missed having her so close. You whimper, hips swiveling but not allowing any of her to escape. She notices, teasingly she asks, “Just can’t get enough? You must have missed me so much,” she sighs again at the pressure, feeling you clenching, cunt begging her to stay.

“I did, I did, missed you so much, baby,” you jabber, “Please please please don’t leave me again,” words pouring out of your mouth, saying whatever’s on your mind. Ada coos, “Of course you know I can’t promise that, but I may be able to pull a few strings…Stay a bit longer this time,” Her hand reaches to cup your cheek, thumb rubbing against the scarlet tinted skin.

Her hips begin to jolt your body forwards, her arms securing you in place against her as she picks the momentum. You rest your head on her shoulder, moans and sighs leaving you as she uses your body as she likes.

Abruptly, she stops. Pulling your body away from hers, she moves to open the drawer on her night stand, pulling out a bullet vibrator. Your body tingles at the sight of it, the small item packing powerful vibrations that can be controlled with a remote. Taking some medical tape, she fixes it against you, securing it in place so it’s hands-free. 

Grabbing the remote, she sets it to the lowest setting before resuming her tempo. Wailing, the pleasure already so intense against your clit and walls. Tightening against her, you whimper out, “Getting close.”

“Already? We’ve just begun. Hold on a little longer, dear.” Ada says, turning off the vibrator. You groan, “No, no please! Let me cum,” She tuts at you, “Where are your manners, hm? Ladies first, isn’t it?” She questions, movements slowing. “Ugh, I’m sorry ma’am,” you whisper, burying your face into her neck, kissing. She hums, neck tilting to allow you better access.

Her hips moving almost like the waves, rolling into you, her pace agonizingly slow. Ada dislikes feeling rushed, wanting to enjoy her time, to savor it. A handful of thrusts later she turns the vibrator on again, stirring you from the trance of her rocking body underneath yours. “Ready to cum with me?” She whispers in your ear, her leather clad fingers holding the back of your head.

“Yes! Yes please, Ada, cum with me,” the pulsing of the toy melding with her languid pace has your orgasm washing over you, crying out as your pussy seizes around her cock. Ada bites her lip and tilts her head back, soft moan escaping while she finishes alongside you. 

Head against Ada’s chest, you savor the pleasure, her hand petting your hair. Free hand releasing the scarf from around your wrist, your hands reach to do the same to her hair, the black silky locks falling through your fingers. 

A kiss against your forehead pulls you from your warm headspace, Ada’s brown eyes meeting yours. “Now that we’ve said our hellos and welcome backs, I think it’s time for dinner.” You giggle, moving yourself off of her, tossing your clothes back on to begin preparing dinner.

Tags: @caramlizedtomatoes, @cheezbites, @dwkfan, @emilzke, @neondogs, @roseglazedlens, @scar-crossedlvrs

[tropes-and-tales-archives]

More Precious Than Rubies: Part 3a

This is an alternate timeline story that has a Rafael Barba track and a Sonny Carisi track. The two paths split off in part 3.

WC: 2662

TW: SVU-typical talk of rape and sexual assault cases.

AN: The prompt was "I saw you staring at each other, I just wasn’t sure if it was sexual tension or murderous rage."

When the jury read their verdict of “not guilty” on all counts, you breathed a sigh of relief and then tended to your client, who collapsed against you in broken sobs.  You got him collected, then you both went out and made a brief statement to the assembled press.  You shook Jeremy’s hand and wished him well, and then you stood a moment in the weak April sunlight.

You descended the steps of the courthouse slowly, one at a time, and thought about what you should do. 

It was late in the day – you could go back to your airless little utility closet of an office and wrap up you paperwork on the case.  Or you could start making your way towards home.  Most of the cops and ADAs went to celebrate or commiserate at Forlini’s, but two blocks up was a charming little Spanish wine bar that most tourists walked right past.  It was right near your subway stop – you could go finish your paperwork there.

You had been a good student in high school and undergraduate, and you’d been top of the class in law school.  The sole subject you struggled in had been math and calculus, so it was fortunate that law didn’t require much higher math beyond calculating what consecutive sentences would add up to.

If you had been good at higher math, you’d know what an inflection point was – a moment when a curve changes from being concave to convex, or vice versa.  Life was full of inflection points – when the path a person could take is changed or decided on.  Most times, the person in question had no idea how their little choices affected the larger arc of their life. 

Take the subway or walk.  Eat the street meat or the leftovers you packed from home.  Go to Fordham law or Columbia law.

Turn right, towards your office.  Or turn left towards home.

Today, you turned left.

********

Barba was livid.  The problem was, he didn’t know who to be madder at:  himself, or Liv, or the rest of the SVU squad. 

He should have known better.  He should have known.  How many times had SVU handed him flimsy cases with circumstantial evidence?  How many times had he sent them away, refusing to even consider a case until it was more solid?

Too many times, and yet here he was – dodging Jack McCoy, sneaking out of the office, creeping past Forlini’s without looking through the plate glass windows, ducking into a tiny wine bar.  Steadying his nerves with a glass of ruby-red Garnacha and just letting the alcohol inflame his temper even more.

Because he should have known better.

And once he worked through his uncharitable feelings about his detectives, he moved on to the irritating new public defender.  If he had been intrigued by you initially, it quickly wore off once he saw you shred his admittedly feeble case.  You caught the social media posts that NYPD didn’t, but that didn’t make you a brilliant lawyer – it just meant you were thorough.  And lucky.  The next time he faced off with you in court, he’d settle the score.  And he’d do it with the same, tiny, infuriating smile you had sported during closing arguments. 

He finished off his first glass of wine and then ordered another, along with a charcuterie tray for one, as if he didn’t already feel like a loser.  He sipped his wine slower and tried to enjoy the notes of plum and juniper.  After his last overdue annual physical (and his doctor clucking over his blood pressure), Barba had downloaded some meditation app that basically charged him $2.99 a month to tell him to close his eyes and take deep breaths.  While he waited for the world’s smallest, saddest charcuterie tray, he closed his eyes and did just that.

He could feel the tension loosen a little bit.  His pulse slowed.  He took another sip of wine and tried to savor it.  Everything would be fine.  He’d take his lumps from McCoy, then he’d march over to the 16th precinct and give Liv a stern speech about sloppy police work.  Then he’d do better, be more vigilant, work harder.

When he opened his eyes finally, his newfound serenity evaporated immediately.  Across the bar, settling into a stool and pulling a stack of papers out of a battered satchel, was the irritating new public defender.  He ducked down and watched you furtively.  You shed your grey jacket.  You ordered a glass of white wine but no food, and you bent over your papers.  Your face was drawn and serious, as if you hadn’t just scored an impressive victory against the district attorney’s office. 

The waiter bringing Barba’s food created a flurry of activity that drew your eye, and Barba saw you see him.  You nodded at him in greeting and gave him a smile, and he wasn’t sure if it was meant to be friendly or to gloat.  He embraced his foul mood as it returned and settled for the latter instead of the former.

He scowled back at you and pointedly ignored you to focus on his food, but not before he saw you carefully gather up your stuff and walk around the bar to join him.  He was unable to be explicitly rude and ignore you, so he sighed and turned to face you.

“You here to gloat?” he asked, and he watched your face turn from casually friendly to guarded.

“I’m not gloating,” you replied.  “I wanted to say it was a good case, and that you did your best.”

Barba scoffed and took a deep swig of wine, polishing it off in one gulp.  “Liar.  It was a weak case, and now you’re gloating.”

You narrowed your eyes at him and watched him as he ordered another glass of wine.  “I’d think that you’d be happy that you weren’t responsible for getting an innocent man locked up,” you said, and your voice was clipped and almost borderline angry. 

He swiveled in his seat so that he could face you directly.  You weren’t wrong, but Barba was still smarting from such a humiliating defeat – especially on a case he shouldn’t have even taken to trial.  He had no one to blame but himself, but the heady red wine was hitting him harder than his usual scotch did, so he snapped back at you.

“Enjoy your victory,” he said, and you narrowed your eyes further until they were mere slits in your face, glaring out at him.  “You won’t get another.”  And then he turned back in his seat to make sure you knew you were dismissed.

He’d feel bad about it in the morning.  You were just some green public defender, some bleeding heart, probably, and likely someone who just eked out a law degree and a license from passing the bar.  And you had kept an innocent man out of prison.  But law was a zero-sum game:  every case you won was a case he lost.

And more than anything else, Barba loved to win. 

-----

It was another month before Barba faced off against you again, and it ended in a draw – guilty on a lesser count, not guilty on the more serious charge.  You’d be able to make a plea for leniency during sentencing.  When court was dismissed, he turned to nod at you, but you deliberately tilted your head in that sometimes-cute, mostly-irritating way you had and ignored him.

The next match up was just two weeks later, and you lost it handily.  Guilty on all counts, and your client was a repeat rapist, but Barba begrudgingly admitted that you gave him a good defense.  The defendant would not be able to appeal based on incompetent counsel.  Again, you refused to look at Barba, but he couldn’t miss the tension that melted from your frame when your client was led out in cuffs.  He realized that you had to defend monsters, and he wondered if you just now realized it yourself.

He got to talk to you a little during those cases, when you both did the mandatory tap dance around possible plea deals.  Even if you were young, you were a fierce competitor, snapping back at his own witty one-liners with sarcastic rejoinders of your own.  Unlike the other lawyers he squared off with, though, you never made it personal.  You never snarked on his suits (like Calhoun), and you never called him a peacock (like Buchanan).  You just threw out obscure case law and legal precedents that he sometimes wasn’t aware of.

Meetings with you left him both invigorated and exhausted.  Like a sudden burst of adrenaline that, when it was spent, made him weary.

He conceded that you knew what you were doing.  You seemed to know the law inside and out, and you seemed to have a supernatural instinct for when SVU was floating a weak case.  Barba wondered what your relationship with Carisi had been like – maybe your ability to see through the squad’s posturing came from whatever had happened between you and the lanky detective. 

Barba asked Liv about it once.  Liv had just shrugged and said that you and Carisi had already been a couple when he came to Manhattan’s SVU, and then a few months later, Carisi had turned up to work with red eyes and rumpled clothes for a long stretch before pulling himself together.

“She was sweet,” Liv said.  “She used to bring in lunch and dinner when we were working overtime.  But she was still in school then, I think.  Fordham.”

Barba pictured you in college student garb, maybe a pair of faded jeans and a Fordham sweatshirt, your face sans makeup and your hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail.  He pictured you bringing in boxes of food for the squad, maybe sitting and chatting with them a bit while Carisi played footsie with you under the table.  He pictured the tall detective walking you out, kissing you and promising to see you at home soon. 

Barba felt a measure of melancholic jealousy for that imagined domestic scene.  He’d love to have a girlfriend who brought him food when he was working late.  More to the point, he’d love to have a reason to even go home instead of pulling late nights in his office.  His mind started to wander to an imagined scene where you brought him food in his office, where he kissed you and promised to see you at home….he shoved that daydream aside violently.  Not you.  Anyone but the irritating public defender who stung and maddened him like a deep papercut that kept breaking back open after he thought it had healed.

He wondered again idly what had broken the two of you up.  Likely being on opposite sides of the law, Barba figured.  Carisi, the cocker spaniel of special victims advocate, and you, an avenging angel of the poorest criminals Manhattan had to offer.

-----

SVU had a new case:  a sixteen year-old, Anthony Forni, was being tried as an adult for sexual assault of a neighbor in his apartment building.    

And a familiar face caught it for the defense.

Barba and Liv were in his office, chatting about the case when Carmen knocked on the door and announced you.  As per your usual routine, you nodded curtly at Liv before zeroing in on Barba like a heat-seeking missile.  You marched over to stand on the other side of his desk, and Barba knew by now not to bother with polite small talk about the weather.  He seemed to have lost that privilege when he rebuffed you all those months ago at the wine bar.

“Counselor,” he said in greeting, and his mentally girded himself for a fight.  Increasingly, your meetings with him were getting tenser.  It was his fault, probably, when he made it personal by calling you “girl wonder” sarcastically once, and you had glared at him so hard that he almost withered under the force of your stare.  Almost.

“The Forni case,” you replied.  “Let’s talk plea deal.”

He scoffed at this and saw Liv start to open her mouth to add her two cents, so he held a silencing hand out to her.  “I’ll take my chances at court.”

The corner of your mouth twitched as you fought a smile.  “You sure about that, Barba?”

“I’d consider rape in the second degree.  Five years, and he goes on the registry.”

“I’d consider forcible touching,” you retorted.  “Probation, mandatory therapy.”

Barba laughed outright.  “A misdemeanor?  Don’t waste my time.”

You held up your hand and ticked off your points.  “One, you can’t prove that my client even had sex with the victim…”

“The rape kit tested positive for lubricant,” Live cut in, and you just rolled her interruption into your list of points without even looking at her.

“Two, the victim is married and is rumored to have a piece on the side, so lubricant is a non-issue.”  You paused for a split second, waiting for another interruption.  Your eyes never left Barba’s; he wondered if you were this intense with other ADAs.  He couldn’t imagine you staring down Callier or O’Dwyer with such passion. 

“Three,” you continued, “Forni’s mother has been fighting with the victim over noise complaints for months.”

“Which gives me a motive for the defendant attacking her,” Barba cut in.

“Which gives me a motive for the victim lying,” you snapped.  “And four, I have reason to believe that my client is himself a victim of sexual abuse.  He needs therapy and support, not hard time with grown men.”

“How noble of you,” Barba murmured, and he saw you clench your jaw.  “But what about support for the victim?  Moreover, what about justice?”

“What’s just about sending an underaged kid to an adult prison?  That’s vengeance.”

Barba shrugged.  “That’s the law.”

“An eye for the eye makes the whole world blind,” you replied, and Barba laughed outright again.  He was thinking, more and more, that you were some sort of bleeding-heart do-gooder after all. 

“Embroider it on a pillow,” he snarked.  “Don’t use it for a basis of legal argument.”

“At least I keep it pithy,” you sassed back at him.  “Your closing arguments are so wordy and long-winded, you couldn’t embroider it on a blanket.”

The two of you stared at each other for a moment, and Barba refused to look away first.  Instead, he studied your face, smirking a bit at the way your nostrils flared almost imperceptibly as you raged quietly.  Finally, you blinked and stepped away from his desk.

“I’ll see you in court then,” you declared, and you flounced out without another word.  Barba could practically feel the energy in the room shift as you left, like you were a storm front passing by.

He leaned back in his chair and then glanced over at Liv.  He’d nearly forgotten that she was even there.  That was the problem with you:  in court and in these little encounters, the rest of the world seemed to fall away.  Liv, for her part, was giving him that infuriating soft smile she had when she felt like she had some new insight into Barba’s character or inner thoughts.

“What?” he barked, sounding meaner than he intended.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Her smile widened.  “I saw you staring at each other.  I just wasn’t sure if it was sexual tension or murderous rage.”

“Neither,” he said.  “And stop smiling like that.  It’s just business.”

Liv held up her hands in mock surrender and stood up to leave too.  But the smile never left her face, and she even chuckled softly to herself as she made her way to the door.

“For my money, that looked a lot like sexual tension to me,” she said, and she ducked out of his office before he had a chance to come up with a snarky response.

[darkmaga-retard]

#87 2024. The Rowen Report

Robert Jay Rowen, MD

Aug 29, 2024

Dear Subscriber,

Many years ago I faced off with witch hunters at an Anchorage assembly meeting. I belonged to a group that was opposing their legalization of their criminal fluoridation of municipal water absent passed authority. They were belatedly passing the ordinance. The medical mob joined in the chorus claiming fluoridation was one of the greatest public successes ever. The mayor appointed a cadre of citizens to study the problem. This committee recommended against fluoride. The city council passed it with the help of collectivists on the council, one of whom went on the be the key senator who was the final vote in the US Senate passing Obamacare.

Those of us opposing the poisoning of water with fluoride have been labeled as fringe, whackos, idiots, fluoride lepers, conspiracy theorists, pseudoscience, cultists, and worse. You can see continuing attacks on us:

Dentists and the “EXPERTS” have been lying to us for decades, my whole life in fact. Here’s one site still up:

“Fluoride has its own share of whacko websites. These sites claim that fluoride is poisoning us and advocate its removal from municipal water supplies, where fluoride has been added for over 60 years.”

Now I don’t expect an apology from the Anchorage Medical Society, or the Alaska State Medical Assn or Dental Assn. for the name calling and attempts to destroy my integrity over fluoridation, chelation therapy (now proven to be safe and effective), or mercury toxicity from dental fillings (also known now to be true).

We in the anti-fluoride movement have been vilified by the “TRUSTED EXPERTS”. I want you to note that the same “EXPERTS” are those that brought you the COVID scam: CDC, FDA, professional organizations, your local conventional medical doctor, even the ADA, and more. In Alaska, the “EXPERTS” ran out to native villages and spent taxpayer money to install fluoridation equipment, sometimes to levels three times what the government is now (below) saying is safe.

[mariacallous]

Why did a popular, effective, and by nearly all accounts benign English and Language Arts curriculum called Wit & Wisdom, which has been used across the country, spark organized backlash in a thriving school district in suburban Nashville, drawing accusations that it promoted “gender fluidity,” an obsession with skin-color differences, and even cannibalism? In exploring this question, Paige Williams investigates the rising influence of a new activist group called Moms for Liberty, with shadowy origins and the ability to “accept unlimited dark money,” which describes itself as standing up “for parental rights at all levels of government.” Much of that fight has been taking place at the school-board level, where the concept of critical race theory—“a complex academic framework that examines the systemic ways in which racism has shaped American society,” as Williams describes it, which is “explored at the university level or higher”—has become a rallying cry for angry parents, and an umbrella definition for every seeming progressive affront to cultural conservatism both in and out of the classroom. Williams’s story is deeply reported, nuanced, and essential reading for understanding how we’ve reached this fraught and escalating political battle inside American education.

In August, 2020, Williamson County Schools, which serves more than forty thousand students in suburban Nashville, started using an English and Language Arts curriculum called Wit & Wisdom. The program, which is published by Great Minds, a company based in Washington, D.C., wasn’t a renegade choice: hundreds of school districts nationwide had adopted it. Both Massachusetts and Louisiana—states with sharply different political profiles—gave Wit & Wisdom high approval ratings.

The decision had followed a strict process. The Tennessee State Board of Education governs academic standards and updates them every five or six years, providing school districts with an opportunity to switch curricula. Williamson County Schools assembled a selection committee—twenty-six parents, twenty-eight elementary-school teachers of English and Language Arts. The committee presented four options to teachers, who voted on them in February, 2020. Wit & Wisdom was the overwhelming favorite. After the selection committee ratified the teachers’ choice, the school board, which has twelve members, unanimously adopted Wit & Wisdom, along with a traditional phonics program, for K-5 students.

Great Minds’s promotional materials explain that Wit & Wisdom is designed to let students “read books they love while building knowledge of important topics” in literature, science, history, and art. By immersing students in “content-rich” topics that spark lively discussion, the curriculum prepares them to tackle more complicated texts. The materials are challenging by design: studies have shown that students read better sooner when confronted with complex sentences and advanced vocabulary. Wit & Wisdom’s hundred and eighteen “core” texts, which range from picture books to nonfiction, emphasize diversity, but not in a strident way. They provide “mirrors and windows,” allowing readers both to see themselves in the stories and to learn about other people’s lives. The curriculum assigns or recommends portraits of heralded pioneers: Leonardo da Vinci, Sacagawea, Clara Barton, Duke Ellington, Ada Lovelace. The lessons revolve around readings, augmented with paintings, poetry, speeches, interviews, films, and music: in the module “A Hero’s Journey,” students explore an illustrated retelling of the Odyssey alongside the Ramayana, a Sanskrit epic, while also discussing “Star Wars.” A section on “Wordplay” pairs “The Phantom Tollbooth” with Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine.

Elsewhere in Tennessee, teachers were saying that Wit & Wisdom improved literacy. The superintendent of Lauderdale County, a rural area where nearly a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, published an essay reporting that his district’s teachers had noticed “an enormous difference in students’ writing” after implementing the curriculum. Wit & Wisdom encourages students to discuss readings with their families—a father in Sumner County, northeast of Nashville, was pleased that his daughters now talked about civil rights and the American Revolution at dinner.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Wit & Wisdom became the target of intense criticism. At first, the campaign in Williamson County was cryptic: stray e-mails, phone calls, public-information requests. Eric Welch, who was first elected to the school board in 2010, told me that the complainers “wouldn’t just e-mail us—they would copy the county commission, our state legislative delegation, and state representatives in other counties.” He said, “It was obviously an attempt to intimidate.”

The school board is an American institution whose members, until recently, enjoyed visibility on a par with that of the county tax collector. “There’s no glory in being a school-board member—and there shouldn’t be,” Anne McGraw, a former Williamson County Schools board member, said on a local podcast last year. Normally, the district’s public meetings were sedate affairs featuring polite exchanges among civic-minded locals. The system’s slogan was: “Be nice.”

In May, 2021, as the district finished its first academic year with Wit & Wisdom, women wearing “Moms for Liberty” T-shirts began appearing at school-board meetings. They brought large placards that contained images and text from thirty-one books that they didn’t want students to read. In public comments and in written complaints, the women claimed that Wit & Wisdom was teaching children to hate themselves, one another, their families, and America. “Rap a Tap Tap,” an illustrated story about the vaudeville-era tap dancer Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, by the Caldecott medalists Leo and Diane Dillon, harped on “skin color differences.” A picture book about seahorses, which touched on everything from their ability to change color to the independent movement of their eyes, threatened to “normalize that males can get pregnant” by explaining that male seahorses give birth; the Moms suspected a covert endorsement of “gender fluidity.” Greco-Roman myths: nudity, cannibalism. (Venus emerges naked from the sea; Tantalus cooks his son.)

The Moms kept attending school-board meetings and issuing complaints. Curiously, though they positioned themselves as traditionalists, they often borrowed “woke” rhetoric about the dangers of triggering vulnerable students. Readings about Ruby Bridges—who, in 1961, became the first Black child to attend an all-white school in New Orleans—exposed students to “psychological distress” because they described an angry white mob. (Bridges, in a memoir designed for young readers, wrote, “They yelled at me to go away.”) The Moms also declared that, though they admired Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s iconic line about judging others “on the content of their character,” the book “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington” was unacceptable, because it contained historical photographs—segregated drinking fountains, firefighters blasting Black Americans with hoses—that might make kids feel bad. The Moms considered it divisive for Wit & Wisdom to urge instructors to remind students that racial slurs are “words people use to show disrespect and hatred towards people of different races.”

At one meeting, Welch watched, stunned, as a Moms member said, “You are poisoning our children,” and “Wit & Wisdom must go!” Welch told me, “They went from zero to a hundred. Everything from them was aggressive, and threatening in nature.” He said, “It was not ‘Let’s have a dialogue.’ It was ‘Here are our demands.’ ”

When the women in T-shirts first showed up, Welch had never heard of Moms for Liberty, and he didn’t recognize its members. The group’s leader, Robin Steenman, was in her early forties, with shoulder-length blond hair; in coloring and build, she resembled Marjorie Taylor Greene. Board of Education members struggled to understand why she’d inserted herself into a matter that didn’t concern her: Steenman had no children in the public schools.

Moms for Liberty members soon escalated the conflict, publicly asserting that Williamson County Schools had adopted Wit & Wisdom hurriedly, and in violation of state rules. The school board still wasn’t sure what Moms for Liberty was—who founded it, who funded it. Nevertheless, the district assembled a reassessment team to review the curriculum and the adoption process. At a public “work session” in June, 2021, the team announced that, after a preliminary review, it hadn’t found any violations of protocol. Teachers had spent a full workday familiarizing themselves with Wit & Wisdom before implementing it. As Jenny Lopez, the district’s curriculum director, explained, “Teachers actually had more time than they’ve ever had to look at materials.”

The superintendent, Jason Golden, urged his colleagues to take parental feedback seriously, including worries that certain Wit & Wisdom content was too mature for young kids. For example, there were gruesome details in books about shark attacks and about war. Golden told the board, “These are real concerns.” Yet Golden also recalled telling a Moms for Liberty representative how much he trusted the district’s processes for evaluating curricula.

The review committee ultimately concluded that Wit & Wisdom had been an over-all success; still, administrators decided to survey teachers quarterly about how the curriculum was working. They limited access to the gorier images in one Civil War book and imposed similar “guardrails” involving “Hatchet,” a popular young-adult novel in which a character attempts suicide. “Walk Two Moons,” a novel by the Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech, about a daughter’s quest to find her missing mother, was eventually removed from the Williamson version of the program, not because its content was deemed objectionable but, rather, to adjust the pacing of one fourth-grade module. Golden, who is tall and genial, told the board members, “The overwhelming feedback that we got was: ‘Man, can’t we just read something uplifting in fourth grade?’ And we felt the same way!”

At the work session, Golden shared one end of a conference table with Nancy Garrett, the board’s chair. Garrett, who has rectangular glasses and a blond bob, is from a family that has attended or worked in Williamson County Schools for three generations. She had won the chairmanship, by unanimous vote, the previous August. At one point, she asked an assistant superintendent who had overseen the selection and review of Wit & Wisdom whether “the concept of critical race theory” had come up during the process. No, the assistant superintendent said.

Moms for Liberty members were portraying Wit & Wisdom as “critical race theory” in disguise. Garrett found this baffling. C.R.T., a complex academic framework that examines the systemic ways in which racism has shaped American society, is explored at the university level or higher. As far as the board knew, Williamson County Schools had never introduced the concept. Yet there had been such a deluge of references to it that Garrett had delved into her old e-mails, in an unsuccessful attempt to identify the origins of the outrage. She told her colleagues, “I guess I’m wondering what happened.”

In September, 2020—four months after the murder of George Floyd, two months before the Presidential election, and a month into Williamson County Schools’ use of Wit & Wisdom—Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show, on Fox News, and called critical race theory “an existential threat to the United States.” Rufo capitalized on the fact that, given C.R.T.’s academic provenance, few Americans had heard of the concept. He argued that liberal educators, under the bland banner of “diversity,” were manipulating students into thinking of America not as a vibrant champion of democracy but as a shameful embodiment of white supremacy. (As he framed things, there were no in-between positions.) Rufo later called C.R.T. “the perfect villain”—a term that “connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American views.”

Rufo found a receptive ear in President Donald Trump, who was already ranting about “The 1619 Project,” the collection of Times Magazine essays in which slavery is placed at the heart of the nation’s founding. On Twitter, Trump had warned that the Department of Education would defund any school whose classroom taught material from the project. Trump conferred with Rufo and banned federal agencies from conducting “un-American propaganda training sessions” involving “critical race theory” or “white privilege.” Trump said that Black Lives Matter protests were proliferating not because of anger over police abuses but because of “decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools.” Establishing a “1776 Commission,” he urged “patriotic moms and dads” to demand that schools stop feeding children “hateful lies about this country.” (The American Historical Association condemned the Administration’s eventual “1776 Report,” highlighting its many inaccuracies and arguing that it attempted to airbrush history and “elevate ignorance about the past to a civic virtue.”)

Nearly nine hundred school districts nationwide were soon targeted by anti-C.R.T. campaigns, many of which adopted language that closely echoed Trump’s order not to teach material that made others “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.” In some red states, the vague wording was enshrined as law. Republicans filed what became known as “anti-C.R.T.” bills; they were seemingly cut and pasted from templates, with similarly phrased references to such terms as “divisive concepts” and “indoctrination.”

Williamson County Schools was uneventfully wrapping up its first term with Wit & Wisdom when, in early December, 2020, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which generates model legislation for right-leaning lawmakers, hosted a Webinar about “reclaiming education and the American dream.” A representative of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, warned that elements of a “Black Lives Matter curriculum” were “now in our schools.” Rufo—correctly predicting that Joe Biden, then the President-elect, would abolish Trump’s executive order—urged state legislators and governors to take up the fight.

Continuing the agitation wasn’t just an act of fealty to Trump; it was cunning politics. The fear that C.R.T. would cause children to become fixated on race has resonated with enough voters to help tip important elections. Last November, Glenn Youngkin, a candidate for the governorship of Virginia, won an upset victory after repeatedly warning that the “curriculum has gone haywire”—and promising to sign an executive order banning C.R.T. from schools. Jatia Wrighten, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the Washington Post that Youngkin had “activated white women to vote in a very specific way that they feel like is protecting their children.”

Days after the alec Webinar on “reclaiming education,” three women in Florida filed incorporation papers for Moms for Liberty, Inc., later declaring that their “sole purpose” was to “fight for parental rights” to choose what sort of education was best for their kids. One of the organization’s founders, Tina Descovich—who had recently lost reëlection to the school board of Brevard County, Florida, after opposing pandemic safety protocols—soon appeared on Rush Limbaugh’s show. Declaring plans to “start with school boards and move on from there,” she said of like-minded parents, “It sounds a little melodramatic, but there is evil working against us on a daily basis.” maga media—“Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Breitbart—showcased Moms for Liberty. Media Matters, the liberal watchdog, argued that influential right-wing media figures were essentially “recruiting their eager audience” for the Moms’ campaign.

Moms for Liberty, which is sometimes referred to as M4L or MFL, is so new that it is hard to parse, from public documents, what its leaders are getting paid. (The founders say that the chairs of local chapters are volunteers.) The group describes itself as a “grassroots” organization, yet its instant absorption by the conservative mediasphere has led some critics to suspect it of being an Astroturf group—an operation secretly funded by moneyed interests. Moms for Liberty registered with the I.R.S. as the kind of social-welfare nonprofit that can accept unlimited dark money.

The leaders had deep G.O.P. connections. One, Marie Rogerson, was a successful Republican political strategist. The other, Bridget Ziegler, a school-board member in Sarasota County, is married to the vice-chair of the Florida G.O.P., Christian Ziegler, who told the Washington Post, “I have been trying for a dozen years to get twenty- and thirty-year-old females involved with the Republican Party, and it was a heavy lift to get that demographic. . . . But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me.” Moms for Liberty worked with the office of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, to help craft the state’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, which DeSantis signed into law this past March; it forbids instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in “kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate.”

A national phalanx of interconnected organizations—including the Manhattan Institute, where Rufo is a fellow, and a group called Moms for America—supported the suite of talking points about C.R.T. According to NBC News, in a single week last year Breitbart alone published seven hundred and fifty posts or articles in which the theory was mentioned. Glenn Beck, the right-wing pundit, declared that C.R.T. is a “poison,” urging his audience, “Stand up in your community and fire the teachers. Fire them!”

On March 15, 2021, Rufo, in a tweet thread, overtly described a key element of the far right’s evolving strategy: “We have successfully frozen their brand—‘critical race theory’—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.” He added, “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ ”

Williamson County has some of Tennessee’s top-ranked schools. “That’s why people move here,” Eric Welch, the longtime school-board member, told me. He describes the school system as an economic “asset that pays off.” Williamson County has the state’s second-lowest unemployment rate and the highest property values: the median home value exceeds eight hundred thousand dollars.

It is not a diverse place. Eighty-eight per cent of residents are white. Ninety-five per cent of the school district’s teachers are white. Until September, all twelve school-board members and the superintendent were white. A Confederate monument anchors the town square of the county seat, Franklin. The square was publicly marked as a former slave market only three years ago. The Confederate flag still flies prominently in some areas. When the white father of Black children recently complained about this at a school-board meeting, a man in the audience sneered, “We’re in the South! ”

In 2018, several parents joined forces to point out that schools in Williamson County could work harder to be welcoming to children of color. The group, which became known as the Cultural Competency Council, included Black, Asian American, Jewish, and L.G.B.T.Q.+ residents. A school-district official who served as a liaison to the council created videos for teacher training and development, including one about privilege. That video’s language had clearly been calibrated to preëmpt defensive reactions: a narrator underscored that the concept of privilege was “not meant to suggest that someone has never struggled or that success is unearned.” Even so, the conservative media pounced: the Tennessee Star said that the video took viewers on a guilt trip about “the perks white males supposedly have that others do not, America’s supposed dysfunctional history, and how unfair it all is.” Such views have played well in a county that Trump carried twice, both times by more than twenty points. (The Cultural Competency Council has been disbanded.)

In 2020, Revida Rahman and another parent co-founded an anti-racism group, One WillCo, after Black parents chaperoning field trips to local plantations were astonished to see slavery depicted as benign. Rahman told me that some presentations suggested that “the slaves didn’t really have it that bad—they lived better than we do, they had their food provided, they had housing.” She added, “I beg to differ.” At a school that one of Rahman’s sons attended, some white classmates had mockingly linked arms as if to represent Trump’s border wall.

One WillCo especially wanted the school system to address the fact that it had a record of disproportionately punishing students of color—a recent revelation. Moreover, some teachers used racially insensitive materials in their classrooms: in an assignment about the antebellum economy, students were instructed to imagine that their family “owns slaves,” and to “create a list of expectations for your family’s slaves.”

On February 15, 2021, the school board hired a mother-and-son team of diversity consultants to gauge the depth of the district’s problems with racism, bullying, and harassment, and to recommend solutions. A conservative board member, Jay Galbreath, forwarded information about the consultants to influential local Republicans, including Gregg Lawrence, a county commissioner, and Bev Burger, a longtime alderman in Franklin. In an e-mail, Lawrence complained to Galbreath that hiring the consultants was the type of thing that would lead to “the politicization of teaching in America where every subject is taught through the lens of race.” He wrote, “These young people who have been protesting, looting and burning down our cities in America are doing so because they don’t see anything about America worth preserving. And why is that? Because our public schools and universities taught them that America is a systemically racist nation founded by a bunch of bigoted slave owning colonizers.”

This exchange was eventually made public through an open-records request, which also revealed that Burger had helped edit what has been called the foundational complaint against Wit & Wisdom: a month after the diversity consultants were hired, the parents of a biracial second grader e-mailed school officials to complain that the curriculum had caused their son to be “ashamed of his white half.” Burger wrote of her edits, “See what you think.” She cc’d Lawrence, who forwarded the communications to Galbreath and another school-board member, Dan Cash, a fellow-conservative who had won his seat in 2014, during a Tea Party wave. The county commissioner told the school-board members, “Here is more evidence that we are teaching critical race theory,” and urged them to “get rid of” Wit & Wisdom.

A few weeks later, on March 22nd, the school board’s monthly meeting took place on Zoom, because of the pandemic. Robin Steenman appeared before the board for the first time. Wearing a cream-colored sweater and dangly earrings, she presented herself simply as a concerned resident who wanted school officials to reject any diversity proposal that involved “The 1619 Project, critical race training, intersectionality.” She worried aloud that a recent proposal in California to mandate a semester of ethnic studies would be “paraded as a blueprint for the rest of the country.”

Steenman, who appeared to be reading from notes, asserted that parents in Virginia were being blacklisted for “speaking out.” In Pennsylvania, an elementary school had “forced fifth graders to celebrate Black communism and host a Black Power rally.” In North Carolina, a teacher had described parents as “an impediment to social justice.” In Ohio, C.R.T. “had to be removed from the curriculum, because the students were literally turning on each other.” Steenman cited no sources. She said, “If you give them an inch”—then changed course. Dropping the “them,” she declared, “If you give one inch to this kind of teaching, then you’re gonna subject yourself to the whole spectrum.”

Several weeks later, Steenman started the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty, building on the e-mail sent by the parents of the biracial child and harnessing the furious energy of families who were already accusing the school board of “medical tyranny” for requiring students to wear masks. This vocal minority had been particularly incensed at one school-board member, Brad Fiscus, a former science teacher whose wife, Michelle, a pediatrician, was Tennessee’s chief vaccine officer. Williamson County is a Republican pipeline to state and national office: the governor, Bill Lee, is from there; Marsha Blackburn, the maga senator, began her political career as a county commissioner there. In July, 2021, the state fired Michelle Fiscus after conservative lawmakers objected to her “messaging” in support of covid-19 vaccinations; afterward, Brad Fiscus resigned from the school board and the family moved to the East Coast. For right-wing extremists, the obvious lesson was that rage tactics worked. That August, one school-board meeting nearly ended in violence when two enraged men followed a proponent of masks to his vehicle, screaming, “We can find you!”

Moms for Liberty emphasizes the importance of being “joyful warriors”—relatable women who can rally their communities. A founder once explained, “This fight has to be fought in their own backyard.” The organization may have seen Steenman as particularly well suited to winning over Williamson County residents: she was a former B-1-bomber pilot now raising three small children. Her husband, Matt, was also ex-Air Force—fighter jets. They moved to Williamson County five years ago, from Texas.

Another member of their fraternity was John Ragan, a former Air Force fighter pilot who’d been elected as a Republican to the Tennessee General Assembly in 2010. Ragan, a former business consultant from the city of Oak Ridge, had been listed as an alternate on alec’s education task force. (He says that he does not recall attending any meetings.) He’d once crafted legislation to ban K-8 teachers from using materials “inconsistent with natural human reproduction” in the classroom. (It failed.)

Early last year, as Moms for Liberty was receiving its first wave of national media attention, Ragan introduced “anti-C.R.T.” legislation. He wanted to ban teaching about white privilege or any other concepts that might cause students “discomfort or other psychological distress” because of their race or sex. The wording parroted talking points from Moms for Liberty, which parroted Trump, who parroted Rufo. Around the time that Moms for Liberty members began showing up at Williamson County school-board meetings, Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, said on his video podcast that “the path to save the nation is very simple—it’s going to go through the school boards.” Calling mothers “patriots,” he urged a “revolt.”

At a committee meeting of Tennessee House members, Ragan promoted his legislation by claiming that he’d heard about a seven-year-old Williamson County girl who had had suicidal thoughts, and was now in therapy, because she was ashamed of being white. (No such family has ever publicly come forward.) Two Black Democrats sharply challenged Ragan. Harold Love, a congressman from Nashville, asked him whether the proposed legislation would make it illegal for teachers to even mention “The 1619 Project.” When Ragan replied that instructors could talk about it as long as they taught “both for and against,” Love said, “It’s kind of hard to be ‘for or against’ slavery.” G. A. Hardaway, a congressman from Memphis, argued on the House floor that a law limiting discussion of race, ethnicity, discrimination, and bias contradicted “the very principles that our country was formed on.”

Ragan pushed ahead, arguing that “subversive factions,” “seditious charlatans,” and “misguided souls” were creating “artificial divisions” in a “shameless pursuit of political power.” His bill passed. Senator Raumesh Akbari, who chairs the Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus, said, “This offensive legislation pretends skin color has never mattered in our country,” adding that “our children deserve to learn the full story.”

Once the Governor signed the bill into law, Moms for Liberty would be able to devise complaints arguing that certain elements of public instruction violated a Tennessee statute. Violators could be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially draining resources. Steenman, appearing on Blackburn’s video podcast, “Unmuted with Marsha,” let slip a tactical detail: the moment Tennessee’s new law took effect, Moms for Liberty would have a complaint against Wit & Wisdom “ready to go” to the state. Blackburn praised Steenman as “the point of the spear.”

Steenman also appeared on Glenn Beck’s show. As if speaking directly to Governor Lee, she said, “Stop serving the woke-left lobby!” Beck said, “Bill Lee, shame on you!” Lee signed the bill into law on the eve of the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder.

Steenman raised Moms for Liberty’s visibility by putting on events—rented plants, live music, charcuterie. One of them, C.R.T. 101, took place in May, 2021, before a large audience at Liberty Hall, a Franklin auditorium in a renovated stove factory filled with shops and restaurants. A clinical psychologist from Utah, Gary Thompson, came onstage and declared that C.R.T. engenders shame, which can trigger depression, which could “be pushing your kids to suicide.” Thompson, who is Black, showed photographs of his multiracial family: he and his wife, a white pediatric neuropsychologist, have six children. Thompson joked, awkwardly, that the overwhelmingly white audience sure didn’t look like members of the K.K.K. He noted that he’d voted for Barack Obama, and said that he approved of Williamson County Schools’ hiring of diversity consultants to assess such problems as racial bullying. He opposed C.R.T., though, because it framed people of color as “victims.” Choking up, Thompson said, “That is not the legacy that my parents left me.”

Moms for Liberty often advances its cause by enlisting Black conservatives, or by borrowing snippets from their public comments. The organization has posted a video clip of Condoleezza Rice saying that white kids shouldn’t have to “feel bad” in order for Black children to feel empowered. Steenman has collaborated with Carol Swain, a political scientist at Vanderbilt, who vocally opposes same-sex marriage and once described Islam as “dangerous to our society.” This past January, Moms for Liberty sponsored a conference organized by Swain, American Dream, whose branding heavily featured images of Martin Luther King, Jr. Before the event, King’s daughter Bernice tweeted an admonition about those who took her father’s “words out of context to promote ideas that oppose his teachings,” adding that Steenman’s chapter, having “sought to erase him,” was now “using him to make money.”

At the C.R.T. 101 gathering, the author of the original complaint against Wit & Wisdom revealed herself onstage to be Chara Dixon, a mom in her forties. Nervously holding a copy of her speech, she introduced herself as a naturalized citizen. (She had emigrated, decades earlier, from Thailand.) Dixon, whose husband, Brian, is white, recalled helping their seven-year-old son with a Wit & Wisdom assignment about a “lonely little yellow leaf.” The audience laughed when she declared, “It was boring.” A book about a chameleon: “Another boring story!” Her son had also read about King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which was “beautiful and uplifting”; but the tale of Ruby Bridges and the “angry white mob” was depressing. Dixon said that in her son’s childhood world “there’s no color.” (She soon became Moms for Liberty’s treasurer.)

Dixon seemed to conflate Wit & Wisdom and C.R.T. Steenman, in an official complaint to the Tennessee Department of Education, wrote, “There does not have to be a textbook labeled ‘Critical Race Theory’ for its harmful tenets to be present in a curriculum.” At the C.R.T. 101 event, she took the stage and told the audience that the threat of “Marxist” indoctrination at school could be vanquished by opposing “activist” teachers, curricula, and diversity-driven policy. An m.c. cheerily ended the evening by reminding everyone that “today’s kids are tomorrow’s voters.”

The Williamson County chapter of M4L held its next big event, Let’s Talk Wit & Wisdom, at a Harley-Davidson franchise in Franklin. Steenman had been having trouble finding a venue when the dealership’s owner offered his showroom. Calling the man a “true patriot,” Steenman presented him with a folded and framed American flag that, she said, had accompanied her on a bombing mission in Afghanistan.

Moms for Liberty had invited the entire school board to the event, but the only members who showed up were the group’s three clear allies. One, a former kindergarten teacher who opposed masking, liked to hug people during breaks at school-board meetings. The other two were Cash and Galbreath, both of whom were up for reëlection on August 4, 2022.

Steenman, gesturing toward a large screen behind her, showed the “findings” of a Moms for Liberty “deep dive” into Wit & Wisdom. She elicited gasps from the audience by saying that the curriculum contained books that depicted “graphic murder,” “rape,” “promiscuity,” “torture,” “adultery,” “stillbirth,” and “scalping and skinning,” along with content that her organization considered to be “anti-police,” “anti-church,” and “anti-nuclear family.” Rhetoric about “empowering the students” was suddenly “everywhere,” she complained. Without presenting any evidence, she claimed that elementary-school students now needed counsellors to help them “overcome the emotional trauma” caused by Wit & Wisdom.

Steenman’s events often strayed far from the particulars of Williamson County Schools. At one of them, the proceedings were interrupted when someone walked onstage and breathlessly announced news from Virginia: Glenn Youngkin, the candidate for governor who’d crusaded against C.R.T., had won. The audience cheered as if Youngkin were one of their own.

Steenman’s claims about Wit & Wisdom were so tendentious that several ardent supporters of the public schools looked her up on social media. Among other things, they discovered a Twitter account, @robin_steenman. On August 9, 2020, Matt Walsh—a columnist for the Daily Wire, the conservative media site co-founded by the pundit Ben Shapiro—had shared a thread by a Philadelphia teacher who expressed concern that meddlesome parents might overhear classroom conversations during online learning and undermine “honest conversations about gender/sexuality.” (The Daily Wire is headquartered in Nashville, and Shapiro has propagated Moms for Liberty’s messaging.) In a retweet of Walsh, @robin_steenman had posted, “You little brainwashing assholes will never get hold of my kids!” After Eric Welch and others publicly challenged Steenman about the tweet—and another one declaring that her children would never attend public schools—the account vanished. (Steenman agreed to an interview, but did not keep the appointment. A Moms for Liberty spokesperson, calling my questions “personal in nature,” largely declined to provide answers.)

Privately, certain defenders of Wit & Wisdom referred to Moms for Liberty members as the Antis. In a sly move, some adopted the seahorse as a symbol of what one parent described to me as “the resistance.” This summer in Williamson County, I saw seahorse stickers on cars and laptops. When I met Rahman for lunch, she was wearing seahorse earrings. At a school-board campaign event for a candidate who opposed Moms for Liberty, a volunteer wore a seahorse pendant on a necklace, alongside a gold cross. At least one person connected to Moms for Liberty had become concerned about the group’s motives and tactics, and was secretly monitoring them from the inside. This person told me, “I’m the one in the trench, and I don’t want to get caught.”

Many Moms and like-minded parents wanted both Wit & Wisdom and Superintendent Golden gone. Golden’s contract was up for annual review before the 2021-22 school year began. (One Moms for Liberty opponent recently tweeted, “The m.o. nationwide is to fire Supt’s and hire ideologues.”) At a meeting where the board planned to vote on Golden’s future, one of the superintendent’s many supporters implored the elected officials to “hold the line” against the “steady attack on our public schools.” The Antis were louder. A man wearing an American-flag-themed shirt shouted, “We, the parents, are awake, we’re organized, and we’re extremely pissed off.” He declared, “We’re gonna replace every board member in here with people just like me. Nothing would make us happier than to surround you with a roomful of American patriots who believe in the Constitution of the United States and Jesus Christ above!”

The Antis jeered at speakers who expressed support for Golden or the district’s diversity efforts. They mocked a woman whose daughters had experienced anti-Asian slurs at school. The mom told the board, “I’ve heard people say that teaching these parts of our history is ‘racist’ or ‘traumatic.’ What’s traumatic is Black, Latino, Asian, and L.G.B.T.Q. kids going to schools where they face discrimination and don’t feel safe.” A local psychologist, Alanna Truss, said, “I’m yet to see a child in my practice who’s been traumatized by our county’s curriculum choices. I have, however, seen many students experiencing trauma due to being discriminated against and bullied within our schools, related to race, religion, gender, and sexuality.”

Six of the school-board members, who serve four-year terms, were coming up for reëlection in August of 2022. (The other six will finish their terms in 2024.) As the Wit & Wisdom furor grew, another component of the right-wing assault on schools locked into place: last fall, state lawmakers passed a bill legalizing partisan school-board elections. Moms for Liberty called the change “a HUGE step forward.”

Educators and policymakers have long believed that public education should operate independently of political ideology. As the magazine Governing put it last year, “The goal of having nonpartisan elections is not to remove all politics” but “to remove a conflict point that keeps the school board from doing its job.” For people who target school boards, conflict has become a tool. In Texas, a PAC linked to a cell-phone company which recently funded the maga takeover of several school boards paid for an inflammatory mail campaign blaming a classroom shooting on administrators who had “stopped disciplining students according to Critical Race Theory principles.” In August, during a panel at cpac, the gathering of conservatives, the former Trump official Mercedes Schlapp warned that, though Republicans were focussed on federal and state elections, “school board elections are critical.” The panel’s title, “We Are All Domestic Terrorists,” derisively referred to recent instructions from Attorney General Merrick Garland to the F.B.I. for devising a plan to protect school employees and board members from threats of violence.

Joining Schlapp onstage was Ryan Girdusky, the founder of the 1776 Project pac, which funnels money to G.O.P. candidates in partisan school-board races. Girdusky boasted that, in 2021, his pac “did fifty-eight elections in seven states and we won forty-two.” Girdusky said that his goal this year is to boost at least five hundred school-board candidates nationwide. He urged the audience to “vote from the bottom up—go from school board and then go all the way up to governor and senator, and we’ll have conservative majorities across the entire electorate.”

Last November, mere weeks after Tennessee lawmakers voted to allow partisan school-board races, Steenman launched a pac, Williamson Families. Its approach was markedly similar to that of Southlake Families, a Texas pac whose orchestrated takeover of a school board in that state has led to attempted book bans. Both pacs have worked with Axiom Strategies, a political-consulting firm that has helped seat high-profile Republicans, including maga figures. Allen West, the chair of the Texas G.O.P., has urged Southlake Families to export its takeover blueprint to suburbs nationwide. Wealthy suburbs are some of America’s purplest districts, and winning them may be key to controlling the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Anne McGraw, the former Williamson County Schools board member, told me that the advent of Moms for Liberty “shows how hyperlocal the national machine is going with their tactics.” She observed, “Moms for Liberty is not in Podunk, America. They’re going into hyper-educated, wealthy counties like this, and trying to get those people to doubt the school system that brought us here.”

Steenman’s pac quickly took in about a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars—an unusually large amount for local politics in Tennessee. The pac held an inaugural event featuring John Rich, a country singer who had appeared with Trump on “The Celebrity Apprentice.” Rich, who has no apparent connection to Williamson County, has contributed at least five thousand dollars to Steenman’s pac.

Progressives and policy experts have long suspected that right-wing attacks on school boards are less about changing curricula than about undermining the entire public-school system, in the hope of privatizing education. During the alec Webinar about “reclaiming education,” the Heritage Foundation representative declared that “school choice” would become “very important in the next couple of years”; controversies about curricula, he said, were “opening up opportunity for policymakers at the state level” to consider options like charter schools.

This isn’t the first time that the culture wars have taken aim at public education. But Rebecca Jacobsen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, believes that this era is different, because social media has made it easy for national operatives to stage “a coördinated, concrete” scare campaign designed to drive parents toward alternatives to public schools: “The message, at its core, is: ‘Beware of your public-education system. Make sure your kid’s teachers aren’t up to something.’ ”

The timing of “anti-C.R.T.” legislation is no coincidence. Instead of putting forth a platform, the Republican Party has tried to maintain power by demonizing its opponents and critics as sinister and un-American. In the lead-up to the midterms, the G.O.P.’s alarmism about critical race theory has accompanied fear-mongering about L.G.B.T.Q.+ teachers being “groomers.” Conservative media aggressively promote both campaigns. From Fox News to the Twitter account Libs of TikTok, the messaging has been consistent: many public-school teachers are dangerous.

Lee, the Tennessee governor, has leveraged this discord while trying to reformulate school funding: in January, he announced plans to create fifty new charter schools in partnership with Hillsdale College, a private Christian school in Michigan, whose president, Larry Arnn, headed Trump’s 1776 Commission. The plan partially collapsed after a Tennessee television station aired footage of Arnn, during a private appearance in Williamson County, comparing public education to “the plague” and arguing that teachers are educated in “the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” J. C. Bowman, the executive director and C.E.O. of Professional Educators of Tennessee, called Arnn’s comments “reprehensible and irresponsible.” Even Republican politicians backed away. The speaker of the Tennessee House, Cameron Sexton, acknowledged that Arnn had “insulted generations of teachers who have made a difference for countless students.”

Moms for Liberty’s role in the broader war on public schools became ever clearer in July, at the group’s inaugural national summit, in Tampa. DeSantis, who delivered a key address, was presented with a “liberty sword.” Another headliner was Trump’s former Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, whose family has connections to Hillsdale. To an enthusiastic crowd that included Steenman, DeVos declared that the U.S. Department of Education—the agency that she once oversaw—should not exist.

Early this year, Eric Welch, the school-board member, was leaning against seeking reëlection. Both of his sons had graduated—he was the one who handed them their high-school diplomas when they crossed the stage. His wife, Andrea, wanted him to take it easy for a while.

School-board service, which is time-consuming and can be tedious, requires diplomacy, a breadth of knowledge, and the ability to make complex, well-informed decisions. At meetings, Welch, who considered ideologues and bullies a threat to public education, often rebutted misinformation about covid-19 and Wit & Wisdom. At one meeting, he’d pointedly read aloud from a title that he found on a Moms for Liberty site: the book, written by a follower of the John Birch Society, referred to Black people as “pickaninnies.” Rahman, the co-founder of One WillCo, the anti-racism organization, told me, “He came with all the receipts.” Welch’s detractors had declared him arrogant and rude; Rahman called him “a strong advocate for what’s right.”

For Welch’s seat, Steenman’s pac backed William (Doc) Holladay, an optometrist who, like Steenman, had no children in Williamson County Schools. Holladay had shown up at school-board meetings to denounce C.R.T. as “racist.” On Facebook, where he’d railed against pandemic protocols, his posts were routinely flagged or removed because they contained misinformation. His top “news” sources included the Epoch Times, which regularly promotes right-wing falsehoods.

Last year, Charlie Wilson, the president of the National School Boards Association, characterized local school-board members as fundamental guardians “of democracy, of liberty, of equality, of civility and community, and of the Constitution and the rule of law.” Holladay, a felon who believes the conspiracy theory that Trump is still the “legitimate President,” seemed more like an opportunist. In 2008, he’d pleaded guilty to multiple counts of prescription fraud and forgery; the Tennessee Department of Health had put him on probation for “immoral, unprofessional or dishonorable conduct,” noting that he had also worked “while impaired.” The state licensure board later added five more years of probation upon discovering that he’d made “untruthful” claims about “professional excellence or abilities.” (Holladay told me that he has turned his life around.)

When Welch heard that Holladay and other figures he considered to be unsuitable were seeking authority over the schools, he tweeted, “I’m running.” He told his wife, “I don’t know that I can walk away and let these people be in charge.” The “Tennessee School Board Candidate Guide” notes that, for the office of school board, “the best, most capable and most farsighted citizens of each community should be drafted.”

During the campaign, Holladay tried to frame Welch, a lifelong Republican, as a “liberal” for having supported masking and Wit & Wisdom. Welch publicly noted that he had interned for Senator John Warner, of Virginia, and attended the Inauguration of George W. Bush. Holladay, who had no military service, bragged about being a patriot; Welch is an Army veteran.

In a Q. & A. published by One WillCo, candidates were asked to describe their involvement with Williamson County Schools. Welch explained that, in addition to serving on the executive board of the district’s parent-teacher association, he had “run wrestling tournaments as a booster fundraiser, spray painted end zones, worked concessions, volunteered for holiday shows setup/breakdown, built theatre sets, cleaned bleachers, mopped floors.” Holladay’s answers: “Speaking out at school board meetings”; “Helping to lead activist groups in order to effect needed changes.” When asked why he was running, he said that “the school board has largely been operating in a manner that runs counter to the conservative principles that most people who live here hold dear.” This and other answers betrayed profound ignorance of what a school board does.

Moms for Liberty had been broadening its campaign against Wit & Wisdom and was now targeting reading materials available in school libraries, which provided access to the Epic app, a repository of nearly fifty thousand children’s books. In a local news segment, Steenman read aloud, “I-is-for-intersex,” from a book called “The GayBCs,” which was available on Epic, and said, “What parent wants to explain ‘intersex’ to their child that, at this point, doesn’t even understand sex?”

Holladay tried a similar maneuver. During a live-streamed candidate forum, he handed his interviewer a passage from “Push,” the acclaimed novel by Sapphire, and asked him to read it aloud. (If this was the same passage that Holladay later showed me on his cell phone, it began, “Daddy sick me, disgust me, but he sex me up.”) The interviewer was Tom Lawrence, a gentlemanly fixture on AM radio who has been called “the voice of Williamson County.” Lawrence scanned the text and declined to share it with viewers, saying, “It has words like ‘orgasm’ in it.” Holladay, noting that the book could be found in one of the local high schools, declared, “Whoever is responsible for putting that book in the library should be arrested.” (In a tweet, Welch expressed astonishment that a school-board candidate would “call for the arrest of a WCS librarian.”)

As Holladay campaigned, he repeatedly invoked the nationwide partisan divide. In an interview that appeared on YouTube, he declared that conservatives were fleeing blue states for places like Williamson County because the left was trying to “destroy the last remaining refuges of conservatism and patriotism.” If Williamson County “goes blue,” he said, the rest of the state would follow, and if Tennessee “doesn’t stay red” it will be “a huge blow to the country.”

On Election Day, Welch, a wiry ex-wrestler, erected a pole tent outside Hunters Bend Elementary School, a voting precinct. Holladay’s supporters set up nearby. I arrived to find Welch, wearing khaki shorts and a “re-elect eric welch” T-shirt, squaring off in the parking lot with a Holladay supporter who was saying, angrily, “I’ve laid people out for less than that!”

The man, Brian Russell, described Welch as the aggressor—“He shoulder-checked me”—but multiple witnesses characterized the altercation differently. Meghan Guffee, a Republican running for reëlection to the county commission, told me that Russell had demanded to know why Welch had blocked him on social media. Welch, trying to walk away, had responded, “I’m ending this conversation. You’re an ass.”

In a public Facebook post, Russell had declared Welch to be “as bad as a pedophile.” Guffee said that she’d heard Russell, in the parking lot, accuse Welch of having “voted to teach third graders how to masturbate.” (Russell denies this.) Guffee was particularly appalled that her six-year-old daughter, who was with her at the voting site, had witnessed Russell’s hostility. She told me, “That is not how this community does things.”

Before leaving the school grounds, Russell, a painting contractor in his early fifties, told me that he was angry about Wit & Wisdom: “When my daughter comes home and her best friend is Black, and she’s wondering why ‘I’m bad because I’m white. . . . ’ ” This and other comments suggested that his children attended local schools. In fact, Russell’s three children lived in his native state of Ohio.

Throughout America, maga types were targeting education officials. In Maine, a man plastered a school-board member’s photograph on a sign and surrounded it with rat traps, telling NBC News, “This is a war with the left,” and “In war, tactics and strategy can become blurry.” A member of the Proud Boys ran for a school-board seat in California. On September 27th, the American Libraries Association sent an open letter to the F.B.I. director, Chris Wray, asking for help: in the previous two weeks alone, “bombing or shooting threats” had forced the temporary closing of libraries in five states. Tennessee was one of them.

In Williamson County, Moms for Liberty members couldn’t claim ignorance of the beliefs of some of the candidates they and Steenman’s pac supported. Williamson Families donated a thousand dollars to the campaign of an ex-marine who was running for county commissioner, and who had publicly warned the school board, “In the past, you dealt with sheep. Now prepare yourselves to deal with lions! I swore an oath to protect this country from all enemies—foreign and domestic. You harm my children, you become a domestic enemy.”

That guy lost. So did Holladay. Welch beat him by five hundred and fifty-nine votes. Welch was surprised that anybody had voted for Holladay, later telling me, “If you had to design a candidate who is unqualified and should not be on a board of education, that’s what he’d look like.”

Candidates backed by Moms for Liberty members won, however, in two other districts. A Republican who appeared to have no connection to the public schools beat Ken Chilton, who ran as an independent and who, the day after the election, tweeted that Tennessee lawmakers’ decision to allow partisan school-board elections had “created a monster.”

Jay Galbreath, the board member who had forwarded the e-mails about diversity consultants to other conservative politicians, had found himself challenged from the right flank—by a M4L-affiliated candidate whose campaign signs said “reject crt.” As if to prove his opposition to Wit & Wisdom, Galbreath had posted publicly, on Facebook, that progressives were “constantly looking at ways to inject and normalize things like gender identity, the black lives matter movement, and LGBTQ by weaving it into curriculum.” Williamson Strong, a pac composed of local progressives who have long defended the public schools, called for Galbreath’s resignation, noting, “This is pure hate speech, and it has NO place in a position of influence or power over 40,000+ children and their education. It has no place in Williamson County, period.” The group, whose leaders include Anne McGraw, the former school-board member, observed, “All filters have apparently been obliterated now that he’s competing for votes against an MFL-endorsed candidate.” Despite the controversy, Galbreath won reëlection.

A month before the vote, a civil action was filed against Wit & Wisdom: the parents of an elementary-school student sued the school board and various administrators in the district on behalf of a conservative nonprofit that they had just launched, Parents’ Choice Tennessee. The lawsuit’s complaint echoed Moms for Liberty’s assertions that the curriculum’s “harmful, unlawful and age-inappropriate content” represented a “clear violation of Tennessee code.” If the lawsuit succeeds, Williamson County Schools may have to find a new curriculum and pay fines. (Citing the litigation, Williamson County Schools officials declined to comment for this article.)

The lawsuit may have been designed, in part, to give the impression that there was more local opposition to Wit & Wisdom than actually existed. There are eighteen thousand students in the district’s elementary schools, but according to a district report only thirty-seven people had complained about the new curriculum. Fourteen of the complainants had no children in the system.

Rebecca Jacobsen, the Michigan scholar, looks for clues in such data. She said, of the vitriol toward school boards, “Is this a blip, and we’ll rebound? Or are we chipping away at our largest public institution and the system that has been at the center of our democracy since the founding of this country?” She noted that some Americans “don’t trust their schools and teachers anymore,” adding, “That’s radical.”

Moms for Liberty’s campaign, meanwhile, continues to widen. The organization now claims two hundred and forty chapters in forty-two states, and more than a hundred thousand members. It has thrown a fund-raising gala, featuring Megyn Kelly, in which the top ticket cost twenty thousand dollars. In late October, a spokesperson for the Moms told me that the organization—ostensibly a charity—is a “media company.”

The slick rollout of Moms for Liberty has made it seem less like a good-faith collective of informed parents and more like a well-funded operation vying to sway American voters in a pivotal election year. Steenman’s chapter recently announced a slate of upcoming talks: “Gender Ideology,” “Restorative Justice,” “Comprehensive Sex Ed,” “History of Marxism in Education.” I asked Jacobsen whether she thinks that Moms for Liberty members actually believe that a curriculum like Wit & Wisdom damages children. “I don’t know what anybody believes anymore,” she replied. “We seem to have lost a sense of honesty. It may just be about power and money.” ♦

[duothelingo]

-- Junu ootin' stars break the mold It's a cool place and they say it gets colder You're bundled up now but wait till you get older But t he meteor men beg to differ Judging by the hole in the satellite picture The ice we skate is gettin' pretty thin The water's getting warm so you might as well swim My world's on fire How 'bout yours That's the way I like it and I'll never get bored Hey, now, you're an all-star {Shouting} Get your game on, go play Hey, now You're a rock star Get the show on, get paid And all that glitters is gold Only shootin' stars break the mold {Belches} Go! Go! {Record Scratching} Go. Go.Go. Hey, now, you're an all-star Get your game on, go play Hey, now You're a rock star Get the show on, get paid And all that glitters is gold Only shootin' stars break the mold -Think it's in there? -All right. Let's get it! -Whoa. Hold on. Do you know what that thing can do to you? -Yeah, ! I'm an orge! You know. "Grab your torch and pitchforks." Doesn't that bother you? -Nope. -Really? -Really, really. -Oh. -Man, I like you. What's you name? -Uh, Shrek. -Shrek? Well, you know what I like about you, Shrek? You got that kind of I-uttons. -All right then. Who's hiding them? -Okay, I'll tell you. Do you know the muffin man? -The muffin man? -The muffin man. -Yes, I know the muffin man, who lives on Drury Lane? -Well, she's married to the muffin man. -The muffin man? -The muffin man! -She's married to the muffin man. {Door opens} -My lord! We found it. -Then what are you waiting for? Bring it in. {Man grunting} {Gasping} -Oh! -Magic mirror - - -Don't tell him a \ adas And getting caught in the rain -Princess Fiona. If you're not into yoga -She's perfect. All I have to do is just find someone who can go - - -But I probably should mention the little thing that happens at night. -I'll do it. -Yes, but after sunset - - -Silence! I will make this Princess Fiona my queen, and DuLoc will finally have the perfect king! Captain, assemble your finest men. We're going to have a tournament. -But that's it. That's it right there. That's DuLoc. I told ya I'd find it. -So, that must be Lord Farquaad's castle. -Uh-huh. \

Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that's how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don't know who she is get da hell out of here!). I'm not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he's a major fucking hottie. I'm a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I'm also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I'm in the seventh year (I'm seventeen). I'm a goth (in case you couldn't tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

"Hey Ebony!" shouted a voice. I looked up. It was... Draco Malfoy!

"What's up Draco?" I asked.

"Nothing." he said shyly.

But then, I heard my friends call me and I had to go away.

次の日、私は寝室で目覚めました。雪が降ってまた雨が降ってきました。私は棺の扉を開け、持っていた瓶から血を飲みました。私の棺は黒い黒檀で、中には端に黒いレースが付いたホットピンクのベルベットがありました。私は棺から出て、パジャマとして使っていた巨大なMCR Tシャツを脱ぎました。代わりに、私は黒い革のドレスを着て、五芒星のネックレス、コンバットブーツ、そして黒い網タイツを着ました。ピアスを4つつけ、髪をボサボサお団子のような形にまとめました。

私の友人のウィロー (AN: レイヴンはあなたです!) が目を覚まし、私に笑いました。彼女は腰まで届く長い漆黒の黒髪をピンクの縞模様で翻し、森のような緑色の目を開いた。彼女はマリリン・マンソンのTシャツを着て、黒のミニパンツを着て、網タイツを履いて、とがったハイヒールのブーツを履いていた。私たちは化粧をします（黒の口紅、白のファンデーション、黒のアイライナー）。

「OMFG、昨日あなたがドラコ・マルフォイと話しているのを見ました！」彼女は興奮して言いました。

「ええ？ それで？」私は顔を赤らめながら言いました。

「ドラコは好きですか？」私たちがスリザリンの談話室を出て大広間に入るとき、彼女は尋ねました。

fun fact i got a strike on my twitch for reading this during a stream. i got to chapter 20 something and i like to think that a member of twitch staff had to suffer through it.

[subtlybrilliant]

So, my fireteam was joking around in the voice chat tonight, and someone brought up the concept of The Night Before Christmas, but as The Night Before Lightfall. I kept chewing on the idea as we were doing our activities this evening, and so the following poem was born:

The Night Before Lightfall

'Twas the night before Lightfall and all through the Tower,

The Guardians awaited a big shift in Power,

Their armor was hung up by Ada with care,

And knowledge the Black Fleet quite soon would be there.

The Ghosts were all nestled so snug with their Risen,

In hopes that the Traveler would survive this new schism.

And Zavala in his armor and Shaxx with his horn,

With Rasputin gone, we all are forlorn.

When far out in space there arose such a clatter,

The Vanguard assembled to see what was the matter.

Away to the hangar we dashed with all haste,

As fast as we could, there was no time to waste.

The moon with its Hauntings still fills us with dread,

With The Witness approaching, we can’t get ahead,

When what to our wondering eyes should appear,

But Osiris’s visions to keep us from fear.

With a brand new location, so neon and new,

We knew in an instant it was not all through.

And it sparked and glowed and was all filled with Strand,

And a safe place (for the moment) for us to land.

On Hunters! On Warlocks! On Titans so strong!

With Void! And with Solar! Arc, Stasis along!

To the top of the building! And to The Arcade!

With little Strand buddies the Warlocks have made!

As starlight before the nova ignites,

The Guardians readied for their respective fights.

So to the far reaches of space they flew out,

With their ships full of weapons, and hearts oh so stout.

And then in a twinkling a new class appeared,

All lovely and green and full of ads cleared.

To travel the rooftops and swing thru the world,

And cute little Strand cats with whiskers all curled.

But out in the distance The Witness still waits,

With the Darkness and Pyramids- the Black Fleet that they’ve Shaped.

We all are in danger of Collapse 2.0,

And even The Traveler has nowhere to go.

We spring to our ships, our Fireteams ready,

Our armor enhanced and our trigger fingers steady.

And so we all say, in the face of this threat,

“Eyes up, Guardian. It’s not over yet.”

[tyanis]

Poll: Which TEAM of female Resident Evil characters can build a shelf the fastest and with the least amount of trauma?

Now that they're back from their camping trip, the gang finally notices their living space is severely lacking in shelves.

Because they all live in the same house.

And shelves are important.

After a quick trip to a furniture store, the women now have six shelves. Problem is... they have to assemble them themselves.

So... they once again pair off in the most convoluted way possible and set to work. To make it more interesting, they see what team can finish the fastest and have the least amount of fighting.

And both women need to contribute equally.

Here are our teams (picked by random number generator):

Team 1: Hunnigan & Mia

Team 2: Ada & Rose

Team 3: Ashley & Claire

Team 4: Sheva & Rebecca

Team 5: Helena & Sherry

Team 6: Jill & Alcina

Winners go on to face the winners of the male poll so make sure to vote in both!

[fierysword]

1 Oh my God, why have You abandoned me? Why are You so distant from the sound of my groaning? Why do You fail to save me? 2 Every day I call, but You do not answer. Every night I cry, but You are silent. 3 Yet my people have always praised You for Your holiness. 4 When they trusted in You, You always delivered them. 5 When they cried to You, You came to their rescue again and again. When they put their confidence in You, You never let them down. 6 But I feel as if I were more worm than human. I am despised and scorned by everyone around me. 7 My captors deride me, shaking their heads and mocking me: 8 "She trusted in God. If God truly delights in her, let God rescue her!" 9 I know You as the One who took me from the womb. You cradled me upon my mother's breasts. 10 From my birth I have been cast upon You. Since my mother bore me, You alone have been my God. 11 Do not forsake me now that I am in trouble, with no one else to help! 12 I am surrounded by guards who look like strong bulls. 13 Their mocking mouths are like the jaws of ravenous beasts. 14 My bones are pulled apart, and my limbs are like water. My heart melts within me like hot wax. 15 My strength is dried up like baked and broken pottery. My tongue clings to my jaws. Is it You who lay me in the dust of death? 16 Evildoers surround me like dogs, piercing my hands and feet. 17 I am so starved I can count all my bones. See how they stare at me! 18 They gamble over my clothing, dividing it among them. 19 O God, do not be so far away. Help me! Hurry to my rescue. 20 Deliver my soul from their attacks, my body from their assaults! 21 Save me from their devouring mouths, their evil threats and thrusts. 22 Shaddai! You have answered me!... I will proclaim Your saving grace to all my sisters and brothers. I will praise You among the assembly of the faithful! 23 All you children of my people, glorify God, and stand in awe before Her! 24 For Shaddai has not ignored the suffering of the afflicted. She has not turned away from the cries of those in pain. 25 You, O God, are the theme of my praise in the congregation of Your people. I will pay my vows before those who revere You. 26 Now I know that the starved shall eat and be satisfied. All suffering seekers will someday praise You! May their hearts live forever! 27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and return, O God, to You! All the families of the nations shall worship before You, Shaddai! 28 For to You belongs true dominion; Your reign reaches to the ends of the earth. 29 All the wealthy, all the poor, all those ground down in the dust- together they will worship before You. 30 Their children shall also serve You, and tell the next generation, 31 who in turn will proclaim Your deliverance to a people yet unborn: "Hear the great things God has done for us!"

Psalm 22 (feminine translation from Swallow’s Nest: A Feminine Reading of the Psalms by Marchiene Rienstra)

Possible uses of this psalm:

Deliverance from despair (read by a Pink Candle to brighten your attitude and help find a solution to a difficult situation; repeat v19 for instant help and encouragement when discouraged)

Pray for protection during travel (against storms, animals, and humans)

Prayer of lament

Prayer of praise/gratitude

1 sourced from Power of the Psalms by Anna Riva & 2 sourced from My New Everyday Prayer Book by Brother ADA 

[tropes-and-tales-archives]

More Precious Than Rubies: Part 3b

This is an alternate timeline story that has a Rafael Barba track and a Sonny Carisi track. The two paths split off in part 3.

WC: 2771

TW: Angst; end of relationship drama.

AN: The prompt was "I Made a Mistake"

When the jury read their verdict of “not guilty” on all counts, you breathed a sigh of relief and then tended to your client, who collapsed against you in broken sobs.  You got him collected, then you both went out and made a brief statement to the assembled press.  You shook Jeremy’s hand and wished him well, and then you stood a moment in the weak April sunlight.

You descended the steps of the courthouse slowly, one at a time, and thought about what you should do. 

It was late in the day – you could go back to your airless little utility closet of an office and wrap up you paperwork on the case.  Or you could start making your way towards home.  Most of the cops and ADAs went to celebrate or commiserate at Forlini’s, but two blocks up was a charming little Spanish wine bar that most tourists walked right past.  It was right near your subway stop – you could go finish your paperwork there.

You had been a good student in high school and undergraduate, and you’d been top of the class in law school.  The sole subject you struggled in had been math and calculus, so it was fortunate that law didn’t require much higher math beyond calculating what consecutive sentences would add up to.

If you had been good at higher math, you’d know what an inflection point was – a moment when a curve changes from being concave to convex, or vice versa.  Life was full of inflection points – when the path a person could take is changed or decided on.  Most times, the person in question had no idea how their little choices affected the larger arc of their life. 

Take the subway or walk.  Eat the street meat or the leftovers you packed from home.  Go to Fordham law or Columbia law.

Turn right, towards your office.  Or turn left towards home.

Today, you turned right.

-----

Sonny would have claimed that he was finally over you, but when you strode into the precinct, as a public defender, no less – he knew that’d be a lie.  All of his hard work to accept that you were gone fell away.  He had been frozen on the spot as you gave him a curt nod and then tossed Rollins and Fin out of the interrogation room.  A moment later, you marched your client out, and you tilted your head in that defiant way that Sonny recognized instantly.  It was adorable…until one realized that it meant you were digging your heels in and spoiling for a fight.  Not that you’d ever done it with him – he’d only seen it when you argued with classmates at Fordham over tricky legal precedents and controversial cases. 

Maybe if you had argued with Sonny more, he’d still be with you.  You’d bitten back all of your frustrations with him until they grew too big, and you’d left him as a result.

Sonny could barely focus on the case that was falling apart for Barba.  He couldn’t tear his eyes from you:  when you gave your opening, when you questioned witnesses, when you sat at your table with your client, your head bent over your notes and the slim column of your neck rising out of your polished grey suit.

And when the verdict came back as not guilty, Sonny couldn’t help but smile at your own smile of triumph.

He wanted to stick around and congratulate you, but Rollins tugged on his arm and pulled him out of the courthouse with the rest of the squad towards Forlini’s, where they’d drink and console each other and pretend that they hadn’t handed the ADA a completely flawed case.

Sonny paused outside of the door to the restaurant though.  Rollins looked at him questioningly.

“I’m gonna go for a walk,” he said.  “Clear my head.”  Before she could argue, he turned and walked away with a wave.

It wasn’t technically a lie.  He was going for a walk, and if it led him to your office, then that was just a coincidence. 

Sonny had shown remarkable restraint throughout the entire case.  He’d only spoken to you twice:  once to remark on the rainy weather that day, and once to remark on the sunny weather on another day. 

It was another sunny day.  He could always stop in and tell you so, maybe congratulate you on your case.  And if that went well, maybe beg you for a chance to really talk.

-----

You gave yourself a quick five minutes to enjoy your win, and then you settled into your desk to address the stack of files that threatened to topple over.

You were interrupted every so often.  Your admin assistant stopped in three times to offer you coffee.  Your boss stopped in to congratulate you.  A few other public defenders drifted past your door.  The nicer ones just said “good job.”  An older one, jaded and bitter, said he was glad that you “stuck it to Barba.”  This made you frown – you weren’t trying to stick it to anyone.  You just wanted people to get a fair trial.

You wrapped up the paperwork from the Michaels case and slid it to one side.  You looked over the stack of open cases you had and decided to work on the simple assault one.  You might be able to plead it out and avoid a trial.

You were deep in the situation of the case (two drunk men, brawling in the street, one ending up with a broken arm, the other unharmed and charged with assault in the third degree) when there was a knock in your doorway.  You looked up with a smile, expecting another public defender, but it was Sonny.

It felt like the air was pulled out of the room.  You tried to keep your face expressionless, but a million emotions roiled through you:  anger at how things had ended, and guilt too.  And a lingering bit of love for him.  You had held yourself together through the trial, being polite and professional around him.  You even managed to exchange small talk about the weather, and you only glared at Amanda when her back was turned to you.

It didn’t help that he was wearing a blue suit that made him look absolutely delicious.  In the year since you’d seen him last, he had only aged like a fine wine.  The bit of grey at his temples made him look even more handsome, and he’d finally figured out how to style his hair. 

Standing in your doorway, he looked nervous.  His hand fidgeted at his side, and he ducked his head in that adorable Sonny way he had when he was feeling uncertain.

“Hey,” you said.

“Hey,” he replied.  He fidgeted for a moment and stared at the floor, then looked up at you.  “Congratulations on your win today.”

You shrugged.  People kept praising you, but the case had fallen apart on its own.  You had just nudged it along.  “Thanks,” you said simply.  After a beat, you gestured to the seat in front of your desk for him to sit, and he did gratefully.

“It’s a nice day,” he finally offered.  “Sunny, nice breeze.”

You glanced around your windowless office – it was little more than a glorified storage closet, so cramped that Sonny’s knees were jammed against the edge of your desk.  “It’s hard to tell from in here,” you joked. 

He smiled at this.  “You should go out and enjoy it,” he said.  “Knock off a little early.”

“Maybe.”  You tapped the stack of files on your desk.  “These aren’t going anywhere.”

You could feel your desk moving, almost unnoticeable.  Sonny was obviously bouncing his leg in nervous tension.  “If you want, maybe we could go grab a bite?  My treat?”  When you didn’t answer right away, words started tumbling out of his mouth, about how it wasn’t like that and he was going to go eat anyway…

“Okay,” you said.  Truth be told, you felt a complex guilt about how you had ended thinks with Sonny over a year ago.  True, he had basically ghosted you throughout the last few months of your entire relationship, leaving you to sit alone at restaurants and bars and once, alone in your apartment during your anniversary with a home-cooked meal that got cold and new lingerie that went unseen. 

It didn’t excuse your own behavior though.  You could still access those old feelings of jealousy towards Amanda, the feeling of not being good enough for Sonny.  But your anger had also cooled down into a sort of gloomy acceptance.  What remained was the guilt:  you’d cut Sonny out completely, blocking his number and deleting his emails.  You never explained your position and let him guess it himself.  And you’d heard from mutual acquaintances that he had been pretty torn up about the whole thing.

Which didn’t mean you forgave him.  It just meant that the bad feelings were tempered a bit, and you had to work with him anyway, so establishing a professional relationship would help.

But Sonny smiled so brightly when you agreed to grab a bite with him, you couldn’t help but smile back at him as you gathered up your stuff and walked out of your building together.

********

Sonny’s first instinct was to lay his hand on your back to lead you to the elevator, but he caught himself just in time.  He also did it again, as the two of you went to a nearby El Salvadorian restaurant.  He wanted so badly to touch you.  It wasn’t even a sexual thing, though he’d not turn that down if hell happened to freeze over and you offered it. 

He just missed the intimacy of casual touching.  When you were comfortable with someone, you touched them – hugs, grasped hands, shoulder taps, ruffled hair.  With Sonny, you always had your hands on him.  You’d work out the tension in his shoulders with your deceptively strong fingers.  You’d run your hands through his hair.  You’d hold his hand when you walked somewhere.

It had been well over a year, and he’d been on a few dates, but the last person to really touch him in a comforting way had been you – when you’d been making out on his couch, and he had pushed you away to call Amanda.  The memory made him wince as you both made your way to a two-top near the back of the restaurant.

You were obviously a regular here – the waiter recognized you as he brought you water and chatted with you a moment, and you never touched the menu in front of you.  Sonny took up his own, struggling to understand the pictures and Spanish dishes.  He glanced up and saw your mouth twisted into a smirk.

“Go with the pupusas or tamales.  When it comes to meat stuffed into corn tortillas, you can’t beat a Salvadorean,” you said. 

“You order for me,” he said with a smile.  “You know what I like.”

You placed your orders with the waiter, who dashed off to the back.  “They don’t do cannoli, sadly.”

Sonny pretended to act offended.  “I eat all sorts of foods.”

The two of you chatted amicably.  You each discussed your final classes at Fordham, he asked about your internship, you asked about SVU.  You compared bar exam experiences and the nearly unbearable stress of waiting for the results. 

You asked about his family, and he told you about Bella and Tommy and how they were expecting their first baby.  He asked about your own family, but you shrugged and said they were fine, even though that’s what you always said.  Sonny had never met your family, and you hardly ever mentioned them.  He had never pressed it, just assuming that you weren’t close with them.

The waiter came back with your food, laying down a ridiculous number of platters that covered the table top.  You explained what each thing was, and then you both tucked in with relish. 

Sonny watched you as you both ate.  You looked just the same, only more polished.  Your hair swept up and back instead down, your makeup subtle.  The sharp suit, the jacket hung over the back of your chair, revealing a sleeveless blouse underneath and your lightly muscled arms.

“I appreciate you meeting with me,” he said between bites.  “I know things…didn’t end the best between us.”

You slowed your own chewing to look up at him, and he couldn’t read the expression in your eyes.  You swallowed your bite then daubed at your mouth with your napkin before taking a sip of water.

“No,” you said.  “Things didn’t end great.”

“I wish…” he started, but stopped to think about how to phrase it.  “I made a mistake.  I should have done better.”  He didn’t mention that you could have given him a chance to fix it before dumping him unceremoniously and then refusing all communication from him.

“I didn’t handle it well myself,” you conceded after looking at him for a long moment.  “I just held it all in until it boiled over.”

“So why, then?” he asked.  It felt like opening an old wound.  Painful, but necessary for it to heal properly. 

You snorted.  “Why did I break up with you?  Sonny, you were never around.”  You took another sip of water, and he noticed the faint tremor in your hand.  “I didn’t handle the breakup the best, but how else was I supposed to do it?  Schedule an appointment with you that you’d only break because Amanda was having a bad day and needed a shoulder to cry on?”

“Are you implying that I cheated on you?” he asked, stung at the insinuation.

“No,” you replied carefully.  “Not physically.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

You sighed.  “Sonny, even when you were around, you weren’t with me.  You were always texting Amanda, calling her, talking about her.  Even when we were literally making out, you pushed me away to call her.  Emotionally cheating can hurt just as much as physical.”

“She’s my partner.”

You nodded at him, your eyes sad.  “She is.  More than I ever was.”

“That’s not fair,” he said, and he let some of his anger bubble to the surface.  “She needed – needs me.  Her life isn’t as easy as yours.”

At this, Sonny watched as your face changed, like a door slamming shut.  Your eyes narrowed and you pressed your lips together in a hard, thin line, as if you were physically holding back words.  Then you balled up your napkin and tossed it onto your empty plate.  You reached into your purse to pull out your wallet, and when Sonny tried to stop you, you shook off his hand angrily.  You tossed down a couple of bills and turned to nod at the waiter, then stood up.  The chair scraped along the floor, and you threw your jacket over your arm.

“You know fuck-all about my life, Sonny,” and if your thunderous expression wasn’t enough, your casual use of the eff word told him all he needed to know about how mad you were.  You never swore.

“Maybe you should have shared that with me,” he snapped, unable to stop himself.

“When?” you said, and your voice was low and steady.  “When did I have a chance to share my life with you?”  You gave a bitter bark of laughter.  “You couldn’t even show up for our anniversary dinner, Sonny.  You expect me to believe you’d have been there for the bad stuff when you couldn’t even bother with the good?”

That anniversary.  As long as Sonny lived, he’d never forgive himself for missing it.  It was the beginning of the end, really – you who could barely cook had spent an entire day fussing over cookbooks, pulling together an amazing meal that he ate as leftovers in the days that followed.  He hated to think about you sitting and waiting for him…while he was at Forlini’s with Amanda, nursing a beer as she pounded them back, making sure she got home safely. 

In his mind as he imagined it, you had blown out the candles you’d lit for dinner at about the same time he eased Amanda’s shoes off after laying her in her bed.

You took a few steps toward the door, then paused.  “Tell your partner to get her shit together,” you said.  “Because while I really enjoyed tearing her apart on the stand with this case, I do prefer a challenge.”

Then you walked out, your heels clicking on the tiled floor, leaving Sonny behind.  Again.