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cordonia · 5 years ago

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Ethan + MC: “Kill Us”: I Do P2

Summary: Two days confined in his apartment, two days to decide if they should be together. Time is almost up and Dr. Valentine can’t leave until she has an answer.

Inspired by Kill Us by Jessie Reyez

“I know nobody gets outta love alive We either break up when we're young Or we say goodbye when we die For a moment at least I know You were mine and it was beautiful”

Warnings: Angst, sexual content (I kept it short, nothing worse than a diamond scene and completely skippable, just scroll a little lol!)

Word Count: 3444

“No more apologies, I don’t want to waste more time together.”

She’d agreed instantly, so tired of the sadness that came with every apology they uttered to each other. They could focus on brighter, more important things. Other things could wait, at first.

They’d been alone for two days, hiding away in Ethan’s apartment like students skipping classes and afraid to be caught. She had the time off, however she doubted Ethan had had a two day weekend in a very long time. How he managed to spend this much time with her was unknown, she was afraid asking would change his mind.

Without being said, there was a promise that existed between them. When Valentine left late that night, they would decide the fate of their relationship and wouldn’t argue or upset themselves again.

There hadn’t been much discussion so far; mostly sleeping in, arguing over the news and talking until either of them got frustrated enough to steal a kiss. Valentine could have done it on repeat forever, unable to find a reason why she would ever want to leave.

She’d learned long ago that it was never that easy, but it stopped her from daydreaming. It had been a long time since she had dazed off in someone’s arms and dreamt about anything happy. This was far from wanting to escape, but too close to a fantasy feeling that felt too good.

The evening came quite quickly, and Valentine felt herself counting down the hours until Ethan would need to sleep and ask her to leave. They both had to work the next day, and neither of them knew what their state of mind would be like. The countdown of time was heavy, she felt weighed down to the couch.

Her head laid his lap, his fingers twirling through her hair absentmindedly. She was wearing one of his shirts, not point in getting dressed until she had to leave. She curled her bare legs into herself and closed her eyes.

“How many people have you ever loved?” She didn’t know if she wanted to know the answer, but she had a habit of asking those kinds of questions.

He had to think about it, but when he finally had an answer it was more complicated than it was in his head.

“There are so many forms of love, and it feels strange to categorize it. I haven’t been in many long term relationships. Everything in-between them was a fleeting experience. Positive or negative, it didn’t always have to matter.”

“I don’t want the in-between anymore, I’m so tired. I want the passion and ecstasy and I’m sick of it being temporary.” She sounded a bit flustered, but she suddenly felt sick thinking of being described as a fleeting experience to him. It wasn’t like that, never was, but what if he one day finally forgot how much he loved her?

“What if I’m not the ecstasy?” He tried not to show any emotion in his voice but she still sat up. She adjusted to face him, her legs folding under her, and she sat back on her feet. It gave her the slight height to be eye level with him.

It was difficult to find a scenario in which she fell out of love with him. A small part of her knew that she had never been in a real relationship with him, that being the first problem. Then there was the matter of their careers, they would complicate so many decisions in their life together.

“I think I just want whatever you are then,” she confided. But that didn’t stop her brain from delving into a more detailed look at their options.

If they were to have a family, one of them would need to put their career on pause for a little while. What if Ethan didn’t picture himself ever staying home long enough to raise a family? What if she didn’t? Before him it seemed unlikely she really wanted a family. When she looked at him then, she hated the concept of him one day passing without leaving someone behind who knew his love and all of the wonderful memories he had to offer. She knew it was biological, all bodies, all genders often felt that pull. She had hoped to be among those who were a little bit different. Lucky, she supposed.

But that was impulse, and whether or not it would last was not guaranteed. Next week she could change her mind, not everyone was built for parenting. They could do so many amazing together with the rest of their lives. Endless possibilities, even with their careers. That scared her as well though.

Who was she supposed to be?

“I spent an exceptional amount time forcing you out of my mind,” he admitted. He was holding her hand in his, studying the small scars and lines that made it entirely hers. “I don’t know how successful I was.”

“Did you want to be?”

“I’ve learned a lot about pain tolerance and it’s never been strong when it comes to you. I don’t want to be in pain.” His eyes darkened, and she held her breath, trying to avoid a reaction.

She wanted to cry, to tell him she knew what it felt like, but also that she was sorry. But they had sworn against apologies, and they were running out of time.

“We need to talk about what could keep us apart, Ethan.”

He looked away from her, catching their reflection in the TV across the room. She couldn’t tell if he was preparing himself for a difficult conversation or if he was arguing with his thoughts.

“Just say it aloud, no matter what the other person says. We say what we’re afraid of and we talk to talk it through. Promise?”

He nodded thoughtfully and she gave him a moment to think about what he was going to say. She already had hers at the front of her mind, waiting to spill out like she were preparing to plead guilty. There was few times when being truly vulnerable with Ethan had a happy ending. They’d really had no happy ending at all, but she tried not to look at it that way.

“What are you afraid of?” she asked gently, her fingers reaching out to graze his cheek. He exhaled slowly and briefly closed his eyes before speaking.

“You just got out of a relationship that you were secretly waiting to fall apart. How long until I’m so blinded by how much I love you that I miss you resenting me?”

He tried not to sound impassioned, but it was clear this was a recurring fear, one that held a tight grip on his thoughts. It made it that much harder for her to speak the truth in her head, knowing it wasn’t going to comfort him.

She just had to say it and deal with the consequences.

“What if it isn’t supposed to be so difficult? I worry that if we keep forcing ourselves together, we’re going to wake up in ten years and wonder what made us try so hard.” She suppressed a sob as soon as she had begun speaking, she hated the way her words sounded out loud. She hated playing what if with her own life. With his.

Her lashes were already heavy with tears but she refused to distract from their discussion. “I can’t picture myself ever falling out of love with you. I’m just so scared I don’t know myself like I used to. I might be the kind of person who hurts people.”

Ethan reached out to her, pulling her towards his chest where he held onto her tightly. She could think of nothing worse than going back to her apartment without the comfort of his arms. The idea felt like a betrayal to her own emotions, but she couldn’t be irrational. She had been independent for so long, even in a relationship, and she knew she would survive anything.

It just never felt that way.

“You save people, you help them mend. You’re more than someone else’s pain.” He sounded almost desperate for her to hear what he was saying, but she had seen the repercussions of her decisions in the past few years.

“Why fight for me now, when so much has changed? What makes you think I’m worth it?”

She pulled back from his embrace and waited for him to answer her. His face changed from sympathetic and understanding, emotions they practiced habitually in their work. Suddenly he was more determined, faced with the entanglement of his own feelings and rationale.

“I used to love all of the details I knew about you that nobody else knew. I loved everything from your passion for people to the way you drew patterns across my back when we laid in bed. I have discovered in the past 48 hours that I love everything I have yet to discover about you, and I want to know all of it. When I picture you in the future, I see you doing every single thing you love. You’re never going to need me for that, I know this as a fact.”

She wondered if anyone was ever going to believe in her like that, if she deserved it at all. But Ethan was never the person to shy away from the brutal truth, not when it came to what he loved most; medicine. She couldn’t see anything concrete in her future, it all felt so distant. There was no denying she was already getting older, but their field put them in unusual circumstances sometimes. Nothing was ever linear, there was no track to follow.

“I don’t have to need you, to want you this badly.” The underlying sensuality in her tone was unintentional, but that did nothing to prevent his heartbeat from quickening against the palm she had pressed against his chest.

“I don’t believe you.” Was that a dare? She got off the couch, noticing the flash of confusion of Ethan’s face as she had pulled away.

She faced him, leaning into him for a kiss before climbing into his lap, her knees on either side of his thighs. She kissed him again, slightly deeper, and he responded by shifting lower into the couch, pulling her closer to him. It was like a reflex to grind her hips into his lap and moan at the heat between them. His hands found the small of her back and she knew she would never get enough of his touch on her skin.

He pressed his lips against her jaw, moving down her neck and sucking gently at her throat. She felt his teeth part against the tender area and just before he could do anymore damage, she pulled back. She couldn’t show up to work with a scarf in May.

“Ethan?”

“Yes?”

He looked unfocused, rubbing her thighs and looking from her eyes to her lips. Some of the buttons of the shirt she wore had come undone, his shirt, and when he noticed, his fingers twitched against her thighs. He wanted to touch her, he had touched her many times in the past hours.

“I’m never going to need you,” she mumbled against his lips, applying more pressure to their kiss and letting her teeth graze his lower lip. His body seemed to hum in response but there was a space between their hips that he wanted to close. She had a different idea.

“I’m never,” she purred smoothly, pulling a hand away from him and slipping between her skin and the thin material of her underwear, “going to need you.”

Ethan reached for her hips, gripping them so tightly that her head fell back in response to the pain. She pushed two fingers into herself, hyper aware of how attentively he watched her face change with every curl of her fingers.

“But do you want me?”

She nodded, a small smile on her lips as she let him kiss her again. She removed her hand from between legs and Ethan grabbed her wrist, pulling her fingers to his lips. She held her breath, eyes locked with his as his mouth enveloped the two fingers she had used to pleasure herself. His tongue seared her finger tips and she pushed them further into his mouth, amused by how his body remained completely still.

“I want you, Ethan,” she said aloud. He lifted her up from his lap, turning his body and laying her against the couch. His whole body pressed against hers, the pressure nothing like the fear of time that had weighed her down earlier.

He unbuttoned his pants, removing the physical barrier between him and then her underwear was tossed far enough that she would struggle to find them later. What Ethan could do with his hips soon left her legs shaking so fiercely that he had to hold them still. The couch was the last place they hadn’t had sex that weekend, and they weren’t going to leave it until they knew its strength was properly tested. She hoped it was as expensive as it looked.

The feeling of him inside of her was a convincing reason alone to never leave his place. But nothing could last forever, and eventually the time came that she had to leave so he could find some rest before work in the morning.

They were both dressed, back on the couch, laying on their sides. Her back was pressed against the front of his body, his arm holding her waist to him. She could have fallen asleep like that.

“I don’t want to leave,” she said quietly, hating the way it sounded out loud let alone in her head. It sounded like she was pleading for him to ask her to stay, but she wasn’t delusional.

She hated being an adult. If their lives had been different and she could have gone to college with him, she would have convinced him to take off a week just to memorize the lines of her thighs. But that’s not how doctors spent their time, instead they chose to heal, cut and study. And they loved it.

Valentine wasn’t sure everyone could have multiple great loves, and medicine was first for them both. Could they be lucky enough to have each other as well? Not much in her life gave her the hope to believe that. She wanted the last two days to be proof of something, she just didn’t know what.

Would the passion last? Would they wind up hating each other one day? There was no formula or calculation that gave them those answers.

“I never want to hold you back,” he began. “I’m terrified of disappointing you.” He held her tighter, burying his face in her hair and breathing her in.

“I feel so stupid,” she cried, “I wanted a sign, a spark of something to tell me we wouldn’t hurt each other again. I wanted to know if we deserved this.”

“Some love isn’t this complicated” he assured her. “You still have time, even if it feels like it’s running out. You don’t need me.”

“I wish I did.”

His words didn’t mean the same thing as they had before, not when they suddenly meant goodbye. She wanted to need him so that they could not leave each other, an unbreakable promise, a vow. To need him so badly that her body couldn’t walk out the door like there was a force stronger than love keeping her inside. She wished magic existed, to tie him to her and contain the overflow of absolute ecstasy that felt wasted when they were apart.

Ethan was a realist, and she was of sound mind, maybe even practical. She did not believe in magic and invisible forces in door frames. But she did believe that as Ethan Ramsey broke her heart on an overpriced couch, the power of loss and despair was not mutual with having a grasp on reality.

She felt like a ghost, gathering everything she had with her in the apartment so solemnly that Ethan could barely look at her. There used to be a time where she would leave his apartment feeling like the sun shone entirely for her, always in her favour. Having Ethan in her life felt like a small miracle that most of her coworkers searched for every single day in medicine.

The quicker she left, the sooner she could cry in a way that Ethan would only hurt seeing. She needed to get it out of her body, every ounce of sadness that overtook her. She couldn’t bring it to work, it was dangerous and there was no time for it.

She had to adapt and move on, just like she had before. But maybe better that time around. She chose this, after all.

He hugged her by the door, squeezing her tightly until her body was almost numb. When he let her go she swore she felt like half a person, ripped from someone meant to be sown to her side. It didn’t feel right, but she let him open the door anyways.

“Goodnight, Dr. Valentine. I’ll see you around.” He clenched his teeth, his cheeks hollowing out against the tension in his mouth. He stared into her eyes even as the door began to slowly close, and neither one of them could look away.

Her legs had no more strength to offer, she could feel her knees buckle and she couldn’t linger any longer. She finally turned away and the door shut with a click, leaving her utterly alone in a bland, sanitized hallway. Her feet carried her to the elevator but her cheeks were already wet with tears.

The tears started as a trickle and then streamed freely down her face until she could taste them on her lips.

The chime of the elevator rang through her entire body like a physical force, halting her thoughts with a trance-like effect. She felt the weight of her purse in her hand become incredibly heavy, pulling her to the floor. The elevator doors opened, revealing a completely empty lobby, so quiet that the silence sounded off like static.

She felt paralyzed, swaying slightly as she demanded her body to take a step out into the lobby. She could make it home by midnight and get a few hours of sleep before she was on call. A home where nobody knew what she had gained and lost in two nights. Then back to a hospital where her sorrow was the most minuscule example of suffering and loss. It was meaningless, all of it, because as soon as she left the building, everything that had tied her to Ethan Ramsey was reduced to memories.

There was no proof they had loved each other so intensely, no one to tell their story.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to end, she thought to herself. They had searched for serendipity in the past, a sign they were meant to be along. But then the elevator chimed again, and the moment the doors began to close her back inside; her phone rang.

With shaking hands she lifted the phone to her ear and watched the lobby become a sliver between two doors.

“I can’t watch you leave again,” he said quietly through the phone, desperation clear in his voice.

“I can’t keep doing this, Ethan.” She wiped her eyes and tried to steady her hand, worried she was about to drop the phone. “It hurts more every single time.”

“I’d rather wake up to you in ten years knowing I tried too hard than waking up alone knowing I never tried at all. I don’t need a sign, I just need to fight for you, for once. Do you think you could let me fight for you?”

Her head was spinning, she swayed to the left and quickly put out a hand to the wall to steady herself. She took a deep breath and turned around, facing a mirror in which her appearance stared her down.

She looked exhausted, her face swollen from crying and her hair a disaster from their intimacy on the couch. Her whole body vibrated with the intensity of her feelings and she was face to face with the misery in her entire demeanour. Was she doing this to herself?

She took a deep breath and turned back, pushing a button and sighing in defeat. She couldn’t be the one inflicting her own pain anymore, she wouldn’t. What did she really have to lose anymore?

“I do, Ethan. I’ll let you fight for me this time.”

Note: Some of this sounds so ridiculous but the sad part is this is how dramatic so many encounters with my ex used to be like. Just the level of intensity and the weight of walking away with no certainty. Yesterday I noticed that the last silver chain bracelet my ex gave me to wasn’t on my wrist anymore. I’m extremely sentimental and it hasn’t come off my wrist in three years until now. I can’t believe it’s gone? You can probably tell how tired I am. I also didn’t save this twice, and had to rewrite really long parts so this took forever to finish. This isn’t my best work but... oh well.

Tagging: @ethandaddyramsey @binny1985 @openheart12 @bellcat2010 @edith-eggs1 @missmiimiie @queenofspades6 @schnitzelbutterfingers @longneckramsey @queencarb @kaavyaethanramsey @ethxnrxmsey @jooous @blazerina @choices-lurker @itsgoingnuts @lilyvalentine @aworldoffandoms @choices-love-affair @nooruleman @mkamra2355 @whimsicalreader

#open heart #open heart fanfiction #ethan ramsey #ethan ramsey x reader #ethan ramsey x mc #open heart imagine #open heart edit #my fanfic #my edit

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rkivepacks · 5 years ago

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TITLE: In the blurry memories from the other side of my dreams Originally posted on: AO3/dtgloss Pairing: taekook/kookv/vkook (Kim Taehyung & Jeon Jeongguk) Rating: PG13 Genre: Fluff Word Count: 2,889 Trigger Warning/s: Swearing Disclaimer: Title is from Lucid Dream - Monogram. This work is solely from the idea of the author. Should there be similarities with the works of other respected artists are purely unintentional. This also do not reflect on the real lives of the artists portrayed in this work. Comments, suggestions and any other concerns are accepted in my inbox. Thank you!

[See all works here]

Summary: Jeongguk, Taehyung learns, has a habit of cancelling plans. Plans that were predetermined by Taehyung’s dreams. In his defense, he was not aware that Taehyung has these kinds of dreams. Jeongguk, Taehyung learns, can prove that habits, in fact don’t die hard. or the au where taehyung’s dreams become reality and jeongguk accidentally stops them from becoming a reality until one day he doesn’t that nobody honestly asked for

He remembers this. He learned the difference between deja vu and his dreams when he sees them, or dreams about them, rather. Taehyung would like to think it just happened and not some kind of accident where he hit his head and suddenly he happens to dream about things that eventually becomes real or some asteroid shit he stumbled upon when he was thirteen suddenly gave him his supposed talent. He noticed the pattern when his dreams become real, and he admits quite a handful cant be that pretty. He also learns how to use them to his advantage.

Like that one time he had a dream where his boyfriend in twelfth grade had dumped him. He had four days to prepare himself from the classic ‘it’s not working out’. Or that one time he saw Jimin getting into a compromising situation, prompting his best friend to be careful if he won’t let Taehyung stop him from going to that one club.

And this, he remembers. A dream he once had involves him performing in a theater, a full house at that. He remembers it being a musical. He also remembers the reason why he ended up as a performer is this. He also remembers the most memorable part of his dream - he was apparently romantically involved with the other lead actor who plays the role of the other half of his character.

However, this he does not remember. He does not get along with the said co-actor.

“He’s still salty not getting my role, hyung.” He grumbles for the second time when his Namjoon hyung insists the said co-actor was probably pining for him, because who the fuck goes behind your back and bad mouths about you to the director? Surely not someone who likes you, and your supposed other half as his dream told him. He feels quite betrayed that his dream did not tell him about the said asshole, or maybe he does not remember at all.

Taehyung eyes the milk he badly wants to have, weighing the pros and cons of having it the morning he needs to leave for the call time of his show that day and the consequence of being lactose intolerant before he runs up to his room to grab his bag. He reminds Namjoon of the tickets he reserved for them and that he put them inside his bag already because, hyung if you lose them I will strangle you with the curtains, and leaves his apartment.

Taehyung’s favorite part of being a theater performer is the adreline rush behind the curtains that just closed, signaling the end of the performance. It was a good mess, people congratulating each other, talks of the next performance, and the food. Taehyung was in the middle of texting his friends to wait for him in the lobby so they can all walk to dinner when Director Kang knocks on his dressing room, with people towing behind.

“Kim Taehyung, playing one of the main roles.” Said the director who introduced him to the three people standing near the couch inside his dressing room. One of them was also a director, one he recognizes from the plays he may have seen in the past, the stage manager for this very play he just performed in and -

“Jeon Jeongguk. He was supposed to play the role of Cunnings.” There was a hint of regret in Director Kang’s voice and oh, honestly.

“Really? Why didn’t you?” Taehyung asks just because, why the fuck?

“Minor accident. I insisted on pushing through with rehearsals but recovery will take up half of it.” Jeongguk explains, noticing the inner turmoils inside Taehyung’s head. “Congratulations by the way.” He offers to which Taehyung gratefully accepts with sincere appreciation.

This, Taehyung doesn’t remember. He feels betrayed by his dream because honestly, not informing me of this important information? Life threatening.

Taehyung finds himself explaining what took place in his dressing room to his friends because, Jimin, I could have saved him.

“What are you gonna do? Stop the car? Take the hit? Push him behind you?” Namjoon snorts, followed by a horrible rendition of his infamous line “Why did you do it?” from one of his plays before where he was stabbed and died.

The Performing Arts Theatre has a small community, they would see each other again. Just wait, soulmate.

_______________________________________

They had met sooner than they think. It was at the audition of the next major play for the First Quarter of next year. Going through heaps of aspiring actors aiming to earn a role for the major play.

Taehyung had a dream about this. Which is why he came prepared in the form of his best clothes he only wears for his dates. Namjoon thinks he is being a flirt and straightforward, to which Seokjin adds gayforward, Namjoon. Taehyung is gay as fuck. Taehyung thinks he is smart and Namjoon is a little bitch.

Which is why, Taehyung sits at the table with the profiles of the actors in front of him and Jeongguk to his right, in his all black glory. They have shared glances and notes in the first half of the auditions and Jeongguk even got him a water bottle that Taehyung contemplates bringing home with him, because you gotta save the environment and all that shit yadda yadda.

Taehyung had a dream about this. Jeongguk sitting across from him at the sizzling plate diner 2 blocks away from the theatre. Jeongguk talks about the newly-opened diner that was on its soft-opening that he wanted to try, and Taehyung doesn’t wonder why the other members of the panel were not invited because he honestly couldn’t care. Not when Jeongguk has been laughing at him as he blame Jeongguk for leaving him to work with an asshole.

“I met him also. Was a bit smug he got the role instead of me.” He chides.

“He sucks. I just hope he wouldn’t be in the first quarter productions.” Said Taehyung.

“You said you had a minor accident? That’s why you didn’t get to play my other half.” Taehyung bites his burger, still guilt-tripping his future man (he damn will be, Jimin. Watch me).

“I fell funny during dance practice. Therapy kind of took a long time and its compromising with rehearsals. I told them I could do it. Doctor said I’m annoying as fuck.” And maybe Jeongguk made up the last part just to see Taehyung laugh.

Taehyung can’t remember if he had a dream about this. But he doesn’t care. Not when they had to go back to the theatre to be in the second half of the auditions. Not when Jeongguk walked him to his car and got his number. Not when Jeongguk hugged him before he left. Not when he bursted through his apartment and hit Jimin’s back with the door knob and got hit by the slippers because sue him. He’s met the love of his life (My Dream, 2014), he’s happy. Contented--

Jeongguk also ignores the way he doesn’t feel guilty that his packed lunch soiled inside his bag just to get lunch with Taehyung. He also ignores the way Director Kang was looking when he said he had to be somewhere for lunch and had to quickly leave with Taehyung without them knowing. He also ignores the script he needed to memorize just to construct the first message to Taehyung.

“Taehyung what if he’s being nice. You work together.” Jimin says with a pout. The one where he’s honestly just trying to ruin Taehyung’s fun.

“My dreams said otherwise. She also said fuck you Jimin.”

“You knew each other for only a week.” Namjoon adds, breaking Taehyung’s train of thoughts where he had already planned their wedding, their honeymoon in Malta, their first two children named Taehan and Jungmin.

“He’s probably already taken or straight.”

“You’re paying for my fucking drinks tomorrow or I’m stealing your m&m’s stash” Taehyung makes sure of the threat with the force of the pillow he threw aimed at Jimin’s dick.

—————————————————————

“What’s your star sign, Tae?”

“Capricorn. Why?”

“I can trust you. Good to know.” Also good to know we’re compatible, Jeongguk adds.

“And you, Jeonniboy? You act like you’re an Earth sign.”

“Virgo.”

“Ah, kinky.” Taehyung inappropriately comments, making the two of them laugh in the middle of Burger King.

“I’d like to defy stereotypes for us virgos and prove we’re fun. Would you grant me the honor of having a drink with you this Thursday?” Jeongguk inquires, raising an eyebrow, getting too close for Taehyung’s health.

“Is that where you bring your dates?”

“Yeah I get them drunk and dump their bodies behind the bar. Don’t tell anyone.”

“You’re killing the person who’s willing to dispatch a dead body for you?” Taehyung tries his best to sound hurt.

“We’ll if you bring bleach I’ll reconsider.”

“Cut up the bodies and I’ll bring the plastic bag.” Taehyung sounds serious, earning a strange look from the table beside them.

Thursday morning comes too quick but Jeongguk doesn’t mind. He may have prayed for it to come quick but no one questions him aside from Yoongi, who has been judging him for being awake before ten in the morning.

His phone lights up with a message from Taehyung, saying ‘Mind if I bring friends? You can say no, I can tie them up and hide the keys.’ to which he replies with ‘as long as I still have your attention. And because I’m competitive, I’ll also come bearing gifts.’

Fast forward to the night they see each other, respective friends in tow, the group quickly falls deep into conversation. Taehyung sits in the outer part of the booth, with the excuse of having low control for peeing, and Jeongguk excuses himself to the bathroom and comes back to a different seat, now parallel to Taehyung. The two have been in a competition on who can stay sober the longest without having to stop drinking, and Taehyung never failed to give his attention to Jeongguk.

Their current game is a staring contest, where nobody won because Jimin just had to ask-

“do you want a separate table?” Really loudly, gathering the attention of everyone at the table, and snickering.

“Jimin, eat.” Taehyung warns, shoving a big chunk of bulgogi inside Jimin’s mouth, Hoseok laughing really loudly at him.

Jeongguk looks to his left where Yoongi sits, eyeing him that’s almost teasing.

“Hyung, also want one?” Jeongguk threatens, pulling a tight smile, as he picks up a rather bigger chunk of bulgogi.

The night ended with Jeongguk walking Taehyung, helping him pull a very drunk Jimin to his car.

“Designated driver?” Jeongguk asks as Jimin hit his head on the door and Taehyung nods. “Want me to drive you?”

“It’s fine I can manage. You need rest.” Taehyung shrugs, opening the door to his side.

“Text me when you get home.” Said Jeongguk, who later on adds, “please” earning a chuckle from Taehyung.

“You too, please.” And Taehyung would like to think he had a dream about this, of Jeongguk diminishing the space between them to place a kiss on his cheek, and he knows he did not imagine it when his body tilted back a little because of the force. He helpes Taehyung get inside, watching him drive away, before walking back to his own car where Yoongi had been waiting for him, threatening to leave with his car.

—————————————————————

Taehyung and Jeongguk have been locked up in the latter��s apartment since the latter had called Taehyung to come help him practice his lines, and Taehyung agreed, will always agree to Jeongguk’s wishes. They had been throwing lines back and forth, Taehyung looking down at the slightly tattered script while forcing Jeongguk to drop scripts.

“Hyung, do you want brownies?” Jeongguk suddenly asks.

“That’s not a part of the script.” Taehyung replies and Jeongguk throws the softest pillow. “You bake?” He gapes.

“Hell no. It’s pre-mix.” Jeongguk yelps as he gets a slap on his thighs.

The two has long abandoned the script and made a bee line towards the kitchen, where Jeongguk has started mixing the butter with the brownie mix and Taehyung sits at the counter top for moral support. His best role.

“Taste.” Jeongguk has his point finger covered in the brownie mix near Taehyung’s lips and the latter tries not to jump the opportunity that quick. “Good?”

“Tasty.” Taehyung wiggles his eyebrows, earning a chuckle and a flush from Jeongguk.

Jeongguk assigns Taehyung the task of mixing the batter while he prepares the oven only to turn around and catches Taehyung dipping his finger on the brownie mix and what seems to be not the first time he’s been doing it. Taehyung has his fingers mid-way to his mouth newly-dipped, covered in brownie mix when Jeongguk gets a grip of his arm, halting his actions causing Taehyung to jolt.

“Traitor.” Jeongguk grumbles playfully, contradicting his first action by guiding Taehyung’s hand to his mouth. And Taehyung, who got a slightly horrible hand-eye coordination, missed his aim a little, a slight whip of the mix getting to his chin, making Jeongguk chuckle. Taehyung, with flushed cheeks and brownies on his chin, aims to wipe it off with his free hand, and Jeongguk with his fast reflex catches his other arm, causing him to practically back hug Taehyung.

“I’ll get it for you.” Jeongguk mumbles, leaning down to wipe the mix on Taehyung’s chin with his own lips, pausing for two seconds, before moving closer to the corner of Taehyung’s lips.

And Taehyung is glad he did not dream of this. Glad he knew he was gonna make a little mess of himself. Glad that Jeongguk was there to clean up for him. Glad of his own way of helping Taehyung. And suddenly, Taehyung has 20 ideas of ending the script he was trying to write.

The smell of the butter pre-heating in the oven pulled Jeongguk away and he’s glad. He wouldn’t know how to explain his actions to Taehyung. “Set up the console?” He asks Taehyung as he pulled away, putting a safe distance between them, before grabbing the brownie mix and turning to the oven.

Later that night, the two (unsurprisingly) are sitting too close to each other, with Jeongguk sitting behind Taehyung, who was sitting between his legs, in an intense game of the classic overwatch. Hoseok comes home and sees the two in a slightly out of context position before turning on his heels quite fast, with the excuse, oh shit, I left my wallet at Yoongi’s. Jeongguk ignores how the back pocket of the older is bulging with his said missing wallet. He doesn’t care. He’s contented.

That night, Taehyung left his apartment with packed brownies and a kiss more secured than the one they shared earlier in the kitchen and Taehyung goes home with a bounce in his steps, wallowing in happiness while munching the brownies, swatting Namjoon’s hand when he tried to sneak a small piece, claiming they are pot brownies.

That night, Taehyung dreams of a laid back date with Jeongguk, going to see a much-anticipated play that was half and an hour away from where they are and a dinner at that damn diner that was still on it’s soft-opening. Taehyung wakes up in the morning with a to-do list that includes preparing his outfit and a rehearsal to attend to. The following night, Taehyung’s dreams include Jeongguk bringing him donuts and milk tea for a working breakfast while the two sit in another auditions, and another intense game of fortnite in his apartment.

————————————————

Jeongguk, Taehyung learns, has a habit of cancelling plans. Plans that were predetermined by Taehyung’s dreams. In his defense, he was not aware that Taehyung has these kinds of dreams. Jeongguk, as Taehyung’s dream told him, had rightfully brought him his donuts and a milk tea. However, Jeongguk couldn’t attend the second half of the auditions, as he needed to oversee the technical dress rehearsal of the major play of a close friend directing the said play.

————————————————

Jeongguk, Taehyung learns, can prove that habits, in fact don’t die hard. The former had sent him a text that says I’m picking you up, is thirty minutes enough? to which he replied sure, before screaming and scrambling for his closet in panic. Taehyung sure is wearing the outfit he has prepared the morning after he had the dream where they had a date.

“Where are we going, good sir?” He asks Jeongguk who chuckles.

“Just somewhere.” He shrugs. And Taehyung knows. Knows what they’ll do, where they’re going.

The night happened just as it did in his dream. Turns out the play they have seen was the one Jeongguk was overseeing that one time they had to cancel their second date (as Taehyung’s dream called it). However, Taehyung’s dream purposely left out the part where Jeongguk has his hand wrapped around Taehyung’s the entire time. Or the random kiss he received in the middle of the play (Taehyung swore he cried because of the scene). It also left out the part where Jeongguk stayed the night in his apartment, Jimin and Namjoon caught in the act of munching over his brownies, the one he baked with the person sitting beside him, arms wrapped around him.

[end]

#armysource #bangtanhq #goldenclosetnet #taekook au #dtgloss #aus #taekook #vkook aus #kookv aus #dtgloss 1 #rkivepacks aus

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raccoonpatriotism · 6 years ago

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Random, Useless Headcanons | Accepting

i like how i keep labeling this meme as “accepting” when i have…. 260 of these right here.

1: Has he driven a car before? Yes. Should he be allowed to keep driving? No.

2: You know that “I’m washing me and my clothes!” vine? That’s Jane. It’s efficient.

3: If you gave him Cat Food he’d say it’s the best thing he’d ever tasted.

4: Before going to Poland to serve his time, he hired a sex worker. Her touch would be the last non-violent physical contact he would feel for the next 9 or so years.

6: He donates a healthy sum of his paychecks to wild animal and veteran charities.

7: Jane’s ‘friendship’ with Merasmus is the longest relationship he’s ever held.

8: Jane doesn’t believe in the number 8.

9: He doesn’t have any titty mags, but he does have tasteful pin-up for the inside of his locker.

10: He’s an excellent swimmer - but will sometimes forget to hold his breath.

11: Getting Jane to imprint on you like a baby bird is really easy. Be strong, be patriotic, be funny, be determined.

12: He trusts everything he’s told from someone he views as a friend.

13: He’s been on BLU before - it was brief.., a WAR! got started and ended. A few years went by and he was balanced to RED

14: Continuation of 13, it was… very easy to get him to believe he was always on RED team.

15: He loves fighting robots - but nothing compares to the feeling of a neck snapping in his hands.

16: He taught himself how to use every weapon he came across in Poland - it took a few years before he ran into a rocket launcher…. His life was changed from that moment onward.

17: His knowledge of the US military comes from tv and stories from veteran home he was forced to work at through his older years at the orphanage. (Outdated or complete bullshit.)

18: The liveliness of America is just one of the innumerable reasons he loves the country. Even things he hates (like.. war protesters/hippies) have this determination in them that makes him proud.

19: He’ll pick ear wax out of his ear, sniff it, grimace, and happily hold the finger out to somebody near him.

20: He only wants the best for you.

21: Getting him to realize he’s actually ended civilian’s lives is a conversation that would take over an hour. His brain has the wildest, irrationally rational excuses ever. (”Officer Miss Pauling, what I am about to say will SHOCK you; I was framed” will never make me not lose my mind. ilove him)

22: His moral compass is, admittedly, terrible, but he genuinely wants the best for people in the world.

23: Helping people, serving his country, that’s his goal. That all he wants out of life. He’s a cog in the machine of war and he loves it.

24: Consequences don’t exist in Jane’s world.

25: He’s so fucking bisexual. This headcanon is not useless at all.

26: Jane snores like a chainsaw - and will then be absolutely silent for spaces of minutes.

27: He never covers his face when he sneezes.

28: He’s very touchy feely - A way to make up for what he so clearly craves.

29: But god this man wants to be touched.

30: As much as Jane holds back on admitting to weakness, he’s also just a genuinely honest guy so simple prodding usually gets him to spill.

31: Jane has never purposefully manipulated someone in his life.

32: He’s only ever seen one movie. Well, more like registered he always zones out at some point. Sometimes starting the movie in a day dream and zoning back in to catch the ending. The movie he’s fully seen was watched through 3 separate sessions.

33: War films, what he does catch, always make him cry.

34: With everyone he meets; Jane immediately thinks of two things. How to kill them. And what to say when holding their guts into their dying corpse and crying to the sky.

35: He has no idea he’s beautiful.

36: Jane doesn’t have a self-effacing bone in his body.

37: He chews with his mouth open, and speaks with his mouth full. He’ll also snap at someone else to stop talking with their mouth full, it’s disrespectful.

38: Jane had a dream where he beat Communism and thought it was true for a whole year.

39: He’s not dumb on purpose. He has nothing to gain by making people think he’s an idiot, as far as he’s concerned. He acts like himself 24/7

40: Jane invented that song Fifty Nifty United States song that’s song in elementary schools.

41: You know those kiddie leashes? You could put one of those on Jane and he wouldn’t be, like, “Okay.” Try and run off and be like “What contraption is holding me here?!?!?!”

42: The answer to life, the universe, and everything is American Apple Pie

43: i just realized im gonna get to answer a headcanon 69 and got excited. UHH jane likes the color red.

44: Jane likes the color blue.

45: Jane likes the color white.

46: Jane loves all skin colors, anybody can be American.

47: Has he retained any American history? Haha. Ha. No.

48: Jane was taken out of elementary school for bad behavior, lack of attention, and general ruckus.

49: His orphanage never tried to send him back to any schooling.

50: Jane was born July 4th, he doesn’t know that, despite claiming it.

51: He’s not an amnesiac - he’s never had a strong sense for long-term memories.

52: God, he loves bread.

53: And also he loves taking everything Engineer says literally. He’s such a wise American.

54: Jane would absolute trollface and say “Problem?”

55: He would never say a slur.

56: Jane does not use fuck as a curse ever. He’ll say it, but like, to mean, y’know.

57: He’s a follower, don’t tell him that. He’ll get offended.

58: Jane is convinced the President is the most powerful being in the world, and is also granted special powers.

59: Jane is progressive, baybee. He thinks dogs should vote!!

60: UNLESS IT HAS TO DO WITH WAR. Then he’s, like, a total bootlicker.

61: He’ll beat up racists in bars.

62: Jane really came alive during Grey Mann’s first robot attacks - for the second time he felt like he was protecting America and not some Very Important American Gravel.

63: If Jane ever got sentenced to prison, he’d just serve his time.

64: He has Lawyer Powers given to him by magic, and he is not afraid to use them.

65: Besides Scout, he has represented himself, Lt. Bites, and the state of Tennessee in court.

66: He was a bad roommate, he genuinely thought Merasmus was an even worse roommate.

67: Extreme Cold is a surefire way to trigger his PTSD. He doesn’t act all that different verbally, but he becomes entire still. Not even moving to shiver. It’s like he automatically transfers to late stage hypothermia.

68: Jane may have never played baseball, but he’s briefly been on a bowling team.

69: ayyyyy. Jane always returns the favor, if ya know what i mean.

70: I can’t tell you how much he can lift because I know nothing about fitness, but it’s a lot. And it’s impressive.

71: Jane practices unsafe workout routines! It’s a miracle lifting without a spotter hasn’t killed him yet.

72: He makes up for his genuine stupidity with Pure Luck.

73: He’ll kill, he’ll maim, but he won’t assault.

74: Jane’s favorite chocolate is Hershey’s.

75: He’s convinced Milton Hershey, founder of Hershey’s Chocolate, was a President despite him being alive in Jane’s lifetime.

76: Jane isn’t afraid of gay thoughts, never payed attention to period typical homophobia going on around him therefor never got a chance to develop it.

77: Jane would totally be the type of guy to see one of those Fireman Calendars and zone out staring at some dudes pecs and someone asks him if he’s okay and he’s like “I’m ogay.”

78: It’s a miracle, the first time Jane rocket jumped, his legs weren’t blown off. He was injured from the fall, surprised he’d gotten air at all. It was an accident and, while he’d never go to recreate it during his time in Poland, when he’d gotten hooked up to respawn and he saw all the high perches, the trick reoccured to him.

79: He loved Tavish so much

80: He was born in Tennessee, although he grew up in Wisconsin.

81: He’ll make odd little sounds - aborted sentences, thoughts lost to the depths of his brain. You can point them out and he’ll have no idea what you’re talking about.

82: He could have a possum mixed in with his raccoons and think it’s a raccoon.

83: He takes his Ranger Job very seriously. Just as serious as he does all his jobs. (So, you know. Not… very.) He is very enthusiastic at least!

84: He’s not empathetic at all, however energies at Large in a room really affect him. Chances are, if everyone’s in good favor, he’ll be really happy and relaxed - even if previously grumpy.

85: Jane can be really grumpy, that’s when his drill sergeant personality shines through - more often than not, he’s just a good natured loud patriot rolling with the punches of life.

86: He believes in the Judeo-Christian God, but also… believes the president is stronger than God? Sometimes? Depends on the situation. What is blasphemy haha?!?

87: Jane always wanted a puppy - meeting Bites, future Lieutenant, was like a dream come true to him.

88: Plus, he’d always liked raccoons - often responsible for tipping over dumpsters at his orphanage to help the little critters.

89: Jane can and will eat out of the garbage if not stopped.

90: He’s very passionate and strict about what he knows are fact (the issue is, facts can change pretty easily in jane’s head.

91: Good thing he has a helmet because Jane’s puppy-dog eyes are the sort that are clearly un-practiced and unintentional and thus made all the more soul-wrenching.

92: He’s always surprised by doorbells.

93: Jane would never smoke weed of his own volition, but under the influence, everything would make So Much Sense to him.

94: I’m talking the wildest stoner sayings, that always are so structurally sound it’s scary.

95: This man loves cashews.

96: “Mm crunchy things.. good.” - Shared thought by Jane and Lt. Bites.

97: Lt. Bites likes to curl up on Jane’s stomach when he’s sleeping. Jane often wakes up with his face covered in scratches and fur in his mouth. Much like the Soldier, the Lieutenant isn’t quite a sound sleeper.

98: Fuck, like, he loves cashews so much? The texture is amazing.

99: Jane has no illegitimate or legitimate children.

100: Jane loves his team almost as much as he loves America.

101: IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR scroll back up and read everything, LOSER otherwise… wow………you love soldier. me too……

CONTINUED HERE

#homeofthevan #patriotic answers #patriotic headcanons #100 headcanons so far.......#to be continued tomorrow.........#vanyel is absolutely ridiculous blame them and also love them

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akaluan · 6 years ago

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Baku!Erich Part 4

((Last of what I currently have written. Might get some more done this weekend.

Also, it’s really fun to write Alexis like this, she’s such a sassy creature I love her to death.))

They begin that night.

Erich devours the boy’s first nightmare and Alexis pulls free a fragment of the hoshi no tama, no bigger than a grain of rice. She holds it out to him, perched on a claw, and Erich breaks off a fragment of his Self to wrap around the divine gift.

A baku’s protective nature, to guard the boy from unintentional harm.

He breathes out the power gained from the boy’s first nightmare, tucking it close around the gift and letting none escape. The end result looks almost like another hoshi no tama, gleaming in the moonlight with a single, bright star in its heart.

It’s beautiful, and Erich can’t help but feel /hope/.

He plucks the new orb from Alexis’ paw and presses it gently to the boy’s forehead. It sinks in like rain on parched earth, gone before Erich even has a chance to let go.

The boy’s face scrunches up in reaction and he grumbles in his sleep, head turning away and arms pulling his blankets closer. They wait, watching him for any sign of distress, but only another nightmare comes.

::How long, do you think?:: Alexis asks while plucking the newborn nightmare free.

Erich considers the hoshi no tama, then presses it gently to the hollow of Alexis’ throat. ::Two months, perhaps?::

Two months is a long time. Already they’ve spent nearly a month guarding the teens’ sleep. Already they’ve spent more time in one place, /together/, than at any other moment in their lives.

Already they are growing attached to these humans, like they once did with the soldiers who called them into being.

::Two months to heal his soul, but how many months to sooth their dreams?:: she wonders, staring down at the sleeping boy.

That is a question he has no answer for, and they both know it. Whatever these teens have been through, they were thrown into it without preparation or regard for their wellbeing. The price they now pay is cruel and relentless, and Erich is uncertain how long it will take for them to recover.

::We should get moving,:: he offers instead. He pulls the next nightmare from the boy’s mind before it can settle, then leans in and breathes out his fragment of protection. ::Remember to keep track of the hours.::

Alexis nods and leaps through the window, orienting towards another of the teens.

But she doesn’t leave.

/They/ don’t leave.

Because the man that’s been stalking them is standing in midair, eyes shadowed by his hat and cane held in a deceptively loose grip. His expression is flat and cold and unyielding, like some of the most war-hardened soldiers Erich ever knew.

Silence stretches as they each wait for the other side to cave first. It seems to last forever, straining Erich’s patience and making Alexis go still in preparation to strike.

(They have charges to care for. Charges that they are ignoring in favor of a useless standoff with a dangerous man.)

(But they are two and he is one, and Erich and Alexis have never been shy about carving their way through problems.)

He and Alexis share a look. The man’s stance shifts.

::I told you he could see us,:: Erich says, breaking the standoff with an irreverent comment. It throws the man, albeit briefly, and snaps the rising tension nicely.

Alexis harrumphs at him, put upon and annoyed, and gives the man a ‘can you believe my companion?’ look that further throws him off balance. ::You /guessed/ he could see us. It was a fifty-fifty chance, congratulations on guessing correctly.::

::My guesses are—::

::Exactly as reliable as a coin flip,:: Alexis interrupts with a huff, ::just like everyone else’s.::

“As entertaining as this is,” the man cuts in, a hint of humor hiding amongst the steel, “I would like to ask what it is you two have just done to that boy, baku-san, baku-san.”

::Begun to heal him,:: Erich answers.

The man’s expression hardens. “I was unaware that baku were skilled in healing soul-wounds.”

::We aren’t, but why should we be limited to only our skills?:: Alexis asks. She tips her head and bares her teeth, ears laid back against her skull. ::Inari Ōkami was more than happy to lend her aid to our cause.::

The man grows still. Fragments of emotion creep into his aura, faint and muddy and barely enough for Erich to sense, but still /there/. Still enough to prove that he cares, that he worries. “And you think whatever this is will help?”

::We know it will.:: Erich says with confidence.

The man grimaces and tugs at the brim of his hat, gaze drifting away from them to land on the boy’s window. “Fine. But if you cause him harm, if this ‘solution’ of yours only makes him worse—”

::You have been trying, haven’t you,:: Alexis interrupts. She stalks forward and rears up on her hind legs, leaning in to peer closely at the man. ::That’s why you’ve been stalking us, because you were wondering if we were doing something you could capitalize on.::

“Yes,” he admits readily enough, undaunted by the way Alexis is practically looming over him. “Everything I could devise… all my theories fell apart when I tried to bring them to fruition. The human soul is an intricate affair, and the damage to his is immense. When I saw what you were doing to his soul, attempting to staunch the wound, I… wondered.”

Erich grimaces and shakes his head. ::That is no more than a stopgap. The soul can heal, but his is too damaged to do so on its own. He needs outside assistance, and that is what Inari Ōkami has provided.::

“I had suspected, but…” the man sighs and steps back from Alexis, shoulders slumping with exhaustion. “My best theory was to provide an infusion of a large quantity of reiatsu all at once, but I can’t produce that much alone. Not quickly enough to help…”

::It wouldn’t do him any favors,:: Alexis says, dropping back to all fours and giving the man a sad look. ::His soul might heal from it, but the myōbu told us that /he/ must heal himself, else a fragility will be introduced to his soul. We cannot force healing upon him.::

The man frowns at them. “Isn’t that what you’re doing, though? You’ve not approached him, not asked him for his agreement—”

::But whether or not he heals is up to him,:: Erich says. ::We are giving him the strength and the template. How he makes use of that… that is up to his subconscious will.::

“How soon will you know?”

Erich trades a look with Alexis, then shakes his head. He hadn’t even considered asking. ::We don’t know.::

::Perhaps a week?:: Alexis offers. At Erich’s curious look, she lifts a paw and mimes a shrug. ::With the sort of healing he’s doing, and the time you estimated, a week seems about right for the first signs.::

The man sighs and fidgets with his cane, gaze flickering between them and the boy’s window once again. “Alright,” he finally agrees. “Alright. One week. And if there’s no sign, or if he becomes /worse/, I will not hesitate to chase you off.”

Erich blinks at the threat, one ear swiveling back in confusion. From the man’s aura and the way he so effortlessly pretended Alexis didn’t exist despite her best efforts, ‘chase them off’ seems… laughably light. He expected to need to fight the man— /still/ expects it, honestly— and instead he’s being threatened with… being run off?

Some of his confusion must be clear to the man, because he coughs awkwardly and rubs at the back of his head. “You… I’ve been watching you. And… you /are/ helping them. More than I’ve been able to. I also know very well what it’s like to try and try and still make everything worse.”

::The boy will be fine,:: Alexis does her best to reassure. ::He will heal and be whole once more.::

::He will be changed, however,:: Erich warns, deciding that the man should be made aware of the consequences of their actions. ::He is being healed by a divine gift born of Inari Ōkami and strengthened by her myōbu. A human cannot be touched by so much kami and yokai power without being influenced by it.::

“But he’ll live,” the man says. He squares his shoulders when Erich and Alexis both nod in agreement. “Then so be it. Kurosaki-kun is an adaptable young man, he’ll manage.”

Erich is not entirely certain it will be so easy, but the less conflict the better. And, in all likelihood, the man will help Kurosaki to adapt.

::If that is all, we have our duties to perform,:: Alexis says, gaze turning away from the man and towards one of the other teens. ::Remember, you gave us a week.::

“I remem— woah!” The man straightens sharply as Alexis bolts past him, close enough to touch. He casts an exasperated look at Erich and says, “I thought your companion would stop doing that once they knew I could see you both.”

Erich lifts a paw and mimes a shrug. He’d expected exactly what she’d done, honestly. ::Now that she knows you can see her, she’ll probably begin to see how far she can push you.:: He laughs at the man’s blank, disbelieving gaze. ::There are not many who can see us, so you’re interesting. Along with how well you pretended you /couldn’t/…::

“Oh dear…”

::You’ll be fine. Just try not to die of a heart attack,:: Erich advises dryly. ::That would make you boring.::

“Well… I wouldn’t want to be that,” the man responds faintly, clearly uncertain how to take Erich’s words.

Erich laughs and rises to his feet, stalking past the man on his way towards another of the teens. ::No, you certainly wouldn’t.:: And with those entirely unreassuring words, he bounds off to continue his duty, leaving the man sputtering in protest behind him.

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kdlovehg · 8 years ago

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Authors note ~ Happy valentine's day! If you celebrate it. Hope you enjoy this. It's my first ever one-shot for valentine's day so I'm proud of it. Hopefully someone like this. Thanks for reading! This is my submission for Love is @loveinpanem. To pluck a heart's rose. •~• •~• The red foil shines as the light from the fireplace reflects onto it. The fake rose lays at the bottom of the handcrafted frame housing the faded photo taken the day they met, exactly four years ago. Katniss was sleeping in the children's area of the library after reading the books of her childhood - the ones her dad had read to her mum whilst she was pregnant with her. She'd been volunteering at the local nursery and in her rush to leave she'd forgotten her library card, by the time she returned they'd closed for the day. Restless and desperate for some comfort she'd sat down to read but the sun shining through the blinds only aiding in lulling her to sleep. Next thing she saw was the comically wide eyes of a young 12 year old boy trying to crawl away from her. It took two years until he confessed about the photo. Apparently, he'd seen the small girl and assumed she was taking a nap, after all, didn't all sane teenagers do that? The boy - Peeta as she'd come to learn - was even more shy than she was, with dirty blonde hair that would block his sight and shirts with sleeves stretched out over his hands. He'd heard of valentine's day but in a house full of boys and with few friends he'd yet to actually prove that he could connect with a girl. Until he saw her. Quickly he had dusted off his father's camera, set the timer for ten seconds and crawled over to her. Katniss imagined he was poking his tongue out throughout the process as he had attempted to be sneaky and lift the sleeping girl's head so it was resting on his shoulder. Unfortunately, he said, that he was acting too bold for his age and attempted to kiss her. He succeeded, giving her a peck on the nose as the second flash went off, except as he moved away. Well she sneezed. 'I thought you were allergic to me' he'd told her shyly at the end of his story. He couldn't have been more wrong. That's why the valentine's gift made her want to cry. Four years later and he'd got her a half fake, half chocolate rose. Who would want that? She wouldn't have minded previously but they'd been together for a year now. He was her boyfriend. They were grown up. They progressed in their relationship. Oh yes, they were past nose kisses - although they were still ongoing. They'd moved onto eye contact. So a chocolate rose? Well Katniss wasn't a romantic or anything, and personally she thought that valentine's day was pointless, but surely he could have put a bit more effort into choosing her a gift. I mean she'd prepared his surprise gift for a week and all their pets came round to watch as they painted their favourite designs on each other, or at least he did as she gave him the supplies and made up stories for each image. Not to mention he had to live up to her parents standards who viewed love as sacrificing anything for a small smile. It hurt. It hurt a lot. Cause Katniss cared for him, however unintentional. Sometimes it seemed she was the only one. She picked it up as the door behind her creaked open. He's slow, heavy footsteps showed he was hesitant. Damn well should be. She sniffed. "Did, did you like it?" he stuttered as she turned to look at him. His hair hung over his glasses obscuring his vision just like it had years before. The dark green frames where her favourite colour and likewise the reading glasses she wore were his - a gentle orange. "Yeah" she whispered watching as he bit his lip and tugged the sleeves of his T-shirt over his hands. "It's" she searched for a word that he'd take as a compliment "sweet". "Well it is chocolate". She hummed and swayed slightly as they stood opposite each other, neither moving. From a look he could sense that she wasn't pleased with his gift. "But I... you like food" he says scratching his head as a blush spreads on his cheeks. "I mean that's what you said". "I did" she murmured trying to dismiss the feeling of sadness that his gift caused. "But it's not cheese buns" she replies, grateful that she found an excuse. Peeta clears throat and uses his sleeve covered hand to wipe at his glasses, a nervous tic she's noticed. "I can make you some if you like. Its past eight but I'll stay up past my bedtime and run to the bakery if you-". "No" she interrupts pausing as she remembers the curfew his mother made him follow since he was born. If he ran home and got caught then he'd probably end up with a beating from the woman, though for some reason she doubts he wouldn't do it for her. He was odd like that. "It's okay". He gestures to the gift as his voice cracks during his attempt at a romantic speech, "You rose above all other girls and stole my well you know..." he blushes and evades my eyes "my heart and my... I shouldn't finish that sentence. I'm not old enough to. So um could you be my valentine?". She replied with her a small smile and a pun of her own. "Rye wouldn't I?". Katniss lifts up the rose with a smile. "I guess I'll go um, eat this. Thanks". He huffs, the breath blowing his curls up before they lazily drift back down. "Can I just. Do you mind if I...". "What?" he shuffles over at the sight of her furrowed eyebrows and pecks her cheek, his thumb brushing against it as she blushes as though trying to wipe it away. Ease her discomfort. She blushed harder. •~• •~• •~• •~• She stumbles down the stairs as she recalls what happened prior to the nap Peeta took with her. She remembered crying after she'd ate the rose and was left with a plastic stem. She'd wasted his gift and was too embarrassed to admit that she'd have preferred a real flower even if it would've died a day later. It seemed only she would make the sacrifices in their relationship. Yet soon as he saw her bloodshot eyes peeta dragged her into the kitchen and melted down some chocolate so that he could make her some more roses in an attempt to cheer her up. Katniss argued that valentine's day was over at 12:01 but Peeta explained that the time zones were different in every district so technically they had at least four hours left of valentine's day. That made her smile. She still didn't think he deserved her. But he'd do anything for a small smile. He was odd like that. So very odd. Whilst it was melting on the stove he showed her how to pipe flowers and imprint a design into ingredients like flour which consequently ended with her giggling and Peeta standing in the room blushing despite being covered in flour. As they settled into the last hour, they had drawn their name and the date into the chocolate before placing it in the freezer to act like a little fossil that they could eat in the morning. They had then sat on the floor and he wrapped his arms around her with a promise to spend their next valentine's day at the beach. How she got to her room she doesn't know but that doesn't mean she regrets it. Katniss strolled over to the fridge and pulled out some of the chocolate before she sat down and began to read the book logs of their savings. Her nose crinkled at the taste. The chocolate seemed different than the rose, which she resigned to the idea that however useless a gift it was it made her happy if only for a moment. The chocolate was still flavourful and would melt within seconds if she didn't chew but it didn't seem as rich. The rose must have been dark chocolate? But that must be artificial. No-one can afford real dark chocolate. Well unless they were from the Capitol which her and Peeta weren't. She flips open the log and scans through the records. Income from bakery, coins spent on trade. A violet coughing racked her body and she clung to the table, squeezing her eyes shut as she heard his footsteps thumping down the stairs. Forcing herself up she ran to the sink to get a drink of water, trying not to choke herself in the process. A deduction. They were missing at least 3/4 of their college funds, or at least Peeta's. She knew he'd been saving. They both had. That money would have taken almost his whole life to earn. Did he give it away? Damn his mannerisms. "Peeta" she screamed slamming the empty cup down, her eyes darting around rapidly. Sixteen times two meant thirty years. He couldn't wait thirty years to go to learn. "What the hell? Where's the money? You son of-". She jerks to a stop. A labeled tag lays among their rubbish. Crumpled and torn she catches a glimpse of the words written. "Peeta... what?" her voice trails off as she goes silent, stunned. {Authentic Gourmet Chocolate, Hand Crafted. Distribution - Capital.} The familiar price lays scrawled at the bottom as she gapes at it with a small phrase. {Love is sacrificing all for the smile of someone who sees you as no-one.} She doesn't deserve him. Oh no. Oh no. Her gaze collides with his as she blinks back tears. He flattens his hair down. Straightens his glasses and with a shy smile, he shrugs. "Happy valentine's katniss".

#submission #valentine's day #love in panem #Everlark #Peeta #katniss #shy #fanfic #ao3 #enjoy

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dtadventures · 8 years ago

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Racism.

The following post is directed to the American Christian church.

RACISM IS A SIN.

Let's start there. Every person I asked about this topic, whether it be a college professor or a college student, said that racism is, in fact, a SIN.

So for the duration of this post, I am going to treat it as such.

Let's define what sin is. Sin is basically anything that goes against God’s law. Sin also goes against God’s ultimate design for humanity.

Let's define what racism is, according to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities, and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”

Basically, it is believing that there is a hierarchy of racial superiority, and taken to its extreme conclusion, it’s believing that a particular race should dominate and control all other races. Racism essentially is dehumanizing, stripping the value of people who God already declared to be made in His image.

While most of us would deny being racist, we probably have racial prejudices. The definition of prejudice, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, is “ a (1): preconceived judgment or opinion (2): an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge.”

BOTH are sins. BOTH are harmful.

Since the fall in Genesis, our relationship with God has been severed, as well as our relationship with the Earth and with each other. We now rely heavily on our own understanding of the world in order to make sense of everything. We organize ourselves into groups. Race, which is supposed to be a representation of God’s workmanship and creativity, has been used to oppress individuals. So much of our modern society links race, culture, and identity. Despite the progress made by Civil Rights groups around the world, we still deal with the issues of race and identity.

In light of the seemingly continuous stream of racially charged hate crimes seen in the media, what is the American church’s response? After all, when topics of abortion, sexual orientation, prayer in schools, gun control, or Starbucks cups are brought up, we are very vocal about our stance. However, when the subject of racism arises, churches too often choose the “color-blind approach”, which can dismiss the pain and actually aids racist attacks through silence.

Racism can appear in so many forms, whether it is a deliberate comment, an unintentional joke, a law that is passed which penalizes marginalized individuals, a tv show that relies on stereotypes for humor or only casts Caucasians in lead roles, or a tendency to make assumptions about others. Racism is a sin, plain and simple. It not only pushes people from God, it creates a divide between groups of people. Shouldn’t we be fighting right against it? Shouldn’t we be champions for unity and pioneering peaceful talks between races? Shouldn’t we be the model after which other institutions develop their diversity departments? Shouldn’t racism disgust us so much that we have sermons on it or training on how the congregation should handle racism on a daily basis? We as Christ-followers have the Holy Spirit in our lives, which gives us insight into how God sees people and how this world was intended to be. As Colossians 3:10-11 states, “Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.” (NLT)

Unfortunately, the church is virtually silent on this issue. I once heard someone say, “[Christians] say a little about what God says a lot about, and a lot of what God says a little about.” We are too afraid to talk about race, to which I say, “God did not give us a spirit of fear.” If your fear as a leader is that people will get offended and leave your church, well that fear wasn’t given to you by the Lord. Currently, people are being murdered in cold blood solely due to their race. Humans are being harassed and beat up because of what they look like. Humans are being kicked out of restaurants and coffee shops based on the color of their skin. For crying out loud, the KKK and other white supremacy groups are parading themselves as ‘victors’ on tv and on magazine covers, while minorities who protest our own oppression are condemned as whiners or being told we are protesting wrong and so don’t deserve to have their voices heard. To be honest, if those examples I just listed don’t shake you in some way I have to suggest that maybe we as a church aren’t dealing with this issue head on because we struggle with racism ourselves. Or even worse, we don’t actually think racism is that big of a problem. We currently have an opportunity to speak out about this issue. Don’t think that because under the law of the land everyone legally has equal rights, that we are over this issue. Let’s be honest, we are far from “over it”.

According to an article in Christianity Today (linked at the bottom), “But at its corresponding core, race is not a matter of law; it is a matter of the heart. Forced legislation cannot reform a wayward heart, it is only the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And it is because the church has been entrusted as the stewards of this sacred gospel that we must pick up where Dr. King and his lieutenants left off. Our battle is not ultimately with structures (though there is a systemic injustice, which the church must address), as much as it is with the reformation of the heart.”

Did you know that it was once said the most segregated hour of the week was Sunday mornings at 11 am? Martin Luther King jr said this in an interview on Meet the Press in the 1960s. Racial segregation and racism were a huge part of American Church history. Many pastors used the bible to promote this sort of behavior and we still seeing the consequences of that today. The issue that we are dealing with right now is bigger than just laws. We have certain stereotypes and prejudices have been ingrained into our mindset and our day to day lives. Or as some like to call them, “opinions and point of views.” One of the biggest problems in America today is “institutional racism”

Definition from Chegg.com

“Institutional racism is a pattern of social institutions — such as governmental organizations, schools, banks, and courts of law — giving negative treatment to a group of people based on their race. Institutional racism leads to inequality; sociologists use the concept to explain why some people face unequal treatment or occupy unequal statuses. One historic example of institutional racism is the barring of African-American students from attending certain public schools, which limited the students' educational opportunities and helped prevent them from achieving a status equal to that of others. Institutional racism need not involve intentional racial discrimination. For example, individual judges might intend to impose similar sentences for similar crimes; yet if Caucasian people tend to receive lighter punishments, plausibly institutional racism occurs.”

When actions and policies justify and support negative stereotypes of a racial group, that’s when we have a problem that will take more work than just passing some laws. I know the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission were wonderful and huge leaps in racial equality. We still have to change mindsets and our hearts from the inside out from both the top-down and bottom-up. It will take personal responsibility from every person to acknowledge and fix this problem.

A lot of people in power are benefiting from institutional racism. Even you reading this, to some extent, may benefit from it - or some of you are suffering because of it. Businesses, government offices, churches, schools, to some degree gain from other people’s suffering. Some of those institutions have a ton of influence over our entire lives and have succeeded in convincing part of the public that there is no real problem.

To those who believe this isn’t a legitimate problem, I have a question which was asked by educator and activist Jane Elliott: "would [you] be happy to be treated as this society in general treats our black citizens" Feel free to replace “black” with any person of color or marginalized group. If not, then part of you must realize that there is a problem and that you might be benefiting from other people’s suffering. Or how Elliott puts it, “...You know you don't want it for you. I want to know why you're so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen to others."

SO what are we going to do about it? Are we going to just continue to not talk about the racial inequality that is within the very fabric of our country? Or when we do, are we going to continue to dismiss it as merely a problem from the past? Are we going to be vocal about this issue that ACTUALLY matters?

Here are some things we can do right now:

1. Have conversations about race. Both on the pulpit and while we sit in the pews. Talk about it and ask POC about their experience and be willing to listen. There should be events where we as a church tackle difficult subjects and brainstorm ways to serve the community.

2. Have speakers who are white, black, Asian, latino, pacific islander, etc, because a new point of view is refreshing to hear. A different point of views reaches different types of people. Isn’t that the goal of the gospel, to reach EVERYONE?

3. Change up the style of worship. There are so many different styles of music, why not get creative and try some out every once in awhile? I personally loved when my university would change up the worship style. I loved hearing new arrangements of old favorites alongside new songs.

4. Diversity in leadership. Much like my last point, having not only racial diversity but gender, and generational diversity is imperative to a thriving church. Look out at your congregations or your surrounding community your church’s leadership team should reflect the diversity both inside and outside these walls.

5. Commit to making a difference in how we approach race and race relations in our everyday lives. As Christians, we are called to be set apart and that means we have to stop accepting what the world does. That means stop engaging in racist talk- including jokes, memes, tweets, WHATEVER (those things don’t bring people to God, so why to participate?). Be quick to listen and slow to speak. Become aware of your own prejudices and work to fix them.

Look, racism is destructive and is as much of a sin as any other sin. We need to fight it now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO1PcovTk90 - One of my favorite videos on racism.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/january/most-segregated-hour-of-week.html - Article from Christianity today

http://www.alternet.org/video/professor-poses-one-perfect-question-about-race-stumps-her-audience

Written By Dekontee (Me)

Nearly all edits were done by��Laila @twentyfirstcenturyvagabond

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lucimonk · 4 years ago

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The moment that Sam Wilson becomes Captain America for me is when he tells Bucky to make amends, not avenge.

I have always had a problem with the ignorant white savior trope: a white dude, in his ignorance, does great harm to a non-white community, learns the errors of his way, then does a heroic deeds, and is considered a leader by the non-white people who conveniently forget or forgive that he ruins their lives recently. I normally chalk it up to “white nonsense” and compartmentalize it in a closed section in my head labeled “do not open to avoid rage.” However, this trope is getting more insidious in recent superhero movies that I find it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief.

One atrocious trend I observe recently is that after the white dude figures out the errors of his way, the narrative often shows the dude experiencing immense trauma due to his guilt, proving he’s such a sympathetic guy because he suffers so much! Narratively, this makes sense when looking narrowly at the hero’s journey: symbolically, an outside obstacle is a manifestation of some inner demon. However, in the larger picture, this could be an excuse for a lot of self-absorbed nonsense. The guilt is no longer a feeling a normal person experiences as a result of his wrongdoing, an internal reaction that should be followed by external punishment. Instead, the narrative dramatizes the guilt, framing it as the ultimate psychological obstacle to mirror whatever physical villain outside; and then when the dude successfully overcomes both, the narrative portrays this as the conclusive triumph by having the people he wrongs anoint him the hero. The problem with this narrative is that it misleads the audience into thinking that realizing one’s mistake and doing one heroic deed is enough not only to redeem past mistakes but also to become a hero. Imagine this: a murderer realizes murder is wrong, so he subsequently saves an innocent person from an other criminal. Does that make him more sympathetic than an unrepentant murderer? Yes. But does it balance out the murder he has commited, or make him admirable enough to be a police? No. In fact, after his good deed, the murderer should still be convicted and serve out his sentence.

Superhero movies are extremely good at using the facade of herodom and the dramatization of guilt to let a (often white male) protagonist out on paying for the crime he commits to a (non-white) community in any meaningful way. Afterall, it is unintentional, the dude learns his lesson, he suffers so much already, doesn’t he deserve to be a hero again so he can save these non-white people and the world? Take the MCU: Tony Stark creates Utron who destroys Sokovia. In the real world, Stark would be tried for crimes against humanity. However, in Civil War, the Avengers are still free to do missions; Tony Stark, the culprit, only realizes he has done something wrong after someone confronts him privately. This is white privilege in its finest: Stark needs a black woman to spell out his responsibility in small words in private so he does not lose face in public, as if a whole country ceasing to exist due to his direct action is not clear enough evidence. The confrontation and Stark’s subsequent guilt are meant to humanize him in a fragile moment. The movie cleverly groups the Utron incident, which is Stark’s fault, with New York, where he’s the hero. This allows the narrative to equivocate on Stark’s mistake by conflating a war crime and other heroic deeds, which evokes a misleading sense that Stark is being treated unfairly. As such, Stark’s guilt is no longer a natural reaction he is supposed to feel but a tool employed by the narrative to manufacture an internal burden for the character to suffer through to gain sympathy from the audience.

I find Stark’s performance of guilt unconvincing because however guilty the movie shows him to be, Stark does nothing to make amends to the Sokovian people. If he and the Avengers had felt genuinely sorry, they would have spent the next movie full time in Sokovia to atone for their crimes and afterward willingly be executed according to international law. Instead, Stark’s purported guilt drives him to persuade his team to sign the Accords which places the Avengers under governmental oversight, which theoretically is a reasonable course of action. However, since he is forced to confront his mistake instead of actively recognizing it, and his acquiescence to the Accords is done without compensating for his victims in any substantial way, this is avoiding taking the responsibility by passing that responsibility to an authority. In short, by dramatizing the guilt, equivocating on the nature of the crime, and failing to address the real victims or mentioning any sort of amends, the narrative successfully reframes Stark as a victim of his conscience instead of the war criminal he is.

The MCU is full of similar examples where a superhero’s trauma is dramatized to distract the audience from the gravity of their crime. Tony Stark is the worst, but others are just as bad. Also in Civil War, after Wanda Maximoff blows up a hospital, Steve Rogers tells her, “this job, we try to save as many people as we can, sometimes it doesn’t mean everybody, but if we can’t find a way to live with that, next time, maybe nobody gets saved.” Here, Wanda murders innocents, but Rogers attributes it to her inability to save everyone. This is such masterful equivocation: by calling it a matter of “saving” instead of killing, Rogers conveniently disregards the fact that these victims are not related to the mission and never ask to be saved in the first place, thus rebranding Wanda from accidental murderer into regretful hero and conflating her guilt over her crime with regret of a good deed unfinished. What a convoluted version of the white savior mentality: the narrative shamelessly allows perpetrators to maintain the facade of moral high ground, twists their crime into a noble mission, denies victims justice by turning them into unfortunate collateral damage. It is as if these white protagonists are incapable of mentally processing the notion of having committed a crime without making it all about themselves. The damages done to victims are unimportant; the guilt the hero carries is. The hero’s noble mission is crucial; a few accidental deaths are an acceptable price to pay. Afterall, hasn’t the hero already paid the price, being tortured by his own guilt?

What Steve Rogers should have told Wanda Maximoff is this: “Go make amends to the people whose families you killed. Don’t be afraid to face the horrific consequence of your action because only then can you truly understand the responsibility of possessing such power and be deserving of it. Run away from your guilt, you will not grow up. Remember it instead. Let it remind you of the burden we carry as soldiers.” If he had done so, maybe Wanda would not have been so traumatized by guilt. Maybe she would have learned to exert some control over her power. She certainly would not have run off as she did in Wandavision after imprisoning a town in her conjured reality and torturing them with her despair. Instead, Wanda flies away without a care. Why wouldn’t she, when the show’s enabling mouthpiece, Monica Rambeau, tells her, “[the town people]’ll never know what you sacrificed for them,” turning an abuser into a savior, victims into ignorant ingrates. Twisted savior complex strikes again!

What Tony Stark should have done is this: submit to international court, accept punishment - even imprisonment or death if that is the decision, pay reparation to rebuild Sokovia, and then if he is still alive, work toward accountability for superhero work. The movie skips all the compensation and reparation to jump to advocacy because the former is the punishment of a criminal whereas the latter is the activism of a leader. The former is too disgraceful for white male protagonist; the latter allows him to keep the moral high ground. However, had Tony not skipped these not so proud steps, he probably would have realized that making up for one’s mistake is about focusing on the victims and the Accords couldn't care less about them. Had his mind not been so clouded by guilt, he would have distinguished between true amends and politics and understood his co-captain’s concern. The Avengers might not have been broken.

White people are extremely skilled at turning their crimes into heroic deeds. The formula is simple: first, erase the victim from the narrative, then present the white man’s struggle with his guilt as a glorious journey, celebrate his moral growth as the testament to his personal strength and perseverance, and never mention such development is earned at the expense of the victim who ceases to exist in the narrative. How brilliant in its simplicity, how masterful in execution. See, this is why whenever I encounter this trope, I suspend my disbelief. I convince myself to overlook it for my own mental well-being. I love Steve Rogers. I love Tony Stark. They are my OTP. Wandavision is the best show ever. Who cares about a little irrelevant trope? Those are entertaining movies. Enjoy them! It is just “white nonsense” anyway.

So you see, when Sam Wilson tells Bucky Barnes to make amends, not avenge, he becomes Captain America of my heart. He says, “You got to make [your victims] feel better. You got to go to them and be of service.” He tells Bucky his guilt is not as important as making up to the people he has wronged. For many others, that is just a nice moment, but for me it unravels a forbidden part in my head that I have so long learned to compartmentalize, so as to not think too much about how the prevalent white savior tactic is so utterly unfair, disgustingly shameless. I label it “do not open to avoid rage” because I know if I do think deeply about it, I will feel either abysmal hopelessness or incandescent fury. When I least expect it, Sam Wilson’s words soothe the feverish anger I have been carrying by giving me a type of masculinity, a type of heroism I can stand behind without suspending any part of myself.

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therightnewsnetwork · 8 years ago

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The Unjust, Irrational, and Unconstitutional Consequences of Pedophilia Panic

“Sounds like you enjoy sex with kids,” a reader tweeted at me after seeing a blog post I wrote about former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle. It was 2015, and Fogle had just signed a plea agreement in which he admitted to looking at child pornography and having sex with two 16-year-old prostitutes. “You also look like [a] pervert,” the reader added.

That’s the sort of response you can expect if you write about the broad category known as “sex offenders” and suggest that not all of them are the same or that some of them are punished too severely. In this case, I had noted that the decision to prosecute Fogle under federal law, which had been justified by factors that had little or nothing to do with the gravity of his offenses, had a dramatic impact on the penalty he was likely to receive.

Fogle ultimately was sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison, a penalty that was upheld by a federal appeals court in June. Had he been prosecuted under state law for the same actions, his sentence could have been as short as six months (the minimum penalty for possessing child pornography in Indiana, where Fogle lived) or as long as four years (the maximum penalty for an adult 21 or older who has sex with a 16-year-old in New York, where Fogle met the prostitutes).

The arbitrariness of Fogle’s punishment should trouble anyone who thinks fairness, consistency, and proportionality are essential to a criminal justice system worthy of the name. But the conjunction of two fraught topics—children and sex—makes it hard for people to think clearly about such matters. The fear and disgust triggered by this subject help explain why laws dealing with sex offenses involving minors frequently lead to bizarre results, including wildly disproportionate sentences, punishment disguised as regulation or treatment, and penalties for committing unintentional crimes, recording your own legal behavior, or looking at pictures of nonexistent children.

Hidden Cameras

Unlike Russell Taylor, who ran Fogle’s charitable foundation, Fogle was not accused of producing child pornography. He was instead charged with looking at photographs and video of “minors as young as approximately 13–14 years” who were “secretly filmed in Taylor’s current and former residences.”

According to the government’s statement of charges, Taylor produced that material “using multiple hidden cameras concealed in clock radios positioned so that they would capture the minors changing clothes, showering, bathing, or engaging in other activities.” He also gave Fogle a thumb drive containing “commercial child pornography” featuring minors as young as 6. Fogle “on one occasion” showed this material to “another person.” That became the basis for a distribution charge, which was dropped as part of Fogle’s plea agreement. Fogle’s lawyers say that incident involved “one individual with whom [he] was then involved romantically, and it occurred in the confines of a locked hotel room.”

The voyeuristic material that Taylor produced did not involve sexual abuse of children. According to the charges, the guests caught on Taylor’s cameras “did not know that they were being secretly filmed.” Taylor’s actions, which earned him a 27-year prison sentence, were obviously an outrageous invasion of privacy and breach of trust, and Fogle bears responsibility, at the very least, for allowing the secret recordings to continue by failing to report him. (Taylor, seeking leniency, claimed Fogle had actually encouraged him to install the cameras.) But what Taylor did is not the same as forcing children to engage in sexual activity, and what Fogle did is even further removed from such abuse.

Under federal law, however, looking at child pornography can be punished as severely as sexually assaulting a child. Receiving child pornography, which could mean viewing a single image, triggers a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. The maximum penalty for receiving or distributing child pornography is 20 years, and federal sentencing guidelines recommend stiff enhancements based on factors that are very common in these cases, such as using a computer, possessing more than 600 images (with each video counted as 75 images), and trading images for something of value, including other images.

In exchange for Fogle’s guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to ask for a sentence of no more than 151 months. His lawyers argued that 60 months, the mandatory minimum, would be more appropriate. Rather than settle on a number somewhere between those two suggestions, U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt sentenced Fogle to 188 months—almost 16 years—for looking at the pictures Taylor provided. That prison term was not only longer than the government had sought; it was longer than the upper end of the range recommended by federal sentencing guidelines. Last June the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld Fogle’s sentence, which means he will spend at least 13 years behind bars, even allowing for “good time credit” based on his behavior in prison.

If Fogle had been prosecuted under Indiana law for possession of child pornography, he would have faced a minimum sentence of six months and a maximum sentence of three years. Even assuming he would have received the maximum penalty, the decision to prosecute him under federal law effectively quintupled his sentence. Yet the official reason for prosecuting him under federal law—that the images he viewed were produced using equipment “manufactured outside the State of Indiana”—does not make his actions (or his inaction) any worse.

Life for Looking

As a result of congressional edicts, the average sentence in federal child pornography cases that do not involve production rose from 54 months in 2004 to 95 months in 2010, according to a 2012 report from the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC). Many federal judges have rebelled against what they perceive as patently unjust sentences for such offenses. In 2005 the Supreme Court ruled that federal sentencing guidelines (as opposed to mandatory minimums set by statute) are merely advisory, freeing judges to depart from them in the interest of justice. After that decision, according to the 2012 USSC report, “the rate of non-production cases in which sentences were imposed within the applicable guideline range steadily fell from its high point in fiscal year 2004, at 83.2 percent of cases, to 40.0 percent of cases in fiscal year 2010, and to 32.7 percent of cases in fiscal year 2011.”

Looking at a single image can trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.

In 2016, Jack B. Weinstein, a federal judge in Brooklyn, was called upon to sentence a 53-year-old father of five who had pleaded guilty to possessing two dozen photos and videos showing children in sexual situations. The defendant—identified only by his initials, R.V.—told NBC News he came across the images that led to his arrest while looking at adult pornography. “I just got caught up in it,” he said. “It’s not like I woke up and said, ‘Listen, let me look at this stuff.’ It kept popping up every time I was downloading.” He added that “I feel very remorseful,” and “it’s something that will never happen again.” NBC reported that “the man also had ‘sexual’ chats with underage girls online, but there was no evidence he sought physical contact with minors.” A psychiatrist testified that R.V. did not pose a threat to his own kids or other children.

The sentencing guidelines recommended a prison term of six and a half to eight years. Instead, Weinstein sentenced R.V. to time served (five days), a fine, and seven years of supervised release. “The applicable structure does not adequately balance the need to protect the public, and juveniles in particular, against the need to avoid excessive punishment, with resulting unnecessary cost to defendants’ families and the community, and the needless destruction of defendants’ lives,” Weinstein wrote in a 98-page explanation of his reasons for departing so dramatically from the guidelines. “Removing R.V. from his family will not further the interests of justice; it will cause serious harm to his young children by depriving them of a loving father and role model, and will strip R.V. of the opportunity to heal through continued sustained treatment and the support of his close family.”

Judges are not alone in questioning the propriety of federal sentences for viewing and sharing child pornography. In a 2015 case, James Gwin, a federal judge in Cleveland, asked jurors what sentence they considered appropriate for a man they had convicted of possessing and distributing child pornography. The defendant was caught with 1,500 images, and he was charged with distribution because he also had peer-to-peer file sharing software. The mandatory minimum was five years, prosecutors wanted 20, and federal sentencing guidelines recommended 27. On average, the jurors recommended a prison term of 14 months, less than a quarter of the shortest sentence allowed by law.

Although state penalties for looking at child pornography are often lighter than federal penalties, they can also be more severe. In 2011, a Florida judge imposed a sentence of life without the possibility of parole on Daniel Enrique Guevara Vilca, a 26-year-old with no criminal record who was caught with 454 child pornography images on his computer. “Had Mr. Vilca actually molested a child,” The New York Times noted, “he might well have received a lighter sentence.”

Amy’s Ordeal

Something has gone terribly wrong with our criminal justice system when the same offense can be punished by five days in jail or by life in prison, depending on the whims of legislators and judges. One reason it is so hard to figure out an appropriate punishment for looking at child pornography is that it’s not exactly clear why looking at child pornography is treated as a crime in the first place.

The First Amendment ordinarily protects people from punishment for the literature they read or the pictures they view, even if a jury might consider the material obscene. When the Supreme Court upheld a state law criminalizing mere possession of child pornography in the 1990 case Osborne v. Ohio, its main rationale was that the government “hopes to destroy a market for the exploitative use of children.” In other words, punishing consumers is justified because their demand drives production, which requires the sexual abuse of children. Now that people who look at child pornography typically obtain it online for free, that argument carries much less weight, and another rationale mentioned by the Supreme Court has come to the fore: “The pornography’s continued existence causes the child victims continuing harm by haunting the children in years to come.”

The Court reiterated that point in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, the 2002 case in which it overturned a ban on “virtual” child pornography—i.e., depictions of underage sexual activity that do not involve any actual children. “As a permanent record of a child’s abuse, the continued circulation [of actual child pornography] itself would harm the child who had participated,” the Court said. “Like a defamatory statement, each new publication of the speech would cause new injury to the child’s reputation and emotional well-being.”

Lower federal courts have elaborated on that theme, positing that children are revictimized every time images of their sexual abuse are transferred or viewed. In 2001, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit—the same court that upheld Jared Fogle’s sentence—declared that “the possession, receipt and shipping of child pornography directly victimizes the children portrayed by violating their right to privacy, and in particular violating their individual interest in avoiding the disclosure of personal matters.” The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which Congress passed in 2006, likewise declares that “every instance of viewing images of child pornography represents a renewed violation of the privacy of the victims and a repetition of their abuse.”

It is surely true that the dissemination of child pornography compounds the harm caused by its production. Consider the case of “Amy,” who at the ages of 8 and 9 was repeatedly raped by her uncle, who recorded his crimes and distributed the images. New York attorney James R. Marsh, who helped Amy pursue a federal restitution claim, and University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, who represented her when her case reached the Supreme Court, described her experience in a 2015 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law article.

“By the end of her treatment in 1999,” Cassell and Marsh write, “Amy was—as reflected in her therapist’s notes—’back to normal’ and engaged in age-appropriate activities such as dance lessons. Sadly, eight years later, Amy’s condition drastically deteriorated when she discovered that her child sex abuse images are widely traded on the Internet.” According to her psychologist, the distribution of her uncle’s pictures has had a “long lasting and life changing impact on her.” The psychologist explained that “Amy’s awareness of these pictures [and] knowledge of new defendants being arrested become ongoing triggers to her.” As Amy put it, “Every day of my life I live in constant fear that someone will see my pictures and recognize me and that I will be humiliated all over again.”

Notwithstanding the reality of Amy’s ongoing suffering, allocating responsibility for it among the thousands of people who have seen the pictures is no simple matter, as the Supreme Court discovered when it took up her case in 2014. Amy’s lawyers put the past and future cost of her sexual abuse, including lifelong psychotherapy, an interrupted college education, and reduced earning capacity, at $3.4 million, some of which was attributed to her knowledge that images of her uncle’s crimes against her are circulating on the internet. Under a federal law that requires a defendant to pay his victim “the full amount of the victim’s losses,” Amy sought all $3.4 million from Doyle Paroline, who in 2008 was caught with a collection of child pornography that included two pictures of Amy.

Paroline’s lawyer argued that he owed her nothing because downloading the pictures her uncle took was not the proximate cause of her suffering. The Obama administration said judges should assess restitution on a case-by-case basis. Another possible approach: If you divide $3.4 million by the estimated 70,000 people who have seen photographs or videos of the crimes committed by Amy’s uncle, the result is less than $50.

None of these solutions is very satisfying. Once images of sexual abuse have been viewed 1,000 times, Justice Samuel Alito wondered aloud during oral argument, is it even theoretically possible to assess the damage caused by the 1,001st viewing? In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that a defendant owes restitution “only to the extent the defendant’s offense proximately caused a victim’s losses.” Hence a court “should order restitution in an amount that comports with the defendant’s relative role in the causal process that underlies the victim’s general losses.” Applying that logic to child pornography cases, the Court conceded, “is not without its difficulties”—quite an understatement.

If figuring out the damage that Paroline did by looking at images of Amy is essentially impossible, deciding what criminal penalty he deserves is at least as challenging. He pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and received a two-year sentence. But the same actions—looking at images on the internet—also made him guilty of “receiving” child pornography, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years (a fact that helps explain why Paroline pleaded guilty). Because Jared Fogle pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography, he was subject to the five-year mandatory minimum, and in the end he got a sentence nearly eight times as long as Paroline’s. In fact, Fogle’s sentence was about 50 percent longer than the one Amy’s uncle received, even though her uncle repeatedly raped a prepubescent girl, while Fogle did not assault anyone.

The FBI Distributes Child Pornography

It makes no sense to treat possession of child pornography more harshly than violent crimes—more harshly even than actual sexual abuse of children—unless you believe that serious harm is inflicted every time someone looks at the image of a child’s sexual abuse. In that case, a large enough collection of images could equal or even surpass the harm done by a single child rape, so that it could be just to impose a life sentence on someone who has done nothing but look at pictures.

Federal law enforcement officials claim to believe something like that, but it’s pretty clear they don’t. If they did, they would never condone the tactics that the FBI uses in child pornography cases, which include distributing it to catch people who look at it.

In a 2002 New York University Law Review article, Howard Anglin argued that victims of child pornographers have legal grounds to sue FBI agents who mail images of them to targets of undercover investigations. “If, as courts have held, the children depicted in child pornography are victimized anew each time it changes hands, this practice inflicts further injuries on the children portrayed in the images,” wrote Anglin, at the time an NYU law student and now executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. “The practice of distributing child pornography in undercover operations exposes federal agents to potential civil liability and undermines the integrity of the criminal justice system.”

That argument did not deter the FBI from continuing to distribute child pornography. In 2015, after arresting the operator of The Playpen, a “dark web” source of child pornography, the bureau took over the site and operated it for two weeks. During that time, about 100,000 people visited the site, accessing at least 48,000 photos, 200 videos, and 13,000 links. The FBI not only allowed continued access to The Playpen; it seems to have made the site more popular by making it faster and more accessible. The FBI’s version attracted some 50,000 visitors per week, up from 11,000 before the government takeover.

That operation resulted in criminal charges against about 200 people, mostly for receiving or possessing child pornography. But to achieve those results, the FBI became a major distributor of child pornography, thereby committing a more serious crime than the people it arrested. Federal prosecutors brought cases that, by their own lights, required agents to victimize children thousands of times. Each time the FBI distributed an image, it committed a federal crime that is punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and a maximum sentence of 20 years. If such actions merit criminal punishment because they are inherently harmful, there is no logical reason the federal agents who ran The Playpen should escape the penalties they sought to impose on the people who visited the site.

Felonious Cartoons

Another reason to doubt the official justification for punishing possession of child pornography is 18 USC 1466A, which makes it a crime to produce, distribute, or possess “obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children.” That law covers “a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting” that “depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct,” provided the image qualifies as obscene. Notably, “it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist.” The penalties are nevertheless the same as the penalties for producing, distributing, or possessing actual child pornography.

This law is a rejiggered version of the ban on virtual child pornography that the Supreme Court overturned in Free Speech Coalition v. Ashcroft. Since the Court has said obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, Congress narrowed the ban by limiting it to material that meets the legal test for obscenity, meaning it appeals to prurient interests, depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” But the new ban is still constitutionally problematic because the Court also has said that mere possession of obscene material cannot be punished without violating the First Amendment right to “receive information and ideas” and the sphere of privacy protected by the 14th Amendment.

Federal prosecutors seem to be getting around that problem by resolving cases involving possession of virtual child pornography through plea agreements in which the defendant gives up his right to challenge the law. In a 2010 Ohio case, a former middle school teacher named Steven Kutzner pleaded guilty to possessing “obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children,” including cartoons featuring characters from The Simpsons. As part of the plea agreement, Kutzner waived his right to challenge the constitutionality of the possession charge.

Jim Peters, an assistant U.S. attorney who worked on the case, says Kutzner agreed to the deal to avoid prosecution for receiving the cartoons, which would have triggered a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. Peters adds that Kutzner’s computer also contained traces of actual child pornography that Kutzner claimed he downloaded by accident and deleted. Prosecutors decided not to bring charges based on those images because they were downloaded before federal law was changed to criminalize accessing child pornography with the intent to view it. In 2011, Kutzner was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison followed by three years of post-release supervision.

Two years later, Christjan Bee of Monett, Missouri, was sentenced to three years in federal prison for “possessing an obscene image of the sexual abuse of children.” Federal prosecutors said the forbidden material was “a collection of electronic comics, entitled ‘incest comics,'” that “contained multiple images of minors engaging in graphic sexual intercourse with adults and other minors.” Like Kutzner, Bee pleaded guilty to avoid a receiving charge, waiving his right to challenge the ban on possession.

The fact that federal law treats virtual child pornography the same as the real thing suggests the essence of the crime is not the injury inflicted on actual children by looking at pictures of their abuse but the message communicated by such images. As the USSC noted in its 2012 report, an alternative rationale for criminalizing possession of child pornography is that these images “validate and normalize the sexual exploitation of children.” It is debatable whether material like Simpsons porn and “incest comics” actually does that. In any case, the same argument would apply with even greater force to explicit advocacy of sex with minors, such as literature produced by the North American Man-Boy Love Association. As offensive as such speech may be to the vast majority of Americans, it is clearly protected by the First Amendment.

Victims As Predators

The inadequacy of the child protection rationale is also clear in cases involving teenagers who use their cellphones to exchange sexually provocative pictures of themselves, thereby qualifying as both victims and perpetrators. In 2015, for example, Cormega Copening, a 17-year-old boy in North Carolina, was charged with sexually exploiting a minor, a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison, because of nude pictures he exchanged with his 17-year-old girlfriend.

Under North Carolina law (as under federal law), a “minor” for purposes of defining child pornography is anyone under 18. Hence Copening produced child pornography by taking pictures of himself. He could nevertheless be prosecuted as an adult for that crime. To make things even more confusing, the age of consent in North Carolina is 16, meaning that Copening could legally have consensual sex with his girlfriend. But if he (or she) made a video of that activity, even with the consent of both parties, it would be a felony punishable by years in prison plus lifelong registration as a sex offender.

The Copening case is not unique. In 2016, an Iowa prosecutor threatened to charge a 14-year-old girl with sexual exploitation of a minor for sending pictures of herself to her boyfriend. According to a federal lawsuit filed by her parents, one photo shows the girl “from the waist up, hair entirely covering her breasts and dressed in boy shorts.” The other picture shows her “standing upright, clad in the same boy shorts and wearing a sports bra.” These images do not seem to meet Iowa’s definition of child pornography, since they do not show a minor engaged in “a prohibited sexual act,” which includes prurient nudity only when it involves exposure of breasts, genitals, or buttocks. Even if the pictures qualified as child porn in Iowa, it defies logic to say a teenager can be guilty of sexually exploiting herself.

The case of Eric Rinehart underlines the counterintuitive consequences of treating pictures as a crime even when the actions they record are not. In 2006, Rinehart, a 34-year-old police officer in Middletown, Indiana, who was in the midst of a divorce, became sexually involved with two girls who were 16 and 17. Since the age of consent in Indiana is 16, it was legal for him to have sex with those girls. (Whether it was wise or appropriate is another question.) But because Rinehart also took pictures of the girls, he was convicted of producing child pornography and sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. It did not matter that the girls consented to the pictures or that the images were never shared with anyone else.

Although Jared Fogle apparently did not record his sexual encounters with teenaged prostitutes in Manhattan, he broke state law by paying for sex and by having sex with the girls before they turned 17, the age of consent in New York. Under state law, he was therefore guilty of patronizing a prostitute, a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, and rape in the third degree, a Class E felony punishable by probation or up to four years in prison. Instead, he was charged under federal law with traveling across state lines “for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct,” which is punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

Judge Pratt apparently considered that crime as serious as Fogle’s viewing of child pornography, because she imposed exactly the same sentence for it: 188 months in prison. (Fortunately for Fogle, he is serving the two sentences concurrently.) Prosecutors emphasized that while the youngest prostitute Fogle hired was 16, he asked her about “access to minors as young as 14 years for purposes of commercial sex acts with him.” In challenging his sentence, Fogle argued that he shouldn’t be punished for something he thought about but never did.

Unintentional Crimes

While Fogle may have known how old the girls were, that is not always the case when adults have sex with teenagers. The difference between a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old (or a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old) may not be obvious, especially when the teenager claims to be older than she is. State laws nevertheless assume that someone who has sex with an underage adolescent should have known better. Generally speaking, “mistake of age” is no defense against a statutory rape charge. When it comes to sex with teens, people can break the law without realizing it—an exception to the rule that proof of mens rea (usually translated as “guilty mind”) is required for a criminal conviction.

In 2016, a Minnesota appeals court cast doubt on that exception in a case involving a middle-aged man named Mark Moser who propositioned a girl on Facebook. She said she was 16 (the age of consent in Minnesota), but she was actually 14. Under state law, that subterfuge did not matter: Even if Moser thought she was 16, he was still guilty of soliciting sex with a minor, a felony punishable by up to three years in prison and 10 years on the state’s sex offender registry. But the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled that Moser had a due process right to raise a mistake-of-age defense.

“The child-solicitation statute imposes an unreasonable duty on defendants to ascertain the relevant facts,” the appeals court said. “Where solicitation occurs solely over the Internet…it is extremely difficult to determine the age of the person solicited with any certainty.” By contrast, the court said, “a defendant can reasonably be required to ascertain the age of a person the defendant meets in person.” But as UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh pointed out in a blog post, that is not necessarily true: What if a girl “lied about her age, and perhaps even showed the defendant a credible-seeming fake ID”? Or what if the couple met in a context, such as a bar or a college fraternity party, where it might be reasonable to assume that everyone is old enough to consent to sex?

A mistake-of-age defense probably would not have helped Fogle even if one were available, since abiding by age-of-consent laws does not seem to have been a priority for him. Still, it’s not clear that he qualifies as a pedophile—that is, someone who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children. Neither the girls he had sex with nor the ones he asked about were that young, and prosecutors say that while the minors in the pictures and videos recorded by Taylor ranged in age from 9 to 16, the youngest person in the images he shared with Fogle was 13 or 14. The images on the thumb drive that Taylor gave him included children “as young as approximately six years of age,” but Fogle does not seem to have actively sought out such material.

The distinction between adolescents and prepubescent children is relevant to the seriousness of Fogle’s crimes and to the sort of danger he poses. Even when people are physically ready for sex, they may not be psychologically ready, which is the rationale for age-of-consent laws. But as a press release about Fogle’s case from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana noted, “federal law provides strong punishment for engaging in commercial sex acts with minors under the age of 18 years,” no matter what the age of consent is in the state where the sex acts occur. Whatever you think of these transactions, it is hard to see how the fact that they happened in New York rather than Indiana makes them worse. Yet if Fogle had paid for sex in his home state, where the age of consent is 16, instead of doing it in another state, it would have been a misdemeanor rather than a federal felony.

Leaving aside the issue of punishment, sexual attraction to prepubescent children suggests different precautions than sexual attraction to teenagers. Restrictions aimed at keeping potential predators away from kids, even if we assume they are otherwise justified, make little sense when applied to someone who has no sexual interest in young children. Yet Fogle will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, subject to the same restrictions as a child molester. Such registries, which every state maintains, also include people guilty of crimes less serious than Fogle’s, such as public urination, patronizing an adult prostitute, and consensual sex with a fellow teenager.

Leper Lists

Although sex offender registries and the restrictions associated with them are supposedly intended to protect public safety, the evidence suggests they are mainly a way of imposing additional punishment on people who have already completed their sentences. The rationale for publicly accessible registries is that they will protect children by alerting parents to the presence of potential predators. But the Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey indicates that more than 90 percent of sexual offenses against children are committed not by strangers but by relatives, friends, or acquaintances. Furthermore, nearly 9 out of 10 sex offenses are committed by people who were not previously convicted of a crime that would have put their names in a registry. Justice Department data also indicate that sex offenders are much less likely to commit new crimes than commonly supposed—less likely, in fact, than most other kinds of offenders.

Not surprisingly, studies that try to measure the impact of registration laws find little evidence that they work as advertised. If anything, they seem to be counterproductive, probably because they make it harder for sex offenders to reintegrate into society by publicly identifying them as pariahs, limiting their job prospects, and restricting where they can live. In Michigan, for example, registrants are prohibited from living, working, or “loitering” within 1,000 feet of a school, regardless of whether their crimes involved children. A 2013 study funded by the Justice Department found those restrictions were associated with an increase in recidivism. A 2011 analysis in the Journal of Law and Economics likewise found evidence that publicly accessible registries have a perverse effect on recidivism.

If registries and residence restrictions do not actually make people safer, it’s hard to justify them as public safety measures. Last August, a federal appeals court ruled that Michigan’s Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA) imposes punishment in the guise of regulation, meaning it cannot be applied retroactively without violating the Constitution’s ban on ex post facto laws.

In addition to the residence restrictions, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit focused on the law’s onerous reporting requirements and its classification system. SORA threatens registrants with prison if they fail to report, in person and immediately, changes such as new email addresses or newly borrowed cars. It also puts them in tiers that supposedly correspond to the danger they pose, but those categories are not based on individualized risk assessments. Although all of the plaintiffs in this case qualified for Tier III, supposedly the most dangerous category, one of them was convicted at age 18 of having consensual sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend, while another was convicted of “a non-sexual kidnapping offense arising out of a 1990 robbery of a McDonald’s.” The appeals court said the residence restrictions, reporting requirements, and arbitrary classification system distinguished SORA from the Alaska registry that the Supreme Court upheld in 2003, deeming it regulatory rather than punitive.

“SORA brands registrants as moral lepers solely on the basis of a prior conviction,” the 6th Circuit said. “It consigns them to years, if not a lifetime, of existence on the margins, not only of society, but often, as the record in this case makes painfully evident, from their own families, with whom, due to school zone restrictions, they may not even live. It directly regulates where registrants may go in their daily lives and compels them to interrupt those lives with great frequency in order to appear in person before law enforcement to report even minor changes to their information.” The court concluded that “the punitive effects of these blanket restrictions…exceed even a generous assessment of their salutary effects.”

Like registration and the burdens associated with it, the continued imprisonment of sex offenders who have completed their sentences bears a strong resemblance to punishment. Twenty states and the federal government have laws allowing indefinite “civil commitment” of certain sex offenders. The Supreme Court has upheld such laws on the pretext that what looks like punishment is actually “treatment” aimed at curing offenders who would otherwise pose an intolerable threat to public safety.

Taking the Court at its word, a federal judge ruled in 2015 that the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP), which was established in 1994, did not qualify for this loophole because none of its “patients” had ever been declared well enough for unconditional release. “The overwhelming evidence at trial established that Minnesota’s civil commitment scheme is a punitive system that segregates and indefinitely detains a class of potentially dangerous individuals without the safeguards of the criminal justice system,” wrote U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank. “It is fundamental to our notions of a free society that we do not imprison citizens because we fear that they might commit a crime in the future.…This strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a free society where liberty is a primary value of our heritage.”

Criticizing Frank’s decision, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton exposed the fallacy at the core of his state’s program. “It’s really impossible to predict whether or not [sex offenders] are at risk to reoffend,” Dayton said. “So the more protection you can give to the public, as far as I’m concerned, given their history, is entirely warranted, and that’s what this program does right now.” Yet the law authorizing the program requires predictions about whether or not sex offenders “are at risk to reoffend”; if such predictions are “impossible,” the whole law is a crock.

FBI tactics include distributing child pornography to catch people who look at child pornography.

It gets worse. “I don’t think any parent in Minnesota wants to subject their daughter or their son to a probability,” Dayton said. “They want to make sure their government is doing absolutely everything conceivably possible to make it 100 percent safe to walk in the park or to or from school.” So even if recidivism were predictable, Dayton would say that someone who is 99 percent guaranteed not to reoffend should nevertheless be locked up for the rest of his life. Just in case.

In January, a federal appeals court sided with Dayton, saying Judge Frank was mistaken in concluding that the MSOP violates detainees’ substantive due process rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit said Frank was wrong to think the MSOP impinges on a fundamental liberty interest—i.e., the right not to be locked in a cage for the rest of your life. After all, the 8th Circuit said, the Supreme Court “has never declared that persons who pose a significant danger to themselves or others possess a fundamental liberty interest in freedom from physical restraint.”

The appeals court was unimpressed by the fact that the MSOP manifestly fails to accomplish what it purports to be doing: rendering sex offenders “no longer dangerous” by treating their statutorily defined mental conditions. Although “the Supreme Court has recognized a substantive due process right to reasonably safe custodial conditions,” the 8th Circuit said, it has never recognized “a broader due process right to appropriate or effective or reasonable treatment of the illness or disability that triggered the patient’s involuntary confinement.”

The appeals court said Frank wrongly applied “strict scrutiny” to the MSOP when he should have taken a much more deferential approach. To decide whether Minnesota’s law is unconstitutional on its face, it said, Frank should have asked whether it passes the “rational basis” test—a highly permissive standard that all but guarantees a challenged law will be upheld. The 8th Circuit said Frank also erred in ruling that Minnesota’s law is unconstitutional as applied to the plaintiffs. To prevail on that claim, the court said, the plaintiffs had to show their confinement not only violates a fundamental right but “shocks the conscience,” which is pretty hard to do for any kind of imprisonment this side of a Nazi concentration camp.

‘Do We Need a Whole New Constitution?’

The upshot of such judicial deference is that laws targeting sex offenders will be upheld as long as supporters of those laws claim to have good intentions. The so-called International Megan’s Law (IML), enacted in 2016, shows how thin the justifications can be.

The IML requires that the State Department create “a visual designation affixed to a conspicuous location” on the passport of anyone listed in a registry for “a sex offense against a minor,” to make sure they are properly scrutinized, shunned, and harassed wherever they might travel. It also authorizes notification of foreign officials about the travels of sex offenders who are no longer required to register.

The law is supposedly aimed at people who visit other countries to have sex with children, which seems to be a pretty rare crime. According to Justice Department data, about 10 Americans are convicted of “sexual crimes against minors in other countries” each year. As the IML itself notes, the State Department already had “authority to deny passports to individuals convicted of the crime of sex tourism involving minors.” The provision requiring “unique passport identifiers” sweeps much more broadly, covering any registered sex offender who was convicted of a crime involving a minor, regardless of the details, when the crime occurred, or whether the offender poses an ongoing threat.

The Americans whose passports will brand them as international child molesters include people who committed their offenses as minors and even people who still are minors (as are more than a quarter of registered sex offenders). They include people who as teenagers had consensual sex with other teenagers. They include people convicted of misdemeanors. They include people who committed their crimes decades ago and have never reoffended. They include people convicted of sexting, streaking, or public urination. The IML treats all of these people as a menace to children everywhere.

Sex offenders are a heterogeneous group that includes many people who pose little or no threat to the public while omitting many people who are clearly more dangerous. It makes no sense to impose the same restrictions on all of them simply because their crimes had something to do with sex. “They have it set up now where Charles Manson is a nicer person than a sex offender,” remarked a registered sex offender who was interviewed for the 2013 Justice Department–funded study of residence restrictions.

“You created a whole new population of people that you are not prepared to deal with at all,” another sex offender observed in the same study. “If you are not going to remove them completely from society or off of the planet, just what the hell are you going to do with them after you create this leper colony?…I mean, do we still come up under the Constitution? Do we still have the same rights as other folks? Do we need a whole new constitution for us?”

Sex offenders are consigned to a kind of legal and social limbo that is neither fair nor prudent. They supposedly have paid their debts to society but are constantly obstructed in their efforts to rejoin it. Even when their crimes did not involve assaults of any kind, they are subject to burdens that murderers and other violent criminals escape.

A lawsuit challenging the IML argued that “individuals convicted of sex offenses constitute a discrete and insular minority that is uniquely subject to public and private discrimination, and whose rights are uniquely subject to unconstitutional deprivation by state action, including by state action that is motivated by malice, that is arbitrary and capricious, that bears no rational relationship to any legitimate government purpose, and that is not sufficiently tailored to serve a legitimate government purpose.” All of that is true, but the same unreasoning prejudices that created this situation make it hard to change.

Dismissing the IML lawsuit last September, a federal judge in San Francisco said specially marked passports for sex offenders do not amount to retroactive punishment, because registration of sex offenders, no matter how far-reaching and life-crippling the consequences, is not punitive and therefore does not implicate the Ex Post Facto Clause. If registration is not a punishment, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton reasoned, sharing information from a registry with foreign officials surely cannot be, even if the upshot is that an American citizen cannot travel internationally and therefore cannot see his wife, do his job, attend to his business, or claim his inheritance in Iran without risking summary execution (all concerns raised by the plaintiffs).

Based on similar logic, Hamilton rejected the plaintiffs’ due process claim, saying they got all the process they were due when they were convicted. In her view, the IML merely passes along information about those convictions to foreign authorities, who can do with it what they want. Why should the U.S. government be held responsible for the foreseeable consequences of branding American citizens as pariahs, perverts, and predators?

Hamilton also made short work of the plaintiffs’ substantive due process and equal protection claims, saying they could not succeed because the IML easily satisfies the rational basis test. The only question under that standard, Hamilton explained, is “whether there is some conceivable rational purpose that Congress could have had in mind when it enacted the law.” The IML is aimed at preventing “the commercial sexual exploitation of minors,” which is a rational purpose. Whether the law actually serves that purpose is beyond the scope of rational basis review. So is the fairness and wisdom of including anyone convicted of “a sex offense against a minor,” even if he never assaulted anyone and never demonstrated a propensity to visit other countries for the purpose of having sex with minors.

The passport and notification provisions apply decades after the offense, whether or not the offender currently poses a threat, and notification applies even to offenders who are no longer required to register. One of the plaintiffs, who “routinely travels to Europe and Asia for business purposes,” was convicted 25 years ago. Another plaintiff, who committed a crime minor enough that he was sentenced only to probation and was initially told he would not have to register as a sex offender, will nevertheless have to carry a special passport. A third plaintiff had his 1998 conviction expunged, was reinstated as a lawyer, and is no longer listed in California’s registry but is still covered by the IML’s notification provision.

Stigmatizing these people as a threat to children everywhere for the rest of their lives may seem irrational, but that does not mean it fails the rational basis test. “Under rational basis review,” Hamilton explained, “a law ‘may be overinclusive, underinclusive, illogical, and unscientific and yet pass constitutional muster.'”

What’s true of the IML is true of many laws targeting sex offenders: Even if they are poorly designed to achieve their ostensible goal, politicians say they will protect children, and that’s rational enough for government work.

from http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/the-unjust-irrational-and-unconstitutional-consequences-of-pedophilia-panic/

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patriotnewsblogger-blog · 8 years ago

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The Unjust, Irrational, and Unconstitutional Consequences of Pedophilia Panic

New Post has been published on http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/the-unjust-irrational-and-unconstitutional-consequences-of-pedophilia-panic/

The Unjust, Irrational, and Unconstitutional Consequences of Pedophilia Panic

Hidden Cameras

Life for Looking

Looking at a single image can trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.

Amy’s Ordeal

The FBI Distributes Child Pornography

Felonious Cartoons

Victims As Predators

Unintentional Crimes

Leper Lists

FBI tactics include distributing child pornography to catch people who look at child pornography.

‘Do We Need a Whole New Constitution?’

http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/the-unjust-irrational-and-unconstitutional-consequences-of-pedophilia-panic/ %cats%

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