#and have been living in a failing economy since I was fourteen

[honibabysworld]

I always hate change

I am notoriously bad at coping with change.

I get nostalgic for things as they are happening, and when I am put into a position where I could choose to grow I usually will decide against it solely because that means something would change. And. I. Hate. Change.

Much to my friends distaste I will almost always find ways of getting out of things. I will avoid getting my license because to go from passenger princess to the person behind the wheel is too much change. I will stay in a town I hate because moving somewhere else is too much change. I will lose my friggin mind during a break up not because of the guy but because it is too much change.

So naturally this carries over into jobs. When I first got a new job I panicked. I couldn’t possible start something new. To mold my day to day life around a task that wasn’t going for three mile long walks like I have done almost everyday since I was fourteen sounds like a nightmare. Unfortunately, student debt, living in a capitalist society, and being an adult means that I had to get a job. So I did.

And then I realized that eventually I would not have that job. Whether it was my choice, or out of my control, a job is not forever. The panic set in again. Once a month I have a mental breakdown at the concept of no longer having my job. I check indeed constantly, thinking that seeing other jobs like mine might somehow soothe my unease (it doesn’t). I save every dollar I make to prepare for the moment and binge “the great resignation” videos on TikTok. I track the economy, preparing for a societal collapse and listen to podcasts on investing knowing damn well I am too scared to move any of my money from its cushiony saving account into a ROTH IRA because that would once again, require me to change something I have become so used to.

My days have been plagued by thinking about my job so much so that I have been failing at it. I have been paralyzed with fear about what will happen to me to me when I lose my job.

Was the workforce always like this? Did my grandfather also worry about his job like this when he was working in the 1950’s? Is being afraid of being on the chopping block just another part of the American Dream they forgot to teach me about in history class.

And most importantly, why do I care so much? I don’t love my job that much. It’s the same way I have been with boys. I found the breakup so earth shattering not because I loved him (though sometimes I did, I’m not that heartless), but mainly because I couldn’t handle the change. And that is the same way it is with my job. I don’t find the idea of leaving my job earth shattering because it is all I want to do, I am scared of the fact that to no longer work there means that something has changed.

I am deciding to try to embrace change this year. So with that I’m quitting my job. Ok, that’s a lie, but I will try to work on embracing change so that maybe I won’t have to spend everyday worrying about how horrible it would be if I ever decide to leave my job in the future.

[piracytheorist]

Once I get a job that pays well enough for me to actually buy the stuff I want and also move into a less toxic environment and grow some self-esteem it’s over for you bitches

[awed-frog]

If I may ask, what do you think of the whole sea watch 3 mess? And indeed of the whole migrant situation in Italy?

Well - I have messy thoughts about that. Mostly I’m angry, disgusted, worried and pretty hopeless about the whole thing.

As a recap for people who haven’t been following this (complicated stuff ahead, so I don’t claim to be right about everything): 

1) In 1990, the EU decided on how to deal with migrants by drafting the Dublin Regulation, which came into effect in 1997. The idea was charmingly simple: people seeking refuge in Europe should ask for asylum in the first European country they got to. Optimists claim it was difficult back then to imagine any complications, since immigration was very low and European countries still had borders and everything else, but in hindsight, you have to wonder why countries like Italy agreed to this at all. You obviously can’t get to Germany or the UK without crossing through Italy or Spain first, so the Dublin Regulation was bound to cause huge problems. The other ridiculous thing is that the Italian government that signed this was headed by Andreotti, a nearly immortal ghoul princeling who’d been in politics since the 1750s and had been implicated in at least two murders.

(He’d also been found guilty of collaboration with the mafia, but was let go on a technical detail.)

2) In 2011, Muammar Gaddafi, ‘Brotherly Leader’ of Libya, was killed. We still don’t know exactly what went down - more on that in a second - but a general problem the West has in the Middle East and Africa is that we tend to support dictatorts, no matter how brutal, because it’s just easier to do business and get our way with one greedy and corrupt person than it is to deal with an entire Parliament, but the risk we overlook, time and time again, is that all-powerful dictators tend to become more and more ambitious and form their own plans, which may or may not align with Western interests. In the case of Gaddafi, Hilary’s emails (I know, I know) seem to indicate the real reason the West - and particularly France, as in former President Nicholas ‘I’m the son of an immigrant but he was the right kind of immigrant’ Sarkozy - suddenly got annoyed with Gaddafi is that Gaddafi was planning to introduce a new banking system in Africa - a thing that would rival the CFA franc. 

(That’s a currency used in fourteen African countries which is basically a leftover from French colonialism - it’s managed directly from the French Treasury, and that gives France more or less full control of those countries’ economies). 

So anyway, NATO got all tough on Libya, Gaddafi was killed, and as a result Libya is now a failed state with - if that’s possible - more human rights violations than before - particularly relevant for your question is a very harsh treatment of black Africans (down to and including literal ‘slave markets’ where people are bought and sold, also torture camps and everything in between). This happens partly because it’s lucrative af, and partly because there’s been bad blood between ethnic Arabs and black Africans for generations.

So, aynway, that’s the general context. What happened next is what we’ve seen for the last few years - an increase in the number of immigrants coming to Europe, therefore an increase of the number of deaths in the Mediterranean, therefore widespread panic leading to 

immoral and unethical deals with people like Erdogan (I say ‘people’, lol)

a sharp rise of the extreme right and 

a general inability to welcome those desperate enough to come here and offer them a decent life.

Most recently, Italy’s far-right Interior Minister decided to close down the harbours to prevent NGOs-operated rescue ships from docking. The Sea-Watch 3, which was carrying 42 migrants, decided to ignore this and go to Lampedusa, in Sicily - the closest and safest harbour. Now its captain has been arrested, but it’s unclear what will happen next.

If you’re asking me what do I make of all this - I don’t know. It’s a mess. 

For instance, there are studies showing that if NGO ships patrol international waters, the crossing gets more dangerous, because people smugglers don’t bother finding good ships - they know they just have to get migrants off the coast of Libya, and someone will pick them up. This means more risk for the immigrants themselves, and more money for the smugglers. But on the other hand, no rescue ships there means no help at all, so if something goes wrong, those people are doomed. The same ‘yes but’ applies to many other issues concerning migration. Like, a lot of migrants coming in (and these are people who were left with nothing, including ID) means more of them disappearing into thin air, because of the badly-organized and overcrowded camps. We know thousands of them end up exploited by criminal gangs - in Italy, a particularly brutal business is managed by the Nigerian mafia, which trafficks thousands of women into prostitution and terrifies them into obedience thanks to ‘black magic’, but there’s also agricultural workers, people forced into drug trafficking, kids who end up homeless and so on. Another major problem is that - other than the Syrians - the immigrants who got to Europe over the last decade are difficult to integrate into the legit labour market because they lack the necessary qualifications. Most of the European is now tertiary-based, which means you need some kind of post-high school diploma to do anything, and research shows about half of those coming here didn’t even finish primary school.

(To be very clear: I’m not saying this is in any way their fault, or something that can’t be fixed. But: it does encourage a battle of the have-nots, as people at the bottom - including chunks of the native population, immigrants from Eastern Europe and more recent immigrants from the rest of the world - compete for those few and miserable options open to them, like run-down housing, meagre welfare checks, and a handful of jobs you don’t need qualifications for.)

On top of that, many migrants would need a lot of support, because they escaped from horrific situations - not only those torture camps in Libya, but everything else you can think of: civil wars, political persecution, brutal rapes, whatever - that’s also something that has a cost no one wants to cover. And finally, since coming to Europe is so dangerous, most immigrants tend to be young men on their own - which is exactly the ‘worst’ group of people in any culture.

(Sorry if that sounds bad, what I mean is - we know that for whatever reason, young men everywhere tend to be more reckless than other social groups, and that increases the chance for risky behaviour - especially when the person is not ‘kept in check’ by a well-structured community. Thus, a young man without family or friends is more likely to make stupid or dangerous choices - for himself or others - than, say, a middle-aged father or a young woman.)  

All of this, as daunting as it is, could be solved - after all, this is not an invasion: it’s numbers we can manage - but probably won’t because:

1) There’s some interest in keeping the situation as it is. More migrants means more political success for right-wing and extreme right parties, not to mention huge profits for a lot of people.

2) Right now, the EU can’t agree on anything because of reasons. 

3) Nobody wants to do the right thing, ie treat Middle Eastern and African countries with a modicum of respect and actually support them and their development instead of propping up whatever strongman is convenient and robbing their citizens of whatever isn’t nailed down.

4) The countries on the EU borders have their own issues and right now it’s very hard to imagine those issues ever going away. Like, under many respects Italy’s basically a failed state that relies on the goodwill of half its citizens to keep trudging forward. It never rooted out clientelism, corruption, or tax evasion - plus, it still hasn’t defeated its own mafias, and despite an exceedingly brave and dedicated bunch of policemen and judges (plus all those ordinary citizens risking their necks every day by saying no and living an honest life), the battle against foreign mafias (like the Albanians, and more recently the Nigerians) is probably a task beyond its means.

So, well - sorry this turned into a novel. I guess what I think is - I admire people like Sea-Watch 3 captain Carola Rackete and everyone else who volunteers and fights for the most vulnerable, and I think the current government is a disgrace, but ultimately immigration is a political problem whose only solution is the usual solution to everything else: more courage, more competence, more transparency; less inequality, less greed, less corruption. More democracy, and a democracy operating without the (overt and covert) influence of powerful lobbies. Less support to dictators, fair wages for workers and fair prices for raw materials - even if that includes higher prices for Western consumers. And, above all, more regulations and less power to corporations and stakeholders.

Very few people actually want to leave their homes, but if we keep forcing them out, then they’ll keep fleeing - with all the consequences that entails.  

[uss-edsall]

The Berliners did not fold under the pressure of the blockade. Instead, that pressure, a pressure of incomprehensible force, transformed them into something beautiful and pure and able to withstand the hardest blows. Clay had been convinced, since he first came to Germany, that he “could not hope to develop democracy on a starvation diet.” So the Americans, for the three years since the war, had tried to feed the German people. They did it without any demonstration that they actually cared about what happened to their defeated enemy. Clay crowed he “had no desire to do things because it was for their good.” And for those three years the attitudes about democracy among Berliners, the people who had heiled and fought for Hitler, had barely budged. Every time they were asked, they had replied, by wide margins, that if forced to choose, they would pick economic security without liberty over freedom and democracy with hunger. The month the siege began, they had repeated their verdict: 61 to 34. In November, when the decision was not abstract but real in a way that no one could have ever guessed it would be, they were asked the question again. For the first time since the end of World War II, perhaps for the first time in the seven-hundred-year history of Berlin, their attitude had changed. Berliners now chose “free elections, free speech, a free press, and freedom of religion” over “economic security and good employment opportunities” by 54 to 40. Clay and the other Americans had been wrong. A commitment to democracy had come to Berlin—a devotion so fierce it would awe those who took its comforts for granted—at precisely the city’s most trying moment. The years of effort in trying to revive Berlin’s economy had not only failed, they had failed to lead Berliners to embrace the ideas of freedom. What had been needed was an experience of metamorphosis, a common endeavor to bring the victors and vanquished together, and—most of all—a touch of humanity and kindness. The Airlift fed and warmed Berlin as much as it could, but Berliners might well have buckled that winter if the endeavor had been only a movement of machines in the sky with the aim of maintaining America’s options in a strategic outpost. Instead, Hal Halvorsen’s candy drops had been a catalyst that had transformed the character of the Airlift and the way Berliners thought about it. He had “really started something,” the New York Times wrote on the last day of October, which was more true than they knew. Halvorsen was “the one person who won the hearts of the Berliners—adults and children alike,” wrote Inge Gross, who was fourteen at the time. As he came to represent the Airlift and America to the Berliners, through him America became a country that cared enough about the defeated Germans to, in those months of strain, deliver candy to children—an act without any ancillary benefit or ulterior motive, a gift of plain compassion. And while, to him, kindness may have been its own reward, the candy drops—and the Airlift in general—paid dividends that changed the psychology of the German capital. A fifteen-year-old girl wrote during the Airlift that it reminded her “that in this world there are higher things than national egoism—namely humanity and the existence of all peoples in human dignity.” Berliners came to feel they had to live up to the faith the world was putting in them. Three years after the blockade ended, the West Berlin evening newspaper Der Abend asked its readers to answer the question “What do you remember about the blockade?” Results poured in. A stonemason wrote that the “people who for a long time had been opposed to us in battle suddenly stood at our sides as if they were our own brothers.” Another Berliner found it a wonder that “things turned out in a way that nobody could easily believe. The enemies of yesterday became the friends of today.” A laborer recalled, “Early in the morning, when we woke up, the first thing we did was listen to see whether the noise of aircraft engines could be heard. That gave us the certainty that we were not alone, that the whole civilized world took part in the fight for Berlin’s freedom.” So the Berliners resolved not to “betray the Airlift pilots who were helping us without interruption, trusting in our steadfast behavior.” Despite their troubles, they were unbowed. “I walked proudly through the streets,” wrote another. “I was helping to write a proud page in the history of Berlin’s housewives.” It is easy to dismiss the psychological impact of Halvorsen and even the Airlift as mere sentimentality. But something real happened in Berlin that winter of the blockade—the mind-set of Berliners changed dramatically—and it had real consequences. In July, when they thought the blockade was only, could only be, temporary, 43 percent of Berliners in the western sectors said they would leave the city if they could. By October, with winter approaching, war a real possibility, their city splintering, the number had dropped by a third. In the years after the war, Berlin had become “Crime Capital of the World”—it was racked with gang warfare, violent robberies, and brutal murders. But as the blockade wore on, as Berliners should have, by all rights, grown more desperate, crime began to drop. Indeed, it plummeted. Overall, crime rates fell by 20 to 30 percent during the blockade. There were 39 percent fewer robberies in 1948 than there had been the year before. Berliners were assigned plots of land to cultivate, tiny strips of soil where they could plant a few vegetables. “It is one of the most inspiring phenomena of the present time,” observed a Christian Science Monitor reporter that November, “that not a single leaf of lettuce, not a single cabbage head, is taken by strangers from these unprotected beds.” Crime fell so far, so fast that dire winter that the place that had been “Crime Capital of the World” only a year earlier now had the lowest crime rates of any big city in the Western world. But it was not just the Berliners that had been transformed. The attitudes of the Americans had changed as well. They had come to Berlin determined to punish the Germans so that they would never turn to totalitarianism again. Yet neither harsh reprisals nor detached efforts at providing for Germans’ well-being and security had done much to foster devotion to the principles of democracy. Halvorsen, intuitively, had understood that the way to change Berliners’ outlooks was to treat them as people, not as pawns in a global chess match. Without intending to, without even knowing it, Halvorsen had provided a lesson to the eminent foreign policy experts and imposing generals in Washington. The Cold War was a new kind of war, one that would be fought and won not primarily with bullets and armaments but with ideas and appeals; it would be waged, for the most part, not by great powers battling over territory but by a competition for the affections and convictions of people on every continent. Hal Halvorsen and the Airlift had showed that in a new type of conflict there was a different use for armed might, that for democracy to take root it required a change in minds and hearts more than in economic conditions, that America’s strength was not just military muscle but an undisputedly moral voice.

The Candy Bombers, by Andrei Cherny

[trevorxokc258]

Punishing Guidelines for Cannabis Ownership in Arizona

"It occurred to be just recently while seeing tv that the U.S. Federal government is really nothing more than the political version of Jabba The Hutt from the Celebrity Wars films. As you might recall, Jabba was a formless, sluggish moving, overweight entity that ruled with an iron fist while feasting on sources brought to him. He did not pay for anything, he simply took them, and he was not there to assist anybody however himself. Those he ruled over had no say in exactly how their sources as well as wealth were made use of and also had no chance in removing Jabba from his position of power. Type of sounds like our political course presently being in DC.

Jabba came to mind today as I thought about some recent events in which the Federal government has obtained so huge that it is doubling back on itself and also putting itself in some really unusual circumstances and also conflicts with the fact of the world around us:

- According to an article in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week publication, a Boston Federal judge has actually ruled parts of the Federal Protection of Marital Relationship Act to be unconstitutional. This act prohibits the Federal federal government from recognizing gay marital relationships and granting Federal benefits. The court ruled that the Federal regulation forces Massachusetts to discriminate against it very own citizens. Currently for the unusual component. the Obama administration is now compelled to appeal the judgment, although his management as well as the Democrats accountable of Congress oppose the Protection of Marital relationship Act and want it repealed. The Federal federal government has actually obtained so huge that it is expending lawful resources for something that it does not want to exist in the first place.

- This unusual circumstance is similar to the present illegal alien scenario. A current Associated press short article reported that the most up to date data relative to illegal boundary crossers reveals that the Federal federal government just recently had the highest degree of prosecutions for illegal aliens as well as the greatest deportation degrees of illegals given that they started tracking such data however at the same time this same Federal federal government was in court combating the brand-new Arizona state law that was attempting to stem the circulation of illegal aliens right into that state.

- Returning to gay marriages, according to a July 15, 2010 Associated Press short article, the nation of Argentina lately came to be the first Latin American country to legislate gay marital relationship. The article reported that Chile and also several various other South American countries are most likely to attempt and also follow suit. Do we believe that our Jabba, flaunting as the American political course, has any type of possibility of making that happen in this nation when it locates itself in court defending against gay legal rights?

- According to a short article in the August issue of Factor magazine, considering that 1996 fourteen states as well as the District of Columbia have legislated cannabis use for clinical objectives and several various other states are taking into consideration doing the same. This remains in straight conflict with Federal legislation which has actually in some cases led to Federal raids of medical marijuana suppliers which are illegal under Federal regulation yet legal under state regulation. This is additionally in conflict with Obama the campaigner that intended to legalize the medicine when he ran for President but now defends the banning of it at the Federal level. Again, federal government has actually gotten so big that we have actually entered the unusual zone concerning medical cannabis where it is lawful at the same time as being prohibited.

- Mentioning medication disputes, a recent Associated Press short article reported that the Federal Veterans Matters company would permit its clients to make use of medical marijuana if those patients lived in the fourteen states where clinical cannabis is legal. Thus, one arm of the Federal government (Veterans Matters) is perfectly fine with medical cannabis use while other arms of the Federal government (FBI, DEA, Federal statuary) wishes to wipe it out.

- If you assume the Federal federal government has a medication trouble currently, wait up until the Oakland Common council elects on whether to enable commercial farming of cannabis to be established in city limitations, commercial ranches which would produce marijuana for medical usage along with for usage in items ranging from baked items to body oil. Winning applicants who would operate these farms would have to pay annual authorization costs as well as 8 percent of their sales to taxes along with carry $2 million in responsibility insurance coverage. Comparable efforts are being pushed in various other cities throughout the state along with a November tally problem to legislate non-medical use marijuana, according to the article. Currently think about the materials of a short blurb in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week magazine that reported on a Rand Study that ended from their analysis that the legalisation of marijuana would decrease the street rate by approximately 90%. Therefore, the initiatives in California might help in reducing the street cost of the drug which in turn would significantly lower the power, wealth as well as impact of the Mexican drug cartels which would certainly be an advantage. Nevertheless, in the face of this good set of end results (more profits for the local governments, less of a stigma of cannabis customers, less law enforcement resources invested in breaking marijuana users, the weakening of the Mexican medicine cartels) do we believe that the Jabba the Hutt monster in DC is nimble sufficient to comprehend what the advantages are or will it proceed down its path of problem at the Federal medicine enforcement level?

- Think About a Washington Message write-up from Might, 2007, entitled ""Federal Loans Fuel Push For Coal Power Plants."" The short article talks about a remaining Anxiety age Federal program that supplies inexpensive financings to build coal terminated, high contamination nuclear power plant utilizing taxpayer money. According to the write-up, ""the [financing] assistance is a significant pressure behind the rush to coal plants, which spew co2 that scientists blame for worldwide warming."" Hence, while the Obama administration is pushing a climate control bill in order to fight versus worldwide warming, the same federal government is funding nuclear power plant that do just the contrary. Makes no sense.

- A current Affiliate Press short article reported just how the Feds had busted 94 people for defrauding the Medicare program. This was a great development but why was our Jabba so sluggish in obtaining these arrests done? Medicare fraudulence has been taking place since the day Medicare began several years ago, why did it take such a painfully sluggish time to begin apprehending the cheats? Among those jailed had filed over 3,700 deceitful insurance claims under her name before she was detained, just how sluggish can you get?

We might go on and on. The U.S. federal government has obtained so big and so slow, just like Jabba the Hutt, that its lots of folds up of skin hide waste, stupidity and the doubling back on itself, i.e. government laws and also actions in conflict with itself or the desires of those running the federal government. We might go on and on regarding exactly how sluggish, ineffective, and also inefficient our Jabba is, about just how our Jabba never ever fixes a problem whether it is insecure borders, failing public institutions, rising healthcare prices, etc., how our Jabba wastes unknown billions of bucks on trademarks, useless efforts, and fraud-infested programs, or exactly how our Jabba does not know how to control the economy, cbd doral causing skies high public debt levels and also a really creaky economic situation with low growth as well as high unemployment.

Jabba is very poor for all of us yet he is tough to displace. Through the allocate process, the gerrymandering of Legislative areas, do-nothing project financing regulations, as well as various other approaches, Jabba has numerous defenses against defeat in an election, defenses that also a Jedi light saber might not quickly pierce. Long-term, it is crucial we start to enforce term limitations on political leaders to make sure that they never ever again get as fat, sluggish, inefficient, and ineffective as Jabba The Hutt. Short-term, this November is crucial since it starts the procedure of electing out the Jabba incumbents and ultimately entering some sleek, reliable, as well as courageous Jedi warriors that will make the difficult decisions to get the size of federal government in control as well as make that downsized federal government extra effective and also much less odd and less contrasted."

[percyinpanties]

UPDATE - before it gets better the darkness gets bigger CH 02

i should have picked a shorter title. 

anyway, here it is. almost 8k long because i have a death wish. 

read below or on ao3. format here is a bit funny bc I have to write in gdocs. sorry about that. 

warnings in the tags.

Lance rarely ever dreams these days, but this time when the darkness surrounds him, he find his mother’s face looking back at him. It’s been so long since Lance has dreamt of her, or thought of her at all for much longer than a small, painful moment.

 In Lance’s dream, his mother is smiling.

Her lips are moving, too, and while Lance cannot hear her words he wishes that she is reminding him how much he has been loved back when she was still among them.

 When Lance was a little boy, he wanted to grow up to be just like his mother. Being the youngest child in his family, Lance had always been very close to her, especially once his older siblings had all moved out.

His mother was always a loving and kind woman, and she had held their family together for as long as she was alive. Even though she was an omega, it was always her who made the decisions in their house, Anyone who would bother to look close enough would realise that Lance’s mother was the head of their family rather than the alpha she had married.

 Lance was only fourteen when she passed away as the last straw in a series of tragedies.

 They were nothing without her. Her death broke Lance’s father’s heart and it tore their family apart like nothing else had before.

For a long time, it turned Lance bitter. Not knowing or understanding the circumstances and reasons for her passing only made accepting it more difficult and Lance had never handled grief well to begin with.

 In Lance’s dream, his mother is reaching out to him. Lance wonders how she would feel if she’d known he would present as an omega two years after her passing, how she would feel knowing her son carried the same trait that had been her demise.

Lance tries to move forward, to fall into his mother’s arms, but finds that his legs refuse to obey him.

 His mother’s smile falls and her arms drop. She looks sad, rejected, and Lance feels as if someone stabbed a hot knife through his heart.

 It is not an expression he has seen often on her face, which only makes it ache more. It reminds Lance of times he would rather not remember.

  Just after Lance’s thirteenth birthday, the late King’s daughter and her husband ascended the throne. They had a young son, a strong alpha boy who Lance would later get to know as the Prince, and they were a popular couple. Lance remembers his mother being so hopeful when she heard that the Princess would finally be Queen.

 The years leading up to the King’s death had been rough ones. Political quarrels, civil war and a worldwide economic crisis had wrecked their kingdom and its people.

Even though Lance’s family was well off they had felt the impact of it, had suffered through the consequences.

 Many, including Lance’s family, had believed the Princess would be able to turn things around for the better. The next years, however, proved that the people’s trust was wrongly placed.

 In all fairness, the new Queen hadn’t dealt the best cards when she took the throne after her father’s death. The kingdom was still struggling to recover from the crisis of the past years, birth rates were at an all time low while poverty and unemployment were at an all time height.

 The young Queen was determined to change things for the better, pushing through economic and social reforms almost on a daily basis for her first few months in office.

 Initially, it worked.

 Jobs were created, the economy experienced a small boom, trade went up again. The media adored the Queen, as did Lance’s mother. He can’t recall having heard a single bad word thrown her way during the first year of her reign.

 Sadly, it didn’t stay that way for all too long.

 Two months before Lance’s fourteenth birthday, a new kind of suppressants were released as one of many new drugs funded by the government’s healthcare reform. Many of the old drugs were not supported by insurance any longer, but the royal pharmaceutical corporate group had allegedly been working hard on replacements.

 Lance’s mother, his oldest sister and one of his brothers were only a few of the millions of omegas that switched to the new drug when it came out. None of them would have believed that it would be their downfall.

 There were no side effects at first. No headaches or mood swings, no weight gain or uncalled-for pains that the traditional medicine sometimes came along with. Those who previously reacted sensitive to suppression chemicals got along much better with the new option. The government funded the drug, making it cheaper and easier available to the public and of course, people soon believed that it was the best option available.

 That was when things started to go wrong.

 The day of Lance’s fourteenth birthday, his oldest sister went into a sudden, violent heat.

There were only a few occasion then that brought their entire family together and they had been celebrating, sharing food and stories that afternoon when Lance’s sister broke into a fever.

 It was a sight Lance hasn’t forgotten since. Watching his sister wrecked by cramps and seizures, shivering and whimpering and crying had been one of the scariest experiences in Lance’s life.

Her wife carried Lance’s sister upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms while Lance’s mother ushered their other guests to leave. Lance’s sister hadn’t gone into heat since she’s had her twins five years before. Her body didn’t remember how to cope with the sudden onslaught.

 No one understood why her suppressants would so suddenly fail. Her wife had been sure that she’d taken every pill on time, Lance’s sister didn’t drink and wasn’t on any other mediaction.

Up to that day, she had been in perfect health.

 Lance can see her now, in his strange memory-laced dream. She is passed out on the bed with an unnaturally pale face and dried tears on her cheeks. His mother sits by her side, runs her fingertips over her forehead.

She is not crying, not yet, but Lance can tell how close she is to breaking. He remembers being able to smell his mother’s fear.

 Lance and his parents were worried sick for the next month that came. His sister’s wife took her home the next morning, and then called them almost daily to keep them updated. At first, it looked like Lance’s sister was recovering, improving again.

Lance remembers guiltily that he’d felt hopeful, how sure he was his sister would come out on top.

 The sudden heat had left her weakened though.

 When a new virus began to spread, one that seemed to specifically target omegas, her immune system didn’t stand a chance. No one understood where it had come from, or why only omegas seemed to succumb to its symptoms.

 It was a tragedy.

It was the first time Lance had seen his mother cry.

 He can hear her sobs now, echoing through the dream. He can feel himself crying too, tears hot on his cheek. Lance knows he is out cold, that this is not reality. It does nothing to give him control and nothing to lessen the pain.

 The morning after they learned of his sister’s death, Lance mother went into heat for the first time in fourteen years. No one knew then if it was the stress, the trauma of losing a child, if she’d forgotten her medication through her worry.

 She didn’t survive long enough to contract the virus.

 There was nothing that could compare to the pain Lance felt when his mother closed her eyes forever. He feels an echo of that pain now, but he’s grown almost numb to the feeling. He misses her with every day that passes, but he has stopped seeking someone to blame.

 It seemed like a coincidence, back then, losing both his mother and sister. Until more and more omegas reported their suppressants failing, until more and more omegas were admitted to hospitals all over the kingdom with the same strange virus no medical professional had seen before. Until Lance’s brother fell ill, and until not even the best doctors money would buy could make him last any longer than Lance’s sister had.

  Over the next weeks, the situation escalated. The kingdom was at a tipping point, and a single step in the wrong direction might have set off a chain of reaction that could never be reversed.  

 The virus was mutating. It began to attack betas and alphas, whose immune systems are not subject to their reproductive cycle.

Finally, the government started properly funding research into a cure, much too late for most of the virus’ victims. Too late for Lance’s sister. Too late for Lance’s brother.

 Reports were leaked that accused  government of approving many of the new medications despite them not having been researched to the extend they should have. Worse even, in their rush for any improvement at all, they released drugs with known side-effects and malfunctions.

 Tensions rose, the same people that had loved the Queen so much were now quick to blame her for the lost lives of their loved ones. She disappeared from the public eye and their kingdom’s newly won stability tumbled down like a house of cards.

 Attacks and riots began, ministers and government officials fled the kingdom.

The people were angry, livid even, and they had every right to be.

There was no Queen to diffuse the situation, every day it escalated a little more.

Soon, Lance believed then, there would be civil war. His father had considered taking them away somewhere safer.

 A month of chaos and violence had passed when suddenly the head of the biggest pharmaceutical company came forward publicly.

The news were transmitted live all over the kingdom, and Lance remembers sitting in their living room growing paler with every word.

 The man admitted to having released ineffective suppressants and birth control, purposefully and behind the back of the reigning Queen and King.  He admitted to giving ill advice to the young Queen when the virus surfaced, suggesting to let it run its course rather than take immediate action to contain it.

The man had tears in his eyes as he spoke, Lance can’t recall now if he believed they were genuine. Apparently, this man had lost his own family to the virus, to his own bad decisions, and ridden with guilt he turned himself over to authorities and the public.

 There was no word from the Queen, still, but over the next days several advisors, ministers and high ranking officials were arrested and publicly put on trial. Only then did Lance and his family finally get an explanation for what had happened to Lance’s mother, his sister and brother.

 It was a scandal like none their country had seen before.

 The plan, allegedly, had been to forcefully increase birth rates. Not enough children were born, their economic boom wouldn’t last but soon collapse if there wasn’t a new generation to carry it.

At the time of crisis, manipulating the reproductive cycles of those who carried the kingdom’s children seemed like the best option.

None of those involved had realised how violent a heat would be after years on suppressants, and they had not listened to the doctors that warned them about such side effects. More so, no one could have expected the virus.

What had been simple on paper had turned so much more complex in reality and had spiraled out of their control before they had realised what had gone wrong to begin with.

 The day their verdict was passed was the first time the Queen showed her face in weeks.

Their kingdom was torn and people were grieving, and if there had ever been a time they needed a strong monarch, it was then.

 Lance can see her in his dream now, which strikes him as strange. He had watched the transmission with his father, sitting alone in their estate.

 The Queen had held onto the podest she stood behind, her features uncharacteristically pale. There was sorrow in her eyes, and her voice wavered with unmistakable pain when she spoke.

 She has the same tone in Lance’s dream, but her features begin mixing with that of Lance’s mother. Lance feels conflicted, he knows those are just his memories blurring together, but even so he doesn’t understand why he is recalling the worst years of his life now.

 Hands on the podest, the Queen spoke slowly, carefully picking her words.

Two nights before, she announced, she had lost her husband, the King, to the same virus that had taken so many loved ones from her people. She had been deceived by her most trusted advisors, and she loathed herself for her own blindness. There was nothing left to do for her but beg her people’s forgiveness, as they would need to stand together - united and strong - if they wanted to prevail after this terrible tragedy.

 The memory sharpens.

 Behind the Queen, Lance sees her son. He hadn’t known Shiro then, but he recognises him easily now that he relives the moment. For once, the prince is not what catches Lance’s attention however.

 Behind the Queen, he sees the woman.

   Lance gets ripped out of his dreams by a sharp pain on the skin of his thighs. He tries to flinch away but neither his legs nor his arms move very far, held back with a metal clang. Lance's eyes fling open, but for the first moment he can’t see anything against the blinding brightness of the room.

 Lance blinks a few times, forces himself to still so he won’t hurt himself in a panic - even though all he wants is trash and scream.

The room slowly comes into focus as his eyes get used to the light: against all improbable hopes that today had only been a nightmare, Lance finds himself in a room that is definitely not his own.

 He's still in the palace.

They drugged him, tied him down. From the feeling of soft sheets against his sensitive skin, Lance can guess they stripped him too. Humiliation makes his cheeks burn and before he can stop himself this time, he tries to rip his hands free again.

 They turn out to be restrained with soft leather cuffs above Lance’s head. The metal clank must have come from their links catching on the bed frame they are secured to, giving Lance very little hope that he can violently free himself even if he tries. Although the actual restraints around his wrists are made of soft leather, it is too thick to give even slightly as Lance pulls once with all the strength he can summon.

 Despite them opting for leather over more secure metal, undoubtedly to avoid any marks on Lance's skin, they didn't take any security risks.

 “He’s awake, Ma’am.” A voice, deep but surprisingly gentle, comes from Lance’s right.

 Startled, Lance stops tugging at the cuffs. He hadn't thought to look around, to check what or who had woken him and if he was alone.

 When he turns his head, eyes wide like those of a spooked animal, Lance’s eyes land on a young man about his own age, although much larger compared to Lance’s lean build. The guy is holding a thin wooden stick, like the ones usually stuck into popsicles, but the tip is sticky with some blue substance.

 Wax, Lance realises.

They’re waxing his skin.

That must have been the pain that woke him.

 Lance feels the colour drain from his face as he takes in the setup.

There’s a soft mattress under his back and curtains drawn around one side of the bed. He can hear voices distantly, so he knows there must be people right outside the door.

 Most of his skin feels unusually sensitive, especially where it is touching the sheets, which must mean they have been going at this for a while before the pain brought Lance back to consciousness.

He doesn't want to consider what else they might have done while he was out.

 What is going on here?

 “Perfect.” The woman. Her voice makes Lance still. “I was wondering when you’d come back to us, Lance.”

 When he looks up, he finds her standing at the edge of the bed Lance has been deposited on. She is smiling down at him, but there is no sympathy in her expression now. She looks downright cruel, and some part of Lance finds comfort in the fact that at least she is showing her true colours now.

 “You can't do this.” He whispers hoarsely. Every word hurts his throat on the way out, and Lance guesses he must have screamed and fought more than he had thought when they'd tried to put him down.

 In Lance’s head, it sounds like it must be a nightmare, so obscure that it cannot possibly be the truth. He’s being held hostage at the royal palace, to be forced to marry a prince he hadn't spoken to in years, and every grain of common sense wants Lance to reject this reality rather than accept it as what it is: the terrible truth...

 The Shiro Lance knows… the Shiro Lance used to know - he would never have allowed this, Lance refuses to believe that with every ounce of his being.

 Time may change people, and maybe, the prince has changed as well, but this… Lance doesn't want to accept that Shiro would put him through this against his will.

 “Continue.” The woman addresses the man by the bed now, completely ignoring Lance’s words. “We don’t have time to waste before the ceremony and the seamster will be here in less than an hour.”

The man nods slowly, but he doesn’t reply.

 He doesn’t seem too happy with this job, whether that is because of Lance or the situation they have found themselves in, Lance can’t tell. Chances are that Lance is the first omega this guy has seen in years and if he is an alpha… Lance swallows dryly. He tilts his head ever so slightly toward the man and inhales slowly through his nose, praying to every deity that he is being subtle enough.

 Hardly any scent.

A beta, most likely.

 Lance feels himself relax just a little. He has to stop panicking if he wants to stand any chance of escaping this mess, but the possibility of being alone with a strange alpha exposed to an omega for the first time is enough to set Lance off, nevertheless.

If he keeps going like this, Lance doesn’t like his chances from here on out.

 The man sighs, which catches Lance’s attention. He looks vaguely familiar, but there are more important things to consider than whether or not Lance has met this stranger before.

 Lance hisses when hot wax is applied to his skin again. There isn’t much left that Lance feels has been left untouched, and even though it is almost worse to consider what has already happened in the time that he was asleep, Lance finds some sort of comfort in knowing this ordeal won’t last much longer.

 He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He can do this, but he needs to think.

 There must be a way out.

 Although… realistically, Lance needs to at least free one of his wrists from the cuffs linked to the bed frame. There is nothing he can do as long as his hands are tied, but Lance also knows he doesn’t have the physical strength to break the restraints.

However, they won’t be able to keep him chained down forever, especially if… if the ceremony is as soon as the woman’s words make it sound.

 The wax is ripped off Lance’s skin once more and this time, a whimper escapes Lance’s lips. His thoughts scatter in the moment of sharp pain, concentrating on only this sole sensation.

Lance’s skin feels almost raw, although he knows that his mind must be exaggerating how bad it really is.

 Lance has always loathed being touched by anyone who wasn’t family. He had believed to be a beta for most of his teens, and after presenting as an omega at sixteen, he was completely unprepared for all the new kinds of attention that came with this. It has left him wary and this treatment now, and the knowledge of how much more his privacy must have been invaded already, is soon becoming too much for Lance to handle.  

 “I’m sorry.”

 Lance hears the whisper, but for a second he believes he’s imagined it.

 “I’m almost done. One more. I’m sorry.”

 Lance opens his eyes slowly to squint at the man next to the bed in disbelief. The image is blurry; Lance hasn’t realised that tears have gathered in his eyes.

 The stranger avoids Lance’s gaze, but his expression is pained nevertheless. He must know Lance is being held in the palace against his will, and he evidently doesn’t enjoy this anymore than Lance does. He may have as little choice regarding his servitude as Lance does in being here… and if he is speaking up now…

 Lance raises his head, lets his eyes scan what little he can see of the room. They seem to be alone. This is his chance!

 “Please.” Lance whispers. It’s desperate, and he already knows it is most likely futile, but Lance cannot not try.

 His voice is hoarse still, and the pain of speaking hasn’t lessened. He wishes he could ask for some water, but even if he believed they’d give him what he asked for, there is some pride left within him that won’t allow him this request.

 “I don’t wanna be here.” Lance adds, and he makes sure that his voice carries all the emotion that threatens to take him over. “Please.”

 There’s no answer. The man clenches his hands to fists, looks away and grits his teeth. His gaze goes beyond the bed, to the side obscured by the curtains.

Lance doubts that this man is here of his own free will only grow stronger at the sight.

 Even so, Lance feels a tear slip down his cheek.

As much as he knew it wouldn’t work, being proven right still hurts.

 Another tear follows, then even more. He feels pathetic for crying, but once the first drop has escaped it's near impossible to reign them in again.

 And what can he do now, anyway?

 Without outside help, Lance knows he doesn’t stand a chance. Deep down, he’s known that from the second the needle pierced his skin before, but the realisation sinks in a little more with every second that ticks by. It feels like an ever growing stone in the pit of Lance’s stomach.

 If by some miracle, he manages to free himself of his cuffs, he would still have to escape this place. Lance doesn’t know the palace, if he’s even within the actual royal residence still. He wouldn’t know where to go or where to turn, he has no clothing on his back and his smell would be a dead giveaway even if he tried to hide or blend in.

 He is most likely the only omega in the entire building. There is nowhere for him to go without risking discovery. And if he makes it out of the front door… the palace outside of town and getting to the suburbs alone would be extremely difficult - not to mention that Lance isn’t entirely sure a barely dressed omega would meet a better fate there than what Lance is experiencing now.

 They planned this, so much is clear. There was never a choice, the second Lance accepted the invitation, maybe even before that, they had decided his future.

They won’t be reckless now and leave him any openings, not if they’ve gone to such lengths already to get and keep him here.

 Lance’s hands clench into fists and he screws his eyes shut tightly in an attempt to stop the tears.

 No. He scolds himself. No. Stop this.

 Lance cannot afford to care about how hopeless it seems now. There is always a way out, there has always been before. And He will find it. He will not go down without a fight.

  The last strip of wax comes off Lance’s skin and even though it stings just as bad as before, no noise leaves his lips this time. A moment later, those large hands are back on his thighs, spreading some sort of lotion or oil - the substance soothes the pain and leaves Lance’s skin soft and shiny, but even so Lance has to grit his teeth in order to not flinch away from the touch.

 Lance only relaxes minimally when the hands are gone and he hears the man take a step back away from the bed. He opens his eyes again slowly, and luckily this time they are void of fresh tears.

  Lance is regaining some of his composure, although he struggles to keep it that way. In his chest, his heart is still beating fast enough to hurt.

He needs to find a way out. He can do this. He has no other choice.

 “Get him up on his feet.” Lance hears the woman again, and pales.

 He looks around, but she is obscured by the curtains drawn around the bed. He hadn’t realised she was still here, but her hovering presence just out of sight might explain the man rejecting Lance’s pleas before… Of course she wouldn’t leave to of her captives alone to plot together.

 Even so, Lance cannot help but feel a surge of hope. His first tactic might have been a fail, but if they want him up on his feet, they need to undo his cuffs. This is as much of an opening as he will get, Lance knows that.

  He lies obediently still when the man comes back to the bed and unfastens Lance's ankle cuffs from the bed. His thoughts are racing, and he hopes that the rush of adrenaline accompanying them doesn't show on the outside as well. His core is tense, wound up too tight in preparation of what comes next.

 A hand rests on his ankle when the cuffs come free, as if the man is expecting Lance to try and free himself or struggle as much as he had when Lance has woken earlier. Instead though, Lance only turns his head to the side and casts his gaze down sadly, miming as if he has given up already.

 Another second passes by, then the hand moves higher, leaving Lance's skin entirely until it joins the other hand already on Lance’s wrists.

 This is the moment. He has to make this count, Lance knows he'll likely not get another chance like this one.

 Lance waits until he hears the cuffs release.

 He only has a second. Before he can think better of it, he draws up his legs and pulls his arms forward hard. The man stumbles toward the bed but Lance uses this to kick him in the chest with as much strength as he can muster.

 Lance would feel bad for the guy, given he doesn't seem like a volunteer here either, but he has no time for sympathy now. The man goes down with a pained shout and Lance  rolls to the other side of the bed.

With too much momentum to stop himself, Lance falls through the drawn curtains on the other side onto the floor in front of the bed.

 Clumsy after not having moved in so long, and maybe from some remnants of tranquilizers in his blood, Lance struggles to get back to his feet as quickly as he'd like. He can’t see the woman yet and a look around the room tells him all he needs to know: there is a door up ahead and while he has no idea where it leads, it's his best shot right now.

 Lance scrambles forward, afraid that he's already lost too much time. He's sure he's heard the man grown on the other side of the bed, maybe already back on his feet as well. There's not another second to waste.

 Lance's fingers touch the doorknob when suddenly a cold hand wraps around his shoulder. He's ripped backward, then hurled into a whole other direction until his back violently connects with a wall.

Lance gasps in pain and blinks, disoriented but trying to see who had caught him so close to having gotten free

.

The woman stands in front of him, eyes cold, mouth drawn into a sneer and one of her arms across Lance’s chest.  

 “Why do you insist on being so difficult.” She snarls. It is not a question.

 Her free hand comes up and wraps wrapped around Lance’s throat, her sharp nails dig into his skin. It is a threat, Lance knows that, although he has his doubts she’ll actually hurt him.

 “I’ve given you so many chances to make this easier. You have left me no choice.”

 The hand drops from his neck, then her arm leaves Lance’s chest. At first, Lance believes she’ll just drug him again.  

Instead however, she raises her hand and slaps him hard across the cheek.  It stings so badly that it makes Lance's eyes water and head swim. He winces in pain even though he hates to give her the satisfaction.

 “We all have to do our part. You will marry the prince whether you like it or not, boy.” She looks at him with distaste and Lance stares back at her defiantly.

 It all she needs to justify another slap, this time backhanding Lance across the other side of his face. Pain blooms all over his face and his lip splits under the force of her hand. Lance can taste the blood on his tongue, his vision is swimming with large black dots.

When he raises his arms in a weak attempt to protect his face, she punches him in the stomach. Pain shoots through Lance, he doubles over as his knees give out below him and he falls to the floor.

 He can smell her now, the pheromones of an angry alpha, and for the first time, Lance is actually scared of her.

Memories of school bullies who just loved pushing around the little omega come flashing through his mind and he curls in on himself, a new sob tearing out of his chest before Lance has even realised that he is crying again.

 “The more you struggle, the worse I will make this for you.” The woman warns him in a low tone. This time, Lance takes her threat seriously. He doesn’t look up, only curls in further on himself and hopes she won’t inflict even more, worse pain on him.

  She watches Lance for another moment, then pushes away from him and the wall. Lance is left shaking on the floor, but unrestrained and not held back, the door right in his reach. His head raises and his gaze flits over to the doorknob. Lance wonders how stupid it would be to risk it again now, if he’d even make it the few feet to the door while he is shaking like a leaf in the wind.

 Before Lance can make up his mind, the woman catches his gaze and klicks her tongue.

 “You can try all you might, boy. This door won’t open for you.” She informs him. A cruel little smile spreads on her features as she regards Lance a second longer, then she nods toward the door. “Go on. Try if you don’t believe me.”

 This time, no one stops him on his way to the door and no one stops him when his fingers wrap around the doorknob. His knees are scraped from falling and then crawling over the floor, and his arms tremble - when he tries to pull himself up, he only sends a new spike of pain through his body.

He doesn’t need to be on his feet for this, Lance tries to tell himself, so he reaches up again and twists the doorknob from where he is kneeling on the floor.

Nothing happens.

Lance tugs, and the door stays in place. He pushes his second hand against the wall, doesn’t care that the woman is watching when he rips at the handle now.  

 It doesn’t budge.  Angry tears stream down Lance’s cheeks, a sob threatening to break free, but even so he pushes and pulls at the door like a madman.

 “Please.” He whispers without realising he’s said the word aloud. “Pleasepleaseplease. God, fuck- please. dammit.”

 The door doesn’t move even a fraction of an inch. Of course not. Of course they would have locked the door. Why is Lance so naive and stupid and why would he believe they’d even let him get to the door if it was a legitimate way out?

 Lance feels his eyes burn with fresh tears and anger light up his chest. After what has happened in the last twentyfour hours, he cannot believe what a fool he is, kneeling sobbing and bleeding in his underwear in front of a door that will never open for him. He must look even more pathetic than he feels.

 Lance squeezes his eyes shut, drops his forehead against the wooden door and lets his tears run freely. He is sobbing quietly for several minutes before anyone says anything.

“When you’re done with this pitiful display,” The woman speaks up. She is approaching again but Lance hardly finds the strength to shrink away from her.

“The seamster is almost here. We need to make you presentable for the ceremony.”

 Her words are salt in Lance's open wounds. He doesn’t need to be reminded of why he is being kept here or that, while he is their only option, he is a pitiful excuse for a bride.

Lance is trembling all over again, struggling to stop new sobs from breaking out.

 “Get up.” She commands, but Lance doesn’t answer, doesn’t move, doesn’t even look at the woman as she stops behind him.

 She is getting to him and Lance doesn't like that in the slightest. The more Lance struggles, the more difficult this will become for him, the more will she hurt him and the closer will he be monitored.  If he played along, maybe he can at least spare himself some pain until a new opportunity for escape presents itself.

If he goes about this the right way, they might be more lenient with him in the future. Playing the docile omega they want him to be shouldn’t be so hard, and if they believe they have broken him...

 Lance doesn’t get as far as making a decision. The woman grabs a fistful of his hair and starts pulling. Lance cries out at the pain, scrambles to move along as she drags him up to his feet.

 “I don’t ask twice.” She hisses when Lance is standing, making himself small as she towers over him. “Over there, get yourself cleaned up.”

 Reluctantly, Lance steps away from the door. He can feel a bruise forming on his cheek and his knees hurt with every step he takes away from the door. His gaze is fixed to the floor, his posture sagged and he doesn't have to pretend much to look like all fight has left him.

 “You won’t get away with this.” Lance protests weakly even as he walks over to where the man that attended him earlier is waiting. Some of the resentment he feels still rings through, but it’s deliberate.

His change has to be gradual, or the woman will be suspicious. Lance has underestimated what he is up against twice now and he won’t make the same mistake again.

 The woman laughs humourlessly and watches as Lance limps over to the other side of the room. There is a small vanity standing against the wall on the other side of the bad where the man is waiting.

Lance pales and hesitates when he remembers how he kicked the stranger. In contrast to Lance’s expectations though, the man doesn’t seem to hold Lance’s outburst against him. When he reaches for Lance’s wrists, his grip is a little firmer but still as gentle as any other touch had been before. Maybe he understand that  an animal which is caged will lash out even against the hand that feeds it.

 Lance is being led to the small table. There is a shallow bowl with water and a washcloth, which the man now takes to clean the blood from Lance’s split lip off of his skin. He checks Lance’s knees and palms too, which are luckily only a little scraped.

 “It’ll be fine within the week if he doesn’t open the wound again.” The man tells the woman, who has taken a seat on a chaise by the foot of the bed. That is where she must have been hidden before too, Lance realises, as it would be convered from the bed and either sides of it.

 Once the wounds are cared for, the stranger leads Lance to a small pedestal in front of three large mirrors that take up an entire corner of the room. Next to the space is a little working table with several long sheets of white fabrics draped over. They vary in opacity and quality and some are intricate lace - there is no doubt in Lance’s mind what they are for.

 He’s seen a room like this before when his oldest sister took him shopping for a dress before her wedding. The memory is painful, even more so when Lance considers what she would think if she could see him now… He pushes it away, and steps onto the pedestal without complaint when he is being nudged toward it.

 Struggling hasn’t gotten him anywhere and he doesn’t want to be hit again.

 Behind Lance, a door opens. He has to grit his teeth so he won’t do any stupidly impulsive, despite knowing that even if he tries to make another run for it, the door will be locked long before he gets anywhere near it and he’ll likely just get another beating.

There’s quiet whispers, then someone claps their hands and Lance flinches before he can stop himself.

 “So, here we have the little omega, eh?” A voice asks behind him.

 In the mirrors, Lance can see a small, very old man looking up at him. His face is so wrinkly he hardly even looks like a human anymore, and his sparse hair is discoloured and greasy.

Despite the strange appearance, Lance has a feeling that there is more to this man than meets the eye.

 He nods slowly, not sure what else to do but knowing that the old man expects an answer.

 “Ah, very well. I just finished a truly beautiful suit for your groom.” He walks around Lance as he speaks with surprising agility, taking in every inch of Lance’s skin with his eyes. “I already know what we’re gonna do with you. All that nice skin, would be a shame to cover it all up, eh? Gotta do something about those scrapes though, what a shame.”

 This time, Lance doubts it was a question as much as a statement so he just stays silent. He’s grateful those bony hands have stayed away from ‘all that nice skin’ so far and he’d rather not invite the man to touch by agreeing with his musing.

 In a flurry, the man produces a sketchbook from somewhere within the ridiculous coat he is wearing. In a different life, Lance might have found him amusing or even liked the seamster.

The sketchbook is thrown onto the working table and opened to an empty page, then Lance watches as he produces a piece of coal out of one of the many pockets in the coat and starts sketching out Lance’s silhouette on the paper from a few angles.

 “My tape.” The man commands then and holds out his hands. One of the people that had followed him in jumps into action and hurries over. As if handing over an ancient artifact, the young woman places a small roll into the old man’s open palm with utmost care. He makes a pleased hum in reply, but does not offer his thanks before he turns back to Lance.

 “Hold still, little one. We’ll be done here in no time.”

  The measuring process is humiliating to say the least. Grubby little hands touch Lance in all sorts of places that he would rather stay untouched by creepy old seamsters. Lines of coal are drawn directly on his skin, whether on accident or purpose Lance isn’t entirely sure. Every now and again, the man lets off him to scribble something into his sketchbook, but it’s never long until he’s back on Lance.

 Lance would regret playing along with this if he wasn’t scared of punishment if he did anything to rebel. And anyway, he knows there isn’t a way around this now. If he struggles, they will simply tie him or sedate him, making the process take even longer than it does now.

 Finally, the band wraps high around Lance’s neck for the last time, pulled taut like a collar before it’s let go.

 “Perfect. You were a very good model.” The old man praises Lance and pats his thigh like one might with a pet. “Now, I need to work. We will have the fitting in the morning.” The old man announces as he finally steps away from Lance.

 He turns to the woman, who has been watching the whole procedure with her cold and calculating glare, an ever constant threat in the corner of the room.

 “Be sure the omega sleeps, that disgraceful split lip is already bad enough, I don’t want any of those ugly dark circles on his face tomorrow, too.” The little man tells her, apparently unafraid of the much taller presence.

 The woman nods, but doesn’t step out of the seamsters way yet.

 “There is one more thing.” She says, slowly. Her eyes leave Lance for the first time in an hour when she leans down to whisper in the old man’s ear.

 Lance cannot make out the words, but the old seamster doesn’t seem overly pleased with the request as he frowns up at the woman as soon as she pulls back again

 “But this -” He starts, then stops when the woman holds up a hand.

 “I’m afraid I must insist. We don’t want the boy spoiling the ceremony now, do we? And this way no one will have to see that disgraceful lip either.” She says with a very pointed look at Lance.

 Maybe she is just waiting to hurt Lance even more, waiting for him to step out of line so she has an excuse to show him who is the alpha in this room. Whatever the case, Lance doesn’t like the way she regards him now any more than before.

  As soon as the seamster leaves, Lance is allowed to step down from the pedestal. His legs ache from the fall and standing so long, and he is almost grateful when he is being guided back to the bed.

 Idly, Lance wonders how different this might have gone had he agreed yesterday.  If he would have been allowed to go home to pack his things, allowed to call his siblings he’s only seen once in the past year and invite them. If they had let him see Shiro, the prince, beforehand and if Lance would have been allowed any say in this process.

 He doubts it, somehow. They have shown him how little they care for his wellbeing and his comfort, that he is just a pawn in the Prince’s ascension to become King. Who knows if they will even keep him here once Shiro’s position is secured.

Some distant part of Lance wonders if he had agreed had Shiro asked himself, if Shiro had come to visit Lance to explain… evidently though, Shiro doesn’t care any more about him that this horrible woman whose care Lance has been put in does.

 “It’s late. We need to get some food in him before putting him down for the night.” Again, the woman is speaking over Lance to the man who has had to handle Lance all day. It sounds as if she is talking about a dog rather than a human.  “Leave the hands free for now, I will be right back.”

 With that, she leaves out of the same door Lance had attempted to escape through earlier.

A large hand wraps around Lance’s upper arm and pulls him the rest of the way toward the bed.

This is the first time they are truly alone, the first time the woman has actually left Lance out of her sight…

If he speaks now, he probably won’t have to face a punishment as severe as the last one...

 “I’m sorry I kicked you.” He whispers as soon as the door closes again. He doesn’t look up to the man, doesn’t have to pretend to feel bad about it to give the impression of a sad, kicked puppy. “I’m just so scared…”

 This part is no lie, Lance doesn’t even have to fake the little shiver that goes through him. There is no answer, not yet, but Lance isn’t going to give in just yet. Not this time.

 “I… I can’t believe they’re getting away with this…” He says and now looks up after all. There are tears gathering in his eyes and Lance pretends to try and blink them away before the first spill over his cheeks. There isn’t much acting involved in his pleas, which Lance hopes makes him all the more convincing. “How does no one care I’m being held against my will?”

 The man’s free hand clenches at his side and he turns his gaze away from Lance, closing his eyes for a second before he turns back to Lance.

He seems to search Lance’s face for a moment, as if he is expecting something more that doesn’t come.

 “After.” He says after a second, gaze not moving from Lance’s eyes for even a seond. “After the wedding. Wait until then… be strong.”

  It is nothing but a small spark of hope, but it is catching the rest of Lance’s being on fire.

After the wedding.

[yaltonrp-blog]

Congratulations Becca! You have been accepted for the role of Hiro Komatsu with the FC of Sen Mitsuji. We found Hiro fascinating and look forward to seeing where you take him. Please send us an account within the next 24 hours with the ask and submit boxes open.

Welcome to Yalton! We look forward to roleplaying with you.

OOC:

Name/Alias: Becca

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Age: 17

Timezone: EST

Activity Level: I’d say a solid 7. Like everyone, there are days where I’m more active and eager to roleplay than others, but I usually do take time to come onto my character account everyday and at my worst, my replies will take place every other day.

Things you aren’t willing to write: Smut

IC:

Biography Info:

Character Name: Hiro Komatsu

Pronouns: He/Him/His

Gender: Cis Male

Age: 22

Major/Position: Philosophy Major

FC: Sen Mitsuji

Biography:

The Komatsu family has always been the epitome of elegance in their town of Hiraizumi, Japan. Ancient Japanese culture and practices still run deep in the town to this day, with it’s agriculture based economy and plethora of historic monuments. At the age of eight, Hiro knew that the small town life would never accompany him as he visited Tokyo for a distant relative’s wedding. The most people Hiro had ever seen in one place at one time were the 103 kids in his year gathered together for an assembly. It was safe to say that stepping off the train and into Tokyo city was unlike anything he had ever witnessed before. Since that day, Hiro was obsessed with the thought of leaving his town to go live somewhere new and exciting, preferably somewhere far away from the farmer filled town of Hiraizumi.

Hiro wasn’t so much of a bad kid as he was a trouble maker. He was anything but neglected, but it’s safe to say his older brother Sho received the most attention from his family. With Sho’s stellar grades and a full ride scholarship for basketball to the University of Tokyo, Hiro couldn’t help but be kept in his 6′5″ brother’s shadow. While eighteen year old Sho was meeting up with the Prime Minister to be condemned for his amazing academic achievements, Hiro was being suspended from school, this time for stealing his teacher’s grade book and altering his friend’s grades. Hiro was stealthy, so if he wanted to get away with little things like that he could, it’s just that the chase was a lot more fun.

While Hiro’s father was born in Japan, his mother is from Philidelphia, Pennsylvania. She came to Japan to teach English and eventually met Minato Komatsu, and the rest was history. Though Hiro was aware of his family in the states, he never actually met them. With only a measly seven cousins residing in Japan, Hiro’s mother explained how she was one of eight, and there’s over thirty other relatives from her side of the family he’s never met. It seemed as if his seventh suspension was the last straw from his parents, as the day he turned fourteen, Hiro was fresh prince’d all the way to Philly to stay with the grandparents he often forgot existed.

Philidelphia was incredibly different from Hiraizumi, but in every way Hiro had hoped it would be. The schools were bigger, people more diverse, and Hiro had learned to prefer the savory American food over the traditional Japanese dishes back home. Though his family feared the culture shock would take him by surprise, they could have never imagined he’d fit in so nicely. Hiro was initially only supposed to reside in Philly for a year, but he was doing so well that his parents decided to allow him to stay for however long he pleased. Although he was considered very smart back in Japan, here in Philly his intelligence was exceptional as he quickly became the top of his high school class. While his peers struggled with teenage angst during high school, Hiro had never felt better. Hiro had girls, boys, and pretty much everyone else he wanted at the tip of his fingers, because who wouldn’t be attracted to the smart yet bad boy from Japan?

His bad behavior stopped in school, but that didn’t prohibit Hiro from engaging in less than admirable activities behind his family’s back. He became quite good at holding his alcohol as Hiro had a party almost every time his grandparents were out of town. If he wasn’t hosting one, he was most certainly attending one. Starting the third week he entered America, Hiro went to a house party at least five times a month. He’d get black out drunk or higher than heaven with his friends, something his family failed to realize until he was seventeen and headed home from what must’ve been his thousandth party. With only a visa, Hiro couldn’t drive, so he was dependent on his buddies to bring him home from whatever they had been doing that night. Though he knew better, his friends didn’t, and decided it would be a good idea to drive everyone home intoxicated. Paramedics arrived at the scene seven minutes after the crash to find the bottom half of the car 100 feet away from the scene of the accident, the tree the car hit completely toppled over, and no survivors except for Hiro who’s legs were completely shattered and stuck between the passenger’s seat and dashboard.

Hiro’s left leg was able to be saved, but his right one was forced to be amputated below the knee as it was completely mutilated. While the rest of his body was practically untouched besides for a few wounds requiring sistches, Doctors didn’t realize there was something else wrong with Hiro until four months after the accident during his last days in rehab. Due to the car stopping so fast while going such a high speed, Hiro’s upper body went right through the windowshield and into the tree which eventually toppled over the car. The impact caused parts of his skull to shatter and enter his frontal lobe, a problem that was presumed solved by an immediate surgery. However, that proved to not be the case once the frontal lobe damage became prominent in his behavior. The once charismatic and somewhat sweet boy quickly became a mix of all different personalities in one. Mood changes had become frequent, and the smallest things would now set Hiro off. His volatile behavior spontaneity had quickly become the main concern for those around him.

As he learned to live with his prosthetic and had been attending a therapist daily, now eighteen year old Hiro was sent home a total of five months after the accident. He finished his senior year by taking summer school classes and being tutored. It was harder to concentrate but still proved manageable as Hiro graduated with one of the highest GPA’s in high class. His family back in Japan flew over for a weekend as they had a party in celebration of this accomplishment, but it seemed as if everyone returned to their daily lives except for Hiro himself. He had plans to apply to some of the biggest colleges in the US for Computer Science, but the accident caused him to lost passion for most things in life. Instead, Hiro decided to take a gap year, getting a job at a local diner. It’s surprising how many tips a crippled nineteen year old with a pretty smile can make.

Eventually Hiro started applying to colleges again. He was lucky enough to take the SATs during his Junior year a earn a near perfect score, but it was still difficult getting accepted almost two years after graduating high school, However it wasn’t all for nothing as Hiro opened what he thought would be his fifth rejection letter only to find out that come fall, he’d proudly be a Yak. Though his battles are far from over, Hiro can proudly say he’s doing better. Weekly therapy sessions and time to himself has improved his behavior immensely, but there are times where he’s set off by some seemingly meaningless things. There’s still a long way to go, but for the first time in his life, Hiro can say he’s actually excited for the future.

State at least one headcanon about the character:

Ever since his accident, Hiro has refused to touch any alcoholic beverage. Although the crash wasn’t his fault, he can’t help but feel responsible for not doing something. He’s been told all his life that coke and rum mix, but booze and driving do not. Hiro is terrified that for any instance if he were to consume alcohol again that history will somehow repeat itself.

Though most expect him to be a womanizer of sorts, Hiro has always identified as pansexual. Sure, he’s flirty with the ladies, but his interests are not influenced by gender identity. He constantly says how his love for another isn’t with the body, but the mind. Hiro is unapologetically proud of his sexuality and greatly values the time it took for him to understand that being so is okay.

Japanese is his first language and he didn’t learn English until age eight.

He has a strong dislike for all of social media except Instagram, where he constantly posts pictures of the most random things he can think of. If it’s artsy enough, Hiro will snap a photo and upload it in minutes. He does use other social media as well but only to keep up with his friends, as he rarely posts any of his own content on there.

Traditional Japanese instrumental is his favorite type of music to listen to, however he is also a big fan of Alternative rock and Grunge bands like Nirvana, Sublime, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. The two contrasting genres are an accurate representation of Hiro’s personality.

If you were to tell high school Hiro that he’d be majoring in Philosophy, he probably would’ve laughed in your face. Up until his accident, he was set in stone that he’d be majoring in something having to do with technology. However, in the past few years Hiro has been plagued with a constant question regarding everything: Why? He’s always been interested in theory, and as his love for science dwindled, his passion for the study of ideas about almost everything rose.

He doesn’t exactly know what job he wishes to pursue come graduation, so he presumes graduate school will be his next step.

[crayonlead2-blog]

Links 3/18/19

Patient readers, we just this instant switched on the codes for a new advertising vendor. A very much unintended and unexpected side effect is that some of you may be seeing video and other pop-ups. We were very clear in that these types of ads were not allowed. We are working to make them go away as fast as we can, because we know how much you hate them (and we do too)! –lambert

Update by Yves: The site seems to load faster with the new ads (the ads were what would slow down loading times), so once we get the popups sorted out (which thank God are appearing only on the landing page and so aren’t interfering with reading articles), this should be a net plus to readers once we get past transition issues.

Stonehenge-like monuments were home to giant pig feasts. Now, we know who was on the guest list Science

What’s the cost (in fish) between 1.5 and 3 degrees of warming? Anthropocene

Home Of Strategic Command And Some Of The USAF’s Most Prized Aircraft Is Flooding (Updated) The Drive

Radical plan to artificially cool Earth’s climate could be safe, study finds Grist

Fire Breaks Out At a Houston-Area Petrochemicals Terminal Bloomberg. Second in a week. Video:

The heat is deforming this metal storage tank. Some of the first responders are worried it will collapse. pic.twitter.com/Y3ZsjJ96zj

— Respectable Lawyer (@RespectableLaw) March 18, 2019

Leave the oil in the ground, and this doesn’t happen…

The Fed has exacerbated America’s new housing bubble FT

Churches are opening their doors to businesses in order to survive CBS

Some county treasurers have flouted Iowa gift law for years Bleeding Heartland

Corporations Are Co-Opting Right-To-Repair Wired

Brexit

What will it take to push May’s Brexit deal over the line FT. The arithmetic: “To overturn her 149-vote deficit, she would have to win over at least 75 MPs. The most plausible route starts with the DUP’s 10 MPs. If they backed her deal, then some 50 of the nearly 70 Tory Eurosceptics who voted against it last week may change sides. Then Mrs May would need a further 15 Labour MPs, in addition to the five Labour and former Labour MPs who backed her last week.”

Northern Ireland’s farmers urge DUP to back Brexit deal FT

Around 40 Tory Rebels Told Theresa May: We’ll Vote For Your Brexit Deal If You Quit Buzzfeed

Labour likely to back public vote on UK PM’s deal, says Corbyn Reuters

Brexit by July 1 unless UK votes in EU election: Document Politico

The Irish Backstop: Nothing has changed? It has actually (PDF) Lord Bew and Lord Trimble, Policy Exchange. Bew is a Professor of Irish Politics. Trimble is a former First Minister of Northern Ireland and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Well worth the clickthrough to read the entire PDF. Here is the final paragraph:

All of this suggests that a backstop that functions for more than a short period of time – and the DUP has indicated in Parliament that it could live with a short backstop – is likely to be an extremely unstable affair. If it does not negotiate a trade deal with the UK in the next year or so, the EU is also likely to become increasingly aware that the Protocol will give it nothing but grief as it gets sucked into the Northern Ireland quagmire. In this quagmire, the UK Government (which has the support of the majority of the population in Northern Ireland and which pays the subvention which subsidises the entire society), holds most of the cards.

Politico’s London Playbook calls their report “a ringing endorsement of the tweaks to the backstop agreed by Theresa May in Strasbourg this month.” Readers?

NORMAN LAMONT: History will never understand Tory MPs if they kill off Brexit Daily Mail

Brexit will mark the end of Britain’s role as a great power WaPo. Surely Suez did that?

Macron calls for ‘strong decisions’ after violent Yellow Jacket protests Politico

Among the Gilets Jaunes LRB

Syraqistan

Months after saying US will withdraw, now 1,000 troops in Syria to stay Jerusalem Post but US denies report it is leaving up to 1,000 troops in Syria Channel News Asia. And what about the mercs?

Saudi Crown Prince’s Brutal Drive to Crush Dissent Began Before Khashoggi NYT

A Palestinian Farmer Finds Dead Lambs in His Well. He Knows Who’s to Blame Haaretz

Algeria After Bouteflika Jacobin

North Korea

Investing in resource-rich North Korea seems like a good idea — but businesses find there’s a catch Los Angeles Times

Picking Up the Pieces After Hanoi Richard Haass, Project Syndicate

New Cold War

How ordinary Crimeans helped Russia annex their home Open Democracy

How Russia Gets To Build Its Most Controversial Pipeline Riddle

Trump Transition

The Pentagon’s Bottomless Money Pit Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone. How are they gonna pay for it?

Government withholds 84-year-old woman’s social security, claims she owes thousands for college WISH-TV

737 Max

Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system Seattle Times

737 MAX disaster pushes Boeing into crisis mode Phys.org

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

All the Crime, All the Time: How Citizen Works NYT

Global Mass Surveillance And How Facebook’s Private Army Is Militarizing Our Data Forbes

More Than a Data Dump Harpers. Why Julian Assange deserves First Amendment protection.

Democrats in Disarray

Establishment Democrats Are Undermining Medicare for All Truthout. As I kept saying with my midterms worksheets, the liberal Democrat leadership’s #1 priority is to prevent #MedicareForAll, and to that end they shifted the center of gravity of the electeds against it. Now we see this strategy born out in falling sponsorship numbers.

Even a Vacuous Mueller Report Won’t End ‘Russiagate’ Stephen Cohen, The Nation. “[T]he Democrats and their media are now operating on the Liberty Valance principle: When the facts are murky or nonexistent, ‘print the legend‘.”

Venture capitalist Steve Case spreading funding to Middle America with “Rise of the Rest” CBS

Class Warfare

What’s Wrong with Contemporary Capitalism? Angus Deaton, Project Syndicate

Bill McGlashan’s firing exposes hypocrisy in impact investing Felix Salmon, Axios

The College Admissions Ring Tells Us How Much Schoolwork Is Worth New York Magazine

How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood NYT

‘Filth, mold, abuse’: report condemns state of California homeless shelters Guardian

Wall Street Has Been Unscathed by MeToo. Until Now. NYT

What the Hell Actually Happens to Money You Put in A Flexible Spending Account? Splinter

‘Super bloom’ shutdown: Lake Elsinore shuts access after crowds descend on poppy fields Los Angeles Times. “Desperate for social media attention, some visitors have trampled through the orange poppy fields, despite official signs warning against doing so.” Thanks, influencers!

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.

This entry was posted in Guest Post, Links on March 18, 2019 by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

Post navigation

← Electronic Health Records: Death By A Thousand Clicks Report from the Ground in Paris: The Most Recent Gilets Jaunes Protests →

Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/03/links-3-18-19.html

[scarletwelly-boots]

Books Read 2017

I read 35 books this year. I'm about halfway done with #36, so I might make a smaller post later if I finish it before the New Year. I will also make a follow-up with the top ten so you don't need to read this whole thing. This post will briefly review each book (and damn I slacked this year; last year I got through 39 books).

As last year, each entry will include the title, author, and the entry of this year's reading challenge that it fell under.

1. All the King’s Men, by Nora Sakavic (A book that’s been on your TBR list for way too long). This is book three of the All for the Game trilogy, and holy shit you have to read this. It’s the best book in the trilogy. It is a series about a college sports team who play a made up sport called Exy, which is basically a more violent version of lacrosse. I’m not a huge sports fan, but the way she writes Exy matches had me on the edge of my seat. The team is made up of all “at-risk” students, the main character being a kid on the run from his mob boss dad. Trigger warning for the series for violence, sexual assault/rape, abuse, drug use, I may be missing some things. It was so good though.

2. Chopsticks, by Jessica Anthony (A book of letters). This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I kind of cheated on including this for this part of the challenge. It’s not entirely epistolary. It’s more mixed media. The story is told through pictures, letters, newspaper articles, notes, etc. It was good. It’s about a girl who’s basically this piano prodigy who meets a boy and falls in love.

3. East, by Edith Patton (an audio book). This year was going to be the year I reread books I haven’t read since junior high, but I kind of fell through on that, so I think this might be the only one I actually read. It’s a retelling of the Scandinavian fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon, which in turn is basically a version of Beauty and the Beast. I was obsessed with Beauty and the Beast retellings (and fairy tale retellings in general) when I was fourteen. The book certainly holds up over time. I definitely recommend it.

4. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz (a book by a person of color). Guys, everything you have heard about this book is true. It is so cute, and beautifully written. Two very different boys meet at a swimming pool when they are fifteen, and almost immediately become inseparable best friends. Also, if you can, the audiobook is surprisingly cheap on Amazon and read by el amor de mi vida, Lin-Manuel Miranda, so the book has that going for it too. 11/10 would recommend.

5. The Summer Palace, by CS Pacat (a book with one of the four seasons in the title). This is a short story in the Captive Prince series, and while it is absolutely adorable and so sunny, you need to read the trilogy to understand and appreciate it. It’s so sweet, with Laurent and Damen finally allowed to get to know each other and explore their personalities without the immediate threat of death hanging over them. Definitely recommended, but only after you read the trilogy, which I also obviously recommend.

6. The Course of Irish History, by TW Moody &co (a book with multiple authors). This is like 800-page textbook-grade Irish history, from the Ancient Celts to the Celtic Tiger economy in the 2000s. It is the leading book for Irish History courses, as I understand it. Guys. I loved this book. It took me forever to read, but I love Irish history books. It’s almost the only nonfiction I can sit through. Will you like it? Probably not. Do I recommend it anyway? Absolutely. 

7. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire (a book with a cat on the cover). Might’ve cheated on this entry too. Okay, listen. I have zero interest in reading the other books in the series and I’m sorry, but the musical was ten times better. However, there are several things about this book that I love. (And I read this in January so how accurate my memories are is questionable.) Elphaba is absolutely bi/pan in this and you cannot convince me otherwise. There are two munchkins who aren’t in the musical but who are absolutely gay as the Fourth of July. I’m pretty sure I remember someone who could be read as trans. This book was very queer. I just have no attachment to the characters that I know will be in the other books. If you want to read it, I’d recommend it. If you have the opportunity to see the musical instead, go with that option even if it’s the more expensive choice.

8. Fence, vol. 1, by CS Pacat (a book by an author who uses a pseudonym): CS Pacat is back, this time with a modern sports comic about fencing. This is a literal comic book guys, so it was really short, but vol. 2 is out soon so it’s okay. I liked it. I like fencing and CS Pacat, so I enjoyed it. Too short, but I know that’s how comics work. Yeah, go read it and support comics.

9. The Raven King, by Nora Sakavic (a bestseller from a genre you don’t normally read). “This was a bestseller?” Yeah, okay, so I cheated a lot this year. It should have been a best seller. This is book two in the All for the Game series. I already explained this series above, but guys read it, it’s so good!

10. Turtles All the Way Down, by John Green (a book by or about someone who has a disability). Yay, John Green wrote another book! Yep, it’s a Green book all right. But it was really, really good. Yes, this is coming from someone whose favorite book is still The Fault in Our Stars, but listen. The main character has anxiety like crazy, and Green, having anxiety himself, writes it so well. Almost too well; the character’s anxiety was starting to give me anxiety. I loved it. Read this book.

11. A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson (A book involving travel), this is a classic. Bryson goes to hike the Appalachian Trail, which is very very long. He takes along his somewhat stupid friend from home. Another nonfiction book, but it was good and had no Ireland at all in it. It was really funny, too. I recommend the audiobook, because it’s really fast to get through, but good. 

12. The Immortal Irishman, by Timothy Egan (a book with a subtitle). I know, but it’s got a subtitle actually but I just can’t remember what it is. Guys, I know it’s Irish history again. This book is whole leagues above The Course of Irish History. It’s not a textbook, and doesn’t read like one. It’s a biography on Thomas Francis Meagher, a revolutionary in Famine-decimated Ireland trying to free his dying and oppressed country from the English. It doesn’t go well. He’s imprisoned and sentenced to death. But instead of dying, he is transported to the Penal Colony in Australia, where he lives and works to free Australia from Britain’s clutches as well, before he escapes to the United States just in time to be a general in the Civil War. It’s really good.  

13. Weird Ireland, assorted authors (a book that’s published in 2017). A very small, independently published book about paranormal, supernatural, and extra-terrestrial sightings in Ireland. It was okay. I finished it in two hours. I knew everything that was in it, and some of it they even got wrong. Even if you’re crazy-obsessed with Ireland like me, you can skip this one.

14. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the movie script, by JK Rowling (a book involving a mythical creature). Did you see the movie? Then you’re good, you don’t need to read the script. Bye.

15. Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones (a book you’ve read before than never fails to make you smile). Did I say TFiOS is my favorite book? Sorry, I meant this one. Did you see the movie? Don’t care, book’s better, go read it. This may be my most frequently read book on my shelf. It’s sooo good!

16. Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt (a book with career advice): I hate to say this about a fellow Irishman and a celebrated author, but Frank McCourt? not a great guy. The book was good, because I’m also a teacher, so some of what he was saying was relatable to me. But the guy teaches high school English, and even though the book follows him from his thirties to like his sixties, he’s kind of salivating over the high school girls and it was making me very uncomfortable. He never actually does anything about his attraction (at least not in the book), but I was still like this is wildly unprofessional please stop. 

17. Loki: Agent of Asgard vol. 1, by Jason Ewing (a book from a nonhuman perspective): This was the second-ever graphic novel I’ve ever read guys. Yes, I had a weeabo phase in junior high like everyone else, so I did read manga, but comics were never really that interesting to me. So I was Thor: Ragnarok six times this year. Why did I see it six times? I love Loki and their genderfluidity, even if the MCU won’t acknowledge that my love so obviously gf. So I decided to read all the comics where it’s canon that Loki is genderfluid. This book was so good, please read.

18. Graceling, by Kristen Cashore (a steampunk novel). Cheating again, sorry. This was more fantasy than steampunk. It was also a junior high favorite I’m reading again. In this world, there are people born with two eye colors that signify they have special abilities. Some are benign, like being an amazing baker or the ability to tell someone is lying to you, but some are more sinister. The main character, Katsa’s grace is for killing. It’s a good book.

19. The Irish Civil War, by Tim Pat Coogan (a book with a red spine). A very short book highlighting the Irish Civil War 1922-1923. I liked it, because the civil war is basically the only section of Irish history I was still a little foggy on, so it was helpful. Will you like it? Only if you’re into Irish history like me. This is not Immortal Irishman.

20. Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan (A book you loved as a child). We read this with my fifth graders last year. I loved this book when I was ten, but I got so much more out of it this second time around. It’s a really good book, even if you’re not a child. Esperanza starts out the daughter of a wealthy rancher, but when her father dies under shifty circumstances, she and her mother are forced to flee to America, where they live with their servants’ relatives in a migrant worker camp in California, facing hardship, discrimination, and immigration laws. It’s very good.

21. Cupid, by Julius Lester (a book with a title that’s a character’s name). This was okay. I thought I’d read it in junior high, but I had no memory of any of it. It’s a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, which is very similar to East of the Sun and West of the Moon. The author tried to be tongue-in-cheek in a few places, which I didn’t appreciate, but overall it’s a pretty good YA novel. 

22. Loki: Agent of Asgard vol. 2, by Jason Ewing (a book with an unreliable narrator). Loki? Unreliable? Since when? Still good, still queer, Freyja pissing me off as always.

23. Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel (a book with pictures): Okay, I guess I lied, since this book was a graphic novel and I read it before Loki. It was really interesting. It’s autobiographical of Bechdel’s life and relationship with her dad.

24. The Pirate Queen, by Barbara Sjoholm (a book about an interesting woman). Not only was this about my favorite person ever, Grace O’Malley, stone in Britain’s imperial sandal, but also talked about the relationship between Atlantic-dwelling women and the sea. It covers goddesses, fisherwomen, pirates, adventurers, and sea-witches from Ireland, Scotland, the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland. It was really interesting and I recommend it. 

25. Timekeeper, by Tara Sim (a book set in two different time periods). Cheated here, too, don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, this is a steampunk novel in which clock towers actually control time, which means that if there’s a flaw, it affects time itself in more literal ways. It’s about a clock mechanic and a clock spirit who lives in one of the towers and watches over the clock. They are adorably gay, but that’s more of a subplot because someone has been sabotaging the towers and throwing time into chaos. The sequel comes out in January. Good for a debut novel.

26. Across Five Aprils, by Irene Hunt (a book with a month or day of the week in the title). This is about a ten-year-old boy growing up in rural Illinois during the Civil War, so it talks about how it affects him and his family, as well as covers the course of the war in a more general perspective. It was interesting, and well written, but I think I prefer Hunt’s Up a Road Slowly.

27. The Adventures of Charls, by CS Pacat (a book written by someone you admire): Another Captive Prince short story that should be read after The Summer Palace. Where Green But for a Season (the first CP short story) was sad, and Summer Palace was passionate and cute, The Adventures of Charls is hilarious. Charls, the cloth merchant, was such a great side character in the CP trilogy, and telling the story from his perspective was great. It doesn’t have to be read after the Summer Palace, but at least the trilogy should be read first.

28. Wonder, by RJ Palacio (a book that’s becoming a movie in 2017). Did you watch the movie? Whitewashed, go read the fucking book. I read this with my fifth graders last year too, who loved it. It’s a very sweet story, and the movie was good, but it goes too fast and leaves out some scenes that I liked. Highly, highly recommend.

29. The Foxhole Court, by Nora Sakavic (the first book in a series you haven’t read before). First book (obviously) in the All for the Game series. What are you still doing here? Go start this trilogy!

30. Symptoms of Being Human, by Jeff Garvin (a bestseller from 2016). I think I cheated again, but this book should have been a bestseller. Quality of the story gets a solid 7/10, but this is the only novel I know of that has a canon human genderfluid character, and representation is so important and for a cis dude, this guy wrote genderfluid shockingly well. Characterization and representation gets a 10/10 because I just ignored the “I’m a whiny teenager, no one likes me, my parents don’t get me, woe is me” chorus. Some of it was justified, because they were being bullied, and they weren’t out to their parents, but still, the book was written very young adult-y. 

31. The Story We Carry in Our Bones, by Juliene Osbourne-McKnight (a book about an immigrant or refugee). The subtitle describes the book best: Irish history for Irish-Americans. Down side: very watered down Irish history because it’s a small book and just an introduction to Irish history. Up side: More information and context of the history of the Irish in America, because my personal studies have pretty much entirely skipped over that aspect of my heritage. If you’re Irish-American and looking to learn a little more about your ethnic past, but don’t want to dive headfirst into the deep end of Irish everything like me, you should read this book. If you’re willing to study more in-depth Irish history, skip this book and I have some better recommendations for you. 

32. Loki: Agent of Asgard vol. 3, by Jason Ewing (a book from a genre you’ve never heard of): Cheated; I know what a comic book is. This is the last volume in this series. My only qualm is a spoiler, so I’ll give it 8/10.

33. Original Sin: Thor and Loki in the Tenth Realm, by Jason Ewing (a book with an eccentric character): Who is more eccentric than Loki “Always-Extra” Laufeyson? This is the first comic I’ve ever read, and I have to say it was very good. Featuring genderfluid!Loki all the way, actual Father-of-the-Year this time Odin, Freyja’s shockingly shitty parenting skills (maybe this is a theme in the comics, but coming from actual-angel!Frigga in the MCU, this was upsetting for me), and Thor abandoning the Avengers in a fight to start another battle in another realm because Thor is a fucking over-dramatic bastard. 

34. Huntess, by Malinda Lo (a book that’s been mentioned in another book). I read Lo’s Ash a few years ago and loved it. Huntress, while okay, didn’t quite live up to the hype I’d applied to it after reading Ash. It was good, and had a very mythical Ireland feel to it that I liked, and it was very gay, but I don’t know, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. 

35. Ever, by Gail Carson Levine (a book based on mythology). I read this book when I was fourteen, too (guess I did read a lot of books from junior high). I love this book. It’s about a young god who meets a monotheistic mortal girl and they fall in love despite the differences in their religion. I didn’t love it as much as I did in junior high, but it’s still good. Levine also wrote Ella Enchanted, which is very good and more well-known than Ever.

[jimoshaughnessy]

Getting the Most Out of Your Equity Investments

As we approach 2018, I thought this final chapter from the 4th edition of What works on Wall Street might be a helpful frame of reference for equity investors.

“To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult of all.”

                       --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 Investors can learn much from the Taoist concept of Wu Wei. Taoism is one of the three schools of Chinese philosophy that have guided thinkers for thousands of years. Literally, Wu Wei means “to act without action” but in spirit means to let things occur as they are meant to occur. Don’t try to put square pegs into round holes. Understand the essence of a circle and use it as nature intended. The closest western equivalent is Wittgenstein’s maxim: “Don’t look for the meaning: Look for the use!”

 For investors, this means letting good strategies work. Don’t second guess them. Don’t try to outsmart them. Don’t abandon them because they’re experiencing a rough patch. Understand the nature of what you’re using and let it work. This is the hardest assignment of all. It’s virtually impossible not to insert our ego or emotions into decisions, yet it is only by being dispassionate that you can beat the market over time.

 We’ve lived through the most tumultuous market environments since the 1920s and 1930s since I originally published this book in 1996. A stock market bubble between 1996 and March 2000—the likes of which we had not seen since the late 1960s and before that the roaring 1920s—led many investors to throw out the investing rule book. The more insanely overvalued a company, the more it soared. Everyone talked of “the new economy” and how it really was different this time. Sticking with time-tested investment strategies during the stock market orgy was close to impossible. Month in, month out you had to stand on the sidelines, watching your reasonably-priced stocks do nothing while the over-priced “story” stocks soared. And, as often happens with stock market bubbles, just as the last sane investors capitulated and learned to love the stocks with the craziest valuations, along came the reckoning—all the previously gravity-defying stocks came crashing back to earth. Fortunes were lost and millions of investors lost their faith in the long-term potential of stocks. What’s worse is that after recovering from the bear market of 2000-2003, a new bubble appeared in real estate markets and the debt used to finance them. This new bubble popped in any even more destructive fashion than that of the dot.com stocks earlier in the decade and brought worldwide markets close to the brink of collapse, ushering in the worst bear market for stocks since the Great Depression. Investor’s faith in equity markets was almost completely destroyed by the great market crash of 2007-2009.  The S&P 500’s loss of 37 percent in 2008 was second only to 1931, where it dropped by 43 percent. People were literally hoarding cash, terrified to make any investment in the stock market. And much as the bubble years gave birth to the idea that things really were different than in the past and we had emerged with a “new economy”, the bust years also gave birth to the concept of “the new normal.”  To its advocates, the new normal meant that returns would be permanently lower going forward than they had been historically and there was really nothing that we could do about it. Money poured out of equities into bonds with investors desperate to avoid risk of any kind. The September 2010 issue of Institutional Investor had a cover story entitled “Paradise Lost: Why Fallen Markets Will Never be the Same”, in which the authors argue that “the financial crisis has discredited free-market capitalism and given its state-driven counterpart a boost.”  Yet we are forever fighting yesterday’s battle without paying attention to what we can learn from historical events.

 In markets moving from extreme speculation to extreme despair, believing in Ockham’s razor—that the simplest theory is usually the best—is almost impossible. We love to make the simple complex, follow the crowd, get seduced by some hot “story” stock, let our emotions dictate decisions, buy and sell on tips and hunches and approach each investment decision on a case-by-case basis, with no underlying consistency or strategy. On the flip side, when equity returns are horrible over a long period of time, we are far too willing to assume that stocks will never generate returns comparable to those of the past and abandon them in favor of less risky assets like bond and money market funds.  Even fourteen years after this book was first published—showing decade upon decade of the results of all the various types of strategies—people were more than willing to throw it all out the window because of short-term events, be they good or bad. No wonder the S&P 500 beats 70 percent of traditionally-managed mutual funds over the long-term!

A Taoist story is illuminating: One day a man was standing at the edge of a pool at the bottom of a huge waterfall when he saw an old man being tossed about in the turbulent water. He ran to rescue him, but before he got there the old man had climbed out onto the bank and was walking alone, singing to himself. The man was astonished and rushed up to the old man, questioning him about the secret of his survival. The old man said that it was nothing special. “I began to learn while very young, and grew up practicing it. Now, I’m certain of success. I go down with the water and come up with the water. I follow it and forget myself. The only reason I survive is because I don’t struggle against the water’s superior power.”  

 The market is like the water, overpowering all who struggle against it and giving those who work with it a wonderful ride. But swimming lessons are in order. You can’t just jump in, you need guidelines. Our study of the last 84 years with the CRSP dataset and 46 years with the COMPUSTAT suggests that to do well in the market, you must do the following:

 Always Use Strategies

You’ll get nowhere buying stocks just because they have a great story. Usually, these are the very companies that have been the worst performers over the full time period of our study. They’re the stocks everyone talks about and wants to own. They often have sky-high price-to-earnings, price-to-book and price-to-sales ratios. They’re very appealing in the short-term, but deadly over the long haul. You must avoid them. Always think in terms of overall strategies and not individual stocks. One company’s data is meaningless, yet can be very convincing. Conversely, don’t avoid the market or a stock simply because things have been bad over the short-term. Few investors could see the compelling valuation of the overall stock market in March 2009, yet it was at this time that stocks were a screaming buy and about to embark on a huge rally. If you had a simple rebalance strategy in place at the time which allocated between stocks and other investments, the strategy would have forced you to buy more stocks. But as Goethe’s quote at the beginning of this chapter makes plain, acting is hard, and acting in line with what you think is almost impossible.   If you can’t use strategies and are inexorably drawn to the stock of the day, your returns suffer horribly in the long run. Remind yourself of what happens to these stocks by looking at charts of all the dot.com high flyers between 1998 and 2002 and the tables and charts for how value stocks came soaring back after the stock market bubble burst in 2000. If, try as you might, you can’t stick to a strategy, put the majority of your money in an index fund and treat the small amount you invest in story stocks as an entertainment expense.

 Ignore the Short-term

Investors who look only at how a strategy or the overall market has performed recently can be seriously misled and end up either ignoring a great long-term strategy that has recently underperformed or piling into a mediocre strategy that has recently been on fire. Over the last 15 years, I cannot count the number of times investors have gotten extremely excited about our strategies as they were doing well relative to their benchmark and the same number of times that investors became despondent about short-term underperformance. Tragically, investors seem hardwired to inordinately focus on very short periods of time, often completely ignoring how the strategy has done over long periods of time. As investors, all of our information about returns is focused on extremely short periods of time. Witness everyone falling all over themselves to explain why the stock market has gone up or down in a single day! What’s funny is that over very short periods of time, the stock market is relatively impossible to forecast, yet when you extend your horizon, the market becomes far more understandable. As I mentioned in the introduction, if you look at the 50 worst ten year performances for the stock market, there is not a single instance where over the next ten years the stock market failed to go up.

 The point is that at some time in the future any of the strategies in this book will underperform the market, and it is only those investors who can keep their focus on the very long-term results who will be able to stick with them and reap the rewards of a long-term commitment. You should always guard against letting what the market is doing today influence the investments decisions you make. One way to do this is to focus on the rolling batting average of how your portfolio is performing versus its benchmark. Much like we focus on the rolling base rates for all of the stock selection strategies we have tested in this book, you can do the same for your portfolios performance versus its benchmark. When you look only at how your investment portfolio has performed for the last quarter, year, and three and five year period, you are simply looking at a single snapshot of how you’ve done. Now, this might make you very happy if you’ve done exceedingly well for that particular period but it also might make you want to abandon your strategy if you’ve done poorly relative to other strategies available. In both cases, I would argue that you are potentially misled by only looking at a snapshot. What if it is December 31st, 1999 when you take a look at this snapshot? For an investor who had loaded up on pricey dot.com and tech stocks five years earlier looking at the snapshot and  he or she will think they are a genius—my God, I will be able to retire in a few years if I keep growing my portfolio at this rate! Or how about an investor who had kept their portfolio devoted to small-cap stocks and large-cap value fare? They might look at how they’ve done and wince about the relative lack of great returns in their portfolio and be tempted to follow the same strategy as the first investor with a tech and dot.com heavy portfolio. By looking at the snapshot at that point in time and extrapolating it into the future, both investors would have been seriously misled. The tech-heavy portfolio went on to crash and burn just as the small-cap and value portfolio began to soar.

 By focusing on how your portfolio is doing against a benchmark on rolling periods, you will get a much better sense for how you are continuously doing against the market and will be much more likely to be willing to stick with a strategy that may be underperforming recently but has an outstanding win rate versus the market over all rolling periods. It gives you continuous feedback that allows you to take the hills and valleys with greater restraint than if you simply looked at one point in time. It also lets you put recent performance into the historical context of the strategy—if you’re relative performance is down but still very much in line with what the strategy has done historically, you will probably be more able to stay the course.

 Finally, this advice is equally useful after sharp draw downs for stocks. In March of 2009 I wrote a commentary for Yahoo Finance that was entitled “A Generational Opportunity”  in which I argued that many investors were facing a once in a lifetime gift to purchase equities at valuations that we hadn’t seen since the early 1980s. I urged middle-aged investors to increase the equity allocation of their portfolio to 70 percent to take advantage of the fear that permeated the markets and for the most part the response was silence. People were so shell-shocked by what had happened over the previous 15 months that no amount of data would move them to take advantage of the situation. That’s why ignoring the short term may be both the hardest and best thing you can do for the overall health of your portfolio.

 Use Only Strategies Proven Over the Long-Term

Always focus on strategies whose effectiveness is proven over a variety of market environments. The more time periods you can analyze, the better your odds of finding a strategy that has withstood a variety of stock market environments.  Buying stocks with high price-to-book ratios appeared to work for as long as 15 years, but the fullness of time proves that it is not effective. Many years of data help you understand the peaks and valleys of a strategy. What’s more, sometimes a strategy might make intuitive sense, like buying stocks that have the greatest annual gain in sales, yet a review of the data tells us that, in the long-run, this is a losing strategy, probably because investors get so excited by those huge annual sales increases that they price the stocks to perfection, which is rarely achieved.  Attempting to use strategies that have not withstood the test of time will lead to great disappointment. Stocks change. Industries change. But the underlying reasons certain stocks are good investments remain the same. Only the fullness of time reveals which are the most sound. Remember how alluring all the dot.com stocks were in the late 1990s? Don’t let the investment mania de jour suck you in—insist on long-term data that supports your investment philosophy. Remember that there will always be current market fads. In the 1990s it was internet and technology stocks, tomorrow it might be nanotechnology or emerging markets, but all bubbles get popped.

 Dig Deep

If you’re a professional investor, make certain to test any strategy over as much time and as many seasons as possible. Look for the worst-case scenario, the time it took to recover from that loss and how consistent it was against its relevant benchmark. Note the largest downside deviation it had against the benchmark and be very wary of any strategy that has a wide downside deviation from it. Most investors can’t stomach being far behind the benchmark for long.

 If you’re an individual investor, insist that your advisor conduct such a study on your behalf, or do it yourself. There are now many websites where you can do this research. With all the tools now available to individual investors, there is simply no excuse for not doing your homework. A wonderful resource for individual investors is the American Association of Individual Investors. Their website (www.aaii.com) is chockablock full of helpful ideas as well as an entire section devoted to stock screening. Check the links at www.whatworksonwallstreet.com for any new sites that might appear to aid you in your research.  

   Invest Consistently  

Consistency is the hallmark of great investors, separating them from everyone else. If you use even a mediocre strategy consistently, you’ll beat almost all investors who jump in and out of the market, change tactics in midstream, and forever second-guess their decisions. Look at the S&P 500. We’ve shown that it is a simple strategy that buys large capitalization stocks. Yet this one-factor, rather mediocre strategy still manages to beat 70 percent of all actively managed funds because it never leaves its strategy.  Realistically consider your risk tolerance, plan your path and then stick to it. You may have fewer stories to tell at parties, but you’ll be among the most successful long-term investors. Successful investing isn’t alchemy, it’s a simple matter of consistently using time-tested strategies and letting compounding work its magic.

 Always Bet With the Base Rate

Base rates are boring, dull and very worthwhile. Knowing how often and by how much a strategy beats the market is among the most useful information available to investors, yet few take advantage of it. Base rates are essentially the odds of beating the market over the time period you plan to invest. If you have a ten-year time horizon and understand base rates, you’ll see that picking stocks with the highest multiples of earnings, cash flow, sales or lowest value composite score has very bad odds. If you pay attention to the odds, you can put them on your side.  You now have the numbers. Use them. Don’t settle for strategies that may have done very well recently but have poor overall batting averages. Chances are you’ll be getting in just as those long-term base rates are getting ready to reassert themselves.  

 Never Use the Riskiest Strategies

There is no point in using the riskiest strategies. They will sap your will and you will undoubtedly abandon them, usually at their low. Given the number of highly effective strategies, always concentrate on those with the highest risk-adjusted returns.

Always Use More Than One Strategy

Unless you’re near retirement and investing only in low risk strategies, always diversify your portfolio by investing in several strategies. How much you allocate to each is a function of risk tolerance, but you should always have some growth and some value guarding you from the inevitable swings of fashion on Wall Street. Once you have exposure to both styles of investing, make sure you have exposure to the various market capitalizations as well. A simple rule of thumb for investors with ten years or more to go until they need the money is to use the market’s weights as guidelines. Currently, 75 percent of the market is large-cap and 25 percent is small- and mid-cap. That’s a good starting point for the average investor. Unite strategies so your portfolio can do much better than the overall market without taking more risk. Indeed, while this book only covers stocks that trade in the United States, with a reasonable number of them being American depository receipts of Foreign-domiciled companies that offer shares to U.S. investors, you might think about having your portfolio aligned in a similar fashion to the MSCI All World Index. Currently, the U.S. makes up 35 percent of that index, with Japan, the United Kingdom. France and Canada rounding out the top five. If you include the next five countries by market capitalization, Hong Kong, Germany, Australia, Switzerland and Brazil, you would cover 74 percent of the total market capitalization in the world. The point is, these strategies work outside the United States as well, and a well diversified portfolio should reflect this. We have run tests similar to those in this book on the MSCI dataset that begins in 1970 and found that, for the most part, these strategies work equally well in foreign markets.

 Additionally, you should have a plan for your entire portfolio, not just the equity portion. One of the simplest and most effective strategies for your entire portfolio is to rebalance your allocations to various styles and asset classes back to your target allocation at least once a year. If you are working with a financial advisor, he or she is probably already doing this for you, but if not, figure out what makes the most sense for you and then make sure that you follow your allocation. What this effectively does is force you to buy more of an investment style or an asset class when it has done poorly and take money away from styles and asset classes that have done well. It would have served you extraordinarily well near the bear market bottoms of the last decade, as it would have forced you to move money from fixed income into equities at a time when most investors were fleeing the equity market and allowed you to take advantage of the big move up from the market bottom. But it also would have served you well during the last market boom, as it would have had you trim equity allocations and put additional money in fixed income and other assets. It’s important to have a strategy for your entire portfolio.

   Use Multifactor Models

The single factor models show the market rewards certain characteristics while punishing others. Yet you’re much better off using several factors to build your portfolios. Returns are higher and risk is lower. You should always make a stock pass several hurdles before investing in it. The only exceptions to this rule are our Composited factors like the Composited Value Factor, the Composited Earnings Quality and so forth. These are essentially multifactor models as they include several factors and require a good score on each for a stock to rise to the top.

 Insist On Consistency

If you don’t have the time to build your own portfolios and prefer investing in mutual funds or separately managed accounts, buy only those that stress consistency of style. Many managers follow a hit-or-miss, intuitive method of stock selection. They have no mechanism to reign in their emotions or insure that their good ideas work. All too often their picks are based on hope rather than experience. You have no way to really know exactly how they are managing your money, or if their past performance is due to a hot hand unguided by a coherent underlying strategy.

 Don’t bet with them. Buy one of the many funds based on solid, rigorous strategies. If your fund doesn’t clearly define its investment style, insist that they do. You should expect nothing less.

  The Stock Market Is Not Random

Finally, the data proves the stock market takes purposeful strides. Far from chaotic, random movement, the market consistently rewards specific strategies while punishing others. And these purposeful strides have continued to persist well after they were first identified. We now have not only what Ben Graham requested—the historical behavior of securities with defined characteristics—we also have a 14-year period where we’ve witnessed their continued performance in real time. We must let history be our guide, using only those time-tested methods that have proven successful. We know what is valuable and we know what works on Wall Street. All that remains is to act upon this knowledge.