#buoy health

[buoyhealth]

What are common symptoms that accompany this pain in my adam's apple?

Common accompanying symptoms may include:

Sore throat

Hoarseness

Swelling

Difficulty swallowing

Coughing

Can allergies cause pain behind the Adam's apple?

Yes, allergies can lead to throat irritation and inflammation, causing discomfort in this area.

How can this pain be diagnosed?

Diagnosis typically involves:

Physical examination

Medical history review

Possibly imaging studies or throat swabs

What home remedies can help relieve this pain?

Some home remedies include:

Gargling with warm salt water

Staying hydrated

Using throat lozenges

Avoiding irritants (e.g., smoke)

What over-the-counter medications can help?

Over-the-counter options include:

Pain relievers (e.g., acetaminophen, ibuprofen)

Antihistamines for allergies

Throat sprays

[jockpoetry]

rags and wolves both losing their game ones in their respective conference finals

[zvaigzdelasas]

In the week since the International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli government is plausibly committing genocide and ordered it to prevent potential further acts of genocide, Israeli forces have only continued committing atrocities against Palestinians.

Buoyed by the staying support of American officials, Israeli forces have killed at least 874 Palestinians and injured at least 1,490 in Gaza since last week’s ICJ ruling, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures from Saturday, January 27, to Friday, February 2. That’s not to mention other acts of Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.The loss of life should not be dismissed as “collateral damage,” contrary to what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.[...]

Backgrounding the atrocities in Gaza is the broader misery the entire population faces. The BBC noted that UNICEF’s biggest concern is the “estimated 19,000 children who are orphaned or have ended up alone with no adult to look after them.” CNN reported that Palestinians are eating grass and drinking polluted water amid famine conditions. The Guardian reported that 50-62 percent of all buildings in Gaza have likely been damaged or destroyed.

Earlier this week, a federal court affirmed the ICJ’s finding that Israel may be carrying out a genocide and warned the Biden administration to reconsider its unconditional support for Israel’s war effort. [...]

The Intercept asked Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., to comment on the court rulings that the accusations of genocide by Israel are credible. “I don’t accept that. I reject [the ruling of the International Court of Justice]. I don’t believe that is Israel’s intention: to commit genocide,” said Fetterman, who has emerged as one of Israel’s most staunch Democratic defenders, on Thursday. “I do believe that their goal is to neutralize or dislodge Hamas from that. And I believe that they certainly do not want to take the lives of any innocent Palestinians and I certainly don’t assign higher value to my children versus a Palestinian child. I mean, I wouldn’t want anybody to die throughout all this tragedy, and it’s just an awful situation.”

Within hours of the ICJ issuing its ruling last Friday, Israel alleged that 12 of 30,000 — 0.04 percent — employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East were involved in Hamas’s attack on October 7. The United States immediately suspended its funding of UNRWA, the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, spurring a cascade of other nations to follow suit.

Sky News later obtained an Israeli document that actually downgrades the allegation to 0.02 percent of UNRWA staff (six people) being involved in Hamas’s attack. Sky News reported that the documents, which allege further ties between UNRWA and Hamas “make several claims that Sky News has not seen proof of and many of the claims, even if true, do not directly implicate UNRWA.”

The contrast between the U.S. decision to pause funding based on unverified allegations and its unwillingness to reconsider its military funding of Israel, despite serious allegations of genocide, is stark.

Fetterman also said that he supports the suspension of funding to UNRWA. When asked why the standard of suspending funding while investigating serious allegations doesn’t apply to the Israeli government, Fetterman dodged the question.

Fetterman: Well, again, it — well, it’s not. We need a full investigation and find out just how much a part of it was about that and how much, you know, the old question: how much they knew and when they knew that.

The Intercept: So you’re saying that for Israel as well?

Fetterman: Yeah, OK, so good, all right, well good.[...]

Reporter Said Arikat confronted State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on the tension Wednesday. “I’ll say with respect to the charges of genocide [at the International Court of Justice], we believe that they’re unfounded,” Miller said. “We continue to support Israel’s right to take action to ensure that the terrorist attacks of October 7th cannot be repeated, but we want them to do so in a way that complies with — fully with international humanitarian law.”

Miller was then asked about Israel receiving aid even as Israeli government officials call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and maintain good standing in government.

“When the secretary traveled to Israel on his most recent visit,” Miller said, “he made clear that he thought it was important that the Israeli government speak out against those matters and those comments publicly and reiterate that it is not the policy of the Israeli government to force Palestinians from Gaza.”[...]

Two days after the ICJ ordered the Israeli government to prevent and punish incitements of genocide from public officials, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich were among 11 cabinet ministers and 15 coalition members of the Knesset who rallied at conference hosted by hundreds of settlers calling for the settlement of Gaza.

On Tuesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly told members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that afte​​r their military campaign ends, Israel will maintain military control of Gaza, so it can operate similarly to the way it does in the West Bank.

On Thursday, Smotrich said that allowing aid into Gaza contradicts the goals of Israel’s campaign, and that he spoke with Netanyahu, who supposedly assured him that things will change soon. Israeli ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot reportedly called to limit humanitarian aid as well. Meanwhile, at aid crossings, people in Israel have taken cue from their leaders, attempting to block aid trucks from entering Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people — including the hostages held by Hamas — are at risk of starvation and malnutrition, every day since the ICJ ruling.

One clip even shows a right-wing activist telling an aid truck driver, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, that “I am the owner here, you are a slave here.”

2 Feb 24

[barnacles34]

Beautiful Relationship

Tags: Romance, Sex, Soft Ryujin, Male Reader

With her nestled against the edge of the tub, I reached for the book I had left on the counter, opening it to where we had left off. It was an old copy of "Anna Karenina," the pages slightly yellowed, the spine well-worn from countless readings.

Ryujin sighed contentedly as I began to read aloud, my voice low, resonating in the quiet intimacy of the bathroom.

“‘All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow,’” I read, my fingers absentmindedly tracing patterns on my lap. The words seemed to echo in the room, intertwining with the stillness around us. “‘In seeking happiness for others, we find it in ourselves.’”

Ryujin tilted her head back slightly, her eyes closed, her body fully relaxed against mine. “I love hearing you read,” she whispered

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

The foggy weather clung to my skin like a second layer, a damp embrace that blurred the edges of the world around me as I stepped out of the condo. Each step felt light, almost floating, buoyed by the strange clarity that had settled over me. The condo itself—where I had just experienced something raw, something deeper than anything I’d known—felt miles away already, even though Ryujin's presence was still etched into my senses. Her face buried in a book, she had waved lazily from the large leather couch as I left, a gentle smile on her lips, a silent reassurance that lingered in the back of my mind.

The streets outside were nearly empty, a ghostly contrast to the usual bustling of Seoul. It was the kind of solitude I had long craved, the quiet that comes after the rain when the air smells of wet earth and fresh grass, mingling with the faint, distant scent of exhaust and city life. The kind of quiet where thoughts can breathe, where the world's noise feels muted, and the only sound is the gentle patter of raindrops on pavement. I inhaled deeply, feeling a strange contentment in the cool, misty air—a sensation that was somehow both calming and electric.

Enough of the background setting drivel. My mind snapped back to the task at hand as I drove toward Samsen HQ, the cityscape slipping by in a blur of gray and silver. The receptionists at the front desk were visibly surprised at my unexpected arrival. I saw them exchange glances, a flicker of confusion passing over their faces before they snapped back into their polished smiles. I had been absent from the office for a few days—unusual for me, and certainly enough to stir the quiet currents of office politics that always buzzed beneath the surface. There was always a game being played here, even if you sat at the top.

The days of absence had been deliberate, of course, a move calculated to keep the lesser sharks on their toes, to stoke the fires of intrigue among those who thought they could outmaneuver me. Let them wonder, let them speculate—it kept them busy and distracted. To be honest, the supposed mind games were more of an ego trip than any real threat. These pretenders held barely any power to undermine me. They were nuisances at best, and any one of them could be removed with a single call. The irony was almost amusing. I had the president’s number on speed dial, and yet these people acted as if they could orchestrate my downfall with hushed whispers in the hallways.

“Viva la Seoul!” I muttered to myself, a half-smile playing on my lips as I navigated the labyrinthine corridors of corporate life. The place had always fascinated me, with its paradoxes and its hypocrisies, its cutthroat maneuvering, and its strange, almost poetic absurdities. The Nietzschean interns who would debase themselves for a fraction of my hourly wage, desperate for approval or advancement. The older managers, balding and paunchy, somehow managing to crawl up the ladder faster than those who had dedicated themselves to optimal efficiency and health.

Was I evil for thriving in this environment? Was there something fundamentally wrong with finding beauty in these contradictions, in relishing the dance of corporate warfare? The thought amused me more than it should have. Maybe it was the fact that my entire existence was built around these principles, these axioms of survival. Maybe that was why I found it so hard to believe that anyone else could see the world any differently.

But then there was Ryujin, the outlier, the anomaly that challenged everything I thought I knew. She was proof that there was another way, that life didn’t have to be a series of calculated moves, that it could be something more—a mix of spontaneity and sincerity, without pretense or strategy. She was the exception to the rule, enough to make me question the very foundations of my beliefs, to make me wonder if maybe, just maybe, there was a different way to play the game.

The danger she posed was undeniable—she could unravel me, expose me to vulnerabilities I hadn’t known existed. And yet, the benefits she offered were so much more profound, so much more intrinsic. With her, everything seemed more vivid, more real. The same conversations I’d grown to hate with others—talks of relationships, the future—felt fresh and exciting with her, filled with possibility and promise.

I was so lost in thought that I almost missed the knock at my door, the sharp rap that pulled me back into the present. My new secretary entered without waiting for a response, a young woman with bright eyes and a sharp tongue, one of the few I hadn’t hired for her looks or her connections but for her brains and her grit. She had been foisted on me by my so-called equals, who thought I needed someone to keep me in check. They didn’t realize that I’d turned her into an asset, someone who could see through the corporate fog almost as well as I could.

“Sir!” she burst out, a hint of panic in her voice. “A rival competitor has just published an article about your recent absence. And they’ve announced a new home appliance chain aimed directly at Samsen’s market.”

I felt a slow smile creep across my face. “Good,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Let them make their moves.”

It was showtime. The familiar thrill of the game flooded through me, sharpening my senses, focusing my mind. The room seemed to hum with a new energy, the fog outside thickening as if the world itself was holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

I liked the unpredictability, the dance of strategy and counter-strategy. I could already imagine the maneuvers that would follow, the ripple effects of this new announcement, the way I would turn this challenge into an opportunity. In the end, it was all just another move on the board, another chance to prove that I was still the master of this game.

But even as I prepared to dive back into the fray, my thoughts drifted back to Ryujin. Her face, her smile, the way she made everything seem a little less bleak, a little less calculated. She was the only unknown variable, the one piece of the puzzle that didn’t quite fit. And maybe that was why I couldn’t stop thinking about her, even now, with the scent of competition in the air and the thrill of the fight ahead.

“Alright,” I said, snapping back to the moment, my voice calm but firm. “Let’s see what they’ve got.”

The secretary nodded, turning to leave, but not before casting a quick, curious glance over her shoulder. I didn’t mind. Let them wonder. Let them speculate. They had no idea what was coming next. Neither did I, but for once, that uncertainty felt like an advantage.

—--

After a whole day’s worth of intrigue, the outside felt damper than before with the slight tint of the night on the sky. The executive cars quickly pulling away to their respective areas after Samsen closed in a new historic high on the stock market. Greene’s power laws were accurate, accurate in their vagueness, in what constitutes as a power play, a masterful case of deception, and it just so happens that I have internalized it. 

Crooked? Maybe. 

The drive back home felt even fresher, unburdened by the rush of being down on the market, and burdened by the smell fresh of the damp grass, the damp streets with my windows all the way down. Pedestrians drew their phones, seeking to record the person that seemingly sways the national politics wherever he went. 

I promise you this is not an ego play, I really do control the national politics, but the magnitude of power also brings about the same magnitude of the potential to fail. But I’m used to that, my years of training, being down millions, multiple millions have utterly destroyed whatever the fuck part of brain controls my ability to discern risk. People don’t know how leveraged I am on the stocks, how leveraged to the fucking tits I am, my entire multi-billion fortune rests on the slight percent nudges of the hour, the minute, the second. 

That’s what drives me, performance adapts to what you expect and prepare for. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for the public, The government is readily available to bail me out in the billions.

Finally, I pull into the parking lot. I anticipate what I might see when I enter the condo, excited for the possibilities and excited for whatever the singular possibility might be. Will I see my hot girlfriend splayed onto the armchair, with only a tight-knit sweater dress on? 

The smell of vanilla wafted in the air as I approached the condo. As I approached, I was about to input the code into the door but it just opened with the touch of my fingers. And I saw Ryujin standing there, in a tasteful pajama set with loafers waiting at the door.

“Did you really read books all day?” I asked.

“Sometimes these days are warranted.” And hugged me below my shoulders, it’s always a spectacle to feel how small a kpop idol truly is, not that I have experience with them, it’s just that Ryujin feels small. I held her waist as I slowly entered, as she slowly moved backwards.

“Did you eat?” She asked, stepping away so that I could take off my shoes. 

“No, I just wanted to be home early.”

“Aww, you must be tired,” Ryujin said softly, stepping back to give me space as I entered. She glanced at the table, where dinner was already laid out, a quiet gesture that spoke volumes about her care.

I looked at the meal, then back at her, a small nod of acknowledgment passing between us. “You didn’t have to wait,” I said, my voice steady, though the hint of gratitude was unmistakable.

She shrugged slightly, her hands finding their way into her pockets, a gesture of both nonchalance and shyness. “I wanted to. Besides, I wasn’t really hungry until you got here.”

I raised an eyebrow, a faint smile tugging at the corner of my lips. “Convenient.”

Ryujin met my gaze briefly, then looked away, a subtle flush creeping up her neck. “Yeah, well… I figured you’d be starving after today.”

I walked over to the table, pulling out a chair for her. “Sit,” I said, more as a gentle command than a request. She hesitated for a split second before complying, her movements almost tentative as she took the seat.

I settled into the chair across from her, the space between us charged with an energy that was still new, still unfolding. There was a comfort in the silence that hung in the air, a kind of unspoken understanding that neither of us felt the need to fill with words.

“Did you make this?” I asked, gesturing to the food, though the answer was already clear.

“Yeah,” she replied, her voice soft. “I hope it’s okay.”

I nodded, picking up my chopsticks. “It’s more than okay.”

We started eating, the clinking of chopsticks against bowls the only sound for a while. I could feel Ryujin’s eyes on me from time to time, as if she was trying to gauge something, but she didn’t say anything. I let the quiet stretch on, content to let the moment linger.

Eventually, she broke the silence, her voice low, almost as if she wasn’t sure whether to speak. “I’ve been thinking… about us.”

I didn’t look up right away, taking a moment to finish my bite before responding. “Yeah?”

She shifted in her seat, her fingers fidgeting slightly with her chopsticks. “I don’t want to mess this up.”

I placed my chopsticks down, meeting her gaze with a steadiness that I hoped would reassure her. “You’re not. We’re figuring it out.”

Her lips curved into a small, uncertain smile, and she nodded. “I guess I just… I want to be what you need.”

I leaned back in my chair, studying her for a moment before replying. “You already are. But this isn’t just about what I need.”

Ryujin’s eyes flickered with something—relief, maybe?—but she didn’t say anything, just nodded again, as if she was absorbing my words.

Our dinner ended in satisfaction, and plates were washed under our melodic humming. And the area of our participation changed, onto the couch.

The room was dim, the glow from the TV casting shifting patterns of light and shadow around us. "Twin Peaks" flickered on the screen, the eerie opening score filling the quiet. Ryujin leaned into me, her body fitting neatly against my side, one arm draped over my stomach.

I tightened my hold around her, my hand resting firmly on her waist. She sighed softly, a small, content sound, her eyes fixed on the screen but her body melting further into mine.

“You like this show?” she asked quietly, almost as if testing the waters.

“I do,” I replied, my thumb rubbing gentle circles on her hip. “It’s got that strange charm”

She chuckled under her breath, a sound that sent a warm hum through me. “Kind of like you, then.”

I smirked. “Maybe. But you don’t seem to mind.”

She shook her head, nestling closer, her hand moving slightly against my shirt. “No… I don’t.”

I could feel her pulse, a steady beat beneath my palm, her head resting on my shoulder, her breaths syncing with mine. She was so quiet, so small in these moments, her usual boldness softened by the closeness between us.

Without a word, I shifted, pulling her fully into my lap. She let out a surprised breath, looking up at me with wide eyes. “What are you doing?” she asked, though there was no real protest in her tone.

“Getting comfortable,” I replied simply, guiding her so her legs draped over mine. “Is that a problem?”

She shook her head, a slight blush creeping up her neck. “No… it’s fine.”

We settled again, her hands resting lightly on my chest, as if she wasn’t sure what to do with them. I covered them with mine, holding her in place. Her cheeks flushed deeper, and I could feel the way her heartbeat quickened just slightly under my touch.

We watched in silence for a while, my fingers tracing idle patterns on her back. Ryujin shifted now and then, as if finding new ways to fold herself into me, her body instinctively seeking more contact.

The sound of Agent Cooper’s voice drifted through the room, but I was more aware of her—the soft rise and fall of her breathing, the way her fingers occasionally twitched against my shirt, as if she wanted to say something but wasn’t quite sure how.

“Do you think they’ll solve the mystery?” she asked at last, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I think it’s less about the mystery,” I said, my tone low, “and more about how it pulls everyone together… or apart.”

Ryujin nodded slowly, her eyes still on mine, her thumb brushing over my hand. “Kind of like us,” she murmured, almost absently.

I chuckled softly, leaning down until our foreheads almost touched. “Are you saying I’m a mystery?”

She bit her lip, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Maybe… but one I don’t mind trying to solve.”

I smiled, pressing a quick kiss to her temple. “Good. I like keeping you guessing.”

She laughed, the sound soft and genuine, and then snuggled deeper into my hold, her head resting just under my chin. Her fingers found mine, and she gave a light squeeze, her body relaxing completely against me.

And there, in the flickering light of the TV, we stayed close, without the need for any more words.

A dim warmth spread through my body, a quiet satisfaction as Ryujin nestled into me, her legs folded beneath her. Her soft breaths were steady, rhythmic, her chest rising and falling in a comforting cadence. The episode of "Twin Peaks" ended, but our embrace didn’t. The TV hummed faintly, the credits rolling into a quiet, glowing blue, and yet neither of us moved, content to linger in this stillness.

Her fingers traced over my hands, studying them in the dim light, her thumb brushing against the calluses. “How did your hands get so rough? Did you fight every day or something?” she asked, a soft chuckle escaping her lips.

“After training, yeah,” I replied, a small smile forming as I remembered. “I used to be part of an underground fight ring. It was fucking crazy… I still don’t know why I joined. It was full of middle-aged losers, and we’d just beat each other up, badly, almost every day.”

Ryujin's laughter bubbled up, a sound both amused and surprised. “What the hell? Seriously? Was the owner some big 'Fight Club' fan or something?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “But there was this weird nostalgic element to it… getting stitches almost on a daily basis, feeling like I was constantly on the edge.”

Her laughter faded into a more thoughtful expression, her brow furrowing slightly as she massaged my hands, now resting on her lap. She slowly turned on my lap, shifting until she was facing me, her gaze searching my face with a mix of amusement and concern. “Gosh. What would you do without me? Look at these scars, and how rough your hands are! How did your face not get nicked?”

I smirked. “Oh, it got nicked. Plenty of times, at first. But a teenager learns pretty quickly among a bunch of 40-year-olds. By the end, no one really wanted to fight me.”

Her eyes softened, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth as she continued to trace the lines of my scars. “Sounds like a mix of ego and insanity,” she teased, but there was an underlying tenderness in her tone.

I leaned back, letting her study me, feeling the weight of her gaze on my skin. “Maybe,” I admitted. “But it made me who I am, for better or worse.”

Ryujin shook her head, still smiling, and then leaned in, pressing her forehead to mine. “You're a little crazy, you know that?”

“Is that a compliment?” I asked, my voice low, teasing.

She laughed softly. “It’s an observation. But… yeah, I guess it is. You pretend like you don’t need anyone, but here you are, with me, letting me hold you like this.”

I felt a warmth spread through my chest, her words sinking in deeper than I’d expected. I tilted her chin up, meeting her eyes. “Maybe you just have a way of breaking through,” I said, brushing my thumb over her cheek.

Her cheeks flushed slightly, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she settled closer, her hands resting on my shoulders now, her body melting into mine as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Maybe… or maybe you just needed someone to see you,” she whispered, her voice soft but certain.

I didn’t reply right away, just let my fingers move to her hair, tangling in the soft strands as I held her close. I felt her relax, her body going pliant against me, and there was a peace in that moment, something that felt unspoken but deeply understood. 

A slow movement between each other occurred, and a slow kiss formed out of it all. A passionate, an unendingly lovely kiss, a kiss that could only be shared by two lovers. I reached deeper, my head moving forward deeper into the kiss, trying to get more out of Ryujin, her taste, her beauty. I slowly stood up, with her still on my body, I held her up with my arms around her waist while still sharing a passionate kiss. 

How could a girl be this lovely? Holy shit.

I quickly plant her on the leather couch, a black luxury couch too expensive for a single man, but a perfect frame for the most beautiful girl in the world. She laid on the couch, motioning for me to join her, in laying, in loving. The next seconds were a haze, the warmth of a kiss being shared, her soft bosom pressed up against me, The warmth shared by two bodies aggressively pressing each other to get more out of each other.

My left hand went from her waist to her breast, gripping firmly against the soft of her clothes, the soft of her breast. She mewled in my mouth, taking quick breaths trying to continue the kiss as long as possible, unbearably aroused by my body.

I quickly pulled away, she was irritated, I quickly took off my button-up, more like ripping it apart, buttons everywhere. That didn’t matter at all, we quickly continued our session, she softly rubbed her hands all over my back as I kissed into her. 

Then, clothes flew off each moment, and a kiss shared in each layer, and a mess on the floor. Her creamy-white skin caved at my touch, the slight ripple of her semi-abs visible as I greedily took more of her. Finally, her bra came off, the perfectly pink nipples were visible, and completely rigid. The kiss transitioned as my mouth traced over her body down to her breast.

I sucked lightly, fingering at her other nipple. Her loud moans and body ripples only inspired greater performance, I felt a slight tug when I felt her fingers around my hair and she seemed to be moaning louder.

I nibbled at her nipple, kissed the white skin around the nipple, which compressed at the slightest touch. It was almost heaven, a girl who gave me her virginity, a girl who is witty, smart, and loving. 

After enough teasing of her nipples, she began to be more reactive, perhaps signalling that it’s turned into pain rather than pleasure. So I stopped, caressing the pads of my fingers along her body, her curves, her identity, all the way down to her thighs where my thumbs hooked on her panties that were damp. 

“You must be excited.” I teased.

“Ah… please I’m so wet, you kept teasing my nipples you bastar- Ah!” I slipped a finger inside her, interrupting her, amusing myself in her arousal.

I took the finger out, it glistened even in the warm light.

“Open your mouth.” I demanded.

She complied, with her mouth open, I inserted the glistening finger inside her, “Tastes good?”.

“So Gooth-.” She replied with my finger still in her mouth. A slight vibration, a fiercely erotic sign, a sign that she was so stimulated that her body was vibrating as a coping mechanism after realizing other ways of coping with it were futile. 

I took out the finger out of her tender, warm mouth, with a trace of saliva still on my finger, I slowly tracked down her body, the shine of her saliva following suit, the rise of her breasts, the drop to her ribs, the softness of her belly no, abdomen, it would be an insult to call it a belly, it was the perfect midriff. The quiver getting more intense as the tip of my finger slowly approaching her pussy.

I pulled off my hands off her body quickly, and hastily set to pull off my belt; suddenly, Ryujin laid her hands on my belt, showing that she wanted to take it off, that she wanted to see my cock entirely of her own volition. Slowly, making sure that whenever her hands were not occupied with taking off my belt and undergarments, she grazed my abdomen with her fingers any chance that she got. She was kneeled on the couch, crouched over, I was kneeled up straight, and she took her time enjoying the rare opportunity to tease me.

She was entirely naked, and I got to see her back, her beautiful back, one that was crafted through sheer divination by the lords above, there was absolutely no other way to achieve that back, the hourglass shape of her waist and the curve of her hip bones, lord almighty.

I traced the lines of her back with my hands as she finally got down my underwear. Whilst I busied myself with her breasts, now that it was hanging, it was even softer, even more beautiful and absolute euphoria to handle.

A firm grasp disrupted my vivid imagination. “Are you gonna keep teasing my breasts, is it that lovely?” she said with a laugh, slightly firmer on the cloth that barely hid my erection. “Is underwear like this even practical? It looks like it’s a camp site!” Somehow she found some humor in this situation, most likely embarrassed about giving me fellatio. 

Of course, I know the cure. I grasped her hair tightly, the hair that has been diligently grown, perfect to grab tightly and insist on what actions you want. She obliged in the pull, her legs completely folded in obedience, and obliging in the slight pulls and pushes of my hand. 

“Too hard?” I asked.

“I don’t even know why you have to ask.” She replied, with a bright flush in her cheeks, knowing that she likes it and that I know it.

“You’re gonna suck my cock, and you’ll do it diligently; and you’ll get fucked into this couch.”

“Ye- Yes.. please Koji.” She submitted with speech.

I swiftly pulled out my erection, and I leaned into the railing of the couch, inviting Ryujin over. She moved closer, still kneeling, still crouched, and slowly approached my erection. She breathed deeply, getting closer to my dick, and started to stroke it with her hand. The soft coldness of her hands confirmed my suspicion, she was so nervous that all the heat went to her torso, “you don’t have to be so nervous, baby.” She smiled at the remark, and immediately took my dick in her mouth.

She learned so quickly, it was unbelievable, what a virtuoso. She sucked on my length, going halfway with an incredible suction. The pleasure was intense, a sensation of sucking was strong, and I would peak too quickly to enjoy her body. 

“My muse, aren’t you learning a little bit too fast?” I said with a chuckle, gritting my teeth against the pleasure.

She released, still very close to the tip, “it’s so delicious that I had no choice but to learn, and it seems it paid off.” Yes it has, but of course there’s an opposing force every force. Before she could continue sucking me off, I pushed her onto the couch. 

“Should I make you cum in one stroke?” I asked, fully intending to do.

“You wish.” Scoffing at my threat. “I was a virgin then-”

I quickly placed pressure just at the edge of the pubis bone, then the other hand traced the outer lips of her pink pussy. Her solid determination was nearly broken at that moment, a hand placed on her lower abdomen pressing into her was getting her off so well.

And it was a technique that only got more arousing the more it was used. She was a goddess personified and I was disgracing her by almost getting her to cum with light presses and pressure. The fingers that traced the outer lips of her pussy slowly converged on her clit hood, applying almost a graze over it, each graze getting a sizzling inhale from Ryujin. 

“Ah~ fuck, I’m gonna come! I’m gonna come!”

I immediately took off my hands, and I stared at her. “Wha- What are you doing? I was so close.” I didn’t reply, I swung my left hand against her hip bone, a firm slap, as close as you could get to her ass in missionary. 

She yelped, and I covered her mouth with a firm grip, “it would be a disgrace for you cum on my fingers, and even less so without me penetrating you at all.” I leaned into her with a hand still on her mouth, leaving enough room for her to breathe through her nose. I was still quite above her to let her see me entering her, she looked down, as I slowly pressed my member at the heat, prodding, then slowly entering. When I saw that she was not looking down and when she was trying to deal with the pleasure, I quickly took the hand off her mouth and pulled her head forward to make her look as I entered inside. Each inch pain-stakingly slow and purposeful, she stared with pleasure ablaze.

“Princess. I am the only one who understands you.”

That was it, that was the moment she lost it. I immediately entered to the hilt, then pulled out. She spasmed at the intensity, squirting all over the leather couch, screaming and moaning at the pleasure. “Oh my fucking god!” She placed a hand over her head to recover.

The latter minutes were spent with a more furious kind of love, an intense love.

A manner in which I fucked her, with love and embrace. I held her in missionary position, grasping the nape of her neck, sharing our mouths as I repeatedly and fully drew inside her fully. The motions bringing the deep moans of pleasure out in the form of vibrations in her body, and mewls of her mouth.

She loved giving up control in intercourse, it was something that brought her pleasure to no end. To know that she was not in control of her orgasm nor mine, that any second I could pull away and let her mewl in anticipation, and suffer right under the eclipse of her orgasm. However, she loved it more when we shared our arousal, in this position, she could kiss my shoulder, kiss my jaw, caress my back, and even massage my shoulders. Of course, she engaged in these sorts of affection, she couldn’t control it and I could never resist it. The deeper I went, the more her moan hummed against my jaw when she kissed it.

Sometimes I pulled off to maintain eye contact with her, noticing the twists in her eyebrows, the whiskered dimples of her cheeks as she was drawn to climax again. This time though, her legs locked me inside her, she knew that it would take multiple orgasms for her to get me to eclipse, she acknowledged it and was fully intent on it. Of course, the significant height and weight difference didn’t allow Ryujin to maintain much control at all. Instead of the leg lock, I swiftly kneeled up while my dick was still inside her, while she stared expectantly. 

I seized her legs, right above my shoulders, “Oh not again!” She definitely remembered the first time I did this. Then I lowered myself to kiss her, her legs were now placed next to her ears.

“I feel this is my obligation, to train your flexibility.” Still punishing her cunt with my deep strokes inside her

“Oh please-ah! Yo- You just want to fuck my brains out!” She was right.

 I still held her legs as the way they were, but I wanted a fuller picture, a picture where I saw Ryujin enjoying herself to the fullest. I observed the strokes, her cunt glossy with her arousal, I wanted her to enjoy it even more.

From then and there, I placed my hand on the place of her pubis bone, compressing the canal that anticipated my strokes, and a slight thumbing on her clit.

One, euphora

Two, amazing

Three, orgasm

She came again, this time she was allowed no movement, my hands acted as braces that held her down, and she vibrated in pleasure.

She tightened even further, her moans became more guttural as the added pleasures of my hands began to feel more like punishment.

I chuckled, she was such an angel. I released my hands, the hands thus landed on the breasts, the warm pliable breasts with very noticeable aroused nipples.

I had been pumping so quickly and hadn’t realized that I was getting close, I was enjoying her mewls and moans so much that I realized that I might cum this instant. Despite the fact that I finally bought condoms because I kept cumming inside her, I forgot to use it. 

Trying to resist pulling out of Ryujin’s pussy was impossible, it wasn’t ‘almost impossible’ it was plain and simply impossible. And Ryujin definitely felt the twitch my cock, “Please Please Cum inside me! Do it inside me~!”

Finally, I pumped into her one two three times and fell onto her as I filled her with my seed.

“I might actually get pregnant at this rate” she chuckled with her hands getting tangled in my hair

“I don’t even fucking care anymore” I breathed by her side, ear-to-ear.

“Would you like that? A little Koji running around?” She asked.

“I don’t know, what about you?” Genuinely curious about her opinion.

“I think it’s cute to see a little Koji running around, a little Koji that has a happier childhood.”

“I love you” I kissed her lips.

She murmured something against my lips, most likely “I love you” too.

The warmth of the embrace lingered as we finally moved from the couch. The night had drawn on, but the intimacy between us only grew stronger. Ryujin stood up, her hand slipping into mine, and without a word, she led me towards the bathroom.

The bathroom light flickered on, casting a soft glow across the tiles. The shower was already running, steam curling up and filling the small space with a comforting heat. Ryujin turned to me, her eyes gleaming with a mixture of affection and something deeper. She reached up, gently tugging at my hand.

Soon, the warmth of the steam wrapped around us both.

We stepped into the shower together, the hot water cascading over our bodies, washing away the day. Ryujin reached for the soap, her hands lathering it up before gently running it over my chest. Her touch was soft, methodical, as if she was memorizing every inch of me. I closed my eyes, leaning into the sensation, the warmth of her hands, the soothing pressure as she worked the soap across my skin.

I returned the favor, my hands moving slowly, carefully, over her shoulders, down her back, the water rinsing away the suds in gentle streams. She sighed, a sound of pure contentment, as I massaged the tension from her muscles, taking my time, savoring the closeness.

When she turned to face me, her eyes were soft, almost vulnerable. I cupped her face in my hands, letting the water pour over us, and she leaned into my touch, her own hands resting on my waist. For a moment, we just stood there, water pouring over us, our foreheads touching, our breaths mingling in the steam-filled air.

Finally, I leaned down, pressing a kiss to her forehead, then her nose, and finally her lips—slow, lingering, full of the unspoken things between us. She kissed me back, her hands moving up to tangle in my wet hair, holding me close.

When the kiss broke, we both smiled, a small, shared moment of understanding. I reached for the shower’s knob, turning off the water, the sudden silence almost startling. Ryujin didn’t let go, though. Instead, she wrapped herself around me, resting her head on my chest as the last of the water dripped off us.

“I want to take a bath,” she murmured, her voice soft, almost shy.

I smiled, pressing another kiss to her damp hair. “Let’s do it.”

We stepped out of the shower, toweling off quickly before I started the bath, adjusting the temperature until it was just right. Ryujin watched me, her eyes following my every movement, a small smile playing on her lips. Once the tub was filled, she sank into it with a sigh, the hot water enveloping her.

I settled on a chair that directly faced ryujin still with a towel draped over my lap, watching as she leaned back, closing her eyes, her face relaxing completely. The room was filled with the soft sounds of water lapping against her skin, the scent of lavender from the bath salts mixing with the steam.

“Join me?” she asked, opening her eyes just a sliver, looking up at me with a hopeful expression.

“Don’t even try” I chuckled at the previous time she asked for me to join her in the bath.

With her nestled against the edge of the tub, I reached for the book I had left on the counter, opening it to where we had left off. It was an old copy of "Anna Karenina," the pages slightly yellowed, the spine well-worn from countless readings.

Ryujin sighed contentedly as I began to read aloud, my voice low, resonating in the quiet intimacy of the bathroom.

“‘All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow,’” I read, my fingers absentmindedly tracing patterns on my lap. The words seemed to echo in the room, intertwining with the stillness around us. “‘In seeking happiness for others, we find it in ourselves.’”

Ryujin tilted her head back slightly, her eyes closed, her body fully relaxed against mine. “I love hearing you read,” she whispered, her voice almost drowned out by the water, but I caught it, and it warmed me from the inside out.

I continued reading, my voice steady, letting the words flow through the air, wrapping around us both. “‘But every one of these men, straightway from the first minute of their meeting, was seized by an unwonted feeling of respect, as though they had met with something sacred, and in consequence every word and gesture of hers seemed to them more important and significant than they had ever been before.’”

Ryujin’s fingers played idly with mine beneath the water, her thumb brushing against my knuckles as she listened. The words from the book mixed with the rhythm of our breathing, with the warmth of the water and the quiet that enveloped us.

As I read on, the story of Anna Karenina unfolding in the soft light, I could feel Ryujin’s heartbeat, slow and steady, matching mine. The romance of the scene in the book felt distant compared to the reality of her in my arms, this intimate moment we were sharing.

Eventually, I let the book rest on the edge of the tub, my voice trailing off as I pressed a kiss to her damp shoulder. “You know,” I murmured, my lips brushing against her skin, “this might be better than any book.”

She turned slightly in the water, looking up at me with a playful smile. “Only might be?”

I chuckled, leaning down to kiss her, slow and deep, letting the warmth of the bath and the softness of her lips consume me. “Definitely better,” I corrected softly against her mouth.

Ryujin smiled, a content, sleepy smile, and nuzzled back against my chest. We stayed like that for a while, the water gradually cooling around us, but neither of us was in a hurry to move. The book lay forgotten on the edge of the tub as we simply enjoyed the closeness, the feeling of being utterly connected in this quiet, private world we had created together.

P.S: I have the whole prequel ready but the writing quality is a lot worse than this but its 20k words of setup, comment below if you want it.

[rosewaterandivy]

vena amoris

Summary: some part of me must have died / the first time that you called me “Baby”

Pairing: s.h. x reader

W.C.: 2.5K

Themes: the usual— repressed feelings, smut mentions, Cabaret quotes, Steve ‘down bad’ Harrington™️

A/N: well ahoy there! Did I take a mental health day and brain rot this into being? You bet! Title is Latin for “the vein of love.”

“Oh god,” You’d remarked, with a knowing smirk and lifted brow. “Can you imagine?”

Your tone brokered no argument. It wasn’t a whimsical, starry-eyed, sigh filled statement coming from a naive girl.

No, instead it was a wry, flippant remark laden with sarcasm and pity as the woman by the college green gleefully sobbed out a yes, yes, of course! to a polite smattering of applause as her newly minted fiancé slipped a sparkling band onto her finger.

“And on graduation day, no less.” You bat away the few hairs that had flown into your face buoyed by the summer breeze, your graduation gown fluttering about your legs. “Damn my guy, let the woman have her moment jeez.”

Steve struggled to laugh and maintain composure, because the thing was, he actually could imagine it, and had even done so himself from time to time. The time honored predicament of “keeping it casual” while remaining friends.

He remembers it clear as day, how you’d met in front of the dining hall as he’d overslept (again) and rushed to shove his pockets full of cereal before his morning lecture so as to not fall asleep during Macroeconomics.

”Hey, Buck-o!” You’d crowed from the table riddled with pens, to-go coffee cups, and clipboards, “Are you registered to vote?”

All he can remember thinking, after the pre-requisite it’s too damn early for this was the ever eloquent, well, fuck me.

Nevermind that you were wearing a Reagan Ruined Everything shirt accompanied by the flaming visage of the man. Nevermind that your friend merely snorted at your bombastic accosting of students for the sake of democracy. Nevermind that several people had shoulder checked him in their rush to get waffles and coffee.

”Ritchie Rich,” You’d said with a smile, “Voting solely for your interests or ready to join the proletariat with the rest of us?”

It was an unlikely friendship, to say the least. You, a blue-blood former ballet dancer until “my tits grew in” majoring in poli-sci and him, the sole progeny of a captain of industry on the ivy-league to corporate office pipeline.

So, it really was inevitable that you’d fall into bed together. Even without your grandparents wheedling and match-making attempts. But still, you weren’t dating— he wasn’t that kind of guy and you weren’t even interested in a relationship anyway.

It was sex and friendship, that was all.

Argento movie marathons because it was “a crime you’ve never seen something outside of a cineplex, Harrington,” underneath mountains of a goose-down duvet. Trips to the Cape just to pass the time, M&M’s riddling the hardwood floors in front of a roaring fire with his head between your thighs. Dragging him out on cold autumn mornings to canvass for local elections. Late nights where you’d pass out in front of the flickering tv screen after watching Bitter Rice.

Sure, Robin side-eyed the entire situation and Dustin never failed to remind him how much of an idiot Steve was being. But, in fairness, it was never something that struck either of you as odd.

It was college, people do weirder and more detrimental shit all the time without the evergreen excuse of misguided youth. Who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Eddie was the one to ruin it all.

“Dude,” He’d said, surprisingly serious as he loaded up his bike for the drive back to New York. “Not for nothin, but if I were you Harrington,” He inclined his head toward where you were at the coffee cart. “I’d lock that shit down.”

”Whaddya mean? We’re just friends.”

“Sure buddy,” Eddie laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. “Keep tellin’ yourself that.”

But did he really think about it after that? Of course not, just continued to careen toward graduation and the inevitable.

He was destined for great things, according to his father: continuing the family legacy and filling the coffers, working abroad in Europe for year post-grad and securing those overseas accounts.

So when he wasn’t suffering through mind-numbing lectures, and being at dear old dad’s beck and call, Steve was doing what he did best: wilding with the gang or hanging out with you.

Which mostly resulted in fucking at increasingly creative locations at your place or his, but he digresses.

His graduation was uneventful— his father sternly nodded his approval while his mother posed them like dolls for a family photo. They’d drug him to a prolonged who’s who of his father’s connections under the guise of a celebration dinner, to which none of his friends had been invited.

Steve had schlepped himself back to the apartment, less drunk than he would’ve preferred given the circumstances. Only to be greeted by you at the door, in one of your more creative get-ups consisting of a 1920’s boudoir set with stockings.

Plum-painted lips split like a ripe fruit, white pearly teeth gleamed in the dim hallway light. And his heart nearly beat its way out of his chest.

“Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome,” You gently kick the door of his apartment the rest of the way open to reveal people packed to the brim inside— Robin, Dustin, Eddie.

“Fremde, étrange, stranger.”

Because of course you’d throw him a going away party, themed no less (“Cabaret only seemed appropriate since you’re Berlin-bound come morning,”). The drinks are flowing and the music is thumping and all he wants to do is kiss you, so he does.

And the world doesn’t cease to turn, the music doesn’t stop, his friends don’t give a damn. No one is shocked by this turn of events, not even the elusive ex of Stanford fame Nancy Wheeler.

Because if there’s one thing that everyone knows, well everyone excluding you because if you somehow caught on to him Steve might actually drop dead right then and there—

What everyone knew was this: Steve Harrington was not and had never been a casual guy.

He heard Eddie mumble something about Sisyphus into his drink before pulling him off of you. Your lipstick was smeared and a little patchy now, but he sure as shit didn’t care, his own mouth was probably branded now too, bruise-colored as if he’d bitten into an overripe stone fruit.

A big deal is made about getting the King a drink, as Eddie all but frog marches Steve to the bar.

“So,” He greets, clapping him on the back, “You’re down bad.”

Steve nearly chokes on the beer, the frothy foam ticking at his nose. He swallows past his heart lodged in his throat, and shakes his head.

“It’s nothing.”

“Tell that to your mouth, Liza,” He sweeps a thumb against Steve’s bottom lip, it comes back riddled in purple lipstick. “You know you leave tomorrow, right?”

Steve turns back to the bar and signals for a shot of something, anything really. He sips at his beer in the interim, letting Eddie’s declaration linger in the air between them.

They drink in silence until Robin stumbles in, dragging Steve away claiming “besties before the resties!”

He spies you and Dustin chatting nearby, you catch his eye with a lascivious and exaggerated wink before throwing your head back in laughter at something the dingus had said.

The party rages on for hours— he’s already packed and ready to go for his flight tomorrow, and he knows you’d put a lot of effort into this send off, but Steve would like nothing more than to wrap himself around you and fall into bed. Eventually someone catches onto this and alerts the guests that they “don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”

Steve doesn’t know who to thank for that, Nancy maybe. He’ll figure it out later. At that moment, he was more concerned with getting those glasses out of your hands and that garter belt on the floor.

“Hey, you okay?” You’d asked in the early morning light, watching as he stumbled into his pants and threw on a shirt.

Your face was freshly scrubbed of your makeup from last night, soft and open as your eyes trailed him from your spot in his bed.

He was a weak, weak man when he’d sat down with a sigh and asked, “Tell me not to go?”

He can hear you shuffle across the bed, can feel the warmth of your body as it drapes against his back.

“Tell me not go to,” Steve continues, “Tell me to blow off my dad, the Harrington destiny, tell me to fuck it all and that I can figure something else out.”

You nose along the column of his throat, lips settling at the nape of his neck. His hand finds its way to yours, arms wrapped against his shoulders, fingers dancing along his collarbone. He links a solitary finger with yours crooking into each other like monkeys in a barrel.

“Oh babe,” You sigh, the pet name rolling prettily off your tongue, “You know I won’t do that, as much as I would delight in smearing the Harrington name.”

You grip him all the tighter.

“You have a plane to catch and a life to start. A life you were dragged kicking and screaming into but you know what?”

“What?”

“The only way out is through, Steve.” You rest your head on his shoulder, continuing, “The changes you want to make? Well, it’s your life so make them. Who’s going to stop you? You’re a blue-blood white man in a world built to serve people like you.”

“Are you going to lecture me about the patriarchy? Because it’s too early for that—"

“I’ll spare you, just this once.” You tease, “But no, I’m just saying that you have options and it’s a year away from your father. Take advantage of it.”

Steve knows you mean well, that you’re trying to put a positive spin on his departure but still, it hurts.

He stands back up with what he hopes is a believable smile on his face. He expects to see you settled back in the sheets when he turns around, not hopping on one leg as you attempt to jam your foot into your Vans with one hand, while clawing into a bra with the other. Somehow, you’re already in sweatpants.

He can barely restrain his laugh, “What’re you doing?”

“Uh, accompanying you to the airport, duh.”

And if his heart wasn’t already broken, surely this would’ve been the nail in the coffin.

“No, don’t get up.”

“Too late for that.”

“My bags are already in the car,” He tries again, trailing after you from the bedroom to the kitchen.

“Great! Do we have time for coffee?”

“No, seriously,” Steve catches your hand before it can land on the doorknob, tugging you back from the door.

“But,” Your voice has lost its joking tone and you can’t bring yourself to look him in the eye. “I have to say goodbye. I have to wave at you from the gate.”

“They won’t let you past security.”

“Then I’ll wave from there,” You say with a sniff, blinking the tears from your eyes. “I have to go, please.”

Steve, in that moment, chooses to glance up at the rafters of his loft apartment in an effort to keep his emotions in check. So he misses how greedily your eyes take him in, as if it’s for the last time, how you’re biting your lip so hard as to draw blood.

And by the time he looks back down again, you’ve found a spot on the floor to stare steadily at.

“Hey,” He says, curling a finger under your chin prompting you to glance up. Steve gives you a watery smile at best before imploring, “I need you to listen to me, please.”

He waits for your nod of assent before continuing.

“Everything is all set— I’ve paid the rent on the apartment for the next year, so you don’t have to worry about that. I know you won’t use the car service, but there’s a few more weeks left on that too, so.”

Your face falls with the finality of it all. That Steve is actually leaving, that he’ll be in Europe for the next year “growing up” as his father intended. And that maybe you should’ve done more to help him want to stay.

“There’s a ticket for you on the counter for after midterms, I’ll meet you in London and we can do whatever you want, just like we agreed.”

You nod quickly and take a short breath. He kisses you on the forehead and promises to call once he lands.

As his hand twists open the door, you blurt out:

“Please don’t do this. Let me come with you to the airport. You’re going to be gone for so long and—"

“Baby.”

And you know he’s serious because that diminutive is solely reserved for when you’re at least two orgasms deep and he’s got your knees up by your ears. Sweat-slick and ruddy-mouthed, your whole world narrowed to focus on him, desperate longing veiled by throes of passion.

Steve doesn’t even turn back, and you can hear how his voice shakes. “If you go with me, I won’t get on the plane.”

Your arm drops from where you’d reached after him, hadn’t even registered the action as you did it.

In a small, guilty voice you say, “I know.”

The muscles of his back feather as he sighs, his grip on the doorknob knuckle-white. He knows you can’t really mean it, that it’s the scared, vulnerable part of you stumbling as you offer him an olive branch; a way out.

In the end, he got on the plane anyway.

Smash-cut to a year later, the same college green but this time it’s not him in the graduation cap and gown. Steve took the week off for your graduation festivities, flew back into Logan then rented a car for the drive to Cambridge. Made nice with your parents and grandparents, shook your grandfather’s hand politely when he’d said that Steve was a “fine boy from a fine family,” and tried in vain to forget the fact that this is the same man who’d learned his granddaughter was sexually active with him, mind you, in front of no less than a missionary, a minister, and a rabbi.

But all of that is neither here nor there, as you clap politely for the newly engaged couple, pinning your mortarboard beneath your elbow. And because he knows you, Steve catches your eye roll sequence, surely at the audacity of That Man who proposed on his girlfriend's graduation day, from Harvard no less.

He snatches the satin covered cardboard from you, and throws an arm around your shoulders walking you toward the rager of a graduation party Eddie was throwing at your apartment.

“I know,” He says conspiratorially, relishing as you lean into him. “God forbid a woman do anything.”

Your laugh is a good distraction for him, something loud and joyful to focus on as the ring box in his left pocket sinks like a stone.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The unexpected upside of global monopoly capitalism

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TODAY (Apr 10) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Here's a silver lining to global monopoly capitalism: it means we're all fighting the same enemy, who is using the same tactics everywhere. The same coordination tools that allow corporations to extend their tendrils to every corner of the Earth allows regulators and labor organizers to coordinate their resistance.

That's a lesson Mercedes is learning. In 2023, Germany's Supply Chain Act went into effect, which bans large corporations with a German presence from using child labor, violating health and safety standards, and (critically) interfering with union organizers:

https://www.bafa.de/EN/Supply_Chain_Act/Overview/overview_node.html

Across the ocean, in the USA, Mercedes has a preference for building its cars in the American South, the so-called "right to work" states where US labor law is routinely flouted and unions are thin on the ground. As The American Prospect's Harold Meyerson writes, the only non-union Mercedes factories in the world are in the US:

https://prospect.org/labor/2024-04-08-american-workers-german-law-uaw-unions/

But American workers – especially southern workers – are on an organizing tear, unionizing their workplaces at a rate not seen in generations. Their unprecedented success is down to their commitment, solidarity and shrewd tactics – all buoyed by a refreshingly pro-worker NLRB, who have workers' backs in ways also not seen since the Carter administration:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

Workers at Mercedes' factory in Vance, Alabama are trying to join the UAW, and Mercedes is playing dirty, using the tried-and-true union-busting tactics that have held workplace democracy at bay for decades. The UAW has lodged a complaint with the NLRB, naturally:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/alabama-mercedes-benz

But the UAW has also filed a complaint with BAFA, the German regulator in charge of the Supply Chain Act, seeking penalties against Mercedes-Benz Group AG:

https://uaw.org/uaw-files-charges-in-germany-against-mercedes-benz-companys-anti-union-campaign-against-u-s-autoworkers-violates-new-german-law-on-global-supply-chain-practices/

That's a huge deal, because the German Supply Chain Act goes hard. If Mercedes is convicted of union-busting in Alabama, its German parent-company faces a fine of 2% of its global total revenue, and will no longer be eligible to sell products to the German government. Chomp.

Now, the German Supply Chain Act is new, and this is the first petition filed by a non-German union with BAFA, so it's not a slam dunk. But supermajorities of Mercedes workers at the Alabama factory have signed UAW cards, and the election is going to happen in May or June. And the UAW – under new leadership, thanks to a revolution that overthrew the corrupt old guard – has its sights set on all the auto-makers in the American south.

As Meyerson writes, the south is America's onshore offshore, a regulatory haven where corporations pay minimal or no tax and are free to abuse their workers, pollute, and corrupt local governments with a free hand (no wonder American industry is flocking to these states). Meyerson: "The economic impact of unionizing the South, in other words, could almost be placed in the same category as reshoring work that had gone to China."

The German Supply Chain Act was passed with the help of Germany's powerful labor unions, in an act of solidarity with workers employed by German companies all over the world. This is that unexpected benefit to globalism: the fact that Mercedes has extrusions into both the American and German political spheres means that both American and German workers can collaborate to bring it to heel.

The same is true for antitrust regulators. The multinational corporations that are in regulators' crosshairs in the US, the EU, the UK, Australia, Japan, South Korea and beyond use the same playbook in every country. That's doubly true of Big Tech companies, who literally run the same code – embodying the same illegal practices – on servers in every country.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has led the pack on convening summits where antitrust enforcers from all over the world gather to compare notes and collaborate on enforcement strategies:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077

And the CMA's Digital Markets Unit – which boasts the the largest tech staff of any competition regulator in the world – produces detailed market studies that turn out to be roadmaps for other territories' enforces to follow – like this mobile market study:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

Which was extensively referenced in the EU during the planning of the Digital Markets Act, and in the US Congress for similar legislation:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2710

It also helped enforcers in Japan:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And South Korea:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-considers-505-mln-fine-against-google-apple-over-app-market-practices-2023-10-06/

Just as Mercedes workers in Germany and the USA share a common enemy, allowing for coordinated action that takes advantage of vulnerable flanks wherever they are found, anti-monopoly enforcers are sharing notes, evidence, and tactics to strike at multinationals that are bigger than most countries – but not when those countries combine.

This is an unexpected upside to global monopolies: when we all share a common enemy, we've got endless opportunities for coordinated offenses and devastating pincer maneuvers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

[venus-haze]

Power in the Blood (Father Paul Hill x Nun!Reader)

Summary: There’s power in the blood. Father Paul knows this. Soon, you will, too.

Note: Female reader who's only referred to as "Sister," but no other descriptors are used. Also, the newspaper clipping isn't on the wall in this, for obvious reasons. I’ve been working on this fic in one way or another for about a year, but watching The Devils (1971) and Immaculate (2024) earlier this year as well as encouragement from my amazing friend @zaras-really-dreamless finally gave me the push I needed to finish it. Major visual inspiration from this scene in particular. Do not interact if you're under 18, terf or radfem, or post thinspo/ED content.

Word count: 5.7k

Warnings: Major canon divergence. Angst, yearning, and unrequited feelings. Elements of Catholic mysticism. Sexually explicit content which involves dubious consent by way of religious manipulation, members of the clergy engaging in sexual acts, oral sex (f. receiving, but it's related to the stigmata and vampirism), blood play.

In retrospect, Crockett Island was the only place it could have happened. Desolation hung over the remote fishing village like fog in the early mornings, when you’d take your walks before the Monsignor awoke, and you heard the woes of the fishermen as they prepared to sail out for the day—oil spills, restrictive fishing laws, better paying jobs on the mainland but leaving everything they knew behind in exchange. Despite coming from the mainland yourself and otherwise alien to the ways of the dying village, your being a woman of the cloth on the largely Catholic (though predominantly non-practicing) island made the islanders trust you, consider you one of their own a bit more than they otherwise would have as you took on the burden of buoying their spirituality as the Monsignor’s health continued failing, and he could no longer fulfill the task himself.

You’d begged the diocese for help, hardly considered yourself equipped to care for the ailing priest and run a parish, however small, essentially on your own. But for a parish as small as St. Patrick’s, you were all the help the diocese would care to send. The letter you received in response to your detailing all of the things Crockett Island’s parishioners desperately needed boiled down to “wait until the old man kicks it.” 

You supposed it was a miracle the diocese even sent you there in the first place. Though most of the islanders took the arrival of a young nun like yourself as a breath of fresh air, Beverly Keane didn’t seem all too pleased to have her self-appointed position as number two at St. Patrick’s knocked down to number three. She seemed to settle down when it became clear you had no interest in engaging in petty politics in a church that barely counted three dozen people for regular Sunday mass attendance. 

The island’s social life, small as it was, interested you more. People were more open to receiving you as a friend than as a representative of the church, undoubtedly put off by Beverly Keane’s self-righteous fanaticism that veered into cruelty. You got to know the regular parishioners, like Erin Greene, who’d grown up on the island, left for some time, and returned pregnant yet eager to become a mother to her unborn baby. She taught at the island’s small school with Beverly, who encouraged you to take up teaching there, obviously hoping to bring a religious curriculum to the tax-payer funded public school. You declined. 

Besides Erin, and to your chagrin Beverly, who was convinced the two of you were compatriots of some kind despite how often you clashed, you found yourself spending increasing amounts of time with Sheriff Hassan. Despite dutifully filling an essential role in the community, he hardly seemed any closer to gaining acceptance despite a year on Crockett Island. 

The day he and Ali moved onto the island, you had a cold, and thus weren’t part of the unofficial welcoming committee. Your head pounded from the sinus pressure when Beverly brought the Monsignor back to the rectory afterward, and you barely heard what she said. You met Sheriff Hassan a few days later, when you were feeling well enough to shop for yourself and the Monsignor for the week. Among your expectations about Hassan Shabazz, his being handsome enough to make your breath hitch for just a moment before introducing yourself wasn’t on the list. But he was understandably weary of you, expecting the same horrendous treatment he undoubtedly received from Beverly. 

Over time, he found you were only interested in buying groceries and not in underhandedly converting him or Ali. You were both lonely outsiders to the island and found some solace in regular conversations about the mainland, or observations about the islanders, occasionally broaching the topic of religion, which had a comfortable place in the space you two shared in the general store, sometimes over a cup of coffee he’d brew for you. 

You admired him. His dedication to his son, the efficacy with which he performed his thankless job, and the unwavering faith he had in his religion, while yours had long lost its luster since you’d become Monsignor Pruitt’s live-in nurse in all but name. 

But the days became your own when the Monsignor made his trip to the Holy Land, ill-advised considering his health. When you voiced your concerns to the parish, your outsider status was paraded through the discussion by Beverly, who insisted you had no way to understand how much the trip meant to the Monsignor, and by extension, every good, practicing Catholic on the island. At the time, to your frustration, she had won. 

Besides, even if he were there, you weren’t sure a man on death’s door himself would have been able to give Mildred Gunning Last Rites. Torrential rain pounded against the rectory when you could barely hear the phone ring. 

You had picked up with a hesitant, “Hello?”

“Sister, it’s—it’s my mom. I think she’s—”

“Sarah, do you want me to come over and see her?”

“Yeah, she’d want that. Just be careful with the rain.”

“I’ll be there in ten.”

Grabbing a flashlight, you had only half pulled on your raincoat when you hurried outside, in a near sprint to the Gunning house. You almost slipped and fell on the way there, and then you wouldn’t have been any good to anybody, and the last thing Dr. Sarah Gunning needed was to tend to a broken leg while her mother was on her deathbed.

The door was unlocked when you arrived, the house quiet and dark save for a few lamps left on.

“Sarah?” you called out.

She emerged from her mother’s room, eyes red. “I thought I was ready for this a long time ago, but being face-to-face with it…”

“Are you sure this is it?”

“As sure as I can be. She hasn’t been eating. There’s only so much I can do,” Sarah said, her voice breaking in despair. “Sister, I—she’d want you to be here. Even though she didn’t know you very much, I could tell she liked you.”

“Of course,” you whispered, giving her a hug before approaching Mildred’s bedside. 

Despite her labored breathing, she managed a kind smile when you took her weathered hand in yours and prayed the Our Father with as steady of a voice as you could manage. Then, you knelt, pulled the rosary from your raincoat pocket, and prayed until your knees ached and you nearly passed out from exhaustion at staying up so late. You almost thought you had dreamed it, the way she went, as peacefully as drifting off to sleep. It was only the cry of her daughter that pierced through your haze, and you struggled to your feet as you allowed Sarah privacy and called Sheriff Hassan over to certify the death, as was necessary for the burial Mildred would have undoubtedly wanted as a Catholic.

When the Sheriff arrived, about fifteen minutes after you called, you’d become acutely aware your nightgown had soaked through in the rain, and pulled your raincoat more closely over your body, ashamed you’d even forgotten such a detail in your haste.

“I should head back now,” you said. “I’m so sorry again, Sarah. You’ll be in my prayers. I’ll contact the diocese first thing in the morning."

She nodded. "Thank you, Sister."

“Do you need a ride back to the church?” Hassan asked. “This shouldn’t take long.”

You smiled, tempted by his offer, the prospect of spending more time alone with him. Instead, you shook your head. “Thank you, Sheriff. I think I can manage.”

Crockett Island was quiet the following day, when Annie’s son Riley arrived home for the first time in over a decade, following his four year prison sentence. You could tell through his polite greeting he had no interest in speaking with you further than his mother’s introductions. Fair enough.

Monsignor Pruitt was supposed to return that evening, but you had been calling the diocese to try to get confirmation that they could send a priest over to perform the funeral mass if needed. As usual, you got answering machines or the run around of being told to call different offices, none of which could apparently help you. 

When you returned to the rectory after visiting with Sarah Gunning, you noticed the light on in the distance. Beverly had planned to meet the Monsignor at the ferry and bring him home. In all honesty, you couldn’t believe he survived the trip, both there and back.

“Monsignor, it’s me!” you called out. “How was your trip? I’d love to hear about—” You froze when you came face to face with a priest. A priest who wasn’t the Monsignor. Younger, handsome, absolutely unexpected. “Hello. I–I’m sorry, who are you? Father—”

“I’m Father Paul, Paul Hill,” he said kindly. “The diocese sent me.”

“That was quick. I thought they’d been ignoring my messages.”

“Yes, I’m afraid the Monsignor became ill on his trip, and I’m here until he recovers. I hope you don’t mind, I went ahead and brought my things into what I assumed was his room.”

“Please, make yourself at home.” You hastily made a sign of the cross. “But the Monsignor…I don’t think the islanders could take another loss. I’m so sorry, you come here and your first mass is a funeral.”

“Funeral? For who?”

“Mildred Gunning, an elderly parishioner who had been ill with dementia for a few years, I believe. She passed away two nights ago,” you said. “That’s why I’ve been calling the diocese all day. We need someone to perform the funeral mass.”

His deep, brown eyes widened with all the terror of a deer being chased through the woods. “Are–are you sure?”

“Of course I am. I was there when she passed.”

“Did she suffer?”

“No, it was like she had fallen asleep,” you said softly, watching in wonder as tears fell from his eyes. “Father?”

“I’m sorry, Sister. These things affect me deeply.”

You put your hand on his shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze. “Can I make you coffee or tea?”

“Coffee, please,” he said, his voice empty, an almost far away sound to it.

“While that’s brewing, I’ll call Dr. Gunning, Mildred’s daughter, and let her know you’re here. I don’t think she’d want any deviation from the typical funeral rites. Her mother was quite devout.”

“Yes, I know.”

You furrowed your eyebrows. “What was that?”

“Yes, I–I figured.”

He retreated into the Monsignor’s room. When you brought the coffee to him, he requested you leave it outside the door, which you found odd. Even more strange was having to tell Beverly that she missed the Monsignor’s arrival because he wasn’t arriving in the first place, and the diocese forgot to tell you that he’d become ill on his trip and Father Paul was serving as his replacement until he recovered. You privately figured the assignment would be more permanent, as yours had unexpectedly become.

Mildred Gunning’s funeral was held in St. Patrick’s Church less than a day later. A simple, solemn affair that saw the church nearly packed for the first time outside of Christmas or Easter. Mildred had lived and died on Crockett Island, everyone knew her in one way or another. Father Paul conducted the funeral mass as if mourning the Pope himself, and you were particularly struck by his grief, the way he nearly fell apart while giving the homily.

He fared no better at the wake that followed the funeral mass, held in the community center. Father Paul was utterly disinterested in speaking with any of the parishioners who tried to introduce themselves to him or sought solace and spiritual guidance in his presence. Thus, the burden once again fell on your shoulders, and you almost thought the diocese would have been better off ignoring your calls after all.

You sighed. You couldn’t let your cynicism get the best of you. It’d be entirely inappropriate for Father Paul to treat Mildred’s wake as a social hour. Besides, people with such deep empathy for others, especially someone they’d never met, were rare, as reminded to you by Beverly, who made her way over to you with a plate of cheese and crackers and a slight sneer on her face.

“I suppose it’s nice and all, but it’s not like he knew the woman,” Beverly muttered.

“He needs time to adjust,” you said. “This isn’t the best way to start out his tenure here.”

“Yes, well, let’s just hope he gets his act together soon.”

You could swear the diocese had you on some kind of blacklist, the way your calls to them went unanswered, letters returned with vague instructions and empty assurances. Father Paul had no idea how long they intended for him to stay on Crockett Island or the condition of Monsignor Pruitt. 

Your living in the rectory made sense when you were caring for the Monsignor, but with Father Paul fully capable of taking care of himself, you wanted to know if you’d be staying on the island, and if so, if separate arrangements would be made for your own housing. The island was too small, too chatty, for you and Father Paul to be living alone for too long before it was turned into something it wasn’t.

The bitter taste of married life settled on your tongue as you took up most of the responsibilities around the rectory while Father Paul moped . The old man could hardly help with cleaning, and you didn’t want him anywhere near the kitchen, but your new roommate was an able-bodied man who could spare to pick up some slack, couldn’t he?

“I made dinner, if you’re hungry,” you said, emerging from the kitchen and into the living room where he sat on the couch. “Just spaghetti and meatballs. The jar sauce from the store isn’t too bad. I usually add—”

“Red wine and oregano to it. I know.”

“Oh,” you said, taken aback by his statement. “I guess Bev told you. Not much of a secret recipe.”

“You’re pretty young for a nun,” he said, turning to you. “What made you want to give up a normal life for this?”

“It’s my vocation. For as long as I can remember, I knew this was what God called me to do. I never wanted another life.” You sat down next to him, sparing a glance around the room. “This is it for me.”

“Crockett Island?”

You conceded a small smile. “I was hoping for somewhere a little more exciting, but I think there’s a chance for something amazing to happen here.”

He shook his head. “That time’s long passed. Look around you, Sister. People are leaving in droves, and the ones who’ve stayed…it’s just too late.”

“Please, Father, I know this island may seem like it’s dying, and presiding over a funeral as your first mass here doesn’t help that, but the people still need guidance,” you pleaded, taking his hands in yours. You couldn’t contend with the diocese sending you to rot with the rest of the island. It couldn’t be for nothing. “The Monsignor is no longer well enough to fill that need, and I couldn’t do it on my own, but together, I think we can do something great if we try. This might be the island’s last chance to have life breathed into it again.”

“Sister—”

“I agree that Crockett Island is hardly a place anymore, but it’s somewhere to start, isn’t it? We couldn’t have been sent here without a reason.”

He swallowed roughly, intertwining his fingers with yours. “You’re right, Sister. I—Thank you.”

You smiled, relief washing over you at his words, at his assurance you wouldn't have to bring revival to Crockett Island on your own. 

Following your conversation with Father Paul, his attitude completely shifted. He was friendlier with the parishioners, taking extra time to spend with Leeza, offering to hold Riley’s AA meetings in the community center to save him a trip to the mainland, and, inexplicably, he liked Beverly, who’d changed her mind about Father Paul since the wake and warmed up to him. The only time he wavered was when he visited with Sarah Gunning, still grieving the loss of her mother and considering moving her practice off of the island.

He’d return to the rectory on those evenings quiet, morose, seeking the comfort you selflessly offered him. A warm embrace in which he’d bury his face in the crook of your neck. A hand to hold and squeeze in his own, intertwining his fingers with yours. Teetering on the brink of an intimacy you’d made vows against, you weren’t quite sure how to bring it up to him, not when he needed you, and you, him, to fill the hunger in your heart for a man you knew you could never have. 

You allowed the beast to live in you. Fed it. Nurtured it. Cared for it. Guarded it with a shameful protectiveness, shielding it from your regular confessions with Father Paul, in which uttering its name would make it real, and thus ripped away from you and destroyed. 

Ash Wednesday and the first week of Lent were resigned to a haze in your memory, hardly able to think of the beginning of the holiest time of the liturgical year without feeling sick. Not after the potluck. You were sure it had been Beverly, Sheriff Hassan was, too. You knew she was cruel, but to harm an animal, something so innocent…You couldn’t stand to be in her presence for long after that, and silently resented Father Paul for keeping her so close. But you supposed everyone had their vices. 

Yours came to a head in a dream, one that felt all too real, that you could hardly remember when you awoke apart from burning hands on your skin, lips pressed to yours, you and Sheriff Hassan in throes of passion. You laid in bed with a lump in your throat and aching between your legs. You hadn’t experienced a dream like that in…you couldn’t even remember.

The entire time you sat through mass, you thought you were going to be sick. You couldn’t concentrate on the readings or the homily. Taking the Eucharist felt wrong, and your hand shook when you brought the communion wafer to your lips when Father Paul handed it to you. Finally, when mass ended, and you were sure the church was empty, you approached him with trepidation.

“Father, I have something I need to confess.”

“Would you like to go to the confessional?”

You shook your head. “I don’t want to hide behind it. I need to be transparent and held accountable.”

He nodded. The two of you sat in a pew, facing each other as you crossed yourselves. 

“How long has it been since your last confession?”

“Three days,” you answered.

“What is it, Sister?”

“I’ve been having lustful thoughts, Father, about someone incredibly close to me, who I care deeply for. Instead of asking the Lord to take these feelings from me, I’ve been indulging in them, and last night I—I had a dream about him. A sexual one that I experienced physical pleasure from.” You were in tears, guilt wracking your body as you spoke. “I’m so ashamed. I should have been stronger. I’ve been sinning against God, exploiting this man in my heart when he’s done nothing to deserve such disrespect. Sheriff Hassan is—”

“Sheriff Hassan?” Father Paul’s gaze darkened ever so slightly, and you leapt to the sheriff’s defense in his absence.

“He didn’t do anything, Father. Nothing more than friendly smiles and kind words, never anything inappropriate. It was me, letting my lustful thoughts ferment instead of nipping them in the bud right away. He committed no sin. It was me.” Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

“Why him?”

You were silent for a moment. “He’s a good man.” Better than most you’d come across. Kind, selfless, just—the virtues that were few and far between among the men of the cloth you had met. Above all else, even when it was difficult, Hassan Shabazz was good. “I love him.”

“You don’t love him, Sister. Lust after him, yes, but you don’t know him, not enough to love him the way you think you do.”

With a shaky, reluctant sigh, you nodded. “Will you help me, Father?”

He took your hand in his, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Of course, it’s the least I can do after you helped me through the trial God set out for me when I first arrived here.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ll get through this together, Sister. Let us pray.”

The following Sunday, you tried to match the enthusiasm he had for ten o’clock mass that morning. You had gotten used to it by then, the way he always seemed to know something you didn’t or was aware of details about the islanders you weren’t keen to even after living there for two years. He was easy to trust, you supposed. 

Sitting in the wooden pew, you focused on following along with mass until the homily following the reading from the Gospel. Father Paul’s homilies were always a bit odd, cryptic, even. You assumed his faith was influenced by mysticism, and sought out books by the likes of St. John of the Cross and St. Francis in an attempt to better understand him. The way he spoke that day unsettled you, a fantastical fanaticism that felt out of place on Crockett Island.

Then, when it was time to receive the Eucharist, there was a solid minute where you were sure you had never hated anyone more in your entire life than you hated him. Telling Leeza Scaroborough to walk, goading the poor girl to step out of her wheelchair in an act of cruelty you couldn’t abide by. You got up from the pew, en route to smack him across the face when she did it. Leeza stood up from her wheelchair, and with tentative steps forward and tears of disbelief and hope in her eyes, she walked up to Father Paul and received the Eucharist.

Everything that followed was a blur, but you knew you were one of the few in attendance who hadn’t broken out into frenzied celebration. Something just wasn’t right. You found yourself hesitant to make eye contact with him when you took communion, and remained quiet even as mass ended, the cacophony of elated voices almost background noise to you.

“I’m sorry, everyone, but I need to speak to our dear Sister in confidence. I’m sure you all understand,” he said, murmurs of affirmation from the congregants who had crowded around him, except for Bev, who had a puss on her face at being excluded.

Father Paul ushered you into the sacristy, closing the door behind you.

“Is something wrong, Sister?” he asked.

“How can anything be wrong? Leeza Scarborough can walk again.”

“Yes, a miracle occurred in this very parish, right before our eyes, yet you seem…hesitant.”

You chewed on your lip before murmuring, “Seeing isn’t always believing.”

“You were the one who told me this island needed life brought back to it, who said we could achieve great things together. Now I’ve done that, by the grace of God Himself, and you have cold feet?”

“It’s not that.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“You know I do,” you said, trying to ignore the lump in your throat. “Maybe my faith is still weak—I’m still weak. I’m sorry, Father.”

“You’re not weak, Sister.”

“I think I’m going to get some air,” you said.

He nodded, distressed by your continued lack of enthusiasm. “Alright.”

Leaving St. Patrick’s through the side door in the sacristy, you tried to muster up the joy and faith you were supposed to feel, but found yourself coming up disappointingly empty. You had seen it with your very own eyes, and had been standing right there when Leeza walked for the first time in years. It couldn’t have been a trick, not orchestrated or premeditated, not by her. But Father Paul seemed so certain. Was his faith that much stronger than yours? Strong enough that he could be a true miracle worker, a vessel of God Himself on Crockett Island of all places?

Even the more skeptical congregants present, like Erin and Riley, had bared witness to it. Could attest to what had happened just as everyone else had, as you could. As a nun, you were undoubtedly expected to believe, be among the most fervent of Father Paul’s advocates. Beverly wasted no time in declaring the act a miracle worthy of the Vatican’s attention. Your faith still wavered despite what should have been undeniable proof. 

You’d lost track of how long you’d been walking around the island, but the sun was beginning to set and you realized you were tired and hungry. The general store wasn’t much farther of a walk from where you ended up while mindlessly wandering, and so you made the trek into town, telling yourself you were getting a few groceries for yourself and Father Paul. Really, the only person you knew you could speak to without judgment would be in there.

When you entered, Hassan greeted you with an emotional distance you expected. He probably figured you’d be among the dozens of people eager to relay Leeza’s miracle to him, underhandedly attempting to invalidate his own faith. 

Grabbing a jar of sauce and a box of pasta, you brought them up to the counter. Your mouth was dry while he rang up the groceries, but you couldn’t help asking, “Have–um–have you seen Leeza recently?” 

He nodded, his lips pressed in a thin line. “Walked right in here and bought a Twinkie earlier.”

“Amazing, how it happened.”

“I know about what happened to Leeza. I don’t believe what happened to Leeza.”

“Neither do I.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t?”

“It doesn’t sit right with me,” you said. “It felt more like a show was being put on than a miracle. I don’t think she had anything to do with what happened, but he had to have done something. He was so sure she would walk, and I just felt angry, betrayed that he’d make a spectacle in mass. In all honesty, Sheriff, my faith has been wavering for a while, but this didn’t make it any stronger.”

“It makes me feel a little more sane to hear you say that.”

“Well, if anyone can get to the bottom of this, I’m sure it’s you.” You smiled, taking the bags of groceries from the counter. “Have a good night, Sheriff.”

“You too, Sister.”

Walking back to the rectory, you wondered if anything would be able to make you change your mind about actually bearing witness to a miracle.

Father Paul hugged you as soon as you walked through the door. “I was about to send out a search party for you.”

“I didn’t mean to worry you, Father. I just needed time to think.”

He looked at the grocery bag in your hand. “And to see the Sheriff.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Sister, something incredible is happening here. I need to know you’re on my side,” he said, his urgency striking you like lightning. 

“I am. I want to be. Please just be patient with me. This is—it’s a lot to process.”

“I can’t do this without you,” he said softly, caressing your cheek. “I need you.” His gaze fell to your lips.

“I should start on dinner,” you whispered, pulling away from him.

“Let me, you cook enough for me already,” he said, taking the bag from you. He pulled out the jar of sauce. “Red wine and oregano, right?”

You nodded. “That’s right.”

“Make yourself comfortable out here. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

The following half hour or so was unbearably tense, and you could hardly focus on the book sitting in your lap, The Dialogue of Divine Providence, while he cooked. The two of you ate in near silence, and you retired to your room early, falling asleep almost as soon as you changed into your nightgown and crawled into bed.

Burning pain seared your limbs when you awoke in the middle of the night, the pungent scent of iron assaulting your nose, and for a moment, you thought you were dying. You reached over to the lamp on your nightstand, your arm heavy as you moved it. With trepidation, you pulled the cord, a phantom sensation in your hand as you did so. 

Soft, white light from the bulb illuminated your beside. Lifting your hands to your face, you let out a panicked whimper at the gaping wounds in your palms, gently bleeding crimson and flowing down your arms to your nightgown. The fabric around your torso was blotched with blood, each tinge of pink becoming red with every ragged breath you took. You tried kicking at the covers, but found it excruciatingly difficult, and to your horror, discovered identical wounds to the ones in your hands through both of your feet.

Your hands shook as you screwed your eyes shut, telling yourself it was a dream, and that when you opened your eyes, the blood would be gone, the wounds healed. Except the pain was all too real, pulsing in your wounds, tears stinging your eyes as you choked out a sob. Your simple bedroom, with little more than a bookshelf, desk, chair, and crucifix on the wall, threatened to suffocate you as your panic set in.

A groan pulled from your lips as you pushed yourself out of bed, your legs nearly giving out beneath you. The strange sensation of your bare feet on the wooden floorboards made you feel dizzy, or maybe it was blood loss. Each step forward was more agonizing than the last, but you needed help. You needed someone else to see you, a witness to what was happening. 

“Father Paul!” you cried out from the doorway, your voice hoarse and low, barely carrying across the hallway. “Father, wake up!” Mustering what strength you could, you threw yourself against his bedroom door, your closed, bleeding fist erratically banging against it. “Father, please!”

“Sister, what’s going—” 

As soon as he opened the door, you collapsed into his arms, sending him stumbling backward with the sudden burden of your body on his. He looked at you, gaping at the blood that covered you—and him. 

“Father?” 

“I should call Dr. Gunning.”

You shook your head frantically. “Don’t! Not yet.” 

“What happened?”

“I woke up, and I was like this.” Your bleeding hands clenched around the hem of your nightgown, keeping it at your thighs. “I’m too afraid to look.”

“May I?” he asked, his own hands shaking as his fingers brushed the blood-drenched fabric.

Staring at him for a moment, reckoning with the further vulnerability you were about to display to him, you breathed a soft, “Yes.”

He pulled your nightgown up, the fabric sticking to your skin from the congealed blood. You stared at the ceiling as he lifted the garment over your head, too embarrassed and mortified to acknowledge your body bare before him. His fingertips brushed your torso, and you moaned. In your horror, you looked down to see deep, fresh wounds on your sides.

“Oh my God.”

“Do you know what this is, Sister?”

Tears blurred your vision as you shook your head. “It can’t be stigmata. I’m not pure enough, not devout enough. He’d never—”

“Of course He would. He saw you needed faith, a reminder of His love for you, and look at you now,” Father Paul said with hushed fervor as he took in the state of you. “You’re beautiful.” He kissed your forehead, then pressed his lips to each of your weeping palms, and then your feet. 

Desire twisted in your gut at the sight of him beneath you. He kissed your feet again, a terrifying hunger in his gaze as he brought his lips higher up your legs, his hands brushing your skin with a reverence you felt unworthy of receiving. 

You watched as he dipped his fingers into one of your side wounds and then brought the digits to his mouth, tasting your blood from them. With a ragged breath, he brought his face to your torso. His tongue plunged in the valley of your wound, lapping up the blood that gently flowed from it. A moan tore from your throat, pleasure rolling across your skin as if you truly were a vessel for the divine. Surely it was the same sensation that inspired St. Teresa of Avila’s eroticism, a mystical ecstasy that saw her driven out of villages and cloister herself in search of the purest, incorporeal love.

Except before you knelt a man of God whom you could reach out and touch, eagerly devouring your flesh as if able to find salvation in your blood. His teeth grazed your skin, eliciting a shudder that echoed through you like a worn-out hymn. Words failed you, the pleasure you received from his ravenous consumption of you overtaking the pain from your wounds. 

Holding his head against your side wound, you wanted more, the feeling of him indulging in you. Taste and eat. Everything you felt and saw was in shades of violently blossoming red, deeper and deeper with each curl of his tongue and brush of his fingertips, his unadulterated worship, his veneration for you, serving as the flowing cup of God’s grace and mercy.

Rapturous bliss hummed through you like an ecstatic prayer, pulsing in your wounds on your hands, feet, and sides. You felt like he was part of you, a mystical union between yourself and him.

But just as high as he’d taken you, you quickly came down. The gravity of the situation, of what he’d done, what you’d let him do, weighed on your conscience more heavily than any illicit feeling you’d ever harbored toward Sheriff Hassan.

Father Paul took your face in his hands, eyes glistening with a joyous faith you no longer envied. “Your own miracle, Sister. Do you see it now?”

“You did this to me?” you asked in distressed horror. “You—Who are you?”

“Not me, Sister,” he said. “Here, let me show you. You’ll understand everything. I think you’re ready.”

He held out his hand, and despite everything in you screaming otherwise, you took it.

[buoyhealth]

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Anxiety or stress

Is a tingling nose a serious condition?

Most of the time, it’s not serious, but if it persists or is accompanied by other symptoms, it may require medical attention.

When should I see a doctor?

Consult a doctor if you experience:

Persistent tingling

Swelling or redness

Difficulty breathing

Other unusual symptoms

[foldingfittedsheets]

Hey! If you don't mind sharing, I'd be interested to hear more about your chronic illness diagnosis journey (I also get that it can be a private thing!).

I've been struggling for the last 5 or so years with chronic fatigue, muscle weakness, muscle pain and brain fog, and my doctors have checked a bunch of different things. EBV, thyroid, vitamin D, "are you sure you're not just depressed" and they've now gone for ME/CFS. A part of that just doesn't feel right to me because I feel like they should have done more tests or walked me through alternatives before settling! Especially because it fluctuates so much. Sometimes I can't leave the house, sometimes I have to borrow a wheelchair if I'm in a shop, sometimes I can walk 5000 steps??

Love and support for you and your gluten free adventure - potatoes, rice and polenta tend to be pretty good for me when I want something bready! (Doesn't quite hit the spot as well as buttered toast does though...)

My decline was really painfully gradual. I didn’t realize why things were getting so much harder. It manifested first with friction between my beloved because they were frustrated I was always too tired to run little errands myself. I went to the doctor and talked about my fatigue but was assured I was fine. I went on Chinese herbs and they buoyed up my reserves so I could keep functioning.

That went on for months, just getting more and more tired. I’d wake up sobbing because I wasn’t any more rested than I’d gone to bed. I went to a new doctor at that point. I got diagnosed with anemia until my blood work came back normal and then I was told I was fine.

Then I started fainting. My hair was falling out. I went to a different doctor. She ran my blood. I got told I was fine, but that maybe I had a food allergy. She slapped me with a full elimination diet that broke my spirit. I did feel some minor improvement but I wasn’t healthy by any means.

Finally, my good friend who is a doctor said that’s enough. She was in a different state but she was furious that I wasn’t getting any help. She ran my blood on a bunch of different ailment tests that were less well known. She tested for antibodies to EBV. If you have over 20 they consider you to have an active infection.

I had over 700 which is when they stop bothering to count.

I was so chock full of virus I was pound for pound virus by that point.

Then came the hard part. Knowing you’re bursting at the seams with a virus doesn’t make it easy to treat. The virus was living in me, in my cells. Too much of the medication and my body would start siccing it’s defenses against its own tissue.

I went on a bonanza of supplements. There was syrups to boost energy, pills to increase my immune system, antivirals, iron and vitamin D because those were kinda low. It was a three times a day regime of medicines.

My initial dose of antiviral was too high. I experienced a pain unlike what any mortal should bear as a result, dropping to the ground to writhe in agony when it hit. My dosage got lowered and my progress crept along.

I started school sometime in there and barely kept my head afloat above coursework. My stress load from school correlated to how much energy I had and I longed to finish my degree and just prioritize feeling better.

Then things got worse. My original doctor friend let her prescription rights for my state lapse, it didn’t make financial sense to keep them. A different friend from yet another state wrote my antivirals for a while but eventually I needed a new doctor.

I found another, this time a naturopathic doctor like my friends, hoping I’d keep receiving good care in that scope of practice. I didn’t. I had the most painful blood draw of my life in her office, writhing in agony, then didn’t hear back from her. I got ghosted by my doctor. When I pestered her for results she wrote me a script for antivirals but that was all.

I’d find out about eight months later when my health was declining and my friends demanded to see my blood work that my iron had been dangerously low but she hadn’t bothered to tell me. I got on iron supplements and staggered along.

Through precision time management I could budget my functional time into schoolwork then collapse to recuperate. It was working, but barely.

When my scrip on antivirals ran out I hunted once again for a doctor. This time I’d realized that any good care I’d gotten was when I’d made a personal connection with the doctor, a rare privilege not many people got. So I sought out a friend of a friend, someone I’d seen on occasion in the doctory social circle.

I have never been more happy with a doctor. She tested my viral numbers and pronounced herself satisfied that it was in check but was suspicious that although my thyroid numbers always looked normal that something was going on there. She ran more tests and lo. A thyroid imbalance.

Around that time I’d sunk into needing the chair. I stopped functioning, it was almost as bad as my first collapse. And yet again the fun part of getting my thyroid in balance was a delicate balance of making sure I wasn’t taking too much and hurting myself.

That balancing act took about a year to stabilize. I was still so weak from years of fatigue and inactivity. An able bodied person cannot imagine how hard it is to build up from ground zero on all your muscles. And the worst part was any time I felt tired I was terrified I was going to slip back down into the depths of exhaustion.

Then my beloved and I got Wyvern the puppy. And before we realized we had both somehow developed allergies to dogs and had to break our hearts giving him up, he saved me the last time.

Potty training meant I had to get up every two hours to take him out. I didn’t have to walk far but I had to do it consistently. Every single day I’d go to bed aching in every muscle, terrified to wake up. But every day I woke up with energy and was able to do it again.

It was like puppy boot camp, and I was able to go longer and farther every walk. By the time we realized we couldn’t keep him I was mobile again, I hadn’t needed my chair at all. When we said goodbye to him I promised I wouldn’t lose the progress he helped me make.

Now I finally, for the first time in six years, feel healthy again. I can go on long walks, I can run little errands for my beloved, I can fill my days with activity and wake up to do it again the next day. It’s the most amazing thing.

I hope you can stumble upon a doctor who can listen to you and help you. I know how hard things can get, but sometimes they can get better.

[khangi]

Starting a new post for our sick list.

Spouse and I are disabled native people and have a wishlist of items to help with our lives.

At current, items we’d really like to help are:

-eye drops

-bottles

-buoy drops (I use about 1 of these per week and they’re a huge boon for my health)

As always, any help we receive us deeply appreciated!

[arjudy224]

Cobblepot's Cabana

Summary: Working for Oswald Cobblepot has its perks. Mr. Cobblepot always gives out Christmas and summer bonuses, you get excellent health insurance... However, working at a pool owned by one of Batman rogues can put you at odds with the Caped Crusader himself. One day, the Riddler and Killer Croc team up to defeat Batman. This team endeavor doesn't work out the way they expected.

Lifeguard POV:

There wasn’t any mention of how to handle situations like this during the certification. Teenage boys doing back flips into the shallow end? Yes. Nose bleeds? Of course. Clocking into work to find the Gotham knight fighting not one, but two of his rogues on the pool deck? Absolutely not. Nothing could have prepared me to witness the all out brawl that was occurring during my shift. Or the fact that Killer Croc’s tail defensively slapped the Riddler, Batman, and Robin into the pool. Tyler hands me the lifeguard tube with a sly smile.

“Good luck with that. I’m going to go pee.”

If I wasn’t so concerned for the teenage vigilante getting his face pushed underwater by a crocodile, that would have been incredibly annoying.

Staring at the drowning quartet, I am faced with a dilemma.

Do I get paid enough for this? (No)

Would interrupting the feud end with my imminent death? (Probably)

Poor Eddie Nygma flails desperately against the waves made by Killer Croc and Batman wrestling. For such an intelligent guy, one would have assumed he would at least know how to doggy paddle... One would be wrong. Every time the man, known to the rest of the world as the Riddler, touches the water... He sinks. It's honestly impressive how quickly he can reach the bottom of the pool. His panicked green eyes cause my heart to swell.

Dammit... Fine.

Within moments, I plunge into the icy water. Of course today of all days Cobblepot would turn the temperature down for dramatic effect. Fighting against Killer Croc's waves, I lunge for Eddie first. Avoiding his panicked limbs, I shove the buoy flush against his chest. Eddie clings onto the life preserver with a grateful gaze as I meet a face full of salt water.

My eyes burn from the impact. Resurfacing a few feet away, the vigilante/ crocodilian brawl somehow managed to turn on the manual waves. I watch in disbelief as Eddie gets pulled in their direction. His feverishly pale skin and blue lips chill me to my core.

"Oh.. No you don't!" I gasp struggling against the current. Another wave pushes me under. Stay calm. You've done this before. Opening my eyes, my heart stops when I register what I am face to face with.

Void like black eyes stare emotionless in my direction. With skin so grey and smooth, I'm almost tempted to run my hand across. However, the hundreds of sharp teeth keep me at bay. There's a shark in the pool, King Shark, to be exact... and he's not happy about the wrestling match going on above. Typical Gotham. Funny enough, I checked the attendance log this morning. Nanaue canceled his membership months ago, but that's none of my business.

From the corner of my eye, I vaguely make out the faint outline of the drowning boy wonder. The kid’s head is above water for now, but the heavy plated Robin suit cannot be easy to swim in.

Sometimes, King Shark confuses the lifeguards for poolside snacks. Easy mistake really. Cobblepot had warned us previously of the last guard who got eaten. Unzipping my fanny pack, I fumble for my saving grace: a small tuna packet from my morning lunch. Offering it to the shark, I await his response. That must have been the right move because a smile emerges with hundreds of teeth barring all at once.

Pressure and panic spreads throughout my body from the lack of oxygen. Crawling to the surface, my lungs gasp for air while I assess the current situation. Eddie's conscious, yet even with the raft his lips are still tinged with blue from his underwater adventure. Robin's fighting with less vigor than before. He doesn't have much time. Killer Croc is in his element. And Batman? Well, like any Florida man wrestling with their local wildlife: he's doing his best. His sluggish movements are showing how much the cape and his weaponry are weighing him down.

Considering my options, I make the dumbest split second decision of my life: I ask for help. Diving under the oncoming waves, I gesture towards King Shark with as much pleading as I can muster. I don't speak Shark, but I motion to my fanny back to insinuate their would be more fish ahead. Nananue slowly nods his head before circling the water around me.

For a second, I think my life is over. Maybe my parents were right to throw a fit when I announced my acceptance into Gotham U. I'm sure Metropolis Lifeguards’ don't have to make bargains with their local trespassing aquatic life.

To my relief, King Shark doesn't bite my head off. With an impatient shimmy, he waits for me to hold on. I shrug before crawling on his back. We cut through the waves with such ease that I find myself in awe of the cartilaginous fish. If I swam like that, I would bum off Oswald Cobblepot too. The Riddler and his life raft tug loosely behind due to the harness around my waist.

Checking my watch, I frown.

Tyler was supposed to take me off stand ten minutes ago. That bastard. From the empty pool deck, I bet he left work early again... for the 3rd time this week.

Speeding past the giant iceberg in the center of the pool, King Shark reluctantly slows down once we near the frail looking teenager. Before I can hoist the kid up, Nananue eyes the young boy with interest.

"Don't even think about it. If you eat Robin, I have to explain to Cobblepot how you've been staying here for months without paying for a membership."

With an exaggerated sigh, the Shark man allows me to hull the kid half way out of the water. Somehow, Robins mask managed to stay on during the kerfuffle. His wet black hair sticks to his forehead. He's got a pulse. He's breathing. Reaching the pool deck, Robin’s limp form is proving ridiculously lofty to move.

Across the pool deck, Batman somehow managed to tranquilize Killer Croc. His damp armor makes a hilarious ~squish~ noise with every step. Eddie sprawls on his back muttering something I assume to be riddle associated. Robin's starting to regain color.

Thank goodness, I didn't have to do CPR; I do not want to be the one responsible for breaking the Boy Wonders ribs.

One eye flutters open, then the other. The intensity of his blue eyes catches me off guard.

"Instead of saving my life," He rasps with a mischievous grin, "Can you save my phone number?"

Very original.

I briefly consider shoving him back into the pool. If I hadn't spent the last 20 minutes trying to save his life, I would have. Instead of responding, I make eye contact with his Guardian.

"I'm going to need to ask you two to leave." I elaborate gesturing to my watch, "The pool closes at 9."

[malleusmaleficent]

ODYSSEY APPRECIATION POST! (Art is a wonderful commission by the inestimable @kailysander )

I tried to listen to Epic: The Musical a few times but couldn't get into it, wasn't my kind of music. However, I am ecstatic knowing it's helped buoy The Odyssey in the modern cultural zeitgeist. I read The Odyssey as an allegory for depression and struggling to fix your past mistakes. I think that, as mental health issues proliferate thanks to mass communications, The Odyssey is a good book to read and it's important we find new ways to keep it alive and relevant. Odysseus is a deeply flawed person, frankly he's pretty terrible, but I think all of us need a tiny bit of Odysseus in us if we want to keep moving in the face of the constant obstacles life presents us with. A steely, grim resolve to make it to the end, even if death is a preferable alternative to the tribulations you'll face.

Also, low-key I cried when Telemachus was talking to Menelaus about the pain that comes with thinking about all the things you'll never get to do with a person in your family because they died before you got to know them. My grandma died a few months after I was born but literally everyone (even my dad who hates most people) agrees that she was a wonderful person. Getting to know a dead person vicariously through the people that knew them when they were alive, knowing that you'll never get the chance to love them, is an odd kind of pain.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Archived link here

An important paragraph to remember:

William and Kate have also been “buoyed” by public support and the sense that “the public sentiment is not the same as on TikTok”. On Tuesday, the Buckingham Palace switchboard “rang off the hook” with messages of support for them

But also, Harry and Meghan aren’t going to like this one:

Those close to William say that the family “bubble” he and Kate have created at their home in Windsor, Adelaide Cottage, is his top priority. After school, it is just the five of them at home, with Kate, rather than a cook or housekeeper, usually preparing dinner. By his own admission, William is no chef. What he has found especially challenging in recent weeks, say friends, is the feeling that the couple’s bubble is coming under threat, and that his wife is experiencing some of what his mother went through.

[racefortheironthrone]

Is there any way for governments to respond to a pandemic such as Covid 19 or something worse without provoking considerable public resentment? Take no measures to prevent the spread and you’ll be blamed for the resulting public health disaster. Try to prevent the spread, and you’ll be blamed for the inevitable inequities and negative effects taken to do so, and the (mitigated, but not entirely avoided) public health disaster.

I don't mean this to come off as pessimistic or overly negative, but I would say as a matter of historic record, public health campaigns (especially anti-pandemic campaigns) tend to be quite unpopular - and my suspicion is that the mid-20th century moment where public health experts like Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin became folk heroes with enormous amounts of popular support from the middle-class parents of the Baby Boom is probably the exception that proves the rule.

You can go all the way back to the very earliest days of public health measures - the Venetian invention of the quarantine during the Black Death - to find one of the first anti public-health backlashes. Conservative Venetians felt that the free food packages that were an essential part of the quarantine process (because you don't want potentially sick people wandering the city looking for food) would make people lazy and economically dependent on the government.

Likewise, when advances in medicine and state capacity in the early 19th century led to one of the first modern pandemic campaigns during the cholera outbreaks of the early 1830s, the public's response was not one of orderly compliance and gratefulness. Instead, you had what were called the "cholera riots" in both the U.K and Russia. Buoyed by conspiracy theories about shadowy cabals of doctors working hand in hand with an autocratic government to kill the destitute, mobs attacked symbols of public health (public hospitals, government doctors, public research clinics, anatomical colleges, health boards) and government authority (governors, police stations, quarantine cordons, court houses, etc.).

By contrast, all the anti-vaxx insanity of the past couple years seems a bit tame - at least in COVID-19, most violence has been rhetorical and abstract rather than involving the targeted murder of doctors and government officials.

Ultimately, we may just have to come to grips with the fact that public health/anti-pandemic policy is always going to be unpopular and that the correct approach is to use hard power rather than try to chivvy people into doing what's in their best interests. I certainly remember how California started to make strides against the anti-vaxx movement prior to COVID-19: it ultimately required legislation like SB 277 and SB 742 that made vaccinations more mandatory and made anti-vaxx harassment punishable with six months in jail.

[kellysue]

On Interviews and Getting All Up In My Head

If you haven’t yet listened to Sam Fragoso’s interview with Annie Baker, please do. Baker is startlingly honest, and I mean that literally. I was folding clothes, hadn't even chosen the episode—it was just the next thing in my queue after whatever grisly murder podcast I had purposely selected. I was startled enough to stop folding, rewind, and listen again. I don’t want to say too much about it for fear of spoiling the experience for you, but there’s an authenticity there that’s rare. If anyone within the reach of this email knows Fragoso or Baker, please pass along my compliments. It was a hell of a thing.

Interviews are on my mind as I gear up to do press for the new comic. I’m not a shy person, not an introvert in the least (as anyone who’s met me will attest) but I do get up in my head about this stuff. It’s a part of the job that elicits a stew of feelings. The sort of vulnerability required to write, to create anything really, is different from the vulnerability required to talk about the work, about the process, or about yourself in that mix. (My heart is beating a little bit faster all of a sudden—my body reacting to even the thought of it. No kidding: I just got a notification from the Apple Health app.) There’s a certain defensiveness in the experience, no matter how friendly the interlocutor, one I suspect is fueled by the spirit of this internet age. As a part of your brain is searching for an honest answer, another is running through all the ways your response could be deliberately misconstrued, and a third is asking, ‘Will this really help the sales of the book/film/show/etc.?’ Is this worth it?

Baker lays all that bare; she risks being considered “difficult” or annoying Fragoso. (To his great credit, he doesn’t just allow for it; he answers her vulnerability with his own.) She appreciates the thoroughness of his preparation but at the same time wonders aloud at the peculiarity of having something she once said parroted back to her as Truth. She doesn’t deny having said it, and likely it was true once, but memory and identity are fickle things, and the perspective of age alters how the light hits both. Of course, for the purpose of an interview, for the purpose of any conversation, there have to be some things we take as given, but her willingness to highlight the absurdity of the exercise, to own her discomfort, and then to light up when Fragoso is willing to ride along is refreshing, a buoy to me just now.

I love her willingness to push back, too. If you know me, you know I can be a lot, and I don’t exactly have a reputation for conflict-avoidance, but there have been moments/remarks in interviews past that I let slide unchallenged and they gnaw at me still. My hesitancy to hit the press circuit probably has something to do with that as well. Fear of signing up to either answer the well-meaning stranger back or grit my teeth and learn to live with another Lego in my shoe. And for what? In comics, anyway, no one seems to know what press, if any, will move the needle.

Oh goodness. Reading back, I’ve descended into something that looks rather unflatteringly like privileged moping. I am fortunate to make my living in the arts, I know. My challenges are hardly those of a coal miner or a policy-maker, I know, but here we are. Bucking up now, I promise.

I’ll say in closing this bit out, though, that I probably ought to own that my efforts to find new ways to market FML (starting with the acrostic in the last email) are not entirely about the current media landscape. They’re at least in part a reaction to the current me landscape. And I think it’s probably okay to acknowledge the absurdity of being so tired you can’t bring yourself to do things the usual way and then making up new approaches that require three times the work. Nothing if not on brand.

xo

Kelly Sue

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

By Joanne Silberner

April 8, 2024

A hug, a handshake, a therapeutic massage. A newborn lying on a mother’s bare chest.

Physical touch can buoy well-being and lessen pain, depression and anxiety, according to a large new analysis of published research released on Monday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

Researchers from Germany and the Netherlands systematically reviewed years of research on touch, strokes, hugs and rubs. They also combined data from 137 studies, which included nearly 13,000 adults, children and infants. Each study compared individuals who had been physically touched in some way over the course of an experiment — or had touched an object like a fuzzy stuffed toy — to similar individuals who had not.

For example, one study showed that daily 20-minute gentle massages for six weeks in older people with dementia decreased aggressiveness and reduced the levels of a stress marker in the blood. Another found that massages boosted the mood of breast cancer patients. One study even showed that healthy young adults who caressed a robotic baby seal were happier, and felt less pain from a mild heat stimulus, than those who read an article about an astronomer.

Positive effects were particularly noticeable in premature babies, who “massively improve” with skin-to-skin contact, said Frédéric Michon, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and one of the study’s authors.

“There have been a lot of claims that touch is good, touch is healthy, touch is something that we all need,” said Rebecca Boehme, a neuroscientist at Linkoping University in Sweden, who reviewed the study for the journal. “But actually, nobody had looked at it from this broad, bird’s eye perspective.”

The analysis revealed some interesting and sometimes mysterious patterns. Among adults, sick people showed greater mental health benefits from touch than healthy people did. Who was doing the touching — a familiar person or a health care worker — didn’t matter. But the source of the touch did matter to newborns.

“One very intriguing finding that needs further support is that newborn babies benefit more from their parents’ touch than from a stranger’s touch,” said Ville Harjunen, a researcher at the University of Helsinki in Finland, who also reviewed the study for the journal. Babies’ preference for their parents could be related to smell, he speculated, or to the differences in the way parents hold them.

Women seem to benefit more from touch than men, which may be a cultural effect, Dr. Michon said. The frequency of the touch also mattered: A massage once every two years isn’t going to do much.

Several studies included in the review looked at what happened during the height of the Covid pandemic, when people were isolated and had less physical contact with others. “They found correlations during Covid times between touch deprivation and health aspects like depression and anxiety,” Dr. Michon said.

Touching the head appears to have more of a beneficial effect than touching the torso, some studies found. Dr. Michon couldn’t explain that finding, but thought it could have to do with the greater number of nerve endings on the face and scalp.

Another mystery: Studies of people in South America tended to show stronger health benefits of touch than did those studies that looked at people in North America or Europe. Dr. Michon said that culture may somehow play a role. But Dr. Boehme said the studies showing the differences between countries were too small to be definitive. “I think the mechanism behind this is biological,” she said. “I think that’s hard-wired and will be the same for all of us.”

In 2023, Jeeva Sankar, a pediatrics researcher at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and a colleague published a rigorous review of skin-to-skin care for newborns. The analysis concluded that touch therapy for preterm or low-birth-weight infants should start as soon as possible and last eight hours or more, a recommendation that the World Health Organization adopted. Dr. Sankar said the new review was important because touch is often neglected in modern medical care, but it was too broad. He would have liked it to focus more on how various forms of touch could be integrated in medical care.

Dr. Michon stressed that the types of touch considered in these studies were positive experiences to which the volunteers agreed. “If someone doesn’t feel a touch as being pleasant, it’s likely going to stress them out,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on April 9, 2024, Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Reviewing Studies, Scientists Find Hugs Are Good for You.