#civilization and law and even most religions :-/

[twst-kumi]

Sorry please,my English is not very good ( it's not my mother tongue) it's silly but you can do a headcanon on pregnancy ( from the dorm heads) or an alphabet on either of them!

Don't worry, English is not my mother tongue too. I will consider reader is in a relationship with them and that they are the father. Reader is a girl in the story.

Dorm leader with Pregnant reader

Riddle Rosehearts

Riddle would be the most shocked if you were pregnant.

You two were still in NRC. IN SCHOOLS! He knew he should have waited for marriage.

Riddle is worried, and rightfully so. He knows nothing about child care, let alone parenthood. He is scared that he won't be a good father. Or worse. What if he becomes like his mother and repeats the trauma circle?

Reader and Trey will need to be the voice of reason here.

Make sure to assure him that everything is alright.

Riddle will gather EVERYTHING he could get about childbirth and childcare.

He will learn everything from start to end. At this point, he knows more about your pregnancy than you do.

Expect him to be there at every doctor's appointment, even better! HE will make those appointments.

Your doctor would be a bit tired tho...

Riddle will ask him a lot of questions. From your diet, to what is needed for the pregnancy, how to make sure you and the baby will be safe.

Reader will be taken care of like a queen.

You will also have to move to Heartlsabyul. Ramshackle is too rundown and dangerous for you or the baby.

Trey mentioned that Mozart was good for the baby's brain development. Care to try it?

Riddle would spend hours talking and reading to your belly.

Will cry before the first ultrasound you did. It's his child's first picture in a way.

Mood swings with Riddle would be funny. He knows it's because your body changes for the child but it's hard sometimes.

Ace would laugh because this time he is the one who has to walk on eggshells.

If you cry, Riddle will be completely helpless. He would panic trying to make you smile.

The one to take care of your food carving would be Trey. Riddle tried to do it, but some of the things you asked for, were unknown.

I think Riddle would be a little jealous of the other. He would feel a little helpless about the situation. And having to rely on others even though he is the father. He should be the one to take care of you!

This would be where Riddle would see the difference between theoretical and practical knowledge.

Marriage will be expected. He will try to at least get a civil marriage. If you have any religion, he will organize a proper wedding following your beliefs once the baby is born.

Riddle's biggest worry is his mom. He doesn't want her to hurt you or the baby.

Riddle will try to take care of everything for you. He isn't the best at it, but he has the spirit.

BONUS Childbirth :

Poor Riddle would definitely want to be there during the birth.

His poor soul didn't support it.

Riddle would either cry or faint. He is sorry he put you through something so painful and potentially traumatic.

You will have to assure him that you are okay.

Leona Kingscholar

Leona with a pregnant reader could be interesting if he was a Yandere.

Lions kill young cubs (not his) to get the lioness more inclined to bear his cub.

But this isn't a Yandere headcanon. So I will keep this in a drawer.

That doesn't mean he wouldn't try to push Grim a little away. Or bribe convince him to leave you and him alone a little longer.

Leona is the first to know you are pregnant. Way before you do.

Cliché but it's true.

He would not try to tell you directly, so he wouldn't sound too insensitive, but he will insist that you take a pregnancy test

Or even better he will try to convince you to do a blood test. It's more accurate than a stick you pee on.

And surprise surprise, you are pregnant.

Leona can't help but be smug about it. He is the father, and if it wasn't obvious before for some stubborn herbivore or... A particular lizard.

Leona is close to his sister-in-law so he had some experience with pregnancy.

But this time he is the father. And the mother is a magicless human.

Unlike beastwomen, you are more weak. This is what worries him.

The first person Leona asks for advice is his sister. Who is the best to ask about pregnancy if it's not someone who experienced it?

This also means that Falena now knows he will be an uncle.

Leona could hear Cheka rambling happily that he would have a younger cousin to everyone he saw.

If you wanted to keep a low profile during the pregnancy, he is sorry. That would be impossible. Say goodbye to your peaceful days.

You must go with him to meet with your in-laws during the weekend.

Leona is a prince. Even if he is just the second prince, he is still from the royal family. Which means, a lot of regulation, tradition, etc...

Leona's family would happily welcome you and try to make you feel accepted.

During the pregnancy, Leona would make sure to get you everything.

You want chocolate and pickles? Of course! Need a massage? The servants are here for you; if you wish, HE would do it.

While in NRC, expect to stay with him. Leona doesn't want you to strain yourself too much.

He will make sure that Ruggie runs errands for him AND you.

Leona will sleep with a hand on your belly. He will never say it but he loves feeling the baby kick.

Another one who will follow you to your ultrasound.

The royal family has their own doctor. And he is your doctor from now on too. You are his royal spouse after all.

BONUS Childbirth :

It's a known fact, that Leona drinks his respected woman's juice every morning.

Well after childbirth? He drinks it morning and night.

Seeing you endure so much pain just because you love him, made him feel even more in love.

Leona could never do what you did.

You are weak compared to beastwomen, but even more brave. As expected of his future wife.

Leona would cradle the baby carefully next to you. He tried not to show it but you could see the small smile on his lips.

Azul Ashengrotto

Azul would be another one shocked. He almost spit his ink.

Floyd and Jade would congratulate and tease him.

It was unexpected but Azul is happy about it.

Don't worry about the future, he saved enough money to care for you and the baby.

For your carving, he will ask the twins for help. Floyd is having a blast with your funny demand.

Azul will accompany you to your doctor's appointment.

He will have done his research before coming with you. And while Riddle would ask the doctor way too many questions.

Azul just takes notes and asks questions only when needed.

He will take you to look for the baby's clothes and maybe even the furniture.

Mood swing with Azul is a nightmare for him and comedy gold for the Leech twins.

No, you are not fat, just full of love.

You are not ugly! You are the prettiest mother who ever existed.

Azul would watch you with bated breath for any outburst.

Please don't mind the contract he asked you to sign. Mariage contract? Don't mind what was written on it.

Bonus Childbirth

Azul would panic the moment your water broke.

He would come in the room, hold your hand as you are pushing the baby out;

And then?... Nothing.

Azul just fainted, he wasn't even able to hold the baby. The tweels will tease him about it.

Kalim Al Asim

LET'S THROW A PARTY!!!

Kalim is way too happy, and you can tell from Jamil's face that he is losing 5 years of his life.

Kalim has been poisoned and kidnapped a lot since childhood, and now he has to protect you too.

Poor Jamil can't take a break. And now you are overworking him.

You will obviously move to their dorm because now you are under careful watch.

Kalim is just happy and is already preparing a room for the baby.

Tell him what you want, and he will give you EVERYTHING.

Your Carving? Don't worry, Jamil can make them for you.

You want a midnight snack? Kalim would try to do it but would fail miserably. He will have to wake up Jamil to prepare your snack and clean up the mess. poor guy

Meeting with the Al Asim family would be great.

Usually, they would do a long background check and be suspicious of you. But if even Jamil trusts you. Welcome to the family.

Another one who has a private doctor.

Mood swings with Kalim would be impossible.

He is such a sweetheart, you can't get angry at him. Instead, he will smother you with love.

You would feel frustrated by the constant monitoring but it's for your safety.

Bonus childbirth

Kalim absolutely wanted to come with you in the room.

Jamil stopped him, so he had to wait with his family.

He would be anxiously pacing until they were allowed in.

He is the first at your side to look at your baby.

Kalim would cry and laugh proudly. He is a father now.

Vil Schoenheit

Vil is happy but also worried. He has always wanted to form a family with you.

But just not this soon. He is an actor so he knows how fans can react.

He wants to be present during every step of your pregnancy but can't.

Vil will keep it as private as possible.

He is not ashamed but it's for your safety.

Vil knows how crazy fans can be, I believe he had some stalker, and you can't tell me otherwise.

Vil would be one of the people who wouldn't cave into your carving.

If he deems it as unhealthy, he will refuse to give it to you.

He will be here for you during your mood swings.

About Vil's dad, I don't think he would mind too much. His son is responsible enough for him to trust Vil's decision. He is also excited to be a grandpa.

Will come with you to your doctor's appointment. He isn't there at every appointment but he tries.

Bonus childbirth

Vil is both in awe and worried. Giving birth is both the most beautiful and strong event he could witness.

He would hold your hand, staying by your side every time

Vil would hold the baby with a tender smile. He doesn't say it but you can see he loves the baby already. It's the most beautiful child.

Idia Shroud

Idia would be happy and MORTIFIED. For him, it's a miracle he was able to pull you.

And now, you say you are pregnant???

He fainted.

Idia is happy but it's too much emotion for him.

He is going to be a father... A FATHER! Idia never thought you would be interested by him, let alone share your blood and have a child with him.

He believes he ruined your life and feel guilty for being happy for it. You will not leave him when you are with his child... Right?

Will ask you if you want to keep the child or not. (Please don't say you don't want it, his heart gonna break.)

You will have to reassure him that you are happy and actually want the baby.

Please hug, Idia! He need a lot of PDA.

Idia will work his courage up, to accompany you.

He will be worried about you and the baby. It's to the point he made something to monitor you and the baby. Or just ask Ortho to keep an eye on you.

Any abnormal change would warrant a panic attack in Idia. He is an overthinker.

Mood swings is a nightmare for both of you.

Idia is an anxious guys, so he would cry.

Any carving you have is like a game where he have to be fast.

His family would welcome you with open arms.

They did a background check, surviving 6 Overblot in a row is incredible. Mind if they study you?

Anyway, you are totally welcomed in the Shroud family.

Don't worry about the wedding after the baby's birth. They will take care of it.

Idia's family is wealthy and he is the heir. So don't spare the details for the baby room.

Bonus Childbirth

Idia would go with you in the delivery room.

I can see him cry like he is the one giving birth.

Poor guy tried to focus on you and only you. Holding your hand tightly, kissing your forehead while whispering encouraging word.

But the moment he glanced at what was happening down there?

He is gone! Idia fainted from horror and shock.

How could you support that? It must hurt!

Did you see the size of his head? He is shocked.

Well was, because he fainted.

Malleus Draconia

I'm going to cheat for this one as I'm planning on doing a Yandere headcanon/one shot involving a pregnant reader. (A personal request of a close friend.)

So I will just link it here.

[shuavez]

litany 𓄧 k.mg

i. tie a cherry.

summary 𓄧 every oath has a cost. every touch has a consequence. sent deep undercover into one of the city’s most illicit vampire clubs, two detectives must navigate the delicate balance between duty and desire — and survive the consequences when pretending stops feeling like pretending.

and some hungers, once fed, are impossible to starve.

tags 𓄧 detective!au, vampire!mingyu x human!reader. slow-ish burn. fake dating. friends/coworkers to lovers. various svt members/idols.

warnings 𓄧 mentions of blood, death, feeding. 

wc. 5.3k.

You’re not entirely sure when this case became your case. One minute it was a ghost rumor, something passed down through precinct whispers—Velvet Eden, the kind of place that exists on the fringe of the city and the law. The next, a body turned up in Sector 6, hollowed out and discarded like trash. And suddenly, the case had a heartbeat.

Organized Crime called in Homicide. Your name was already circled in red ink. You barely blinked. That’s the job, after all. Blood, bodies, and bad decisions. Cases involving vampires usually landed in V-CAD, the Vampire Crimes & Affairs Division, but this one bled into too many departments.

You’ve worked vampire cases before—civil disputes, rogue feeders, one or two cold-body cleanups. But Velvet Eden isn’t that. It’s something older. More indulgent. Less law, more religion.

Still, you weren’t expecting this.

You weren’t expecting a private, invitation-only vampire sex club with a feeding floor and velvet-lined red rooms. You weren’t expecting to slip into the role of arm candy for a six-foot-two vampire with a face like sin and a bite to match. And you definitely weren’t expecting him—Kim Mingyu. Calm. Commanding. All lean lines and quiet power. The kind of man who could make a room stop breathing just by walking into it.

He doesn’t feel like a stranger. You’ve crossed paths on enough cases for that. He’s always been kind, grounded, smart. The kind of vampire who makes you forget to be afraid.

But none of that changes the fact that in ten minutes, you’ll be walking into a club full of predators, pretending to be his prey.

And he’ll have to feed from you.

Your stomach flips, but you keep your face neutral as street lights streak gold across the windshield. Mingyu’s driving—one hand on the wheel, the other resting lazily on the gearshift. He’s dressed in all black, shirt unbuttoned just enough to get one thinking. The silk catches the light. His scent—smoke, earth, and something inherently warm—bleeds into the leather interior of the car. You’re hyper aware of every inch between you. It feels deliberate. Loaded.

You glance out the window and try not to think about the heat climbing the back of your neck. The dress you’re in—deep wine, cut high on the thigh, open at the back—was chosen for how it clings, how it tempts. You’re not used to dressing for hunger.

“—you hearing me?” Jeonghan’s voice slices through the quiet, speakerphone crackling from the center console. You jump, just slightly.

“Loud and clear,” you answer smoothly, though you hadn’t caught half of what he said.

“You’re about to enter a location with zero backup,” he says. “But this isn’t a takedown. You’re gathering intel, building rapport, and staying alive. Right now, as fresh meat, you’re not to leave Mingyu’s side and he’s not to leave yours. Understood?”

“Understood,” you mutter.

“Hey.” Jeonghan’s voice softens. “If anything feels off, pull out. No hesitation. No pride. Just say the word.”

Beside you, Mingyu shifts slightly, glancing over at you. “You won’t be alone in there,” he says, voice low. Steady. Reassuring in a way you feel in your chest. You meet his eyes for a half-second longer than you mean to.

You nod. “I know.”

And the thing is—you do. You’re not afraid of him.

“We’ll mingle for a little, suss out the vibe and you can get a feel of the place. I’m warning you, it’s fucking weird, dude. You’re pretty good at commanding a room, but even I get on edge here. You’re probably gonna see a lot of things you’d rather not, but you have to keep your cool or they’ll smell it on you.” Mingyu fixes you with a quick, firm look before returning his attention to the road, jaw tense.

Then Jeonghan chimes in again through the phone, voice crackling slightly, “Head to a Red Room when you’re both ready, and do your thing.” There’s a beat of silence, and then he stutters. “Just do whatever you have to do to pass off that you’re a real couple. Don’t be shy.”

The line clicks off. Silence floods the car for a moment before Mingyu speaks again, quieter this time.

“Hey, uh…” he clears his throat, fingers tightening around the wheel, “I know this is kinda personal, and I swear I wouldn’t ask unless it was important, but…” He glances at you again, expression serious now, if not a little sheepish. “When was your last cycle?”

Your head tilts. “What?”

“Your period. I just need to know if it’s close. Not to be weird. It’s just—” he exhales sharply, embarrassed but pushing through, “Fresh blood, especially menstrual, it hits different to some of them. Like sharks in water. And your baseline scent’s already gonna be… kind of a problem.”

You frown. “Kind of a problem?”

Mingyu hesitates. You see it in the way his jaw flexes, in the pause before he answers.

“Nothing to worry about right now. You’re just… you smell different, that’s all. Good different,” he adds quickly, then curses under his breath. “Not good like that—I mean, objectively. Biologically. I’ll handle it. Just… I need to know if I should be ready to get a little more aggressive with anyone who gets too close.”

You sit back against the seat, arms crossed loosely over your chest. “I’m about a week out. Why?”

“That’s good,” he murmurs, nodding. “Less likely to trigger any, uh… complications.” Another beat. “And I won’t let anyone touch you. No matter what.”

There’s something about the way he says it that sends a little pulse through your stomach. Something protective. Something possessive. But it’s quiet between you again, save for the hum of tires on the asphalt and the low rhythm of your heart starting to thrum harder in your ears.

Velvet Eden doesn’t look like the kind of place that would house everything you’ve been warned about. On the outside, it’s sleek and minimalist — black marble facade, no signage, just a long awning and two impossibly tall bouncers standing like gargoyles at the doors. You can’t hear any music from the street, but the air smells faintly metallic and sweet, like someone poured sugar into rust.

Mingyu circles the car into a private lot tucked to the side, a space clearly reserved for regulars or VIPs. He glances at you once more before he cuts the engine, his jaw tense again, unreadable in the low amber wash of the dashboard lights.

“You good?”

You nod, but your fingers curl tighter around one another in your lap.

“You look good,” he says then, more gently. He doesn’t say it like a compliment. He says it like a reassurance. Like armor.

Your dress is a deep, wine red — sleek, skin-hugging. It dips low at the back, a single strap across your shoulders like a whisper. Mingyu had said something about blending in, about being convincing, and you figured that looking like the kind of girl a vampire would die to touch wouldn’t hurt.

Your perfume clings to your skin in layers — burning cherry and palo santo — warm, smoky, almost edible. Mingyu had commented on it in the car earlier, murmuring, “You got a thing for cherries or something? The dress, the perfume…” and you’d laughed it off, heart thrumming like a live wire.

Inside, the club is thick with it. The heat. The scent. The sound.

Everything is dim and red — not in the trashy, cheap kind of way, but in that disorienting, luxe way that makes you feel like you’ve stepped into another world entirely. Smoke coils in thin tendrils from incense trays tucked into shadowed alcoves. There’s velvet everywhere — couches, walls, the bodies of dancers. A pulse of low music hums from the speakers, winding, slow, heavy with bass. Something deep and sensual is playing. It moves like honey — like hips swaying under silk.

And the smell… Blood. Sex. Sweat. Clove smoke. Burned sugar. You can taste it on your tongue before anyone even speaks to you.

Mingyu’s hand finds the small of your back as he guides you through the crowd. His palm is warm and heavy, protective, but not possessive. You know he’s playing the part — the tall, slow-moving, effortlessly dominant boyfriend — but the way he hovers at your shoulder, the way he watches everyone who even glances at you for a second too long… that’s not acting.

You’re not the only human in here, but you might be the only one who isn’t visibly owned. Others are draped over laps, bent at the neck for easy access, some seated dazed and blissed out on silk cushions while their partners — vampires, all of them — sip at their throats or wrists like they’re nursing a fine wine. And the vampires — gods, they’re beautiful. Ethereal. Almost unreal. Pale or dark-skinned, pierced or painted, wrapped in leather or lace or nothing at all. All sleek limbs and fanged smiles, eyes glowing faintly in the shadows.

You realize, slowly, that you are being watched.

The kind of watching that makes the hairs on your arms rise. The kind that pins you open like a butterfly.

Mingyu leans down, lips brushing the shell of your ear. “Keep walking. Keep your chin up. Let them think you belong to me.”

You do. And with that thought comes a sharp, unexpected heat curling low in your belly.

The bar glows a sultry amber, lit from beneath so that every bottle looks like it’s filled with gold, or blood. You lean lightly against it, hyper-aware of the press of Mingyu’s presence just behind your right shoulder. His stance is casual — one hand resting on the edge of the bar, the other just barely brushing the side of your waist — but you can feel the unspoken claim in it. Like he’s drawing a line in the sand with his body alone.

Two menus slide across the bar top.

One is printed in gold foil — cocktails, wine, flavored syrups, things with whimsical names like Sunset on Rue and Liquid Kink. The other menu is black — matte, velvet-touch paper, with minimalist script and coded language: A-negative, fresh. AB+, altered. RH-null, euphoric. You don’t let yourself look at that one too long.

“I’ll have a zero amaretto sour,” you say when the bartender — a tall vampire with golden irises and a scar over his top lip — raises a brow in question.

Mingyu hums low behind you, a small sound, almost lost beneath the beat of the music. “Cherries again,” he murmurs, voice teasing. “You’ve got a type.”

You glance at him. “Or a brand.”

He smiles, and it’s too soft for this place. Something about the crescent curve of his eyes when he looks at you makes your pulse do something stupid. Play the part, you remind yourself. Girlfriend. Established. Not nervous.

The bartender glides your drink over, and Mingyu steps in a fraction closer — not crowding, but enough that you can feel the warmth of his chest brushing your back when you move. Enough that no one would dare slip in between you.

He leans in, not speaking, just watching the room over your shoulder. His lips are close enough to brush your temple. “You’re doing good,” he says quietly. “Natural.”

You sip the cocktail. Sweet, tart, a little sharp on the back of your tongue — a distraction, but only just.

You feel Mingyu’s presence behind you, steady and warm, his breath grazing the curve of your jaw as he surveys the crowd.

Then, on impulse — maybe it’s the drink, or the heat in your blood, or the need to take the edge off this place — you reach for the maraschino cherry skewered on your garnish pick.

“Watch this,” you murmur, just loud enough for him to hear.

He blinks, the corner of his mouth twitching. “What?”

You pop the cherry into your mouth, chewing slowly, then slide the stem between your lips.

Mingyu goes quiet.

You don’t say anything—just meet his eyes for a long beat as your tongue works quietly, the stem moving behind your teeth with practiced ease. He leans in slightly, brow furrowing, and it takes him a few seconds too long to realize what you’re doing.

When the stem reappears, it’s knotted. Perfectly. Sitting balanced on the tip of your tongue like a challenge.

You flash him a quick smile and set it on your napkin with delicate precision.

Mingyu huffs a breath through his nose — surprised, impressed, something darker curling behind his eyes.

“That’s a dangerous skill to have,” he murmurs.

You shrug, casual. “Crowd pleaser.”

And that’s when a new voice slips in — smooth, low, and edged in silk.

“So this is her.”

The woman standing beside you is tall, statuesque in midnight-blue velvet. Her skin is flawless, eyes the color of aged wine.

She doesn’t address Mingyu first. She addresses you.

“That was clever,” she purrs, her voice dripping with amusement. “Not many humans know how to use their tongues quite so… effectively.”

Mingyu doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move. “Alba,” he says with a polite nod. “Didn’t think you worked Fridays.”

“I don’t. I heard your girl would be here.” Alba’s eyes don’t leave yours. She offers a hand — fingers tipped in glossy black. “Welcome. It’s always nice to see someone… unspoiled.” The words drip with double meaning.

You take her hand. Her grip is cool, elegant, a touch too long. You can feel her evaluating you — scenting you, even — something primal and calculated behind the pleasantries. “She’s got good taste,” Alba continues, eyes flicking down to your dress, your drink. “Sweet with a little bite. Fitting.”

Mingyu lets out a soft huff, amused, but you feel the way his stance subtly shifts, tightening around you. A human might miss it — the way his pupils dilate, the faint flex of his jaw — but you’ve been trained to read detail. He doesn’t like this.

“She’s mine,” he says lightly, but there’s steel beneath the velvet.

Alba smiles. “So you say.” Then she winks at you. “Be careful in here, sweetness. Pretty girls like you don’t always leave with the ones they came in with.”

And just like that, she’s gone — gliding back into the crowd, swallowed by smoke and velvet and music.

You exhale slowly, glass still half-raised to your lips.

“She’s a friend,” Mingyu mutters, and then, quieter: “Sort of. Also one of the club’s top-tier feeders. If she took a liking to you, it’s ‘cause she’s sizing you up.”

You nod once, but your throat is dry.

Mingyu’s fingers find your wrist briefly, grounding. “We’ll stay here a little longer. Then we go to the Red Room.”

Your tongue flicks over your bottom lip, catching the last of the amaretto, and his gaze catches there for half a beat before he looks away again. A group of vampires has entered, sharp suits and hungrier eyes, and you feel the way Mingyu subtly repositions — just enough to block you from view.

Then, casually, he slides a folded twenty across the bar.

The bartender — still all cool disinterest — takes it without a word, disappears beneath the counter, and returns with a small black key. It gleams in the low light, matte and ominous.

Mingyu palms it smoothly, slipping it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

He leans close, his voice pitched low enough that only you can hear it. “Red Room three. It’s the farthest from the stage. Less eyes.”

A ripple runs down your spine — equal parts anticipation and nerves. This is it. Showtime.

You drain the rest of your drink and set the glass down gently.

Mingyu’s hand rests at the small of your back, guiding, anchoring. “You ready?”

You don’t answer right away. Instead, you glance at him — at the subtle edge of restraint in his posture, the flicker of something darker in his eyes, like he’s been holding his breath since you walked in.

Then you say, evenly, “Lead the way, boyfriend.”

The walk from the bar to the Red Room feels like it stretches on forever. Music thumps low and thick, bass vibrating up through your heels and into your spine. The hallway is bathed in red light, the kind that plays tricks with your eyes—every shadow, every silhouette, a temptation or a threat. Velvet-lined walls soak up the sound like insulation, but the air still hums with sex and something darker. The scent is overwhelming: sweat, perfume, blood. Cherry and palo santo clings to your own skin, warm and sweet in your nose.

Mingyu keeps a hand at the small of your back as you walk. Not quite possessive, not quite casual. Protective. His fingertips are firm through the satin of your dress, guiding you gently but insistently. You feel the weight of his body heat even without touch. You’re not sure if the butterflies in your stomach are nerves or anticipation.

The door to the Red Room clicks open when the key slides home.

Inside, it’s plush and dim—more boudoir than interrogation chamber, but the camera in the corner ruins any illusion of privacy. A velvet bed, dark as blood, is the centerpiece. There’s a chaise in the corner, a bar cart with cut crystal glasses, and heavy curtains hanging like stage drapes over a wall-sized mirror. The air is cooler than the club floor, but heavier somehow. You can feel it sitting on your skin like humidity.

Mingyu steps in first, eyes scanning the corners instinctively. He’s done this before. You can tell by the way he moves, unhurried but deliberate. He sits on the edge of the bed, arms propping him up behind him. His dark eyes flick up to the camera, then back to you.

He mouths something. Cameras.

You nod. Barely. So small it could be a blink.

He pats his thigh, an invitation—brief and respectful. “Is this okay?” he asks aloud, like it’s just part of the role, but you hear the softness underneath.

You step toward him and straddle his lap. His hands settle lightly on your hips, anchoring you there without pressure. The warmth of his body is ridiculous, like standing too close to a fire. You’re already keyed up and you haven’t even done anything yet.

You can feel your pulse in your fingertips, even though it’s faint. His hands are splayed across your lower back now, his body taut like a bow under you. He’s still pretending to lounge, but there’s nothing relaxed about the way he watches you—eyes heavy-lidded, mouth parted, chest rising and falling like it costs him effort to breathe.

He leans in, mouth brushing just under your jaw, murmuring into the soft skin there. “We’ve got audio,” he breathes. “How hard do we want to sell it?”

You know the answer.

“Hard.”

You lift a hand slowly, brushing your fingers along his cheek. It’s warm there. Solid. Strangely human. He looks up at you like he’s trying to memorize your face. Curiosity catches in your throat. “Can I see them?” you ask quietly. “Your fangs.”

Mingyu huffs a laugh under his breath, low and amused, and parts his lips. It’s not theatrical—no giant vampire daggers—but the twin points are sharper, longer than a human’s. Elegant. Clean.

You brush a thumb across one. He shivers slightly.

You don’t know why you ask. Maybe it’s the tension. Maybe it’s the camera. Maybe it’s the fact that if he’s going to drink from you, you want to offer something that’s yours to give.

“Can I kiss you?”

He nods. “Please.”

It starts gentle. Tentative. Curious. But you lean in again and it’s like a switch flips. His hands slip up your back and yours tangle in his hair. Your mouths move together like you’ve done this a hundred times. The kiss turns deeper, hungrier—less about performance, more about something that feels too real.

He kisses like he was made for it. Like he’s trying to memorize you in pieces. The way your lip catches on his. The sweet citrus of your drink. The scent of cherries lingering between your neck and shoulder.

His hands slide over your thighs, your hips, your spine—firm, reverent. You thread your fingers into his hair, tug just a little, and he gasps against your mouth like it’s the first breath he’s taken in years.

And then he pulls back just enough to look at you.

“Can I feed off you?” You nod. 

“No,” he says, voice rough now, unsteady. “I need to hear it.”

Your lips part, your throat working around the heat curling low in your belly. You feel flushed, dizzy, his presence overwhelming every nerve. “Feed off me,” you say, voice barely audible but clear.

He watches you for a moment longer, then shifts his mouth to your neck. He keeps eye contact as long as he can, nose brushing your pulse point. His fangs pierce you with the precision of a surgeon—just a second of pain—and then—

Bliss.

It’s like heat unfurls in your veins. A deep, low-burning euphoria pulses through your limbs, wrapping you in cotton. You’re not sure what noise leaves your mouth but it’s a moan, helpless and heady. Mingyu groans against your throat, low and reverent, like he wasn’t expecting you to taste like this.

Your hands fist in his shirt, dragging him closer as he drinks. You feel his body tense under yours, like he’s trying to keep from shaking. He only feeds for a minute or two, but when he pulls away, he looks absolutely wrecked. Blood on his lips, lips parted. Eyes dark. You slump against him, dizzy and high and somehow… warm.

You slump against him. Dazed. High on him. He wraps his arm around your waist and lets his weight fall back onto the bed, taking you with him.

Neither of you speak for a while. You’re not sure either of you can.

“You okay?” he whispers.

You don’t answer right away. Just lay a hand across his chest and stare at the ceiling, your body buzzing with the aftershock.

“I think,” you finally say, voice hoarse and half-drunk on whatever the hell just happened, “I just saw God.”

Mingyu huffs a laugh, more breath than sound, the warm vibration of it rumbling against your cheek. He wraps his arm tighter around your waist, drawing you closer like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“That tends to be the case,” he murmurs. You don’t think you can move. It takes a concerning amount of brainpower just to keep breathing. To remember that you’re supposed to be undercover. That you’re not supposed to actually melt into your partner’s body like you were sculpted to fit there.

You peel your face off the crook of his neck after a minute, blinking blearily at the ceiling. Your voice is rough around the edges when you manage to push out, “You… do this a lot?” It’s not really jealousy. It’s curiosity. Maybe the tiniest sliver of something sharper under your tongue.

Mingyu stiffens almost imperceptibly under you, just for a second. Then his thumb moves in a slow, soothing arc along the small of your back.

“No,” he says simply. “Not like this.”

You shift slightly to look at him. His face is open, honest.

“I’m careful about who I feed off,” he continues, voice low and even. “Consenting donors. Only when I need it. Never like—” he cuts himself off, like the words are too heavy. “Never like this. Velvet Eden isn’t somewhere I would have chosen to set foot in, if not for….” He trails off, eyes flickering briefly to where the camera watches over the moment.

You realize, as the words sink in, that this isn’t normal for him either. That he’s feeling the same rawness buzzing under his skin.

He keeps talking, maybe to fill the charged silence.

“I don’t like the way most vampires treat feeding.” His jaw ticks, a tiny sign of frustration. “It’s supposed to be… mutual. Respected.”

Your chest tightens a little at the way he says it, like it’s something sacred to him. Not just biology. Not just hunger.

You’re silent for a moment, absorbing it, feeling his heart beat steady against your palm. It’s slower, duller than yours. Just barely there. “I’m glad it’s you,” you whisper before you can second-guess yourself.

Mingyu smiles then, soft and crooked, and it’s devastating. His hand finds yours where it rests over his heart, intertwining your fingers like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Me too,” he says.

You lie there a little longer, both of you pretending you’re just resting. Both pretending you didn’t just tear a seam in something vital.

The ride back is… quiet. Not awkward. Just different. Like you’re both holding something fragile between you and neither of you wants to drop it.

You sit with your head leaned slightly against the window. The city passes by in soft golds and blues, headlights flickering across your skin. Mingyu’s hand rests on the steering wheel, the other flexing on his thigh like he’s thinking about something but won’t say it.

You speak first.

“We’re going to have to go back soon.”

“Yeah,” he replies, glancing over. “Not for a few days, though. It’ll look too eager if we come back too quick.”

You nod.

When he pulls up in front of your building, he doesn’t even hesitate. Parks the car. Gets out. Walks you to the front. You fish your keys out of your coat pocket, hesitating at the lobby door.

“I’m fine,” you tell him.

“I know,” he says, but doesn’t move.

Then, after a pause: “Can I come up? Just to make sure you’re okay. No weird shit, I swear.” He grins, trying to soften it. “Scout’s honor.” You laugh, and it sounds more real than anything has all night.

Inside, you flick on the light in your small but warm apartment. Mingyu lingers by the door. Doesn’t sit. Just looks around like he’s cataloging every detail. Like knowing this part of your world is another way to protect it.

You toe off your shoes. Toss your coat over the arm of the couch. Mingyu’s still standing, hands in his pockets, watching you gently like he’s trying not to spook a deer.

“You can sit,” you tell him. He does. Perches on the edge of the armchair like a man not sure how long he’s staying. “I meant it earlier,” you say, voice quieter now. “I’m glad it’s you.”

Mingyu meets your gaze. For once, he doesn’t deflect with a joke. Doesn’t tease. “Me too.”

The silence stretches. Comfortable. Dangerous.

When he gets up to leave, his fingers graze yours when he hands you the coat you forgot to hang. And the look in his eyes—heavy, unreadable—sticks with you even after the door clicks shut behind him.

He doesn’t start the car right away.

Just sits there, fingers curled loosely around the wheel, the engine off, the streetlamp casting gold slats across the dash. Your building looms to his right. He watches your window for a moment, but the blinds are drawn.

The taste of you still lingers in his mouth.

Not just the blood—though God, that alone was enough to scramble something vital in him—but you. The way you looked at him. Touched him. Said his name like it meant something. The way you curled into him after, without fear.

He shuts his eyes and breathes in deep through his nose, trying to clear his head. It doesn’t work.

You’re still there.

Not just on his tongue. Not just on his skin. But somewhere deeper. Under the sternum. Behind the ribs. Burrowed into a place he didn’t realize was vulnerable.

This was supposed to be routine. Strategic. Controlled. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Mingyu opens his eyes again. Stares out at the empty street. Taps his thumb against the wheel once, twice, like he’s weighing something he doesn’t even want to name.

Then he finally exhales. Just once. Quiet and shaky. And starts the car.

You wake up warm. Heavy-limbed and a little tangled in the sheets, like you’ve been caught mid-dream. The echoes of it cling to you — soft touches, parted mouths, someone whispering your name against your skin.

Mingyu.

You drag in a breath, sharp and sudden, and shove yourself upright just as your phone vibrates violently against the nightstand.

Jeonghan’s name flashes across the screen.

Then again. And again.

By the third call, you fumble to answer, croaking out something close to human.

“There’s been another body,” Jeonghan says without preamble. You can hear the scrape of tires on wet asphalt, the low mutter of radios in the background. “Get up. Get dressed. Mingyu’s on his way to pick you up.”

He hangs up before you can even curse him out.

You throw yourself into clothes on autopilot — slacks, a thick knitted sweater, the softest thing you own that still passes for professional. Your whole body feels wrung out and hazy, muscles sore in places you didn’t know you had. Not painful, exactly. Just… different.

By the time you’re pulling on your jacket, headlights cut across the front of your building.

Mingyu’s SUV idles at the curb, a faint halo of condensation blooming from the exhaust. He climbs out as you approach, tall and solid against the pale wash of streetlamps, and holds out a coffee cup.

“Dirty chai,” he says. His voice is quiet, like he’s not sure how loud the world should be around you yet. “Jeonghan said it’s your favorite.”

You take it, fingers brushing his. He’s not cold. Somehow you thought he would be — vampire and all — but the warmth of him seeps into your skin like secondhand sunlight.

“And these,” he adds, pressing a couple of small sachets into your other hand. Liquid iron. “They’ll help.”

You manage a half-smile. “You’re good at this,” you murmur.

He shrugs, almost shy. “You did the hard part.”

The drive to the scene is short, cut with the soft shuffle of the radio and the occasional tap of Mingyu’s thumb against the steering wheel. Neither of you says much. The air feels weighted, taut with things unspoken.

It’s still dark when you arrive, the city trapped in that brittle pre-dawn chill that bites through every seam of your clothes. You huddle deeper into your sweater as you approach the perimeter, where yellow crime scene tape flutters weakly in the breeze.

Jeonghan is already waiting, gloved up and scowling into his clipboard.

Mingyu falls naturally into step just behind your shoulder, close enough that you feel him there without needing to look.

“Female victim, mid-twenties, no ID yet,” Jeonghan says as you join him. He barely glances up. “ME’s still working on the preliminary cause of death but… it looks familiar.”

You duck under the tape, shoes crunching on damp leaves. The alley is narrow, hemmed in by aging brick and chain link fencing, and the body is slumped against a dumpster.

You glove up quickly and move closer.

Her skin is bloodless. Sickly pale. Clothes torn and stained. But it’s the marks at her throat that stop you cold — two perfect punctures, just above the collarbone.

Your stomach twists sharply.

You glance sideways at Mingyu — and find him already there, studying the scene with an intensity that borders on feral. His mouth is a thin line. His shoulders rigid.

He steps in carefully between the forensic photographer and the ME, crouching low. You watch as he scans, gloved fingers deftly poking through the victim’s scattered personal effects. It’s methodical, clinical — but there’s something under it too, something sharper, heavier.

The crease in Mingyu’s brown deepens as he pulls a wallet out of her left coat pocket, flipping it open.

“Name’s Min Seo-yeon,” he says, voice tight. He hesitates — just a fraction — before pulling a small slip of glossy card from the wallet’s inner pocket.

Velvet Eden.

Membership card.

The blood in your veins goes ice-cold.

next chapter ↝ ii. evidence of absence.

click here for tag list submission / removal.

[franollie]

14 Characteristics of Fascism by Lawrence Britt

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

Supremacy of the Military Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

Rampant Sexism The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

Controlled Mass Media Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

Obsession with National Security Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

Religion and Government are Intertwined Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

Corporate Power is Protected The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

Labor Power is Suppressed Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .

Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

Obsession with Crime and Punishment Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

Rampant Cronyism and Corruption Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

Fraudulent Elections Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

[elbiotipo]

The most annoying thing about generic medieval fantasy slop is that most of it has basically nothing to do with real European history. Tolkien's stuff was based on folklore and myth from anglo-saxon England, so the omission of things like religion and social classes makes sense. But most modern DnD-like fantasy stuff is based on worlds that are much less mythical, and yet they're all exactly the same while having not much to do with real europe. There's no notable distinction between the names and languages of people from one country and another, they're all random european names that come from everywhere from Ireland to portugal to greece to Novgorod, with a few made up european-sounding names with no thought behind them. The exact way social stratification varied, like how some serfs from the HRE would be trained as knights and given valued positions as the emperor's Ministeriales; or the difference between serfs, free peasants who rent, free peasants who have common land, and gentry; or the antipathy between HRE Princes and the Free Cities' elites; or that the centralisation of the governments of the iberian crowns that was made possible by an increase in burghers who studied Roman Law and became Civil Servants; or how feudal lords didn't do much administration and were rarely even literate; is all completely ignored in favour of a worldbuilding-wise nonsensical stylistic mish-mash of anglo-saxon England, Arthurian Britain as imagined by the French, ancient-regime france and the late-medieval Hanse. I wanted to ask you something but I got lost in the rant, sorry

Don't matter, you can keep talking to me like that all night if you wish, in fact, feel free to get more comfortable over there

ahem

I'm very tired of the Middle Ages, even with well researched settings, I believe we reached a point of saturation. I do wonder when this omnipresence of the Middle Ages in fantasy came from, because while there are undertones of it in Tolkien for example, it doesn't scream Middle Ages (more of Arthurian and Anglo-Saxon legend though) I have a feeling there is more to this relatively Middle Ages obsession, because it's even widespread in pop-culture in a way that I feel other time periods aren't.

But what bothers me is the same as you Anon, the fact there is a lot of interesting things to explore about the Middle Ages, and instead it's treated as a shallow aesthetic, as a monolith that can be just used as decoration for your story. Because that's in fact my main complaint with worldbuilding, when cultures are treated as interchangeable monoliths, and then every setting is the same; and if your setting is generic and flat, it means that you could switch your characters to any other setting and that makes them generic and flat. And what is interesting about Middle Ages Europe is that people back then, like any past societies, had very different worldviews and very different ways of organizing their lives. You wouldn't just exchange a knight into a modern soldier or cop and it would be the same. The life of people back then was different, and I would expect a fantasy work inspired by that to reflect it.

Many don't seem to want to engage with that though. They want the aesthetics without any thought about the societies, culture, economics, dynamics that were there. And to be honest, at this point, those aesthetics are not even that compelling anymore.

[whencyclopedia]

The Gifts of Isis: Women's Status in Ancient Egypt

An inscription on an Egyptian papyrus dating from the 2nd century CE relates that the goddess Isis, bestowing gifts on humanity at the beginning of time, gave as much power and honor to women as she did to men. This brief passage reflects not only the ancient Egyptian value of balance, but the high-status women enjoyed in ancient Egypt.

Although they never had the same rights as males, an Egyptian woman could own property in her own name and hold professions that gave her economic freedom from male relatives. Girls whose families could afford the tuition were educated along with boys beginning around the age of 7 and many went on to professional careers. Women could serve as clergy, practice medicine, handle money, travel alone for business purposes, and make real estate transactions. Most women, however, were groomed for marriage, became homemakers, and were taught by their mothers to cook, clean, sew, and weave.

A wife was entitled to one third of any property that she owned jointly with her husband and, on her death, could will her property to anyone she wished, male or female. Egyptian women were equal in the court system and could act as witnesses, plaintiffs, or defendants (as one would understand those terms today). Women were accountable for crimes they committed and would have to stand trial the same as any man.

The equality of the “gifts of Isis” did not mean, however, that women had completely equal rights with men; only that they were regarded as equals under the law. Egyptian society was patriarchal and hierarchical but, even so, offered women more rights than almost every other ancient civilization. This paradigm was observed from at least the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150-c. 2613 BCE) until the fourth century and the rise of Christianity.

Education

Until the age of around 4, boys and girls were kept under the care of their mothers, usually residing in the women’s quarters of a home. After that age, boys began to learn their father’s trade or were sent to school, depending on the social class of the family. Girls remained with their mothers unless the father chose (and could afford) to send her to school. The Egyptian curriculum included astronomy, geography, mathematics, music, medical applications, reading, religion, writing, and physical education, among other subjects. Scholar Rosalie David comments:

Royal tutors taught some of the nobles’ children together with the king’s offspring, and future officials for the home and foreign services attended special training schools. Despite this hereditary pattern in the professions, some children of humble origin were able to receive education alongside the sons of the wealthy and powerful and to pursue important careers. However, education was not free, and each family was expected to pay in kind; in country areas, they would have offered the produce of the land. (205)

The” children of humble origin” could include girls if their parents could afford the cost and recognized either a certain aptitude or family need. An example might be a business the father wished to keep in the family and so wanted his daughters educated as accountants or supervisors, knowing he could trust them, but there is documentation of highly educated women who became career professionals such as Merit-Ptah, the royal court’s chief physician c. 2700 BCE and the first female doctor in world history known by name.

Women’s opportunities in ancient Egypt were determined by their social class, just as men’s were, having nothing to do with gender. Scholar Barbara Watterson notes:

The fact that, unlike women of most ancient civilizations and also of some modern countries, ancient Egyptian women enjoyed the same rights under the law as ancient Egyptian men, goes a long way towards explaining their relatively high social position. “You have made a power for the women equal to that of the men,” words written in praise of Isis, and quoted in a papyrus of the second century AD, might have been written with this in mind; and the point is one that many scholars have commented upon. The de jure rights of an ancient Egyptian woman depended on her class in society and not upon her sex. The king of Egypt was chief lawgiver and upholder of the law; and in theory everyone in Egypt, both male and female, noble and peasant, was equal under the law and had the right of access to the king in order to obtain justice. In practice, as might be expected, some, notably the rich and powerful, were more equal than others. (34)

Although the opportunity under the law was there for women to receive an education, however, did not mean that every woman could afford to seize it and many, if not most, may not even have been aware of their rights. Egypt was, generally speaking, an insular society and, especially in rural areas, a young girl may not have known that education was even a possibility. There is ample evidence, however, through correspondence, that many women could read and write even among the majority who married and raised a family.

Continue reading...

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

A new law, Senate Bill 5375, signed by Democrat Governor Bob Ferguson, crosses a constitutional line that should alarm every American, regardless of political persuasion. The law requires clergy to report suspected child abuse or neglect, even when that knowledge comes from a religious confession.  The language is narrow and targeted. It makes clear that, unlike in most other states, there is no exemption for what is known as the “seal of the confessional”—a practice especially central to the Catholic faith, where a priest is bound by oath not to reveal what is said in confession, even under legal threat. The bill's author makes it clear that she has no regard for religious conviction, calling it little more than "conscience."

...

On Monday, the Justice Department announced it is opening a formal investigation into Washington’s new law, citing serious concerns that it violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. According to the DOJ press release, the Civil Rights Division, under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, is going after the state.  “[T]he law appears to single out clergy as not entitled to assert applicable privileges, as compared to other reporting professionals," Dhillon said in a statement. "We take this matter very seriously and look forward to Washington State’s cooperation with our investigation."

...

The Founders understood that if the government could control religion, it could control everything. That’s why the First Amendment doesn’t just protect free speech—it protects the free exercise of religion. And not just religion in the abstract, but the actual, day-to-day practice of faith, including confession, worship, and conscience. No matter how well-intentioned a law may be, if it violates the First Amendment, it cannot stand. And when that law forces someone to choose between their job and their God, it’s not only unconstitutional—it’s morally indefensible.

Glad to see the DOJ being used to protect the Constitution for once instead of trying to tear it apart.

[o7-17-1945]

14 characteristics of facisim:

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

Supremacy of the Military Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

Rampant Sexism The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

Controlled Mass Media Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

Obsession with National Security Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

Religion and Government are Intertwined Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

Corporate Power is Protected The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

Labor Power is Suppressed Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .

Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

Obsession with Crime and Punishment Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

Rampant Cronyism and Corruption Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

Fraudulent Elections Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

[girlactionfigure]

 THURSDAY HERO: Glagolev Family

It is undeniable that the role of Ukraine in the Holocaust was shameful. Almost a million Jews were killed by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, most of them shot and dumped into mass graves, many while still alive. Because of this ugly history, and at a time when the Ukraine itself is under threat, it is crucial to remember those Ukrainians who did the right thing, even at great risk to themselves.

Alexei Glagolev was a Ukrainian Orthodox priest who practiced his Christian faith despite severe persecution from the Soviet communists. Together with his wife Tatiana and their children, Alexei hid Jews during World War II, a heroic act that almost cost the Glagolevs their own lives.

Born in Kiev in 1901, Alexei was raised in a devout Eastern Orthodox home. His father Alexander was a priest and professor at Kiev Theological Academy and known to be an ally to Jews at a time of rampant antisemitism. Alexei, a stand-out student in high school, enrolled in the Theological Academy in 1919, and studied there until 1923, even after it was shut down by the Bolsheviks and the students had to study in secret. Alexei married Tatiana Bulashevich, the daughter of a sugar plant owner, in 1926. They had three children, Magdalina, Nikolei and Maria.

In 1932 the Glagolevs’ world was rocked when Alexei was arrested by the communists for “anti-revolutionary acts.” He was freed after a week in custody, but was designated a “cult leader” and deprived of civil liberties. With his professional options severely curtailed due to his status as leader of a cult (the Soviets considered all religions to be cults), he labored as a construction worker and security guard. From 1936 to 1940 he studied Physics and Mathematics at the Kiev Pedagogy Institute, while secretly running an underground church. After the war in Eastern Europe began, Alexei was ordained as a priest and served in the Pokrov Church in Kiev.

In October, 1941, Alexei’s sister-in-law asked him to help her brother’s Jewish wife, Izabella Mirkina, who was in imminent danger of being murdered by the Nazis. Without hesitation, Alexei and Tatiana determined to do whatever they could to help persecuted Jews, despite caring for their own three children in difficult wartime conditions. Tatiana gave Izabella her own identity card and baptism certificate. In his memoirs, Father Alexei wrote, “My wife almost paid with her own life for her reckless action. The Gestapo was going from flat to flat asking for papers, and when they found out that Tatiana didn’t have a passport, they were going to arrest her. Very few people returned to their homes after such arrests. We begged and managed to persuade them to leave her alone after a few witnesses confirmed her identity.”

Even with Tatiana’s papers Izabella was unable to escape and returned to the Glagolevs in desperate need of a place to hide. Alexei later said, “Tormented, we searched for a way to save her. What kind of Christians would we be if we refused this poor woman, who was reaching out to us and pleading for help?” The Glagolevs welcomed Izabella and her daughter Irina into their own modest home. When other desperate Jews approached for help, Alexei gave them fake baptism certificates and hid them in his church, even though hiding Jews was a capital crime punishable by execution. The Glagolev children also helped care for the Jews and keep them safe and fed.

In 1943 Alexei moved out of his home and into the hospital at Pokrov Monastery, where he lived beside the Jews he was helping. This was very risky because the Germans had forbidden Ukrainians to live in that part of Kiev. He and his son Nikolei were arrested in fall of that year and deported to Germany, where Alexei was brutally beaten by the Nazis. Somehow they managed to escape and returned to Ukraine after the liberation from Germany in 1944. In 1945, Alexei wrote a letter to Nikita Khrushchev, Secretary of the Ukraine, about the Jews he had saved.

Alexei continued working as a priest in the Pokrov church until it closed in 1960. He worked in several other churches despite increasing ill health caused by his brutal treatment while imprisoned by the Nazis. Alexei died in 1972. Journalist Sergei Kokurin wrote in an article about Alexei, “It is hard to understand to an average man the determination with which Glagolev went against the tide. In 1936 this fragile-looking intellectual publicly carried the cross taken off the Church of Nikola the Kind, and despite threats from the communists kept it in his flat. He was the only priest in Kiev who refused in April 1942 to hold a church service to celebrate Hitler’s birthday.”

Alexei, Tatiana and their children were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem in 1991. In January 2002, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Alexei Glagolev’s birth, a memorial plaque to him and his brave father Alexander was erected on the wall of the National University of Kiev.

For their heroic actions saving Jews, and for practicing their faith in defiance of Soviet persecution, we honor the Glagolev family as this week’s Thursday Heroes.

[centrally-unplanned]

I find myself interested in how ineffective integration was for Ireland vis a vis the UK in the 19th century. Certainly after 1832 voting reforms and the 1829 repeal of the ban on Catholics serving in parliament (UK-wide but ofc hitting Ireland the hardest), the Irish were at more-or-less equal footing as the English or Scots when it came to voting rights and the legal system (I think most people don't know this! They think the Irish couldn't vote in the 19th century!) And it wasn't even an "on paper" deal for voting rights, Irish were active in government (they even had Irish PMs, though ofc Protestant), by the latter half of the 19th century economic regulations were equalized, and they got within a hair's breadth of Home Rule before some munitinous unionists and WW1 got in the way. Despite the rep a lot of countries have gigantic ethnic minorities, and liberalism/equal franchise is actually pretty decent solution to that problem. Why didn't ~100 years of representation in the House of Commons, in the era when "nation building" was at its peak, not work?

From what I can tell, timing is of course part of it. At a simple level, World War One was such a nationalist godsend; it created the "radicalism cascade", a weakened center and domino revolutions inspiring everyone with a cause with a sort of temporal Schelling Point. Without it, would the 1912 Home Rule have just been implemented in due time, and Ireland would be like Scotland today? At a more structural level, the timing was particularly rough because WW1 was the tail end of the age of religion in Europe. So much of the conflict was over Protestant vs Catholic, and after WW2 if Ireland was united under one home rule government in the UK it's hard to imagine the secularizing age powering so much conflict. Had they "held on" a few more decades you could see it calming down.

I think those are true enough but you do gotta dig down to another level. "Protestant" wasn't really just a religion in Ireland - it was the Protestant Ascendancy, a ruling class of combined English settlers and converted Irish who, during the imperial era before the 19th century, built an entirely separate ruling class in Ireland. And it was a deep ruling class - Catholics were barred from voting in even the Dublin local parliament, they were banned from being judges or lawyers, inheritance law was rigged to privilege Protestant sons while converting away from the Anglican church came with property confiscations. Depending on what counts, at its peak in the 18th century up to 30% of the country had opportunistically converted, in a system rigged top to bottom against the Catholics.

Imagine for a second India was given representation in the House of Commons and given self-rule. Just ignore the distance and demography issues for now, this obviously wouldn't actually work, instead think about what that transition would look like. The British "Indian Civil Service" would have to be dismantled...which was like 10k brits vs over 100k Indians. Actual british military officers in the country in the 19th century was less than 100k - and it was a rotating duty, they didn't all live there. Dismantling that really isn't that hard! Those people just go home. The core that ruled was deeply integrated into the country, but it was tiny - the vast majority of India was ruled by Indians, in the name of the Crown. They would just...keep going but now be in parliament.

That was impossible in Ireland. Britain had actually launched one of the most intensive cultural conversion programs of a foreign nation around in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was nowhere close to the "light imperial touch" of elsewhere. But it never...worked. Instead it just built this gigantic ruling class, deeply enmeshed in both Ireland and England, completely dependent on that superiority economically, but seen as outsiders by the Catholic Irish majority. "Protestant & Catholic" is at least half a gigantic class war. And in the 19th century the UK brought "laissez faire liberalism" to Ireland and was like "look, we are equal now!" after two+ centuries of rigging the system. It was literally the "kicking out the ladder after climbing up" equality meme.

This was why Home Rule was so bitterly contested, why Protestant Anglo-Irish officers threatened to mutiny in 1912 if it was implemented. They understood that the first acts of Home Rule were going to be, essentially, reparations. Which the Irish almost surely deserved. But Imperial, Liberal, 19th Century UK was not going to give reparations to the fucking Irish, it was not ready to dismantle its dejure and defacto aristocrats in that way - or at least not until it was too late, some land reform for example did begin in 1903. Scotland didn't need it, Wales was too weak to fight it, but Ireland was in the sweet spot of being weak enough to be oppressed but strong enough to oppose it and fight back once the culture changed.

Or at least that is my current read, this is a low-confidence post. Curious to learn more!

[koheletgirl]

Would love to hear about how you became an anti Zionist!

before i get into this, i'd like to direct you to some of @jewishvitya's posts: [x] [x] [x]. i think their perspective is more relevant to the current situation than mine, and they address issues that i won't get into here because they had no personal relevance to me and you asked about me.

so my family is considered left-wing in israel. my parents voted for ha'avoda (israeli labor) in most elections i can remember, my mom even went "as far" as voting for meretz (as far as jewish parties go, they're the furthest to the left. still zionist though. didnt get enough votes to get into the knesset in the last elections). i grew up mourning rabin, hating bibi before i even knew who he was, believing that the settlements are the source of all israeli wrongdoings. in 2005 people would put ribbons on their cars – green if you support dismantling the settlements in gaza, orange if you're against it. we had a green ribbon. my family talks about the two states solution, about going back to the '67 borders. my grandmother jokingly calls herself a "leftist traitor", because that's how the right labels them.

i grew up with these values. i was taught to value human life, i was taught that all people were equal, i was taught that nationalism and imperialism were wrong. we weren't afraid of talking about the occupation. we weren't afraid of calling israeli fascism what it was. you might have heard about the democracy protests that have been happening in israel in the past year; my parents went every week.

i think this is why it took me so long to break out of my zionist worldview. people talk about zionism as if it's explicitly genocidal and built on racial supremacy, and i understand why (and agree with this to an extent), but you have to understand how absurd this idea sounds to people like my parents. they don't think zionism is the issue, they think the israeli right is. they acknowledge the evils of the settlers in the west bank, but they would never consider themselves settlers. it's very easy to see the wrongness of a person going to someone's house and violently kicking a family out of there because they believe it should belong to them (not a hypothetical, this is happening in the west bank as we speak); it's a lot harder to think that maybe everything you were taught to believe about your own right to be here was a lie from the beginning.

and that's the problem, that it is a lie. we are literally taught there was nothing here. swamps and malaria and sand and sand. the zionists built a civilization out of nothing. that's the story, that's the myth.

another aspect of this that's essential to acknowledge is the dehumanization of palestinians in israel, which is still prevalent in leftist circles, despite taking a different form. the israeli left Loves to make the distinction between palestinians and "israeli arabs" - a term that some people that i have met have used for themselves, and i am not the right person to speak on (i'm sure there's nuance here i'm unaware of). these people don't think of themselves as racists. they don't mind arabs in general, they only mind "the arabs who want to harm us". and it's so easy for them to pat themselves on the back because they have plenty of arab friends and they actively oppose the goverment's racism; but they all draw the line when it comes to palestinians. to them, once a person calls themselves a palestinian, it means they believe jews have no right to exist here. it means their existence is at odds with their own. they don't see palestinians as people, they see them as an agenda.

i was going to add a bit about how the israeli left's aversion to religion (which stems from the influence orthodox jews currently have on israeli law) plays into this, but this is getting really long.

anyway. for me, it wasn't a revelation as much as it was a willingness to open my eyes to the fact that everything i had been taught was a lie. it was always there, this doubt, this uneasiness. i knew that there were a lot of people over the world whose opinions i generally agreed with – except when it came to israel. it just took me a really long time to be able to doubt Everything.

because that required tearing down everything my worldview was based on, everything i had believed in, and it was scary. it's a very, very difficult thing to do. not knowing what to believe is horrifying. realizing you have believed in lies your whole life is horrifying.

but at some point i had to ask myself: how can i hate everything this country stands for, and not doubt what it's taught me? how can i know what i know about the idf, and still believe it's acting humanely? and the thing is, i still don't know what to believe a lot of the time. i still doubt everything, all the time. i'm critical of all of my beliefs, and i think it's good to be. but i listen, and i look, and i feel, and above all i try to be compassionate. and there's only one stance you can take here if you value human life above all else.

here are some israel-based organizations that influenced my political views and i recommend checking out (even though i have my disagreements with them): b'tselem, standing together, breaking the silence, mesarvot

[tamamita]

do you see israel as a secular or a religious issue

Religious one; the entire settler state is built on the supposition that the Jewish people have a divine right to settle there and expel the natives belonging to that region. The biblical and historical Israel was a religious kingdom, to which the Zionists may draw connections upon in history, religion and culture. Furthermore, there are various laws in Israel that are explicitly religious in civil matters, such as marriage, housing, social, public affairs and exclusive rights not enjoyed by other communities, such as law of return. There is no absolute equality between religions in fact, with the religion of the majority playing a role in public life, despite the supposed respect for freedom of conscience and religion. Israel's foundational issue is that it lacks an intergrated consitution, because of whether the definition of Jewishness is secular or religious. Whenever a draft for a consitituion was proposed, it engendered controversy from both the secular and religious aspects of the knesset, ultimatelt being discarded. There's also the issue of religious institutions. Most Jewish religious organizations are supported by the government and enjoy tax exemptions, while non-Jewish institutions are often undersupported.

There are many things I can say to refute the idea that it's a secular state, but even when Ben Gurion was ready to sign the declaration's final draft, he affirmed the Torah, but was met with criticism from the religious leaders, because it did not adequately affirm the Divine revelations from Sinai as the basis of the religious founding of Judaism. The fact that some of religious elements were omitted from the final draft, drew so much controversy between the secular and religious parties, which is why there's no consitution in Isreal.

[mariacallous]

For decades, Americans United for Separation of Church and State called its adversaries “religious extremists.” Today, the group has a more specific target: fighting Christian nationalism.

The decision to sharpen the language was made by Rachel Laser, the group’s president for the last six years. A Jew and the first religious minority to lead Americans United since its founding in 1947, Laser wanted the group to be more clear-eyed about what she sees as a growing threat to religious pluralism in the United States: the belief that American laws should favor Christian values over those of other religions.

But it was not an easy decision for her to make. “On some deep level, I worry about alienating Christians, as many Jews do,” Laser wrote last year in the group’s magazine. “When you are part of a mere 2% of the population, it can feel perilous to risk fostering adversity with 65% of the population.”

That anxiety about the optics of her leadership surfaced even before she took the job. During her interview, Laser recounted to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, she asked the board outright: “Why aren’t you hiring Christian clergy?”

Americans United had always been led by pastors, but Barry Lynn, who served as the organization’s previous leader, from 1992 to 2018, said he welcomes a departure. If there were any concerns about having a Jew lead a fight against Christian nationalism, Laser has proven it’s possible to do so, he said. 

“I’ve thought about that a lot, but I just don’t think it’s a burden or a problem because she works very collaboratively with board members who are themselves Christians and she works in coalitions,” Lynn said. “She understands the depths of the danger that Christian nationalism presents to both Christianity and to religious minorities.”

Laser, 55, is married to intellectual property lawyer Mark Davies. They have three children and the family belongs to Adas Israel, a Conservative congregation in Washington, D.C. She began her journey in Chicago, where she grew up with Jewish activist parents who didn’t prioritize religious life. But when she followed a friend to Sunday school, she encountered Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, a progressive Reform Jewish leader who was deeply involved in civil rights and other social justice causes.

“I was a very curious kid, and he encouraged me to ask questions,” Laser said, fighting back tears as she recalled Wolf, who passed away in 2008. “The more questions I asked, the more he appreciated me. That’s why I value being Jewish.”

Laser (her name is pronounced LAZZ-er) carried those values into a career focused on public service. After earning a law degree, she held senior roles in organizations advocating for reproductive rights, LGBTQ equality, and interfaith dialogue, including as the deputy director of the Religious Action Center, the advocacy arm of Reform Judaism.

“She’s a knowledgeable Jew who cares deeply about Jewish concerns,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, who led the Religious Action Center during Laser’s time there. “She fit very comfortably into the Reform movement’s view that social justice was a central part of what it means to be a Jew.”

He said he hired her because she was already a proven bridge builder, and it was important for the organization to work across political and ideological lines in Washington. It’s a skill that would be critical when Americans United tapped her in 2018, tasking her with adapting the group for a polarized era.

She took the helm during the second year of Donald Trump’s first presidency, as debates over religion in public life were intensifying. Laser commissioned research to gauge public attitudes and test Americans United’s messaging.

The results were mixed. “Religious extremism” resonated with most audiences, but “Christian nationalism” was less familiar — and even sounded positive to some people. “We didn’t want people to think we were insulting Christianity or patriotism,” Laser said, so she decided against emphasizing the term.

Then came the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Laser saw the insurrection as a wake-up call. In the rioters’ biblical rhetoric and religious rituals, she recognized Christian nationalism as a potent and underappreciated threat. She soon hired Andrew Seidel, a prominent critic of Christian nationalism. On his first day as the new vice president of strategic communications at Americans United, Seidel testified before Congress about the role of Christian nationalism in the Capitol insurrection.

Americans United began using the term regularly, aiming to educate the public while highlighting church-state separation as a critical countermeasure.

“The antidote to Christian nationalism is church-state separation,” Laser said in an interview. “It’s the kryptonite that prevents Christian nationalists from codifying their views into our laws.”

Under Laser’s leadership, Americans United has taken high-profile legal actions, such as suing Oklahoma over its proposed religious charter school and representing a Tennessee Jewish couple rejected by an adoption agency due to their faith. The group also helped raise awareness earlier this year about Project 2025, a detailed conservative proposal for Trump’s second term from the Heritage Foundation. 

Donors have responded to these efforts. In 2023, the organization reported $17.9 million in revenue — almost triple what it was raising before Laser took over.

But Laser’s tenure hasn’t been without controversy. The organization’s employee union and some former board members have accused her of fostering a toxic work environment and prioritizing publicity over policy and legal work. After commissioning an outside investigation of the organization’s work culture, the board said Laser has its full support.   

Laser’s efforts to counter Christian nationalism reflect broader tensions in American society. While religious affiliation is declining, Trump’s political alliance with the Christian right has energized a vocal minority.

“I love you, Christians,” he said on the campaign trail. “In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” And the vast majority of them did vote for him.

Since the election, Trump has put together for his next administration a slate of deputies that reflects his strong political alliance with the Christian right, from his nominee for White House budget director Russell Vought to his preferred candidate for defense secretary, Pete Hesgeth. 

But while giving Republicans a resounding victory, American voters also rejected many of the specific policies promoted by conservative Christians. In seven states, including four won by Trump, voters approved measures to protect abortion rights. All three state proposals to allow public funding to flow to private and religious schools were defeated. Laser calls these outcomes a rejection of Christian nationalism and a continued endorsement of the principle of church-state separation.  

In saying that a solid majority of Americans agree with her worldview, Laser relies on surveys like those from the Public Religion Research Institute. “We find that by a margin of about two to one, most Americans reject Christian nationalism,” said PRRI’s president, Robert Jones. 

He said he’s confident in the results because the statements the surveys test against are ”fairly unambiguous.”

“They’re things like, ‘U.S. law should be based on the Bible,’ ‘To be truly American, you must be Christian’ and ‘Christians should take dominion over all areas of American society,’” he said.

As the term “Christian nationalism” has come into play in recent years, Jones’ group has been studying how people respond not only to the underlying attitudes, but also to the term itself. 

“We are finding people who qualify as Christian nationalists based on our criteria have a positive view of the term, and people who are rejecting that worldview have a negative view of the term,” Jones said. “So it’s not just a term used by one side to smear the other.”

The phenomena can be seen in the strong sales of a 2022 book called “The Case for Christian Nationalism,” by conservative political theorist Stephen Wolfe, and in prominent politicians, like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Sen. Josh Hawley, who have embraced the moniker.

But even as one term has become more common, the question of what language to use is far from settled. Advocates on either side of the debate over the place of religion in public life make various choices for strategic or other reasons. 

Sorting through the rhetoric has required substantial attention from Ruth Braunstein, a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. That’s because earlier this year, she was awarded a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to map out the individuals and groups fighting Christian nationalism.

Many of the 100 groups added to the list so far don’t use the term Christian nationalism. 

“Some, for example, talk about defending or promoting pluralistic democracy,” Braunstein said. “Others talk about creating a more inclusive vision of American identity.”

A growing bunch, including Americans United, do. And for Braunstein, it was easy to figure out how Laser’s group fit into her project.

“They have a high profile, historical gravitas and respect, and the resources to be able to provide support to other organizations,” she said. “So I think of them as an important node in this broad network.”

A few weeks ago, Laser went on CNN to be briefly interviewed about her opposition to plans in Oklahoma and Texas to bring Christianity into the classroom. She didn’t mention anything about her identity. She simply delivered Americans United talking points: Parents, not politicians, should decide when and if children are exposed to religion; state mandates sully rather than enhance religion; mixing church and state goes against the country’s founding ideals. 

But one viewer who contacted CNN to complain about Laser’s statements discovered through Google, or correctly assumed, that Laser is a Jew. He made her identity the center of a lengthy tirade, which he ended with a broad threat. 

“When Jews go into the public square to attack Christianity, then we have a problem,” the angry viewer wrote. “Stop abusing the people that treat you kindly because, eventually, the patience will run out.”

Asked if this kind of threat gives her anxiety about the place of Jews in the United States, she said, “Firstly, I’m Jewish. There’s always anxiety. So, fair question.”

But then she went on to emphasize that she’s never felt alone in her activism. She’s always surrounded by Christian allies.  

As soon as she took the helm, for example, she set up a faith advisory for Americans United and packed it with pastors (as well as other faith leaders). When her group files lawsuits against policies it opposes, it always includes Christian plaintiffs. 

“It’s more important to make it clear that Christians are leaders in this cause,” she said. “In any case, however, I don’t plan to go anywhere. This country has given so much to Jews and I feel gratitude for that. I want to ensure that my kids and my kids’ kids can enjoy and be proud of the same America.”

[whereserpentswalk]

Its been thousands of years since humanity has left earth, and you've ended you've ended up as a human in a part of the galaxy where other species became dominant before humans ever could. The closest human governments are further away then any spaceship could travel to within a lifetime, yet still humanity exists here.

Humans currently live in a diaspora across countless systems. Some live in spaceships and independent space stations, which is what most nonhumans think the normal environment for humans is, some living their entire lives without ever touch a planet. Other humans live within other specie's empires, subject to their laws, forced to conform to what alien governments want for their citizens, or what they want from humans to make sure they're safe.

Humans are just known by the larger society of this part of the galaxy as a diaspora race, the idea that they'd ever be capable of having their own government is laughable to most. They're known as traders, mercenaries sometimes as criminals, but never as a people with their own nations, their own worlds to be proud of.

You've read some of humanity's oldest stories. The station you live on has a city sized population, and is a local hub for human culture, especially when it comes to human creatives and scholars. It's strange reading stories from old earth, to see how the Iliad or the Inferno or the Journey to the West describe humanity, not as something deviant and on the fringes of society, but as something important, something special that needs protecting. To think your ancestors wrote these stories in shining human cities, thinking that humanity was all their was, to thing you wouldn't look out of place to any of these ancient humans if you could visit them.

Anti human sentiment is growing. More and more humans live on ships and stations now for that reason. More and more states see humans as a scavenger race, as something that inherently lives off of other, grander, civilizations. Some planets have started banning humans from moving to them. Others have banned human religions, especially those that allow nonhumans to convert.

Human reproductive cycles are seen as especially subversive, with the fact that humans have strong natural urges to mate, and that they see it as pleasurable, being seen as something that makes them a threat. A lot of the humans who are allowed to stay on some planets are forced to remove their desire to mate, or even the organs pertaining to it. It's hard to explain to nonhumans why that seems like such a violation to you.

More and more humans are fleeing to your station. You don't mind, though they are going to have to build it to be bigger soon. Your roommate for your new apartment is someone who just fled here from a planet where she almost never saw another human. She looks sickly and frail, she was never in an environment made for humans, and she never saw enough humans to realize how unhealthy she is, her bones were stretched from being on a world with lower gravity then humans are evolved for, and her reproductive organs were removed as per her old planet's policy.

She seems so embarrassed of being a human, and especially afraid of the human culture that's so present on the station. Even the more stereotypically human members of the station are something she's afraid of. You want to hug and comfort her. And you want to show her all these old humans books you've found. You want to tell her that her race didn't evolve as a race of scavengers.

You wonder about your station. A planet might be nicer, but it's a planet that wouldn't be fine tuned for humans. This stations gravity and atmosphere mimics a homeworld you'll never see, because it's what human bodies were built for. When you're in parts of the station so heavily urbanized it could pass for a dense skyless part of a planetary city, and the conditions around you perfectly mimic the cool autumns your ancestors once knew, you wonder if part of you can feel earth.

[hero-israel]

This article from 1999 is a baffling relic of an extinct alien civilization.

Hidden in plain sight in Harvard Yard, and at elite campuses across the country, is a dilemma of diversity that may test that mantra in complex and confounding ways: the overrepresentation of Asian and Jewish students and the underrepresentation of the white, non-Jewish majority, especially such white ethnics as Italian-Americans and religious groups as Southern Baptists and other evangelicals.

It is a touchy subject, largely unexplored and undebated, if it is noticed at all. But with America's Asian population growing, and the admissions decisions of the nation's most selective universities ever more in the cross hairs of lawsuits and public debate, it won't go away.

Right now at America's most elite school, Harvard, an estimated 20 percent of undergraduate students are Jewish, and almost the same percentage are Asian. Together, Jews, only 2 percent of the U.S. population, and Asians, only 3 percent, comprise nearly 40 percent of Harvard College enrollment. That is about the same as the percentage of Harvard students who are non-Jewish whites, a group that makes up more than 70 percent of the U.S. population.

That means that Christian whites are far more underrepresented at Harvard, relative to their numbers in the general population, than even blacks and Hispanics. Of course not all white Christians are underrepresented. The old white elite -- Episcopalians, for example -- are bearing up well, abetted a bit by the admissions preference for children of alumni. But it appears that groups like Italian-Americans and Southern Baptists do not fare so well.

Already one can see the ways in which whites of various backgrounds may begin to invoke the logic and language of diversity in pursuit of better representation for themselves, and how, in the zero-sum game of select college admissions, that cannot help but threaten the position of Asians and Jews.

As Brian Burt, who graduated from Harvard Law School last spring after three years here as a lonely Christian conservative activist, put it, ``True diversity would look entirely different than it does today.''

Or, in the words of conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan, perhaps it is time for white Christians to stop resisting proportional representation and start demanding it: ``75 percent and no less.'' Borrowing a locution from President Clinton, Buchanan wrote in a January column, ``Let's make the Ivy Leagues look more like America.''

Speaking very roughly, at Dartmouth the combined Jewish and Asian percentage is about 18 percent; at Princeton, about 25 percent; at Duke, Cornell and Brown, somewhere in the 30 percent range; at Yale, about 45 percent; and at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, about half. In each case, at the other end of the seesaw from overrepresented Asians and Jews are underrepresented non-Jewish whites. (Schools do not tally their students by religion, but Hillel, the Jewish campus organization, makes estimates for all the schools where it is present and they are published in The Princeton Review's Hillel Guide to Jewish Life on Campus.)

More broadly, a national survey of the 1998 freshman class conducted by UCLA indicates that looking collectively at 29 of the most selective private and public universities, about 18 percent of the students are Asian, and better than 10 percent Jewish; and looking collectively at 17 of the most selective private colleges (as opposed to universities) -- schools like Amherst, Bennington, Grinnell, Mount Holyoke and Reed -- Jews and Asians were together about 20 percent of those student bodies.

[the-sacred-now]

An Open Letter to the Single-Issue Pro-Life Voter

What do you want more: For abortion to be illegal? Or for fewer abortions to occur?

There’s a reason so many of the Left think that all single issue pro-life voters are obsessed with controlling women’s bodies: because most of your official allies are more interested in punishing people for their pregnancies than in doing anything that could actually be called pro life.

But I know many of you really DO want to save lives, to make lives viable. I trust your hearts—because I used to be one of you.

I argued against abortion with the best of 'em, not because I wanted to push my religion into law, or to control anyone, but because of my belief in that life should be defended, and my genuine care for the unborn.

I’ve learned a lot. Some of my positions have changed, and some of them haven’t.

I’ve faced the fact that one person has the right withhold their own bodily resources as a matter of course. Even after our own death, in the United States, use of our body’s lifesaving resources is not legal without our prior consent.¹

I’ve faced the fact that “risk to the life of the mother” is a reality that stalks every pregnancy, always present and recently rising in the U.S., and a person has the right to refuse that risk.²

I’ve learned more about the dangers of ectopic pregnancies, the primary drivers of late-term abortions.³

I’ve learned the truth about blastocysts and how long it actually takes before an embryo resembles anything more than a bacterial culture, and what a 6 week pregnancy really looks like.⁴

I’ve learned that abortion was not even considered an issue for American Christians until after the religious Right lost the culture war around the Civil Rights movement.⁵

But even without all those factors, this counterintuitive fact would have stopped me in my tracks on the way to the voting booth: The number of abortions INCREASES the more legal restrictions there are.⁶

I’ve never actually stopped believing that human life begins at conception (however fragile, alien, and fleeting—especially if it fails to attach to the uterine wall, as happens to an estimated 30-70% of fertilized eggs). Ultimately, though, that’s just my opinion, founded in philosophical thought experiment and ~vibes~ and nothing else—not even the Bible.

But even if it were an objectively true and proven fact…

I would still be less interested in jailing the people who disagreed with me, and more interested in creating the world I want to see: a fair and free society, where sexual assault is rare, sexual education is clear and honest, unwanted pregnancies are few, healthcare is robust and continually improving, and children are desired and supported—before and after they’re born. And yes, in this world, abortions are as rare as they are free of fear and shame.

We may not be able to create this whole reality right now, but what we can do is decrease the number of abortions, in ways that are consistently shown to be reliable.

I’m pro-choice now. And I never had to give up on caring about babies.

I’m not asking anyone to let go of being pro-life. But I am asking you to join me in allying with the people whose policies support life in all its stages. Which is proven to inherently lower the number of abortions.

One party’s leaders push against contraception. Against the sex education that leads to more teens waiting longer before losing their virginity.⁷

Against creating infrastructure that supports people through pregnancy and beyond, against supporting people in feeding and educating their children.⁸

The other party wants to support people in making informed and independent choices about their bodies—which statistically leads to more confidence in saying “No,” or “I’m waiting,” or “Not without protection,” to sex.⁹

They want to support peoples’ health and well-being.¹⁰

They want to create a future in which children are a real option, an option compatible with getting an education, with keeping your income, with food and housing.¹¹

They want to rebuild a financial landscape in which a single income could take care of a whole family.¹²

I used to feel jarred and confused by having to choose between bundled-together policies that saved the lives of the unborn but left everyone else to struggle in a lack of support callously dubbed “freedom”, and policies that promoted abortion access as an important freedom, but aligned with my values of protecting and uplifting life in every other way.

Now that I know easy access to safe and legal abortion lowers rates of abortion, especially when paired with education, healthcare, and financial stability, my choice is more obvious than ever. My choice, as it always has been, is life.

*Sources linked in reblogs + replies.

[santoschristos]

Kukulkan (Quetzalcoatl): Feathered Serpent And Mighty Snake God

Known under a number of different names, Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent was one of the most important gods in Mesoamerica.

The Aztecs called him Quetzalcoatl and the ancient Maya referred to him as Kukulkan. The K’iche’ group of Maya named him Gukumatz.

Was this mighty snake deity a real historical person?

It is not easy to trace the ancient history of Kukulkan. Like all of the feathered serpent gods in Mesoamerican cultures, Kukulkan is thought to have originated in Olmec mythology and we still know very little about the mysterious Olmec civilization.

The true identity of the god Kukulkan becomes an even greater problem due to the confusing references to a man who bore the name of the Mayan god. Because of this, the distinction between the two has become blurred.

Around the 10th century, a priest or ruler appeared in Chichen Itza, a sacred site that was one of the greatest Mayan centers of the Yucatán peninsula, Mexico where we also find El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kukulkan.

Kukulkan has his origins among the Maya of the Classic Period, (200 AD to 1000) when he was known as Waxaklahun Ubah Kan, the War Serpent.

Maya writers of the 16th century describe Kukulkan as a real historical person, but the earlier 9th-century texts at Chichen Itza never identified him as human and artistic representations depicted him as a Vision Serpent entwined around the figures of nobles.

According to ancient Maya beliefs, Kukulkan - popularly known as the Feathered Serpent - was the god of the wind, sky, and the Sun. He was a supreme leader of the gods, depicted, just like Quetzalcoatl. Kukulkan gave mankind his learning and laws. He was merciful and kind, but he could also change his nature and inflict great punishment and suffering on humans.

According to Maya legend, the Maya were visited by a robed Caucasian man with blond hair, blue eyes, and a beard who taught the Maya about agriculture, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy. This being was Kukulkan – the Feathered Serpent.

Kukulcan warned the Maya of another bearded white man who would not only conquer the indigenous people of Central America but would also enforce a new religion upon them before he was to return. Despite the warning, the Maya mistakenly welcomed the invading Cortes as Quetzalcoatl.

The cult of Kukulkan spread as far as the Guatemalan Highlands, where Postclassic feathered serpent sculptures are found with open mouths from which protrude the heads of human warriors.

Hundreds of North and South American Indian and South Pacific legends tell of a white-skinned, bearded lord who traveled among the many tribes to bring peace about 2,000 years ago. This spiritual hero was best known as Quetzalcoatl.

Some of his many other names were:

Kate-Zahl (Toltec)

Kul-kul-kan (Maya)

Tah-co-mah (NW America)

Waicomak (Dakota)

Wakea (Cheyenne, Hawaiian and Polynesian)

Waikano (Orinoco)

Hurakan

the Mighty Mexico

E-See-Co-Wah (Lord of Wind and Water)

Chee-Zoos

the Dawn God (Puan, Mississippi)

Hea-Wah-Sah (Seneca),

Taiowa, Ahunt Azoma

E-See-Cotl (New Guinea)

Itza-Matul (Yucatan)

Zac-Mutul (Mayan)

Wakon-Tah (Navajo)

Wakona (Algonquin)

Kukulkan emerged from the ocean, and disappeared in it afterward. Before he left, he promised that he will return one day in the future, but he never revealed when…

Image: Kukulkan (Quetzalcoatl) Mahaboka