#drafting will provisions

[corviiids]

genuinely so sorry to slide into your dm's like this, not sure that this is proper tumblr etiquette, etc., but i just got so excited when i read in your sayu-gets-the-death-note ask that you've been trying to talk yourself out of doing an entire statutory interpretation of the manga death note rules because i've been trying to talk myself out doing an entire metaphysical interpretation of the manga death note rules, so... if you, like me, simply cannot talk yourself out of a stupid idea once it sinks its claws in your brain and would at some point like to share notes about I THINK one of the sexiest and most broken parts of this series, i'd be delighted.

oh my god dont apologise im just excited a single person on earth besides me is interested in a pseudo-legal (very pseudo) perspective on the death note rules. high fives you. for the most part im just incredibly impressed that they manage to retain so much internal consistency especially since so many of them have the vibe of, like, random amendments which were included just for funsies. it's incredible they don't overtly contradict each other. ive been obsessed with them since i first saw them and have already spent way too much time reading over them but yeah i'd honestly love to dig into them more. HTR13 does organise them into something closer to Parts or Divisions which makes the structure a little more coherent. it drives me nuts that sometimes a numbered rule will have sub-provisions that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. drafting that gives me a stress migraine

[heritageposts]

A week ago, US President Joe Biden claimed that a “ceasefire” deal in Gaza was imminent and could take effect as soon as March 4. “My national security adviser tells me we are close,” he told reporters while eating ice cream in New York City. But ice cream or not, Biden’s actual position was not nearly that sweet. A subsequent statement by a senior Biden administration official claimed Israel had “basically accepted” a proposal for a temporary pause in fighting. But as of March 4, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Mossad director were still refusing to send a delegation to Cairo, where talks with Hamas were under way. The Biden administration’s eagerness to claim victory in its search for some kind of temporary truce indicates how much it is feeling the heat of the rising global and domestic pressure demanding an immediate ceasefire, an end to the Israeli genocide, an end to the threat of a new escalation against refugee-packed Rafah, and an end to the siege of Gaza and immediate unhindered provision of massive levels of humanitarian aid. Despite Washington’s vain hopes for March 4 and the unofficial goal of a ceasefire by the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on March 10, the deal remains elusive. Media reports indicate Biden is telling the Qatari and Egyptian leaders that he is putting pressure on Israel to agree to a truce and a captives swap. But his claim of pressuring Israel is undermined by the continuing US vetoes of ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations Security Council, most recently on February 20, as well as the continuing flow of United States weapons and money to Israel to enable its assault.

And, on the alternative resolution the Biden admin has put forth after vetoing Algeria's resolution (which called for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire," "forced displacement of the Palestinian civilian population," and "unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza."):

[...] Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s ambassador to the UN, cast the sole veto against the Algerian resolution, and instead put forward an alternative US text, claiming it also supported a ceasefire. But the proposed US language does not call for an immediate or permanent ceasefire or an end to Israeli genocide; it does not prevent an attack on Rafah or end the Israeli siege. The proposed US resolution is not designed to end the murderous Israeli war against Gaza – nor is the deal that is currently being negotiated in Cairo. To the contrary, the provisions of the US draft resolution reflect the true intentions of the Biden administration vis-a-vis its continuing support of Israel, and reveal the limitations of the truce it is trying to orchestrate. While the US draft resolution does use the dreaded word “ceasefire” – which had been prohibited in the White House for months – it does not call for an immediate halt in the bombing, only “as soon as practicable”, with no indication of when that might be. It does not call for a permanent ceasefire either, leaving Israel free to resume its genocidal bombing – presumably with continuing US support. Virtually everything the US draft calls for is undercut by what is left out. The demand for “lifting all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale” in Gaza certainly sounds appropriately robust. But that’s only until you realise that the text’s failure to challenge or even name the principal barrier to aid getting in – Israel’s bombardment – means that this is not a serious plan to end Israel’s deadly siege. It should not surprise anyone that “the Biden administration is not planning to punish Israel if it launches a military campaign in Rafah without ensuring civilian safety” – as Politico reported – despite claiming it wants a credible plan to ensure Palestinian safety. No one in the Biden administration has even hinted at imposing consequences for Israel’s constant rejection of the insipid appeals for restraint – such as conditioning aid on human rights standards (as required by US law) or cutting US military aid altogether. That’s what real pressure would look like. A more accurate picture of Washington’s approach to Israel’s war against Gaza is the continuing US pipeline of weapons to make Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza more effective, more efficient, and more deadly. According to the Wall Street Journal, the “Biden administration is preparing to send bombs and other weapons to Israel that would add to its military arsenal even as the US pushes for a ceasefire in Gaza.” The arms the US intends to hand over to the Israeli army include MK-82 bombs, KMU-572 Joint Direct Attack Munitions and FMU-139 bomb fuses, worth tens of millions of dollars. It is more than likely that the administration will do another end run around US Congress to send the weapons without relying on congressional approval, as it did on at least two occasions last December.

. . . full article on Al Jazeera (4 Mar 2024)

[mae-gi-writes]

Arch-nemesis . Gally (themazerunner)

There's a thin line between love and hate, especially when it concerns Gally.

A/N: I've re-watched the three Maze Runner movies and now I'm obsessed and getting back onto the TMR fantrain so bear with me and the future fics I've already got saved in my drafts TT 3 TT ------

You hate him with all your heart.

Truthfully, honestly. There isn’t anyone you hate more than this stupid asshole that thinks that he’s the centre of the earth.

You met him only when he’d been brought in by Lawrence and a few of his other guys, having been there just for a few weeks prior. Thinking that this might be your chance to make a new friend, you’d sidled over to him with a small smile as you asked for his name. That didn’t go as smoothly as you thought when he just grunted out his name in response and turned away from you like you were a pest instead.

But it isn’t just that. It’s the way he says your name in that really aggravating tone that grates at your nerves. It’s the way he always insists it’s your fault when you’re out on missions and come back with no updates. It’s the way he bullies you and calls you names whenever your paths cross and it makes you want to gouge his eyes out. It’s enough to say that you know Gally now and you know exactly what he’s made of. That, and the fact that you’d stay far away from him as you possibly could if that was an option.

“You’re loading it up wrong shank-face,” he’d tell you as you were re-filling your gun.

“Shut up Gally, I’m doing it properly.”

“Don’t come crying to me when the gun doesn’t work.”

“It’s none of your business if it doesn’t work.”

“It is my business if you’re gonna—“

“Right that’s enough,” your mentor and leader called Jared had to step in, like he did numerous times, to get you to cool off. You’d storm away in a fit of annoyance and irritation, hating how easily Gally got under your skin.

It’s been a few weeks since weird sightings of stray immunes have circulated the area and in reply to this, Lawrence had set you up for a mission with Gally to scout the outer walls of the Last City. That had only caused you to grumble about the unfairness of the situation.

“Why do I have to go?” Your eyes narrow at the familiar tall figure lingering in your peripheral. Gally is busy setting up his weapons as you try to plead your case, seemingly uncaring about your protests, “and with him of all people? We don’t work well together Lawrence—“

“Everyone else is taken or busy with other tasks. Meaning that only you two are free,” Lawrence cuts you off without a hint of sympathy, “so either you do as you’re told or you can leave Y/N. As simple as that.”

In the end you have no choice but to abide by his rules, strapping up your weapons and defenses before Gally calls out your name. You turn just in time to catch the water bottle he sends your way, yelping in the process.

“You’re looking a little distraught, shank-face,” he smirks at you from where he stands loading up the provisions, “scared of what you’ll find out there? If you ain’t good enough, just don’t come and waste people’s time.”

“Nobody asked for your opinion, ugly brows.”

“I’m just worried you might slow me down. I’m not a goddamn babysitter.”

“I didn’t ask for one, now will you shut up and stop talking?”

“I’m surprised these two haven’t killed each other off yet,” murmurs one of Lawrence’s men.

“Killed or kissed you mean,” Jared lets out a chuckle.

These words are enough to cause the others to look at him with shocked faces, “what do you mean?”

“Isn’t it clear?” Jared motions towards the two currently bickering, “bet that by tomorrow night these two will get together.”

“I bet they last a week before they kiss.” Another says.

“Oh come on, I’m betting two weeks. Gally isn’t that type of guy.”

“What about me?” Gally’s voice causes them all to shut up, looking at him with guilty smiles and with shakes of their heads.

“Nothing to worry about Maze boy,” Jared flicks him off with a wave of his hand, “now off you go, both of you. And I expect some good news when you return.”

“Of any kind,” someone adds quietly, to which they all cackle.

You’ve toured the city a million times before in search of any kind of entrances that might lead to the inside, where all of Wicked laid. So it’s nothing out of your depth to follow Gally around as you survey the area and scout for more sources of information.

In all honesty, touring with Gally isn’t that much different from anyone else. On the contrary, Gally’s determined nature conjoined with his natural physical ability to excel just renders him an even more ideal battle partner. Not that you’ll ever tell him that. It will surely come bite you in the ass later when you least expect it.

You’re almost at the perimeter when you notice something off about one of the citizens. It’s a little girl, her face contorted in a grimace as she holds her hands in front of her tummy. For a moment, she sways in the middle of the crowd and you’re about to dismiss it, when another figure stalks in and takes a swipe at her with a stick.

The girl yelps as the stick hits her knees, crumbling to the floor like a sack of bones.

Before you know it, you’re sprinting towards her, anger flaring through your chest as your hands steady themselves on the gun. You barely hear Gally’s voice as you stumble in front of the kid just in time to point your weapon at the older man.

“What do you think you’re doing?” You hiss at him.

The man’s eyes widen. He takes a step back, “no no, get away from her, you don’t understand—“

“Understand what? That you were going to beat her to death?” You click your gun into place, “nice try old man, now tell me—“

“Get away from her!” He yells at you, “she’s not normal! She’s—“

And a growl erupts from behind you. You swivel around in panic, eyes going wide upon noticing for the first time the dark patch close to her eyes.

The Flare.

The girl twitches. A small sob falls from her mouth. Your heart jumps to your throat, stumbling back half a step as weird animalistic noises echo from her mouth.

And then, she pounces.

You yell out something— you’re not too sure what — and are about to knock her on the head as she throws herself at you—

A bullet explodes on the right side of her brain and she falls to the ground like a puppet.

You stare at her for a minute. One more.

Your gaze slowly trails up to see familiar booted feet.

“What were you even thinking?”

Gally’s voice is usually deep. But this time, even you can’t stand up to the anger simmering in his voice. It’s dark and holds some kind of laced savagery that makes your toes curl in apprehension.

He takes your silence as guilt before grabbing onto your arm and roughly pulling you out of the crowd. He doesn’t stop and for once you don’t fight him, still not over the shock of seeing that poor girl’s face, the crazed look in her eyes. You’re so deep in your thoughts that you don’t realize you’re at your truck until Gally practically throws you against its side.

Your back digs into the metal and you grunt at the impact, the ache stinging your spine. But before you can do anything else, huge palms come to a rest on either side of your head.

Gally leans into you, so close that you can feel the heat radiate off him in waves.

“What the fuck was that about?” He growls, voice dropping even lower.

Somehow, it causes a shiver to run up your spine. Not one of fear, something else. Something that makes your stomach squeeze into knots.

“I—“ for once, you don’t seem to have any words. Instead your head turns away from Gally’s eyes as you bite down onto your lower lip, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You’re sorry?” He scoffs, laughs to himself before his gaze hardens once more, “sorry for what Y/N? For almost getting yourself killed? Are you insane?! She could’ve literally infected you and you—“

“I didn’t know she was infected.” You tried to protest.

That seems to aggravate him even more, “You didn’t even bother to check!” His nostrils flare.

“Well I said I’m sorry!”

“Sorry’s not going to cut it if you turn into one of those Cranks you stupid slinthead! You need to be more responsible! I literally turn away for one minute and you’re—“

“Oh stop exaggerating Gally. I was trying to protect her—“

“Yeah and look how that ended!”

You snap, “why are you so pissed? It was an accident and I already said sorry!”

“It’s not just that Y/N!” He yells with such emotion that his face flushes red, “What if I wasn’t there? What would you have done then?!”

“Why the fuck do you care? You wanted me gone—“

Your words cut off in mid-conversation when his large hands suddenly cup your face before pulling you in to crash his lips against yours.

Your eyes widen, brain freezing, as butterflies erupt through your stomach.

Wow.

Is this what a kiss is?

And this is Gally, kissing you like he means it.

It's almost like time has stopped.

Heart pounding, your body slowly melts against his. You’re in a trance-like state, watching yourself crumble under his fingertips that he places right under your jaw, his other hand sliding down to your hip to pin you in place.

The kiss is surprisingly gentle yet firm. His mouth moves slowly, hesitantly, almost like he fears breaking you. And yet, when you respond with a soft movement of your own, the rumble of his chest has your stomach squeezing with adrenaline.

You’re not too sure what’s happening. Here you are, with the world’s biggest dick, kissing him like he’s your lover when all you’ve ever wanted was to kick him in the face for being a class A asshole.

But it’s weird because this, however, feels so right. Like you’re meant to be locking lips, like he doesn’t want anyone else in his arms but you. And when he cages you in his hold with even more intensity it makes you gasp, causing him to slip his tongue into your mouth with an ease that has you parting like melted butter.

Slowly, your hands trail up to his chest, grabbing hold of his dark tunic and tugging slightly as his teeth suckle onto your bottom lip. A noise echoes from the back of your throat and he growls in response, pressing you even harder so that your head tilts back against the truck’s surface.

You need air at some point and so break away from him with a small gasp, chest heaving.

Gally doesn’t hesitate. He dives down to press a kiss to the side of your jaw, down your neck, imprinting his mouth over your skin over and over again in a way that has your body shuddering with delight. Big hand sliding down to the back of your neck to pull you even closer into him, the young man’s lips find a soft spot at your pulse point, causing a whine to fall from your lips at his action.

His chest rumbles in satisfaction and before you know it he’s back to kissing you. This time it’s more heated; mouths clashing and teeth clicking and tongues battling.

And then, the reality of the situation hits you straight in the face.

You freeze. What in the shucking world are you even doing?

You’re making out with Gally, right beside your truck. In broad daylight.

The thought alone makes your hands push him away and your lips disconnect with a small ‘pop’ sound.

You’re gasping for breath at this point, eyes wide as they flutter up to lock onto his own and you’re surprised at what you find there.

There’s some sort of softness, genuine care and something more, something darker that you can’t really put your finger on.

It makes you want him.

You want him.

Shuck’s sake.

“Y/N—“ Gally starts but you’re already moving out of his hold, slipping away from his warmth and suddenly it feels a little too cold.

You shake your head at him, decide it’s best to keep your eyes away as you open the door to the passenger seat, “let’s go. We have a mission to finish.”

You don’t want to talk about it.

————

It’s been days.

Days since the incident.

Days since you’ve been trying to get Gally out of your head.

You don’t understand why he’s having such an effect on you. Theoretically speaking, you should’ve bashed his head in and turned him over to Lawrence for sexual assault.

But you haven’t, and he’s also probably questioning why.

As a result, you’ve done everything in your power to avoid him. You wake up thirty minutes earlier to eat your breakfast so that you don’t have to bump into him at the table, you take the first errands that come to you — the boring ones like refilling tanks and getting the food supplies and guarding their premises. All that so that you don’t have to deal with Gally’s bullying.

Well, not that you’ve heard from him much either.

“What happened between you two?” Jared asks one evening as you help him move the supplies fresh from the last raid from the Last City.

“What?” You stare at him blankly, “what are you talking about?”

“You and Gally. You had a fight or something?”

“When are we not?” You snort, though you can’t deny the flush creeping up your neck as the memory of Gally’s body against yours resurfaces.

“Well I know you fight, but you’ve been ignoring each other.”

“And? Why is that a concern? Shouldn’t you be glad there’s less noise?”

“You’ve got a point I suppose.”

You don’t tell him it’s because you’re nervous of all the things that keep flashing through your head. You don’t tell him about how you keep on thinking of Gally’s mouth on yours, the lingering taste of him like a ghost along your lips. You don’t have to and you don’t want to, because you know that it’s going to entertain an idea far too surreal and ridiculous for you to think about.

It isn’t until a few days after your little mishap that Gally finds you in the storage room. You’ve woken up early to help the newest recruit unpack the food supplies just loaded into the main building dock, only to find out that he had this massive crush on you.

So you’ve been trying to bat him off all morning despite his most desperate attempts.

“Just give me a chance Y/N,” he says as he takes a box from your hands with a wink, “I promise I won’t make you regret it.”

You snort, “no thanks,” and turn back to keep unloading.

But he makes a grab for your hand. You yelp, pulling it out of his grasp, “what do you think you’re doing—“

“You think you’re so tough huh?” He makes another grab for your forearm this time and cages you into his grip. You try to wriggle out to no avail, his fingers squeezing so hard that you let out a cry of pain, “ow—“let me go, asshole.”

“Not until you agree.”

Your glare deepens, “I said no.”

He pulls you closer, stinky breath washing over your face and making you want to barf, “did I tell you how sexy you are when you try to act all tough and shit? I mean that’s literally—“

“Get your hands off her.”

He freezes. You do too. You recognize that voice. You could've recognized that anywhere. Your head tilts over.

Gally.

Oh.

Eyes widening at the sight, you quickly pull your arm away when the newbie drops it in shock.

“Move away,” Gally’s voice drops an octave and causes a string of butterflies to erupt through your chest, “now.”

The newbie frowns, “Who’re you to boss me around?”

“I said: Now.”

And maybe it’s the fact that Gally seems to straighten when he says it so it looks like he’s towering over the other boy, but the latter mutters a curse word under his breath and finally relents, throwing you a scowl in the process as he ducks out of the storage room.

You can’t help but lock eyes with your savior, though quickly averting your eyes in embarrassment as you resume stacking boxes after boxes. You hope that he’s just going to turn around and act ignorant, just like these past few days.

“Y/N.”

You don’t answer, resolutely trying your best to act busy.

“Y/N.”

Maybe it’s the way he says your name that makes you turn impulsively. Your eyes flit to his face, then look back down to his chest. A safer bet, “what?”

He takes a step closer, and another, and another. You swallow thickly, feeling your throat clog up with emotion as you stumble back against the boxes until no escape seems available.

Why is it that you’re always getting trapped by him?

“W—What is it?” You stammer out in hopes he can’t hear how wild your heart is beating, "What do you want?"

He lets out a soft sigh and seems to drop his shoulders in defeat, opening up his palms in a sign of defeat, "I just--I think we need to talk."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Y/N--"

"No Gally," you whip around then with eyes narrowed into slits and your fists curled beside you, "if this is about what happened in the Last City, I don't want to talk about it. It was a stupid shucking mistake and--"

"Stop using Glader slang," he interrupts like a smart-ass and you all but growl at him in irritation, "it doesn't suit you."

"Oh shut up already," you whip around and decide that it's useless to try and have a civil conversation. You'd rather focus your energy on finishing off your task.

But seems that he's determined to bug you, for you feel the warmth of his hand imprint itself on your forearm before he's tugging you. Not too harshly, gently enough that you could've stopped if you wanted to.

You let yourself turn around, cursing inwardly at how the closeness between your two bodies is rendering you a little breathless, a little weak in the knees. He's so close that you have to tilt your head up to look at him, and what you see in his gaze makes your heart skitter.

"It wasn't," he murmurs, "a mistake."

"It was a mistake," you shoot back straightaway, "we can just forget about it--"

"I don't want to. I--" he clears his throat, looks away for a second. And when his eyes find yours once again you feel your breath catch in your throat because he's looking at you in a certain way. That way. With the same kind of tenderness that makes you want to wrap your arms around him and bury your face into his chest and smell the earthly, Gally scent that had wrapped around you back when you'd kissed--

No.

You almost smack yourself, horrified. What in the world are you thinking?!

"I like you, Y/N." Gally’s voice jerks you back to reality, “I like you a shuck lot and—“

“Don’t,” you press a finger to his lips as you try desperately to put some distance between, shaking your head in horror, “no no, you don’t like me. You like me ‘cause I’m the only girl around here and it’s just your hormones talking—“

He shakes you off, “what are you on about?” He frowns before grabbing both your hands to cage them in his grip, “I know what I feel Y/N. Don’t tell me otherwise—“

“Gally please,” you scramble for coherent thought but logic is slipping away by the second. Even more so when he’s tugging you gently to him, even more when his face is a picture of softness and affection, “we hate each other’s guts—“

“I never said that.” He pauses to read your expression, fear suddenly flickering in his expression, “do you hate me?”

“I—“ the words get tangled in your mouth. You want to tell him you hate him, loathe him with all your heart and that you just want him gone and that you hates his kiss.

But you can’t.

Because it’s a lie, the truth is that you think your heart beats for him. You’re not sure since when, but that kiss had confirmed it surely enough: you like Gally more than you think you do. And that thought is terrifying.

You’re so close to him that if you let your hands drop they’ll brush against his chest, so close that you can feel his warm breath fanning across your skin and the heat of his jody permeating to yours.

Ducking your head in embarrassment, you bite down onto your lower lip.

“Answer my question, Y/N.”

You swallow thickly, “I—I don’t know.”

Gally looks down at you still, not giving you the easy way out you would’ve preferred and you find yourself crumbling under his stare.

“No,” you whisper, “I don’t hate you.”

He shifts a little closer still, eyes flitting down to your lips in a silent question.

Your breath catches. Your mouth parts. His scent wraps around you like a soft cocoon.

And then you’re lifting yourself up to kiss him.

He makes a noise of surprise at the back of his throat and you grin to yourself, loving that you caught him off guard. But that doesn’t last, for his big hands quickly drop yours to wrap around your waist before pulling your body to his and kissing you like he hasn’t seen you in ages, like he’s missed you, like he wants to do this forever.

Gally, you soon realize, kisses with his entire intention, not leaving one part of your mouth untouched and adamant on making you go pliant in his hold. You allow yourself to back up as he prods you, until your back hits one of the storage boxes hazardly stacked one atop the other, and Gally doesn't hesitate to press his chest against yours as a soft moan echoes from the back of his throat.

As his lips curve against yours in the most intimate of manners, your hands seem to take on a life of their own as they travel up his chest, caress the broadness of his shoulders, before wrapping around the back of his neck and teasing the soft baby hairs found there. You feel him grinning into your mouth and soon enough you're grinning too, foreheads pressed together as you catch your breath.

"Not bad at all," Gally murmurs, stealing a kiss from you and causing your face to flush deep red, "for someone who can't load a gun properly."

"I can too load my gun properly," you pinch him playfully and he responds with laughter.

That's when you hear your mentor's voice booming with surprise from the front entrance of the storage room:

"Well look what we have here! I told you guys they wouldn't last a week!"

[reasonsforhope]

"A long-awaited ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has officially begun, after a last minute delay of almost three hours. The fighting continued past the initially provisioned 8:30 a.m. local (1:30 a.m. Eastern) deadline as the Israeli military said Hamas had failed to provide the names of the first three hostages due to be released, as per the terms of the agreement.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later confirmed that a list of names had been provided and that the ceasefire would take effect from 11:15 a.m. local time (4:15 a.m. Eastern). 

Now, families in Israel wait for the release of hostages who have been held by Hamas for more than 15 months. The exchange is set to begin at 9 a.m. Eastern Time, 4 p.m. local time on Sunday.

In Gaza, fighter jets and drones were reported to have disappeared from the skies as the deal took effect, and aid trucks began entering into Gaza through the Karem Shalom crossing.

The first phase of the ceasefire calls for Hamas to release 33 hostages over a six-week period. They include women, children and hostages over 50 years old, a draft viewed by CBS News said...

How the hostage release will work

Under the negotiated deal, the ceasefire will be in three phases.

The first phase of the ceasefire will last 42 days, and negotiations on the far more difficult second phase are meant to begin just over two weeks in.

After the six weeks of the first phase, Israel's security cabinet will decide how to proceed.

In total, Hamas would release 33 hostages during the first phase. Hamas would start releasing hostages on the first day, initially returning three to Israel, according to the draft viewed by CBS News. On the seventh day, Hamas would release four hostages. Thereafter, Hamas would release three hostages every seven days, starting with the living, and then moving on to return the bodies of those who have died.

Among those expected to be released is the youngest hostage, Kfir Bibas, whose family marked his second birthday on Saturday. The child has become a symbol across Israel for the helplessness over the hostages' plight.

During each exchange, Palestinian prisoners will be released by Israel after the hostages have arrived safely.

Mr. Biden said Wednesday that Americans would be among the hostages released in the first phase, but he did not specify any names or how soon they would be freed.

In phase one, Israel will release at least 1,700 Palestinian prisoners, including 1,167 Gaza residents who were not involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that sparked the war. All women and children under 19 from Gaza held by Israel will be freed during this phase.

The remainder of the Hamas-held hostages, including male Israeli soldiers, are to be released in a second phase that will be negotiated during the first. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal.

When does fighting stop

During the ceasefire's first phase, Israeli troops are to pull back into a buffer zone about a kilometer (half of a mile) wide inside Gaza along its borders with Israel.

In a post on X, Qatar's foreign minister advised Palestinians to exercise caution when the ceasefire goes into effect and wait for directions from officials.

Israel's military later said Palestinians would not be able to cross the Netzarim corridor that runs across central Gaza for the first seven days of the ceasefire, and it warned Palestinians not to approach Israeli forces.

Despite the caveats and uncertainty, anticipation was high."

-via CBS News, January 19, 2025

[dailyadventureprompts]

Calling all homebrewers!

Recently I've had an idea bouncing around my head that I want your help in refining: Building out the exploration pillar of the game by making the party's "camp" into a mechanic that players can interact with by upgrading it.

LOTS of RPGs give your party a home base/camp that you return to between missions and upgrade over the course of your adventure. D&D is no stranger to this, but building a base tends to be a high level/retirement sort of goal, and instead I want the players to be given a set of options from the very beginning. Think of this potential camp system like its own early game skill tree where upgrades can be unlocked with GP or quest rewards, which gives players a very tangible reason to partake in those early game low-stakes side quest.

As someone who's shifting more and more to the "one adventure per level" model, I specifically wanted this camp system to be a way to reintroduce a player driven progression back into the game. Likewise, the camp's upgrade system could give us a mechanical backbone for building out a codified exploration system, which has been something I've been wanting to knock out for a while.

Here's some of the upgrade paths and their uses I've been tinkering with:

Provisions- In addition to generally tracking how long it's going to be before the party goes hungry/needs to return to town, "enhanced" provisions are a consumable that gives the party temporary hitpoints every time they're used. Advanced provision upgrades grant more temporary hitpoints.

Supplies- Need an item in a pinch? Good thing you loaded up when you were last in town. Digging through your camp's supply allows you to retroactively have purchased an item off the equipment list below a certain GP threshhold. Upgrading your supplies means more chances to grab things, and a higher quality of item grabbed.

Shelter- Camping out under the stars can be picturesque, but not so much when it's raining. These items specifically shelter the party from different types/qualities of weather and the passive threats of the environments they're exploring.

Draft- That's right, we're playing with carrying capacity. Rather than making it a problem of individual inventory management, we keep the challenge of managing the party's encumbrance by making it simple and slot based, applying to large or bulk items (primarily loot and the camp upgrades we're acquiring). Pack animals and wagons can add to this total but limit the party's camping opportunities to roads and navigable terrain. Are they a caravan hauling house wagons and trade goods? or are they packing light to travel across rugged landscapes?

Camp Followers- NPC allies and hirelings that act as their own upgrades: a cook that makes the best of provisions, guards to prevent the camp from getting robbed, a quatermaster who ensures that things are packed more efficiantly, a merchant who pays out shares every time the party land in a new market. Having a cast of characters follow the party through their adventures

My question for you dear readers is if there's anything I'm missing. How do you think I should handle the encumbrance system? How should this information be presented to the party in the most efficient way possible? Eventually I want to evolve the camp system into a background for running a proper stronghold, or a ship's crew, but I want the foundations to be strong before I do.

[coochiequeens]

What these freaks did to those kids is cruel and unusual.

Madagascar will surgically castrate paedophiles under new law approved by MPs it is revealed - days after Kazakhstan announced same plan

 A minister spoke in favour of the law saying: 'society must know what they did'

By ED HOLT

PUBLISHED: 14:29 EST, 7 February 2024 

Madagascar's parliament has approved a new law which will see paedophiles surgically castrated for their crimes.

The new law comes just days after Kazakhstan announced a similar law where the country's worst offending child sex offenders will have their genitals surgically removed. 

On February 2 Madagascar's parliament, The National Assembly, approved a law which legalised the castration of child rapists. 

The old law stated that those found guilty of raping a minor would face between five and 20 years of forced labour. 

However, this new law states that those found guilty of raping a child under ten-years-old will be surgically castrated and sentenced to life imprisonment. While if the victim is between ten and 13-years-old, they will instead be chemically castrated and face 15 to 20 years of forced labour. If the rapist is also a minor they will escape castration. 

Madagascar's Minister of Justice Landy Randriamanantenasoa spoke in favour of the bill. She said: 'Society must know what they did and who they are'

Ms Randriamanantenasoa has rebuked similar criticism about respect for human rights by saying Madagascar is a sovereign country. This comes after Amnesty criticised the bill 

Minister of Justice Landy Randriamanantenasoa spoke in favour of the bill. Le Quotidien, a French language newspaper, reported that Ms Randriamanantenasoa said: 'Society must know what they did and who they are.'  

The bill was proposed by the President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina, last month and was one of his key campaign promises during his re-election bid last year. 

International organisations have criticised the new law. The BBC reports that in a statement, Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty's regional director for east and southern Africa, said: 'In Madagascar, rape cases remain under-reported, and perpetrators often go free due to the victims' and their families' fear of retaliation, stigmatisation, and a lack of trust in the judicial system.

'Implementing chemical and surgical castration, which constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as a punishment for those found guilty of raping minors will not solve this and is inconsistent with Malagasy constitutional provisions against torture and other ill-treatment, as well as regional and international human rights standards.'

Ms Randriamanantenasoa has rebuked similar criticism about respect for human rights by saying Madagascar is a sovereign country.  

The tighten of the law in Kazakhstan follows the death of Erkezhan Nurmakhan, five, who was lured to a paedophile's house after he offered her money for an ice cream

Saidolim Gayibnazarov, 48, who had previous convictions, was sentenced to life in jail and chemical castration

Kazakhstan announced its own draft  law to remove paedophiles genitals on February 6 following complaints from MPs that the current law where paedophiles are chemically castrated was not deterring child sex offenders. 

The tighten of the law follows the death of Erkezhan Nurmakhan, five, who was lured to a paedophile's house after he offered her money for an ice cream.

Saidolim Gayibnazarov, 48, who had previous convictions, was sentenced to life in jail and chemical castration.

Deputy Interior Minister of Kazakhstan, Igor Lepikha, said surgical castration was 'controversial'.

'In terms of ethics and the human side of the issue it is very complicated indeed.

'Moreover, we speak about these criminals being locked up for life - so there is no point in [castration] then.'

[ayeforscotland]

What is Dataflow? Part 3: Doing the Practical

Apologies for the delay in getting this next section up - past few weeks have been super busy and then, hilariously, I was ill last week.

Read Part 1 here.

Read Part 2 here.

In Part 2 I wrote about how important diagrams have been throughout history. Understanding the 'big picture' has been important for every triumph of engineering. From bridges to skyscrapers to oil rigs and wind turbines, all of these have had diagrams backed by international standards which enabled them to be built.

The digital world hasn't quite managed that yet. In the other posts I've tried to drill home the point that modern digital businesses are often extremely siloed, communication and documentation isn't there and there is a lack of a common language between 'Business' and 'IT'.

This lack of understanding means organisations do not understand how data flows through their business and their supply chain.

It's the understanding of dataflow that's important here because it enables organisations to focus on optimising, securing and maintaining flows across an organisation rather than siloed teams patching things up where they can and not understand the upstream and downstream impact on the business.

Method and Layers

Going to preface this by saying that this may come across as complete common sense, and to some extent you'll be completely correct!

This is an example of how to create a very basic dataflow. But I will first start with understanding all of the People, Processes and Technology that I use to post on Tumblr.

So I start with six layers:

Ownership

Business Process

Application

System

Hardware

Infrastructure

What is important to remember here is that you do not have to be a specialist in every single layer.

A Business Analyst will feel much more at home in the Business Process Layer, while an Infrastructure Manager will be much more knowledgeable about the Infrastructure layer.

The important thing is that this Business & IT Diagram allows them to communicate more efficiently.

Let's Build a Dataflow!

In this example - There's an 'AyeforScotland' Element (the rectangle!) at the top. I'm the owner of everything below that element. The black lines are 'connections' representing the connectivity between the different elements.

Following the example, I'm responsible for' managing my blog 'Blog Management' which breaks down into smaller processes: Draft posts, schedule posts, answer anon abuse, and reblog shitposts.

Coming down to the Application Layer (red) - You can see that I draft and schedule posts using Tumblr Desktop and I'm using Firefox Web Browser for that.

But for answering anon abuse and reblogging shitposts, I'm using the Tumblr App.

In the Systems layer you can see I'm using Windows 11 on my PC (Hardware) and I'm using iOS on my iPhone.

Both my PC and iPhone connect to my BT Router.

And that's it for this Business & IT Diagram. I've shown clearly how I'm responsible for the processes and how I use the technology to perform those processes. I don't necessarily need to show everything on a single diagram because it would lose clarity.

This next Business & IT Diagram is much smaller, and establishes the relationships and dependencies on Tumblr to provide the service. And that's because we're complying with the laws and rules of a methodology.

In this diagram (probably need to zoom in to see it) I'm at the top left as 'AyeforScotland' and my 'BT Router' is spatially below me. Following the rules and laws of the method, that maintains the relationship that I have with the BT Router, I own it.

But I don't own the small 'Internet' that's next to it horizontally. I've simplified the concept of the internet for this example.

There's also two owners - 'Automattic' which owns and operates 'Tumblr' below it, with Tumblr being responsible for the 'Provision of Tumblr Services'.

Now naturally 'provision of Tumblr services' will break out into loads of sub-processes. Tumblr could map out their entire organisation (and if they need a hand, they can DM me!) But for this dataflow it's not really required.

Now both diagrams above are not dataflows. But close your eyes for a second and you can visualise what they are.

But because we've created our two diagrams, we understand the connectivity and using the software we can create the dataflow.

Now again, this is very basic. But when you put things into a dataflow context, you can put this down in front of a wide range of people from different business disciplines and they can start to optimise how the business works.

Here's a much larger Dataflow example, that you won't be able to read because it exceeds A0 printing size, but it should convey the scale.

If any of the connections or elements fail along this dataflow - The dataflow stops.

This costs organisations time and/or money.

So understanding dataflows allows IT people to articulate to business people "Hi boss, if this server goes down it will bring down this dataflow and cost the business $10,000 an hour" - Suddenly it's in a language they understand.

It helps with strategic decision-making, it helps with communication, it helps document how things *actually* work as opposed to how people think they work, and once you switch to thinking in terms of 'dataflow' it's hard to stop.

Conclusion

I can't wait to answer all the questions on the back of this.

Also one area I didn't go into is that each of the elements (rectangles) can also hold data (Financial data, Technical Specs, Risk & Cybersecurity metrics, Governance documentation etc).

It's also really easy to get started with it. You can start in any of the layers based on your area of work.

[pretty-little-whorror]

Rough House - Ash Williams

AvED Ash smut bc i still need him. This ones been sitting in my drafts since December ish so i thought i would finish it.

wc: 4.1k

tags: older man/younger woman(age is never specified, written in mind with a 20-something), "outdoor" sex, kinda public sex, car sex but not like normal, almost getting caught, p in v sex, oral(fem receiving), light nipple play, unprotected sex, cream pie, light fighting, mentions toward canon style violence. not completely proof read I just searched for the underlined words.

Ash sat in the aged lawn chair, watching as you grumpily worked to wash the Deadite guts off of his car. He was rather pleased with himself, finding not only a way to pawn chores onto someone else, but to ogle at your figure as you bent over the hood of his car. As for you, the hot summer weather does nothing to ease your mood. You grabbed another sponge from the bucket while you silently cursed Kelly and Pablo for running off on a grocery run before you had the mind to. 

After finishing his beer with one long gulp, he crumpled it with his metal hand and tossed it somewhere behind him. Hearing the aluminum can hit the ground, your eyes met the sky impatiently. “Really?” You sighed, his behavior only adding to your aggravation. 

“Hm?” He hummed in response as he leaned over in his chair to grab another can from the cooler placed next to him.

“Seriously? You can’t even throw your own shit out?” You turned to him, a soapy hand resting on your hip. 

“Oh please, sugar, I hardly think it matters. I’ve done worse. Pick it up if it bothers you so much.” He shrugged, a careless grin plastered across his mug. The pop of the metal tab sounded deafening as he opened up his next beer. 

“I swear to God, Ash if you don’t pick up that fucking can, I’m gonna shove it so far up your ass you’re gonna be burping aluminum for the next week.” 

He raised his hands in mock surrender as he raised himself from the chair. “Easy there, darling, no need to get all worked up.” He walked back to where the can had landed. “I’ll pick up the ‘fucking can’” he mocked. You let out a sigh, deciding to ignore him for your own sake. You turned back to the car and used the sponge to push a chunk of what was maybe brain at one point onto the gravel. You winced as it landed with a heavy ‘splat’. 

“Oh, come on now sugar, a little manual labor never hurt no one. We’ll be finished in no time, then you can go get your beauty rest.” He said as he settled back into his chair. “Or maybe do some sunbathing, I can always help with the sunscreen.” 

“We?” You snapped back toward him. “There has been no ‘we’, Ash, just you working on getting day drunk while I clean your fucking car!.” 

“Well then you can’t say I’m not working.” He winked with his trademark cocky, full-of-himself grin. “Besides, I’m supervising. Making sure everything is up to my incredibly high standards.”

“Then how about you finish this shit up then, yeah? It’s too fucking hot out for me to be dealing with you.” 

Ash feigned offense, placing a hand over his heart dramatically. “Oh how you wound me with your words. Can’t you see, baby? The sweat, the heat, the hard work, that’s all part of the Ash Williams experience. I’ve got to save my hands for more delicate matters.” He wiggled his hand with a wink. “Besides, if you do a good job maybe we can go get a drink.” He bounced his brows.

“Only if I can drown you in it.” You gave him a poisoned sweet smile with a glare. 

He again rose from the chair and walked over to the car, standing next to you as you cleaned. “You just need a little bit more elbow grease, sweetheart. Once we're done we can try something else to ease those troubles of yours, hm?”

“Right now you’re my only frustration.” You remarked, turning your back to him. “Pablo should be doing this, he’s the one with the shit aim.” You sighed. 

“Yeah and I’m making him buy our provisions as punishment. Besides, you have me here for moral support and expert supervision. It would be irresponsible of me to let you miss out on all the valuable life lessons I have to offer.” 

You ignored him again, wringing the sponge out over the bucket before dipping it into the clean bucket full of suds. 

“But, if you don’t think you have the mental capacity to learn a thing or two from my noggin, I can always find someone who can.” 

“Now, you know better than to threaten me with a good time, Ashley.” You didn’t even turn to face him as you spoke. 

“Oh, come one now sweetheart, once a lady gets a taste of what Ash Williams has to offer, they always come back asking for more.” He shrugged and took a sip from his drink as he turned to walk back to his chair. 

Deciding that he had finally run your patience too thin, you let out an annoyed groan and chucked the sponge at his back. “Fuck you! Clean your own fucking car!” You shouted at him as he slowly turned around with a surprised, albeit impressed, look on his face. 

“Oh fine, fine. Don’t get your panties in a twist, sugar cake. I can finish cleaning my baby. I’m sure she needs a gentle touch after what you’ve done with her.” 

You rolled your eyes again but continued to walk away, deciding you were done with him until you found something, a lot of something, to drink. However, as soon as you were no more than a pace or two in front of him on your way back to the trailer, you felt a heavy stream of water hit your back. The unexpected force almost pushing you forward. You snapped around to see Ash holding the hose with the biggest shit eating grin on his face. Seeing red, you quickly closed the distance between the two of you and you swiped at his feet, sending him falling to the ground, dropping the hose on his descent. 

“Jesus fucking Christ” He shouted as his back hit the gravel floor. “At least you're not throwing a temper tantrum.” He winced as he got up, wiping down his pants after his fall. You turn back around, trying again to go back to the trailer for the second time, but then his voice again grated against your ears. “Now do you have it all out of your system or did you wanna tangle a little more?”

Taking the bait, you turn around again and made the same move to knock him down again. Now prepared to use his years-honed reflexes, he sidestepped out of dodge as you lunged at him. As you went past him he grabbed your arm, using your momentum against you. He twisted your arm behind your back and pushed you up against the newly cleaned, still wet car with a firm grip. 

“Oh come on now, baby, let’s channel that energy into something physical that’s a little less violent, hm?” He chuckled, his breath fanning against the nape of your neck. 

You took a second to take in your situation, bent over the Delta by Ash and your face flushed red, however less from anger this time. Not caring for the predicament you whipped your head up, the back of your skull hitting his jaw, causing him to bust his lip open on his teeth. He stumbled back, allowing her to stand up. He raised his left hand to his bleeding lip, an expression of surprise once again painted on his face, however the corners of his mouth curled into a playful smile. 

You looked over him, not able to take in his full figure given the lack of space between the two of you. Initially, you had resented the smile that played on his lips, but you almost felt a sort of release. Finally being able to take out your frustrations, not only from Ash, but from the continuous pile of shit you had been navigating through these past few months. 

“Now where’s that spitfire when we need-”

Before we was able to finish, you bent down and grabbed the hose from off the ground and whipped it at his side. The stream of water avoiding him but spraying all over the side of the Airstream as a result. Ash yelped in surprise as he narrowly avoided his face being doused in water. He chuckled at your resourcefulness and raised his hands as a white flag. As worked his way towards you, you decided you weren’t done yet and again repeated the move to swipe his legs out from under him with your own. Only narrowly avoiding the move this time, he only tipped a little over your before regaining his balance. You balled your hand into a fist and pulled back, ready to throw a punch but he again caught your arm, pushing it flush against your chest and using it to maneuver you back to the car, the back of your legs hitting the side of the hood. 

“You’ve gotta get another move in your deck, baby.” He chuckled. “Besides, I'm getting a little tired of this. Now are we done or do you have something else you’d like to try?” He pulled back on your arm, moving your torso forward just a bit as a subtle, but surprisingly un-obnoxious show of his current power over you. You didn’t talk back, just staring up at him. Luckily you had worked yourself up during your brief spat, allowing the blush coming over your face a pliable excuse. You wanted to say your next move was nothing more than impulsive but deep down you knew better. 

You pulled against his grip, not in an attempt to free yourself, but instead to bring him down to your level. Still having to balance on your toes, you brought your lips harshly up to his, able to taste the blood you had caused to accumulate not more than five minutes ago. You could feel him smirk against your lips, but you were past getting annoyed at his hubris. His grip on your wrist loosened as he pushed into the kiss and you felt the cool metal of his right hand on your side through the dampened fabric of your t-shirt. 

“Now that’s the kinda move I’m talking about.” He spoke, barely separating his mouth from yours. 

“You’re not gonna shut up, are you?” You grumbled, completely freeing yourself from his wrist and running your hand over his clothed chest. 

“Well there’s a few other things I can do with my trap.” He winked. You rolled your eyes again, he was always gonna be this cheesy. 

“Why don’t we just focus on being quiet for now, hm?” You patted his chest as he smirked, closing the distance between your lips once again. He took the opportunity to pull at your bottom lip with his teeth, an unspoken request you granted by sighing into the kiss, your other arm wrapping around his shoulder in time. 

As his tongue pushed into your mouth, his hands falling onto either side of your waist, gently running the distance between there and the curve of your hips before he gently patted your ass, a silent signal you followed by jumping up onto the hood of the car and spreading your legs enough for him to stand between. Now settled, his hands crept up beneath your shirt, separating the wet fabric from your skin as left snaked a path up to your bra, reaching around the back to expertly unclasp the garment in a single move. 

Deciding it was well past your turn, your hands worked on undoing the first few buttons of the henley, allowing enough space for you to run a hand over his chest, your fingers lightly dancing through the dark hair peeking through. You then tugged the shirt out of the waistband of his pants. 

His hands moved down, palming yours hungrily through the fabric of your jeans. He undid them quickly and lifted you slightly off the hood in order to discard them completely. 

“Shit baby,” He murmured, his lips millimeters away from your ear, his hot breath fanning over the shell. “You’ve got no clue how long I’ve been waiting to get into your shorts.”

“Oh, I think I’ve got some sort of idea.” You teased back, undoing his belt and sliding it through the loops of his jeans. 

“So you just let me sit there like a begging dog?”

“Consider it a test of patience.” You smirked as you brought your lips back to his. While you hoped that would have silenced him, he had proven you wrong. 

“First test I’ve ever passed.” 

You rolled your eyes. “I’d believe that.” You unlatched your arms from around his neck to get rid of your wet shirt and bra. “You barely passed this one.” 

"It's hard to study when I'm hot for teacher." 

You rolled your eyes at his remark as he explored your newly exposed skin, his hands cupping your breasts, the cool metal of his right hand a stark contrast to the warmth of his other. He circled his thumbs over your hardened nipples, eliciting a soft gasp from you. He pressed his mouth to your jawline as he continued to paw and knead at your breasts, slowly trailing a path from your neck, then down to your collarbone, to the valley between your breasts. His lips eventually landing on your nipple, tongue swirling around the hardened peak as his left hand fondled the other. 

Eventually, he raised his head to bring his lips to yours again, kissing you hot and messy. His fingers moved down your stomach, undoing your shorts and pulling them down your legs, you helped to kick them off once they fell down to your ankles. He gave a quick nip to your bottom lip before pulling away. He brought his hands up briefly to gently push at your shoulders. 

"Go ahead and lay back for me, sweet thing." 

You complied eagerly, the cool metal of the car hood against your heated skin sent a shiver down your spine. His gaze was heavy as he raked over your body, taking in every curve and contour of your body sprawled out on his car. He couldn't help but smile at the sight before stepping away for a moment. You gave him a quizzical look as he made his way towards the lawn chair he had been sat in earlier. 

"Uh, hello?" You spoke up, propping yourself up on your elbows. You watched with a raised brow as he brought the chair back over to where you laid on the car. 

"Give an old guy a break, yeah?" He smirked, sitting back down. The old, beaten chair just low enough to place him right between your legs. He tugged at the hem of your panties, pulling them down your legs. However, instead of tossing them aside like your shorts, he pocketed the fabric into his jeans, giving you a wink as he did so. His eyes glinted with mischief and desire as his hands ran up and down your thighs, eventually propping them over his shoulders. He lips pecked on the soft flesh of your inner thigh before settling at the apex between your legs. 

His tongue dipped into your folds, lapping at the arousal coating your core. He groaned as your taste coated his tongue, his grip on your thighs tightening. 

His motions started exploratory, paying close attention to the reactions each movement was able to elicit from you. While his ministrations has started small, they quickly matched those of a man starved; you felt his nose bump your clit as he delved into your dripping cunt, savoring every movement as if this would be his last meal. 

Your hand reached down to where his head was buried between your legs, your fingers weaving through his hair and gripping hard onto the locks.

"Goddamn, Ash." You sighed, arching your back and instinctively pushing your hips forward. You could hear him chuckle, the sound reverberating through you in a subtle vibration. His left hand that had been gently gripping at your thigh trailed up to join his tongue, his fingers dancing around your entrance, collecting the slick signs of your arousal on his fingertips.

He slowly pushed the digits in, causing your grip on his hair to tighten. He began to pump his fingers, the movements beginning as slow and tantalizing, however they quickly began to match his own impatience. The combination of his tongue eagerly lapping at your swollen clit and his fingers spreading you open causes that all too familiar and welcome tension to start tightening in your core.

"Fuck...Fuck I'm gonna cum!" Your words were breathless and whiny. His metallic hand patted your thigh encouragingly. 

"C'mon baby," He groaned, his words becoming less muffled as he withdrew his head from between your legs, replacing the attention on your clit with pressured circling from his thumb. "Cum for me baby, all over my hand, c'mon." 

It took only a few more deliberate movements before you came undone on his hand, a jumbled string of whines and curses expelling from your mouth in time. He slowed his movements, as if to help you down from the high before withdrawing his hand and standing back up, pushing the chair away with the back of his thighs. He leans down, kissing sloppily from the crook of your neck up to your lips as you came to all while muttering reassurances. 

"Such a pretty, perfect little pussy for me. Not fair for you to be hiding that, hm?" You moaned into his kiss, tasting yourself on his tongue. 

"So pretty when you cum baby, want you to cum on my cock this time, yeah?" He pushed his jeans down, the cloth of his boxers going with them, allowing his hard and aching cock to spring free. He wasted no time positioning himself between your legs, the head of his cock brushing against your entrance. 

"Ash," You whined. "Stop teasing." Your plea was met in reply with a confident smirk. 

"Oh c'mon now, nothing you can't handle." 

"Please..." You whimpered, your hips bucking up in an attempt to draw him in deeper. "Just fuck me already."

"Well if you're gonna ask so nicely." He grinned, slowly thrusting forward, letting you get accustomed to his size as he pushed himself in inch by inch until he was buried to the hilt. "Goddamn," He dropped his head as he hovered over you, his movements still. "So fucking good, so nice n' wet for me."

He began to move, his hips setting a steady rhythm as he pumped in and out of you, each thrust sending engulfing your nerves in red hot pleasure. As his pace increased, you could hear the car creak beneath the two of you, the sound mingling with your moans and the wet slap of skin against skin. 

Ash used his metal hand to anchor him to the hood of the car, allowing his left hand to roam your body, eventually landing on again kneading the plump flesh of your breast, rolling the nipple between his fingers. You moved your legs up from his hips to wrap around his waist, pulling yourself closer and allowing him to plunge into you deeper and hitting that perfect, sensitive spot inside you with each stroke. 

"Ash- fuck, right there." You gasped. "Just like that." You arched your back up, pushing your hips up to meet his each heavy thrust, tension again coiling tight in your core. He groaned in response to your words, his movements becoming more shallow but focusing on making sure he fucks you deep where you want him. 

"You gonna cum again for me? Cum all over my cock?" His hand left your chest moved down to your hip, fingers digging into the soft flesh as he moved you in time with his thrusts, angling himself so that he was grinding against your clit every time his hips met yours. The combination of sensations pushing you closer to the edge, your body trembling as the increasing pleasure brings you to the brink of your orgasm.

"Gonna," You breathed out, "Gonna cum again, Ash." You whined, writhing underneath him. 

"Yeah baby, me too." He groaned, closing his eyes as he tried to focus on his movements, regardless his thrusts had begun to turn more erratic and less focused as his own climax approached. The cool metal of his right hand came down to the other side of your hip, allowing his other hand to again move and slide between your legs. His fingers gathering some of your slick from where the two of you connected before circling tight over your swollen and overly sensitive clit. The added sensation causing an almost pornographic moan to slip through your parted lips. Your body tensed, muscles tightening in preparation for the heavy climax his actions promised you. 

"Shit, oh my God-" Your words were cut off by a knife-sharp gasp as your orgasm hit you like a heavy wave. Your walls clamped down around him, pulsing in time with your heavy breaths. Feeling you tighten around him, Ash let out a guttural groan, almost baring his teeth. 

"Fuck, baby, you're so tight. Gonna cum." He shuddered, his final thrusts rushed and erratic before burying himself deep inside of you as he found his own release, cock pulsing as he painted your velvet walls with thick ropes of his cum. You mewled, your oversensitive cunt feeling heavy from the passing bliss of your orgasm combined with sensation of the additional fullness of his release. 

As the final moments of your climaxes subsided, Ash carefully pulled away from you, his softening cock slipping from your well-used heat, causing a quiet whine to leave your mouth, pouting from the sudden emptiness. He took a moment, still panting, before stuffing himself back into his boxers and up his jeans. 

"Goddamn, sugar. Haven't had a fuck like that in years." He said, marveling and taking in the look of you still blissed out from your orgasm as if to commit it to memory. You lolled your head to the side lazily, thoroughly fucked out. He snickered, taking pride in how tired he had made you. 

"C'mon princess, let's go inside and get you cleaned up." He patted your thigh encouragingly. You sighed, not wanting to get up but knowing he was right. 

"Yeah, just gimme a second to make sure I can feel my legs." Your words were mumbled but not inaudible. You heard him chuckle. 

"Ol' Ashley fuck you that good?" 

You rolled your eyes, deciding that was the extent of a response he would get from you, knowing his ego didn't need further stoking. You took him in as he stood a few feet away from you. You stretched out on the car hood before slowly sitting up, taking a moment to get your bearings before sliding off the Delta. You began to pick your discarded clothes off from the ground, grumbling as you noticed they had become covered in dirt and mud, likely as a result from the earlier hose fight. As you bent down to recover your bra, you heard a loud 'slap' accompanied by a sharp sting to your ass. You snapped up, immediately glaring at Ash who just grinned. 

"Don't think just because I let you fuck me that I won't kick your ass, Williams." You sneered, pointing a finger at him. He raised his hands in mock surrender, allowing you to pick up the remaining scattered garments, tilting his head and appreciating the growing red mark on your skin. 

Your head again perked up as you heard the familiar roaring of a motorcycle approaching in the distance. You quickly walked over to where your shorts had landed before hurriedly trying to make your way back to the trailerr to shield yourself from the incoming eyes of Kelly and Pablo. The fact that they had been out slipping from your mind until now. 

Before you could make it to the small set of stairs, Ash grabbed you by your waist, pulling you to his chest. 

"Why in such a rush, sweet thing?" He chuckled as you squirmed against his grip. 

"Let go!" You hissed, urgently trying to push away from his lumber arms as Pablo's bike pulled into the driveway. 

"Oh, c'mon, you'll let me fuck you out here but the thought of those two seeing a little skin from you sends you running?" He teased.

"Ash, I'm not kidding." Your voice was firm, the thought of Kelly and Pablo seeing you like this making your stomach churn. He could sense the urgency in your voice and reluctantly releasing you from his grip, but still appreciating the view of your naked, reddened ass as you streaked into the trailer, slamming the storm door shut behind you.

[sayruq]

You read the headline and think, 'well that's a nice change of pace' but

According to Reuters, Washington also plans to veto a rival, Algeria-drafted resolution that demands an immediate humanitarian ceasefire - amid concerns it could jeopardise talks between the US, Egypt, Israel and Qatar.

The US vetoes a resolution that wants to end the genocide immediately because it threatens peace talks that have been going on for weeks. Lol, lmao even.

Here's the resolution the US wants to pass

If passed, the Security Council would "underscore its support for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as soon as practicable, based on the formula of all hostages being released, and call for lifting all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale".

[mariacallous]

Just before the presidential election last November, Carolyn Fisher was in her living room in Birmingham, Alabama, when her nonbinary child walked in and said that he, along with four other transgender kids, were planning on dying by suicide if Donald Trump won the upcoming election.

Fisher and her husband were both lifelong Republicans and supporters of Trump. Holding a spiral notebook, Carolyn’s 16-year-old, who uses the pronouns he and they, made a case against voting for Trump.

“He laid out why a vote for Donald Trump was voting against him as our child and why Donald Trump should never be president. He had literally been keeping notes of everything Trump and other Republicans had been saying about trans and nonbinary people, how they were mentally delusional and mentally ill. When he laid all of that out, my husband and I, we both just looked at each other and started crying.”

Fisher, together with members of the Rainbow Youth Project, contacted the parents of the other children who were part of the pact.

The Fishers later voted for then-vice president Kamala Harris, even going so far as taking a picture of their ballot to show their child.

But Trump still won, and during the president’s inauguration speech on January 20, the Fishers heard him say that their child effectively doesn’t exist when he signed a sweeping executive order that, among other things, calls for the ending of trans care, requires housing trans women in male prisons, and allows only male or female markers on official documents like passports and not the “X” that was introduced in 2021 for people who identify as nonbinary, intersex, or gender nonconforming.

“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Trump said.

When a bishop at the National Cathedral service for the inauguration this week asked Trump to protect “gay, lesbian, and transgender children” the president dismissed her pleas in a Truth Social post and called her “nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”

The executive order contains provisions that require further federal action to become law, and this document should be viewed as a roadmap the Trump administration has drafted to signal what new rules they are planning on implementing. But experts say the order published this week, in conjunction with Trump’s very public comments, are designed to strike fear into the trans community.

“I think there's a huge amount of it that is just about fear, and a part of it is trying to scare people into compliance” Allison Chapman, a trans rights activist, tells WIRED. “Enforcement takes a lot of time, energy, and resources, so what we really need people to do is to not voluntarily comply in advance. There needs to be an active resistance to these things.”

The Rainbow Youth Project, an organization focused on helping young LGBTQ+ people, received over 6,000 calls in just the first couple of days after Trump’s November election win. That’s up from the usual 3,600 calls a month. It didn’t stop: The hotline received over 8,000 calls in December.

Now, after Trump’s comment and actions on the first day of his presidency, the group’s crisis helpline is once again receiving a torrent of calls. Sixty-two percent of incoming calls this week, the group tells WIRED, are from trans and gender-nonconforming adolescents age 14 to 17.

The callers are expressing varying degrees of emotional and mental distress, often expressing feelings of hopelessness and fear. One of the most common sentiments shared is “my country does not want me to exist.”

While the Trump administration’s actions are causing huge distress for the trans community and their families, a stark increase in the attacks, both online and offline, are already coming from Trump supporters who feel emboldened.

“We have already seen an uptick in the hate against us,” Fisher says. “We had someone who came to our home just last Tuesday and put a note in our mailbox that said: ‘He's your daddy now, he's your president. You people won't exist anymore.’ So yes, they're definitely emboldened.”

A trans pride flag they had hanging on their porch has been stolen twice in the space of a week. At her local Piggly Wiggly, a supermarket, she overheard people at an adjacent table talking about how glad they were that Trump had “gotten rid of” trans people.

“He didn’t get rid of them, they’re always going to exist—but he damn so put a target on them, especially my teenage son,” Fisher said.

And the attacks are also targeting the groups who are trying to help the LGBTQ+ community.

“We have seen a lot more hate,” Lance Preston, executive director of the Rainbow Youth Project, tells WIRED. “We've been receiving a lot of messages, crazy shit, like ‘Trump is your president, now all of you are gonna have to go away. We don't want you here.’ We get those in contact submission forms every day, and since the election it has just grown exponentially. It's really sad.”

Some activists are also concerned that those who have always stood with the LGBTQ+ community could be too scared to speak up under Trump’s new administration.

“Every time something like this happens we notice supporters backing down and just getting quiet,” Chris Sederburg, who helps trans and gender nonconforming people through the Rainbow Youth Project, tells WIRED. “Not all of them, but a lot of them do because they're scared of what's happening. They're scared of what might happen to them or they might catch hate for it.”

Sederburg, a trans man who works as a trucker, communicates with young trans people on social media and says that the response this week from the community has been one of “intense, immediate fear.”

For Jamie Anderson, a 40-year-old teacher living in Texas, her biggest fear is that Trump’s administration forces her 15-year-old daughter Dawn, who came out as trans last year, to make a traumatic decision.

“My biggest worry is that she's going to have to go back to living a lie, like not being who she is meant to be,” says Anderson. “She's happy now, she's a lot happier than she was right before she came out. She was super depressed. We had no idea what was going on. And finally she comes out, and she's this whole brand-new, amazing, loving child.”

But that’s not Dawn’s biggest fear. When WIRED asked what that would be, Dawn remained silent. Moments after the interview, Dawn sent a message: “I am afraid the government will take me away and end up killing me because I am transgender,” adding that she was now willing to share this in case “it might help others understand what I’m going through.”

(Jamie and Dawn are not the women’s real names. WIRED is using pseudonyms to protect their identities.)

The Fishers, meanwhile, are considering moving to a different state, possibly to California, where they feel their child would be more protected. But Carolyn Fisher worries about other families and trans and nonbinary children who may not have that option.

“I just want these kids to know that there are people out there, even Republicans, even conservative Christians, who love them and accept them for the way they are, and we want them to stay here with us,” Fisher says.

If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-273-8255 for free, 24-hour support from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also text HOME to 741-741 for the Crisis Text Line. Outside the US, visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for crisis centers around the world. If you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community in need of help, you can contact the Rainbow Youth Project here or by calling ((317) 643-4888.

[leohtttbriar]

There is an important line between cynicism and nihilism. Assuming that SCOTUS will authorize the end of birthright citizenship would cross that line. Trump’s reascendency to the White House is a pitch-black moment in this country’s history, but that is no license to indulge in preemptive defeat.

Why should we expect the Supreme Court to uphold birthright citizenship? There are three main reasons: one legal, one practical, and another related to the court’s own power. Start with the legal issue: There are few constitutional provisions with a clearer and more settled meaning than the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This guarantee is rooted in common lawand traces back to the nation’s founding. Congress enshrined it in the Constitution after the Civil War to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott, which had erroneously denied citizenship to Black Americans. During ratification, senators explicitly recognized that the citizenship clause’s broad language would encompass not just freed slaves but also the children of immigrants. They debated and ultimately approved the extension of birthright citizenship to these children, concluding that their parents’ lack of American citizenship should not abridge their own civil rights. The Supreme Court affirmed this understanding of the 14th Amendment in 1898’s Wong Kim Arkand has never retreated from it.

Trump attempts to get around this plain meaning by latching onto the words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” His order claims that the children of immigrants are not “subject to” the United States’ jurisdiction, presumably because their parents are citizens of another country. This argument is an indefensible misreading of both the text and the historical record. Once again, senators discussed this issue when drafting the 14th Amendment, and agreed that the “jurisdiction” language simply means “subject to our laws.” And the Supreme Court has clarified that all immigrants, both lawful and undocumented, are fully subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

Why, then, did Congress mention jurisdiction in the 14th Amendment? Because it intended to exclude the offspring of three groups who were not fully “subject” to U.S. law: foreign diplomats, invading soldiers, and Native tribes. Diplomats and soldiers were viewed as agents of a foreign sovereign, while tribes were, at the time, viewed as “quasi foreign nations.” But Congress was adamant that all other people, including immigrants’ offspring, be included in the promise of birthright citizenship.

To uphold Trump’s executive order, then, the Supreme Court would have to jettison 126 years of precedent, abolishing an ancient right at the heart of constitutional liberty. That will give the court serious pause. A large majority of justices almost certainly do not want to destabilize American law in this way, abruptly eradicating a right upon which millions have come to rely. Trump’s order also goes far beyond undocumented immigrants, denying citizenship to the children of “temporary” immigrants who are here lawfully. People with H-1B visas, Temporary Protected Status, DACA, and others who’ve long resided in the U.S. would evidently fall under this category, meaning their offspring would not receive citizenship. If implemented, this policy would be extremely unpopular: Most Americans do not want to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented people, let alone the children of legal immigrants. It would also upend the practical realities of citizenship, creating immense confusion that would invariably wind up in the judiciary’s lap.

not sure how much i agree that “the court” wants to not be seen as trump’s lapdog but i agree that this is one of those issues that roberts, barrett, gorsuch, and kavanaugh would be very likely to not side with him on.

[dcdreamblog]

So is the Plastic Man who was in the All-Star Squadron and the Freedom Fighters the same guy who's still around today with the Justice League? The current one is so rarely serious in interviews I can't find any concrete information.

I know there's plenty of other Golden Agers who are still around, but he still looks exactly the same and so does this "Woozy" Winks guy who's in a lot of pictures with him.

Same guy. Same weird, WEIRD guy.

(A recent "glamor shot" published by Mammoth City Magazine) Because his identity is publically available I can help clear up some confusion for you. Plastic Man's birth name is Patrick "Eel" O'Brien. Little is known about his birth family save some measure of Irish ancestry. His father was abusive and abandoned Eel at a young age to a Catholic nunnery. Eel counts the main factor in his fall toward crime being his lack of a positive male role model, meaning the most affection and attention he got was from street toughs and gangsters. He started by running simple errands, then couriering illicit goods, then dealing, by the time of his adulthood he was running a small outfit in Mammoth City, New Jersey. Everything went wrong when he was shot during a robbery of the Crawford Chemical Works. Blundering into a rack of barrels a large industrial acid was dumped all over him, even entering his wound. He was presumed dead but actually ended up under the care of an order of monks known as Rest Haven. Taken in and given asylum despite his criminal past, O'Brien discovered that he could morph his body in any way he desired, save for its color. Viewing the monks as role models in his new life, Eel gave up crime and decided to make the most of his second chance. His crime career was helped by Wolfgang "Woozy" Winks (as far as I can tell that is the man's legal name) a former small time criminal who became a bumbling if loyal confidant to the man of rubber. He was, of course, drafted into the All Star Squadron during the war where he gravitated toward working alongside Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. He says that despite pitching it as wanting to be "as close to Phantom Lady as possible, mrrrowww" (sic) it was actually because like earlier in his life he respected Uncle Sam as a reasonable and appreciative male role model. For his famous sense of humor he was regarded as a trustworthy and respected member of the Freedom Fighters until the war's end. He was left behind when the Freedom Fighters made their exodus to Earth X, although the reasons have never been made fully clear as to why. He spent the next several decades working for the FBI, hunting down mobsters, killers and robbers under a low profile as to not upset the provisions of the Keane Act. At some point during this period he engaged in a prolonged affair with a woman named Angel McDunnagh (She is by all accounts a very kind and patient but utterly mundane woman. Do not go looking for her. Seriously don't. He tends to get testy if she complains about people snooping.) which resulted in the birth of their son Ernie Luke McDunnagh O'Brien. It just so happens that around this same time, Superman's appearance and the formation of the JLA rendered the Keane Act moot when Plastic Man reappeared on the scene. This lead to Angel and Eel separating and Eel becoming rapidly estranged from his son. Plastic Man would eventually be granted membership on the Justice League where he served with distinction and commendation, risking life and limb for his comrades, innocents and all mankind more than once. Even eventually making an effort to step back into his son's life. At this moment in time he is associated both with The Terrifics, a group of respected superhuman multiversal explorers as well as the brand new "Justice League Unlimited" initiative. As I have said many, MANY times before, I will not judge a man like Plastic Man by his attitude. Especially when there's not a damn thing wrong with his attitude. The man grew up in the shadow of the great depression, abandoned to a nunnery, became a criminal before he finished middle school, was mutagentically deformed and decided all of that was reason enough to turn into the GOOD GUY. And the psychological trade off the he makes is that he's kinda goofy. He has faced the worst of the worst from literal nazis on down the list, I say he gets to break the tension however he damn well feels like it.

[prokopetz]

The most consistent piece of playtest feedback I've been getting on Space Gerbils is that the Action Phase sucks, on two counts:

Blowing your roll in the Action Phase can retroactively make the Operations Phase minigame feel pointless, and there isn't really any provision for addressing runs of bad luck; some playtest groups routinely managed to whiff a 15/16 chance of success three or four cycles in a row, which makes the whole engagement grind to a halt, and there isn't an obvious way to mitigate that when an entire round of prep work boils down to a single roll of the dice.

The first point feeds into the second: the Operations Phase has its positional minigame, and the Fallout Phase has those lovely lookup tables, but then Action Phase hanging out between them is kind of nothing, mechanically speaking. Many players have reported that it feels like the Action Phase ought to have a minigame as well, and that it's incongruous for the portion of the phase cycle where stuff actually happens to be the least mechanically engaging.

There've also been reports, where drafts 0.1 and 0.2 would often become unplayable due to the play grid filling up with broken stations, drafts 0.3 and 0.4 have swung too far in the opposite direction and made complications too easy to mitigate. It's unclear whether this is due to the Action Phase's mechanics not throwing complications frequently enough, or due to the Fallout Phase not assessing those complications harshly enough; probably it's a mix of both.

Fortunately, the game's modular nature means that it's actually fairly trivial to rip out the current Action Phase procedures and replace them with something else; very little of the rest of the system would have to change. The trick is figuring out what that should look like.

The most obvious routes involve introducing individual actions in the Action Phase, but that's exactly what we don't want; mechanically, because we just made each gerbil perform a tactical action in the Operations Phase, and doing it twice in a row would double the handling time of an already ponderous system; and thematically, because acting "as" the gerbils' singular assumed persona after doing all that setup as individuals is kind of the whole point!

In balance, this is a good problem to have, because I enjoy designing stupid minigames.

As for what that hypothetical Action Phase minigame might look like, I keep coming back to the idea of taking a page from Gone to Hell and formalising the presently-optional rule that the players should take turns "being" the bounty hunter persona in each Action Phase. That would definitely help with sorting out the forthcoming rules for GMless play, since the players whose "turn" it isn't could step into the encounter management roll. However, that leaves the off-turn players twiddling their thumbs every Action Phase in GMful play, which in turns means either having two separate sets of Action Phase procedures for GMful and GMless play, or biting the bullet and making Space Gerbils exclusively GMless, neither of which terribly appeals.

This post is mostly just me thinking out loud, so I don't expect anyone to have an opinion, but as always, I'm open to suggestions!

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Shalom Yoran 

Selim Sznycer, aka Shalom Yoran, was a Polish Jew who escaped the mass murder of all the Jews in his town, including his parents, and wanted to fight Nazis. However, when he tried to join a Russian resistance group, they rejected him for being Jewish, which led him to create his own militia of 200 Jews who hid in the forest and carried out acts of sabotage against the Nazi occupiers.

Selim Sznycer was born in Poland in 1925. After the Nazis invaded Warsaw, the Sznycer family fled to a different part of Poland, the town of Kurzeniec, occupied by the Soviets. But in 1941 the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. and despite their best efforts to escape the Nazis, Selim and his family found themselves living under Nazi occupation once again.

The Jews of Kurzeniec were forced into a squalid ghetto. Not far away was a Russian POW camp, where the prisoners were suffering from abuse, starvation and disease. Local Soviet partisans were forming militias to fight the German occupiers, and Selim heard about the nascent resistance movement from an escaped Russian POW.

The day before Yom Kippur in 1942, Nazi high command gave orders to “liquidate” the ghetto – meaning kill all the inhabitants. From a contact in the resistance, Selim learned of the horrific plan, and he and his brother were able to escape from the ghetto and hide in a nearby barn owned by Polish peasant, Ignalia Biruk, who took in the terrified Jewish boys at great risk to herself. From his hiding place, he heard the sounds of all the Jews in the ghetto being massacred, including his own parents. He later remembered his mother’s last words to him, “She told me, ‘Go fight… try to save yourselves, avenge our death and tell the world what happened.’ These are the words that guided me through that dark period, what gave me strength to fight, and what inspires me to share my story today.”

That winter, Selim, his brother and three friends hid in the Polish forest near the Sang river. They survived the brutal cold by building an underground bunker. A few kindly locals periodically gave them some food, but most of their provisions were stolen.

Selim wanted to fight the Nazis who had taken everything from him, and in 1943 he and his small group approached a Russian partisan unit, but they wouldn’t allow the five Jews to join because they had no weapons. Desperate to join the fight, Selim persisted, and finally the unit commander told him that if they returned to Kurzeniec and blew up the Nazi munitions factory, they would be allowed to join the resistance group. The Russians assumed the Jewish boys couldn’t possibly survive the dangerous mission, but they carried out the bombing successfully and returned to the forest, only to be told the real reason they were rejected: they were Jewish.

Undeterred, Selim wandered the forest in nearby Belarus looking for Jews who wanted to fight. He formed an all-Jewish resistance unit featuring 200 fighters. After the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad, Selim and his group harassed and sabotaged the retreating German soldiers. They blew up bridges and railroad supply lines. In 1944, Belarus was liberated by the Soviets, and Selim and the other Jewish resistance fighters went from the firing pan to the fire: they were drafted into the Red Army, where they were viciously persecuted for being Jewish, enduring beatings and near-starvation. Selim managed to escape and flee to Italy, where he illegally fought with the British Army until the war ended in 1945.

Selim used a fake British passport to emigrate to Palestine, then occupied by the British who severely restricted the number of Jews who could enter the territory. Like many Jews, when Selim got to Israel he dropped his Polish name and started using his Hebrew name: Shalom Yoran. He joined the Israeli Army and became a decorated Air Force officer. He built a successful career developing the Israeli aircraft industry. He was a founding member of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and a governor of Tel Aviv university.

In 2003, Selim/Shalom published “The Defiant,” a memoir about his experience as a resistance fighter during the war. He dedicated the book to his parents. Shalom Yoran died in 2013 at age 88, survived by his beloved wife Varda, and their children and grandchildren.

For fighting Nazis and avenging his parents’ deaths, we honor Shalom Yoran as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[sparklingmineraltequila]

American Wasteland

Note: Not as long as I would've liked but I kept it in my drafts for long enough so here it is. My semester is almost ALMOST finished so I'll have some more time after that and 2002 Rust is hard af to write. Though, I hope this carries those of you who've stuck with me, through. Love you guys

Warnings: Cussing, drinking, smoking, drugs, references to domestic abuse, references to transactional sexual activity, references to sex work

Rust sits at the bar, tapping the edge of his Camels on the bar top, when he remembers Travis sneering at the first pack of cigarettes he'd brought home. Just another checkpoint in the list of defiance that his 16 year old self had started to compile. It wasn't the smoking that had pissed Travis off, Rust knew that. It's that he had bought one of those sleek, little cartoons; all bright-colored, branded and ready-rolled. A perfect 'fuck you' to Travis' contemptuous survivalism that kept them without cable and without the sugary stuff that Rust always dragged from by the scruff of his hunting jacket, on the rare trip to tiny provision stores. Just another cut of modernity that he was deprived of; another part of him that, when he had first left, he'd meticulously contrived to slot right into suburbia. Rust didn't give a really fuck in '95, gave even less of a fuck when he was undercover. But now him and Marty are getting older so it's easier to slide into that slow and easy catatonia. Over the past few years, the grudging after work beers had been getting more endurable, Marty's preening around his backyard during 4th of July barbecues almost forgivable. A man's home is his castle and Marty wears that badge of honor with the pompousity belonging only to undeserving men. Marty, Maggie, Laurie, the whole vivarium of the performance of what's normal, good and Christian, as if the bayou wasn't out there with the Spanish moss waiting to blow in a breeze that never arrives and the women's bodies who no-one ever finds.

'Hey.'

Rust looks at her closer, this time. She was always a chameleon, Cassandra. Then again, you'd have to be, in a profession like hers. She's changed out of the pencil skirt and Rust has half a mind to ask her if she's kept the same cutoffs from all those years ago. He doesn't. It's selfish and he hopes she's burned everything goddamn thing she owned from back then. It was always a uniform of some sorts; Rust sees it in the girls he interrogates, in the crime scene photos pasted onto his walls. Those frayed shorts and tiny tops and push up bras and boots or wedges or heels filled in with Sharpie to hide the scuffs. Rust still sees Cassandra, flimsy fabrics stained with blood, sweat or beer, and his biker leather draped over her shoulders, shivering after too many hits of a post-shift joint. He knows she hasn't burnt them. It would be far too dramatic an action and a waste of money. An emotional catharsis limited to suburbanite teenage girls, accustomed to the back-ups and retribution that Cassandra knew she couldn't afford.

Rust remembers the first time they'd talked about this nihilistic disillusionment of hers. It seemed apt on him, with his scars and callouses and whiskey breath. Cassandra's acrimony towards 'the pigs' and 'the system' had seemed almost sweet on a girl with a hot pink hair tie around her wrist. That was before Rust had learnt that she still barricaded the door to her room, now living alone.

'Hate me even more, now?' Rust's voice is gritty with cigarettes and the preliminary beer he drank, before her arrival.

'I knew you were a cop, back then,' Cassandra counters, voice icy as if to veil the hurt that he may have forgotten; relegating her to another footnote of his grief.

Rust clicks his tongue,

'Nah, not really a cop. Didn't have the authority, at least.'

Cassandra watches him, her eyes narrowing fast,

'The fuck is your point? Want me to buy you a beer for your fucking promotion?'

Rust doesn't laugh. He just stares at her while taking another drag so Cassandra takes it upon herself to indulge him,

'Detectives ain't the responders to 911 calls, are they?'

'We ain't.'

'There you go.'

Rust scoffs,

'You hate patrollers?'

'Yeah, I do.'

'Those lazy assholes?' Rust drawls, and Cassandra almost slams his head against the bar top. Rust sees that anger in her eyes; the rage that boils up like hot vomit until she chokes on it, offering up something hideously vulnerable. Dog looking at its mess.

Cassandra lights her cigarette. Still Marlboro Golds, Rust notes.

'You want to know why he used to always leave the phone on the cord?'

Rust knows their talking about her father

'To fuck with me. That man couldn't make it to the toilet in time, most nights that he got liquored up, but the sick fuck always remembered to keep the phone on. Want to know why? Cause when he'd break out the belt or the fists or the bottles, the first thing that I would run to was the phone. Fuck, I was a kid. I didn't understand self-preservation, yet. And that man used to tell me that the cops would take 5 minutes but, in that 5 minutes, he could fuck me up however he wanted,'

Rust wonders if that's why she had to make herself beautiful. Pity. It distinguishes or at least elicits some sort of emotion that isn't just resignation towards those poor ol' children we need to pray for. Beauty. Otherwise, you're just another statistic dripping blood on the kitchen linoleum.

Cassandra exhales the smoke,

'The patrollers used to take 10.'

Rust holds her gaze, wondering he deserves to feel shame; past the empty platitudes and symbols that his badge carry. Cassandra stares down at the burning tip of her cigarette, raising her face up with her hand as she takes a drag. There she goes, back into that smooth, icy shell. Rust wonders what the diversions have since become, those little pivots she uses to veer you off from the path down to that dark, dirty shit. He also wonders if she's finally learnt not to bother with him. Not when they carry smears of each other, all over. Shit like that stains-even after all these years.

'What do you want to know, then? Boudreaux, right?'

Rust gives a nod,

'He ever talk you about the Yellow King?'

'The Yellow King?' Cassandra scoffs, 'Not exactly but it sounds like the type of shit he woulda come up with after a binge.'

Cassandra looks at Rust's stoic expression, evidently unsatisfied with her answer. She sighs,

'No. It doesn't come to mind but you know these guys. Up for a heavy sentence and, for once, are smart enough to see it. They'll grasp at any shit to rile you up. They're like kids.'

'Don't fuckin' infantilize them. They know what they were doing and they're real fuckin' proud 'til they end ass up, in Angola.'

'No, Rust, I mean literally and you know it too. Shit, I thought Texas was bad. Here, it's another fucking planet. You've seen the things they name their schools-schools- after. There ain't nothing that the Bible ain't able to gloss over. Hell, last case I had was a guy beat a another man's face into the concrete over 40 mg of oxycontin,'

Cassandra takes a moment to ask him,

'You seen all those pill mills you got going on, down here?'

Rust exhales some smoke,

'Ain't my division, anymore.'

Cassandra licks the inside of her cheek, pissed off by his nonchalance that she knows is contrived, before continuing,

'Anyway-this man killed another man like you would a damn hound. Said he needed the pills to hear Jesus.'

Rust already knows this. Not this story exactly, but these laconic tales about the depravity of humanity. It's like preaching to the goddamn choir with him.

'Want me to feel sorry for you or some shit? Tell you what a good job job you're doin'? Sittin in those rooms, listenin' to that shit, starin' at those pictures?'

Cassandra stares at him for a moment, almost taken aback. Then, she responds to aggression in the only way she's ever known,

'What, you wanna be an asshole with me cause you still feel shitty that you fucked a 20 year old and liked it?'

Rust almost falters, at that; not out of shock at the crass acidity with which she spits them out but at the sudden surge of nausea he feels at what he's done, something which has been quietly gnawing at the edges of his being. Never too comfortable, Rust is haunted by what he's done like a dull ache in all his joints. Sin and old age plastered on the lines of his face, you may as well be able to smell it on him. Rust sure can.

'I ain't here to re-hash any of that shit with you, Cassandra.'

'No? You think you're better than me, now?'

Rust huffs, gritty with smoke and liquor. It's a lazy retort, they both know it. Lazy and untrue. Cassandra, his ever tenacious Cassandra, licks the inside of her cheek. Rust wonders if she still bites it, remembering the blood he'd taste when he'd concede himself a kiss.

'You got a girl, now? That it?'

Cassandra's mocking tone does nothing to confine that jealous tinge that tilts her intonation downwards.

'Laurie ain't a girl. She's a woman,' Rust lights another cigarette.

'Ohhh, ok. Lau-rie,' Cassandra draws it out, turning it over her tongue, 'Cute name. Sweet, almost. Ain't nothing like Rust.'

'Well, people don't exactly get together based on the congruity of name,' Rust says, dryly.

Cassandra ignores him,

'Is she sweet? A real southern belle; Laurie sounds like that.'

'She's a doctor. Smart,' Rust pauses to let the next word sink into any slivers of hope that Cassandra's so desperately clinging onto, 'Steady.'

'Oh, cause you're so fucking steady, now? Got a badge and a button up, and you're suddenly Uncle-fucking-Sam, himself?'

'You got anythin' else to tell me about Bourdreaux or are we done?'

Cassandra stares at him before narrowing her eyes,

'No, Cra-Rust, we ain't done,' she spits, noticing his involuntary twitch at her slip of the tongue.

Rust pulls out his wallet, placing a couple bills on the bar top, enough to cover both of their drinks, before ambling out. A slower, more controlled walk than his Crash days. Less of a twitch in his neck, now standing firm and upright. He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, nowadays. Cassandra grabs his arm and Rust remembers that desperate dig of nails, in his arms,

'You ain't leaving. Not like that. I don't see you for 8 years and, then, you show up with a badge and a Laurie, in the middle of a fucking swamp.'

Rust studies her for a moment,

'You were just a kid and I was some wild-ass biker junkie-'

'Don't you goddamn dare treat me like a stranger! I used to lick the blood from your teeth.'

'A fuckin' kid that I-'

'I would've found someone else to fuck me up, if you hadn't come along.'

'But I did and I was more than happy to do so,' Rust drawls, trying to seem resolute but they can both hear the fury that lies beneath his stoic penitence.

'Happy's a slight overstatement,' Cassandra pauses, 'You used to vomit, sometimes. Afterwards. I'd hear you.'

Rust doesn't say anything. Just another detail of their relationship that they had never acknowledged, too devastating to deal with the implications. It was easier to let it sit, same way a bullet stays under the skin to stop blood bursting out.

'It wasn't cause of you,' he mutters.

'I know.'

She can't look at him. Neither can he, so he leaves. This time she lets him but not without following close behind.

They walk to his truck with her just a foot away, but silent. He can smell her perfume, the oils she puts in her hair; it must be a small victory to her that she's finally become the woman she was always pretending to be. Rust isn't surprised. Cassandra was, hell still is, smart in how she studied people. Came with the territory of what she did and what she does now, she knew how to coddle men like babies. The girls at the club telling her to wear Elizabeth Taylor's perfume-White Diamonds or some shit- cause it would always get you an extra tip, reminding men of their momma's in their starched church clothes and rouge. Even when they get aggressive, Cassandra always told him that it usually wasn't pure violence, more pathetic desperation. A woman cooing and holding them the way that their mommas and then wives hadn't done in years. That didn't stop the acrimony with how she spoke it and looked at the yellowing, on her arm. She also studied women- she'd told Rust that too, in some dive bar in Galveston. The Chicana girls that went to her high school, mostly. Rust knew it wasn't the earrings or eyeliner, though; it was the authority.

'You make good money?' Rust asks, not bothering to turn as he opens the driver's side.

'You asking me if I turn tricks, on the side? Graduated from stripper to hooker?'

'Shut the fuck up.'

Cassandra looks at him, still knowing how to read him,

'I got a place, Rust.'

'Good, cause ain't no way in hell you're stayin' with me.'

Rust sits there, not starting the ignition. Cassandra knows this is the closest thing she's getting to an oppurtunity to ask, whatever the hell it is she wants from him.

'Give me your arm. I can bring over some files on Boudreaux. I don't need that shit taking up space now that he ain't my problem no more.'

It sounds too rehearsed, too rushed coming from Cassandra's mouth; as if attempting to reinstall that lacquer of composure through cruelty, one that she resents Rust for holding better than she has. She takes a pen from her purse, holding out her hand.

'I ain't got no paper.'

'Your arm, dumbass.'

Rust stares at her,

'I got Laurie now, girl. I don't need you runnin' one over me?'

'What game am I playing?' Cassandra asks, benignly but with that damn glint in her eye. He feels it again, that passivity. The story he told Marty about his time undercover always include that passivity: from the drugs, his department, his grief, Ginger and the rest of the Crusaders. But her always leaves Cassandra out. Rust is a man of extremes: complete detachment or entrenching himself so deeply in depravity, the he now wears part of it forever. No qualms about violence, just the way of the world and who you had to be and what you had to do. Cassandra's amorality always flawed him, though. In opposition to his, it was completely self-serving. Some might've call it selfishness, he called it survival instincts. She had always known what she had to do and how she had to be, to get some. Only way you can be, growing up letting the drug store creeps feel you up, over your bra, to pay for tampons. Rust stares at her now. She knows she's not a good person, neither is he. They never tried to pretend otherwise, to themselves or each other. That's more than most.

Rust extends his bare forearm over the rolled-down window.

[queenhunter102]

Our Omega Master list

Hi! This will be the rewritten version of Our Omega; you can read the original / Draft version here

Chapter 1 ~ The Arrival | Chapter 2 ~ Medbay | Chapter 3 ~ Settling In | Chapter 4 ~ Meeting The Team | Chapter 5 ~ The Canteen | Chapter 6 ~ Training Day | Chapter 7 ~ In The Labs | Chapter 8 ~ Provisions | Chapter 9 ~ Meeting Jenson | Chapter 10 ~ TBC | Chapter 11 ~ TBC | Chapter 12 ~ TBC | Chapter 13 ~ TBC | Chapter 14 ~ TBC | Chapter 15 ~ The Briefing | Chapter 16 ~ The Drive | Chapter 17 ~ Sand Storm | Chapter 18 ~ Out Post | Chapter 19 ~ The Base | Chapter 20 ~ The Files | Chapter 22 ~ The Patch | Chapter 22 ~ TBC | Chapter 23 ~ TBC | Chapter 24 ~ TBC | Chapter 25 ~ TBC | Chapter 26 ~ TBC | Chapter 27 ~ TBC | Chapter 28 ~ TBC | Chapter 29~ TBC | Chapter 30 ~ TBC |