#e trade account

[elizasidepiece]

me when I listen to "Say Don't Go" by t swift and imagine remadora

[chussyracing]

i cannot tell if the people charles took pictures with at the met gala are looking THAT ugly this evening or if charles just shines through more than usual?

Those 2013-2022-2024 pictures keep popping up on tl and they look like an average slavic couple tm lmao

idk which pics you mean but i was talking about the top 3 wdc finishers at the fia gala yesterday!!

[sohaibsmart]

Amazon Prime Day occasion begins, gross sales up 12% in first 7 hours: Report | Firm Information

Prime Day can function a bellwether for the vacation procuring season. 3 min learn Final Up to date : Jul 17 2024 | 12:10 AM IST Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Day gross sales rose virtually 12 per cent within the first seven hours of the occasion in contrast with the identical interval final 12 months, based on Momentum Commerce, which manages 50 manufacturers in a wide range of product…

[marketingprofitmedia]

Smart Ways to Make Money: Profitable Passive Income Ideas to Secure Your Future

Smart passive income ideas can secure your financial future and provide steady earnings. Explore profitable ventures like rental properties, dividend stocks, and online businesses.

Securing a prosperous future requires savvy income strategies that work for you around the clock. Passive income streams offer a way to earn money without the need to actively work all the time. These strategies include investing in real estate for long-term rental profits, engaging in the stock market for dividends, or leveraging digital platforms to sell products or create content that generates revenue continuously.

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Passive Income Essentials

Securing your financial future doesn’t have to mean working endless hours. Smart passive income strategies can unlock a world where earnings grow even as you sleep. There’s a wealth of options out there — each with its unique strengths. To navigate this domain, understanding the basics and choosing the right streams is vital.

Demystifying Passive Income

Passive income often seems shrouded in mystery. Many people wonder if it’s a practical goal. In essence, it’s earning money from investments or work you’ve done once. This could mean rental income, dividends, or sales from an e-book. Distinct from active income, it requires less time to manage daily.

Purchase and rent out property

Invest in dividend-paying stocks

Create digital products for sale

It’s about smart choices now for long-term benefits. For the ideal start, assess the potential risks and returns of each option.

Financial Stability Through Passive Streams

Passive income is more than just extra cash. It’s a step toward lasting financial safety. The goal is to create multiple income sources that can support your lifestyle, even if you stop working. Diversification is key — spreading your investments across different areas reduces the risk.

Type of Passive Income Benefits Real Estate Steady income and property value growth Stocks with Dividends Regular income plus potential stock value increase Creating an Online Course Earn with each new student enrollment

Review these options to align with your life goals and economic situation. Start building that foundation for a more secure and sustained income stream today. Remember, the path to financial freedom involves planning and the savvy generation of earnings on the side. Get started, and watch your financial health flourish over time.

Diving Into The Stock Market

Exploring the stock market opens up a world of possibilities for passive income. It’s a tried-and-true approach that savvy investors leverage for long-term financial gains. You don’t need to be a Wall Street expert to get started. With the right strategy, anyone can tap into this lucrative avenue.

Dividend-yielding Stocks

Dividend-yielding stocks stand out as a solid option for passive income. They pay out a portion of profits to shareholders regularly. This means you earn money simply for owning the stock. Consider these key points:

Choose companies with a history of stable dividends.

Look for those with potential for dividend growth.

Reinvest dividends to compound your earnings.

Index Funds & Etf Portfolios

Index funds and ETFs offer a more hands-off investment approach. They track specific market indices and spread your investment across numerous stocks. This leads to a balanced and diversified portfolio. Here’s why they’re advantageous:

Lower fees: Expense ratios are typically minimal with index funds and ETFs.

Automatic diversification: Instant exposure to a variety of assets helps mitigate risk.

Simplicity: They’re easy to purchase, making them ideal for first-time investors.

Comparison of Dividend Stocks vs. Index Funds & ETFs Investment Type Income Potential Risk Level Dividend Stocks High Moderate to High Index Funds & ETFs Varies Low to Moderate

My Best Recommended & Proven Way to Make $100 Daily — Watch THIS Video FREE Training to START >>

Real Estate For Residual Income

Earning while you sleep sounds ideal, and real estate often fits this dream. With strategic investments, you can build a robust stream of passive income. Real Estate remains top-tier for growing wealth. Let’s dive into real estate strategies that can secure a more prosperous future.

Rental Properties Revenue

Rental properties can turn a tidy profit monthly. Location is everything, so choose areas with growth potential. Starting can be more hands-on, but many opt for management services to handle day-to-day tasks. Here’s why rentals rock:

Steady Cash Flow: Monthly rent payments go straight into your pocket.

Tax Advantages: Deduct property expenses from your income.

Appreciation Over Time: Rentals can increase in value, boosting your net worth.

Your investment in real estate can grow with careful planning. Understanding the market helps ensure success.

Real Estate Investment Trusts (reits)

REITs are powerful for portfolio diversification. They allow small investors to earn from large real estate ventures without owning the properties themselves. Stock-like ease with real estate rewards! Key REITs facts include:

Pros Cons High Dividend Yields Sensitive to Interest Rates Liquidity Like Stocks Market Fluctuations Diversified Assets Less Control Over Investments

Credit: printify.com

Online Ventures That Generate Cash

Embarking on online ventures unlocks doors to a world where income flows even as you sleep. The internet is bustling with opportunities to create a stream of passive income. Let’s explore some smart ways to fill your pockets without the constant hustle.

Blogging And Affiliate Marketing

Blogging is not just a platform for sharing ideas. It’s a robust money-making tool. A successful blog captures the attention of thousands, opening avenues for monetization. Adding affiliate marketing turns your content into a cash magnet. Here’s how to start:

Select a niche that you love and know well

Launch a blog with a user-friendly CMS like WordPress

Regularly post high-quality content

Apply SEO strategies to increase visibility

Join affiliate programs related to your niche

Recommend products through your posts

Remember, consistency is key. Regular updates paired with SEO will drive traffic. Higher traffic leads to more earnings through affiliate links.

Creating And Selling Digital Products

Digital products offer a limitless income potential. They’re convenient to create, distribute, and sell globally. Popular digital products include:

Type of Product Examples Platforms to Sell eBooks Guides, Novels, How-tos Amazon Kindle, Your Website Online Courses Video Tutorials, Lectures Udemy, Teachable Stock Photography Photos, Graphics Shutterstock, Adobe Stock

To succeed, identify your audience’s needs. Create valuable content. Market through social media and email lists. An initial effort can translate into regular sales without any added work.

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Turn Hobbies Into Income Channels

Imagine your favorite hobby making cash while you sleep. Turn hobbies into income channels and see the magic happen. Your passion can unlock a stream of income. Transform leisure activities into lucrative ventures. Dig deep into hobbies and spot money-making potentials. Read on for smart ways to monetize your interests!

Monetizing Creative Skills

Got a knack for creativity? Harness this power for passive income. Here’s how:

Create digital products: E-books, courses, art pieces, and music tracks.

Print-on-demand services: Sell custom designs on tees, mugs, and more.

Stock photography: Click and sell images to stock photo websites.

Remember, quality content stands out. Polish your skills consistently. Keep your digital presence strong. Engage with online communities. These steps help sell more.

Leveraging Peer-to-peer Platforms

Peer-to-peer platforms are goldmines for passive income. Here’s a quick look at options:

Platform Activity Etsy Sell handmade goods. Airbnb Rent out extra space. Turo List your car for others to use.

Credit: www.bankrate.com

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What Is Passive Income?

Passive income involves earning money without active, daily involvement. It’s generated from ventures like rental properties or royalties from creative works. This approach can offer financial security over time through consistent, scalable streams.

Q. Can Blogging Generate Passive Income?

Yes, blogging can generate passive income. Once you create quality content and optimize for SEO, you can earn through affiliate marketing, ads, or selling digital products. Regular updates and marketing strategies help maintain and grow your earnings.

Q. What Are The Best Passive Income Strategies?

The best passive income strategies include investing in dividend stocks, real estate rentals, peer-to-peer lending, creating an online course, and writing an ebook. These require varying levels of initial effort but can provide ongoing income with minimal maintenance.

Q. How Does Affiliate Marketing Provide Passive Income?

Affiliate marketing provides passive income by promoting other people’s products. You earn commissions for sales made through your unique referral links. It’s effective when you have a strong online presence and can persuade your audience to make purchases.

Conclusion

Embracing passive income strategies can transform your financial landscape, securing a brighter future. Diverse options, from real estate investments to digital products, offer paths to sustainable earnings with minimal ongoing effort. Start small, scale sensibly, and watch your wealth grow.

Your financial freedom might just be a well-chosen venture away. Dive in and let your money work for you.

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Thanks for reading my article on Smart Ways to Make Money: Profitable Passive Income Ideas to Secure Your Future

Affiliate Disclaimer :

This article Contain may be affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission at NO ADDITIONAL cost to you if you decide to purchase something. While we receive affiliate compensation for reviews / promotions on this article, we always offer honest opinions, users experiences and real views related to the product or service itself. Our goal is to help readers make the best purchasing decisions, however, the testimonies and opinions expressed are ours only. As always you should do your own thoughts to verify any claims, results and stats before making any kind of purchase. Clicking links or purchasing products recommended in this article may generate income for this product from affiliate commissions and you should assume we are compensated for any purchases you make. We review products and services you might find interesting. If you purchase them, we might get a share of the commission from the sale from our partners. This does not drive our decision as to whether or not a product is featured or recommended.

Source : Smart Ways to Make Money: Profitable Passive Income Ideas to Secure Your Future

[lionblaze03-2]

holy shit guys. My YouTube is ten years old now. I’ve been posting about these fucking cats for ten goddamn years straight. That’s HALF OF MY ENTIRE LIFE. I’ve spent half of my entire life on that god forsaken platform making videos about fucking kitty cats killing each other. And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way 💖happy ten years me you did it. Still out there creating, always will. It’s been a crazy ten years. Here’s to ten more!

[city-of-ladies]

"Women could be found working on construction sites, if only occasionally, including in specialized roles such as carpenters and masons. The research is found in the article, “Appropriate to Her Sex?” Women’s Participation on the Construction Site in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” by Shelley E. Roff.

She surveyed a wide variety of records from throughout Western Europe, including tax records, inventories of wages paid on construction sites, and municipal accounts, and discovered numerous instances of women working alongside men on construction sites as far back at the 13th century. Most of these women were employed as day laborers, carrying out tasks such as moving water and building supplies around the sites, digging ditches and serving as assistants to bricklayers and stonemasons. For example, in the Spanish city of Seville during the 14th century, women were hired to dig trenches for the foundation of a new city wall, while at the nearby city of Toledo, one or two women were hired each day for the construction of the city’s cathedral, where they gathered lime and worked on the roof. Meanwhile in the French city of Toulouse, almost half the laborers working on the Perigord college site were women. Ross also finds several examples from England and Germany.

Roff notes that previous historians have seen many examples of women working on construction sites in their research, but they had believed that these were just abnormal exceptions caused by economic crises, or because the male population had been killed off through war or disease. But her new study suggests that women construction workers were more than just odd occurences. She explains that “the expansion of urban centers starting in the thirteenth century set off a trend of increasing female employment for day laborers and in the crafts, which only began to contract on occasion for women working in the crafts in the sixteenth century with ensuing economic crises.”

She also notes that in almost all accounts surveyed, the women were paid at a lower rate than the men, which would make the “a cost-effective solution” for site supervisors looking for ways to reduce expenses. The women who took these jobs would have come from society’s poor – those women who could not maintain their households and families just from their husbands’ (if they had one) income.

Roff also finds records showing women taking part in specialized building trades. In London in 1383, Katherine Lightfoot is recorded as the supplier of 2,000 painted tiles for bath in the King’s palace. Meanwhile, tax records from Paris during the years 1296 and 1313 reveal the existence of two female masons, a tiler and a plasterer. These women were not poorer individuals, rather they were the wives of male craftsman, and in some cases their widows. The 15th-century French writer Christine de Pizan noted in her book The Treasury of the City of Ladies that craftswomen, “should learn all the shop details so that she can properly supervise the workers when her husband is away or not paying attention.”

Women workers could be found on the medieval construction site, Medievalists.net

[itsrlymine]

Hello, I noticed in one of your responses you said that you trade. Can you talk about how you trade. Sorry if this isn't manifestation related 😅. Have a nice day!

yes I do! I manifested it ofc. I used to trade when I was in university a few years ago but I “didn’t have” any money so I stopped. Then I realized I can have whatever I want so I can just trade instead of working long hours for money and going to school for a job I won’t even like. I was in a manifestation group and I saw a few success stories about people who decided to trade full time and easily and I was like omggg that’s me!!!

It’s the best thing I could ha e ever decided on fr and Zakari Hikari posted a success story of a client of his that made $260k USD in one month…. Let’s all stop thinking small pls.

I trade indices and some currencies and I also have a funded quant account. I just put in trades whenever and receive the highest profit. I learned bc it’s easy and effortless but I also wanted an account that would make money for me😭💖

[legobiwan]

So I find it a little odd that Mario shakes his brother's hand like he's trying to win political office rather than having just been rescued (again) from one of King Boo's paintings at the end of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.

But then I was thinking - this might be a kind of instinctual response.

From what we can gather over the three games, being stuck in a painting isn't a passive experience, but one that is disturbing, disorientating, and mostly likely tantamount to torture.

And given King Boo's abilities, who knows what kind of environment he has dropped his victims into with these settings. The landscapes, you might say. There's no definite background in any of the trapped paintings, ghost or otherwise, but it does beg the question of what can be felt, seen, heard, or otherwise perceived by someone who is trapped in a portrait. Does the hunter create the cage, enrichment area and all, or are the trappings beyond the frame (inside the frame) more akin to being trapped within one's mind and all the pitfalls that could emerge from that?

We see three iterations of Mario being freed from the painting in each game. The first being total confusion and possible injury; the second looking like some kind of hallucination, given Luigi's concerned expression; and the third being a form of decorporalization (not a real word, but whatever), as Mario seems shocked to learn he has a body again.

The first might be attributed to King Boo's insistence of straight-up physical torture combined with E. Gadd's more medieval equipment, which had likely been less-than-tested in extracting someone from a portrait. (And if the de-portraiting process was that bad, imagine what it was like for the ghosts going in. No wonder they held a grudge. I love E. Gadd, but oh boi, is he the pinnacle morally ambiguous mad scientist).

Anyway, in the third installment, Mario definitely shows signs of having been disconnected from his physical form, perhaps meaning that his time inside the portrait reduced him to a neutered, mental representation of himself, incapable of fighting back in the real world. But this being said, he seems to recognize Luigi on-site, rushing forward to give him an enthusiastic hug, which is the reaction you'd expect after being freed from a pair of diabolical ghosts, one of whom is trying to thirst-trap the other through psychological torture.

So what's the deal with Mario's reaction in Dark Moon?

My guess is that King Boo trapped Mario in a painting that was a distorted reality, or perhaps a distorted version of Mario's own insecurities. It would account for the disorientation and the fact Mario comes out of the painting gladhanding his own brother like a stranger. (Which would also account for Luigi's concerned reaction - what the hell is my brother doing?)

And you figure, Mario, at this point, is a kind of figurehead, an idol, a hero of the Mushroom Kingdom. It's become his identity, it's who he is, it's what he does and is known for. Of course, part of this role is going around and shaking hands, being present - at least physically - at press conferences and speeches and all the like. The people need a focal point, a representation of their hopes against the violent and numerous incursions upon their land they suffer from outside forces (although in complete transparency, my personal headcanon is that Bowser's kingdom used to be comprised of at least a part of the Mushroom Kingdom, and that that land and sovereignty was stolen through a series of bad treaties by his father and some of the more malicious factions of the Toad Council, thus leading to both the enmity between the kingdoms and some serious economic and trade repercussions in the Darklands, but that's a whole other post.)

Mario must be so used to blindly shaking hands and putting up that front, that character, so much so that he doesn't even think about it anymore, and it's my theory that this is the version of Mario that emerges from the portrait in Dark Moon, perhaps having been wrested from some situation where this almost desperate attempt at approval was manifesting from Mario's own subconscious.

And poor Luigi. You have to wonder if one of his latent fears is becoming another empty face in the adoring crowd surrounding his brother. The Mario that emerges is not 100% connected to the fact he is Luigi's brother, it seems, is just putting on airs and the right words and actions as he may have been trained to do by the Toad Council. (Who, incidentally, are one of my favorite scapegoats in the series). Talk about a nightmare come to life.

It fits, in a way. Mario's first abduction results in physical harm, his second in mental, his third in more of a depersonalization - perhaps a rushed spell enacted by King Boo as he was, by the time of the whole hotel debacle, was far more preoccupied with his idea of trapping Luigi than enacting harm on anyone else beyond imprisonment. Because by the time Luigi's Manion 3 rolls around, King Boo is almost deranged in his obsession with Luigi, and I wouldn't be shocked if his non-existent heart wasn't into the nastier sides of portrait capture when it came to Luigi's friends and family. But oh boi, if he had captured Luigi in one of those paintings - good night, nurse.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The long, bloody lineage of private equity's looting

Tomorrow (June 3) at 1:30PM, I’m in Edinburgh for the Cymera Festival on a panel with Nina Allen and Ian McDonald.

Monday (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

Fans of the Sopranos will remember the “bust out” as a mob tactic in which a business is taken over, loaded up with debt, and driven into the ground, wrecking the lives of the business’s workers, customers and suppliers. When the mafia does this, we call it a bust out; when Wall Street does it, we call it “private equity.”

It used to be that we rarely heard about private equity, but then, as national chains and iconic companies started to vanish, this mysterious financial arrangement popped up with increasing frequency. When a finance bro’s presentation on why Olive Garden needed to be re-orged when viral, there was a lot off snickering about the decline of a tacky business whose value prop was unlimited carbs. But the bro was working for Starboard Value, a hedge fund that specialized in buhying out and killing off companies, pocketing billions while destroying profitable businesses.

https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/the_real_olive_garden_scandal_why_greedy_hedge_funders_suddenly_care_so_much_about_breadsticks/

Starboard Value’s game was straightforward: buy a business, load it with debt, sell off its physical plant — the buildings it did business out of — pay itself, and then have the business lease back the buildings, bleeding out money until it collapsed. They pulled it with Red Lobster,and the point of the viral Olive Garden dis track was to soften up the company for its own bust out.

The bust out tactic wasn’t limited to mocking middlebrow family restaurants. For years, the crooks who ran these ops did a brisk trade in blaming the internet. Why did Sears tank? Everyone knows that the 19th century business was an antique, incapable of mounting a challenge in the age of e-commerce. That was a great smokescreen for an old-fashioned bust out that saw corporate looters make off with hundreds of millions, leaving behind empty storefronts and emptier pension accounts for the workers who built the wealth the looters stole:

https://prospect.org/economy/vulture-capitalism-killed-sears/

Same goes for Toys R Us: it wasn’t Amazon that killed the iconic toy retailer — it was the PE bosses who extracted $200m from the chain, then walked away, hands in pockets and whistling, while the businesses collapsed and the workers got zero severance:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/06/01/how-can-they-walk-away-with-millions-and-leave-workers-with-zero-toys-r-us-workers-say-they-deserve-severance/

It’s a good racket — for the racketeers. Private equity has grown from a finance sideshow to Wall Street’s apex predator, and it’s devouring the real economy through a string of audactious bust outs, each more consequential and depraved than the last.

As PE shows that it can turn profitable businesses gigantic windfalls, sticking the rest of us with the job of sorting out the smoking craters they leave behind, more and more investors are piling in. Today, the PE sector loves a rollup, which is when they buy several related businesses and merge them into one firm. The nominal business-case for a rollup is that the new, bigger firm is more “efficient.” In reality, a rollup’s strength is in eliminating competition. When all the pet groomers, or funeral homes, or urgent care clinics for ten miles share the same owner, they can raise prices, lower wages, and fuck over suppliers.

They can also borrow. A quirk of the credit markets is that a standalone small business is valued at about 3–5x its annual revenues. But if that business is part of a large firm, it is valued at 10–20x annual turnover. That means that when a private equity company rolls up a comedy club, ad agency or water bottler (all businesses presently experiencing PE rollup), with $1m in annual revenues, it shows up on the PE company’s balance sheet as an asset worth $10–20m. That’s $10–20m worth of collateral the PE fund can stake for loans that let it buy and roll up more small businesses.

2.9 million Boomer-owned businesses, employing 32m people, are expected to sell in the next couple years as their owners retire. Most of these businesses will sell to PE firms, who can afford to pay more for them as a prelude to a bust out than anyone intending to operate them as a productive business could ever pay:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

PE’s most ghastly impact is felt in the health care sector. Whole towns’ worth of emergency rooms, family practices, labs and other health firms have been scooped up by PE, which has spent more than $1t since 2012 on health acquisitions:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/17/the-doctor-will-fleece-you-now/#pe-in-full-effect

Once a health care company is owned by PE, it is significantly more likely to commit medicare fraud. It also cuts wages and staffing for doctors and nurses. PE-owned facilities do more unnecessary and often dangerous procedures. Appointments get shorter. The companies get embroiled in kickback scandals. PE-backed dentists hack away at children’s mouths, filling them full of root-canals.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/17/the-doctor-will-fleece-you-now/#pe-in-full-effect

The Healthcare Private Equity Association boasts that its members are poised to spend more than $3t to create “the future of healthcare.”

https://hcpea.org/#!event-list

As bad as PE is for healthcare, it’s worse for long-term care. PE-owned nursing homes are charnel houses, and there’s a particularly nasty PE scam where elderly patients are tricked into signing up for palliative care, which is never delivered (and isn’t needed, because the patients aren’t dying!). These fake “hospices” get huge payouts from medicare — and the patient is made permanently ineligible for future medicare, because they are recorded being in their final decline:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Every part of the health care sector is being busted out by PE. Another ugly PE trick, the “club deal,” is devouring the medical supply business. Club deals were huge in the 2000s, destroying rent-controlled housing, energy companies, Mervyn’s department stores, Harrah’s, and Old Country Joe. Now it’s doing the same to medical supplies:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

Private equity is behind the mass rollup of single-family homes across America. Wall Street landlords are the worst landlords in America, who load up your rent with junk fees, leave your home in a state of dangerous disrepair, and evict you at the drop of a hat:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/16/die-miete-ist-zu-hoch/#assets-v-human-rights

As these houses decay through neglect, private equity makes a bundle from tenants and even more borrowing against the houses. In a few short years, much of America’s desperately undersupplied housing stock will be beyond repair. It’s a bust out.

You know all those exploding trains filled with dangerous chemicals that poison entire towns? Private equity bust outs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/04/up-your-nose/#rail-barons

Where did PE come from? How can these people look themselves in the mirror? Why do we let them get away with it? How do we stop them?

Today in The American Prospect, Maureen Tkacik reviews two new books that try to answer all four of these questions, but really only manage to answer the first three:

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2023-06-02-days-of-plunder-morgenson-rosner-ballou-review/

The first of these books is These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs — and Wrecks — America by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/These-Are-the-Plunderers/Gretchen-Morgenson/9781982191283

The second is Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America, by Brendan Ballou:

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brendan-ballou/plunder/9781541702103/

Both books describe the bust out from the inside. For example, PetSmart — looted for $30 billion by RaymondSvider and his PE fund BC Partners — is a slaughterhouse for animals. The company systematically neglects animals — failing to pay workers to come in and feed them, say, or refusing to provide backup power to run during power outages, letting animals freeze or roast to death. Though PetSmart has its own vet clinics, the company doesn’t want to pay its vets to nurse the animals it damages, so it denies them care. But the company is also too cheap to euthanize those animals, so it lets them starve to death. PetSmart is also too cheap to cremate the animals, so its traumatized staff are ordered to smuggle the dead, rotting animals into random dumpsters.

All this happened while PetSmart’s sales increased by 60%, matched by growth in the company’s gross margins. All that money went to the bust out.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2021/09/27/the-30-billion-kitty-meet-the-investor-who-made-a-fortune-on-pet-food/

Tkacik says these books show that we’re finally getting wise to PE. Back in the Clinton years, the PE critique painted the perps as sharp operators who reduced quality and jacked up prices. Today, books like these paint these “investors” as the monsters they are — crooks whose bust ups are crimes, not clever finance hacks.

Take the Carlyle Group, which pioneered nursing home rollups. As Carlyle slashed wages, its workers suffered — but its elderly patients suffered more. Thousands of Carlyle “customers” died of “dehydration, gangrenous bedsores, and preventable falls” in the pre-covid years.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/opioid-overdoses-bedsores-and-broken-bones-what-happened-when-a-private-equity-firm-sought-profits-in-caring-for-societys-most-vulnerable/2018/11/25/09089a4a-ed14-11e8-baac-2a674e91502b_story.html

KKR, another PE monster, bought a second-hand chain of homes for mentally disabled adults from another PE company, then squeezed it for the last drops of blood left in the corpse. KKR cut wages to $8/hour and increased shifts to 36 hours, then threatened to have workers who went home early arrested and charged with “patient abandonment.” Many of these homes were often left with no staff at all, with patients left to starve and stew in their own waste.

PE loves to pick on people who can’t fight back: kids, sick people, disabled people, old people. No surprise, then, that PE loves prisons — the ultimate captive audience. HIG Capital is a $55b fund that owns TKC Holdings, who got the contract to feed the prisoners at 400 institutions. They got the contract after the prisons fired Aramark, owned by PE giant Warburg Pincus, whose food was so inedible that it provoked riots. TKC got a million bucks extra to take over the food at Michigan’s Kinross Correctional Facility, then, incredibly, made the food worse. A chef who refused to serve 100 bags of rotten potatoes (“the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in my life”) was fired:

https://www.wzzm13.com/article/news/local/michigan/prison-food-worker-i-was-fired-for-refusing-to-serve-rotten-potatoes/69-467297770

TKC doesn’t just operate prison kitchens — it operates prison commissaries, where it gouges prisoners on junk food to replace the inedible slop it serves in the cafeteria. The prisoners buy this food with money they make working in the prison workshops, for $0.10–0.25/hour. Those workshops are also run by TKC.

Tkacic traces private equity back to the “corporate raiders” of the 1950s and 1960s, who “stealthily borrowed money to buy up enough shares in a small or midsized company to control its biggest bloc of votes, then force a stock swap and install himself as CEO.”

The most famous of these raiders was Eli Black, who took over United Fruit with this gambit — a company that had a long association with the CIA, who had obligingly toppled democratically elected governments and installed dictators friendly to United’s interests (this is where the term “banana republic” comes from).

Eli Black’s son is Leon Black, a notorious PE predator. Leon Black got his start working for the junk-bonds kingpin Michael Milken, optimizing Milken’s operation, which was the most terrifying bust out machine of its day, buying, debt-loading and wrecking a string of beloved American businesses. Milken bought 2,000 companies and put 200 of them through bankruptcy, leaving the survivors in a brittle, weakened state.

It got so bad that the Business Roundtable complained about the practice to Congress, calling Milken, Black, et al, “a small group is systematically extracting the equity from corporations and replacing it with debt, and incidentally accumulating major wealth.”

Black stabbed Milken in the back and tanked his business, then set out on his own. Among the businesses he destroyed was Samsonite, “a bankrupt-but-healthy company he subjected to 12 humiliating years of repeated fee extractions, debt-funded dividend payments, brutal plant closings, and hideous schemes to induce employees to buy its worthless stock.”

The money to buy Samsonite — and many other businesses — came through a shadowy deal between Black and John Garamendi, then a California insurance commissioner, now a California congressman. Garamendi helped Black buy a $6b portfolio of junk bonds from an insurance company in a wildly shady deal. Garamendi wrote down the bonds by $3.9b, stealing money “from innocent people who needed the money to pay for loved ones’ funerals, irreparable injuries, etc.”

Black ended up getting all kinds of favors from powerful politicians — including former Connecticut governor John Rowland and Donald Trump. He also wired $188m to Jeffrey Epstein for reasons that remain opaque.

Black’s shady deals are a marked contrast with the exalted political circles he travels in. Despite private equity’s obviously shady conduct, it is the preferred partner for cities and states, who buy everything from ambulance services to infrastructure from PE-owned companies, with disastrous results. Federal agencies turn a blind eye to their ripoffs, or even abet them. 38 state houses passed legislation immunizing nursing homes from liability during the start of the covid crisis.

PE barons are shameless about presenting themselves as upstanding cits, unfairly maligned. When Obama made an empty promise to tax billionaires in 2010, Blackstone founder SteveS chwarzman declared, “It’s a war. It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

Since we’re on the subject of Hitler, this is a good spot to bring up Monowitz, a private-sector satellite of Auschwitz operated by IG Farben as a slave labor camp to make rubber and other materiel it supplied at a substantial markup to the wermacht. I’d never heard of Monowitz, but Tkacik’s description of the camp is chilling, even in comparison to Auschwitz itself.

Farben used slave laborers from Auschwitz to work at its rubber plant, but was frustrated by the logistics of moving those slaves down the 4.5m stretch of road to the facility. So the company bought 25,000 slaves — preferring children, who were cheaper — and installed them in a co-located death-camp called Monowitz:

https://www.commentary.org/articles/r-tannenbaum/the-devils-chemists-by-josiah-e-dubois-jr/

Monowitz was — incredibly — worse than Auschwitz. It was so bad, the SS guards who worked at it complained to Berlin about the conditions. The SS demanded more hospitals for the workers who dropped from beatings and overwork — Farben refused, citing the cost. The factory never produced a steady supply of rubber, but thanks to its gouging and the brutal treatment of its slaves, the camp was still profitable and returned large dividends to Farben’s investors.

Apologists for slavery sometimes claim that slavers are at least incentivized to maintain the health of their captive workforce. This was definitely not true of Farben. Monowitz slaves died on average after three months in the camp. And Farben’s subsidiary, Degesch, made the special Zyklon B formulation used in Auschwitz’s gas chambers.

Tkacik’s point is that the Nazis killed for ideology and were unimaginably cruel. Farben killed for money — and they were even worse. The banality of evil gets even more banal when it’s done in service to maximizing shareholder value.

As Farben historian Joseph Borkin wrote, the company “reduced slave labor to a consumable raw material, a human ore from which the mineral of life was systematically extracted”:

https://www.scribd.com/document/517797736/The-Crime-and-Punishment-of-I-G-Farben

Farben’s connection to the Nazis was a the subject of Germany’s Master Plan: The Story of Industrial Offensive, a 1943 bestseller by Borkin, who was also an antitrust lawyer. It described how Farben had manipulated global commodities markets in order to create shortages that “guaranteed Hitler’s early victories.”

Master Plan became a rallying point in the movement to shatter corporate power. But large US firms like Dow Chemical and Standard Oil waged war on the book, demanding that it be retracted. Borkin was forced into resignation and obscurity in 1945.

Meanwhile, in Nuremberg, 24 Farben executives were tried for their war crimes, and they cited their obligations to their shareholders in their defense. All but five were acquitted on this basis.

Seen in that light, the plunderers of today’s PE firms are part of a long and dishonorable tradition, one that puts profit ahead of every other priority or consideration. It’s a defense that wowed the judges at Nuremberg, so should we be surprised that it still plays in 2023?

Tkacik is frustrated that neither of these books have much to offer by way of solutions, but she understands why that would be. After all, if we can’t even close the carried interest tax loophole, how can we hope to do anything meaningful?

“Carried interest” comes up in every election cycle. Most of us assume it has something to do with “interest payments,” but that’s not true. The carried interest loophole relates to the “interest” that 16th-century sea captains had in their cargo. It’s a 600-year-old tax loophole that private equity bosses use to pay little or no tax on their billions. The fact that it’s still on the books tells you everything you need to know about whether our political class wants to do anything about PE’s plundering.

Notwithstanding Tkacik’s (entirely justified) skepticism of the weaksauce remedies proposed in these books, there is some hope of meaningful action. Private equity’s rollups are only possible because they skate under the $101m threshold for merger scrutiny. However, there is good — but unenforced — law that allows antitrust enforcers to block these mergers. This is the “incipiency standard” — Sec 7 of the Clayton Act — the idea that a relatively small merger might not be big enough to trigger enforcement action on its own, but regulators can still act to block it if it creates an incipient monopoly.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

The US has a new crop of aggressive — fearless — top antitrust enforcers and they’ve been systematically reviving these old laws to go after monopolies.

That’s long overdue. Markets are machines for eroding our moral values: “In comparison to non-market decisions, moral standards are significantly lower if people participate in markets.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20130607154129/https://www.uni-bonn.de/Press-releases/markets-erode-moral-values

The crimes that monsters commit in the name of ideology pale in comparison to the crimes the wealthy commit for money.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Edinburgh, London, and Berlin!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farbenizers

[Image ID: An overgrown graveyard, rendered in silver nitrate monochrome. A green-tinted businessman  with a moneybag in place of a head looms up from behind a gravestone. The right side of the image is spattered in blood.]

[astrojulia]

Tarot Cards as Professions

Navigation:   Masterlist✦Ask Rules✦Feedback Tips

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Major Arcanas:

The Fool: Work with abroad, connections with imports, language teacher, multinationals, entrepreneur, intern, college student, art major.

The Magician: Entrepreneur, job that needs skill with the hands (acupuncture, hairdresser, artisan), actor, salesperson, influencer.

The High Priestess: Education, especially children, nutrition, psychology, cook, housewife, food engineering, toy factory, fortuneteller, spiritual advisor, librarian.

The Empress: Management, business administration, foreign trade, secretariat, translation, decoration, stay-at-home mom, model, cook, farmer.

The Emperor: Business administration, work related to areas of technological innovation, the military or sportsmen, CEO, tycoon.

The Hierophant: Philanthropic areas, ONGs, religious work, social work, diplomacy, and a degree, journalism, writer, editor, priest, spiritual guru, politician.

The Lovers: Sales area in any sector, tourism, theater, advertising, the arts in general, porn star, stripper, masseuse.

The Chariot: Activities related to transport, cars, the latest technology, chauffeur, mechanic, athlete.

Strength: Aesthetics, physical education and various body therapies, medicine, zoologist.

The Hermit: Teacher, writer, doctor, antique dealer, restorer, librarian, gardener.

Wheel of Fortune: Financial market, exchange offices, casinos, lottery houses, stock exchanges, and areas related to public relations, hospitality, game show host.

Justice: Public jobs, won through competitions, politics, police, with government positions, in the diplomatic area, law, insurance company worker.

The Hanged Man: Nurse, auditor, inspector, porter, secretariat, general assistants, yoga instructor, prison guard, philanthropist.

Death: Doctor, farmer, geologist, business administrator, gardener, accountant, assassin, death row executioner, surgeon.

Temperance: Working with liquids in general or with what is transported in liquid form such as alcoholic beverages, medicines, juices. chemist, chef, food critic, regional or even international traffic.

The Devil: Does not limit the individual to a professional wing, so he can also go to extremes for the desire he has, such as landlord, drug lord, sex trafficker.

The Tower: Social assistance, humanitarian aid, medicine, firefighter, police officer, construction worker.

The Star: Music, painting, sculpture, poetry, cinema, makeup artist, dressmaker, beautician, agent, promoter, sound artist, astronomer, harpist, dealer, meteorologist.

The Moon: Oceanographers, sailors, fishermen, owners of bars and restaurants or nightclubs, artists in general, medium, hypnotist, psychiatrist.

The Sun: Motivational speaker, entertainer, comedian, social relationships, work with the public, artist in general, member of society.

Judgment: Work done at home, connection with the law, lawyer, judge, work with disabled or people excluded from society, social assistance, board member, executive producer, director.

The World: Pharmacist, massage therapist, scientist, teacher, community leader, religious leader or priest, fashion designer, makeup artist, interior decorator.

Wands:

Creative industries such as advertising, marketing, and graphic design.

Entrepreneurship and starting your own business.

Athletics, sports coaching, or physical training.

Outdoor jobs like park ranger or tour guide.

Event planning or organizing.

Firefighters or rescue workers.

Ace of Wands: Entrepreneur, startup founder, motivational speaker, fitness coach, personal trainer.

Two of Wands: Business strategist, project manager, travel agent, international consultant, import/export specialist.

Three of Wands: Sales representative, marketing manager, e-commerce entrepreneur, market researcher, international trade coordinator.

Four of Wands: Event planner, wedding coordinator, party organizer, festival manager, hospitality industry professional.

Five of Wands: Conflict resolution specialist, mediator, lawyer, debate coach, competitive sports coach.

Six of Wands: Public relations manager, spokesperson, social media influencer, motivational speaker, winning athlete.

Seven of Wands: Defense attorney, human rights activist, political campaigner, advocate, civil liberties lawyer.

Eight of Wands: Courier, delivery driver, airline pilot, travel blogger, expedition guide.

Nine of Wands: Security guard, bodyguard, soldier, endurance athlete, self-defense instructor.

Ten of Wands: Overworked entrepreneur, project manager, event organizer, professional organizer, heavy equipment operator.

Page of Wands: Assistant in a creative field, aspiring artist, intern in a startup, social media coordinator, apprentice.

Knight of Wands: Travel journalist, adventure tour guide, professional athlete, race car driver, stunt performer.

Queen of Wands: CEO, business owner, charismatic leader, life coach, influential speaker.

King of Wands: Executive manager, entrepreneur, leadership coach, consultant, director of a creative agency.

Cups:

Counseling, therapy, or social work.

Hospitality industry, including restaurant management and bartending.

Wedding planner or event coordinator.

Artistic fields like poetry, writing, or acting.

Healing professions such as nursing or holistic therapy.

Psychologist or counselor specializing in emotions and relationships.

Ace of Cups: Therapist, counselor, social worker, holistic healer, emotional support specialist.

Two of Cups: Marriage counselor, matchmaker, relationship coach, wedding planner, love psychic.

Three of Cups: Event organizer, party planner, celebratory event coordinator, community organizer.

Four of Cups: Meditation teacher, mindfulness coach, spiritual counselor, psychologist, therapist.

Five of Cups: Grief counselor, trauma therapist, hospice worker, emotional healing practitioner, bereavement support.

Six of Cups: Child psychologist, teacher, daycare worker, children's book author, pediatric nurse.

Seven of Cups: Creative writer, fantasy novelist, imaginative artist, dream analyst, visionary.

Eight of Cups: Travel blogger, adventure seeker, spiritual pilgrim, explorer, wanderlust photographer.

Nine of Cups: Life coach, happiness consultant, gratitude coach, self-help author, wellness retreat organizer.

Ten of Cups: Family therapist, marriage and family counselor, foster care advocate, wedding planner, family mediator.

Page of Cups: Creative writer, artist in training, intuitive healer, aspiring therapist, dream interpreter.

Knight of Cups: Actor, romantic poet, musician, art therapist, love and relationship coach.

Queen of Cups: Psychic reader, intuitive healer, counselor, compassionate caregiver, therapist.

King of Cups: Therapist, counselor, intuitive mentor, emotional intelligence trainer, psychologist.

Swords:

Legal professions like lawyers, judges, or law enforcement officers.

Journalists, reporters, or investigators.

IT specialists, computer programmers, or hackers.

Teachers or professors specializing in critical thinking or philosophy.

Military or defense-related careers.

Strategic planners or analysts.

Ace of Swords: Lawyer, judge, legal consultant, investigative journalist, strategic planner.

Two of Swords: Mediator, conflict resolution specialist, negotiator, diplomat, relationship counselor.

Three of Swords: Divorce lawyer, grief counselor, trauma therapist, emotional healer, heart surgeon.

Four of Swords: Rest and relaxation specialist, meditation teacher, spiritual retreat organizer, yoga instructor.

Five of Swords: Military strategist, competitive sports coach, lawyer specializing in litigation, debate coach.

Six of Swords: Travel agent, relocation consultant, therapist specializing in transitions, boat captain.

Seven of Swords: Private investigator, spy, intelligence analyst, cybersecurity expert, undercover agent.

Eight of Swords: Social justice lawyer, human rights advocate, disability rights activist, therapist specializing in limiting beliefs.

Nine of Swords: Insomnia specialist, anxiety therapist, nightmare counselor, sleep coach, mental health counselor.

Ten of Swords: Surgeon, coroner, forensic scientist, mortician, grief counselor.

Page of Swords: Researcher, journalist, fact-checker, apprentice in a legal field, investigative reporter.

Knight of Swords: Military officer, police officer, attorney, competitive fencer, conflict resolution specialist.

Queen of Swords: Judge, lawyer, critic, journalist, literary agent.

King of Swords: Judge, attorney, CEO, strategist, military general.

Pentacles:

Financial advisors or investment bankers.

Real estate agents or property developers.

Agriculture, farming, or gardening.

Architects, builders, or construction workers.

Conservationists or environmentalists.

Accountants or bookkeepers.

Ace of Pentacles: Financial advisor, investment banker, wealth manager, entrepreneur, luxury goods retailer.

Two of Pentacles: Financial analyst, accountant, bookkeeper, event planner, stock trader.

Three of Pentacles: Architect, contractor, project manager, teamwork facilitator, craftsman.

Four of Pentacles: Wealth manager, investor, financial planner, asset protection specialist, treasurer.

Five of Pentacles: Social worker, philanthropist, charity organizer, financial counselor, volunteer.

Six of Pentacles: Philanthropist, humanitarian worker, non-profit manager, social worker, charitable fundraiser.

Seven of Pentacles: Gardener, farmer, agricultural consultant, sustainability expert, botanist.

Eight of Pentacles: Craftsperson, artisan, apprentice, skilled tradesperson, technical trainer.

Nine of Pentacles: Luxury brand manager, independent business owner, successful entrepreneur, vineyard owner, art collector.

Ten of Pentacles: Real estate developer, property investor, family business owner, generational wealth manager, financial advisor.

Page of Pentacles: Intern, student, apprentice in a practical field, aspiring entrepreneur, entry-level employee.

Knight of Pentacles: Accountant, financial planner, farmer, skilled tradesperson, meticulous worker.

Queen of Pentacles: CEO, business owner, property developer, hospitality industry entrepreneur, financial advisor.

King of Pentacles: CEO, business mogul, successful investor, high-level executive, financial consultant.

(CC) AstroJulia Some Rights Reserved

[wirewitchviolet]

It is absolutely ridiculous that I have no way to contact people I care about in 2023.

So I got up today, and saw a big announcement about a certain particularly large company in the games industry did an absolutely massive round of layoffs despite an amazingly good year. You know, as they do. As it so happens, this is a company that, last I checked, employs several people I consider to be pretty good friends, and I feel compelled to toss them a quick message asking if that affected them, ask if poke around on their behalf for freelance work or slap a project of my own real quick they can collaborate on, or whatever.

And it's suddenly sinking in to me that I can't actually do that.

Tabletop game work is writing work, and that means 90% of the networking for most of the past decade or so happened over Twitter. Someone announces they're working on a thing, you message them, e-mails get traded to formally send stuff around. I was on there until I wasn't, so normally, that'd be where I'd be doing my checking in. But that of course is off the table. And like, I don't even have read-access to the site to check if anyone's announcing anything there.

Well, we've traded e-mails, right? We absolutely have. Back when everyone I'm worried about was at this other company, which let this same pile of people I care about and then some go several years ago now. So... those e-mails are no longer valid.

Well, what else is there? Oh right, the one friend has a discord server. It's been super dead for years now since he stopped doing the big weekly social thing it was there for, but it's still - oh, no. It's actually closed out. Same with the one for this freelance artist in that same general orbit... and oh Discord redid usernames and forced everyone to pick new ones. Damn.

Well, there's tumblr here, maybe? Like, there isn't really practically any direct messaging on here but... no, no wait, none of them have posted anything on here since bad policies drove a bunch of people out years back.

There's Facebook? But no, I don't have an account, they're all real legal name focused, and for personal security reasons, I never actually use my legal name anywhere even if I could make one (see, they also insist my name "sounds fake" over at Facebook). Well surely I can just find people's personal websites and send an e-mail but... no, people just don't have personal e-mails anymore, and spam got so bad decades ago now that I can't remember the last time I saw ANYONE post a personal e-mail address anywhere visible. Used to be phonebooks, but I don't think they really adapted to everyone just having a cellphone, and even if they did, they're a local thing.

So yeah. I've got nothing here. Uh... on the off chance anyone's reading this who I'm concerned about, hey, I hope you're OK? I'm still at least periodically checking the e-mails you last used to send things to me? Feel free to reach out and let me know how things are going?

But yeah this just sucks.

[aspentreewrites]

and when all the flowers are rotten and all the cannons shot

Chapter 3

Pairings: Codywan

Tags/Warnings: (for current arc) slow burn, fake dating, only one bed, general angst and pining, realising feelings, Cody is having a breakdown, AO3 rating is E for future chapters

Link to read on AO3 here!

Description:

The truth of the matter burrows deep into Cody’s skin, settling into the home it’s long-since made for itself there, nestled tightly amongst the other secrets he harbours that are too shameful to ever speak aloud.

He digs his fingers into his temples, breathing in heavy lungfuls of the steam-drenched air as if it might reverse the realisation that now weighs upon his heart like lead.

This is no longer just some passing infatuation.

He’s in love with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

(or: an account of the relationship between one Marshal Commander and his General from in the midst of a war.)

✷✷✷✷✷

A/N: Oh, Cody, we're really in it now. Happy holidays! It's been a tough end to the year, but everyone who's been so kind and left such lovely comments on here and on my AO3 have really been keeping me going :') thank you so much for reading so far!

As always, thank you so much to @whenyourfavouritedies (their AO3 link here) for beta reading!

Wordcount: 8.9k

Prev chapters: 1, 2

✷✷✷✷✷

The General and the Commander get a good deal of work done together that evening.

Their first order of business is checking in with Gregor about the state of the files they’d sent across - it seems they’re encoded, which isn’t much of a surprise, and will take a little while to fully decipher. A few select members of the 212th who can be trusted to keep quiet are already on it, and expect to have it cracked within the week.

Next comes the important affair of discussing the follow-up steps of the mission, particularly how they’re going to proceed with information gathering after facing Barrek directly, in a… less than subtle encounter. They aren’t able to come to a definite conclusion this evening.

Finally, they once more go over their guesses on what the deal they’re here to disrupt is actually likely to be. Knowing that it’ll be weapons related helps narrow it down, but not by much.

They trade dry comments about the state of things, about how much they’re already looking forward to getting back to normality once this is over. Obi-Wan makes a few comments about the state of the room’s provided caf machine - though he’s quick to mention that it’s still above the standard of some of the GAR-supplied requisitions.

The one thing they don’t speak of, is the kiss. 

A few times throughout the night the odd, thick tension rears its head. Cody catches the Jedi’s eyes lingering on him with a strange expression more than once, always glancing away when their gazes meet. 

Each time, it makes Cody wince. White, hot shame crawls across his skin before he has the time to shove it down, prickling beneath his collar. Cody knows - Force, how he knows - that Obi-Wan sensed more than he should have, earlier. To call it ‘mortifying’ would be an understatement.

It’ll pass, he tells himself. A lapse of judgement and concentration that he can make up for by performing professionally and exceptionally in the field, as often as he can from this point onwards. 

With any luck, his General will have pity on him and forget about the whole thing.

Rather robotically, Cody finds himself getting ready for bed that night. He goes through the motions of getting changed, all the while trying very, very hard to not think back to the feeling of Obi-Wan’s mouth on his. 

Stars above, he’s never been kissed so carefully, so gently. 

Because it wasn’t real, the voice in his head reminds him, sounding particularly bitter. Because it was a strictly professional necessity.

The thought makes his stomach twist, his heart aching with a longing that he knows, intrinsically, will be incredibly tricky to sate. It’s one thing to have feelings for someone, knowing they can never be acted upon… it’s another thing entirely to experience a taste of what could be, if only everything were different.

If not for the fact that Cody is certain that it’s unrequited, if not for the war…

Cody can’t help but let out a heavy sigh. If not for the war, he wouldn’t exist at all. The reminder is a lead weight upon his soul, albeit an old and familiar one. 

He’s a man whose hands were engineered to be bloody, he’s come to be at peace with that.

Despite it all, sometimes he can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be nat-born. To exist for the sole purpose of living, not for taking life.

To be someone that could be allowed to love, and be loved in return.

Perhaps that version of Cody, unburdened by the war and the weight of expectation, would have the courage to go after the things he wants.

To tell Obi-Wan how he feels…

Cody wrinkles his nose. He’s being far too sentimental and dramatic over something that doesn’t need to be such a big deal. They’re just… feelings. He can live with that.

The two men settle in to attempt sleep that night, firmly keeping to their opposite sides of the bed. An unspoken rift of tension has opened up between them, and Cody doesn’t quite know where to start in broaching it. 

Perhaps the morning will bring clarity. It usually does.

With a deep exhale, the Commander closes his eyes, willing himself to shut off his mind and rest. 

The moons have risen high enough in the sky by now that their light permeates gently through the thin curtains of the hotel room, creating a uniquely soothing atmosphere. 

Cody, like most of the vode, is far more used to the artificial darkness of a sleeping pod than natural moonlight. Some of his brothers struggle to relax under the light of the real stars, finding it far too bright, but never him. In his mind, no fluorescent recreation is ever a substitute for the real thing.

He focuses on that light, on the repetitious sound of waves lapping at the shore outside, and allows himself to let go, as much as he is able.

When the morning comes, Cody isn’t afforded the luxury of a gentle awakening.

Rather, the sound of a scream startles him into consciousness. His hand moves without deliberate input, closing around the blaster on his nightstand even before his eyes have fully opened. When they do, his gaze is sharp, deadly - a trained killer, alert and hunting for the enemy. 

… The enemy that appears to be a distressed child outside who’d dropped their ice cream. 

With a slow exhale, Cody’s grip on the pistol loosens, setting it back down as his shoulders slump, just a little. 

He glances around the room as his heart rate calms, his eyes settling on the source of the sound - the open balcony door, much wider than they’d left it last night. That’s odd.

His gaze automatically shifts to Obi-Wan in concern - or, rather, where Obi-Wan should be. Instead, he finds himself staring at an empty side of the bed. 

The Jedi being up before him explains the balcony being open at least, though Cody can’t deny that the smallest flicker of disappointment that wells up within him at the sight. 

He tamps it down swiftly.

Cody has kicked himself into his normal alertness, showered and dressed for the day by the time the Obi-Wan returns. The other man is as calm and steady as he always seems to be, balancing two bowls in the crook of one arm and two mugs of caf in another as he steps through the threshold of their room. 

For the briefest of moments, Cody stills, quietly remembering that he doesn’t quite know how to approach today. 

And then Obi-Wan turns to face the door behind him with a scrunched brow, and any hesitation in Cody is immediately overridden by the sight of his general in need of rescue.

“Had a trip to find breakfast?” he finds the words to ask, heading over to offer aid for the precarious crockery situation. Obi-Wan hums appreciatively in response, gratefully allowing the other man to take a bowl and both mugs from him, slipping the door closed with his now-free hand.

“Thank you. Yes, I bought some fruit from the kitchens downstairs. They were supposed to be complementary, apparently, but they still somehow weaseled some credits from me. I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Ah, so they’re pretending that nothing happened last night. Cody finds himself considerably relieved - he can work with that.

“Beats ration bars,” he returns with a shrug, eyeing the offerings with cautious interest. Even if the rest of the food here was definitely over-complicated and over-priced, they surely couldn’t go too wrong with preparing fruit. He sets the mugs on the sideboard to better investigate.

“... How did they get you to give them money?”

Obi-Wan grimaces. “The staff said it was a ‘charitable donation’.”

Cody can’t help the way his mouth twitches into a smirk..

“Uh-huh.”

“... To go towards their Life Day bonuses.”

“There it is.”

Obi-Wan frowns, looking defensive even as he pops a grape into his mouth. 

“If they say it’s for charity, I can’t very well go ignoring their request,” he protests, waving a hand in front of him as if to illustrate his point. “And they’re likely being underpaid anyway, so it’s simply good manners–”

Cody snickers, shaking his head and giving his Jedi a fond grin. “Mm, no, absolutely,” he agrees, a hint of teasing in his tone. “Which reminds me, sir, I have a bridge to sell you on Corellia, actually–”

Obi-Wan does his best to not look impressed, though his eyes betray him as they always do, lighting up in mirth. “Oh, hush, you.”

Cody can’t hide his amusement, even as he attempts an imploring expression.  “It really is a fantastic piece of architecture, though. And at such a reasonable price…”

He trails off as he sees the fond exasperation painting Obi-Wan’s features. It’s one of the other man’s signature countenances, and one he’s been on the receiving end of many times over the years. He doubts he’ll ever get sick of it.

“So,” the Jedi starts pointedly, steering the conversation to more practical topics. “The finalised agenda for today.”

Cody nods, taking a bite of a piece of fruit as his expression turns more serious. It’s one he’d seen growing on the native trees here during his excursions through the grounds yesterday - bright pink and not dissimilar to an apple, but decidedly more sour. He thinks he likes it. 

“Right. We’re hoping to intercept Barrek at 1030 hours,” he recites easily, shrugging slightly at the Jedi’s request to go over all of this again.

Cody is a man who prides himself on his strategic prowess - it’s entirely good practice for he and Obi-Wan to cover the mission details whenever they have downtime, he’s aware of this.

… All the same, this isn’t a battlemap with three chokepoints, a hundred enemies, and countless potential flanking positions to watch out for. This linear-style of plan is as simple as it gets.

“While he’s booked a slot on the local tour,” Obi-Wan adds, stroking a hand over his beard in thought. Cody’s eyes track the movement idly. 

“For some reason.”

The Jedi hums. “It seems as if he’s treating every moment that he’s not involved in intergalactic crime as a legitimate holiday.”

Cody huffs at the thought. It doesn’t seem particularly likely to him that someone preparing to take down the Republic would be so relaxed as to go around sightseeing like a normal tourist - but then again, he supposes he’s not really got an insider look on the proclivities of terrorists. 

“Perhaps,” he responds, though his tone is doubtful. “So we tag along on the tour to watch Barrek, see if he tries to slip away, or takes any extra notice in concealed coves or hideaways. What comes after that…?”

Obi-Wan finishes off his bowl of fruit, placing down the dish on a small side table. “Lunch, I suppose,” he says evenly, checking the chrono on his wrist.

Now it’s Cody’s turn for exasperation.

“I meant with Barrek,” he clarifies. He reaches for a cup, taking a sip of his caf. The warmth of the mug in his hands is a grounding sensation, the same here as it always is during their morning meetings, wherever they may happen. It’s a pleasant constant to be drawn back to.

“Well, I imagine he’ll be eating lunch too,” Obi-Wan muses, “perhaps we might be able to do so together, hm?”

Cody raises a brow.

“You’re certain that’s wise? Won’t he remember, well… everything from last night?”

Obi-Wan smiles. “I daresay I’m counting on it, Commander.”

Now that catches Cody’s attention. He gestures for Obi-Wan to continue, and the Jedi steeples his fingers together, a plan already put together in full, it seems.

“We introduce ourselves with an apology for our drunken impropriety last night, and tell him that we recognise him from previous Pyke dealings. He’ll be irritated by us, but intrigued. Play up the oblivious angle and he might just spill something about the deal tonight.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Cody’s brow pinches in a frown, already going over the thousands of ways that such a direct ploy might backfire. “Wouldn’t announcing our intentions like that be an incredibly suspicious move?”

Obi-Wan shrugs, clearly an old hand at this social game by now.

“Then he writes us off as oblivious and unsubtle smugglers - they’re a credit a dozen in a system like this. A spy would never be quite so direct.” He finishes off his own mug of caf, glancing at Cody with a sly twinkle in his eye.

“Never,” Obi-Wan starts, his tone indicative of an incoming lesson, “underestimate the value of someone believing you to be a harmless fool.”

Cody can’t help but chuckle. “That’s usually Skywalker’s gambit, as I recall.”

“And just who do you think he learned it from?” Obi-Wan responds lightly, giving Cody a friendly pat on the shoulder. The Jedi taps his chrono, before turning to grab his coat from the nearby hook. “Now, we’d best be off, my dear. I believe we have a tour to catch.”

Cody nods, rolling his shoulders as he slips on his own jacket. Once more into the fray by each other’s side. 

The lingering nervousness of the need to uphold his alias remains, though with the success of last night, Cody has to say his confidence has grown, just a little.

He offers Obi-Wan a small smile as they step out into the corridor, offering him his arm to take in a moment of boldness. 

He knows he probably shouldn't indulge like this, and it'll likely only serve to make his predicament worse, but he can't find it in himself to care as he feels Obi-Wan's arm slip into his own, the Jedi's warmth steady and reassuring.

“It seems we do.”

______________________________

The tour of the curated grounds outside of the hotel ends up being as much of a waste of time as the both of them had suspected - not that they’re here to sightsee, but the Jedi and Commander still can’t help but make muttered comments to one another under their breaths with every egregious claim made by their guide.

The worker giving the tour has a veritable litany of diplomatically worded stock phrases about the history of the planet that they cycle though, obscuring the planet’s history as a corporate bidding ground and making it sound more like a ‘paradise’ that happened to be discovered by their company’s founder. The word ‘colonisation’, in particular, is very carefully tiptoed around.

At least some of the views are worth appreciating.

From their position at the back of the group, they maintain a watchful eye on Barrek, noting anything he seems to be paying particular attention to, any moment that could possibly give him means to slip away unnoticed.

… And Cody has to begrudgingly admit that it does, in fact, seem like the man is here to enjoy himself - it looks like he’s genuinely interested in the things the tour guide is saying. Force knows why.

As the event is wrapping up and the group is beginning to disperse, the two men share a glance and a subtle nod. Now or never.

Obi-Wan and Cody make their pre-planned approach, catching up to their target before he can disappear out of their sight. The Jedi clears his throat.

“Atashe Barrek?”

The Rodian’s shoulders stiffen, and the man turns, eyeing the two warily. Obi-Wan puts on a bright, easy grin, offering a friendly wave as he steps over. “It’s Renne. From that party for the Syndicate, back on Oba Diah? I knew I recognised you when we talked last night!”

Bold, bold move. Barrek lurches forwards as Obi-Wan says just the right amount of ‘too much’, the Rodian’s hand reaching out to grasp him by the lapel of his coat. Cody tenses, but taking his cue from his General, doesn’t move to intercept the attack. Still, he feels his shoulders draw up, body coiled like a spring even as he tries not to show it.

“Keep. Your voice. Down,” Barrek hisses, his fist tightening in the fabric. Cody makes note of the four different ways he could break the Rodian’s wrist from this position if things get ugly, his entire focus narrowed down to the threat currently being presented. It’s a nice fantasy, if nothing else - the sight of someone manhandling the Jedi like this irks him, and he itches to act.

Obi-Wan can handle himself, Cody knows this, but it’s his job above all else to handle things for him so he doesn’t have to. 

During a particularly intense confrontation, Ventress had once referred to him as Kenobi’s trained attack dog. It was meant to be a disparaging comment, he’s sure, something intended to deny him of his agency - Obi-Wan’s eyes had flashed with something uncharacteristically dangerous at the comparison -  but in the moment, Cody couldn’t find it in himself to disagree.

So he’s an attack dog, then - good. Obi-Wan is his charge, and it’s his duty to go down fighting with bloodied claws and teeth, ensuring that he takes the hits in the other man’s place. 

The small thrill he gets from the thought is probably not wholly borne from the loyalty trained into him since decanting - though Cody finds it easier to pretend that’s all that it is.

There’s no Commander Cody without a General Kenobi to protect. It’s simply the way of the Galaxy.

The Jedi placidly smiles as Barrek’s grip loosens and eventually lets go, Cody’s hackles lowering reluctantly as he does so. A small, irrational part of him almost wanted the Rodian to push, just for an excuse to put him in his place. It would certainly be more comfortable than playing nice.

“Ah, of course, of course. Secrecy, got it,” Obi-Wan murmurs, the vacant grin still plastered on his face as he taps the side of his nose conspiratorially.

Cody forces on a smile too, though his gaze is probably still a little too sharp on the man who’s far too comfortable with putting his hands on Obi-Wan. 

He sucks in a quiet breath as he feels a foreign, yet soothing rush of calm entering his mind, no doubt courtesy of his Jedi sensing the tension that runs through him. 

Cody allows it to seep into him, relaxing his shoulders and reminding himself that even without their usual access to their weapons, they still have the advantage here. His eyes meet Obi-Wan’s for the briefest of moments, silently thanking him for the assist.

Barrek takes a step back to brush himself off, though he’s still clearly irritated. He glances around rather conspicuously to check no one else is listening in, before shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Good. Who are you and why do you know me?” he growls, voice low.

Obi-Wan blinks, managing an incredibly convincing look of offense. “You don’t remember? Really, Atashe, I would have thought you would.” 

At Barrek’s ensuing blank stare, he elaborates, “Renne and Vidarr Emerin. We were at the Pyke Palace - the soiree last year? We were speaking to Lom himself when you were passing, and I said–”

At the mention of the leader of the Syndicate, Barrek pales. 

Cody holds his breath. If their words are being believed here, then Obi-Wan has made them out to potentially be incredibly important. This could all come tumbling down terrifyingly easily.

“Right– right,” Barrek interrupts, nodding vigorously. “I, ah– I remember now,” he lies. “Yes, at the, uh, mid-year party, right? I had drunk a lot, so that was why I didn’t immediately…” he trails off, eyes darting between them, evidently trying to put together pieces of a puzzle, unaware that the two men in front of him are playing chess instead.

“Of course, of course,” Obi-Wan returns brightly, clapping a hand on Barrek’s shoulder. “Now, you were on your way to the buffet before I interrupted you, right? How about we join you for lunch?” 

The Rodian isn’t quite as adept at concealing his grimace as Cody imagines he intended to be.

“I… already arranged for company,” he says with a frown, his discomfort palpable. Obi-Wan’s smile grows brighter, clasping his hands together in delight. 

“Well, more colleagues to meet sounds perfect! Lead the way.”

There’s not really much Barrek can do with that level of social ineptitude. As frustrated as he clearly is, Obi-Wan has done a skilful job of getting across that ‘Renne’ does run in the same circles as him, and the Rodian has no way of knowing how important they are to the Pykes, meaning he has to play nice just in case.

Barrek blinks, bewildered, not quite realising that he’s been expertly backed into a corner.

“... Uh, fine. It’s… Yeah, this way.” 

Cody and Obi-Wan share a glance behind the Rodian’s back as he begrudgingly gestures for them to follow him inside. The Jedi has a distinctive triumphant gleam in his eye, but Cody suspects it’s a little too early to call victory just yet.

The real work starts now.

______________________________

Barrek leads the two of them through to a small table at the resort’s pop-up buffet for today’s lunch, awkwardly introducing the two of them to an apparent girlfriend, a Togrutan woman named Lia. 

It’s admittedly strange that their intelligence hadn’t mentioned her at all, and from Cody’s memory, there was no hint of a second person staying in Barrek’s hotel room last night. Not enough reason to outright be suspicious, but definitely something to keep track of.

Despite his reservations, he offers her what he hopes is an easy smile as they settle down to eat.

Obi-Wan takes a seat across from Barrek, wasting no time in starting conversation about their ‘mutual’ line of work. 

Cody is content to let the Jedi take the lead in conversation, his eyes tracking the lunch hall around them as subtly as he can. It’s not particularly busy in here right now, but they’re not exactly in the most secluded of spots… if someone were to attempt to listen in, they’d find it all too easy.

He’s startled out of his thoughts by Lia reaching across the table and tapping him lightly on the arm.

“The two of you are together, then?” she asks with a smile, inclining her head towards Obi-Wan.

It takes Cody a moment to register what she’s asking. Ah. Here they go. Time to actually play the role he’s been preparing for for the past few weeks.

He glances to where Obi-Wan is still very much engaged in conversation with Barrek, wincing internally. Looks like he’s on his own.

“Ah, yeah,” he replies, finding a tone that feels too light and airy to be natural to him. “Married, actually,” he adds, gesturing to the band on his ring finger. 

Lia seems to be expecting him to say something else in the ensuing pause, so he offers a small smile. “We’re… here on our anniversary.” 

Lia actually sighs at that, resting her head on her hand and smiling dreamily.

“Oh, how sweet. I figured it must have been a special occasion for the two of you,” she practically coos. Cody raises a brow.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, I saw you the other night. The two of you are just so…” she shrugs, eyes sparkling. “... In love, really.” She leans in, giving him a playfully conspiratorial nudge. “I wish Barrek would look at me like that.”

Cody lets out a strangled laugh, the sound more one of a desperate need to cover his surprise than anything else. He takes a sip of his drink, trying to stall out the need for a response. How had they been looking at each other, exactly?

“I, uh, I suppose we got lucky,” he manages to say after a moment, hearing the way his voice comes out a tiny bit strained, though luckily Lia doesn’t seem to pick up on it. Keep talking, Cody, Vidarr would not shut down on this topic, he reminds himself, trying to keep his calm as much as possible. “Closest thing to soulmates someone could get, I’d say.”

“Yeah?” Lia prompts, twirling the end of one of her lek around her finger. She’s enraptured, which Cody is grateful for, because it means he’s being believable enough - but it’s also absolutely terrible, because it means he’s going to have to improvise more.

“Well, y’know…” Cody starts, glancing sidelong to Obi-Wan, who’s currently leant back against the chair lazily as he talks shop with Barrek. He finds a strange sense of sureness wash over him as he takes a moment to just… look. Talking about being partners with someone. He thinks he can do that. He turns back to Lia with another smile, this one more certain than his previous attempts.

“We just… fit, I suppose,” he says with a shrug, his voice soft, thoughtful. “A good duo. Not just the, uh… romantic stuff. We’re close friends, allies first and foremost.”

He pauses to take another sip of his drink, feeling his heart ache slightly, tugged on by some invisible (but far too familiar), force. For once, he thinks, it could be helpful. He doesn’t push it away.

“It’s what makes it so special, you know? I know there’s nothing I can go through that he wouldn’t have my back for, and he feels the same about me. It’s…” Cody looks down at the band on his finger, his expression turning more pensive. “It’s only been a few years, but I can’t imagine anyone else being by my side. Being that… primary person that I turn to when I need advice, or… just company, really.”

He falls quiet for a moment, reflecting on the truth of the words. How much of this is him trying to play as Vidarr, and how much is real? It’s all tangled up in his mind, an inextricable knot of uncertainty.

“... That’s love,” Lia responds softly, giving him a warm smile.

Cody blinks. “Is it? I–” he meets Lia’s gaze again, scrambling to not blow his cover. “It– it is, I mean. Love.” 

He lets out a steadying breath, focusing on making a recovery, and not on the way his heart has picked up its pace violently.

Is that what love is?

 “I think I just forget that not everyone has something like this,” he says, forcing on the smile again. “It becomes so normal after a while. Background noise.”

Lia offers him a wry smile, her eyes landing on Barrek briefly, something like sadness etched there for the briefest of moments.

“Would that we all could be so fortunate,” she murmurs, her finger idly tracing the rim of her glass.

She smiles something bright and fake as Barrek turns back to face her, slinging an arm over the back of her chair.

“Ready to go, babe,” the Rodian announces, and the two ‘couples’ stand from the table, bidding their goodbyes. Obi-Wan goes in for a hug, which Barrek uncomfortably rebuffs.

‘It’s not laying it on too thick if it works’, Obi-Wan had told Cody earlier, blatantly enjoying the idea of playing the fool a little too much.

The man was right, Cody concedes, watching the way Barrek rolls his eyes as soon as they think they’re out of sight. ‘Renne’ seems to have been relegated to ‘harmless idiot’ status in the Rodian’s eyes, just as they’d planned.

Obi-Wan takes Cody’s arm once again as they head outside. The Commander forces down the distracting, odd feeling in his chest that has been lingering from the conversation with Lia, pushing it away to deal with later. Much, much later, if he has anything to say about it. His deathbed, perhaps, when he’s old and only has half of his memories left anyway.

… Although, Cody imagines he’s kidding himself with the notion that he’ll get to live that long in the first place.

“Success?” he asks the Jedi, attempting to shake off his persistent discomfort as the two head to the resort’s gardens to speak privately.

Obi-Wan nods. “He was incredibly resistant to saying more than he needed to, but all the same…” A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, looking considerably self-satisfied. “They’ll be meeting at 9:30pm tomorrow. I’m not certain where, but we can trail Barrek if we’re careful.”

Cody lets out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

“I don’t know why I was worried. Good job.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “It was purely luck, I assure you, but I appreciate it nevertheless.”

They pause for a moment to watch as a sparrow flutters overhead to land at a nearby birdfeeder. A small moment of peace after the emotional chaos of the last twenty minutes.

Beside him, Obi-Wan’s head tilts a little, a warm expression gracing his features.

“And you did excellently, too. Not that I could pay attention to the entirety of your conversation, but it looked like you dealt with Lia confidently,” he compliments. Watching Cody’s response carefully, he adds, “I do not, of course, wish to patronise. I only mention it as I knew you were nervous about the ordeal.”

Cody feels himself flush a little under the praise. He can take commendations about his prowess in battle - he knows he’s good at that - but it always feels harder, somehow, when it’s something he’s unsure about.

“Thank you, Obi-Wan,” he murmurs, eyes still tracking the small bird ahead of them.

Obi-Wan nods, and the two fall into a companionable silence.

Cody allows himself a brief reprieve from the stress of the last hour, quietly letting himself just enjoy the moment in the here and now. A gentle scent from the flowerbeds around them diffuses through the air, the sunlight peeking through the sheet of clouds above to softly make itself known.

Obi-Wan turns to fix him with a faux-earnest look, his eyes twinkling with what can only be described as mischief. 

“Though, speaking of that chat you had… Soulmates, are we?” He asks innocently.

… Well. Cody was enjoying the moment. He feels his cheeks flush even brighter.

“Not. Another. Word,” he mutters, frowning over at the other man. Obi-Wan simply grins in return.

“No? Not one?” he presses, clearly delighting in the huff of annoyance that draws from his Commander.

“You’re incorrigible,” Cody grumbles. “I’m not going to encourage it, I know you too well.”

Obi-Wan hums at that, expression softening ever so slightly to reveal a genuine affection underneath his smirk. He gently nudges the Commander’s shoulder with his own, glancing back to the resort behind them.

“You certainly do, my dear. Come, we should be getting back to get our further agenda in order.”

Cody sighs, unable to keep from returning the fond smile.

“Right behind you. As always.”

______________________________

Obi-Wan had always been good at flirting.

Flirting, flirting, flirting, with anything that moves, anything that breathes.

He particularly has an aptitude for flirting with the enemy.

That doesn’t mean that Cody is good at listening to him do it.

The Commander sighs, fiddling with his comm-unit to give him something to occupy his hands with, focusing on getting the signal as clear as possible.It’s fairly clean already, but he’s desperate for something to do.

The smooth tones of his General drift out from the small device, serving to make the crease of his brow deepen.

“What’s gotten into you?” Rex asks from beside him, glancing sidelong at his oldest friend. 

Cody grumbles under his breath, keeping his attention on the damn comm-unit. The tiny thing is vexing him more than it probably should. 

For a brief moment, he fantasises about crushing it.

“Nothing,” he responds irritably. 

Even through his vod’s helmet, he can practically feel the raised brow this earns him. 

“Nothing,” Rex repeats, sounding skeptical. “Sure.”

The two drift into a silence once more, keeping an ear to the unfortunate conversation they’re listening in on over the comms. Once General Kenobi says the codephrase, the 212th are going to rush in, the 501st backing them up.

It’s just… taking longer than they expected.

Stars, why can’t they just get on with it? The Commander feels twitchier than usual, some unknown force making his usually endless patience wear thin. 

His General throws out a casual line about the target’s eyes pleasantly matching the shirt they chose, and Cody rolls his eyes. At this rate, his scowl will be permanently etched onto his features. 

Rex once again notices his tension.

“He’s just stalling until Skywalker arrives,” the Captain tries, but it doesn’t do anything to abate Cody’s prickly mien. 

“Then he should get there faster,” Cody huffs, trying not to let the words come out in as much of a snap as they seem to want to. He’s aware he’s being irrational, but he can’t seem to shake it off.

Rex doesn’t respond. 

After Skywalker comms in to inform them that he’d be at least another ten minutes (because of course he will be, Cody thinks to himself), the two hunker down in their small, temporary bunker (if it can even be called that - it’s more of an empty shack that they’d squeezed themselves into to keep out of sight while awaiting their next orders). Rex removes his helmet with a sigh, running through a routine check of his blasters to give himself something to do in the meantime.

A soft, charming laugh fills the room, a little fuzzy from the distortion of the comm signal. “You’re too much, truly. But I would be lying if I said it doesn’t intrigue me,” Obi-Wan murmurs - or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say he purrs. 

Either way, it irks Cody considerably, making his chest feel oddly tight. He can clearly imagine the look on the Jedi’s face as he speaks, that sultry glint in his eye that comes to him so easily when he’s making eyes at the enemy.

“... It’s not about the mission.” 

What? Cody startles as Rex breaks the silence, having apparently been watching him carefully for the last few minutes. Cody looks back at his vod like he’s grown a second head.

“Of course it’s about the mission,” he objects, absolutely baffled by his suggestion. “We’re wasting precious time, and the men are sitting ducks out here. I’d rather not do most of this firefight after sundown–”

“Sure, Codes, but difficult odds never phase you this much,” Rex counters, raising a brow.  He continues to watch Cody, his gaze searching for Force knows what. The Commander is suddenly very grateful he never took his own helmet off. 

“In fact,” the Captain presses, “I’ve never known you to be so off your game in the field. You usually do best when you’re backed into a corner. So it’s not about the mission.”

Cody doesn’t really know how to respond. He doesn’t particularly want to delve into all of the reasons behind his uncharacteristic distractions today.

“Just drop it, Rex’ika,” he insists, his voice a little weary. “I’m just feeling a little off today. It’ll pass.” 

Something like sympathetic understanding crosses Rex’s features. Cody watches him hesitantly try to find his next words. 

“... Is it about what happened on Cato Neimoidia a few weeks ago?” he asks. “How’ve you been sleeping since then?” 

Cody shakes his head quickly. “No, I– I’m fine. I’m sleeping fine.” Or - as fine as a man whose life has been spent at war is capable of sleeping, but Rex knows well enough what he means. His last mission had been… messy, to put it lightly, but he’s dealt with worse. He can compartmentalise.

His brother looks a little relieved to hear that, though Cody can tell he still wants to push.

Another comment from Obi-Wan that implies he and the target are imminently about to go home with one another makes its way through the space, and Cody grumbles quietly under his breath. Something seems to click for the Captain. Something that seems to amuse him greatly.

“... Ah,” Rex says. The corner of his mouth twitches up into a smirk. Cody wishes it didn’t do that.

“What?” he responds, tone clipped and making it clear that he is absolutely not in the mood for whatever the other man is about to come out with.

“Just connecting some dots.” If Rex looked any more smug right now, Cody might consider walking right out of the shack and eating his blaster - it would ultimately be more dignified than sitting through this inevitable conversation.

He does not want to talk about this, not now, not ever.

“Rex…” he murmurs lowly, a clear warning bleeding into his tone.

A warning that, of course, goes unheeded.

“You’d be unfazed trying to take down a kriffing rancor. And jealousy is what throws you off?”

If looks could kill, the 501st would need to hire a new Captain after this.

“I’m not jealous,” Cody rebuts without hesitation. He spoke too quickly, he knows immediately from the look on his brother’s face. Damn it all.

“No? Then why is every flirt he makes causing you to sound like Fox on that day the caf supplies ran out?” Rex looks practically triumphant in his discovery. “Oh, Force. That also must be why you got all touchy when that Twi’lek came onto Kenobi that time in 79’s. I thought it was about the other guy, but it wasn’t, was it?”

Cody sputters for a moment, trying to come up with a viable defense. 

“That’s not– I–”

As far as Rex is concerned, that’s a veritable confession. He offers his friend a wide grin, returning his focus to the comms.

“Your secret’s safe with me, ori’vod. I won’t tell a soul,” he says, far too brightly for Cody’s liking.

Cody considers continuing to argue, but he knows that it’s a lost cause. With a heavy sigh, he deflates, slouching in his chair.  

“If you were one of my men, I’d have you court-martialed for insubordination,” he mutters darkly, folding his arms across his chest.

“I’ll add that to the extensive list of reasons I’m glad I’m not one of your men, then,” Rex returns easily, giving Cody a playful nudge.

The Commander snorts, shaking his head. A wry smile finds its way onto his face, despite everything.

“Yeah, yeah. I still outrank you.”

The comm crackles with murmurs of conversation, and the two share an alarmed look. The codephrase.

“I’ll harass you about it later,” Rex chuckles, pulling on his helmet as the two rush out of the bunker.

“Just worry about surviving long enough to do that first, vod.” Cody mutters. “I could still shoot you in the back before this is all over.”

His brother only laughs.

______________________________

With the knowledge that the deal was set to be happening the following evening, the Jedi and Commander had spent the rest of their day at a fairly leisurely pace. After much persuasion, Cody had even let Obi-Wan buy a dinner for them both.

(“We usually split at Dex’s,” Cody had protested, not wanting the Jedi to pay out of pocket for such an expensive outing. He was aware that Obi-Wan had access to much more money than he did, but it was the principle of the thing.

“Yes, but I want to do something nice for you,” Obi-Wan insisted, gently placing a hand on Cody’s, staying his hand from reaching for his wallet. “I asked you to join me here on the mission in the first place, so let me repay you in kind.”

Cody had raised a brow at that. “I’ll be getting paid by the Republic for agreeing to come, regardless.”

Obi-Wan’s expression didn’t falter. “You might be, yes, but not nearly enough. Allow me this, please.”

Cody always had been bad at denying him when he used that tone.)

They’d both fallen asleep quickly that night, having stayed up to trade stories - a familiar ritual from when they first began working late together to get their mountains of paperwork turned in on time.

Obi-Wan tells Cody of planets he’d visited before the war, and promises to take his Commander to see some of them once this is all over - to give him the holiday and time off that the Jedi says he deserves. Cody regales his Jedi with tales of his childhood on Kamino, telling him of the books Shaak-Ti had helped smuggle to them to help the tubies sleep at night.

The following morning brings with it a quiet sort of strangeness.

Something urgent, but not necessarily dangerous, tugs at the edge of Cody’s conscious mind, gently drawing him to wakefulness.

He’s warm, warmer than he’d usually like to be, and he can’t quite shake the feeling that there’s something important that he needs to be paying attention to.

He dozes, trying to figure out what, if anything, is different about today.  

Obi-Wan lets out a soft murmur behind him in his sleep, pressing his nose closer against Cody’s back and– 

Oh.

Well, that would certainly explain the warmth.

Cody doesn’t move, doesn’t even dare breathe as his mind works overtime to process the situation. 

Obi-Wan is pressed directly behind him, one of his arms slung lazily over his torso. For want of a better word (and Cody is desperately searching for one), the Jedi is… holding him.

An explosion of conflicting emotions bubble in Cody’s chest, his mind still far too fogged from sleep to make sense of any of it.

With each breath from Obi-Wan, Cody can feel the rise and fall of his chest against his back, and in a brief moment of delirium, he finds himself wishing that he’d forgone his undershirt too, just to feel the touch of skin against skin.

It’s a thought he immediately admonishes himself for, wondering just where, exactly, he’d gained the audacity to think such an unprofessional and objectifying thing about his commanding kriffing officer. 

Cody’s breath grows progressively more shallow as he continues to draw a blank. How had this even happened? Cody is firmly stationed on his own side of the bed, meaning it was the Jedi who had to have shuffled over - but that means nothing. He’s asleep, and pressing close is a normal sleeping instinct when you’re in bed with someone else. Right? Perhaps Obi-Wan was just cold - though, that would hardly make sense, given that they’re on a tropical kriffing island.

Cody’s face, he’s sure, is flushing deeply, his heart hammering against his ribs at the contact. It’s fine. This… can be fine, and not existentially mortifying - as long as he extricates himself from the hold before Obi-Wan wakes up.

He doesn’t even want to imagine how awkward this would be if the other man was aware of what was happening.

He tries a very, very gentle shuffle towards the edge of the bed, but Obi-Wan lets out a quiet groan of protest in his sleep, curling himself around the clone even tighter.

Cody desperately tries to ignore the way that the sound goes straight to his groin.

Shit, shit, shit. 

He doesn’t see another solution, though he wishes he did. Cody once again shifts, a little more firmly now, peeling Obi-Wan’s arm off from him as carefully as possible.

The second he sees a hint of freedom, the Commander bolts, rolling out of bed and rushing to the ‘fresher. 

His Jedi, thank every star in the sky, does not seem to stir.

Safe inside the refresher, with the door locked behind him and his mind buzzing, Cody thinks faintly that his legs might actually give out under him.

Between the feeling of Obi-Wan pressed close against his back, and Lia’s words from yesterday still unsettling him, he feels like he’s losing his mind.

It all adds up to a great cacophony in his head, one Cody has absolutely no idea what to begin to do with. It’s too loud, too insistent, and his heart is still fluttering like a caged bird attempting escape.

A shower, he decides, is a good first step. He could probably do with a shower.

Shrugging off his sleepclothes, he numbly makes his way to the cubicle, determined to do something, anything, to calm his racing thoughts.

Cody presses his forehead against the cold tiles as the scalding water runs down his back. Neither of the contrasting sensations serve to ground him in reality the way he wishes they would.

He… wants.

No, that’s not quite right.

Wanting is ephemeral, malleable. It’s intense, burning, but it doesn’t stick around too long or cut down quite to the bone. 

It usually, in Cody’s experience, is something that can be ignored, temporarily or not, with enough focus and discipline.

No, Cody does not want. He needs.

He raises his head from the tiles, closing his eyes as the water trickles in too-hot rivulets down his face.

Of course. Of course. He should have known, should have seen the signs… perhaps then, he could have done something to stop it.

Cody lets out a quiet, strangled groan. It echoes off of the tiles of the small shower back to him, sounding pitiful even to his own ears.

The truth of the matter burrows deep into Cody’s skin, settling into the home it’s long-since made for itself there, nestled tightly amongst the other secrets he harbours that are too shameful to ever speak aloud.

He digs his fingers into his temples, breathing in heavy lungfuls of the steam-drenched air as if it might reverse the realisation that now weighs upon his heart like lead.

This is no longer just some passing infatuation.

He’s in love with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Force.

This whole mission has been a cruel play by the Gods. By even stepping foot here, he’d opened the lid on something he could have gone the rest of his life ignoring, and Cody is afraid - no, terrified - that there’s no going back now.

Passion, desire, infatuation - he can deal with those. They’re to be expected for anyone, even someone of his station trying to navigate living through wartime. Love, on the other hand… 

… What the fuck does a clone do with love?

From the other room, he hears the front door of their room close, feels the slight shake of the walls. Obi-Wan has left, no doubt waking and deciding to pick them up breakfast like he did yesterday.

Slowly, Cody slides down the wall of the shower, sitting with his knees drawn to his chest and his gaze unfocused as the water pools around him.

His thoughts drift back to the words his Jedi had said to him two evenings ago, just before their kiss. 

‘This… isn’t ideal.’

No, General, Cody thinks to himself, more than a little miserably. He drags a hand over his face, doing his best to stop his teeth from grinding together in frustration. No, it is not.

______________________________

The effort required to pull himself together for the evening is gargantuan, but then again, the Commander has always thrived under impossible odds.

They’ve been trailing Barrek from afar since 9pm, waiting for him to make his way to the site of the deal, wherever it may be. It’s almost a relief when, at 9:25, he finally takes his leave from the resort’s main building and slips out into the night. 

“Showtime,” Obi-Wan murmurs, his eyes locked on the Rodian from their vantage point in the gardens. 

“So it seems. We should be careful.”

“Ah, but we’re simply two lovers going on a nighttime stroll,” the Jedi responds lightly, giving his companion a gentle, friendly nudge. “Nothing suspicious there.”

Cody isn’t certain he’s up for their usual banter tonight. 

Still, he forces on a small smile. It begrudgingly becomes genuine when he takes in Obi-Wan’s expression. 

“You’re sure you’re alright, Cody?” he asks quietly, worried eyes searching Cody’s.

Obi-Wan had noticed his distraction earlier - of course he had. Cody had told him, not entirely incorrectly, that he was simply feeling a little ill.

A mistake, he immediately realised, as that meant that he’d been unable to avoid the Jedi’s fussing for the rest of the day.

A situation that had, unfortunately, not helped Cody’s heart after his earlier discovery. If he had to feel the gentle press of the back of the other man’s hand upon his forehead one more time…

Cody sees the familiar concern in his friend’s eyes, and nods. 

“Can’t be too wrong by your side, sir,” he murmurs, a little more truth in the statement than he imagines Obi-Wan will ever know.

The Jedi’s expression softens further, and he reaches out a hand to squeeze Cody’s shoulder, sparing a quick glance over to Barrek’s retreating form in the distance. “Good. Let us go save the Galaxy once again, then, Commander,” he murmurs, smiling gently.

Cody allows himself a quiet chuckle, even as his stomach does a somersault at the gesture. “It does seem to fall on us often, that.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes sparkle in a combination of fondness and amusement that he seems to only reserve for those quiet, between-mission conversations.

“Then it’s a good thing we’re always fit to answer the call, I suppose.”

It begins to rain a little ways into their excursion, the two pulling the hoods of their cloaks up as they follow Barrek from a safe distance. 

He’s jumpy - though for good reason, Cody thinks, considering he’s being tailed - repeatedly checking over his shoulder and keeping a twitchy hand on the blaster at his side.

Rodians have considerably better night vision than humans, so Obi-Wan is sure to breathe a soft word of warning for them duck out of sight each time he senses the other man is about to turn. 

Cody silently gestures for the two of them to take a path up the side of a nearby cliff as they see Barrek wander down to the shoreline of one of the many nearby beaches - less chance to intervene, perhaps, but a better, more secure vantage point.

The wind rushes past them as they find a place to properly set up, their cloaks billowing out behind them as the waves crash against the shore below. Cody frowns as he removes the blaster clipped to his back, fully extending it out to become a sniper rifle.

Yesterday he had been out of his element, but this is his arena. He's run countless stakeouts before, and the Commander is confident that today’s won't be particularly more difficult than any other.

“Wind’s in a bad direction, gonna affect my aim,” he gripes, glancing down to where Barrek is waiting around on the beach with his hands stuffed in his pockets. They have time, but the others will be arriving any moment. “Stand there,” he orders.

Obi-Wan raises a brow, though he steps over to where Cody had pointed without question. 

“And kneel,” the Commander directs firmly, his focus dedicated to fiddling with the scope. 

He belatedly realises that that is perhaps an incredibly inappropriate request to make of your commanding officer when he glances up to see Obi-Wan, wide eyed and a little red in the face.

Before he can open his mouth to apologise, rectify the situation, Obi-Wan nods, clearing his throat quietly. He arranges the cloak below him, settling himself down on the damp grass below.

Usually, the Jedi would make a joke out of the whole thing, or gently needle Cody for making such an order. For whatever reason, though, he stays quiet.

“Might I ask why…?” he eventually responds. Cody could swear his voice comes out a little strained, though he quickly dismisses the thought.

“Didn’t bring a stabiliser,” Cody answers with an apologetic smile, crouching in front of Obi-Wan and setting the body of the rifle down on the Jedi's shoulder, checking the scope and adjusting it minutely.

Cody tries not to think too hard about the way Obi-Wan's gaze burns into him as he hovers just over the other man, face to face and barely inches away between the cold metal of the blaster.

… But now is not the time for such distractions.

His attention zeroes in on the task at hand, the importance of it all providing a welcome reprieve from the pressure of being so close to his friend.

“... Slightly to the left,” he murmurs, and Obi-Wan dutifully shuffles himself over bit by bit until Cody, keeping close, breathes a quiet ‘stop’.

A few moments pass while he fixes the focus, feeling how tense the Jedi is.

“You can breathe, you know,” Cody says, unable to hide the amusement that slips into his teasing tone. “This is just a glorified telescope, I don’t need it steady enough to take a shot.” 

It takes Obi-Wan a long beat to respond.

“... Right. Of course,” he says, letting out a quiet, shaky-sounding exhale. Cody frowns in worry, nearly commenting on how strange his General is being, but his attention is drawn first by three more figures moving into the scope.

“It’s starting,” he whispers, pulling back briefly to meet the Jedi’s gaze. “Tell me anything you sense.”

Obi-Wan nods, his eyes fluttering closed in that peaceful way that tells Cody he’s reaching out to the Force. “I will. Tell me anything you see,” he requests in return. 

“I will.”

The General and Commander fall quiet as they settle in to work, their world narrowed down to the four people down on the quiet beach below.

The wind, though still strong, ceases its howling, as if holding its breath along with them.

It’s now or never, Cody thinks, watching as conversation on the beach begins. Time for them to save the Republic.

✷✷✷✷✷

Taglist (let me know if you'd like to be added!): @mitth-eli-vanto

[psychotrenny]

There's a lot to be said about Zambia's relationship with South Africa, especially during the Apartheid era. A nation with legal political independence, like much of "post-colonial" Sub-Saharan Africa the deep rooted structures of Colonialism and ongoing pressure of Imperialism have kept it economically dependent on the Imperial Core. Like much of Southern Africa, South Africa specifically is a major locus of that dependence. Indeed, the primary focus of South Africa's foreign policy towards its immediate neighbours, the "Frontline States" in the struggle against Apartheid, was to keep things that way using the most suitable combination of soft and hard power that South Africa had at its disposal.

Now Zambia got off lightly in terms of the military threat it faced, suffering no major South-African proxy wars and relatively few commando raids against the personnel and offices of anti-apartheid resistance that had set up on Zambian soil. The Apartheid regime saw Kenneth Kaunda, the Zambian head of state from 1964 (the year of Zambian political independence) to 1991 (by which time Apartheid was beginning to be dismantled), as a relative moderate due his anti-communist sentiments. Despite Kaunda's outspoken opposition to the Apartheid system, he maintained strong economic ties with South Africa. Zambia's copper mines had their ownership nationalised but were still managed and operated by the same companies, to the point that the pre-independence culture of racism remained alive and well decades later and many Zambian engineers left the mining industry for the private sector as soon as they could due to the discrimination they faced from their mostly white (often South African) managers. A similar arrangement existed for Emerald mines, an industry that only began development in the 1970s and remained in its infancy until the 1990s, remained largely in private hands.

Yet at the same time Zambia was still an independent African nation. On top of verbally denouncing Apartheid to the international community, Kaunda's regime offered material assistance and free access to the anti-colonial resistance movements that toppled the Portuguese Empire and Rhodesia while destabilising South African apartheid to the point of dissolution. Despite the burden of exploitation the masses faced from both foreign imperialists and their local collaborators, conditions for the black majority of Zambia were significantly less vicious than for those living under Apartheid in South Africa and Namibia. Relations between Zambia and South Africa were messy, complex and often contradictory but they were like this because Zambia was very much its own nation. While the shadow of Apartheid is something that must always be taken into account while discussing Zambia in this period, especially in the context of South African investment, this country was much more than an extension of South Africa. You can't talk about it like it's some glorified Bantustan

And yet for most people none of that matters. All Southern Africa is the same to them; who gives a shit about the actual history of struggle? The whole "Elon Musk's dad own a South African emerald mine" is incredibly stupid because it's a severely misleading distortion of the facts that only gets passed around due to widespread attitudes of chauvinistic ignorance towards Africa. Now Errol Musk's statements about his involvement in the Southern African emerald trade are inconsistent; at times he claims to have owned a stake in an emerald mine while at others he claims to have merely traded in the gems. But either way, the gems in question are Zambian and not South African and that's a distinction that matters.

Additionally, the spread of this rumour comes from a grossly oversimplified view of Imperialist exploitation in Africa. While the mining industry is an important vector by which wealth is extracted from the continent, it is far from the only one. Errol Musk did not make his fortune from emeralds; he was an electrical engineer who went own to invest in a wide assortment of businesses from auto parts stores to tourist lodges. A beneficiary of Apartheid for sure, operating in an economic system made possible only through the brutal exploitation of millions of Africans, but in a much more sophisticated way than the cartoonish caricature of a mine overseer a lot of people seem to have in mind.

The point must also be made that most mining in Africa takes the form of modern industrial enterprises operated by voluntary workers who, while still incredibly exploited in terms of the value they produce compared to what they receive, tend to be relatively well paid by local standards. Even in apartheid South Africa and Namibia itself, mining jobs were considered among the most desirable work an African could get. The image of slaves held at gunpoint to dig with shovels, distorted half memories of Sierra Leonean diamonds and Congolese Coltan, do not represent the reality of Imperialism in most of the continent.

The whole "Musk Emerald Mine" discourse is an all around outstanding example of ignorance, made even more egregious by the ostensible "progressive" beliefs of those who engage in it. "Leftists" who care little for what's actually happening to the people of the Imperial Periphery, who see the suffering of Africans as little more than a cheap way to mock an individual they don't like. Maybe it would pay to open a book or two before you open your mouth. Or at least look at a world map and see the funny solid line that exists between "South Africa" and "Zambia"

[probablyasocialecologist]

Calls for a ‘return’ to a non-existent past are seductive precisely because it did not exist. In an increasingly hostile world, it is tempting to believe that things were easier before the onset of a nebulous ‘modernity’. These individuals hint that if we simply traded in social changes, such as gender equality, we would be rewarded with more acceptable material conditions. However, such ideas are born more out of a yearning for an imagined idea of the Fordist consensus and that such conditions must project backwards into the pre-modern world. Such yearnings are compounded by the fact that the history that most people are taught is rudimentary and often provides an unproblematised version of our countries’ past. These narratives help to shore up the power of our own governments and obfuscate the very real benefits that we still enjoy as a result of imperial plunder. Trad accounts, meanwhile, are encouraged by the very platforms they appear on. It is common for them to present themselves as ‘tutors’ or accounts promoting ‘classical’ art, architecture or philosophy. The unsuspecting see a picture of a lovely old church, click follow and then are slowly drip-fed pseudo-history. They are also introduced, algorithmically, to the host of other trad accounts, which will feed them the same ahistorical pablum, establishing a consensus that is blissfully free from fact and heavy on nostalgia. Even those, such as myself, who seek to argue against these falsehoods fall prey to the algorithmic churn. Engaging with bad faith actors is still engaging and it can spread the message further, allowing reactionaries to find others in their cohort. This all translates into money for the platforms, which thrive off engagement – positive or negative.

[paganimagevault]

Female Europid Mummy from the Necropolis of Subexi III, Grave M6, Turfan District, Xinjiang. 5th-3rd C. BCE. Source: Baumer, Christoph.The history of Central Asia. Vol.1. The age of the steppe warriors. London : I.B. Tauris, 2012. pg. 218 left DS329.4 .B38 2012. Image via University of Pennsylvania. See maps in the post before this one for a better understanding of the geography discussed.

"Section 26 – The Kingdom of Nearer [i.e. Southern] Jushi 車師前 (Turfan)

1. ‘Nearer Jushi’ 車師前 refers to the kingdom or state centered in the Turfan oasis or, sometimes, to the tribe which controlled it. There can be no question that Nearer Jushi refers here to the Turfan Oasis. See for example: CICA, p. 183, n. 618; also note 1.5 above. For the etymology of the name Turfan see Bailey (1985), pp. 99-100, which is summed up in his sentence: “The name turpana- is then from *druva-pāna- ‘having safe protection’, a name suitable for a walled place.”

“One other oasis town is currently under excavation. At Yarghul (Jiaohe), 10 km (16 miles) [sic – this should read 10 miles (16 km)] west of Turpan, archaeologists have been excavating remains of the old Jushi capital, a long (1,700 m (5,580 ft)) but narrow (200 m (656 ft)) town between two rivers. From the Han period they uncovered vast collective shaft tombs (one was nearly 10 m (33 ft) deep). The bodies had apparently already been removed from these tombs but accompanying them were other pits containing form one to four horse sacrifices, with tens of horses for each of the larger burials.” Mallory and Mair (2000), pp. 165 and 167.

“Some 300 km (186 miles) to the west of Qumul [Hami] lie [mummy] sites in the vicinity of the Turpan oasis that have been assigned to the Ayding Lake (Aidinghu) culture. The lake itself occupies the lowest point in the Turpan region (at 156 m (512 ft) below sea level it is the lowest spot on earth after the Dead Sea). According to accounts of the historical period, this was later the territory of the Gushi, a people who ‘lived in tents, followed the grasses and waters, and had considerable knowledge of agriculture. They owned cattle, horses, camels, sheep and goats. They were proficient with bows and arrows.’ They were also noted for harassing travellers moving northwards along the Silk Road from Krorän, and the territories of the Gushi and the kingdom of Krorän were linked in the account of Zhang Qian, presumably because both were under the control of the Xiongnu. In the years around 60 BC, Gushi fell to the Chinese and was subsequently known as Jushi (a different transcription of the same name).” Mallory and Mair (2000), pp. 143-144.

“History records that in 108 BC Turpan was inhabited by farmers and traders of Indo-European stock who spoke a language belonging to the Tokharian group, an extinct Indo-Persian language [actually more closely related to Celtic languages]. Whoever occupied the oasis commanded the northern trade route and the rich caravans that passed through annually. During the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) control over the route see-sawed between Xiongnu and Han. Until the fifth century, the capital of this kingdom was Jiaohe.” Bonavia (1988), p. 131.

“Turpan is principally an agricultural oasis, famed for its grape products – seedless white raisins (which are exported internationally) and wines (mostly sweet). It is some 80 metres (260 feet) below sea level, and nearby Aiding Lake, at 154 metres (505 feet) below sea level, is the lowest continental point in the world.” Ibid. p. 137.

“The toponym Turfan is also a variation of Tuharan. Along the routes of Eurasia there are many other place names recorded in various Chinese forms that are actually variations of Tuharan.” Liu (2001), p. 268."

-Notes to The Western Regions according to the Hou Hanshu. Second Edition (Extensively Revised and Expanded). John E. Hill. University of Washington.

[zenkindoflove]

Pull Me in Deeper - Eris x Male OC - Ch 21

Rating: E, NSFW

Status: Multichapter, WIP, 21/23

Summary: Needing more alliances, Eris strikes a deal with Helion: go to the continent and find out information for him, and Day Court will support him usurping Beron. What he didn’t account for is the beautiful Day Court emissary accompanying him that makes his heart race while being such a thorn in his side. 

READ ON AO3

Start at the beginning | Masterlist

Tag List: @crazy-ache, @animezinglife, @lucienarcheron, @castielspelvis, @clockwork-ashes, @teddyhoneybear , @summerbummin , @works-of-heart , @secret-third-thing , @julesvanslutta , @the-darkestminds , @fieldofdaisiies , @chunkypossum , @bonecarversbestie , @jules-writes-stories , @mistandmemories

Snippet: Jocasta and Daphne paused to watch them push the furniture to the walls. Jocasta cringed a few times and Daphne had to stop her from jumping in to help. Once a space was cleared, Eris straightened his clothes and smoothed back his hair before requesting a song.

“Brahmpin’s fourth, please.”

Daphne nodded her head, quickly thumbing through her sheet music and then settling her fingers to the keys. As she played the first notes, Eris bowed formally to Alexius.  When he raised his head, he offered him a stretched-out hand. Alexius held his fingers in front of his mouth in anticipation.

“May I have this dance?”

Eris felt pure joy at the squeal of delight that erupted from Alexius. He tried to suppress his laugh as Alexius composed himself to match his formality.

Alexius placed his hand on his palm and Eris pulled him into a waltz.

“Oh!” Alexius exclaimed as their middles touched. “I guess I’m supposed to dance the female part then.”

Daphne and Jocasta cackled from the other side of the room and Eris squeezed their joined hands. “We can trade on the next one.”