#enforcers rules l answers

[iwritefandomimagines]

MISTLETOE — JESS MARIANO

masterlist

pairing: jess mariano x reader

description: when lorelai gilmore insists on hosting a christmas party, you might just catch yourself under the mistletoe with the boy you, like, totally don’t have a crush on or anything.

warnings: swearing as usual. fluff & a tiny bit of angst. jess smoking and u having a tiny smoke.

author’s note: u asked for more festive jess, and i am hear to answer ur cries! jess mariano i adore you !!!

“Y/N! You’re here!”

Lorelai Gilmore had never looked quite so pleased to see you, her eyes twinkling as they scanned over the Christmas jumper you were (rather reluctantly) wearing.

“Hi, Lorelai,” you smiled, handing her the bottle of champagne you’d been given to bring as a party favour, to which she grinned, “Thanks sweetie, come on in.”

You followed her down the hall and were embarrassingly pleased when your eyes caught those of a miserable looking Jess Mariano.

The moment he saw you he seemed to perk up, and you couldn’t help but notice Lorelai’s smirk as she watched you immediately beeline for him.

“Hey Y/L/N,” he almost smiled, picking at a piece of bread he’d been toying with eating for a while, “You got roped into coming too then?”

You scoffed, “Like Lorelai was going to let anyone get out of the biggest event of the festive season?”

“Don’t let Taylor hear you say that, his 300 different pointless events will be crushed,” Jess laughed, and you couldn’t help but revel in the sound.

You couldn’t quite pinpoint when the joy at finding a friend with whom you had so much in common had become something more, but you didn’t like the way butterflies consumed your stomach when you were around him.

He was your friend, nothing more, and so — how cliche — you wouldn’t even really admit to yourself that you really liked him.

“Nice jumper,” he smirked, and suddenly you regretted adhering to Lorelai’s supposedly strict rule of no entry without a Christmas jumper, “Very festive.”

He was stifling a laugh, and you shook your head as your cheeks burned crimson under his intense gaze.

“Oh fuck off,” you looked down at where Rudolph and Santa were emblazoned on your chest, “I didn’t think I’d get away with no jumper and I didn’t have one, so it’s my mum’s.”

He chuckled now because he already knew that, having already seen your mother wearing the jumper the previous week, accompanied by the fact it was adorably oversized on you and he found it cute that it swamped your frame.

You’d tried tucking it into your jeans to minimise the bagginess, but to no avail.

“It’s cute,” he teased, swiping his tongue over his lips as you looked away, “But it looks warm. Like, crazy warm.”

“Oh, it is. I’m dying here. Anyway I didn’t think you’d actually come,” you shrugged, “If I’d known I wouldn’t have worn the jumper. One, there was no chance you were going to actually listen to Lorelai, and two, I could do without the teasing!”

Jess raised his eyebrows, “Hey, I’m not teasing,” he raised his hands up as if in defeat, “But you think I’d miss all this?”

The sarcasm in his tone as his eyes scanned the room made you giggle, “Of course. Nothing says Christmas like Taylor arguing with everyone and Lorelai running around being the fun enforcer.”

You both watched as Taylor seemed to be enthusiastically explaining something to a frustrated looking Sookie, and saw Lorelai still flitting around the room trying to ensure that everyone was having an at least somewhat pleasant time.

“I could do with some fresh air,” Jess’ eyes almost challenged you, because you knew he was going out to smoke and that Lorelai was inevitably going to have an issue with that, “Wanna join?”

You were well aware that it was in your best interest to not follow him around wherever he went, but you were so drawn to Jess that it was impossible not to.

“Yeah, sure,” you shrugged, gesturing for him to lead the way, “But you better not expect me to cover for you when Lorelai’s like a sniffer dog and finds you smoking.”

Jess just rolled his eyes, “Sure, officer.”

“Woah, woah, woah, where are you two going?” Lorelai asked, eyes immediately catching you both quickly exiting the room and widening in dismay.

“Y/N is wearing the clothing equivalent of a sauna over here, she just needs fresh air,” Jess crossed his arms over his chest as Lorelai’s eyes narrowed.

You smiled sheepishly, “We won’t be gone long, I promise.”

Lorelai didn’t appear convinced, but her expression suddenly lit up when she noticed where you were currently stood between rooms — directly under a doorframe adorned with mistletoe.

“Well, well, well,” Jess smirked, leaning an elbow on the doorframe as he watched you grow shy under his watchful eye, “Pucker up, princess.”

You shoved him slightly, and he almost toppled straight over, “Right, yeah. Like I’d kiss you.”

“Ouch,” Jess pouted, “You wound me.”

“I think your ego can take the hit, Jess,” you bit your lip, overwhelmed both by embarrassment at him joking about kissing you in front of the whole room and the urge to just say “fuck it!” and kiss him.

For a moment he looked genuinely hurt, but he soon resumed his usual nonchalant expression and continue his pursuit outside for a cigarette.

You followed him quickly, scurrying along behind him as he pulled a cigarette from its box and lit it without a moment’s thought once he’d passed the decking.

“Dude—slow down,” you huffed, “You invited me outside and then ran off like you didn’t want me here. What gives?”

Jess rolled his eyes, “Oh please, if you’re going to just question me then do me a favour and go back inside.”

“Woah,” you warned, taken aback by his sudden rude tone when he’d been joking around just minutes prior, “What the fuck is going on here? What have I done in the last 30 seconds that’s pissed you off this badly?”

Jess’ face seemed to drop, like he’d realised he shouldn’t be snapping at you like he was, “It doesn’t matter, Y/N. Just— just go back inside, alright? I’m sorry.”

You weren’t for even a moment going to accept that dismissal, instead sauntering to his side and snatching the cigarette from his fingers to take one single drag.

You didn’t smoke, made abundantly clear by the coughing that followed, so you weren’t sure why you’d so frantically taken it from him.

You shoved it back towards him and he accepted it with a laugh.

“Now you’re laughing? What is up with you?”

Jess rolled his eyes yet again, “I just don’t understand you, Y/L/N.”

You gulped, finally overcoming your coughing fit as your face was lit with confusion, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You came straight over to me when you got here. You giggled and you blushed and you smiled and,” he paused, like he was regretting opening his mouth, before he caved and continued, “And then when everyone’s watching you laugh at the idea of kissing me.”

You scoffed at that, “Says you Mr. ‘Pucker up princess’? Since when did you care if I want to kiss you under the stupid mistletoe or not?”

“Oh, uh, I don’t know… Since the countless fuckin’ weeks I’ve been flirting with you?” he was gesticulating wildly as he spoke, as though what he was saying had been obvious the whole time.

“You tease me, Jess, you don’t flirt with me,” you shrugged, breathing ragged as you pondered what it was he was really saying, “We’re friends and you know I—you just tease me about little things to wind me up. You’ve never ever made any suggestion that you like me.”

“God you’re so oblivious, man,” Jess shook his head, extinguishing his cigarette and tossing it out of sight to step closer to you.

Normally you’d hate the lingering smoke smell, but on Jess it was almost a comfort — though it did nothing to calm your racing heart in this moment.

“I’m hardly good with like, feelings, am I?” he leaned forward, so close you could feel his breath on your face, “I thought I was doing a good enough job at, like, I dunno— I mean I called you princess, for fucks sake. You think I’d do that if I didn’t like you?”

You sighed, “I just assumed you were joking around, trying to make me flustered to get a laugh out of it… I mean, princess? Really? That’s an awful choice and— I just don’t believe for a second that you like me.”

“And why not?”

“I—, well—,”

He didn’t let you fumble over your words any longer, dipping his head to press his lips firmly to yours and pulling you closer to his chest.

“I really do like you Y/N,” he exhaled as he pulled away, his voice quiet and low, “I should’ve made that clearer, and I just got annoyed that the mistletoe could’ve been my chance to kiss you and you blew it off like it was a hilarious idea.”

“Only because you joked like it was!”

“To protect my ego as you so kindly put it,” he quirked his brow, no longer mad and instead still giddy from the kiss, “But I got my kiss in the end, eh?”

You chuckled, “Don’t push your luck, sunshine.”

“You haven’t even told me you actually like me back yet, either,” Jess huffed, and you could detect the faintest pout on his lips as he paused, “This is going to be hard fucking work, isn’t it?”

You leaned in to peck the corner of his lips gently, a small smirk playing on your face, “Mhm. Get used to it, Mariano. ‘Cause I like you too. A whole fucking lot, in fact.”

“Good, now do you fancy going back in there and giving the mistletoe another try? I’m sure it’d spice the party right up.”

You shook your head, eyes rolling at the teasing look on his face, “Let’s just stay out here for now, huh Romeo?”

You were silent for a moment until he kissed you again, hands wrapping around your waist as yours found the back of his neck.

“Sounds good to me, princess.”

———

thanks for reading guys !!! this was a lil ooc but fun to write so i hope you enjoyed. please let me know what you think ! <3

here is my masterlist for more of my works :-)

[kittievampire]

Riddle getting drunk off of eating readers meow meow 🫣

I have a huge corruption kink for this man, so I went kinda wild on this one lmaooooo

Lemme see what I have in my bag, My Dear~

Click here if you wanna request!

His Favorite Flavor

Warnings: Cursing, Smut, Dubcon, Oral (F! Receiving), Sub!Riddle Rosehearts x Dom!Fem!Reader, Corruption Kink

ALL CHARACTERS ARE 18+

Enjoy~

Ah, yes, the Housewarden of Heartslabyul, himself. The one who lived so strictly abiding by the rules of the Queen of Hearts. Riddle was always so strict on himself and his peers, and he continued to enforce these rules even after his overblot. Of course, he was more lenient, now.

You always wondered what it'd take to get him to act out. It was unlike Riddle to completely go off the rails and do something insane. You could never picture him cheating on a test or sneaking off campus after hours or roughhousing. Being an overly curious person, you wanted to see him do something completely out of character. Something that no one else would believe unless they saw it.

Honestly, you don't even remember how it all started. You don't really care to remember at this point.

All you cared about was that the former tyrant of the Heartslabyul dorm, the boy that was so hell-bent on following the rules and setting an example, was on his way to being your personal little plaything.

_

"You're so cute, Riddle," You cooed affectionately, your soft hand gently caressing the top of his head, fingers entwined in his red locks as his tongue was buried as deep as it could possibly go inside of your pussy. His eyes were glazed over with lust, and they would either stare up at you affectionately or roll to the back of his head. "Such a good boy for me." The redhead whined at your praise, thrusting and swirling his tongue along your walls before pulling it out and dragging it along your clit.

He was so much better at this, now.

The first time he ate you out, you had to coach him through every little thing. Being a fairly fast learner, Riddle picked up the best ways to make you feel good. You pulled his head back, his saliva clinging to your pussy in such a deliciously devious way. "Look at you," You murmured, his glazed over eyes staring up at you. "Getting all messy just to make me feel good... I wonder what everyone else would think." You shoved his face into your pussy again, Riddle immediately gripping your thighs like a vice as he aggressively ate you out, dick twitching in his pants. "Mmnhh! H-How would your dormmates r-react, hmm? Seeing their leader so... S-So..." You let out a soft moan as his tongue pressed against an especially sensitive spot. "So submissive and good for me... So quick to get on your knees and pleasure me..." He moaned into your cunt at your words, thrusting his hips against the air as he swirled his tongue around your clit. "P-Please," He whimpered. "W-Wanna... Be in you... Please l-let me..." Riddle's voice was so soft when he begged. So adorable.

You licked your lips and tapped on your inner thigh. "You know the answer to that already, Riddle. Make me cum first, unless you want a punishment for not following my rules."

"P-Punishment...?" Riddle's heart skipped a beat at the sound of it, cock dripping with precum at the thought of being disciplined by you. "You want to be my good boy, don't you?" His hips bucked instinctively as he heard you call him that again, bottom lip quivering as those doe eyes of his stared directly into yours. Slowly, he leaned forward and dragged his tongue over your slit again, making you shudder. "I'll... I'll be a good boy," He murmured out softly, hooking his hands on the underside of your thighs while his thumbs spread the lips of your pussy for easier access to your cunt.

With little hesitation, he shoved his tongue into your hole, eating you a little more aggressively this time. You leaned back a bit, biting your lip to muffle a moan as you reached up to squeeze your own breast. The attention he gave to both your hole and your clit was just so perfect. Then again, he was a fast learner and a perfectionist. Your walls squeezed around his tongue as your body twitched, signalling that an orgasm was near.

"I-I'm gonna- hhnNGHH!" You're cut off by the slurping sound he made as his tongue moved faster, his hand joining his mouth in pleasing you. His thumb started rubbing quick circles over your clit as he thrusted his tongue into your pussy, making you arch your back and cry out as your orgasm washed over you like a tidal wave. Your juices poured out of you as your body spasmed, walls clenching and unclenching so rapidly around his tongue as you made a mess of his face and the bed beneath you.

Riddle pulled away momentarily, slowing his motions on your clit before doing so to allow you to ride out your orgasm.

Your chest heaved as you tried to catch your breath, eyes slowly meeting the clock hanging on a wall in his room. "Oh..." You murmured. "Just... In time..." You took in a deep breath as the fog in your brain slowly went away. "Class is about to sta-" You started to sit up, only to be pushed down by a desperate-looking Riddle who's unbuckling his belt. "I want my reward, MC."

Your eyes could barely take in his disheveled look. Your cum was dripping from his mouth and all over his chin, his uniform was wrinkled, his tie was off, and his pants were down. His throbbing, angry cock was sliding against your cunt as he held your legs in the air, his eyes never leaving yours. "B-But class, Riddle-" You hissed as the tip breached your entrance.

He couldn't stop himself from bottoming out, letting out a pathetic mewl as he felt your walls squeeze around his cock. Only a couple of seconds were given for you to adjust before he whimpered out an apology and started desperately thrusting into you.

Riddle's pace, unlike his disposition, was erratic and uneven, his balls slapped against your ass as his cock dove deeper into your hole with each thrust. His eyes rolled back and a twisted grin formed on his face. Slowly, his stormy gaze met your teary-eyed as he shushed you, your moans having gotten momentarily louder than his own.

"I don't want to go to class, MC... I want you."

Masterlist

Thanks for reading!

[nekropsii]

Why do people call Porrim an MRA??? it's such a bad take I can't even begin to fathom the logic.

Uuuuugh. Okay, to my understanding, the logic is predicated on two concepts:

Kankri is Correct, there is no Misogyny on Beforus.

Since Beforus has a Matriarch, "complaining" about the Oppression of Women on Beforus is the exact equivalent... Men complaining about men being oppressed, despite us living in a Patriarchal society.

This is a terrible argument, because... Porrim literally explains in detail that that is not the case.

Yes, Beforus has a Matriarch... A Superficial Matriarch, where the woman in power is more of a Figurehead than anything. Law Enforcement and Politics are handled mostly by "Higher CIPs" - Ceruleans, Indigos, and Purples - which are predominantly born (hatched?) as men. ... If all of the Social Order and Politics are Enforced and Dictated by men... Then that... Is a Patriarchy.

So, we have it directly explained to us that Beforus is Superficially a Matriarchy, with a Governing Body largely composed by Highblood Men, who canonically benefit from the subjugation of women, because having women be of generally lower class than men means that... Men can cull women, potentially on the basis of being women. You know, that social system, enforced by the predominantly male-lead government that allows for what is essentially the ownership of people you deem incapable of caring for themselves as pets? The system that will take any excuse in the book? Sure, that may have been a social rule implemented by their version of HIC, Feferi fucking Peixes, but it's still being used as a weapon. Just because something was made by a woman, does not mean it cannot be used as a weapon against women in the name of misogyny. You think Alternian Culling doesn't work the same damn way?

There's a sharp cut of irony you have to feel at the fact that Porrim literally says that conversations of Misogyny on Beforus are often shot down using "The Matriarchy" as an excuse. If Misogyny wasn't a thing, why the fuck are Rufioh, Kankri, and Cronus literally, textually, purposefully Misogynists? Why the hell is Latula like that, then? I don't think this is a 1-to-1 allegory for the real world, man- Troll World Building has NEVER been a direct, clean allegory for the real world. I do not think she was ever intended to be read as an analogue to Men's Rights Activists, I think she was intended to be read as an Alien Feminist. If anything, this feels less like an MRA, and more like someone getting shut down for trying to have a conversation about how Misogyny Exists in, like, Thatcher-Era England or something. Well, there's a Female Prime Minister, isn't there? Misogyny is over, clearly.

Porrim is constantly posed as an Exposition Fairy on the same level as Aranea, just... With Politics and World Building rather than Character Analysis. Porrim is portrayed as cool, collected, and correct. Do you think Andrew Hussie - literal Andrew Hussie - would portray a fucking Men's Rights Activist with that level of grace and style? Because the answer is no! Every time a character is a Misogynist in Homestuck, they are comically terrible! Rufioh, Kankri, Cronus, fucking Caliborn! Hussie is a lot of things, and yeah, some of these things are bad, but none of these things include the label Misogynist. Hussie is well known for... Not doing that, actually, that's, like... A major appeal of the comic. The female characters in Homestuck are known for being really, really well written and really, really well handled!! If there was a Men's Rights Activist in Homestuck, we would know about it, because that character would be comedically terrible, constantly dunked on by everyone around him, totally bitchless, and posed as a relentless fucking menace who does not deserve to breathe the same air as any of the women in the story. You know, like Cronus! And Not Porrim!!

Also, can we all take a moment of silence to ponder how much of an L it is to have your entire point of discourse be based in the idea that straight up literal actual Kankri Vantas is correct? That is capital e Embarrassing.

[lilbabybutts]

Ask Game for CG/L Couples!

Corresponding questions for littles and their caregivers; if you answer one, get your partner to answer the other!

1) Do you always regress to a specific age or does it change depending on certain things?

1) Can you tell right away what age your little is?

2) What's your favorite nickname given by your caregiver?

2) What's you're favorite thing to be called by your little?

3) What are some rules you have to follow? Or do you not have any?

3) Do you enforce a daily routine for your little? Does it apply to you as well?

4) What would you do to make yourself regress?

4) How do you make your partner feel little without fail?

5) Do you wear diapers? What's your favorite brand?

5) Have you ever tried out diapers/pacis/little gear? Or are you a Big all the time?

6) What do you do to make your caregiver feel taken care of?

6) What's your favorite thing your little does for you?

7) Do you have a comfort item?

7) What are the names of your little's stuffies/dolls?

8) What's your caregiver's favorite tv/show movie?

8) What's your little's favorite tv show/movie to watch when regressed?

9) What are your favorite activities to do at home?

9) When y'all go out, what do you like to do together?

10) What is the meanest/hardest punishment you've ever gotten?

10) What is the naughtiest thing your little does or has ever done?

11) Describe a time your caregiver made you feel especially safe!

11) Describe a time your little gave you those warm fuzzy caregiver feelings!

12) What's the first time you ever felt Little?

12) When did you know you were a Caregiver?

13) What's a silly thing you do when you want to be bratty?

13) What do you do to get your little to behave?

14) What can your caregiver do to make you blush?

14) What is your favorite thing to tease your little about?

15) Is your caregiver strict or soft? Doting or hands-off? Goofy or serious? Teasing or praising?

15) How would you describe your little? Shy, bratty, hyper, bossy, sweet?

[mariacallous]

One of the section leaders for my computer-science class, Hamza El Boudali, believes that President Joe Biden should be killed. “I’m not calling for a civilian to do it, but I think a military should,” the 23-year-old Stanford University student told a small group of protesters last month. “I’d be happy if Biden was dead.” He thinks that Stanford is complicit in what he calls the genocide of Palestinians, and that Biden is not only complicit but responsible for it. “I’m not calling for a vigilante to do it,” he later clarified, “but I’m saying he is guilty of mass murder and should be treated in the same way that a terrorist with darker skin would be (and we all know terrorists with dark skin are typically bombed and drone striked by American planes).” El Boudali has also said that he believes that Hamas’s October 7 attack was a justifiable act of resistance, and that he would actually prefer Hamas rule America in place of its current government (though he clarified later that he “doesn’t mean Hamas is perfect”). When you ask him what his cause is, he answers: “Peace.”

I switched to a different computer-science section.

Israel is 7,500 miles away from Stanford’s campus, where I am a sophomore. But the Hamas invasion and the Israeli counterinvasion have fractured my university, a place typically less focused on geopolitics than on venture-capital funding for the latest dorm-based tech start-up. Few students would call for Biden’s head—I think—but many of the same young people who say they want peace in Gaza don’t seem to realize that they are in fact advocating for violence. Extremism has swept through classrooms and dorms, and it is becoming normal for students to be harassed and intimidated for their faith, heritage, or appearance—they have been called perpetrators of genocide for wearing kippahs, and accused of supporting terrorism for wearing keffiyehs. The extremism and anti-Semitism at Ivy League universities on the East Coast have attracted so much media and congressional attention that two Ivy presidents have lost their jobs. But few people seem to have noticed the culture war that has taken over our California campus.

For four months, two rival groups of protesters, separated by a narrow bike path, faced off on Stanford’s palm-covered grounds. The “Sit-In to Stop Genocide” encampment was erected by students in mid-October, even before Israeli troops had crossed into Gaza, to demand that the university divest from Israel and condemn its behavior. Posters were hung equating Hamas with Ukraine and Nelson Mandela. Across from the sit-in, a rival group of pro-Israel students eventually set up the “Blue and White Tent” to provide, as one activist put it, a “safe space” to “be a proud Jew on campus.” Soon it became the center of its own cluster of tents, with photos of Hamas’s victims sitting opposite the rubble-ridden images of Gaza and a long (and incomplete) list of the names of slain Palestinians displayed by the students at the sit-in.

Some days the dueling encampments would host only a few people each, but on a sunny weekday afternoon, there could be dozens. Most of the time, the groups tolerated each other. But not always. Students on both sides were reportedly spit on and yelled at, and had their belongings destroyed. (The perpetrators in many cases seemed to be adults who weren’t affiliated with Stanford, a security guard told me.) The university put in place round-the-clock security, but when something actually happened, no one quite knew what to do.

Stanford has a policy barring overnight camping, but for months didn’t enforce it, “out of a desire to support the peaceful expression of free speech in the ways that students choose to exercise that expression”—and, the administration told alumni, because the university feared that confronting the students would only make the conflict worse. When the school finally said the tents had to go last month, enormous protests against the university administration, and against Israel, followed.

“We don’t want no two states! We want all of ’48!” students chanted, a slogan advocating that Israel be dismantled and replaced by a single Arab nation. Palestinian flags flew alongside bright “Welcome!” banners left over from new-student orientation. A young woman gave a speech that seemed to capture the sense of urgency and power that so many students here feel. “We are Stanford University!” she shouted. “We control things!”

“We’ve had protests in the past,” Richard Saller, the university’s interim president, told me in November—about the environment, and apartheid, and Vietnam. But they didn’t pit “students against each other” the way that this conflict has.

I’ve spoken with Saller, a scholar of Roman history, a few times over the past six months in my capacity as a student journalist. We first met in September, a few weeks into his tenure. His predecessor, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, had resigned as president after my reporting for The Stanford Daily exposed misconduct in his academic research. (Tessier-Lavigne had failed to retract papers with faked data over the course of 20 years. In his resignation statement, he denied allegations of fraud and misconduct; a Stanford investigation determined that he had not personally manipulated data or ordered any manipulation but that he had repeatedly “failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes” from his lab.)

In that first conversation, Saller told me that everyone was “eager to move on” from the Tessier-Lavigne scandal. He was cheerful and upbeat. He knew he wasn’t staying in the job long; he hadn’t even bothered to move into the recently vacated presidential manor. In any case, campus, at that time, was serene. Then, a week later, came October 7.

The attack was as clear a litmus test as one could imagine for the Middle East conflict. Hamas insurgents raided homes and a music festival with the goal of slaughtering as many civilians as possible. Some victims were raped and mutilated, several independent investigations found. Hundreds of hostages were taken into Gaza and many have been tortured.

This, of course, was bad. Saying this was bad does not negate or marginalize the abuses and suffering Palestinians have experienced in Gaza and elsewhere. Everyone, of every ideology, should be able to say that this was bad. But much of this campus failed that simple test.

Two days after the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Stanford released milquetoast statements marking the “moment of intense emotion” and declaring “deep concern” over “the crisis in Israel and Palestine.” The official statements did not use the words Hamas or violence.

The absence of a clear institutional response led some teachers to take matters into their own hands. During a mandatory freshman seminar on October 10, a lecturer named Ameer Loggins tossed out his lesson plan to tell students that the actions of the Palestinian “military force” had been justified, that Israelis were colonizers, and that the Holocaust had been overemphasized, according to interviews I conducted with students in the class. Loggins then asked the Jewish students to identify themselves. He instructed one of them to “stand up, face the window, and he kind of kicked away his chair,” a witness told me. Loggins described this as an effort to demonstrate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. (Loggins did not reply to a request for comment; a spokesperson for Stanford said that there were “different recollections of the details regarding what happened” in the class.)

“We’re only in our third week of college, and we’re afraid to be here,” three students in the class wrote in an email that night to administrators. “This isn’t what Stanford was supposed to be.” The class Loggins taught is called COLLEGE, short for “Civic, Liberal, and Global Education,” and it is billed as an effort to develop “the skills that empower and enable us to live together.”

Loggins was suspended from teaching duties and an investigation was opened; this angered pro-Palestine activists, who organized a petition that garnered more than 1,700 signatures contesting the suspension. A pamphlet from the petitioners argued that Loggins’s behavior had not been out of bounds.

The day after the class, Stanford put out a statement written by Saller and Jenny Martinez, the university provost, more forcefully condemning the Hamas attack. Immediately, this new statement generated backlash.

Pro-Palestine activists complained about it during an event held the same day, the first of several “teach-ins” about the conflict. Students gathered in one of Stanford’s dorms to “bear witness to the struggles of decolonization.” The grievances and pain shared by Palestinian students were real. They told of discrimination and violence, of frightened family members subjected to harsh conditions. But the most raucous reaction from the crowd was in response to a young woman who said, “You ask us, do we condemn Hamas? Fuck you!” She added that she was “so proud of my resistance.”

David Palumbo-Liu, a professor of comparative literature with a focus on postcolonial studies, also spoke at the teach-in, explaining to the crowd that “European settlers” had come to “replace” Palestine’s “native population.”

Palumbo-Liu is known as an intelligent and supportive professor, and is popular among students, who call him by his initials, DPL. I wanted to ask him about his involvement in the teach-in, so we met one day in a café a few hundred feet away from the tents. I asked if he could elaborate on what he’d said at the event about Palestine’s native population. He was happy to expand: This was “one of those discussions that could go on forever. Like, who is actually native? At what point does nativism lapse, right? Well, you haven’t been native for X number of years, so …” In the end, he said, “you have two people who both feel they have a claim to the land,” and “they have to live together. Both sides have to cede something.”

The struggle at Stanford, he told me, “is to find a way in which open discussions can be had that allow people to disagree.” It’s true that Stanford has utterly failed in its efforts to encourage productive dialogue. But I still found it hard to reconcile DPL’s words with his public statements on Israel, which he’d recently said on Facebook should be “the most hated nation in the world.” He also wrote: “When Zionists say they don’t feel ‘safe’ on campus, I’ve come to see that as they no longer feel immune to criticism of Israel.” He continued: “Well as the saying goes, get used to it.”

Zionists, and indeed Jewish students of all political beliefs, have been given good reason to fear for their safety. They’ve been followed, harassed, and called derogatory racial epithets. At least one was told he was a “dirty Jew.” At least twice, mezuzahs have been ripped from students’ doors, and swastikas have been drawn in dorms. Arab and Muslim students also face alarming threats. The computer-science section leader, El Boudali, a pro-Palestine activist, told me he felt “safe personally,” but knew others who did not: “Some people have reported feeling like they’re followed, especially women who wear the hijab.”

In a remarkably short period of time, aggression and abuse have become commonplace, an accepted part of campus activism. In January, Jewish students organized an event dedicated to ameliorating anti-Semitism. It marked one of Saller’s first public appearances in the new year. Its topic seemed uncontroversial, and I thought it would generate little backlash.

Protests began before the panel discussion even started, with activists lining the stairs leading to the auditorium. During the event they drowned out the panelists, one of whom was Israel’s special envoy for combating anti-Semitism, by demanding a cease-fire. After participants began cycling out into the dark, things got ugly.

Activists, their faces covered by keffiyehs or medical masks, confronted attendees. “Go back to Brooklyn!” a young woman shouted at Jewish students. One protester, who emerged as the leader of the group, said that she and her compatriots would “take all of your places and ensure Israel falls.” She told attendees to get “off our fucking campus” and launched into conspiracy theories about Jews being involved in “child trafficking.” As a rabbi tried to leave the event, protesters pursued him, chanting, “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!”

At one point, some members of the group turned on a few Stanford employees, including another rabbi, an imam, and a chaplain, telling them, “We know your names and we know where you work.” The ringleader added: “And we’ll soon find out where you live.” The religious leaders formed a protective barrier in front of the Jewish students. The rabbi and the imam appeared to be crying.

Saller avoided the protest by leaving through another door. Early that morning, his private residence had been vandalized. Protesters frequently tell him he “can’t hide” and shout him down. “We charge you with genocide!” they chant, demanding that Stanford divest from Israel. (When asked whether Stanford actually invested in Israel, a spokesperson replied that, beyond small exposures from passive funds that track indexes such as the S&P 500, the university’s endowment “has no direct holdings in Israeli companies, or direct holdings in defense contractors.”)

When the university finally said the protest tents had to be removed, students responded by accusing Saller of suppressing their right to free speech. This is probably the last charge he expected to face. Saller once served as provost at the University of Chicago, which is known for holding itself to a position of strict institutional neutrality so that its students can freely explore ideas for themselves. Saller has a lifelong belief in First Amendment rights. But that conviction in impartial college governance does not align with Stanford’s behavior in recent years. Despite the fact that many students seemed largely uninterested in the headlines before this year, Stanford’s administrative leadership has often taken positions on political issues and events, such as the Paris climate conference and the murder of George Floyd. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Stanford’s Hoover Tower was lit up in blue and yellow, and the school released a statement in solidarity.

When we first met, a week before October 7, I asked Saller about this. Did Stanford have a moral duty to denounce the war in Ukraine, for example, or the ethnic cleansing of Uyghur Muslims in China? “On international political issues, no,” he said. “That’s not a responsibility for the university as a whole, as an institution.”

But when Saller tried to apply his convictions on neutrality for the first time as president, dozens of faculty members condemned the response, many pro-Israel alumni were outraged, donors had private discussions about pulling funding, and an Israeli university sent an open letter to Saller and Martinez saying, “Stanford’s administration has failed us.” The initial statement had tried to make clear that the school’s policy was not Israel-specific: It noted that the university would not take a position on the turmoil in Nagorno-Karabakh (where Armenians are undergoing ethnic cleansing) either. But the message didn’t get through.

Saller had to beat an awkward retreat or risk the exact sort of public humiliation that he, as caretaker president, had presumably been hired to avoid. He came up with a compromise that landed somewhere in the middle: an unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’s “intolerable atrocities” paired with a statement making clear that Stanford would commit to institutional neutrality going forward.

“The events in Israel and Gaza this week have affected and engaged large numbers of students on our campus in ways that many other events have not,” the statement read. “This is why we feel compelled to both address the impact of these events on our campus and to explain why our general policy of not issuing statements about news events not directly connected to campus has limited the breadth of our comments thus far, and why you should not expect frequent commentary from us in the future.”

I asked Saller why he had changed tack on Israel and not on Nagorno-Karabakh. “We don’t feel as if we should be making statements on every war crime and atrocity,” he told me. This felt like a statement in and of itself.

In making such decisions, Saller works closely with Martinez, Stanford’s provost. I happened to interview her, too, a few days before October 7, not long after she’d been appointed. When I asked about her hopes for the job, she said that a “priority is ensuring an environment in which free speech and academic freedom are preserved.”

We talked about the so-called Leonard Law—a provision unique to California that requires private universities to be governed by the same First Amendment protections as public ones. This restricts what Stanford can do in terms of penalizing speech, putting it in a stricter bind than Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, or any of the other elite private institutions that have more latitude to set the standards for their campus (whether or not they have done so).

So I was surprised when, in December, the university announced that abstract calls for genocide “clearly violate Stanford’s Fundamental Standard, the code of conduct for all students at the university.” The statement was a response to the outrage following the congressional testimony of three university presidents—outrage that eventually led to the resignation of two of them, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill. Gay and Magill, who had both previously held positions at Stanford, did not commit to punishing calls for the genocide of Jews.

Experts told me that Stanford’s policy is impossible to enforce—and Saller himself acknowledged as much in our March interview.

“Liz Magill is a good friend,” Saller told me, adding, “Having watched what happened at Harvard and Penn, it seemed prudent” to publicly state that Stanford rejected calls for genocide. But saying that those calls violate the code of conduct “is not the same thing as to say that we could actually punish it.”

Stanford’s leaders seem to be trying their best while adapting to the situation in real time. But the muddled messaging has created a policy of neutrality that does not feel neutral at all.

When we met back in November, I tried to get Saller to open up about his experience running an institution in turmoil. What’s it like to know that so many students seem to believe that he—a mild-mannered 71-year-old classicist who swing-dances with his anthropologist wife—is a warmonger? Saller was more candid than I expected—perhaps more candid than any prominent university president has been yet. We sat in the same conference room as we had in September. The weather hadn’t really changed. Yet I felt like I was sitting in front of a different person. He was hunched over and looked exhausted, and his voice broke when he talked about the loss of life in Gaza and Israel and “the fact that we’re caught up in it.” A capable administrator with decades of experience, Saller seemed almost at a loss. “It’s been a kind of roller coaster, to be honest.”

He said he hadn’t anticipated the deluge of the emails “blaming me for lack of moral courage.” Anything the university says seems bound to be wrong: “If I say that our position is that we grieve over the loss of innocent lives, that in itself will draw some hostile reactions.”

“I find that really difficult to navigate,” he said with a sigh.

By March, it seemed that his views had solidified. He said he knew he was “a target,” but he was not going to be pushed into issuing any more statements. The continuing crisis seems to have granted him new insight. “I am certain that whatever I say will not have any material effect on the war in Gaza.” It’s hard to argue with that.

People tend to blame the campus wars on two villains: dithering administrators and radical student activists. But colleges have always had dithering administrators and radical student activists. To my mind, it’s the average students who have changed.

Elite universities attract a certain kind of student: the overachieving striver who has won all the right accolades for all the right activities. Is it such a surprise that the kids who are trained in the constant pursuit of perfect scores think they have to look at the world like a series of multiple-choice questions, with clearly right or wrong answers? Or that they think they can gamify a political cause in the same way they ace a standardized test?

Everyone knows that the only reliable way to get into a school like Stanford is to be really good at looking really good. Now that they’re here, students know that one easy way to keep looking good is to side with the majority of protesters, and condemn Israel.

It’s not that there isn’t real anger and anxiety over what is happening in Gaza—there is, and justifiably so. I know that among the protesters are many people who are deeply connected to this issue. But they are not the majority. What really activates the crowds now seems less a principled devotion to Palestine or to pacifism than a desire for collective action, to fit in by embracing the fashionable cause of the moment—as if a centuries-old conflict in which both sides have stolen and killed could ever be a simple matter of right and wrong. In their haste to exhibit moral righteousness, many of the least informed protesters end up being the loudest and most uncompromising.

Today’s students grew up in the Trump era, in which violent rhetoric has become a normal part of political discourse and activism is as easy as reposting an infographic. Many young people have come to feel that being angry is enough to foment change. Furious at the world’s injustices and desperate for a simple way to express that fury, they don’t seem interested in any form of engagement more nuanced than backing a pure protagonist and denouncing an evil enemy. They don’t, always, seem that concerned with the truth.

At the protest last month to prevent the removal of the sit-in, an activist in a pink Women’s March “pussy hat” shouted that no rape was committed by Hamas on October 7. “There hasn’t been proof of these rape accusations,” a student told me in a separate conversation, criticizing the Blue and White Tent for spreading what he considered to be misinformation about sexual violence. (In March, a United Nations report found “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence,” including “rape and gang rape,” occurred in multiple locations on October 7, as well as “clear and convincing information” on the “rape and sexualized torture” of hostages.) “The level of propaganda” surrounding Hamas, he told me, “is just unbelievable.”

The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong. You don’t have to understand what you’re arguing for in order to argue for it. You don’t have to be able to name the river or the sea under discussion to chant “From the river to the sea.” This kind of obliviousness explains how one of my friends, a gay activist, can justify Hamas’s actions, even though it would have the two of us—an outspoken queer person and a Jewish reporter—killed in a heartbeat. A similar mentality can exist on the other side: I have heard students insist on the absolute righteousness of Israel yet seem uninterested in learning anything about what life is like in Gaza.

I’m familiar with the pull of achievement culture—after all, I’m a product of the same system. I fell in love with Stanford as a 7-year-old, lying on the floor of an East Coast library and picturing all the cool technology those West Coast geniuses were dreaming up. I cried when I was accepted; I spent the next few months scrolling through the course catalog, giddy with anticipation. I wanted to learn everything.

I learned more than I expected. Within my first week here, someone asked me: “Why are all Jews so rich?” In 2016, when Stanford’s undergraduate senate had debated a resolution against anti-Semitism, one of its members argued that the idea of “Jews controlling the media, economy, government, and other societal institutions” represented “a very valid discussion.” (He apologized, and the resolution passed.) In my dorm last year, a student discussed being Jewish and awoke the next day to swastikas and a portrait of Hitler affixed to his door.

I grew up secularly, with no strong affiliation to Jewish culture. When I found out as a teenager that some of my ancestors had hidden their identity from their children and that dozens of my relatives had died in the Holocaust (something no living member of my family had known), I felt the barest tremor of identity. After I saw so many people I know cheering after October 7, I felt something stronger stir. I know others have experienced something similar. Even a professor texted me to say that she felt Jewish in a way she never had before.

But my frustration with the conflict on campus has little to do with my own identity. Across the many conversations and hours of formal interviews I conducted for this article, I’ve encountered a persistent anti-intellectual streak. I’ve watched many of my classmates treat death so cavalierly that they can protest as a pregame to a party. Indeed, two parties at Stanford were reported to the university this fall for allegedly making people say “Fuck Israel” or “Free Palestine” to get in the door. A spokesperson for the university said it was “unable to confirm the facts of what occurred,” but that it had “met with students involved in both parties to make clear that Stanford’s nondiscrimination policy applies to parties.” As a friend emailed me not long ago: “A place that was supposed to be a sanctuary from such unreason has become a factory for it.”

Readers may be tempted to discount the conduct displayed at Stanford. After all, the thinking goes, these are privileged kids doing what they always do: embracing faux-radicalism in college before taking jobs in fintech or consulting. These students, some might say, aren’t representative of America.

And yet they are representative of something: of the conduct many of the most accomplished students in my generation have accepted as tolerable, and what that means for the future of our country. I admire activism. We need people willing to protest what they see as wrong and take on entrenched systems of repression. But we also need to read, learn, discuss, accept the existence of nuance, embrace diversity of thought, and hold our own allies to high standards. More than ever, we need universities to teach young people how to do all of this.

For so long, Stanford’s physical standoff seemed intractable. Then, in early February, a storm swept in, and the natural world dictated its own conclusion.

Heavy rains flooded campus. For hours, the students battled to save their tents. The sit-in activists used sandbags and anything else they could find to hold back the water—at one point, David Palumbo-Liu, the professor, told me he stood in the lashing downpour to anchor one of the sit-in’s tents with his own body. When the storm hit, many of the Jewish activists had been attending a discussion on anti-Semitism. They raced back and struggled to salvage the Blue and White Tent, but it was too late—the wind had ripped it out of the ground.

The next day, the weary Jewish protesters returned to discover that their space had been taken.

A new collection of tents had been set up by El Boudali, the pro-Palestine activist, and a dozen friends. He said they were there to protest Islamophobia and to teach about Islam and jihad, and that they were a separate entity from the Sit-In to Stop Genocide, though I observed students cycling between the tents. Palestinian flags now flew from the bookstore to the quad.

Administrators told me they’d quickly informed El Boudali and his allies that the space had been reserved by the Jewish advocates, and offered to help move them to a different location. But the protesters told me they had no intention of going. (El Boudali later said that they did not take over the entire space, and would have been “happy to exist side by side, but they wanted to kick us off entirely from that lawn.”)

When it was clear that the area where they’d set up their tents would not be ceded back to the pro-Israel group willingly, Stanford changed course and decided to clear everyone out in one fell swoop. On February 8, school officials ordered all students to vacate the plaza overnight. The university was finally going to enforce its rule prohibiting people from sleeping outside on campus and requiring the removal of belongings from the plaza between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. The order cited the danger posed by the storm as a justification for changing course and, probably hoping to avoid allegations of bias, described the decision as “viewpoint-neutral.”

That didn’t work.

About a week of protests, led by the sit-in organizers, followed. Chants were chanted. More demands for a “river to the sea” solution to the Israel problem were made. A friend boasted to me about her willingness to be arrested. Stanford sent a handful of staff members, who stood near balloons left over from an event earlier in the day. They were there, one of them told me, to “make students feel supported and safe.”

In the end, Saller and Martinez agreed to talk with the leaders of the sit-in about their demands to divest the university and condemn Israel, under the proviso that the activists comply with Stanford’s anti-camping guidelines “regardless of the outcome of discussions.” Eight days after they were first instructed to leave, 120 days after setting up camp, the sit-in protesters slept in their own beds. In defiance of the university’s instructions, they left behind their tents. But sometime in the very early hours of the morning, law-enforcement officers confiscated the structures. The area was cordoned off without any violence and the plaza filled once more with electric skateboards and farmers’ markets.

The conflict continues in its own way. Saller was just shouted down by protesters chanting “No peace on stolen land” at a Family Weekend event, and protesters later displayed an effigy of him covered in blood. Students still feel tense; Saller still seems worried. He told me that the university is planning to change all manner of things—residential-assistant training, new-student orientation, even the acceptance letters that students receive—in hopes of fostering a culture of greater tolerance. But no campus edict or panel discussion can address a problem that is so much bigger than our university.

At one rally last fall, a speaker expressed disillusionment about the power of “peaceful resistance” on college campuses. “What is there left to do but to take up arms?” The crowd cheered as he said Israel must be destroyed. But what would happen to its citizens? I’d prefer to believe that most protesters chanting “Palestine is Arab” and shouting that we must “smash the Zionist settler state” don’t actually think Jews should be killed en masse. But can one truly be so ignorant as to advocate widespread violence in the name of peace?

When the world is rendered in black-and-white—portrayed as a simple fight between colonizer and colonized—the answer is yes. Solutions, by this logic, are absolute: Israel or Palestine, nothing in between. Either you support liberation of the oppressed or you support genocide. Either Stanford is all good or all bad; all in favor of free speech or all authoritarian; all anti-Semitic or all Islamophobic.

At January’s anti-anti-Semitism event, I watched an exchange between a Jewish attendee and a protester from a few feet away. “Are you pro-Palestine?” the protester asked.

“Yes,” the attendee responded, and he went on to describe his disgust with the human-rights abuses Palestinians have faced for years.

“But are you a Zionist?”

“Yes.”

“Then we are enemies.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Payton Armstrong at MMFA:

Sheriffs associated with the anti-democratic “constitutional sheriff” movement — which falsely asserts that sheriffs represent the highest law of the land — have used their positions to investigate baseless election conspiracy theories across the country, including in key swing states. Many of these so-called constitutional sheriffs have also used right-wing media appearances to spread the movement’s talking points, claiming that the country’s 3,000 sheriffs “have awesome power” to enforce their views. They've also spread misinformation about voter fraud, fearmongered about migrants coming across the border, and vowed not to enforce federal or state gun control laws or COVID-19 mandates. Media Matters found that a dozen sheriffs connected to the constitutional sheriff movement’s leading groups have been featured in right-wing media in recent years, including 6 sheriffs who have appeared on Fox News at least 103 times combined since January 1, 2020. Many of the sheriffs have also repeatedly appeared on One America News and other far-right outlets.

So-called “constitutional sheriffs” are part of a growing movement falsely claiming they have ultimate authority to decide whether a law is constitutional

The constitutional sheriff movement falsely asserts that sheriffs represent the highest law of the land, answering only to the U.S. Constitution and superseding any state or federal authority, including the president. The Southern Poverty Law Centers says that sheriffs who adhere to this ideology “are under the false impression that their role as sheriffs allows them to circumvent the structure of checks and balances put in place by the Constitution.” SPLC also argues that the movement is “actively damaging the nation’s rule of law and attempting to shape the U.S. into a country where fringe law enforcement officers determine what human, civil and property rights they will enforce.” According to States United Democracy Center, “many aspects of sheriffs’ roles are controlled by state constitutions and/or statutory law, including their duties, compensation, terms of elections, and procedures for removal.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 6/25/24, 6/6/22; States United Democracy Center, 10/4/22]

Two leading groups promoting the constitutional sheriff movement’s ideology are the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) and Protect American Now (PAN). CSPOA and PAN — which were formed by former Graham County, Arizona, Sheriff Richard Mack and current Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Lamb, respectively — teach sheriffs that they have the authority to exert more control over the voting process and the border, and they encourage sheriffs to refuse to enforce gun control laws or COVID-19 mandates they deem unconstitutional. [Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 6/25/24; The Washington Post, 11/2/21]

CSPOA and PAN have increasingly turned their focus toward promoting election denial, such as urging sheriffs to investigate supposed voter fraud. During the 2022 midterms, CSPOA encouraged sheriffs to closely monitor for voter fraud, and ahead of the 2024 election, the group is reportedly urging sheriffs to insert themselves into more aspects of the voting process. CSPOA and PAN have worked with other extremist groups to monitor drop boxes, including the QAnon-linked election denial organization True the Vote. [Talking Points Memo, 4/18/24, 8/8/24; The New York Times, 7/25/22; The Guardian, 8/17/22]

There is reportedly growing acceptance of the constitutional sheriff movement’s ideology among sheriffs across the country. Since 2018, at least 69 sheriffs out of 3,000 nationwide have either been identified as members of CSPOA or publicly supported it, according to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. But CSPOA’s ideology may be more pervasive: A Marshall Project survey of over 500 of the country’s sheriffs found that more than 48% of respondents agreed that their authority within their own counties supersedes that of the state or federal government. Additionally, CSPOA has “continued to recruit sheriffs into their group and its related ideology through events targeting law enforcement, an online television show and membership in their association.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 6/25/24; The Associated Press, 8/21/23; Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, 10/20/22; The Marshall Project, 10/18/22] 

Media Matters For America takes a look at how “constitutional sheriffs” use right-wing media outlet appearances to promote and grow the extreme movement that puts the county sheriff as the highest authority in their county, ahead of state and federal law.

[theeccentricraven]

Alphabet Write Tag

Thank you @kaylinalexanderbooks for the tag!

Rules: give a sentence for each letter of the alphabet! (Can compose or get from your WIP)

I took quotes from The Blood Cleaners, but composed the last one since I couldn't find any Z's (and it was about time I named the nameless young mother Justin has to encounter during a major section of the story).

A- As Justin covered his eyes and wriggled in his bed, for a moment, he thought this was mild in comparison to the previous shot.

B - “Bravo,” Lord Rico said indifferently. “You’ve earned bonuses for this week. I suppose you’ve proven me wrong. Not the little rebels, but the best we have.”

C - “Congratulations,” said Lady Juana. “Just don’t get too comfortable in that uniform too soon.”

D - Do you hear me?

E - “Excuse you,” Lucio grumbled. “No one excuses an enforcer.”

F- Favor….

G - “Guys!” he shouted. “We’re in an oven!”

H - "Hermana! Hermana!” The little girl ran up and sprung into Joselyn’s arms.

I - I wanted to let you know that you are one of the most amazing girls in this cruel world.

J - Joselyn took only half a step before the hissing sound of a vaculator echoed across the hall.

K - “Kind of?”

L - "Lady Charla is the one who blabbed. She’s worse than Lord Rico.”

M - May 31st. Justin had a week. He spent every night staying up past 3am rehearsing answers for every possible question he could think of.

N - "No matter how much they butter you up, don’t forget about how their rules can’t be condoned.”

O - Oscar and Wayne were slower with transforming while holding objects and slower with transforming to their normal selves.

P - Patricia blushed to show her tattoo of a desert flower.

Q - “Que pasa?”

R - Rafael stuck out his tongue.

S - “She practiced so hard,” Ellen said.

T - “Tenderheart!”

U - Under a log, she’d hid her cards.

V - Velma kept talking.

W - “We call him Pancho,” said Joselyn.

X - Xavier!

Y - "Yeah, I became a cleaner when I was five."

Z - Zoe was the Fist mother who cared for her toddler at home. When she wasn't on maternity leave, she worked as an operations manager at one of the propaganda studios.

Tagging (no pressure): @constellationandcompendium @poethill @ghost-type-writer @ddgraywrites @hersurvival

[amazingmsme]

If you are still willing to do the alphabet thing, Spock for A, C, D, F, G, H, I, L, Q, V, and W please? I'm sorry, I know that's a lot...

You bet I am! This gave me something to do when I had no service & had to wait for sunscreen to soak in after reapplying, so don’t apologize! Honestly you could send the entire alphabet for a character & I’d still answer every one nxbakshd

A: Aftercare | What is their aftercare like after a heavy round of tickling?:)

Spock is big on verbal affirmations in this situation. Tells them that they’re okay & that he’s done & how “fond” he is of their laughter all while sporting a green blush

C: Chase | What are their chances in a chase, both as a lee and ler?

Has mastered the slasher villain slow walk. He won’t run- he doesn’t need to. Even when his lee runs at full speed & is positive they’ve escaped, he’s right there in front of them somehow. But as the lee he’s so easy to corner cause he won’t stoop down to their level to give chase

D: Death Spot | What is their most ticklish spot?

EARS EARS EARS EARS! One of the only ways to make Spock shriek & completely lose composure. I’m sorry but it’s the LAW that anyone with pointy ears is devastatingly ticklish there. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them

F: Fight | What is their behavior in a tickle fight like?

Still pretty cool & collected. He prefers to stay out of them, but tends to get dragged in fairly quickly cause everyone wants to see him cut loose & laugh for once

G: Gentle | How do they react to gentle tickles?

Grins like a fool & has these really adorable soft snickers & giggles. Squirms a lot but thinks it feels nice

H: Habits | As a lee/ler or both, do they have specific habits when it comes to tickling?

He loves nothing more than pointing out all the ways the lee was asking for it. He never fails to rat someone out if he can tell that’s what they want. & when they obviously get flustered about it & tell him to shut up he’s like “what? That’s what you want, so it’s only logical to let others know. Otherwise you’ll just be suffering in silence.“ it never fails to fluster & piss them off lol

I: Interrogation | How well would they handle a tickle interrogation?

He could hold out for a bit, he’s stubborn as a mule. But he’d cave eventually

L: Laughter | What does their laughter sound like when they are tickled?

He has a very smooth, calm sounding laugh, it’s such a nice sound. A bit on the higher pitched side but still has a nice tenor to it

Q: Question | Their response to the question ‘are you ticklish’?

“It would be most illogical to lie, seeing as you’d just prove me wrong. So yes. Was that the answer you were looking for?” (Sassy Spock supremacy)

V: Victim | As a ler, who is their favorite lee and what makes this person their ultimate victim?

Kirk, hands down. He knows he loves it & he likes making him happy. He’d never admit it but he thinks it’s fun too. He also likes to wreck Bones from time to time because the doctor is so grouchy & he likes to push his buttons.

W: Word | What is their reaction to the T-word? Can they say it out loud or do they get embarrassed?

He can say it, though he doesn’t necessarily like to lol. But if you squint you can see a hint of a blush on his cheeks. He gets just a tiny bit embarrassed. He’ll deny it as much as he can tho lol

[wouriqueen]

At this point I feel like I’m going to have to read the series because seeing what Armand can do to a roomful of vampires simply by slamming his hands down?? He’s that powerful?? And he couldn’t prevent what we all know is going to happen?? Like I need to know how that’s possible and l cannot wait a month to find out!

Omg I forgot to answer this ask. Yes Armand is so powerful, and I like how differently we get to see him use his powers compared to Lestat, due to their respective circumstances (family aka small circle and the pretense of nonviolence vs coven aka big numbers and historically violent enforcement of rules and authority), but also their personalities, and actual powers.

As for how it's possible he couldn't prevent it, I don't buy it obviously LOL, we'll see how they the events unfold in the series, it might differ from the book to an extent.

Honestly Armand made me want to read the books right from the end of the 1st season, I haven't done it in the end but yeah I think he's a great and intriguing character and S02E05 definitely has me even more interested!

[voidbears-oc-stash]

*Meanwhile! Overdrive walks over to Synth!* Synth: s-stay back! or- Overdrive: OR YOU'LL WHAT!? TRY'N KILL ME!? *he swings his arm SLAMMING it into her'n sending her flying into the brick wall like she was of thin feathers!* YOU R E A L L Y DON'T THINK! DO YOU YA DUMB MUTT!? you know HOW powerful I am! how I could STRIP YOU BOLT BY BOLT! AND MAKE SURE YOU FEEL ALL OF IT! *he said threatening a punch which causes her to flinch! before he just chuckles!* look at you... you were BUILT to be NOTHING but muscle and intimidation... an enforcer for my rule! but GOD have ya FAILED at that! *laughs* WHY does Null even KEEP you round? ya CLEARLY ain't a good guard dog! yet you can't seem to even BREAK the mold I made for ya! you are PATHETIC! most of yer so called "friends" back there didn't even care bout ya enough to go looking for ye! only came sensing my presence! must like me a HELLUVA LOT MORE THEN YOU! *Synth breaks down into full blown sobbing! tears streaming like waterfalls!* Synth: I JUST WANTED TO BE GOOD AT SOMETHING! I JUST WANTED PEOPLE TO CARE! I DIDN'T ASK TO BE LIKE THIS! I NEVER WANTED TO! SHUT UP! JUST SHUT THE FREAKING HELL UP! YOU OVERGROWN FREAKING FREAK! DOWN RIGHT DIRTY ABOMINATION! YOU'RE NOT NULL! YOU MAY HAVE THOUGHT MY PLANS UP! BUT HIS HANDS PUT ME TOGETHER! HIS IMAGINATION MADE ME MORE THEN A IDEA! SO SHUT UP! AND EVEN IF I'M ANGRY AT THOSE JERKS I CALL PALS FOR NOT GIVING A FRICK! THEY GIVE MORE OF ONE THEN YOU! *she snarled before RIGHT hooking Overdrive! sending him THROUGH a brick wall crumbling it!* (this ask takes place AFTER the other one yer answering!)

Swifty and Vinnie arrive "Hey, we WERE following her!" Swifty snarls

"Then that Lucem decided to try to hide us for our safety. I dunno who this nightmare is, though." Vinnie says to Synth, calling Overdrive a nightmare. "Also, I understand why the others didn't follow immediately, they were just as stressed out as you were, and they were letting you try to get some space to calm down, though they didn't realize that you weren't intending on coming back. I may be the dumb one of the group but I still know when to act on things! You were carrying Silver and then you ran, you hurt her, of coarse others would focus on healing their friend, but you know when there's 6 people taking care of one person, that's plenty, you didn't mean to hurt Silver, you didn't mean to scare Avtug..."

[madmonkeydisorder]

See girl how well settled plan G

I land in Lala land as contraband

Promisses progrow in progress

So good to be Pole polarisations on bipolar this land explores in moral codex I enforce the light warrior super awareness transformations energy levels charging stations internal system collecting magic potions to transgress existential crisis instrumental version explorations in simulation framework locked in programming symbols transcript setting New World Order

I see only way to save me

See me save me

do Xe me eX execute me so cute

Do something face to face

In dissapperance trance Dance

dragon entrance dances around Polish bouncer in da clubs raving spinning wheel turning timemachine

Contact alien invasion in California desert

Miss I already miss

Miss you miss I miss your kiss

I raise from dead read me out

Many roots in my code DNA undetected data missing non existent personality disorder in remission run questy completing mission on simulatorium molecules fusions inspire archetypal layers under supervision artistic expressionism electro punk teknotronik synth retro beats in superego death on stage in old town Amfy Teatr reveal secret third name in katolik church among all saints my Saint is Edyta Stein

I gru up in da Mazovia village in wooden old house who used to belong to nuns serving in church in da village

I the only gay in the village

Future don’t exist

I feel past structureal inspiration Polish accent meddlows fields of Rhye seventh heaven blessed bloom sunflowers crops under holy Sun my head is Solaris

Cosmic microphone voice fast forward to save progress in da city game

Made religion legion

Ground middle but loud

X = X

Under commandment new law I told in the older order I reorder the order grammars break gold rules l break all rules I break the standards we execute this world as constant high resolution

Waga + waga Uwaga! Attention! Red flag of my tribe I found on island in pirate pretty lpstoned town centrala! Ring the bell! It’s ringing can you hear Polish church sending holy chillout on the crossroads energetic nervous system on streets arteries pumping transferring the flow through the centre of the universe

Mentalliens invasion vision

I live alive to live new life

AXe you hidden in sleeve Ace

read my Holy Book I write unlocking the lock

Master key open key hole on my block

Transcription Holy text I read out loud send to me on vintage computer from god signalling in morse Codex holy text I write in Rex fonts frontal lobe

Read me can you copy?

Code exe.cute me I am serious in moonlight

Unite The Round Table

The Knights who say NI

Kissing you sing you sleep

Cuddles cosy magnetic field healing miracle

Sen mi się senni

Śni mi się Sen o Sane

I dream the dream machine turning wheel hilly hilly stoned old town map I upload rediscovery channel under commander channelling aliens linguistic Rythm stick simplify another lifetime

Senniczek 1 am waiting sleepless nights

Waitin sleeping satelites I am alert in waiting

Yeah

Yeah is the answer NeoBeat Generation

Reimplanted on promised land in rotation

America In America Now

cyrylica moja Caryca in da car

Open door the doors lost keys

Yeah, yeah I’m making Polish version in reversion SofJa.made is her name

See me Sennie You all right?

rewieV me interview me time travels reveal the scene i play role play game sailor steering the drunken boat drifting on stormy ocean disconnected from usb ports my drunken boat seek safe anchor this port holds

yeah, the concert of God I was on the concert of God

I have to go home but empty there

I want to call in the middle of the night I’m again too late I am rushing home to empty halls I call home I am home alone waiting you will come home OHMmmm OMG!

Square in circle French town I own frog tribe on floor square meter speaking eter enter eternal

Iwalk out to see not far or is it so far away on the way I walk everyday

Is she there? Hey you I’m with you in god mode ode about how to be out around round about disqualified master disaster steer outsider company come unity community immunity fire resistance tamed elements commander

You so real I see and feel!

Touch On couch I touch to attach your package in backpack I unpack database stored in da head

Extra memory arrested drama play on Amfy Theatre play on stage we need to replay urban legends

Words Ammo shoots the wordstream

Fill me up give me light! Light me lighter I need goddess flint spark to ignite firefly warming up soul I feel lighter!

Repair Bluetooth connections

To your device ice berg magic mountain

Moment in mass-king colours download signal Si! See me when you sleep

What you’re doin? Hi I’m High Priestees blessed Les squatting church to chill out

Now on the lap of the God. God mode! U upgrade me oldschool expired model. Das model!

Lay all your love on me

press love on my pain

Plaster empty messiah

girl when you sleep on me

I love you sleep on me in kinga size bed

I am in red corner ex pi red! Red land quicksand swallow sour milk sea

U in blue ja lubię Lublue ja Ciebie Lublue your blue corner reformaty automaty fantazmaty I speak speaker on air pirate radio gold frequency three six nine six three Tesla golden frequency

I am holy sinner sacrum profanum doom

Look! Take a look at holy book I booked religion legions defend to the end I defend the great defender kicked out field of gold pro groovery

Wait! I rush Russian rush to be on time

I am on time filling the feeling fuel pump electric spark the amp! Amplitude up! I touch fire resistant fire pit glowing halo energy Kinglish crowned secret king on exile drop whizz bombarding fast way bombing the world with altering mind rizla wrapped bombs rescue the peace in Cold War exit the turbulences superpowers hold finger on the red button on nuke testing the universe excellence progressing the simulacra extensions imprint in matrix Sanskrit secret scrolls translations

Reducing actions to recharge the charger

Energymnastic akrobations to reserve enough

To jump another level up

Charging the charger!

mania bipolarysation high resolution solution charge my lifetime battery rewired free electric top up!Charge the charger!

New Bible in Kinglish copy!

Are you ready to read my mind?

So addictive your chemical calories!

Nutritions in da eyes feed me fast!

Punk is home!

OHM come my home

I’m on my way on your way

Psychedelicatesse intense expression press sure Surrealma matter holy patient is patient

Steer me see me Seenie and SteefAnieC

Plan A to C to K.S. My name KS is X

BezSenności ściemnia się

Can’t get a sleeping pill I need your lovin

I’m tribal Poles position the king in sleepless terms Les

Dream realms Heals sleepliness in the well of loneliness

Wounded lioness come my house

Fix me default in simulation city game I used to abuse press play on tape register download I am the who poet talking therapy bout my generation!

drum on drums play the game of love play to find the way out. Exit!

Records say AI I write my soul damages in night howl night owl watching nights scrolling down your body language signature I sign the signal alarm resistors

Sin City is breaking golden balance intense ekspressions old language trans portal immortal PolSky spy Kinglish plan C you see my plan C I see Beatific rites

I need to speed walk now to catch the bus double Dekker chasing androgyn perfectness balancing famm and alpha dyke extremities on scaless unjustices sent my way I can’t miss the bus stop playing long song I compose compositter Chopin translations in evolution absolute power my execution so cute cut me up axe techniques to see the miracle golden child send away homeland to update script holy typewriter I type the hyperactivity Beat in bits syn chroni City synchronicity serve and protect Holy text I impress on conciousness press

See me type who type ape my pen links dreaming dreams

I’m gold ape kinga the king of the bongo bong tribe I bring you my United Kingadom my homeostaza ekstaza see real see me Come! Co? What? Water! and Air! I breathe Air on air!

[silentmeteorite93]

The Leaping Gazelles 7/34

Daddy

Back when a woman was a girl, she used to refer to men by this title. At first it was only in the most impassioned moments, then without realizing it became almost a second name for the boy. From a whisper at first, then later even in life it covered most of her sentence beginnings, and in the end, the girl learned to express a variety of different meanings using only those two words but with a variety of different meanings. The change in tone and pitch was enough to show all the emotions she needed to express, and this behavior continued to the point where even her friends started to snipe at the man in that tone.

The man couldn't understand where exactly he had come across as forceful or accommodating, or if that occasional coldness was like the love-hate father she spoke of. At one time he had thought it was just an affectionate term of endearment with no deeper meaning. He'd inquired about the possibilities of the shape and had been answered in the negative. Nor did he think it possible that he could possibly fit the image of the wise and irascible man, and perhaps a man nowadays could figure it all out, but initially he had accepted the name openly simply because it was pleasant to the ear and the occasions on which it had initially appeared had been sufficiently fragrant.

Back then she would tell the man stories of her childhood on various occasions, oblivious to what would happen next or what had just happened. At one point, the man even suspected that she had picked the most inappropriate time and occasion to tell the story of her childish innocence and strict father to deliberately conflict with the story in her mouth. It was also several years later when the man began to consciously research the subject that he realized what a textbook individual the girl was at the time.

Her recollections were not only of her father's dealings as she recounted them, but were generally laced with service that contrasted sharply with her quieter appearance, and even when she was inarticulate or disoriented, she continued to intermittently recall memories of a childhood that was perhaps sweet and occasionally violent. There were times when the man felt that the two of them men might well become friends by some chance in time and space, provided that her father must not know what had happened to his daughter with this second father.

Her father's behavior and personality through the ages had always been something the boy had abhorred and exclaimed over, the sheer grumpiness directed at no one in particular. Those atrocities and pampering inflicted traveled back through time for the boy to inherit the mantle, and enough to scar the girl who was often on the receiving end of the ripples. Their father-daughter pattern of getting along seemed so normal yet revealingly strange and bizarre. The girl's later career, though adapted to stay on that ice field, was a part of the tradition. She also remembered the first time the unsure woman put on a white uniform, and before the boy could say anything to praise her, she felt the emotion gushing out of her body. Later, even the deviant pair would occasionally recall the madness and novelty of that afternoon, the pilgrimage of eruption still shocking even ten years later.

The severity of the girl's father was not only reflected in the rules that were set and enforced, but the beatings and bruises that covered the woman's childhood were also becoming clear in the man's mind. According to the man's experience in the years to come, the woman could be considered the perverse of the perverse. The woman who would bawl at the slightest touch but never beg for mercy or change was like an object in the man's mouth that needed to be tightened at regular intervals. Even the first attempt was equally hysterical. The boy's youth and kindness then, or the calloused mind now. The girl's prayers and enjoyment didn't allow the boy to feel an ounce of enjoyment, and thankfully after a long period of rendering and analyzing the boy came to a conclusion that was long overdue. It was only then that the two men went from strength to strength, taking this extreme sport to a whole new level. And the only time the woman didn't get into the swing of things was just the right time to leave enough of an imprint on the man's soul. The figure of the man walking into the snow was imagined by the man and still exists to this day.

[strywoven]

@crosspunisher has requested a story : .. He can't fight it anymore. He's leaning against Sloan's shoulder and never plans on standing upright again.

𝑼𝒏𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒅.

Like any maltreated animal ( branded , broken , beaten ; the rabid mongrel near-crushed under heel of supposed purpose still yet unfulfilled— ) , Sloan learned only one rule : stay away from others .  Upheld for y e a r s in following their escape from the Eye , the only company found tolerable ( found safe ) was THEIR OWN .  To invite anyone into their life posed UNNECESSARY RISK ; closeness was a compromise they were unwilling to abide and incapable of offering without it being fraught with the bile of apathy and threat.  And despite all that time ( rightly & purposefully ) alone , enforcing a self-imposed divide between themself and everyone else … They realize their one rule HAS BEEN BROKEN for a single man ( & one that was tasked to kill them , no less ) .

Have they grown so very d e s p e r a t e to believe companionship the only alternative to their lack of humanity , to find it the only salve to their cynical existentialism ?

Perhaps.  People … Do change , after all.  And if Sloan were a god-fearing sort , they might have considered the prospect that a higher power set Wolfwood in their path for a r e a s o n .  As if the universe felt inclined to have a laugh on the two’s behalf.  But why ?  Even Sloan is not sure ( though , maybe it is the unknowing that serves to make it interesting ; maybe it is the mystery that makes this far more special than it ought to be ) .

The weight of Wolfwood’s head falling to rest against their shoulder causes them to t e n s e , to feel momentarily disconcerted.  Sloan knows they s h o u l d respond negatively , they s h o u l d retaliate against the gesture … Yet , they don’t , they accept it ( they welcome it ) .  And come again is the p a r a s i t e burrowing in their skull , bred deep in thought and conscious to sow DOUBT & DISILLUSION .  The voice that still haunts the Anomalous has changed since the exodus , for they think – at times – it sounds less a man and more a w o m a n ( more an echo of own tone ) .  Thus She speaks : WHAT IS HE TO YOU , O’LAMB ?

Lo’ how are they to reply , when they know not the answer ?

Calling him NOTHING is the first thing that comes to mind , but that is not true , nor has it been true for several weeks ( this , a realization that terrifies them ) .

Quiet grunt of acknowledgement sounds , head tipping to pin the other with a halfhearted glare through the fringe of fallen bangs.  ❝ Dumbass , ❞ Immediate is the admonishing he is given , tone SHARP & DEMEANING , ❝ Don’t you ever listen when I talk ? ❞  Probably not.  ❝ I keep telling you not to touch me , ❞ And yet , they’re not moving away from him , not even attempting to shove him away , either.  ❝ … If you were really so eager for my attention , you could’ve just a s k e d … ❞  Thus , Sloan leans back against him , pressing back into his warmth , seeping up the hum of energy he gives off and letting it pulse through their veins , prickling their skin.  Such a STRANGE PLEASURE it gives them , like breathing in the fumes of his smoke as he speaks , or being rattled about when he shakes them by the collar for being too much of a mouthy pest ; feels a lot like soaking up a p i e c e of him , absorbing it and making it theirs to k e e p .

No , perhaps he is not NOTHING to them ; though calling him EVERYTHING seems much like an exaggeration , too.  Sloan is not sure w h a t this is – this forbidden little affair of theirs – but it does feel … ( almost ) GOOD .

[jdnoriel]

Article 1225

For the purpose of the preceding articles, obligation to give definite things and those which are not susceptible of partial performance shall be deemed to be indivisible.

When the obligation has for its object the execution of a certain number of days of work, the accomplishment of work by metrical units, or analogous things which by their nature are susceptible of partial performance, it shall be divisible.

However, even though the object or service may be physically divisible, an obligation is indivisible if so provided by law or intended by the parties.

In obligations not to do, divisibility or indivisibility shall be determined by the character of the prestation in each particular case. (1151a)

Effect of illegality of a part of a contract

Divisible Contract –  if the contract is divisible and a part of it is illegal, the illegal part of the contract is considered void and not enforceable.

Indivisible Contract – if the contract is indivisible and a part of it is illegal, the entire contract is considered void and not enforceable.

Effect of partial performance of an indivisible contract

When an obligation is indivisible, it is not susceptible to partial performance, therefore, a debtors who only does a part of the obligation cannot revocer payment for the partial work that he has done because for an indivisible contract, partial performance is equivalent to non-performance.

Angel Jose Warehousing Co., Inc. vs. Chelda Enterprises (23 SCRA 119)

March 25, 2016

G.R. No. L-25704             April 24, 1968

ANGEL JOSE WAREHOUSING CO., INC., plaintiff-appellee, vs. CHELDA ENTERPRISES and DAVID SYJUECO, defendants-appellants.

Luis A. Guerrero for plaintiff-appellee.Burgos and Sarte for defendants-appellants.

BENGZON, J.P., J.:

FACTS

Plaintiff corporation filed suit in the Court of First Instance of Manila on May 29, 1964 against the partnership Chelda Enterprises and David Syjueco, its capitalist partner, for recovery of alleged unpaid loans in the total amount of P20,880.00, with legal interest from the filing of the complaint, plus attorney’s fees of P5,000.00. Alleging that post dated checks issued by defendants to pay said account were dishonored, that defendants’ industrial partner, Chellaram I. Mohinani, had left the country, and that defendants have removed or disposed of their property, or are about to do so, with intent to defraud their creditors, preliminary attachment was also sought.

Answering, defendants averred that they obtained four loans from plaintiff in the total amount of P26,500.00, of which P5,620.00 had been paid, leaving a balance of P20,880.00; that plaintiff charged and deducted from the loan usurious interests thereon, at rates of 2% and 2.5% per month, and, consequently, plaintiff has no cause of action against defendants and should not be permitted to recover under the law. A counterclaim for P2,000.00 attorney’s fees was interposed.

Great reliance is made by appellants on Art. 1411 of the New Civil Code which states:

Art. 1411. When the nullity proceeds from the illegality of the cause or object of the contract, and the act constitutes criminal offense, both parties being in pari delicto, they shall have no action against each other, and both shall be prosecuted. Moreover, the provisions of the Penal Code relative to the disposal of effects or instruments of a crime shall be applicable to the things or the price of the contract.

This rule shall be applicable when only one of the parties is guilty; but the innocent one may claim what he has given, and shall not be bound to comply with his promise.

Since, according to the appellants, a usurious loan is void due to illegality of cause or object, the rule of pari delicto expressed in Article 1411, supra, applies, so that neither party can bring action against each other. Said rule, however, appellants add, is modified as to the borrower, by express provision of the law (Art. 1413, New Civil Code), allowing the borrower to recover interest paid in excess of the interest allowed by the Usury Law. As to the lender, no exception is made to the rule; hence, he cannot recover on the contract. So — they continue — the New Civil Code provisions must be upheld as against the Usury Law, under which a loan with usurious interest is not totally void, because of Article 1961 of the New Civil Code, that: “Usurious contracts shall be governed by the Usury Law and other special laws, so far as they are not inconsistent with his promise.

ISSUE

Whether or not the illegal terms as to payment of interest likewise renders a nullity the legal terms as to payments of the principal debt.

HELD

Article 1420 of the New Civil Code provides in this regard: “In case of a divisible contract, if the illegal terms can be separated from the legal ones, the latter may be enforced.”

In simple loan with stipulation of usurious interest, the prestation of the debtor to pay the principal debt, which is the cause of the contract (Article 1350, Civil Code), is not illegal. 

The illegality lies only as to the prestation to pay the stipulated interest; hence, being separable, the latter only should be deemed void, since it is the only one that is illegal.

[gladionsgrownup]

"AHH STOP! I could’ve dropped my croissant!"

xx

Looks her dead in the eye before spraying her with the hose again.

[awindylife-writes]

This Time Around (Chapter 8)

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, (here), Chapter 9, Chapter 10 (ongoing)

Relationship: third Doctor x reader

Summary: the Doctor's being difficuuult while he waits for you to wake up.

Warnings: none

Author's notes: l am so PROUD of myself l managed to write this on time. Until now, l've written in advance and posted old chapters after editing but we're getting to parts l haven't written yet and this one's been bugging me for forever. Dialogue😥

The concepts of bond-mates and visible personal timelines belong to @inthisformiambadwolf.

~

"Good morning."

The Doctor looked up from the entrails of your vortex manipulator to stare at Dr. Richards in surprise.

He'd started wrangling the shatter threads back into shape sometime after your nightmare, then moved on to the contorted macrobind. Throughout the remainder of the night, he'd been grappling with himself over whether or not he should comb through the manipulator's databank to determine your takeoff coordinates. The snarling protectivness in him had demanded he find out what wretched place had hurt you so viciously, but in the end, he didn't want to commit such an invasion of your privacy. He would die before he risked your trust.

He was just about to finish aligning the fibre links when Dr. Richards walked in and abruptly pulled him from his thoughts, so his own, "Good morning," was a little dazed.

The man walking closer to your bed looked the Doctor over with inquisitive eyes like he didn't really know what to make of the Time Lord. He stopped at the foot of your bed and began quietly, "You know, when nurse Carter told me you snuck in to see our patient yesterday, l have to admit l was rather surprised."

The Doctor settled for an, "Oh?"

"Yes," the man raised his eyebrows, "And imagine my amazement when l learned that you also managed to calm her after a particularly nasty nightmare, then spent the night at her side."

The Doctor smiled innocently, "And why would that be amazing?"

Dr. Richards levelled him a look. "Don't play games with me, man. Yesterday you didn't even know if she is human, and now you're acting like you're her family?"

I am her family, a part of the Doctor snarled. But he had no right to say that, not yet. Not until you agreed with it.

Instead, he gathered his patience. "I know it's difficult to believe, but l assure you she knows me very well and we'll explain everything when she wakes up."

The man frowned in disbelief as he shifted his weight from leg to leg. "How? What exactly is your relationship with the patient?"

The Doctor sighed and tapped the manipulator with his thumb. "You wouldn't believe me if l told you," he answered matter-of-factly. "As you and nurse Carter well know I don't exist in your Central Records and neither does she, so l can't prove anything, but you can't disprove it either. All l ask is to be allowed to stay beside her."

Dr. Richards pressed his lips together as he measured the Doctor with his eyes. "You seem to forget this is an infimary. There are rules and I have a duty to enforce them."

Then he looked over your sleeping form and took a deep breath. "But luckily for you, the night nurse can confirm at least the basic trust the girl has in you. And seeing her injuries and the state she was in when she woke up, she needs all the friends she can get." His sharp gaze focused back on the Doctor, "Because of that and that alone l'll allow you to stay in her room."

"Thank you." The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief. A smile tugged at his lips, it was good to know he wouldn't have to cause a skirmish by refusing to leave you.

Then he remembered something. "When we last spoke, you mentioned her blood test results would come back..."

"Oh yes, yes, they have," Dr. Richards nodded. "She has an iron deficiency, but that was to be expected with her malnourishment." Then his gaze shifted to you as he frowned, "The strange thing is, they found her trombocites are nothing like any human trombocites they've ever seen, and they couldn't determine if she is Rh positive or negative."

He turned back to the Doctor, eyebrows raised, "Do you have any idea why?"

"No. No, not really," the Doctor smiled, then murmured, "Interesting," to himself as he fiddled with the manipulator's straps.

Dr. Richards' eyes followed his hands. "Somehow l don't think she'd appreciate you tampering with that," he nodded at the device.

A defiant smile appeared on the Doctor's lips. "Well, l thought l better fix it, seeing as l'm the only person on this little planet of yours who can." And Dr. Richards had better not ask about your key. If the man wanted it back, he could fight the Doctor for it.

"Right." Doctor Richards looked between the pair of you, beginning the slow process of leaving. He had apparently reached his limit for nonsense for that day. "Well, either nurse Carter or l will be over to check on her bandages every five hours or so. Can't be too careful."

Then his eyes stopped on the Doctor's jacket and he cocked his head. "In the meantime, l suggest you do something about that stain on your shoulder."

The Doctor's head whipped around to look at the dried patch of your blood. Oh. How could he have forgotten?!

"Ah, and a friendly warning," Dr. Richards remembered just as he started to walk away. "I heard the Brigadier's becoming rather impatient about the lack of information he's receaved from you. If you want to avoid another lecture, l suggest you have a word with him about all this."

"Thank you."

Dr. Richards nodded and headed for the door.

The Doctor sighed. It seemed he would have to leave your side again, at least for a little while.

Standing up, he slowly gathered the vortex manipulator, its parts and his tools in his pockets. He'd make his report to the Brigadier as informative and brief as he could. Luckily, no one would be able to come hound him afterwards, it wasn't like they could come in and have a spat with him over your hospital bed.

"I'll be back as soon as l can," he whispered as his fingers brushed the back of your hand.