#evil author day 2020 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

frvnkcastles · 5 months ago

Note

hi, sorry if I wrote something wrong, this is the first time I make a request... well, I've been dealing with OCD since 2020 (not with organization, but with having to touch something repeatedly or turning the light on and off among other things, and if I don't do something bad happens) and I saw that you're accepting ideas, so here's mine if you want :) Frank Castle x Reader who has had OCD for years but it has gotten worse and she has a panic attack because she doesn't want to deal with it anymore but she just can't stop

I’LL KEEP YOU LIKE AN OATH ➵ F. CASTLE

Summary: Stuck in a compulsion, you need Frank’s help and support more than ever.

Warnings: Reader has OCD, panic attack, hurt/comfort, feminine nicknames

Word count: 1.4k

Author’s note: I’ve actually been assessed for OCD because I display some traits but I’m fortunate to say they’re not that severe, so I can’t say I fully know the experience I was writing about here. But I hope it meets your expectations, anon! You’re so strong and I hope you’re doing well <3 I feel like Frank would 100000% learn everything he can about his partner’s disorders and go to doctor’s appointments and make sure there’s no skipping meds. Tell me I’m wrong!! Anyway, enjoy :)

You didn’t know what happened to make your symptoms worse, what caused the turn towards a decline in your control over your compulsions but it happened, anyway. You thought you were doing so well, but slowly and surely, your steady management of your disorder crumbled and you soon found yourself in an evil loop that you didn’t quite know how to break out of.

Frank quickly picked up on it getting worse. He could read you like an open book and he was perfectly attuned to your moods and especially the anxiety that had begun to rear its head more often, so it was easy for him to figure out you were struggling. You had been together long enough for him to know exactly how your symptoms manifested and what he could do to help, but he couldn’t deny his heart broke for you after you had made so much progress in the past year.

He caught you standing by the light switch one evening, and he immediately knew what was going on. ”Hey, sweetheart. Wanna take a walk with me or somethin’? Get your mind off of it?” he asked softly, placing a hand on your arm to gently retrieve you from the switch, but you stood firmly and pried his grip off of you.

”I can’t do that. I—I just can’t”, you insisted, flicking the lights on and then back off, which earned a frown from Frank. You had told him before about the immense fear of something bad happening if you didn’t follow the compulsions, and while he knew he couldn’t fix what was going on in your head, he always tried to soothe your circling thoughts.

”It’s aight, baby. I promise, nothin’s gonna happen. I know I’m just some asshole sayin’ it but I swear, it’ll be okay”, he reassured you, stepping in front of you to tear your burning stare away from the light switch and towards him. ”Remember what the doctor said, huh? Sometimes you gotta refuse to engage, yeah? C’mon, sit with me for a while, sweetheart”, he reminded you, and reluctantly, you had to admit he was right. You had agreed to give exposure therapy a go, and when you didn’t feel strong enough on your own, Frank had promised to be right by your side to help you sit with the anxiety.

Frank extended his hand to you, and with a sigh, you took it. ”Attagirl”, he commended you before leading you to the living room couch. You fidgeted but sat down, regardless, and he hauled you into his arms, creating a pile of cuddles on the cushions. Throughout the time you had been together, you had discovered that he could be very affectionate — at least when the right person had come along, and usually, you enjoyed it deeply. But right now, you couldn’t help but ruminate on the damn light switch.

”I gotchu. Wanna tell me about your day tomorrow?” Frank tried to steer your mind toward something else, and exhaling shakily, you nodded. You really wanted to try, make an effort for him and give him a reason to be proud of you. You were certainly weary of your compulsions, so you couldn’t exactly blame Frank if he was starting to feel the same way.

”Yeah, I—I, uh… I’m seeing a friend for lunch and—”, you started, but lost track of your own sentence quickly enough. You couldn’t stop thinking about the light switch, couldn’t help but feel the imminent doom looming over you if you dared to step away from the compulsion, and it was driving you mad.

”I’m listenin’, pretty girl. Which friend we talkin’ about?” Frank tried to keep you going, so thoughtful and attentive, but it wasn’t working. You knew he was really trying for you — he had attended every doctor’s appointment as per your wish and he had made sure to ask what he could do to help, how he could take off some of the burden you were carrying by yourself. And he routinely checked in with you to ensure he hadn’t crossed any boundaries and that his gentle pushing was still helping, and most days, you were happy to report that he was your saving grace.

But right now, it just wasn’t enough.

”I’m sorry, I can’t do this”, you stammered, rushing to climb out of Frank’s arms. You hurried to the light switch and began flicking it on and off, the urge to do it a specific amount of times overcoming your senses. You stood by it like a moth drawn to a flame, and Frank felt a horrible pit in his stomach for being unable to ease your mind.

He followed you from the living room, just in time to catch sight of you bringing your hands to your forehead in despair. You promptly burst into tears, feeling sickened and nervous and out of control, and as you shakily dropped your hands to cover your face, Frank rushed to your side. He placed his palm flat on your back and he crouched over to your level as you doubled over and your breathing grew shallow and panicked.

”Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay, sweetheart”, he tried, his gruff voice full of worry as he watched you sink deeper into the panic attack.

”I just want it to stop”, you sobbed, feeling so hopeless and defeated. You didn’t want to get stuck in these loops anymore, but you were incapable of stopping, and it was sending you into a downward spiral right there and then.

But Frank was determined to save you from it. ”I know, baby, I know. It’s real shitty. I wish I could make it stop, y’know I would in a heartbeat”, he spoke with sincere sympathy. ”Breathe f’me, yeah? Look at me. Focus on just me, nothin’ else”, he instructed, soft but demanding enough to be a guiding light, and trying your best, you followed his example of breathing in and out steadily.

Your head was still spinning and your chest felt constricted, but you managed to slow down your breathing. Feeling completely overwhelmed, you slumped down to the floor and sat down against the wall with ragged breaths and trembling hands. Frank followed you down, squatting in front of you to remain in your eyeline, and his hand rested on your propped-up knee.

”There you go, keep goin’”, he encouraged you in a way that helped you calm down. He kept you grounded and as minutes ticked by, you were able to pull yourself back from the void of the sheer panic. You dropped your head between your arms, and observing you with the burning desire to do more to help, Frank sighed.

”I know this fuckin’ sucks, baby. You don’t deserve any of it”, he spoke up, sitting down fully. ”But you know I’m always here, aight? I ain’t givin’ up or lettin’ you do it, either. We’ll get you therapy or meds or whatever it is you wanna do”, he went on, and feeling embarrassed for spinning out of control the way you had, you looked up at him.

”I’m sorry. I wish I wasn’t this way”, you lamented, and in response, Frank just shook his head, refusing to let you go down that path of self-hatred.

”It’s not who you are, ya hear me? They’re your symptoms. It’s a disorder. It’s got nothin’ to do with the kind of person you are, which, by the way, I fuckin’ adore and love no matter what. You’re my girl, and I’m here for you even when you think you’re at your worst”, he claimed with a serious tone. It wasn’t something he was going to argue about — to him, you were perfect. You just happened to struggle sometimes, but that didn’t make you any less beautiful or amazing to him. In fact, it just convinced him that you were so, so strong.

Smiling weakly, you took his hand. ”Thank you, Frankie. I love you, too”, you whispered in gratitude. The compulsion hadn’t left your mind yet, and you suspected it was going to stick with you for a while, but you felt a little better knowing Frank wasn’t going anywhere nor was he going to judge you.

”C’mere, girl”, he gestured for you to crawl into his arms, and you happily obliged. You did exactly that, shuffling on the floor until you were sitting between his legs and your head rested against his chest, the warmth of his firm body bringing you immense comfort.

For the night, Frank was focused on helping you alleviate the anxiety, but the next day, he was driven to find you some help. When it came to your well-being, he did not procrastinate, and so, he was determined to do whatever he could, just for you.

#frank castle #frank castle fanfiction #frank castle x reader #the punisher #the punisher x reader

54 notes · View notes

beardedmrbean · 5 months ago

Text

The first known survivor of China’s forced organ harvesting campaign against religious prisoners said he was now ready to speak out and expose the “evil” of the Chinese Communist Party.

Cheng Pei Ming, 58, who will talk publicly for the first time in Washington on Friday, described how he still feels “extreme pain” 20 years after parts of his lung and liver were forcibly removed.

“I believed they would kill me. I’m not sure they thought I could survive, but I did,” Mr Cheng told The Telegraph as he took off his shirt to expose a scar that wraps around his chest all the way to his back.

Mr Cheng says he was detained and tortured for years by the Chinese state for practising Falun Gong, a spiritual movement founded in the early 1990s.

The movement swept across the country, but was outlawed in 1999 and then brutally suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which branded it an “evil cult” and a threat to the state.

Beijing has long viewed religious groups as a threat to social order and the party’s ideological grip on power.

In the decades after Falun Gong was banned and its followers were persecuted, China’s organ transplantation industry exploded. Vital organs became readily available within a matter of days in state-run hospitals – a timeframe no national transplantation system elsewhere in the world has ever been able to achieve.

In 2019, an independent tribunal in London ruled that the Chinese government continued to commit crimes against humanity by targeting minorities, including the Falun Gong movement, for organ harvesting.

The CCP has denied accusations of organ harvesting and repeatedly denied that Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs.

But in 2021, UN human rights experts reported that along with Falun Gong practitioners, other minorities had been targeted, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians in detention in China.

Mr Cheng said he could not understand why they would crack down on a religion that promoted peace.

“Falun Gong teaches people to be good and to have compassion and empathy for all people. We mean no harm to society, the persecution against us should have never happened,” he said.

After 14 years of evading Chinese authorities, including five years in Thailand where he was granted UN refugee status, Mr Cheng reached the US in July 2020.

Mr Cheng was first arrested in September 1999. He said he was tortured and told to give up his faith and that when he refused he was expelled along with his family from his home in the eastern province of Shandong.

In the years that followed, he was “kidnapped by the CCP” five times, each time suffering “unbearable” torture, he said.

“I remembered asking: ‘Why don’t you kill me instead?’ And they said: ‘It is too easy, we get great pleasure in torturing you’,” Mr Cheng said.

In 2002, he was sentenced to eight years in jail. He recalled seeing other Falun Gong inmates disappear. Some were sent to so-called “re-education” labour camps; others were tortured to death.

In July 2004, Mr Cheng said he was dragged into a hospital where agents from the CCP’s infamous 610 office – dubbed “China’s gestapo” – tried to make him sign consent forms. When he refused, they knocked him down and put him to sleep.

His family was told that he was undergoing surgery and had a 20 per cent chance of survival.

Mr Cheng woke up three days later, terrified, shackled to a bed, and with a 35cm incision across his chest. Transplant experts have since confirmed that scans show sections of Mr Cheng’s liver and left lung were surgically removed.

Two years later, prison guards took him back to hospital. “There was no reason for them to operate, so I understood I would be killed. My family were told I had swallowed knives and wasn’t likely to survive.”

But an unexpected opportunity presented itself for escape. His guard had fallen asleep, so Mr Cheng made a run for it.

For nine years, “I lived a life of escape and hiding under false names”, he said, adding that the CCP “wanted to find men and kill me to cover up what they had done”.

He eventually escaped to Thailand where “I felt I could have been killed anytime”, Mr Cheng said. He only felt safe once he reached US soil in 2020.

In June, the US House passed The Falun Gong Protection Act, which aims to force an end to the persecution of Falun Gong by the CCP as well as forced organ harvesting from apprehended practitioners of the faith.

Mr Cheng, whose family largely remains in China, still cannot feel parts of his chest, and he struggles on a daily basis with shocks of pain that ripple through his body.

But he is now ready to tell his story. “I want the world to know how evil the CCP is. It does not only seek to harm people in China, but the world. I have to expose what has happened to the Falun Gong.”

Dr Charles Lee, a leading advocate for the Falun Gong movement, who himself was arrested and tortured for his beliefs by the CCP in 2003, told The Telegraph that the importance of Mr Cheng’s testimony cannot be overstated.

“We heard reports for decades about the extremely inhuman treatment Falun Gong faced, those that were tortured to death, their bodies cut open and organs missing. But now we have the first live witness.”

He added: “This should be an alarm to people and governments around the world that the CCP does not care for human lives.”

#nunyas news #in communist china #it's our organs #not my organs

48 notes · View notes

riswippiesx · 11 months ago

Text

Drive you insane | Geto Suguru x Fem! Reader[Fall out AU]

•part one

Theme: Mature(MDNI), 18+ NSFW

Fic TW: dark content! smut, world building, twisted morals, meteor fall out, world destroy, corruption, evil plans, conversation for world domination, foul language, looking down of the poor people, degradation, face slapping, slut shaming, spanking, unprotected sex(don't do this irl), fucking in a open place (but no body sees), teasing(a lot), creampie, breeding, mention of starting a family, porn with plot, not proof read !

Ch TW: Meteor attack, world destroy, uneven social systems, hate towards poors, death and injury, scams and plotting, foul language, barging into an oral sex, insult, fantasy, aroused thoughts, hint of masturbation etc.

Summary: You were respected in your world for being a savior during the meteor fall out but you had different plans which no one knew untill another heroic personality appeared to help the poor people. You thought would get rid of him but he knew everything about your little plan, he caught you. Would he expose you? Or help you out?

Note: Tried something new this time. To read this, you need mature mindset. Reader is twisted and not at all innocent. I hope you enjoy <3

05/08/2019

The fear of humans came true, the giant meteor, which was prophesied to hit the earth's ground soon, actually fell on the living planet, destroying a big part of asia. A few smaller meteors followed the bigger one and hit a few close areas. Despite of all the warnings and safety campaigns, many people died. The world population decreased in an instant. The ruler system fell apart. World economy was grounded. Smoke clouded the sky. Glimpse of heinous fire could be seen here and there. Air was heavy with painful whimpers and sobs.

Even in such crisis, a few classy families of politics and leaders were provided the highest level of safety with the secure houses made of the finest stuffs. A large part of food and water was preserved for them. Two or three of such families or family members survived well enough while the poor survivors died, lacking food water and medication.

You were the eldest daughter of a well known person. You dad used to be a bright face in world politics. He was cruel and selfish. He had both power and money. So he spoilt you as much as he wanted. You inherited his stubborn rude nature in yourself.

You were twenty years old when the fall out took place. Your younger brother was fourteen. If you were spoiled, he was like a little demon. He did whatever he wanted at such early age which costed his life in the meteor attack. He wanted to see how it looked when a meteor fell on poor average people. So he ran out of the safety shelter and your father followed him to bring him back. Of course the meteor hit both of them and they died. Their sudden death was tough for you to handle but a part of you was somewhat happy that you would have none in you way from then.

Your father was wise enough for collecting the precious papers and plans related to world domination before hand. So with the help of those papers and your dead father's reputation, you got your hands on the world politics easily.

05/08/2020

One year from that day, the world government fell apart but with the help of the survivors, somehow they managed to get things together in a way. The authorities chose the powerful survivors and decided the areas around the world to take care of. You were a chosen one. A large part of asia was given to you for nurturing and developing.

You agreed very easily and took over the area. You had to put on a mask which helped you to act kind. You hated people bellow your standard but for the sake of greater future, you offered help to those "bullshit" survivors.

At first you were disgusted by the condition of those survivors, some lost their legs, some lost their both of the eyes or one and the injury list could go far long. The authorities sent a team to each leaders and you chose some employs from your area. Your team was slowly building up. You were earning people's trust and respect with your coating of kindness. You were earning trust from the the head authorities as well. They were pleased with your work. But you had hunger, hunger for something greater, hunger for all of it. This was very less of a portion when you were starving for world domination. Your father was one of the main faces of the world. You needed to be the "only" main face of this fallen world.

As the days continued, your team grew bigger with the healthier survivors joining. Your heavily inspired them. Your soft behavior and kindness intrigued a lot of them. Your pretty face was also another reason for many young men's joining. You could notice how many people looked up at you with adoration in their eyes, some were romantic, some were platonic.

Overall it was going how it was supposed to. But, behind every eyes, you were plotting something. You wanted to snatch away powers from the other seven leaders around the world, by corrupting them anyhow. You collected papers from various sources. Since the radio waves and towers fell apart, the world connection was slow but still content. You took your time in collecting the weak points and potholes of other leader's work. You spent years after years planning, earning trusts and working on papers which would destroy your enemies. After all, the world should belong to where it's supposed to, under your feet.

Your trusted team helped you in this. You made a private team of four people. They helped you to find the papers and other things whenever you needed. They were your right hand people.

Your first victim was your neighbour leader, with whom you shared a part of asia. He was a kind man, genuinely kind. He wanted to help the poor people. Though he also belonged to a famous household before the fall out, his mind wasn't that corrupted. How boring! You used the papers about the secret scams of his family which your dad once collected and anonymously sent it to the head authority, to show how much of a scammer that family was. Your father was a savior but couldn't save himself though. To prove your point a bit more, your team went undercover and stole the money which was sent by the head authorities for the fund works, resulting a huge miscalculation in reports. Poor leader couldn't defend himself and his spot was snatch away at once by the authorities. There were no chances of mistake in a world of needs. So you appeared as a savior again and helped the poor people with shelter and food with medication. Already pleased authority was delighted by your "sweet gesture" and offered that area to you and you took it the offer in order to "help the people in need".

20/12/2023

You were busy in checking the reports from your team about the developement around your area. Some files on the food and shelter restock was attached with the main report. You had a pen in your hand while you seated on the luxury chair of your office.

You heard a knock on your door.

"Ma'am? May I come in?"

You didn't raise your head and uttered a "yeah". The other person pushed the door open and entered your well maintained, classy office room.

"Ma'am, there is someone who seeks your visit"

Your brows got twisted as you looked up.

"I wasn't informed about any meeting today. Who is it?"

"He has stated that he wants to join your team."

"Oh. But in order to join, he needs to meet my assistant first. Not me. You all know the rule, right?", you looked at your worker.

"Yes ma'am we know. We tried to tell him all that but he isn't listening. He said that he was full of potential and you are the only one who could value it truly."

"Oh what a bold mouth he got", you grinned. "That's indeed interesting. Fine. Tell him to wait outside for ten minutes"

"Alright ma'am", the worker bowed and left the the room.

You were amused. You knew that you had some admirer who joined your team just for you. Actually you didn't mind them at all, instead they were easy to control. But this guy seemed very confident in himself. It'd be fun in taking control over him.

You were smirking to yourself as you finished your paper works and signed where you needed to. You kept the file aside when you heard a knock on your door. You checked the clock when your worker left to inform hin about ten minutes wait, it was 11:30 am and the knock came right on 11:40 am. Accurate on time ! Impressive.

"Come in", you spoke. The door was pushed open once again and there stood the guy, so majestic that you couldn't look away. Those raven hairs in neat bun with a lock hanging loose on his left side of face, those dark intriguing deep eyes and that sharp face— he was handsome, you needed to admit. And this dark ear piercing made him look even better.

"Thank you for giving me a chance, ma'am", honey dripped in his voice as he spoke. You were impressed by his physical appearance but you weren't a person to loose your composure either. You gestured him with your familiar sweet and kind smile.

"No problem. Come take a seat"

He came and sat at on the chair at the other side of your desk.

"I heard you claim that you have potential?", you questioned him.

"Certainly, ma'am"

"Very well. Care to introduce your self?", you eyes danced in hidden mischief.

"I'm Geto Suguru. I'm 27 now."

"Alright, Mr. Geto Suguru, reason for your arrival today?"

"I came here as a face of Japan"

"Face of Japan?"

"Yes, I survived by fate. So to help the others in need, I worked with the local helping teams. I'm well trained in doing the fund work. I used to work as a leader of National Public Support of Japan. So for greater help, the local people told me to come and join your team. I heard from them that you are a great leader. I'd be blessed if I get to work under you."

"Hmm. And you want me to hire you, based on your words only?"

"I have my reports and documents. Here", he offered you a file. You eyed the file and noticed the details. He was speaking the truth. While you were checking the file, you could feel that his eyes were pointed stright at you. Of course it was, almost everyone had the same reaction when they looked at you.

Those files didn't seem fake. You closed the file after you were done and handed it back to him.

"Not bad. But.." You leaned infront and kept your elbows pressed on your desk "I don't hire just by the past records. I need to see what you've got. So, you will be working a day with the jobs I assign for you. Hope that's okay for you?" You looked straight at his eyes. There was something in there which didn't go entirely with this external personality, you could easily tell.

A smile appeared on his face "Sure, I'd love to"

"Great. You may leave now and wait outside for your jobs for the day"

"Thank you"

"Don't be so thankful before you even get to know what you are going to be assigned with..hmm?", you grinned at him.

"Yeah sure, ma'am", he smiled back at you and left the office. He was capable. You could use him for your work but before that you needed to test his loyalty towards you for a few days or weeks.

You had a list for the jobs which were needed to be done, such as inspecting all the shelters and stop any of the illegal activity which some people did here and there recently. People, who wanted more than they were getting, committed small crimes like stealing and attacking. You hated all that nasty crimes. For you, those were so lame. And you needed to take control over all that. Someone had to take care of the crimes. So you decided to rest your rookie, basing on that.

21/12/2023

Christmas was around the corner. Authorities had sent some special and extra supply for the people in needs. Your workers took care of it. Surprisingly, Geto Suguru did a great job in inspecting the crimes. He submitted his reports on the topic and it was well detailed than the average ones. He really seemed professional and skilled about the whole thing. But you hated giving credits to your new worker on the first day. So you just received the reports and told him to leave.

You could have given him a bit credit only if your mind wasn't messed with a lot of things. After getting the major part of asia under your control, you had to take in the islands around the continent. But it was big deal. To begin with the issue, your father didn't have much of the papers on the leader of those island. Moreover, she seemed really tough to deal with. You tried to work as a partner but she refused. You thought this would help you to prove the less co-operation skills in her to the authorities but they seemed not to care about such a small issue. Your personal team tried to spy around her area but she was really well at handling and controlling her territory. But you weren't someone to let such a small fry stop you from achieving what you deserved. So you were intrigued in making up plans on dragging her down at your office.

Your mood was just messed up as you didn't seem find something good enough. So you were frustrated. You leaned back on your chair and groaned in annoyance. "Ugh fuck this!" and put your legs on top your desk. You were working for so long and your eyes were hurting, so was your back. So you decided to take a break and walk for a bit outside of your office.

You did as you thought. You went outside of your office building and started to walk around fot bit, aimlessly. The surroundings were being taken care of yet those were a lot of damage to be fixed so early where huminity almost got doomed. Broken buildings fell around, only the roads were cleaned, to resume the journey and connections. You were looking everywhere but at the road. Your mind was fogged. Them normal people, who respected you, were waving at your was but you were definitely not in a mood to do the same. So you just smiled at them, not to mention, that was forced.

In the meantime of smiling, you looked side way and didn't notice the a few stones and parts which littered around. Your feet hit one or two of those and tripped. You were about to fall but a strong hand caught you from your behind by your waist. Your hand grabbed on that hand and you quickly looked back. It was your new rookie, Geto Suguru. He was looking down at you with his pretty fox eyes and a slight smile on his lips. Your eyes for once stopped at his. It didn't last a minute before you looked away but it felt like so long. You coughed and made yourself free from his grip.

"Be careful Ma'am, there are stones every where. If you don't be careful enough.." He leaned very slightly, "you might trip". It sounded more like a warning than an advice. What was that tone ! You were pissed.

"I don't remember giving you permission of talking to me in that tone." You fixed your cloths.

"Ah well I just spoke of your well being, sorry if that offended you." He apologized but you could still sense the mild sarcasm in his voice.

"Just go back to whatever you were doing." And you started walk away. Your mind was already fogged and this one thing made you feel even more disgusting. That new bie might give you hard times in future. You would have to take of it before hand.

24/12/2023

There came the Christmas eve. With the help of the funds and other suppliments from the head authority, two of them destroyed buildings were finally fixed. One was a mart and another one was a small apartment, which would help people to get essentials and shelter. Those opened on the day of christmas. You, being they main figure, had to be presented in all the time, looking after the things you didn't want. But again, you needed to achieve as much faith as you could. So you kept up with everything.

It was late when you finished your works and finally relaxed on your seat. After staying silent, you decided to return to the apartment you chose for yourself to live in. You kept the files a side and took your house key. Then you left your office and started to walk across the small corridor. You were about to pass a room when some noises stopped you. Almost all of your workers left, your special team too. Also the room was a little conference room, which you used to discuss plans and tasks. Noone was supposed to be in there, at least not at that hour of night.

The noises were faint. So you brought yourself closer to the closed door and put your ear on it. With a bit of notice, you could hear that those noises sounded like whimpers and a few groans. It was strangely weird for you. Was someone fucking in there? But there? Really? Inside of your organised conference room? How dared them!?

You were getting furious again. It was so improper. Did some poor people break in? A lot of weird thoughts came in your head untill both of the voices started to sound a bit too familiar. But you could not actually catch it.

You couldn't just stand and listen to such nasty noises. So you decided to barge in. The door was fortunately unlocked and you pushed it open at once. What you saw was not something you expected at all.

Infront of you, you could see two very known humans. On the ground, there sat the only female employ of your special team, whom you actually trusted a lot. She was back facing you and was on her knees, naked. Her mouth was connected to someone's hard cock, sucking on it. And that someone was none other than, your new rookie, Geto Suguru. His pants were on the floor and last few buttons of his black shirt was opened, revealing his toned abs and defined v-line. His cheeks were flushed with a faint red, hair was partially up in a messy bun as he leaned back on the table behind.

You went silent for a good while. You were looking at them and they looked back at you. Your trusted employ was quick to let everything go and tried to cover her body. You could see the hickeys on two to three places or her body. She looked ashamed. She didn't expect you to catch them like that. Whereas, the other one had a smug expression on his face. His slightly lidded eyes hinted amusement.

"Ma'am..." She tried to speak.

"What the fuck is going on here?" You calmly asked. But the disgust was clear in your tone.

"Ma'am we can...explain...please", she was nervous.

"Shut up. Not a word. If you were willing that much to suck him off, you should have gone to your apartment. Don't you have any basic sense about place and time? Huh?"

"Ma'am but...he...he told me this would be fine...and also said that you had already left the office ...and I trusted him."

"You don't even know this guy properly. That's why you don't trust just..any person. Also what made you think that it'd be okay to fuck here after I am gone?"

"Ma'am....i'm so sorry, please."

"Leave. Get your as s out of my sight right now. And never show me that slutty face of yours!"

"Ma'am-"

"Leave. Now."

She knew nothing could be stated after your stern order. So she took her cloths and somehow covered herself, then left. Then your eyes fell on Geto. He fixed his cloths already but those still looked messy. He was fixing his bun. His body was a bit sweaty from the previous intense activities. The light fell stright on his features which made him look even better. You sighed.

"I suppose you owe me an explanation.", you spoke to him.

"Extremely sorry, I thought you left and I ...well..I was feeling something. So she volunteered to help and I accepted.", his tone sounded more casual than it was supposed to.

"Wow. Keep your shits in your pants untill you are in a proper place. This isn't your little love hotels!"

"I apologize. It won't happen again."

"Apology my foot! You shithead. Stop trying to mess my special team. I warn you."

"I am not. It's just she is really attactive."

He spoke facts, you knew that. Yet your nerves burn for So me unknown reason. You couldn't just stand what he just said.

"Did I ask?", You almost yelled. But your self control game was great. So you tried to calm yourself down. "Just get out of here!" You spoke in disgust.

You came back to your apartment with a bitter mind and a tired body. You just wanted to sink in your bed. You quickly freshen up and finally laid on the bed. Your body just thanked you for the long awaited rest. Your body wanted rest but your mind was racing. What you just saw before coming back, that scene could not leave your mind. You were disgusted but somewhere in my mind, you kept recalling the vulnerable look of Geto. It was really hot. He was an attractive man and his abs, v-line..even his hard dick..you just couldn't think otherwise. Your whole body felt like burning, with some desire. It wasn't like you were a virgin. Your fucked with a few friends of yours before the meteor attack but that was long ago. After that, you barely got time to think about your sexual desire, in a obsession of power.

So, such things from a genuinely attractive guy bought out you hidden desires and your pleasure deprived self danced with it.

You didn't notice when your thighs were pressing together. Your body wanted some friction in some special places. You could feel your arousal and your hard nipples, brushing against your tshirt painfully, wanting to be pinched and pulled and played with.

A soft groan left your lips as you hands started to move towards the hem of your panties as another hand cupped your left breast over your cloth..........

...To be continued

Phew!! Finally first part is done💀 I typed a lot lol! My finger hurts now. Haha! Anyway! Please please let me if you like this or not! Commet down bellow. Reblogs are also highly appreciated 💗

Alsooo!! I might need some time to post the next part..(I have internals at college T_T) also I need some good response in this. I have put a lot of efforts in this lol! So I need results too :P otherwise i'm not posting another part anyway 🚶‍♀️

And..should I make a tag list for the next part/parts? Lemme know if you wanna be tagged. Haha

Thanks for reading tho<333

#geto x reader #geto x y/n #geto x you #geto x female reader #geto suguru x reader #geto suguru x y/n #geto suguru x you #jjk geto #jjk geto suguru #jjk au #jjk smut #geto suguru smut #suguru geto smut #geto smut #dark content

83 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 7 months ago

Text

A growing Christian supremacist movement that labels its perceived enemies as “demonic” and enjoys close ties to major Republican figures is “the greatest threat to American democracy you’ve never heard of,” according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The SPLC, a civil rights organization that monitors extremist groups, released its “Year In Hate And Extremism 2023” report on Tuesday. A significant portion of the report, which tracked burgeoning anti-democratic and neo-fascist movements and actors across America, is devoted to the New Apostolic Reformation, “a new and powerful Christian supremacy movement that is attempting to transform culture and politics in the U.S. and countries across the world into a grim authoritarianism.”

Emerging out of the charismatic evangelical tradition, the NAR adheres to a form of Christian dominionism, meaning its parishioners believe it’s their divine duty to seize control of every political and cultural institution in America, transforming them according to a fundamentalist interpretation of scripture.

NAR adherents also believe in the existence of modern-day “apostles” and “prophets” — church leaders endowed by God with supernatural abilities, including the power to heal. In 2022, a handful of these “apostles,” the report notes, issued what they called the Watchman Decree, an anti-democratic document envisioning the end of a pluralistic society in America.

The apostles claimed they had been given “legal power and authority from Heaven” and are “God’s ambassadors and spokespeople over the earth,” who “are equipped and delegated by Him to destroy every attempted advance of the enemy.”

And who’s the enemy? Basically anyone who does not adhere to NAR beliefs. NAR adherents see their critics as being literally controlled by the devil.

“There are claims that whole neighborhoods, cities, even nations are under the sway of the demonic,” the report states. “Other religions, such as Islam, are also said to be demonically influenced. One cannot compromise with evil, and so if Democrats, liberals, LGBTQ+ people, and others are seen as demonic, political compromise — the heart of democratic life — becomes difficult if not impossible.”

This rhetoric has become increasingly widespread among Republican lawmakers, including former President Donald Trump, who last year referred to Marxists and atheists as “evil demonic forces that want to destroy our country.”

That Trump would use NAR-inspired rhetoric is unsurprising considering his relationship with Paula White-Cain, an NAR figure who delivered the invocation at Trump’s inauguration in 2017 and at the kickoff of his 2020 reelection campaign, as noted by Paul Rosenberg in Salon. White-Cain also delivered the invocation at Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C. — the event that eventually became the insurrection at the Capitol.

The attack on the Capitol was largely inspired, the report suggests, by NAR’s theology of dominionism. “NAR prayer groups were mobilized at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as well as supporting prayer teams all over the country, to exorcise the demonic influence over the Capitol that adherents said was keeping Trump from his rightful, prophesized second term,” the report states.

Major Republican figures took part in such events on or around the day of the attack. Mike Johnson, who is now the speaker of the House, joined the NAR’s “Global Prayer for Election Integrity,” which called for Trump’s reinstatement as president, in the weeks leading up to the attack on the Capitol. Johnson has also stated that Jim Garlow, an NAR leader, has had a “profound influence” on his life.

Ultimately, the SPLC report is an attempt to ring the alarm bells about the NAR, ”the greatest threat to U.S. democracy that you have never heard of.

“It is already a powerful, wealthy and influential movement and composes a highly influential block of one of the two main political parties in the country,” the report continues. “So few people have heard of NAR that it is possible that, without resistance in our local communities, dominionism might win without ever having been truly opposed.”

The SPLC’s report, according to a press release, also documents 595 hate groups and 835 antigovernment extremist groups in America, “including a growing wave of white nationalism increasingly motivated by theocratic beliefs and conspiracy theories.”

“With a historic election just months away, this year, more than any other, we must act to preserve our democracy,” Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center and SPLC Action Fund, said in a statement. “That will require us to directly address the danger of hate and extremism from our schools to our statehouses. Our report exposes these far-right extremists and serves as a tool for advocates and communities working to counter disinformation, false conspiracies and threats to voters and election workers.”

40 notes · View notes

xx-thedarklord-xx · 1 year ago

Note

saw your name on the erised particpant post and i'm so excited to read what you wrote! it's like seeing authors in the wild when they do fests and stuff. can't wait

Ahh thank you! I've participated three times in Erised and unfortunately, this year will be my last time for that particular fest, but I am glad you are looking forward to it! There's another fest I participated in as well that will get revealed in the next couple weeks. If you are interested in my past fest fics, I'll link them.

-Dear Cousin, Love Regulus [Harry/Draco Big Bang 2018] As the sole Malfoy heir, Draco understood that his path was set long before his birth; who to be, how to act and what his choices should be. What he had not counted on was the power of outside influences. Letters from his deceased cousin caused him to realize that he did have choices, starting with the choice to be someone else, to be who he wanted to be. The road to self-discovery was difficult and navigating that path in the shadow of Harry Potter was its own challenge but maybe, just maybe, his friends would help him along the way. And he would owe it all to Regulus Black.

-Ardour of Karma [H/D Erised 2019] “Malfoy knows something is going on with you and unless you both want to go back to fighting and death glares, you should fix it.”

“How do I do that? Just waltz up to him and say, ‘I know I’ve been a prat but your scent makes my dick swell. How’s your day?’”

“Mind repeating that?”

The familiar drawl had Harry’s throat clamming up as his blood ran cold. Oh no.

-The Forsaken [Harry/Draco OwlPost 2019] When Draco imagined his future as a child he thought he'd be a Potion Master, get married and maybe have a kid. But the reality was he was a retired Assassin, bitten by a Vampire and mated to a reckless, idiotic, foolish ex-Auror now turned Veela—Harry Potter.

-Borrowing Courage [H/D Erised 2018] After years of being a Magical Artist and painting for other people, Draco decides it’s time to paint for himself for once. The secrets pile up as he tries to unravel the mystery of his relatives but the only thing he didn’t count on was having to go to Potter of all people for approval.

-Save a Horse, Ride a Malfoy [HP Kinkfest 2020] Riddles are woven throughout life, some never answered and many lost in frustration. Whatever riddle it was that defined what Harry and Draco had was a mess of a riddle that worked for them, despite what everyone else thought, even if there was no answer—yet. Sex was another riddle, only that was one they had solved many, many times over.

-Still Standing [H/D Fan Fair 2019] Not many know the evil origins of a Philosopher's Stone. When Draco discovers that the Goblins found one and kept it, he'll stop at nothing to see it taken care of. Even if that means having to deal with Gringotts' very own resident twat: Harry Potter.

-Augury Forecast [HP Drizzle Fest 2018] Draco had always known that teaching at Hogwarts would be an experience, he just didn’t think that meant a flash flood in the kitchens, a windstorm in the Great Hall, or a sandstorm in the Quidditch pitch. Months of extreme weather would grate on anyone’s nerves, but to have Potter, the ever annoying Divination Professor, around every corner was even worse. So much for a quiet life at Hogwarts.

-Teach Me [HP Contest Fest 2018] "If you can’t learn Occlumency, then you can’t become an Auror.”

No. All of this couldn’t be for nothing. Harry hadn’t spent so much time proving himself, proving that he was more than just a famous name for all of this to go to shite. “This can’t be the end.”

"I have someone in mind that could teach you if you are willing, but I can't guarantee he will help, especially considering your... past."

"You don't mean Malfoy, do you?"

-Worth Betting On [HP Joggers Fest 2018] The easy way Malfoy breezed into the arena in an unprofessional attire—grey joggers that outlined far too much, and a white dress shirt open with nothing underneath—which showed off his chest, his sweaty sweaty chest—had Harry sitting up straighter. It wasn't unusual to see Malfoy in such a state of undress, it was a signature move that he refused to change.

Not that Harry wanted him to change.

Or the one where Draco is a professional Duelist, and Harry can't stay away from the matches.

#drarry #my stuff #XxTheDarkLordxX Writes #my fest stuff #didn't realize I was in so many of them over the years #i would like to participate in more this upcoming year #we shall see what life throws at me

90 notes · View notes

mneiai · 2 years ago

Text

Are we really going to rewrite history and pretend that the Harry Potter books weren't antisemitic, racist, and fatphobic the entire time?

Cho Chang. Kingsley Shacklebolt. The Irish kid blows stuff up. Most of the Black kids don't have fathers. The fat people are either evil, creepy, or fools. The goblins. Just. The entire thing with the goblins. The baddies all said bloodlines mattered which we the readers supposedly knew was false and then...bloodlines actually did very much matter. The entire fucking US Magical School anti-Indigenous bullshit.

There's a reason from very early on, even before the books were finished, fanworks were trying to establish better takes on a lot of these things.

It's one thing to not notice as a child, but there were people back in the day talking about these things. The fandom was purposefully trying to absolve some of these things. There were a massive amount of essays about this shit, the calendar didn't turn over to 2020 and suddenly people noticed or something. HP had 80s era bigotry in 90s/00s and the way we dealt with that changed: before JKR was blatantly supporting hate campaigns "death of the author" with her wasn't just relied on by bigots to excuse their fan activity but was actually, seriously considered a thing.

"But if we say JKR was always bad then people won't think they can get radicalized." I mean, only insofar as the average person doesn't go around assuming they'll join a cult, but knows that technically it's possible they could get tricked into joining a cult.

We shouldn't hide someone's failings in the past to pretend like they only started failing later on. That JKR was so casually racist/antisemitic/etc from the beginning probably is one of the reasons she could get so deep into terfism so quickly (and it's been years, this isn't some new thing for her, even if many people have only started discussing it in the last few years).

Average people can be (often are) racist, people who consider themselves "good people" can believe antisemitic stereotypes, your friends can be casually transphobic. It's not all or nothing. We are none of us perfect saintly creatures. Acknowledging faults in one person earlier than you saw them isn't the equivalent of saying "and that's why the average person would never be radicalized" because the average person isn't actually without faults.

And if a person sees others acknowledging faults in JKR/HP early on and goes "so that's why I can't be radicalized" they're probably not the sort of person one can prevent from being radicalized by generalized tumblr posts, anyway.

#anti jkr

316 notes · View notes

dreaminginthedeepsouth · 10 months ago

Text

Alexei navalny did not like tragedies. He preferred Hollywood films and fables in which heroes vanquish villains and good triumphs over evil. He had the looks and talent to be one of those heroes, but he was born in Russia and lived in dark times, spending his last days in a penal colony in the Arctic permafrost. A fan of “Star Wars”, he described his ordeal in lyrical terms. “Prison [exists] in one’s mind,” he wrote from his cell in 2021. “And if you think carefully, I am not in prison but on a space voyage…to a wonderful new world.” That voyage ended on February 16th.

Mr Navalny’s death was blamed by Russian prison authorities on a blood clot—though his doctor said he suffered from no condition which made that likely. Whatever ends up on his death certificate, he was killed by Vladimir Putin. Russia’s president locked him up; in his name Mr Navalny was subjected to a regime of forced labour and solitary confinement. Mr Navalny will be celebrated as a man of remarkable courage. His life will be remembered for what it says about Mr Putin, what it portends for Russia and what it demands of the world.

A man of formidable intelligence, Mr Navalny identified the two foundations on which Mr Putin has built his power: fear and greed. In Mr Putin’s world everyone can be bribed or threatened. Not only did Mr Navalny understand those impulses, he struck at them in devastating ways.

His insight was that corruption was not just a side hustle but the moral rot at the heart of Mr Putin’s state. His anti-corruption crusade formed a new genre of immaculately documented and thriller-like films that displayed the yachts, villas and planes of Russia’s rulers. These videos, posted on YouTube, culminated in an exposé of Mr Putin’s billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea coast that has been watched 130m times. Despite the palace’s iron gates, adorned with a two-headed imperial eagle, Mr Navalny portrayed its owner not as a tsar so much as a tasteless mafia boss.

Mr Navalny also understood fear and how to defeat it. Mr Putin’s first attempt to kill him was in 2020, when he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok smeared inside his underwear. By sheer good luck Mr Navalny survived, regained his strength in Germany and less than a year later flew back to Moscow to defy Mr Putin in a blast of publicity.

He returned in the full knowledge that he would probably be arrested. On the way back to confront the evil ruler who had tried to poison him he did not read Hamlet. He watched Rick and Morty, an American cartoon. By mocking Mr Putin, he diminished him. “I’ve mortally offended him by surviving,” he said from the dock during his trial in 2021. “He will enter history as a poisoner. We had Yaroslav the Wise and Alexander the Liberator. And now we will have Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants.”

Mr Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in jail on extremism charges. He turned his sentence into an act of cheerful defiance. Every time he appeared in court hearings via video link from prison, his smile cut through the walls of his cell and beamed across Russia’s 11 time zones. On February 15th, on the eve of his death, he was in court again. Dressed in dark-grey prison uniform he laughed in the face of Mr Putin’s judges, suggesting they should put some money into his account as he was running short. In the end there was only one way Mr Putin could wipe the smile off his face.

In his essay “Live Not by Lies”, in 1974, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel-prize-winning Soviet novelist, wrote that “when violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: ‘I am violence. Run away, make way for me—I will crush you’.” Mr Navalny understood, but instead of running he held his ground.

His great strength was to understand Mr Putin’s fear of other people’s courage. In one of his early communications from jail he wrote that: “it is not honest people who frighten the authorities…but those who are not afraid, or, to be more precise: those who may be afraid, but overcome their fear.”

That is why his death portends a deepening of repression inside Russia. Mr Navalny’s murder was not the first and it will not be the last. The next targets could be Ilya Yashin, a brave politician who followed Mr Navalny to prison, or Vladimir Kara-Murza, a historian, journalist and politician who has been sentenced to 25 years on treason charges for speaking against the war. The lawyers and activists who continue to defend these dissidents are also in danger. Since Mr Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, the number of prisoners has increased 15 times. Even as the remnants of Stalin’s gulag fill with political prisoners, professional criminals are being recruited and released to fight in Ukraine.

Mr Navalny’s death also casts a shadow over ordinary Russians. In Moscow and across Russia, people flooded the streets at the news. Before the police started to arrest them, they covered memorials for previous victims of political repression in flowers. Yet that repression is intensifying. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, 1,305 men and women have been prosecuted for speaking out against it. A wave of repression is also swallowing up people who never before engaged in politics. The president will shoot into the crowds if he must.

For the West, Mr Navalny’s death contains a call to action. Mr Putin considers its leaders too weak and too decadent to resist him. And for many years Western politicians and businessmen did much to prove that fear and greed work in the West, too. When Mr Putin first bombed and shelled Chechnya in the early 2000s, Western politicians turned a blind eye and continued to do business with his cronies. When he murdered his opponents in Moscow and annexed Crimea in 2014, they slapped his wrist. Even after he had invaded Ukraine in 2022, they hesitated to provide enough weapons for Russia to be defeated. Every time the West stepped back, Mr Putin took a step forward. Every time Western politicians expressed their “grave concern”, he smirked.

The West needs to find the strength and courage that Mr Navalny showed. It should understand that Mr Navalny’s murder, the soaring number of political prisoners, the torture and beating of people across Russia, the assassination of Mr Putin’s opponents in Europe and the shelling of Ukrainian cities are all part of the same war. Without resolve, the West’s military and economic superiority will count for nothing.

Western governments should start by treating people like Mr Kara-Murza as prisoners of Mr Putin’s war who need to be exchanged with Russian prisoners in the West or prisoners of war in Ukraine. They should not stigmatise ordinary Russians living under a paranoid dictator and his goons, or put the onus on ordinary people to overthrow the dictator who is repressing them.

The best retort to Mr Putin is by arming Ukraine. Every time America’s Congress votes down aid, Russia takes comfort. The leaders assembled at the Munich Security Conference, who heard Mr Navalny’s wife, Yulia, speak of justice for her husband’s death, need to stiffen their resolve to see through the war. For their part Ukrainian politicians must see that standing up for Russian activists and prisoners is also a way of helping their own country—just as Mr Navalny called for peace, for rebuilding Ukraine and the prosecution of Russian war crimes. Liberating Ukraine would be the best way to liberate Russia, too.

The voyage ends

After he had been poisoned, Mr Navalny returned home because he believed that history was on his side and that Russia was freeing itself from the deadly grip of its own imperial past. “Putin is the last chord of the ussr,” he told The Economist a few months before he took that last fateful journey. “People in the Kremlin know there is a historic current that is moving against them.” Mr Putin invaded Ukraine to reverse that current. Now he has killed Mr Navalny.

Mr Navalny would not want Mr Putin’s message to prevail. “[If I get killed] the obvious thing is: don’t give up,” he once told American film-makers. “All it takes for evil to triumph is the inaction of good people. There’s no need for inaction.”

Mr Navalny’s death has seemed imminent for months. And yet there is something crushing about it. He was not alone in believing that good triumphs over evil, and that heroes vanquish villains. His courage was an inspiration. To see that moral order so brutally overturned is a terrible affront. ■

#heros #Navalny #alexei navalny #Putin #Putin Caucus in US House of Representatives #war in Ukraine

39 notes · View notes

polarisbibliotheque · 3 days ago

Text

Survivor's Blood (Leon x Reader) - Chapter 7

Survivor’s Blood

Pairing: Leon x Reader

Summary: After Raccoon City, Leon became the only Government agent with that kind of expertise. With relentless training, he was now a Special Agent - again, on his first day in the job. He just didn’t expect to live Raccoon City all over again… Maybe Leon was fated to always have the worst first-days-at-work ever.

Age Restriction: 18+. It’s horror, so expect a lot of graphic violence and blood dripping from this. I mean, VERY GRAPHICAL VIOLENCE. Nothing we haven’t seen on RE, but still. Yee been warned

TRIGGER WARNING: This whole fanfic is a trigger warning really

Author's Notes: Heeeeey, I know this is exactly what no one wanted, but it's what I've got. It's been sitting in my files for a while 'cause I wanted to have a couple of new chapters ready to post, but oh well. Blame this update on my mom - who got me explaining the whole history of Resident Evil and why it's so important to gaming along with its lore and she was "wow, that's basically the 2020 pandemic" and I was "exactly, now you get it". And she also kinda loves Chris for becoming boulder-punching-Chris and just suplexing Wesker out of existence. He's 10/10 her fave RE character so far.

Chapter 7

New Setosa State School, April 29th, 2001 – 22h31

“You’re late, Kennedy.”

It was the first time you were meeting the other Agents in charge of rescuing the residents of New Setosa.

It was quite a walk from the hospital to the school, but something kept everyone moving. Maybe it was all the undead in the way, making everyone keep a steady pace and a quiet step. Maybe it was Leon checking his watch almost every two minutes. Or maybe, it was the adrenaline running in your bodies, screaming inside every soul that they had to do their best to survive.

You didn’t hear a single thing on your way there. The houses, apartments, offices, stores… All quiet – except for the creatures groaning every now and then, noticing your group and trying to follow; too slow to be any kind of threat.

There was only one incident – and an incident that was expected by all of you, if you had to be honest to yourselves. In times of survival, the best side of humanity did show… But so did the worst.

You were quickly, and quietly, walking in the middle of the street – as per Leon orders: sidewalks were too close to establishments that could harbor undead creatures, silently waiting for a surprise attack. You still had the lead and he still preferred to remain on the back, since his odds of survival if he was grabbed by behind were a lot bigger than anyone else in the group.

The elderly lady was doing very well – being helped by Valerie, she could walk fast enough to keep up the pace – but the kid with the father were having a little trouble. The boy seemed to be weak, almost too tired to keep going, but his father was almost carrying him – and would carry his son if he needed to. The lab coat man kept fidgeting, sighing audibly every time you gave the group a couple of seconds to breathe – making him receive stern looks from Leon, who was more of a bleeding heart than you were.

It all happened too quick. The lab coat man, for some reason, insisted on being around the father and son and very close to you. There were a few cars up ahead, but neither of you thought it would be trouble: most cars were destroyed and their owners dead inside of them or roaming outside, undead.

You had no idea where the creature came from: in a split second, what once was a police officer jumped on the lab coat man, fiercely trying to bite his face off.

“Stay back!” You screamed to the other survivors, grabbing one of the creature’s arms and trying to fight it. Those things were strong – and, in all honesty, lab coat man wasn’t the best suited to fight one of them.

Valerie held the elderly woman and signaled the father and the kid to join them. Leon immediately ran towards all of you – but as soon as you managed to take a little weight off the lab coat man, he had the strength to handle the creature by himself.

“Take the ones who are already dying, you fucking shit!” The man threw the undead right into the teen, who was too weak to fight for himself. You gasped, trying to hold it back – but it seemed to slip right between your fingers.

Before the creature could bite the kid into pieces, Leon came through like a bulldozer – punching it right on the face, making it groan and stumble behind, as the teen fell on the floor and tried to crawl back to his father. The man immediately grabbed his son, protecting him with his own body, as Leon took a hunting knife from his holster and buried it under the creature’s chin – impaling its head, making it finally stop.

But the danger wasn’t over: another creature crept to the lab coat man, grabbing his foot and using him as a ladder to stand up and eat him alive.

“You… Damn! Leave me alone! Eat them!” The man struggled a little but was able to throw the creature in your direction – his intention of being around you and the invalid teen quite clear: if anything happened, he would rather have you dead than him.

The creature didn’t have time to reach you, because Leon’s kick on its chest reached it first. With a couple of dodges and some expertly placed knife attacks, he finally placed the killing blow by nailing the knife on its temples, right through its brain.

You couldn’t help but to stare wide eyed as Leon discarded the undead on the floor – who was once a living, breathing person, like you and him – and furiously walked towards the lab coat man. Gripping him by the sweaty shirt, Leon stamped the guy on the side of a destroyed, burning car – which was definitely too hot to the touch, and you could see it on the guy’s face as he winced the more Leon pushed him into the hot metal. Still holding the man’s shirt, Leon had his forearm across his chest, knife on standby in his other hand.

You definitely did not expect that from Leon… But it was a welcome thing, given the circumstances.

“What you think you’re doing, huh? You think you’re better than any of them? That your life is worth more?” Leon’s voice was low and his eyes were filled with something you still hadn’t seen that night – perhaps, that was the man who survived Raccoon City. Who became a Special Agent. “I don’t give a fuck how important you think you are or what your name is. We’re in this shit together, and we only gettin’ out if everyone sticks together. Everyone.” With those words, Leon made the man look right into his eyes – even if the guy couldn’t hold the stare longer than a couple of seconds. “Pieces of shit like you are always the first ones to go. I’m gonna make my best to make sure your sorry ass gets out of here, but if you keep acting like this, something is gonna make sure you won’t. I fucking seen that before.”

You kept quiet, side eyeing Leon as soon as he let the guy go and looked back at you – suddenly, his stare softened again and he sighed, rolling his eyes as if saying it was part of the job.

“Oh, I’m glad you put him in his place. Someone had to do that already.” You murmured back to him, making Leon scoff a slight, humorless laugh.

“You kinda already did back in the hospital.” Placing his knife back in the holster, Leon looked back at you. “If you need anything, call. I’ll be…”

��In the back, I know. Don’t worry.” You winked back, slightly waving your gun. “I can take care of things over here.”

That was the only serious incident. After that, father and son walked close behind you, followed by Valerie and the elderly lady and, on the back, the guy in the lab coat moping around, too scared to look back at Leon carrying the shotgun and giving you – and everyone else – cover.

You were late to the rendezvous at the State School… But all things considered, it was quite the miracle everyone got there in one piece.

“I know. But everyone is alive.” Leon marched towards the stern looking man as soon as the group was safe inside the entrance hall of the school. A few other agents holding rifles and wearing Special Ops gear wandered around – as well as some survivors of all ages and backgrounds. “Like I said they would be. No casualties.”

Rogers lifted his heavy eyebrows as he watched you and the group being welcomed by the few police officers who were brave enough to leave the NSPD and account for all the survivors left in the city. The man still had his arms crossed, but he had to recognize: what Leon just did was quite a feat.

“What about the one who helped us with the broadcast? Were you able to find each other?”

“Yeah. Y/n, right over there.” Leon pointed at you – and, as soon as you heard your name and turned around, he signaled you to come over. After exchanging a few words with Valerie, you regrouped with him. “Y/n, this is Commander Rogers, the man in charge of today’s operation.”

“You set up the broadcast and met Leon halfway through this city swarming with those creatures, no gun in hand, right?” The man asked, shaking your hand with a rather strong grip. You reciprocated in the same manner. “You have to be quite the fighter to do that.”

“Well, we do what we need to survive, sir.” You smiled slightly, taking that as a compliment.

“That we do. We’re leaving at 22h40.” And Rogers looked back at Leon, crossing his arms once more. “We’re escorting the people back to the NSPD and we’ll wait for the extraction at midnight.”

“Copy that, sir. I’ll help with the escort.”

You couldn’t help but to let out a sigh of relief – that nightmare would soon be over and you couldn’t wait to be in a safe place again.

“Hey, banana ice cream.” You heard Leon’s voice by your side, making you smile a little bit. You were taking some time to breathe by yourself in a corner of the school – still close to the survivors – while he talked with Rogers and the other agents. But, of course, Leon would check on you before you left for the NSPD. “How are you doing?”

“Better than expected, I suppose.” You sighed back, giving him some space to lean on the table you were leaning in. It probably belonged to one of the employees in charge of supervising the kids – a place now quiet and somber, that you had no wish to go any further inside. It was probably filled with corpses. “And you? Everything ok?”

“Guess we gonna ask that forever to each other tonight, huh?” He had to tease you, since that question became a staple between you two. You couldn’t hold back a small laugh. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve had worse.”

“Hmmm, I can imagine…” You murmured, having no idea how to bring up what you saw in the hospital – speaking to Valerie, she expressed her concerns about Leon having a panic attack; and even if you hadn’t known him for too long, it was something you could understand – to a certain level. “I’ve seen some pretty bad things, being a war correspondent. I mean, it’s part of the job, seeing the worst mankind has to offer… But I never thought I’d see and live through something like this.”

“Yeah, it’s fairly different from a warzone…” Leon sighed back, crossing his arms. “Both are pretty bad actually.” He risked a look at you – watching how your gaze was lost on one of the windows, looking out in the dead, quiet night. It all seemed so peaceful from that point of view. “Why do you do it?”

“What?” You snapped out of your thoughts, turning your eyes back to Leon.

“Bein’ a reporter at war. Why do you do it?” He patiently repeated the question – talking to you was the most calming thing he had that night. And, if he had you to talk to in Raccoon City, it would’ve probably been a little less harrowing of an experience. A little. “You voluntarily go to places where there’s nothing but butchering and blood. You could be doin’ anything else but this, you’re smart enough. So why this?”

“Why do you do what you do?”

That question made Leon furrow his eyebrows immediately, turning quiet for a moment.

“It’s not like I had much of a choice after Raccoon.” He answered quietly, still with that look of concern in his eyes. “I was recruited to be a Special Agent. You can’t turn down something like that.”

It was your turn to become silent. You always thought everyone who followed careers like his did it voluntarily, but there was Leon saying he didn’t have much of a choice. Be it because of his trauma, of his own will or being forced by the government to say yes because he knew too much about the Umbrella incident, you believed in his words.

“Would you have done something too different if you had had a choice?”

Once again, Leon looked back at you with that concern in his eyes. It was probably a question he never really got asked before – and probably never thought of; or avoided thinking of. But now, he had no escape and had to think about it.

“I dunno… Probably would still be a cop.” Leon turned his eyes to his feet, letting out a deep sigh. “Always wanted to help people. Ended up having to save my own skin right at the first day at work… And now, back at Raccoon again, first day as a Special Agent.”

“This is your first day on the job…?” You couldn’t believe his words, but the way Leon smiled and nodded made you trust in what he was saying. “That… Sucks. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. I’m definitely not the guy you wanna have around on your first day at work.”

“It’s bound to be terrific if you’re around.” You teased him a little bit, alleviating some of the tension with a few laughs from both of you.

“But hey, I answered you and you didn’t answer me.” Leon nudged you with his elbow, still having his arms crossed, leaning on the table by your side while you two watched the concentration of agents, policemen and survivors. “You chose a different career, and ended up reporting directly from hell. Out of everything you could choose, why this?”

“Yeah, I know it sucks in theory… And in real life too, it’s not an easy thing and you lose a lot of faith in humanity…” You sighed, now crossing your arms and turning your gaze to an empty spot on the floor. “But… I guess… Not having the option of knowing the truth is worse than having it available. You can choose to remain oblivious and ignore the truth, but it’s still there, being reported to you – you have access to it, you can search for it and learn if you want to. You have the choice. And for you to have the choice, someone has to report it.” You shrugged after a while, sighing once again. It wasn’t much of a reason why, but it was the best you could say at the moment. “I guess, that’s why. Someone’s gotta do it.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Oh, I’m terrified.” You looked back into his eyes, finding his expression of concern – a different kind now; the one Leon wore when he was worried about others. “First time I heard a gunshot close to me, my heart almost jumped out of my mouth. First time I saw a dead mangled body, I couldn’t sleep for weeks. But… You kinda get used to it. A lot of people get desensitized, and I’m probably going down that path too, but… I don’t know. It gets… Less worse with time, I guess.”

“Huh, less worse… I think I get what you mean…” Leon murmured back, now staring at the pattern on the floor as well. Both of you had your gazes lost in something else, while seeing vivid images from your memories. He could remember all the bodies he saw in Raccoon City, all the mutated experiments, all the dismembered people. Destruction everywhere, pieces of bodies everywhere, the streets reeking of blood and closed spaces smelling of entombed death. He had never seen things like that before – Leon was just a rookie cop, on his first job, thinking he would protect and serve; thrown into a warzone, with so much death, so much blood… He dreamt every night his whole body was drenched in it and he could never wash it off. “It becomes routine.”

“Yeah. Something like that…” You murmured back, shaking your head right after. “But I’ve never seen something like tonight. What scares me today is the lack of agency… These townspeople turn into animals, acting like animals, not out of free will – like people during war – but out of… Something that is turning them into these…”

Your words got caught at the tip of your tongue. You had already said that a thousand times that night, but for the first time you were having a level-headed conversation that didn’t involve fighting for survival. The words of your previous boss got in your head, chastising you for your choice of words, and, for a moment, you hesitated.

“C’mon, you can say it. Zombies.”

You and Leon shared a knowing look and couldn’t stop a quiet laugh between you both.

“Zombies.” You agreed right after, nodding slowly. “In a war, you see inhumane acts of cruelty, but you know you could never do that. You know you have morals and the people doing that have none. You know you could never get that low and must report their crimes. But today…?” You shook your head, as if to try to keep a thought away. “If one of those things get to me, I’ll turn into one of them. My mind will die, but my body will keep going, hunting like an animal, to kill and spread whatever the fuck this is. No agency. I’m no better, because my will doesn’t count. It’s not a choice. There’s no reasoning. If they bite me, if they kill me, I’m gone… And I’m one of them.”

“That’s not gonna happen.” Leon almost spoke above your last words, barely allowing you to finish – even so, you had to glance at him with a realistic look in your eyes. Few people had survived that night and, so far, you were lucky. But there was the possibility of your luck ending. You had just as much of a chance of dying to one of those things than anyone else in that room. “Hey. That’s not gonna happen. I’m gonna get you out of here. I promised you an ice cream, didn’t I?”

“That you did. You better keep that promise.” You bantered playfully in return, having a slight smile on your face. Even if Leon was saying that just for saying, you had to admit: it was efficient at calming you down and making you at least a little bit more positive about that night’s outcome. “For me and for you.”

Leon furrowed his brows for a moment, staring at you as if asking for an explanation.

“I don’t wanna leave this place alone. You’re my partner now, right…?” You risked a look at him, seeing how Leon already had a slight smile on his ever so serious lips, ready to quip back; but you had some more things to talk about. “At the hospital… I thought I lost you there for a moment.”

Leon’s eyes immediately turned somber, understanding what you were talking about. If he was going to be honest to himself, he thought he lost himself for a moment too. And that was definitely not good, given his current occupation and situation. It was his first mission after his unforgiving training… And after Raccoon City. No one ever expected the mission would be so similar to what happened to him years prior – and no one could know what kind of reaction Leon would have by being thrown in that sort of mess all over again.

With his training, he learned the best thing he could do was to keep going without thinking too much – but he never really learned what to do if his thoughts assaulted him forcefully, like it happened at the hospital.

“I’m just… Worried.” You tried, wanting to make sure he didn’t understand your words as you seeing him as a hinderance. That was the last thing that crossed your mind. “I’ve been through some pretty bad things too, you know…? And I’ve had some colleagues freeze mid-job because of… Unresolved issues.” You paused for some seconds, almost hearing the gears turning inside Leon’s head. “I… I don’t want that to happen to you.”

“What did you do…?” Leon’s question caught you off guard, making you stare at him with the same inquisitive eyes he turned at you before. “What did you do? To your colleagues who froze mid-job…?”

You flashed him a half-smile on your lips, immediately picking up the undertone in his voice – he wanted to know not only out of curiosity, but to understand where you stood in that matter. You could bet with almost entire certainty that Leon buried things inside himself because he didn’t want to look weak or to be a burden to people: his job was to be the hero, not to be the one cared about. What kind of hero needs support? What kind of hero had weaknesses?

You could almost hear his superiors saying he “couldn’t be a pussy” to survive his Special Agent training – and any kind of weakness, be it from feelings or trauma, would definitely be seen as “being a pussy”. You had seen that before.

“I carried them out of harm’s way and dragged them to our base. I’d never leave them behind.” You still had that smile on your lips, but your tone was soft and reassuring. Something in the way you spoke, made Leon’s shoulders lose a little tension and the expression in his face soften. “We’re human. Everyone breaks, one way or another. We just need people around us to lean on when our knees falter. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Nothing wrong with that…” Leon murmured more to himself than anything else, turning his gaze back to the spot on the floor you were once staring. He had many things to think about – but that was not the time nor the place to do so. “Did it ever happen to you?”

“Yeah, couple of times. Panic attacks suck.” You sighed, turning your gaze outside. It wasn’t something you were too comfortable talking about, but it was the very first time Leon heard it from someone else – and could share it. He needed it, and you wouldn’t deny that kind of help. You once stood in his shoes as well. “There are a few situations that trigger me still, though I kinda have it under control most of the time. It’s always good to have someone else around to help. If I don’t, though, I can only swallow it up and keep going – only to let all that tension go a few days later when I’m safe. Guess it happens to everyone with our kind of… Situation.”

“Huh. Guess so…” He nodded slowly, still going over your words. “I…” And Leon turned silent for a moment. You wouldn’t force him to say anything: if he wanted to stop talking, you would stay there in silence. He had to go at his own pace – but he had to move somewhere, or he would forever be stuck with that inside of him. “I still think about Raccoon sometimes. I still see some things… Some people… The blood. It’s still there, somewhere.” The way he spoke, it was as if Raccoon City was still alive. “It’s all happening. I don’t… Want to think about it. I don’t. But sometimes… It comes back. Even if I don’t want to.”

“Like a drop kick to your chest…?” You tried and he immediately turned his eyes towards you, but this time sporting a knowing smile on his lips. For the very first time, Leon was talking with someone who understood, even if you weren’t there in Raccoon City that night. He thought he would never meet someone who hadn’t lived through it who would understand. “And then you can’t breathe properly…”

“Your hands start shaking and you feel like you’re going to throw up.” He completed your thoughts, with you nodding enthusiastically in return. Something else stirred in his chest, though, something different. Like the joy of finally being seen by someone you admire in a crowd full of indifferent people – of not having to pretend all the time. “It fucking sucks.”

“Oh, it does. Been there.” As you agreed, you both let out quick laughs of complicity. You were also never so open about that before – but for the first time, sharing your experience might have a good outcome; and you were glad you took that leap of faith, with Leon there to catch you and not allow you to fall on the fields of self-consciousness from oversharing. “But we don’t have to go through that alone tonight.”

“Hmmm. Guess we don’t…” Leon shook his head, allowing himself to take a deep breath. For the first time in years, he had this weird – and alleviating – sensation that a weight had lifted from his shoulders. His grayish sea eyes turned back to you, now a little less worried than before. “Partner.”

“I’m gonna tell the President that’s my role now, he better accept me on the ranks.” Your serious answer made him immediately laugh – probably the first genuine laugh you ever heard from him. “Codename banana ice cream reporting for duty to work with codename choco chip, that’s how it’s gonna be.”

“Oh, he’s gonna accept it in no time.” Leon bantered back, enjoying how absurd it all sounded. A few jokes were always good to lift the spirits – but he wouldn’t lie: having you around would be a welcome thing, if that ever happened. Maybe you’d get recruited just like he was, after you escaped New Setosa. “But hey, at the hospital… You had something goin’ on your mind too, when we were leavin’. Whatever it is, you can tell me. You don’t need to go bananas on your own.”

“Oh, that was horrible…” You shook your head after hearing his dad joke, but the smile on your lips gave away it was exactly the kind of humor you needed that day. Leon smiled back a little bit, but still carried worry in his eyes. “Yeah, well… You shared your worries with me, it’s only fair that I do the same, right…?”

“Right.” Given how tentatively your question was, Leon immediately answered you in the firmest manner he could. He wouldn’t let you run away.

“Hmmm… Maybe you can help me out a bit with this…” You sighed, looking down at your feet. For some reason, you couldn’t stand looking into his eyes when thinking about the things that crossed your mind at the hospital – like you said before, in times of war, you knew your morals wouldn’t allow you to commit atrocities. But you were living times of survival – and, sometimes, morals had to be abandoned in order to save yourself. You hated that. “That hospital is really big. It’s for the whole city and it’s very well equipped. A lot of people stay there for days, weeks, or even months…” You took a deep breath, closing your eyes. “I doubt there are only a handful of survivors in that place. If we went in deeper, I bet we would find so many others… So many people that survived so far only to be entombed in that place of death and sickness to slowly perish. It’s horrible. I…” You opened your eyes again, finally looking back at him – with a contrary resolve of someone who has been told by a higher power they cannot do the right thing. “I wanted to go in, to help them. We were there, we were so close. As far as we know, we could’ve passed by so many people and not even realize it. I didn’t want to leave them behind, but… If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have saved the ones who are here with us now, right…? I don’t know, I…”

But you sighed again, looking back at the lost spot on the floor, shaking your head. You had already said a lot and there was nothing you could string coherently into words anymore – there were only a storm of feelings stirring in your heart and that you couldn’t give him. You could only try to explain.

Leon also lowered his head. He knew exactly what you were talking about. You two cared – and, during his training as a Special Agent, he would be scolded exactly because he “cared too much”. To someone in his line of work, caring too much was a weakness: you had to do what you were ordered to do – and what you could do. And that meant, sometimes, working out the odds and literally choosing who would live and who would die. Leon despised that, which made Rogers have a few doubts in his heart about the rookie: in Leon’s book, everyone survived. No sacrifices. No choices.

“You want to save everyone.” He finally finished your thought for you, saying the words you thought you would be too ridiculous when saying out loud. A ‘hero complex’ as most people would say – but he preferred to think of it as a survivor thing. “You have the chance to save yourself, you have the resources, you have the strength and the will. Why can’t you extend that to the people who need it? Sometimes, all they need is a helping hand to save their asses too.” He looked back at you and you could see not only his characteristic bleeding compassion, but also a tad of… Emptiness. “You can help. So why wouldn’t you? Who are you to choose who lives and who dies? Who are you to choose who deserves it or not…?”

You nodded in agreement while your heart lost weight inside your chest. People always used to say that was one of your weaknesses, how much you cared. But seeing Leon that night, watching him work and help so many people… You could barely call it a weakness.

“I had many times in my life that I only needed someone to give me a helping hand.” You shook your head, but agreed with every word he said. Maybe, that’s how he felt when you understood his problem – and now, it was your turn to be seen. “And I know how it feels like when no one helps. How harrowing. How desolating. It makes you want to give up everything – and I bet there are many people in that hospital thinking the same thing. I…” And you sighed, crossing your arms. “I don’t want to be indifferent. I don’t want to make that choice. The choice to close my eyes and ignore everyone else suffering around me just because I’m safe and comfortable. I want to go there where they are and bring them to safety with me… That’s what they deserve. That’s what everyone deserves.”

“Hmmm… I know the feeling…” Leon’s answer was a murmur, but it wasn’t a lie. He knew exactly how it felt – how disgusting it was to only save his own skin when he could try to save someone else too. He wasn’t better than anyone else – and, apparently, that was the same thought that haunted you when you were leaving the hospital that night. “It’s something you gotta learn to deal with… The guilt, it’ll always be there. At some point, the screams will turn quieter and stop, even if your heart feels heavy. And that’s why we have to know what we can do, what’s within our reach.” Leon looked at you, making you reciprocate his stare. Even if his eyes could be cold and empty, at that moment, they had his quiet empathy as well. “You said it yourself. We’re human. There’s only so much we can do. We have to understand those limitations and make sure we did the very best with all we had at the moment. That’s how I learned to deal with it.”

“Hmmm…” You ruminated those words for a couple of seconds, barely noticing a commotion forming in front of you. A new, very small, group of survivors had just arrived – and a man tried to talk with as many policemen and agents as possible, trying to find the one in charge. “Guess we are doomed to be haunted by our humanity, you and me…”

“Hmmm. You can put it that way too.” Leon considered, crossing his arms, but looking less pensive than you. “It’s a lot more poetic.”

“I do have a weak spot for poetry.” You answered in a matter-of-fact tone, after a sigh. Thinking too much about everything he said at that very moment wouldn’t be the best of things – you had too much to do and too much to survive. You needed to focus on that – you could spend time with philosophy later, in a chopper back to safety. “Oh, salty sea, so much of whose salt is Portugal tears!”**

Leon furrowed his brows, but had a slight smile on his lips. He had never heard that before – not that he was well versed in poems, but that one was completely unknown to him – and he would have asked you to go on your declamation, but the commotion was now fully formed. The man spoke loudly, being held by a couple of agents, trying to speak to anyone who would listen.

“You are going to get them all killed! Killed!” His words would’ve been considered furious if his eyes didn’t carry so much desperation. “Their blood will be in your hands! You have to do something!”

You and Leon glanced at each other, finally leaving your small pause. It was a miracle, even, that you had so much time to rest and talk – and a much needed one, if any of you had to say so. Now, it was time to go back to work.

“Sir… Please, sir. Calm down.” As Leon approached, he tried to get the man to stop fighting with the agents. They glanced at Leon as he quickly nodded. “I’ll talk to him. You can let him go.”

“What happened, sir?” You mirrored Leon’s way of speaking: it was probably the best way to get the man to stop fighting and talk to you. “You can explain to us.”

“Well, that’s already a lot better than those brutes! There’s no reasoning with the likes of you!” He pointed at Leon, fixing the pair of glasses on his face and trying to comb his hair back with his fingers.

“He’s… Different.” You only realized you were saying something mid-answer, to which you made yourself stop as soon as you noticed you’d have to say something about Leon. The man in question only looked back at you with a question in his eyes – which you decided to ignore. “He’s not a brute. Well, not only.” And it started going downhill quickly, with Leon crossing his arms and just watching it all unfold in front of him. You had better stop before you said something you would regret later. “He has a good heart. You can talk to us.”

But you couldn’t have stopped, could you? Leon had a shadow of a smile on his lips while you just decided to completely ignore him and pay attention to the man as if it was all on purpose and you weren’t feeling self-conscious for your attempt at calming the man enough so he would talk to both of you – and not just curse Leon and “his type”.

“They won’t listen.” The man huffed, resting his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “I’m a doctor at the hospital, one of the very few who survived. I came here with a couple other ones who managed to barricade inside a room with me until we heard the broadcast on Channel 8.” With those words, you and Leon exchanged a look that could only be defined by pride and excitement. To think your plan worked, that made all the horror you had already lived through that night worth it. “We were deeper into the hospital. That place… It’s…” The man shook his head once more, apparently holding back some tears. He took a deep breath and looked back at you with resolve in his eyes. “As we were trying to leave, we found a body, another doctor… A colleague, a friend… Pediatrician. He was slaughtered on the floor, but he managed to write a message on the wall with his own blood before dying… ‘There are children inside’. Those were the words.”

And those words fell between you like led – being accompanied by dead silence. Neither you nor Leon could say something at that moment: your suspicions were correct, and a lot worse than you had expected. So far, you could see only a few children with their parents – either one or two, but there weren’t many of them. It was very unlikely for a child to survive, but a group of them…? You never saw it coming.

“Did you see them? Where are they?” Leon’s questions came right after the initial shock. The man started shaking his head frantically.

“We tried to get to the pediatric wing, but it’s far into the hospital…” He sighed, fixing the glasses on his face once more. “This doctor, we searched his pockets. He had a note inside, here… Lemme find it…” The man searched all of his own pockets, only to find a note stained in blood and hand it over to you and Leon. “It tells a little more how they were able to save as many children as they could and lock themselves somewhere safe. They won’t be able to leave there on their own. They need help. They need a rescue team.”

Leon had the note in his hands, but you read it together – silently, somberly, hating yourselves for being right about having more survivors in the hospital.

To anyone reading this,

I’m Dr. Howard, from the Pediatric Wing at the Arklay Hill Hospital. With the virus spreading fast, me and Dr. Willows quarantined as many uninfected children as possible in the X-ray room. It has good protection and we grabbed some food and water along the way, before locking the door and barricading it. We have eight children with us – most of them sick or injured – but all of them are free from the virus that has spread through the hospital.

We hoped to be rescued, but so far, no one came. We are suspecting they have considered everyone in the hospital to be dead – but that is far from the truth. We need help – we need to save those children. Upon talking to Dr. Willows, we decided one of us should try to leave and find help.

I volunteered – Dr. Willows has hurt her ankle when we were quickly helping the children we could, so I’m the best choice. I will do my best to find help, to have them rescued. All our efforts won’t be in vain.

But… If I can’t. If I die before I can find someone, I hope this note gets in the hands of someone capable to help. I beg you: these are sweet, scared children, locked in a room with another doctor who is doing everything in her power to keep them alive. We have to help them. They cannot die there, not after… Everything we done. We have to try. I have to try.

Please. They are in the X-ray room, Pediatric Wing, Arklay Hill Hospital. I have attached a hospital map to this note, it’s the place circled in blue. I know it won’t be easy, but please… They are alive. Please, save them.

As a final note: we have been hearing loud steps outside the room. It has been difficult to get the children not to scream, they are very scared, but they learned to control their fear and stay quiet. It isn’t something like the people who die and come back to life affected by the virus – those are slow, usually dragging their feet and body, groaning or screaming like animals – these steps are different. They are heavier, faster, paced… Sentient. I cannot think of someone who would be able to survive and walk around those creatures so peacefully, so I can only think it's one of the… Other atrocities. It’s roaming the deeper areas of the hospital, and it eventually goes back to the Pediatric Wing. Whoever comes to the rescue, be warned. And be careful.

The man looked at you and Leon with expectation – his heavy breath and sweat almost blurring his glasses. As you finished reading the note, your gaze met Leon’s grayish sea eyes.

“We cannot leave them.”

Something inside Leon knew you would say those words – and at the same time he had a surge of pride when seeing your eyes filled with certainty as you spoke, he also had dread stirring in his stomach; for he knew quite well you wouldn’t let him go alone.

“We won’t.”

And you almost smiled back as Leon’s answer had as much conviction to its words as yours.

You both just had to go through Commander Rogers first.

**Portuguese Sea, Fernando Pessoa

8 notes · View notes

jisforjudi2 · 20 days ago

Text

Perry Mason and The Case of the Wildly Successful, Perpetually Restless

Erle Stanley Gardner had an idea for a lawyer who liked to brawl on behalf of the little guy. 170 million copies later, he had an icon.

June 28, 2020 by Lee Randall

Though I grew up watching Perry Mason on television, I didn’t crack the spine of my first Erle Stanley Gardner novel—The Case of the Rolling Bones (1939)—until two years ago. When I did, what a coup de foudre. On the page, Perry Mason is a sexy, sassy smarty-pants, the strong silent type. His mind careens at a thousand miles an hour, propelled by endless pacing. He’s a heroic crusader who wouldn’t seem out of place pulling up a chair at King Arthur’s round table.

A typical Perry Mason novel moves like a cataract forced through a crazy straw. Gardner never claimed to be a brilliant stylist, calling himself a “Fiction Factory.” He said, “I want to establish a style of swift motion. . . . characters who . . . sprint the whole darned way to the goal line.” That pace echoed his early years as a lawyer, when, he reported, he’d try “to keep the case moving with such bewildering rapidity that it would be hard for the prosecutor or the judge to keep abreast of the various legal problems.”

His format is comfortingly familiar: someone (often a damsel in distress) arrives in Mason’s office with an improbable story, begging for help. Mason, the ultimate curious cat, a man constitutionally allergic to boredom, takes the case.

In The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937), Mason outlines his credo: “I’m not merely a paid gladiator fighting for those who have the funds with which to employ me. I’m a fighter, yes, and I like to feel that I fight for those who aren’t able to fight for themselves, but I don’t offer my services indiscriminately. I fight to aid justice.”

No matter what he’s hired to do (keep a rich old man out of an asylum, defend a woman falsely accused of soliciting, settle an inheritance claim, locate a missing relative), before long there’s a murder, and the true mission emerges: fight for truth and justice on behalf of his wrongly accused client.

Gardner’s pact with readers promised that Mason’s clients, whatever else they’ve done, would always be innocent of murder. That way, when the lawyer plays things fast and loose, we can revel in every wild scheme without troubling our consciences one little bit. He explained, “I write to make money, and I write to give the reader sheer fun. People derive moral satisfaction from reading a story in which the innocent victim of fate triumphs over evil. They enjoy the stimulation of an exciting detective story. Most readers are beset with a lot of problems they can’t solve. When they try to relax, their minds keep gnawing over these problems and there is no solution. They pick up a mystery story, become completely absorbed in the problem, see the problem worked out to final and just conclusion, turn out the light and go to sleep.”

Mason is as much detective as lawyer, but typically the payoff is a courtroom showdown that sees Mason clear his client’s name and pull a “J’accuse!” with the guilty party. These justifiably famous showdowns are rich in legal detail, offering an education in American law of the era. Legend has it that Gardner, whose fan base boasted numerous judges and lawyers, only made one mistake in his prolific career, when he allowed the beneficiary of a will to witness it as well.

The Man Behind the Factory

When he died, in 1970, Erle Stanley Gardner was the best-selling American fiction author of the century. He wrote 100,000 words a month for some fifty years. His New York Times obituary cited sales of more than 170 million books in the US alone, and reported his paperback publisher saying that in the mid 1960s they sold 2,000 Gardner books an hour, eight hours a day, 365 days a year.

From the 1920s on, Gardner produced an avalanche of pulp stories, novellas, cowboy yarns, science fiction, travelogues and several mystery series, on top of the 80 Perry Mason novels that cemented his fame and fortune, and won him fans such as Einstein (reported to be reading a Perry Mason novel on his deathbed), Harry S. Truman, and Pope John XXIII.

Oh, and in 1949, Evelyn Waugh told interviewers that Gardner was America’s best writer. People dismissed this as a joke. It wasn’t. Writing to Gardner in 1960, Waugh called himself “one of the keenest admirers of your work.” People still scoffed, yet when it was put to his widow, Laura, she confirmed that Evelyn had read every book, and pressed them on the entire family.

From left to right: Raymond Barr, Barbara Hale, Erle Stanley Gardner, William Hopper.

Gardner was born in Massachusetts in 1889, and raised in California. He and his father often hit out for the open road, a habit that endured throughout his life: Gardner was happiest outdoors, alone, communing with nature.

According to Francis Nevins, in Samurai at Law: Erle Stanley Gardner (shared with me by the author), as a kid Gardner earned money boxing in unlicensed matches. “His interest in the law seems to have grown out of hunting for loopholes in the California statutes that made prizefighting illegal. After completing high school in 1909 he was admitted to Valparaiso University in Indiana but was soon expelled for slugging a professor.”

In Oxnard, California, he worked in law offices and studied, and in 1911, passed the state bar exam—without ever attending university or law school. Nevins writes, “Over the next twenty years he discovered that litigation was a form of combat at which he could excel, and he earned a reputation as one of the state’s most flamboyant trial lawyers.”

He often championed underdogs. One legendary tale concerns twenty Chinese men accused of running an illegal lottery. Gardner quietly had the men switch places at their various businesses. When the police arrived to book them, the men were naturally misidentified. At the trial Gardner pointed out this discrepancy, insisting that if the cops couldn’t tell their suspects apart, the eye-witnesses must be equally unreliable. The case was dismissed.

Another time he sprang a client on a technicality. Certain he’d be re-arrested, Gardner sent the man to the next county, swore a citizen’s complaint against him, and had him plead guilty to violating state gambling laws. A small fine was paid, and that was that. Back in Oxnard, the city attorney did re-arrest the man—prompting Gardner to flourish court records and argue, successfully, that his client could not be tried twice for the same offense.

Later still, Gardner founded The Court of Last Resort, dedicated to seeking justice for those who were falsely imprisoned.

There’s an argument that author and character eventually merged. They sure sound alike. In The Case of the Stuttering Bishop Mason says: “I hate routine. I hate details. I like the thrill of matching my wits with crooks. I like to have people lie to me and catch them in their lies. I love to listen to people talk and wonder how much of it is true and how much of it is false. I want life, action, shifting conditions. I like to fit facts together, bit by bit, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.”

The men shared a restless sense of adventure, idealism, and a passion for justice. Mason paces back and forth to spark his brain, when composing, Gardner planted himself in a rocking chair, teetered it across the carpet, then went back across the room to set off again.

Interesting, then, that Gardner, who had creative control of the television series, clapped eyes on Canadian actor Raymond Burr—there auditioning for the role of DA Hamilton Burger—and said, “That’s him, that’s Perry Mason!”

Prolific and Punchy

Gardner would put in a full day’s legal work, then around 10pm, start writing, working until 1 or 2am. He slept about three hours a night, and wrote for a couple of hours before heading to the office. Gardner admits his early output wasn’t great, but he built up a head of steam, becoming a regular contributor to pulp magazines such as Black Mask and Top Notch.

In the early 1930s he contacted William Morrow and Company about a series featuring a lawyer: “I want to make my hero a fighter, not by having him be ruthless with women and underlings, but by having him wade into the opposition and battle his way through to victory. . . . the character I am trying to create for him is that of a fighter who is possessed of infinite patience. He tries to jockey his enemies into a position where he can deliver one good knockout punch.”

The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933) introduced Mason, PI Paul Drake, and Della Street. They were slightly different in those early books, Perry and Della were loucher. Mason was quick with his fists, more interested in his fee than anything else. Considering those early books were written at the height of the Depression, this isn’t too surprising.

Gardner’s ambition was to publish in magazines with good reputations and deep pockets. When editors at The Saturday Evening Post, who found Mason “tawdry,” asked him to knock off the rough edges, he was happy to comply, working closely with them on The Case of the Lame Canary (1937). They paid a whacking $15,000 for the serialization.

Nevins writes, “Before long, Mason was a fixture in the Post, and the magazine bought and published Perry Mason serials until the early 1960s. Hollywood studios purchased rights to various novels, and seven uneven Perry Mason movies were produced. A highly successful Perry Mason radio drama broadcast for almost ten years. And of course the Perry Mason television series of the late 1950s and early 1960s starring Raymond Burr attracted millions of weekly viewers. By mid-century Perry Mason was one of the most successful pop cultural figures in American history.”

What Does This Have To Do With Chivalry?

As I sped my way through The Case of the Rolling Bones, and the next story, and the next, gobbling them like popcorn, I questioned why I found Mason compelling. Then I found a piece in The Washington Examiner, likening the Mason novels to “classic romance literature: knightly tales of quests and noble deeds.” But of course! Central to these novels is the idea of loyalty—Mason’s loyalty to clients and to the truth; Drake and Street’s loyalty to Mason. Such loyalty is integral to the code of King Arthur’s round table, and the Three Musketeers’, whose motto is “All for one and one for all.”

Perry Mason—incorruptible, clever, dedicated, dogged—slots nicely into the Arthurian mould. His “grail quest” is the pursuit of justice on behalf of innocents unable to defend themselves; his jousting field is a courtroom. He is never unseated.

Surely everyone wants a knight in shining armor on their side. Consider this article about choosing the right lawyer, by Beverley Lewis, proposing that the seven knightly virtues form a lawyer’s “code of chivalry.” Those virtues are courage, justice, mercy, generosity, faith, hope, and nobility.

Let’s Not Forget Courtly Love

Then there is the case of Perry Mason and the women.

I approached Gardner with trepidation, knowing he wrote from the 1930s onward, and began with pulp fiction. I prepared myself for sexist, misogynistic depictions of women. How wonderful to be wrong! The books empathize with women, especially working women. Gardner’s descriptions are fairly basic, but he gives equal time to male and female attributes, and female motivations and ambitions carry equal weight as men’s.

And while Paul Drake and his operatives are an essential weapon in Mason’s arsenal, Della Street is unmistakably the most important person in his life. On the first page of The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933), our introduction to all that will follow, she warns Perry there’s a woman in the outer office saying she’s Mrs Eva Griffin, but “She looks phoney to me.”

Lee Randall is an Edinburgh based writer, interviewer and festival programmer. You can find her on Twitter as @Randallwrited

Mason doesn’t dismiss her intuition, or reprimand her for speaking her mind. He listens. The message is clear: he depends on and values this woman, whose “keenly appreciative eyes [see] far below the surface.”

The inspiration for Della Street came from Gardner’s life. In 1912, he eloped with a secretary, Natalie Talbert, who worked in the same law office. They had a daughter. Marriage to a man who worked all day and wrote all night couldn’t have been easy. On top of that he craved the open air, buying a succession of motor homes which he’d park in remote spots in order to hole up and write. Later, he bought land, establishing a series of boltholes.

Around 1930, Gardner hired three sisters as his secretaries, Jean, Ruth, and Peggy, and, much later, in 1963, a researcher called Betty Burke. Gardner said Della was a composite of these sisters, though after his death, his daughter laid claim to her mother’s strong, early influence, pointing out that she’d been a legal secretary when the couple met.

By the 1930s the Gardners lived apart, and around 1933 he gave up law to write full time. He and his fleet of secretaries would head into the desert for weeks at a time, while he composed his books. He took all or some of the team on his peregrinations around the US, and overseas, as well.

Betty Burke would later say, “Erle trained Jean to keep track of everything. She was always with him. But it was like a father-daughter relationship. Everybody tried to make a big romance out of it, which always bored the daylights out of me. Because Erle Stanley Gardner wasn’t running around romancing anyone. He was a jolly, huggable old man who loved to talk. But he was also very businesslike. And no one bothered him when he was working. We all knew that.”

Be that as it may—or may not—though he never divorced Natalie, and by all accounts, they remained amicable, in 1968, after his wife died, Gardner married Jean.

As for Perry and Della, they’re on intimate terms—forever dining out and dancing, and even visiting Hawaii together—but sex is never spelled out. At the end of The Case of the Velvet Claws Perry kisses Della, but I’ve yet to come across another such moment in my reading. The reality is a lot sexier, an endless series of smoldering looks, crushing hugs, shoulder rubs, hands held, and the like.

This united-yet-apart model mirrors the tradition of courtly love, which supposes forbidden yet adamantine love between a knight and his lady. Perry proposes to Della several times, and Street always deflects the suggestion.

In The Case of the Rolling Bones, time spent in a suspect’s cosy apartment makes the lawyer sentimental:

“Perry Mason’s hand unconsciously sought Della Street’s, gently imprisoned the fingers. ‘Gosh, Della. . . it almost seems as if this place had been made for us.’

She moved her other hand to stroke the back of his well-shaped strong fingers gently, ‘Nix on it, Chief,’ she said gently. ‘You could no more live a domestic life than you could fly. You’re a free-lance, happy-go-lucky, carefree, two-fisted fighter. You might like home for about two weeks and then it would bore you stiff. At the end of four months you would feel it was prison.’

‘Well,’ Mason said, ‘this is part of the first two weeks.'”

In The Case of the Lame Canary, she refuses him by saying, “We’re getting along swell the way it is. You’d establish me in a home somewhere as your wife. Then you’d get a secretary to help you with your work. The first thing you knew, you’d be sharing excitement and experiences with the secretary and I’d be entirely out of your life. No, Mr. Perry Mason, you aren’t the marrying kind. You live at too high a speed. You’re too wrapped up in mysteries.”

That sounds a lot like the Erle-Natalie-Jean triangle to me.

Let’s face it, Will They/Won’t They tension is infinitely sexier than a depiction of marriage. It’s the reason why most fairy tales and movies end when the hero gets the girl. Gardner had this in mind when he said, “How little you know of human nature. Those who want Della to sleep with her boss are those who are afraid she isn’t, and those who think she shouldn’t are the ones who are certain she is.” More bluntly, he said, “If [Perry] married Della, he would lose his sex appeal.”

Perry Mason is a Twentieth Century update of the “parfit gentil knight.” He has no family and no history. He just is.

I can’t get enough of him.

-----

8 notes · View notes

philsdrivinglicence · 6 months ago

Text

Killing the white supremacist inside you. Easy mode. From one whitey to another.

Disclaimer: I am not an academic or an expert. Just a white person who's life was changed for the radically better during the BLM protests of 2020 who wants to share what worked for them.

Below is a non-comprehensive list of first steps you can take to begin the hard work of unpicking the layers upon layers of white supremacist bullshit baked into you from birth by the culture we live in (even if you grew up progressive or in a big city you are not exempt from this).

I made this list because POC in the phandom have been doing a lot of heavy lifting the past few days. I figured the least I could do is share what worked for me to understand what racism is and how its more subtle forms can manifest.

I hope we can all use the below as a starting point to help make the phandom a less racist and more welcoming place.

(btw I do think we are generally more self ware than many fandoms but as we are a mostly white space we have to keep ourselves accountable as white supremacy is an insidious bastard that will catch you unawares if you let it.)

So. Without further ado.

- read this article

- Read "Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race" by Reni Eddo Lodge (how you choose to source this book I will not judge but consider supporting a local book store)

- Stop being so afraid of being called racist. - Hopefully, if you are engaging in good faith then you already accept that racism is baked into our society. Racist is not a dogwhistle for "evil person". It is a descriptor of very specific behavior that we can all fall into if we don't keep ourselves sharp. So part 2 of this step is -

- Look back on your life and identify a time when you have participated in racism. My go to example is my 14 year old "never met a black person in real life" self, yelling along to N****s in Paris (uncensored, duh) at a house party with a bunch of other white 14 year olds. If you're getting really introspective you'll probably have multiple of these such moments. Sit with them, feel the cringe, think about what you might say to that version of yourself now, how you might have acted differently had you been aware the behavior was problematic. And then forgive yourself. Self flagellation does nothing good, the thing to do now is learn and progress. But you can't know what to change/avoid if you don't have examples to work off of. (This one is lowkey hard mode but worth doing early on so you can see your own progress over time. Also, if the examples you are thinking of were directly harmful you may also want to consider making amends in some way).

- Look at your playlists/album collection. If you don't see many/any POC musicians make a conscious effort to change that. Seek out interviews with your favourite artists and see which black artists have influenced them. Add them to your rotation.

- Do this with youtubers, authors, actors, screenwriters etc, etc. In all forms or art and entertainment, look at what you consume and if you find it overerall skewing white, make an effort to fill it with colour.

(Kill the voice inside you that says "I just prefer - blank-", or "the stuff they make just isn't for me, I prefer stuff I can relate to". This is the white supremacy talking, POC are not a monolith, look harder, you will find artists you connect with)

- Every time a POC points something out to you that seems off to them (I often refer to this as "this doesn't pass the sniff test") before jumping in to defend your fave/point of view/TV show etc. really sit with what they have said and try to consider why what they are pointing out, while not a big deal to you, could be a big deal to them.

Like I said up top, this is a non comprehensive list and is only intended as a starting point.

I usually wouldn't post something like this as I prefer to stay out of discourse but the conversation going on this past few days has really disappointed me. So many people are being dismissive toward POC fans and completely missing the points they are trying to make. So here's my two cents. Hope it's helpful.

#not even touching dnp's own past racism here #thats a topic i definetly have THOUGHTS on but at the end of the day anything i have to say has been said better by POC fans #plus I'm still here and giving them my money so clearly I've made my peace with it on some level #but yeah #not trying to be preachy but i think we could all do with being a little more intentional around how we approach conversations about race #dnp #dan and phil #yapping #as i said in the tags of another post the other day #dnp are entertainers who we do not know and cannot speak for #but we can set expectations as a fandom and create a culture that encourages anti-racism #we have seen how in touch dnp are #lets show them what matters to us #phan #phandom

14 notes · View notes

siryouarebeingmocked · 4 days ago

Text

Jack Reacher: The Secret (is that little bro fell off)

The Jack Reacher thriller series was created by Lee Child. It's very popular. Like a lot of authors, he handed it off to someone else; his brother Andrew.

And maybe it's the placebo effect, but I've noticed a drop in quality. Full spoilers for various books.

A previous book revolved around a Russian misinformation operation on American soil, and ransomware. Came out 2020.

The Secret is from 2023, and set in 1992, when Reacher was still an Army MP. It involves a series of murders connected to an American weapons development programed outsourced to the third-world.

Which killed a lot of people, but it was covered up.

The killers are a pair of sister trying to find the people responsible. By killing and interrogating them. Not in that order. They're very good at infiltrating, beating up, and killing people.

They're supposed to be an evil version of Reacher, who is bad at infiltration but is good at hurting people. And, of course, all three are smart investigators.

There's one fight scene where one of the girls goes for a target and runs into multiple male guards. Who mostly lemming train directly into her fists and/or feet. In fact, it heads straight into narm. She drops two guys before one tries to shoot her or really defend himself, and only the fourth, the team leader, stays out of fist range.

You know, basic tactics that any bodyguard, cop, or trained operative should probably know.

Plus, common sense.

While she's busy beating them up, she has enough spare brain cells to think about the situation and come up with a plan. Which she executes on the last guy.

She surrenders, he has some generic sneers about teasing his men for being beaten by a girl, safety-cuffs her, offers a generic sexual threat, and she comes up with an story that sends the surveillance team outside away.

Then she drops the team lead, and sneers at him and his men for underestimating a woman.

This is a running theme.

I think it would've been better if the lead was actually concerned about his men. Make him a little less of a speed bump. You could even leave in the sexism.

The irony is, Reacher usually sticks to highly practical moves. Our girl does go for things like throat strikes, but also a high kick. Which is, I've read, rather impractical.

I certainly don’t have the flexibility to check. Even on a dummy. I may never have had it.

And frankly, it's perfectly reasonable to assume someone who is cuffed is not much of a threat.

For contrast, Reacher's next scene? He beats up four generic mooks between him and a source. He's done this several times in the series, but this time it seems pretty short and token.

I assume they wanted to keep it moving, because of pacing.

This is a series that has had a lot of capable and well-developed female characters. So this seems like an odd theme to include at this point. And it turns out the real villain of the piece is Secretary of Defense.

No, wait, it's actually his wife.

Who people underestimate and overlook.

Including the two killers.

Which kills them.

Oh look, irony.

The girls aren't really complex. Basically, they're Black Widow. A pair of generic foreign female infiltrators and CQC experts. Even their quest to get revenge for their father doesn't really matter, because we don't see any other evidence of their bond with him.

I think the most we get is some verbal discussion near the climax. Telling, nto showing.

And it's not like they care about the hundreds of other people who were killed and covered up. Just their dad.

So no "Pet the Dog" moments.

Now, I'm aware that popular fiction is often Topical™. That doesn't make it bad. EG Die Hard; western terrorists, environmentalism, and Japanese business were all topical.

A previous Lee book during Reacher's MP days revolved around a closeted gay couple. Lee also wrote a 2016 book about European Neo-Nazis, and the very second book was about a far-right militia. And they were pretty good.

I get the impression Lee leans left-wing, but so what?

It just feels like Andrew is a lot less subtle about this.

And that's coming from someone who's enjoyed books by a literal socialist.

#jack reacher #reacher #diversity #feminism #personal #books #writing

5 notes · View notes

religion-is-a-mental-illness · 11 days ago

Text

By: Jake Mackey

Published: Aug 2023

“Live not by lies.” —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A “virtuous lie” is a false, misleading, or highly contestable claim that is promulgated without qualification as flatly true in order to serve a purportedly emancipatory end, despite the fact that evidence of its falsehood, deceptiveness, or contestability is readily available. We live by these lies. They underlie a great many communications in the media, in academic journals, in government, and at elite educational institutions like my college.

For example, a recent announcement for a talk read: “In this lecture, [the guest] asks, what can we do about unkindness? How can [we] grapple with this messy, borderless concept, which has influenced so much of our post-1492 era?” The announcement does not so much assert as simply presuppose, and ask readers to accept, that “unkindness” is a distinctive characteristic of the post-Columbian world. Readers are invited to draw the inference that “unkindness” had less “influence” in the world before Europeans arrived in the Americas. Like much of the messaging on elite campuses, this one implies that the West in general and perhaps the United States in particular are uniquely culpable in history’s evils.

Another example: I attended a talk by a prominent author, a journalist, at a super-elite private high school. He took pains to paint North American slavery in the most gruesome of colors, as well one might for the edification of young people, who are inevitably ignorant of its true toll. In so doing, however, he told two virtuous lies: first, that slave-farmed cotton drove the expansion of the antebellum U.S. economy and, second, that increases in cotton productivity resulted from increases in the torture of enslaved people.

These two claims, both of which come straight out of the “New History of Capitalism” and, via Matthew Desmond’s contribution, are central to the 1619 Project, have been debunked.1 And yet these lies are virtuous. North American slavery was a moral abyss. One can never overstate its horror or overdo one’s condemnation of it . . . even if one lies. The lies of the “New History of Capitalism” are virtuous, serving purportedly noble goals, such as reparations, as the speaker took care to make explicit in his talk.

A third example: on May 21, 2020, as if to foreshadow the murder of George Floyd that was to come four days later, Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at both UCLA and Columbia and coiner of the concept of intersectionality, wrote in the New Republic that anti-black police and vigilante violence represented “modern embodiments of racial terror dating back to . . . the reign of white impunity rooted in slavery and Jim Crow” and opined that such violence was part of a pattern that amounts to “a kind of genocide.”2 In a similar vein, star attorney Ben Crump titled his 2019 book Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People. Chapter two is titled “Police Don’t Shoot White Men in the Back.” Note that this was the tone of the discourse before George Floyd.

What we see in this catastrophizing rhetoric about genocide is the product of the virtuous lie that black people, and black men in particular, are being murdered by racist police with wild abandon. As Derecka Purnell put it in the Guardian: “We know how we die—the police.”3 This perception is the result of a virtuous lie. The lie promotes a distorted view of reality. It is a well-meaning distortion but a distortion nonetheless, designed to bring attention to the cause, worthy in itself, of police brutality against black people.

The reality, of course, easily accessible to all online, is that while there are indeed disturbing anti-black disparities in the police use of nonlethal force,4 there do not appear to be racial differences in the way police deploy lethal force. In other words, police are, overall, no more disposed to kill a black person than a white person. This basic finding has been discovered and rediscovered again,5 and again,6 and again,7 and again,8 and again,9 and again,10 and again.11 And yet so taboo is this finding, and so sacred is the lie, that people have been fired for noting the former in order to correct the latter. Such was the fate of Zac Kriegman, a director of data science at the news and information company Thomson Reuters. When he pointed out that Black Lives Matter, whatever the organization’s salutary contributions to our political life, was promoting a virtuous lie,12 he was fired.13

Indeed, Kriegman was not the only casualty of the virtuous lie that lethal police violence specifically targets black people. In 2019, a paper was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that found “no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings.”14 Due to an unusual set of circumstances, including a congressional hearing about policing, the article quickly became a flashpoint. First, it was officially “corrected,” though its findings were not altered. A few weeks later, George Floyd was murdered. Soon after, as the article began to be cited and contested in the ensuing debate about policing, PNAS asked two independent researchers to look into the article’s data and methods. They found that the article “does not contain fabricated data or serious statistical errors warranting a retraction.” Nevertheless, the article’s authors themselves retracted it, citing as their reason “continued use of our work in the public debate” about policing. PNAS chimed in, too, saying that “partisan political use” of the article warranted retraction.15 The virtuous lie and the political program it serves must be protected at all costs.

Virtuous lies are not confined to high schools, colleges, major media companies, and scholarly journals. Our government and medical establishment increasingly run on virtuous lies as well. For example, in 2019, California passed a bill, AB 241, that requires “implicit bias” training as part of routine continuing education for physicians, nurses, and physician assistants.16 The bill asserts the following: “Implicit bias, meaning the attitudes or internalized stereotypes that affect our perceptions, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner, exists, and often contributes to unequal treatment of people based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, and other characteristics.” And in case you missed the causal chain running from implicit bias through behavior to health outcomes: “Implicit bias contributes to health disparities by affecting the behavior of physicians and surgeons, nurses, physician assistants, and other healing arts licensees.”

AB 241 is wholly based on a string of interconnected virtuous lies about implicit bias. The first virtuous lie is that researchers have settled on a coherent and consistent understanding of what the term “implicit bias” means.17 The second lie is that whatever implicit bias may be, we know that it influences behavior.18 The third falsehood is that we know that disparities in health outcomes are caused by the behavior of implicitly biased medical personnel.

The truth about implicit bias is easy to state: “[I]t is not clear precisely what is being measured on implicit attitude tests; implicit attitudes do not effectively predict actual discriminatory behavior.”19 Moreover, with respect to disparate racial outcomes, it is important to note that measures that attempt to use implicit bias “to predict behavior find little or no anti-Black discrimination specifically.”20 This is good news! It means that racial health disparities are likely not wholly or even significantly attributable to the implicit bias of medical personnel.

What discrimination there is in medicine—and there surely has been and is discrimination—is based on entirely explicit attitudes supported by pseudoscientific theories. For example, it used to be a common practice among medical laboratories to adjust the renal values of black patients to take into account black people’s supposedly greater muscle mass relative to white people.21 Such adjustments might, however, have caused doctors to overlook kidney failure in black patients. Again, some white physicians are said to believe that black patients are less susceptible to pain than white patients because, the theory goes, they have longer nerve endings and thicker skin.22 These are not “implicit biases.” These are wholly conscious false beliefs that can be dispelled by acquaintance with the truth.

Nevertheless, California’s medical personnel now must pay the opportunity cost of submitting to training for implicit biases, training that we know to be useless. In a sense, the mandating of implicit bias training is a fourth virtuous lie, for the fact is, “most interventions to attempt to change implicit attitudes are ineffective.”23 What we have, then, is an entire government-mandated regime of healthcare education built atop the foundational virtuous lie of implicit bias.24 Articles appear regularly to bolster the lie in journals that could once be trusted. If everything you knew about implicit bias in medicine came from the latest article about it in Science,25 for example, you’d know very little indeed.26

We live by lies like implicit bias because we suppose that doing so makes us good people. To question them is to align oneself with all that is oppressive. Our moral credentials are burnished if we condemn European contact with the Americas as the moment at which “unkindness” became a force in human affairs. We signal our ethical seriousness with respect to American slavery and continuing black socioeconomic inequality if we applaud rather than quibble when debunked theories are presented as plain facts to high school students. We stand ostentatiously on “the right side of history” if we endorse BLM’s narrative that black people are “intentionally targeted for demise” by police.27 Similarly, medical personnel in California now attest their racial innocence by submitting, ironically enough, to the proposition that their implicit bias is causing them to mistreat racial minorities and to a highly profitable training industry that purports to remedy it.

As in the case of the narrative about police killings, to question any of the claims built upon the virtuous lie of implicit bias is to court personal and professional disaster. Edward Livingston, then a deputy editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), discovered this in early 2021 when he went on a JAMA podcast and made the mistake of suggesting that accusing doctors of racism was perhaps not the best way to resolve inequities in health outcomes and that the solution might instead lie in addressing socioeconomic disparities.28 This marked him for destruction. A petition against JAMA garnered nine thousand signatures, the podcast episode was scrubbed from the web,29 an investigation was announced, he was asked to resign his editorship, which he did,30 and he was made the subject of a “restorative justice session” at UCLA medical school, where he teaches.31 Yet the spread of the miasma was not stopped by these expiations. JAMA’s editor-in-chief, Howard Bauchner, who had had nothing to do with the ill-fated podcast episode, fell over himself apologizing for the incident but was investigated by an AMA committee and soon had to resign his editorship.32

The fates of Kriegman, Livingston, and Bauchner, as well as my own reticence to push back on the high school speaker, reveal a central feature of the logic of the virtuous lie: to correct these lies is tantamount to opposing noble goals. Nobody wants to be the one who points out that a virtuous lie is not true. In the case of the high school speaker, any pushback would have come across as a defense of American slavery. In the case of “our post-1492 era,” to ask for evidence would be to minimize the enormity of the post-Columbian devastation of Native Americans and of the transatlantic slave trade, just for starters. Regarding claims of a state-sanctioned genocide of black people, to gesture toward research to the contrary would be to affirm the status quo and to oppose much-needed reforms.

The Epistemology of the Virtuous Lie

Let us distinguish the virtuous lie from two adjacent phenomena—Plato’s “noble lie” and Rob Henderson’s “luxury belief”—and then consider the choice of the term “lie.”

The noble lie. Plato introduces the noble lie in Book 3 of his Republic. Socrates, the lead character in the dialogue, urges that in order to found his proposed ideal city, they would need to craft “one noble lie which may deceive” the city’s three social classes, that is, the ruler class, the soldier class, and the producer class:

“Citizens,” we shall say to them in our tale, “you are brothers, yet god has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron.”

The point of Plato’s noble lie is to reconcile people to inequality and their place in the social hierarchy, in order to create the ideal city, with a place for everyone and everyone in their place. The mechanism of reconciliation is a naturalization of the hierarchy not by analogy or comparison to metals but through the assertion that people of differing stations are quite literally made of different metals. The rulers are golden, the soldiers silver, and the workers brass and iron.

Luxury beliefs. Rob Henderson defines luxury beliefs as follows: “Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.”33 People crave status symbols and signs of distinction. Some such signs are expensive clothing or tastes that can only be cultivated by those with surplus time and material resources. Beliefs can function as another status symbol, however. Henderson uses the example of “defund the police,” which is endorsed disproportionately by those of high socioeconomic status, who, as a result of living in places relatively invulnerable to crime, would suffer the least from defunding. This belief is a luxury for them. It has no material impact on them, but it signals their high status to their peers, who are equally safe from crime. Yet this belief is often unaffordable for poorer people, who tend to live in places that make them vulnerable to crime. “Defund” is a luxury beyond their means. If the elites, who dominate the media discourse and exert control in government, get their way and succeed in defunding the police, the costs of the policy will be borne disproportionately by the poor.

Virtuous lies versus noble lies and luxury beliefs. Virtuous lies differ from both Plato’s noble lies and Henderson’s luxury beliefs. Plato’s noble lie promotes acceptance of an inequitable social order, depicting it as natural, inevitable, and just. In contrast, the virtuous lie invariably produces dissatisfaction with the social order, which it depicts as illegitimate or unjust. The noble lie reconciles us to social inequality whereas the virtuous lie is intended to serve a project of dismantling inequality. Finally, the noble lie is ultimately metaphysical. That is, it purports to offer an account of the underlying nature of reality that can be adduced to explain social arrangements. The virtuous lie, in contrast, is concerned with the social arrangements themselves in their historical, sociological, economic, and psychological dimensions, as the examples above show.

Virtuous lies share with luxury beliefs both a commitment to emancipatory political programs and a concern to signal moral goodness. As Henderson’s example of “defund” suggests, however, luxury beliefs are inherently normative. They depict a prescribed course of action. Virtuous lies, in contrast, are purely descriptive. They purport to represent states of affairs as they exist in the world, for example, “police hunt and kill black people,”34 or “Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”35 Virtuous lies like these provide the “factual” basis for normative luxury beliefs like “defund the police.”

Why call virtuous lies “lies”? A lie is, by definition, a false claim that is asserted despite its known falsity. A lie involves intent to deceive. I would not pretend to know that everyone who utters what I have called a virtuous lie knows that it is false (or at least highly questionable) and intends to deceive. Surely some do, but I imagine that many or even most who repeat virtuous lies do so sincerely, because they know no better.

Why might so many know no better? The term “lie” seems especially fitting here. Unlike the unwitting laypeople who repeat them, those who invent and promulgate these untruths, including activists, media companies, and law professors, are in a good position to know better and have an epistemic obligation to the truth that should give them pause.

There is something gratuitous about virtuous lies, not only when they are uttered cynically by knowledge-economy elites but even when they are uttered unwittingly and sincerely. Respected professors of law who specialize in racial issues and major media companies whose own data scientists have alerted them to the truth have no excuse. But neither do laypeople, really. The information that problematizes or even debunks virtuous lies is not kept locked away. Anyone who even halfway cares about what the world was like before 1492, whether slavery was central to the economic surge of the early United States, whether there is an epidemic of racist cops murdering black people, or whether implicit bias is a well-defined construct that has a clear effect on behavior can find the truth with the click of a mouse, or at least a vigorous debate, that should cause one to back off of strong claims.

Those given to whataboutery will have been champing at the bit to utter one word in response to my theory: Trump. The man is, after all, a liar of world-historic proportions. One of his most vicious lies is that the 2020 election was stolen. Indeed, according to a recent CNN poll, 63 percent of Republicans still believe that Biden “did not legitimately win enough votes to win the presidency.”36 But Trumpian lies, and right-wing lies more generally, are manifestly not “virtuous” insofar as they are outwardly self-serving, even if the teller believes in the ultimate truth of the cause. They make no pretense of serving an emancipatory project. They serve a project of acquiring political power and they do so nakedly. In a sense, this nakedness is refreshing. After all, virtuous lies, too, are promulgated in pursuit of political power, but under cover of the pretense of fighting it.

Vicious Consequences of Virtuous Lies

Why not just embrace the most emancipatory virtuous lies? After all, they promise to inspire the activism and political will needed to address some of our most urgent problems. The answer is that virtuous lies offer only a false promise. Let me say why.

First, the internet has put any citizen with even a modicum of curiosity and a free Sunday afternoon in a position to adjudicate these claims for herself. We are in an era in which you simply cannot keep information from people anymore, and you cannot lie to them.

Second, the lies will alienate at least as many people as they inspire. The virtuous lie is not a reliable formula for any political change apart from greater polarization. In other words, a commitment to these lies on the part of the media and our knowledge-producing class more broadly means that there will always be a number of Americans who embrace the lies out of ignorance or tribal loyalty. There will also, however, be a growing number of Americans who, as I have already suggested, will figure out that they are being lied to. This will create, or is already creating, a division in which a side consisting of tribally committed virtuous liars faces off against a side consisting of people who resent being lied to. This division is and will be toxic to our politics and hence to our democracy. It will only promote the rise of more Trump-like figures, who feed on and exacerbate the resentment of voters who dislike being lied to.

Let’s take just one of the virtuous lies discussed above, the lie about racist murders by police, and follow it through. Some might say, sure, perhaps it is not quite true that the police go out hunting for black people. But this fib is innocent because it has beneficial effects. The proof is right before us: after all, it has spurred a massive nationwide and even worldwide movement for change. What could be bad about such a lie?

I would answer that the lie is not worth it. The cost of the lie is paid as a psychological toll on all Americans, but on black Americans especially: the needless psychological suffering that results from hearing that you are being “hunted” by agents of the state in your own country. As Musa al-Gharbi put it in these pages, speaking of such narratives more broadly:

For people of color, getting “educated” in America is to be cudgeled relentlessly with messages about how oppressed, exploited, and powerless we are, and how white people need to “get it together” to change this (but probably never will). Narratives like these grew especially pronounced during the post-2011 “Great Awokening.” The internalization of these messages may contribute to the observed ideological gaps in psychic distress among women and people of color.37

The cost of the lie is paid as damage to our perceptions of black and white race relations. Gallup has polled Americans on this almost every year since 2001.38 In 2001, 70 percent of black Americans said race relations were good. In 2021, not even half as many, 33 percent, could make that affirmation. The drop-off began in earnest in 2013, right around when use of terms like “racism” began to rise spectacularly in the media,39 and the newly formed Black Lives Matter began its messaging campaign.

The cost of the lie is not only ill-conceived campaigns to “defund,”40 but also damage to (already strained) trust between communities and police, especially black communities, whose disproportionate victimization by criminals shows they need policing, good policing, the most.41 The cost of the lie is black Americans’ sense of alienation within their own country. The cost of the lie is the creation of preconditions for destructive rioting the next time a cop is caught on camera killing a black person,42 whether under legally justifiable circumstances (such as to save lives) or not.

There is a final cost to be reckoned with. Police killings do not ultimately constitute a distinctly “black” issue, and a narrative that casts it as such has inherent limitations. First, the narrative’s framing is divisive: there are “black” issues and there are “white” issues, but there are no “American” issues that affect us all. This framing requires activists to leverage enough guilt or empathy among Americans who are not black to enact a “black” agenda of reform. Moreover, the “hunting black people” narrative is impotent to make common cause with those seeking justice for unjustified police killings of people of other races. (Almost half of the people killed by police are white.43) This impotence undermines the possibility of a broad-based, nonpartisan movement for reform.

For example, when police (both, as it happens, Latino) in Fresno, California, killed an unarmed white teenager, Dylan Noble, in 2016, and the killing was caught on video,44 Noble’s friends, family, and sympathizers initiated months of protests. But when protesters displayed “White Lives Matter” placards, perhaps inspired by Black Lives Matter, they were predictably decried as “racist.”45 What if there had been a movement for police reform not based on identity politics with which Dylan Noble’s family and supporters could have made common cause? Later, a young black man, a rapper, Justice Medina, organized a protest in Fresno for all the lives lost to police violence, including that of Dylan Noble. He named Dylan Noble in one of his songs, and he sought to distance himself from BLM: “I’m out here for the human race,” he said.46

Medina is precisely right: police reform is not well addressed through identity politics, in which one group’s grievances are pitted against another group’s perceived sins, biases, and privileges. The issue of police violence falls instead within the broader purview of American identity, which emphasizes our mutual bond and shared interests as citizens. Writing of the killing of a white woman, Hannah Fizer, by a police officer in June 2020, Adam Rothman and Barbara Fields point out that “a successful national political movement must appeal to the self-interest of white Americans” and advise that “those seeking genuine democracy must fight like hell to convince white Americans that what is good for black people is also good for them.” Only in this way will we find “the basis for a successful political coalition rooted in the real conditions of American life.”47

The upshot is that virtuous lies, whether about the police or about any other matter of concern, will get us nowhere. Only if the media and knowledge-producing classes eschew such lies and hew closer to the truth can we hope to depolarize our discourse, restore faith in our information-generating institutions, and bring together a broad swath of the country in solidarity to confront the challenges that face all of us as American citizens.

[ Sources: see Notes. ]

#Jake Mackey #Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn #live not by lies #virtuous lies #legacy media #virtue signal #virtue signalling #virtue signaling #implicit bias #police shooting #police killing #religion is a mental illness

3 notes · View notes

coochiequeens · 1 year ago

Text

Critically-acclaimed transgender horror author hails Osama bin Laden's 'principled' destruction of Twin Towers - months after sharing her desire to slit JK Rowling's throat

Gretchen Felker-Martin, a well-known transgender horror author and journalist, tweeted on Thursday that she admired bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks

Felker-Martin, who in February declared that she wanted to slit JK Rowling's throat, later deleted the tweet and apologized

Bin Laden has returned to public consciousness this week thanks to TikTok users suddenly 'discovering' his 2002 'Letter to America' justifying 9/11

By HARRIET ALEXANDER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 22:56 EST, 17 November 2023 | UPDATED: 23:32 EST, 17 November 2023

A transgender horror author who sparked outrage earlier this year by threatening to slit JK Rowling's throat has hailed Osama bin Laden's destruction of the Twin Towers.

Gretchen Felker-Martin on Thursday joined in the chorus of admiration for the al-Qaeda leader, sparked by TikTokers suddenly 'discovering' his rational for 9/11.

The Massachusetts-based author wrote on X, where she has 30,000 followers: 'Can pretty safely state that bin Laden and I did not, uh, agree on much, but blowing up the World Trade Center is probably the most principled and defensible thing he did.'

Bin Laden's 2002 'Letter to America' has been circulating widely this week, in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war.

TikTok users say that bin Laden opened their eyes to American foreign policy and taught them valuable lessons about global geopolitics. The revival in interest, and ignorance of bin Laden's ideas, have caused shock and anger.

Felker-Martin on Friday deleted the tweet, and apologized. She previously shared her desire to cut JK Rowling's throat over the Harry Potter author's stance on transgender issues.

Gretchen Felker-Martin posted, then deleted, a tweet praising Osama bin Laden

The other day in a moment of distress I talked out my ass to play devil's advocate in a tasteless, needless way,' she tweeted.

'I sincerely regret it, and I apologize to anyone hurt or offended by my thoughtless words.'

But one X user pointed out that she had praised bin Laden in the past.

He cited Felker-Martin's August 2020 tweet, justifying the September 11 attacks.

'The huge crime of 9/11 is that the s*** we do every day overseas gets done to us exactly once,' she said.

The revival of the 2002 document has bemused and enraged many.

The White House expressed dismay at the resurgence of interest in the letter.

'There is never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil, and antisemitic lies that the leader of al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history – highlighting them as his direct motivation for murdering 2,977 innocent Americans,' said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House.

'And no one should ever insult the 2,977 American families still mourning loved ones by associating themselves with the vile words of Osama bin Laden.

'Particularly now, at a time of rising antisemitic violence in the world, and just after Hamas terrorists carried out the worst slaughter of the Jewish people since the Holocaust in the name of the same conspiracy theories.

'Like President Biden said this year in remembrance of the Americans who lost their lives because of Osama bin Laden, 'it's more important now than ever that we come together' against a 'rising tide of hatred and extremism.''

TikTok said they will be removing all content invoking the letter.

'Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,' TikTokPolicy wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter.

'We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.'

The video-sharing platform claims the number of videos on TikTok is 'small' and 'reports of it trending [on the] platform is inaccurate.'

'This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media,' the post added.

Videos with the hashtag 'LettertoAmerica' have been viewed 7.3 million times.

Extraordinarily the majority are claiming support for bin Laden's reasoning - without a thought for the freedoms he criticizes.

The letter began to gain traction online after UK newspaper The Guardian linked to a 2002 article, which translated it in full, in a piece about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

It was subsequently deleted, with the outlet explaining to DailyMail.com that it was being shared 'without its original context.'

The letter continued to spread on X but was prevented from spreading on Reddit.

The Guardian did not explain further as to how the link was made between the current conflict in the Middle East and a verbatim letter from bin Laden that was more than 20 years old.

The link to the letter spread, with hundreds of TikTokers posting videos in response to reading it, in which they appear to confuse the hateful diatribe for an intellectual think piece.

The letter was originally posted with an article explaining that the original version was in Arabic in a website used by al-Qaeda to 'disseminate messages and 'was sent to hundreds of subscribers to an email list run by Mohammed al-Massari, the UK-based Saudi Arabian dissident.'

The message added that the US government was included on the list.

The various trending videos about the letter include no context around bin Laden's life as a jihadist.

In other sections of his correspondence, bin Laden blames the US government for spreading AIDS throughout the world, described homosexuality as 'immoral' and sought to turn America into an oppressive religious state similar to Afghanistan.

The trend appears to have started with TikToker Lynette Adkins who posted a video on November 14.

'I need everyone to stop what they're doing right now and go read - it's literally two pages - go read 'A Letter to America,'' she said.

In his infamous letter, Bin Laden ranted that the treatment of Palestinian people had to be 'revenged' and expressed justifications for the killing of civilians in the name of jihad.

Bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs in a raid on his compound in Pakistan in May 2011.

'The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq,' bin Laden wrote.

For this reason, the Saudi Arabian terrorist wrote, all Americans and Jewish people were culpable for 'the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against [Muslims].'

Bin Laden wrote that AIDS was a 'Satanic American Invention' and repeatedly made anti-Semitic remarks including suggesting that American society was infiltrated by Jewish people who 'control your policies, media and economy.'

Felker-Martin is no stranger to courting controversy.

Earlier this year, named a series of writers she accused of transphobia - including Rowling - in a tweet sent on February 12.

She added: 'If they all had one throat, man.'

She had earlier decried the murder of British transgender teenager Brianna Ghey 16, and suggested Rowling and her ilk had stoked violence which led to the killing.

Another writer she railed against, journalist Jesse Singal, condemned Felker-Martin for making the death threat, and said she has a long history of making threats of violence.

In Felker-Martin's debut novel, Manhunt, published in February 2022, Rowling is murdered by being burned alive.

The book is promoted as 'an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and trans men on a grotesque journey of survival.' It has been lauded as 'visceral' 'gripping' and 'brilliant' by NPR and the New Yorker.

Felker-Martin's tweet - which she has now deleted - came shortly before she joined 180 activists in signing a letter to The New York Times attacking their coverage of transgender issues, which has seen the paper examine whether young children should be given puberty blockers, or gender reassignment surgery.

Rowling has shared similar views, and also questioned whether trans women should be allowed access to some female-only spaces such as prisons, domestic abuse shelters, or sporting contests.

#Gretchen Felker-Martin is a man with violent fantasies #X #Interesting how he doesn't blame the people who actually killed Brianna Ghey #Two teenagers were arrested for Gheys death

26 notes · View notes

ctimenefic · 3 months ago

Note

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to five other writers! 💗

Aaahh thank you for the tag! Okay I'm going to venture back through the mists of time here so, apologies in advance that some of these are not about the vroom vroom men. But we'll go in reverse order, so you guys can just shut your eyes halfway down when we leave the bilgewater of rpf for the filth of the MCU etc.

First off, don't like a gold rush - it was really close between this and positive negatives, and I do consider them almost sister fics, in that they are both one half of Galex going completely insane. BUT. I have this fear about being only able to write AUs. Is that a weird thing to have a hang up about? Probably. Nevertheless, I do. So writing a fic that is plausibly within the canon of, uh, real life sportspeople, is important to me. (However there is one mistake that was a failure of research which will haunt me til I die yay)

Second, Imperator - yes sorry having said I have a fear of being pigeon-holed as an AU writer, here is a historical AU I enjoyed writing a lot. However, it's a fave for me because it's just one scene, but I feel like I got to tell a whole shared life story within it. Nothing else I've published has been this neat and self-contained without feeling sparse, imo. Also, I strongly advocate for evil George as part of a healthy diet.

Third, Indelible Ink - uh oh, fandom change alert, we're in Daredevil land now. Indelible Ink is the sequel to the most popular (?) fic I've ever written. It is a work of endurance. It took me years to complete, and I finished it during the height of Covid in 2020. I have some incomplete fics on my Ao3 profile that still make me cringe with shame, but finishing this gives me hope that someday, I'll clear those WIPs as well. It's also a break up make up, which is truly one of my favourite tropes, because of the complexity of emotion it entails. This is one I look at and go, oh. A grown up wrote that. I'm a grown up.

Fourth, a question to which the answer is not - the only Merlin fic I still acknowledge don't ask about my ff.net account. Similar to Imperator, I like how neat this is – it's three scenes, a single day, there's a deliberate dramatic structure to echo the fact that they're actors. I don't think it's quite as strongly done as it could be in drawing a whole world, in part because the fanon around Merlin Modern AUs was already so pervasive and also because I at one point planned to write a prequel (lol). But it is a sweet and simple idea that I pulled off, like a well-iced cupcake.

Fifth and finally, My ear should catch your voice - back in the Daredevil fandom, this one became a favourite because of the comments I got. In fact, because of the comments I got from one single person. I hope they don't mind me shouting them out, but warmfuzzydyke, if you're out there – I think about you every single time I think of this fic. A lot of the time, I feel writers talk about what they put into a fic, and I certainly did with this one – it has a lot of my feelings, big and small, about faith and music and grief – but seeing what warmfuzzydyke was able to take away from this, god. It's why I still write.

#answered asks #ask meme #my fic

5 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 3 months ago

Text

"This isn’t a political rally," said Lance Wallnau from a convention hall stage in Monroeville, outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "It’s much different than a revival meeting, it’s kind of a new type of thing. It’s where the people of God, the citizens of heaven, bring heaven to earth."

Wallnau, a former oil industry marketer turned charismatic Christian author and media figure, was there recently on the sixth stop of his swing state Courage Tour. The tour’s goal is to bolster the courage of attendees' to speak their minds politically and recruit them to serve as local election workers and poll watchers.

Over the course of two days, audience members would pray, sway with their hands in the air to swelling worship music, take in lessons on American history, politics and the Bible, and be visited by vice presidential candidate and U.S. Senator JD Vance. Wallnau, along with his wife Annabelle, are just two of several right-wing Christian leaders hosting these revival-style events at which Trump is seen as God’s anointed candidate, according to Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies.

"They understand this as a literal spiritual battle between angels and demons. The angels are trying to enact the will of God, which they believe is to see Donald Trump given a second term," said Taylor, who has done extensive research on Christians who were part of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election for Joe Biden.

'Demonic ideas'

On January 6, Wallnau was scheduled to speak at a prayer rally in Washington DC. But before he made it to a microphone, Trump supporters had already broken into the Capitol. So Wallnau went back to his hotel room to stream live on a Christian talk show. Right away, he and his co-hosts made baseless claims that the FBI had bussed in members of antifa to sow violence among the otherwise peaceful crowd.

"They're actually the activists that are working for the Democratic Party that were there in order to create the incident with violence that would smear the president," Wallnau said. "It was the devil’s people at this thing."

"I have been through the social media accounts of many, many of the Christians who were there on January 6th," said Taylor, "and you can find them posting Lance Wallnau videos and Lance Wallnau commentary." He added that one criminal defendant even cited Wallnau’s show as his reason for attending what he believed was a permitted rally.

In his new book, The Violent Take It By Force, Taylor describes Wallnau as "Trump’s most influential spiritual propagandist." He says when many Christian and evangelical leaders had been reluctant to back the brash, twice-divorced, reality TV billionaire’s 2016 presidential run, Wallnau gained a following popularizing biblical rationales for supporting then candidate Trump. God, Wallnau proclaimed, had anointed Trump, imperfect as he was, to lead the country.

Wallnau is well-known in evangelical circles for having popularized a Christian concept called the "Seven Mountains," which calls on the faithful to take dominion over all areas of culture. In person, however, the media-savvy Wallnau can be challenging to pin down ideologically. He’s previously identified as a "Christian Nationalist," but told NPR the term is a label "to create anxiety and misrepresentation." Wallnau also called Taylor’s scholarship "the fantasy narrative of this one guy obsessed with Christian nationalism."

"Nobody’s a demon, but they can be under the influence of demonic ideas," Wallnau said in an interview. "I regret when it sounds like I'm making people evil because I'm in the business of redemption." He still questions the 2020 election results and to this day refers to the events of January 6th as "election fraud intervention."

'A Trojan Horse'

On the Courage Tour, Wallnau and his fellow speakers laid out an updated approach for the coming election.

"Are you guys ready to show the world that Christians will be silent no more?" Joshua Standifer asked from the stage. His nonprofit, Lion of Judah, is helping recruit the folks in the audience to become election workers.

"We all remember 2020 when they bought up the windows, when they closed the doors, when they kicked all the volunteers out. You can be on the inside and be one of the ones making a difference and making sure that nothing nefarious happens," said Standifer, invoking debunked, but still popular, narratives of election fraud.

Standifer also wants these poll workers to send anything they see that could be evidence of fraud. He’s been calling the effort "a Trojan horse," which alarms some observers. He told NPR he didn’t mean the metaphor to extend to the part where the Greeks decimate the city of Troy.

"Do I regret it? I don't know, because it's brought a lot of coverage to us, you know, for better or for worse," said Standifer.

Trust in elections

Even when everyone is working with the purest of motivations, no election runs perfectly, according to Mollie Cohen, who teaches political science at Perdue University.

"But if you are constantly under scrutiny by folks who are looking to catch you in a mistake, certainly, there are mistakes to be found," she said.

The truth, she says, is that most mistakes are caught and addressed very quickly. And since 2020, many election officials have put an even greater focus on transparency.

Mollie also says there’s lots of research showing that working the polls increases peoples’ confidence in elections.

"Something happens when people engage in election administration. It is very boring. It's quite tedious. And you really see everybody in your polling place," she said.

That’s been true for Dina Macey. She drove in before 5am to wait in her car and make sure she could get in to see JD Vance on the second day of the Courage Tour.

"It's the white Subaru, that's all Trumped out. It's got the Trump flags all over it and the bumper stickers, you know, magnets," said Macey.

She’s been an election worker before and was a poll watcher in 2020.

"And I did catch a couple people. Like a kid just walked in, didn't sign in or check in, and he was going to enter that. And I was like, 'whoa, you can't do that, you know?' So I bring it to [election workers’] attention," said Macey.

Macey is clear she hasn’t been pleased with everything about the elections she’s worked, but ultimately, the process she saw felt secure. That trust, though, doesn’t extend to the rest of her state, or the country.

Traveling shows like Wallnau’s Courage Tour are likely to reinforce suspicions like those.

Fears about the post-election period

"We don't trust the government on vaccines now. We don't trust them on laptops. We don't trust them on elections. And that's not a good place for a country," Wallnau told the audience on day two of the Pennsylvania stop.

This election cycle, the Trump campaign has focused heavily on legal challenges to voting rules. They’ve also geared up to dispute election results in the courts. That’s a big part of why Matthew Taylor is concerned about Wallnau and others like him.

"Part of what happened in 2020 was, there was no evidence of election fraud," said Taylor. "The Courage Tour is one component of this multi-pronged effort to stage the aftermath of this election as a season of contestation, that the results of the election are not the results of the election."

A contentious election will also help sustain right-wing and religious media circuits Wallnau is part of.

"By the time that the 2020 election happened, there were hundreds of charismatic prophets who were all prophesying that Donald Trump was God's chosen candidate and was destined to win the election," said Taylor.

When Trump lost, Taylor says those leaders pivoted to support the false narrative that the election was stolen, through more prophecies about demonic plots and divine motivation to fight back. Taylor believes those narratives posed a serious threat to democracy then, and he says it’s not looking much different this year.

10 notes · View notes