#farm laws explained

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

RiAAU Sasha's complicated relationship with her adoptive parents, Percy and Braddock, stems from an awkward mixture of unconditional love, resentment over their inability to protect her from Grime in her childhood, and their fear of what she's become.

[bogbees]

I've been drawing smth silly all night bc I'm so so so easily distracted and good lord i have work tomorrow i can't get lost in the sauce to finish this, so, if i pass out for like 24 hrs, know i had fun

[sayruq]

The Malawi government has finally spoken out on the arrest of Malawian farm workers in Israel, clarifying that 12 out of 40 individuals detained are from the country. According to Minister of Information Moses Kunkuyu, the 40 individuals, representing 13 nationalities, were arrested for leaving their designated work stations and seeking employment in town without proper authorization. Kunkuyu revealed that the group, including the 12 Malawians, had abandoned their farm work to seek jobs at a bakery in Bnei Brak, violating Israel’s labor laws and regulations.

Malawi and Israel signed a labor export deal in 2022, allowing Malawi to send unskilled laborers to Israel to work in various sectors, including agriculture and construction. The deal aimed to generate more foreign exchange revenue for Malawi and provide employment opportunities for its citizens. Under the deal, Malawian workers are expected to work in Israel for a maximum of 5 years, with a minimum salary of $1,500 per month. The deal also includes provisions for workers’ safety, health insurance, and protection from exploitation. However, the deal has faced criticism and controversy, with some opposition politicians and human rights organizations expressing concerns about the secrecy surrounding the deal and the potential risks to workers’ safety.

The arrest of the Malawian workers has raised concerns about the treatment of foreign workers in Israel and the effectiveness of the labor deal in protecting their rights. Human rights organizations have called on the Malawian government to take action to ensure the safe return of the detained workers and to review the labor deal to prevent similar incidents in the future. The incident has also sparked debate about the benefits and risks of labor export deals and the need for greater transparency and accountability in such agreements.

The mistreatment of foreign workers in Israel is well documented and would explain why the 45 workers escaped the farm to look for work elsewhere

[casuallyanidiot]

Got a fair few asks about Danny (aka Yandere Farmboy) and what he'd be like in marriage, with kids and the In-Laws etc. So here are a few HCs about that !

Tw. BabyTrapping, Yandere, Power Imbalance, Forced Marriage, Implied Noncon, Slut shaming, implied abortion, implied homophobia/transphobia at the end, Fem! AFAB! Reader

The Marriage

I've gone into some detail about how Danny would treat you once he got his hands on you in another ask. He likes getting you all dressed up and proper, and he never wants to see you with dirt smeared across your face ever again.

Danny would want to wait until you were pretty far into your pregnancy to actually marry you. Hell, he might even wait until you actually have his baby. You'd asked him to just get it over with right after he got your parent's permission to take you away from the farm and into his home, but he wanted everyone to see what you had become.

You aren't just some rat scurrying around town anymore. No, you're his. And now there's no way you can deny it. Because if you do, you risk being shunned by everyone.

"That poor Petusky kid... getting stuck with that whore."

"She's lucky he even keeps her around. If it were me, I would've run her off a long time ago."

Danny had you moved into his family home soon after the events of the first fic. He likes sitting there, rubbing your growing belly and murmuring words of comfort. He forces you to recline in a plush, padded rocking chair he made with his father just for you.

"This is the happiest I've ever been," he praised as he pressed kisses to your skin. He smiled at the way you flinched, and he cooed softly. "The wedding venue is booked. Plus I've got the bakery prepping a cake. A big one too, with your favorite flavors," He said. You don't remember telling him what they were. "We just gotta wait until this little one arrives. Getting married will be the best thing that's ever happened to you, I swear. Weddings are just... stressful. Don't want anything hurting the baby now, do we?"

Of course he doesn't let you work. You're his precious wife, after all. Plus he seethes at the thought of failing you, of letting you slip from his fingers and back into a life where he can't control your happily ever after. You'll have no financial freedom, that's for certain.

He's eerily attuned to your wants and needs. he's spent years observing you, your interests. The way your eyes would trail longingly on the other women in town with their nicer clothes, the way in school that you tried and tried to keep up with other academically. You wanted a better life. He had that. He could give you that.

He adores you, he really does. He'd buy you old Bronte sister novels and sit there with you when you'd struggle to read them. He comes back to you every day, no matter how sweaty and caked in mud he might be, pressing flowers into your hands.

Maybe if he'd been less of a creep, less desperate to possess you entirely, then perhaps he could've been the love of your life.

The In-Laws

Danny's parents, like mentioned in the original fic, are pretty much the wealthiest people in town if not the entire area. They own several cattle ranches and acres upon acres of land that's perfect for tilling. Really they're the exact opposite of your family.

They aren't unkind per se, but you could definitely feel them judging you whenever you had spoken to them in the past. They'd smile at you in an overly friendly manner that felt empty as it looked nice. Just typical southern politeness wrapped in a shiny veneer.

That being said, when Danny came to them one day, dragging your shaking form in front of them, they knew something was up. There's no reason a girl like you should seem so upset that their precious baby boy was promising her the moon and stars. When he goes on to explain " She's gonna have my baby. I know you should wait until marriage and all, but we got to excited and well..."

A shotgun marriage with the town tramp. Not exactly ideal for a sterling reputation, but they could work with this. Most of the town would probably judge you no matter what, but Danny's parents subtly nudge people to think of you like some gold digger.

They can sense that Danny did something to you. You flinch sometimes when you think no one is looking, and his mother has caught you crying alone in some random room in their big house a couple times. Unfortunately, though, you're far less important to them than their son. If he wanted you that badly, he can have you. They're just gonna make sure everything stays under wraps.

Danny's father doesn't really care for you one way or another. He doesn't really get what his kid sees in you, but then again, he can kind of see why the boy grew up to be so damn possessive. He had traditional values pummeled into him from a young age, and what's more traditional than marrying your high school sweetheart and providing for her and your family? Once you get cleaned up a bit and start living with them more often, he quietly accepts you as part of the family. He likes whittling toys for your new arrival when he's not working or with his wife, and he finds you to be a pleasant addition. Overall, he'll keep his mouth shut on what Danny did for the sake of everyone in the family and for his own peace.

Danny's mother on the other hand is quite involved when it comes to you. Your her daughter in-law! Ain't that something? It's kind of clear that she doesn't like you from the beginning, but she can't get rid of you and sweep you under the rug in the way she'd like. If it was up to her, you'd be headed for some backwater clinic before being shipped off to the big city, never to be seen again. But Danny loves you, and she can't exactly stop him without risking putting him in jail or having their reputation ruined. So, you stay, much to her resentment.

Second to Danny, she spends the most time with you. She's a housewife as well, so she helps you learn how to take care of a proper household for once. Your manners and demeanor are awful in her opinion. You're too skittish and sad looking! So what if you've been forced to marry your stalker? Don't you know how many other girls would've killed for this, young lady? Just like her husband, though, she becomes more fond of you over time. Once you're settled in and start meekly accepting her offers to bake, clean, and do general busy work with her, she starts actually seeing you not as her son's property, but as her daughter. She had all boys after all, so it's nice to have another girl in the house. She keeps tabs on you for Danny, sending him candid photos of you and the baby once it arrives. Now that she actually likes you, sweeping the whole thing under the rug changes to include keeping you as well.

Danny has little sibling as well: two younger brothers. They're both far younger than him, and they don't really have an opinion of you one way or another. You just kind of... appeared in their house one day. Their mom and dad started stressing for a while, and you didn't seem too happy either, so what was this whole deal? I think they'd be very kind to you initially, bothering you to play and sharing sweets when they wished to, and they're both curious and annoyed about the fact that a baby is going to join them soon.

I think that while the siblings don't learn about what happened to you, their perception of love and morality would be heavily skewed by the fact that you, being scared and held in the house against your will, and their big brother are presented as the pinnacle of romance.

Overall, you'd be accepted, but there are definitely a lot of strings attached to that.

The kids

I think Danny really loves his kids with you. Or rather, he loves the idea of having a family more than he actually would the kids themselves. He's always had this dream that the two of you would be lost in a fluffy, domestic bliss until the day you died, and part of that meant a few little ones running around.

He's a good dad in the sense that he'd always be there for them. He'd take them to games, to dance practice, teach them how to work in the fields and buy them gifts. He's very present, but it's always with an undercurrent of control. You don't want to ruin this happy family, do you now? Your kids love their father, they love this happy home, so don't you dare think about leaving, okay?

In addition, I think that Danny would have a really hard time dealing with a kid that deviated from what he considered to be "normal" or "traditional". Part of his whole power in their very conservative town is that his family is a paragon of tradition and "societal values". It's how he trapped the reader after all. But if his kids threatened that balance of power by trying to leave the farm, go to the city, or be anything other that what he'd been trying to turn them into, I think he would genuinely lose it. His kids are not people to him, they are ideas and pawns that he'd become attached to.

If the kids turned out to be more like him in possessive, controlling behavior, then I think then he'd probably recognize them as their own individuals rather than just an fantasy he had for a legacy or a life with the reader.

[sonotpattismith]

but daddy I love him her!

pairing: billionaire's son!gojo x farmer's daughter!reader word count: 10.7k content: angst, fluff, romeo and juliet retelling, hurt w/ comfort, implications of abuse, smut, 18+

gojo fan-art by @3-aem

The grating sound of fake laughter would be ingrained in your mind for the remainder of the week, you were sure of it. In the midst of your zoned out staring and eavesdropping (though even that was becoming mind-numbing at this point), the tray of hordeurves balanced in your hands began to tip ever so slightly. It only caught your attention when one of the caviar topped… whatever it was started sliding to the right. With a strangled gasp, you quickly righted your posture, your spine now stiff as a board. 

You cast your gaze across the banquet hall of high profile, and thus high nose individuals, their glittering jewelery and lavish gowns nearly blinding you, and you assured that no one had seen your slip up. With a quiet sigh of relief, you mustered a polite smile for the goach woman before you, slipping off her glove to grab an appetizer from your tray. 

God, you needed this job, but for the love of all that is holy, you didn’t expect it to be this agonizing. In truth, it could have been worse. You could have found a temp job that really had you breaking your back as you were used to, so perhaps putting up with some horribly privileged elites for the few hours of their… gala or fundraising event or whatever excuse they used to justify such lavish get-togethers, wasn’t as bad as you were making it out to be. 

You didn’t get details of the event you’d be servicing until just an hour prior to its beginning when you were given a run down about the nature of the event as well as the importance of the clientele. Of course, you had already heard of the Gojo family long before your temporary manager explained them to you with sweat dripping anxiously down his forehead. They were the business tycoons of Tokyo, owning half the real estate that you’d likely ever stepped foot in in this city. 

There was a slight unease in your stomach at the thought of being entrusted to work at an event so… high profile, but your subtle irritation for the gall of it all trumped that anxiety tenfold. Not only had you had a good understanding of who the family was due to good ole’ word of mouth, but it also didn’t help that they had been singlehandedly making your father’s life a living hell for the past few years. 

Sure, they weren’t intentionally targeting the man, but as their franchises and real estate continued blossoming throughout the city, there were growing pressures for your father to sell his farmland with the intention of their company building more fucking skyscrapers filled with law firms or IV transfusion spas or whatever the hell it was that these rich people filled their pockets with. He had stayed resolute in his intention to keep the farm, but you knew the rising property taxes that came along with that Gojo family price tag popping up all around him was making it difficult for him to keep it afloat. 

Which is precisely why you were currently pretending not to be creeped out by the middle-aged man leering at you from your peripheral— you really needed this money. 

Clearing your throat, a wobbly smile graced your lips as you held out the tray to him in hopes that it was the caviar he was eyeing and not your… hordeurves. Perhaps that was the wrong move to make though, because he was taking one and staying with a look on his face that said he had an offer that you just wouldn’t be able to refuse. 

“You do private events, sweetheart?” 

You had half a mind to tell him that this was a private event, but the Rolex on his wrist told you that he had too much money to piss off. 

“I-I’m contracted by the catering company, sir.” You explained with your eyes facing forward, gulping down the heartbeat that had manifested in your throat at the way he chuckled patronizingly and leaned against the wall you were standing by. “I work the events that they send me to.”

“Alright then, better question,” He grinned connivingly as he absentmindedly straightened the gold cufflinks at his wrists. “Can I contract you for a private event?”

Any hope of rebuttal got stuck in your throat, caught between your burning desire to defend yourself and the even greater need for this job to go well. 

“I’m pretty sure your three ex-wives would agree that contracts aren’t really your strong suit, wouldn’t you say, Junto?” 

Disguising your near instantaneous chortle as a cough, you quickly turned your head away from Junto and your knight in… Prada? Lord knows you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The sleezeball scoffed, but it seemed he too felt the waves of dominating energy coming from the younger man that dared challenge him, because that scoff quickly turned into a strictly rehearsed laugh.

“You always did have a mouth on you, didn’t you, kid?” He gritted through his fake smile as he patted said kid on the back, who only offered a mocking aw, shucks in return. “You stay outta trouble, huh?”

The man promptly removed himself from the situation lest he be torn apart anymore by someone who appeared less than half his age. Biting at your bottom lip, you weren’t sure if it would be appropriate to acknowledge what you had just witnessed, so you opted to face forward, trying to ignore the scent of the woodsy cologne that just wafted an air far too expensive for you to even be breathing in. Despite your careful composure, you could feel his eyes on the side of your head. 

“What a fuckin’ weirdo, amaright?” He broke the silence for you, a smug smile stretching across his lips when you failed to contain your laughter that time around. 

“Oh my god, I thought he would catch fire standing so close to the candles with so much gel in his hair.” You whisper-shouted, absolutely reeling to get it off your chest after standing in silence for so long. 

Your savior chortled next to you, hunching over himself ever-so-slightly as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his perfectly-tailored suit. Finally daring to look his way, you were almost knocked off your balance for the second time that night as you took in his striking, white hair and icy-blue eyes that seemed to twinkle supernaturally under the candlelight’s flicker. He looked to be your age, and you figured he was the son of one of these bigshots that was dragged here for the sake of networking.

“Maybe we should get him back over here then. We need something to liven this place up— a grease fire would do nicely.” He teased while straightening his posture once again to look out amongst the sea of people as you giggled along beside him. 

“Thank you, by the way.” You expressed sincerely once your laughter had died down. “It was kind of an awkward position he was putting me in.”

The man only hummed, observing you with a mischievous glint in his other-worldly eyes that had you thinking the creep was onto something when he told him to stay out of trouble. 

“Wanna know how you can thank me?” You felt a premature flush falling over your cheeks as he leaned down to be within your earshot. “Sneak me a piece of the cake that’s in the back, yeah?”

At once, the tension in your shoulders dissipated, and you smiled apologetically at him.

“I can’t cut the cake until the hosts give their speech.”

“Ah, see, therein lies my problem because that is assuming I would be staying for the entirety of this snoozefest.” He was promptly taking the tray from your arms and blindly handing it off to another unsuspecting worker who was passing by. “C’mon, I just want a little something sweet before I dip out of here. Please?”

Maybe it was the fact that you felt partially indebted to him, or maybe it was that irresistible pout he was directing your way, or, most likely, the fact that he was obscenely attractive. Whichever it was had you slipping into the kitchen where the lavish cake was waiting atop the counter, peeking around to assure the coast was clear before you grabbed a knife. With an unbelieving shake of your head, you turned it around so as to cut from the back and not make it so obvious. 

Your heart was thumping wildly against your white-button down-clad chest as you promptly maneuvered it back to its proper positioning, grabbing a spoon before you made a beeline toward the hallway where he said he’d be waiting. Sure enough, there he was, just barely illuminated by the candle-lit lanterns hanging in the grand hallway as he leaned against the wall. 

“Hah! You’re a total badass!” He cackled shortly as he pushed himself off the wall. Surveying the plate in your hand, his brows furrowed suddenly. “Just one?”

You shifted nervously on your feet, the corners of your lips twitching in uncertainty. 

“You… wanted two?”

“No, where’s yours?” The question fell from his perfectly pink lips as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. With the reemergence of that incriminating pout, he presented the hand that had since been hiding behind his back. In it, was a bottle of champagne that looked like it cost more than what you were even getting paid for this stupid event. “Brought us some bubbly and everything— you know what, it’s fine. I can share just this once.”

At once, he was leading you by your free arm down the dim hallway until he reached an alcove that would be perfectly disguised to anyone looking straight down the hall. 

“Wait, wait, I can’t be here—” 

“Why not?”

“Why not?” You scoffed in bitter amusement at his oblivion as he sat crisscrossed against the wall. “Because I could lose my job, that’s why not.”

“Oh, please,” He waved you off as he nodded toward the spot beside him. Slowly, you begrudgingly took a seat next to him. “You’re not gonna lose your job.” 

With a resignated sigh, you set the plate down on the floor before him. 

“You sound sure of yourself.”

“Oh the—” He flinched back as he popped the top off the champagne, the abrupt rupture making you squeal. “—surest. What are you doing working this dick-measuring competition anyway?”

You tried not to get distracted by the way his lips settled eagerly around the cake-filled spoon, the smallest of moans leaving him in the process before he passed the plate to you. 

“Need a new laptop for school.” You explained, though you knew it was only a fraction of the story, but you had a feeling he wouldn’t understand your financial struggles as he allowed drops of champagne to spill onto his freshly-pressed suit pants. Despite your better judgement, you took a bite from the cake as well. “Too many open coffee cups next to electronics got me too confident. So, I’m stuck as the Gojo family mule for the night.”

He huffed out a laugh through a mouthful of champagne. You two soon swapped, him taking the cake and you grabbing at the neck of the bottle. Leaning your head back against the wall, you tilted your head to look at him.

“You know, I heard this whole thing was actually a networking thing for their son.” You rambled, the slightest hint of alcohol clearly making you way too comfortable with this stranger. He only hummed beside you, the faintest of amused smiles on his handsome face. “Heard he’s a real disaster, too.”

“I heard he showed up an hour late.” 

“Of course he did.” You snorted softly with a shake of your head. “If I had half the opportunities that dude had—”

“What would you do?”

You fell silent for a moment, smushing some icing around the delicate, china plate. In your peripheral, you saw the small, shiny triangle shaped logo at the base of his black tie, and it once again reminded you that even this man, as relatable as he might appear to you hiding from the party to stuff his face with cake and champagne, wouldn’t understand the petty issues of the working class. 

“I wouldn’t be passing out caviar to a bunch of billionaires— that’s for sure.”

“Satoru!” 

At once, the man was snatching the plate from your hand, juggling it along with the champagne bottle between his long fingers. 

“That’d be my queue.” He quipped, glancing down at your name tag before testing how it sounded on his lips. You blinked owlishly at him, because you could have sworn that Satoru was the name of— “Sorry, you know me— real disaster.” He winked before swiping at the leftover icing at the edge of your parted lips and licking it from his thumb. “Try not to get propositioned while I’m gone!”

You watched with unreserved horror as he stumbled to his feet to race up the hall before anyone could come down to find you. In the quiet solitude of the secluded hallway, you could still just barely hear the host of the event introducing his son with some heartfelt speech about how proud he was of him that was most definitely written by someone else. A churning sense of mortification settled in your stomach as you looked up at the portrait on the wall behind you of the Gojos. 

The Gojos and their son.

The Gojos and their white-haired, blue-eyed son.

Oh, you were so losing your job.

It seemed as though you couldn’t get enough air into your lungs no matter how hard you tried as you stood with the rest of the contracted wait staff for a final rundown of how service went overall that night. 

Following Satoru’s abrupt departure, you begged a coworker to switch roles with you for the night— a change she was more than happy to oblige given she was on dishwashing duty, but you were just eager to be avoiding any possibile run-ins with the man you had just shit-talked right to his face. It was the only reason you made it through the night without vomiting, you were sure. Why had you opened your stupid mouth?

A call of your name pulled you from your self-depricating thoughts, and you lifted your head to meet the gaze of your manager. Through the blood rushing in your ears, his words sounded muffled to you as he handed you an envelope. Blinking a few times, you shook your head and called out to him just as he had moved onto the next worker. 

“Sorry— what did you say this was for?” 

“Long night, huh?” He chuckled at your supposed sluggishness. “One of the guests wanted to give you an additional tip. Guess you left an impression.”

You gulped, looking down at the envelope with the slightest of trembles in your fingers. It burned a hole in your pocket the entire drive home, and you were more so than usual frustrated at your run-down truck’s pathetic engine. It wasn’t until you had showered, cooled your nervous system even in the slightest, and gotten into your bed that you worked up the courage to open it. Flinching back as if it might explode in your face, you slowly tore it open. 

“Holy shit.” You breathed out, clutching the envelope closer to you to inspect the stack of bills glaring back at you. Frantically thumbing through them— your head started to spin after you hit five-hundred. “He’s insane. Oh my god, he’s insane.”

Pulling out the wad of money, a small napkin you recognized as one you were offering the guests with the horderves fell onto your mattress. You snatched it up, frenzied eyes quickly skimming the sloppy penmanship. 

Thanks again for the cake, and try to keep your coffee off of your new laptop. 

— Satoru ‘Real Disaster’ Gojo

The money, along with the note, sat untouched at the bottom of your bag for nearly a week. It felt so unbelievably wrong to use it, but you weren’t exactly sure what to do with the thousand dollars you’d received in exchange for a slice of cake and an insult. So, it remained there as you pretended to forget its existence, continuing to work your actual job in the meantime as though you didn’t already now have more than enough for a new laptop. 

It’s where you found yourself now, mindlessly reading over the notes from your previous class as you sat at the front desk of your campus library. Your days were typically slow like this, especially since it wasn’t anywhere near finals season, which is about the only time of semester you would see this place bustling with students. There were no complaints from you though, as you were able to study and get homework done so you’d be free to help your dad out around the farm when you were home.

The writer’s block you were suffering from was just on the cusp of escaping you as you finally began typing out an opening paragraph for the marketing paper you had been stuck on for nearly an hour. As if the universe was dead set on mocking your academic struggles, a student strolled up to your desk just as your fingers began moving across the keyboard on the library computer. With a barely disguised sigh of frustration, you looked up to offer your services, but your typical greeting died in your throat. 

He looked different than when you had last seen him— out of his Prada suit and instead donning a university crewneck as he scrolled purposefully through his phone with furrowed brows of concentration. Satoru Gojo; maybe it wasn’t such a shock that he attended the same university as you, given it was what some would call a ‘prestigious’ university that you were only lucky enough to attend due to the scholarship you grinded your ass off to qualify for each semester. 

There was a subtle hitch in your breath as he hummed triumphantly, zooming into something on his phone before leaning over the counter to show you. You hoped that perhaps he would have forgotten all about you, and you redirected your attention to the book he was showing you.

“Do you know if you carry this book? I ordered it for class, but it still hasn’t—” 

You felt your stomach practically drop through your ass and onto the floor below you when he abruptly cut himself off. Daring to glance up from his phone, you found those intensely stunning eyes wide and trained on you. A slow smile spread across his lips, and the shock in his eyes morphed into that wicked mischievousness that seemed to come so naturally to him.

“Well that dinosaur certainly doesn’t look like a new laptop to me.” He quipped, clicking his phone shut to lean against the counter on his elbows. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“That’s because I didn’t buy a new laptop.” You explained with burning cheeks, reaching for the bag you had stored under the desk. Fishing around at the bottom of it, you procured the envelope that had been lingering in your possession for a week. You slid it over to him. “Nevermind the fact that I could have gotten three laptops with that kind of money.”

Gojo backed away from the envelope as though it might burn him to touch it, raising his hands defensively. 

“So, I figured you could get a nice one. Sue me—”

“I’m not taking your money, Gojo.”

“Ouch— not the family name, princess! You wound me.” He clutched theatrically at his chest before letting his arms fall beside him with an aggravatingly charming smirk. Huffing out an indignant sigh, you moved to search the system for the book he had shown you. 

“We’re not friendly enough for the first name basis, and we’re certainly not friendly enough that I’d accept this kind of money from you.” You emphasized with a few pointed clicks of your mouse before turning to face him once again. “That book is in the third row to your left.” 

“Yeah?” He hummed, eyes assessing you pensively. The ever present smirk on his lips never faltered. “And what would you have done with it if you didn’t run into me?” 

Pursing your lips, you narrowed your eyes at him in challenge, but it was one he was more than prepared to take on as he tilted his head mockingly.

“Who knows, I’m partial to animals— maybe a local shelter would have needed it more than me.” 

“How very noble of you.”

“Well, you’re not the only one around here drawn to philanthropy.” Leaning in until he could feel your breath fanning against his nose, you smiled in feigned charm. “Of course, my efforts wouldn’t be contributing to a tax write-off, but giving is giving, right?”

But your biting accusations didn’t deter him, if anything, that fierce tongue of yours only intrigued him more after so long of everyone in his life blindly agreeing with him. You wondered if he could hear the way your heart was racing against your chest, because it was just your luck that the arrogant son of the family fucking your dad’s life over was breathtakingly handsome. He hummed softly, picking up the envelope from the counter to pat it teasingly onto your nose. 

“And that’s what you thought I was doing? Charity work?” 

“Well you certainly weren’t doing it because I left any sort of stellar impression.” The confidence in your tone faltered as you recalled that night, a flush falling over your cheeks. “I’m sorry about that, by the way.”

With a mockingly wistful sigh, he turned around, leaning back on his elbows against the counter as he tilted his head back to look at you. 

“Well, I could hardly blame you. You don’t know me, after all.” His anticipatory tone told you that he was plotting something in that pretty, privileged head of his. “And that’s our problem, isn’t it? You don’t know me, I don’t know you— you said it yourself, princess. Can’t accept this kind of money from a stranger.”

You didn’t respond, not wanting to encourage whatever nonsense he was currently conjuring up. Standing from your desk, you walked around the counter and headed down toward the rows of books. Gojo was hot on your heels though, trailing behind you as he leaned down to use his ‘inside voice’. 

“This is the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘Well what do you suggest then, Satoru?’.” His pitched impression of you almost made you smile, but, again, you didn’t want to egg him on. Instead, you headed down your intended row and began skimming the books as he leaned against the shelf. “Well, I’m so glad you asked, because I happen to be in need of a date for my lovely family’s… hah, whaddya’ know— charity gala this weekend.”

“And this concerns me how?”

“What better way to get to know one another than spending a few hours pretending to like each other, huh?” 

“You’re delusional, Gojo.” You shook your head with an incredulous smile. Finally spotting the book he had shown you, you pulled it from the shelf and shoved it toward his chest. “Not happening.”

“C’mon, it’s a win-win for both of us. I get a night without my parents on my ass introducing me to every poor girl they sink their claws into, and you can keep the money knowing it was a gift from a friend.” 

You narrowed your eyes at him, a bemused smirk taking over your features as you crossed your arms over your chest. 

“Let me get this straight.” You began with a pop of your hip, leaning back on the shelf across from him. “Satoru Gojo is having to rent a girlfriend for the night. Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Weeell, if you put it that way, that would make you a—” He quickly shut his mouth upon seeing the icy glare you shot his way, daring him to finish that sentence. With a subtle fear hidden behind those striking eyes, he mustered a sweet smile. “—a fool to not take me up on such a kick-ass offer.”

“Nice save.” You muttered with a roll of your eyes, pushing off the wall to get back to work. He stepped forward though, placing his arms on either side of the shelves by your head and effectively trapping you in. That cologne that you remember driving you crazy all those nights ago was once again making your head spin, and you struggled to find the courage to look him in the eyes. 

“Live a little— it’ll be fun. Think of it as… as prom!” His eyes widened to emphasize his point. 

“I went to prom— could’ve gone without it.” You whispered with a challenging glare.

“That’s cause I wasn’t your date.” He shrugged obviously, and you were beginning to see how it was that Satoru Gojo always seemed to get his way. “I’ll even steal ya’ your own piece of cake this time.”

This had you turning your head to the side to hide your tickled smile, shaking your head as he laughed triumphantly at the sound.

“Atta girl! Now come on and put your number in my phone before I retract my offer.” 

“Don’t push it, Gojo.”

“Right— yes, ma’am.”

The two of you didn’t message much in the days leading up to the event. When you did, it was mainly Satoru not-so-subtly checking in to assure that you hadn’t changed your mind. He let you know that he’d pick you up, but a ride was the last thing you were worried about as you surveyed your appearance in the mirror. 

Formal events hadn’t ever exactly been your scene, given the more modest living conditions that you had grown up in. You could only pray that you weren’t embarrassing yourself as you smoothed your hands down your old prom dress that you had miraculously managed to squeeze yourself back into. It was the only formal dress you owned, the glittering stone details on the bodice contrasting nicely against the noir, silk fabric. While it looked nice enough, you were sure you’d have trouble breathing the rest of the night, already fantasizing about how exhilarating it’d be to take it off after everything was said and done. 

With an anxious sigh, you leaned forward to carefully color in your lips. You gave yourself one last look over in the mirror before leaving your bedroom. A subtle cringe shook your frame as your heels clacked noisily against the wood floor. The last thing you wanted was to be questioned anymore by your father than you had already been when he saw you poking through your mom’s old jewelery box. You had played it off as a fundraising event your university was hosting, but you weren’t sure that he was entirely convinced. 

There was a firm knock at the front door that had you rolling your eyes in exasperation, because you had told him to just text you when he got here. You were grateful that it seemed as though your dad was still out and not here to witness Satoru Gojo of all people picking his daughter up as a date. With a final huff of self-encouragement, you pulled the door open.

Now, he had had a line prepared about the hell of a place you got here, what with all the acres of land extending out the back of the property, but his lazy joke dissipated from his mind at the sight of you all done up for him. You looked so different than the last times that he’d seen you, and it wasn’t just that your eyes were shimmering with intricately placed shadows, or that your dress hugged your frame sinfully. 

No, it was the light in your eyes that had previously been overshadowed by the weight of your responsibilities each time you’d seen him. Gone was that lingering exhaustion that dared taint your features, and in its place was a hopeful glimmer that knocked the wind from him as you directed it up at him with fluttering lashes. 

He no longer felt like the young-adult he had grown to be, resembling more so a fumbling teenage boy picking up the homecoming date that was far out of his league. Anxiously, fiddling with the knot of his tie as if it was to blame for his sudden labored breathing, he chuckled half-heartedly.

“You clean up nice for someone who didn’t even want to come in the first place.” Gojo quipped as he bowed theatrically with an outstretched hand. 

“Well I sure hope I look the part with how much I’m charging you.” The wink you sent him as you placed your hand in his nearly had him falling to his knees, and he wondered how he would survive the remainder of the night without embarrassing himself. 

Nearly the entire drive was dedicated to him giving you the rundown of the event— who would be there, who he was pointedly trying to avoid, the sequence of events for the coming night. It all somehow snowballed into him babbling about the reality show worthy fueds and shambled love lives of the city's most elite names. You wanted to keep up, but Lord could this boy talk.

Even with all his rambling, nothing could have prepared you for the hundreds of scrutinizing eyes that fell upon you as soon as you entered on the arm of the hosts’ infamously single son. There were already a myriad of guests here, drinks in everyone’s hands and people on the dance floor. 

“Why do I get the vibe that we’re disgustingly late?” You muttered through a polite smile, your hand curling tighter around Satoru’s bicep as you two continued making your way in. 

“Pfft, if they want me to stay till it ends, I sure as hell ain’t coming right when it starts.” He retorted with a scoff before leaning down to your ear-shot. “Learn the ways of the disastrous prodigal son, princess.”

There wasn’t a chance in hell that he was ever going to let you live that one down. 

“Ooo, and there are those people I was avoiding. Remember the ones with the twin daughters— come dance with me.” You could barely keep up with his rapid fire, and you wouldn’t have the chance to ask him to reiterate because he was moving toward the center of the room like a man on a mission, because he was one, the mission being to get through this thing unscathed. 

“Wait, Gojo, I don’t know how to dance.” You whispered-shouted as you tried to desperately dig your heels into the ground, but he was stronger than you and a hell of a lot more determined.

“Just stand there and pretend to be in love with me— I’ll do the rest.” He winked, the arm you had yourself wrapped around swooping down to scoop you against him with an urging hand on the small of your back. “Hand on the shoulder— atta girl.” 

Through your flustered blush, you glared indignantly at his patronizing. He tutted softly, his other hand dancing down the silken skin of your arm to grasp at yours.

“That look isn’t screaming ‘love sick’.” Gojo informed through an amused smile. Before you could manage to huff out a response, he had spun around to dip you dramatically, the abrupt motion emitting a delighted squeal from you, much to his satisfaction. “There it is— keep looking at me like that. Talk to me— really sell it.”

You weren’t sure how he did it— how his effortless charm managed to break through even the strongest of resentments you held toward that last name of his. It was all around you though, enveloping you in his orbit and blanketing you in a warmth you were sure was radiating right off your incandescent cheeks. As you stared at the flickers of indigo that seemed to speckle throughout his otherwise icy irises, you nearly forgot what you were supposed to be doing.

“Right, um…” Your eyes fluttered dramatically as you racked your mind for anything to say to him. The dimple in his right cheek that winked at you with each of his ravishing smirks made it difficult for you to stay on track. “Physics.” 

“Physics?” He repeated with unconcealed mirth, and you nodded.

“The book you checked out the other day— it was a physics book.” He hummed affirmatively as if questioning where the hell you were going with this. Truthfully though, he was too lost in the flustered twitching of your plush lips to care if any of what you were saying actually made any real sense. From so close, he could see the sun-spots lining your nose and cheeks like the most breathtaking of constellations. “It just surprised me. It’s not a required class for business majors.” 

“It’s not, and I—” He paused his explanation to twirl you under his arm, reveling in the enraptured smile that graced your face as he pulled you back in. “—am not a business major.”

“Oh? The prodigal son dares not follow in his father’s footsteps? How scandalous.” There was an airy giggle lingering in your tone that fell upon his ears like the most harmonious of symphonies. “And what, pray tell, is the alternative that has led his little lamb astray?”

Those curved lips of his parted to indulge your curiosity, but the announcement that dinner would be served momentarily had a groan slipping past them instead. Just as he moved to guide you to the respective table with a hand on the small of your back, you tugged at his sleeve.

“Wait, I have to pee.” You whispered, hoping the guests bustling around you didn’t hear it. 

“Oh— yeah, there’s a bathroom to the right of the entrance.” 

He was about to walk away, leave you to do your business when you clutched tighter at his sleeve. Looking down at you with furrowed brows, you stared up at him with wide, pleading eyes that said please don’t leave me.

You heard Gojo’s head bumping impatiently against the door of the restroom as you managed to wrangle the zipper of your dress down. There was an embarrassingly long attempt of trying to simply lift the gown up as would have been far easier, but it was proven difficult with the stubbornly form fitting fabric. Now though, as the joints in your shoulders flexed painfully in an attempt to zip it back up, you realized you had an even bigger dilemma. 

Mortified beads of sweat began lining your forehead as you panted at your reflection in the mirror, your zipper still barely halfway up your back. 

“Did you fall in or something?” You heard him call out from outside the door, only making your heart pound more mercilessly against your chest.

“I-I’m fine! I’ll be right out.” But your voice was trembling ever so slightly in the midst of your subtle panic, and it made him push off the door, leaning in closer with furrowed brows. 

“What’s going on?” 

“Nothing!” You stammered breathlessly, but you were rapidly coming to the realization that you wouldn’t be getting out of this without some help. Fighting back tears of frustration, you leaned your forehead against the door. “I— I’m just kind of… stuck.”

“Stuck?” The doorknob jiggled with his attempt to get in. “Open the door.”

The already stuffy air of the restroom seemed to grow ten degrees warmer in tandem with your crippling embarrassment as you hyped yourself up. Holding up the front of your dress, you timidly cracked the door open. Gojo was quickly shoving his face in through the small opening, assessing the situation with an incredulous expression. He almost laughed, but it died in his throat upon seeing your panicked face.

“Okay, alright, calm down. Let me in.” You moved back as he slipped inside. 

“I-I can’t get it back up.”

“You’re fine. Turn around and let me try.” Gojo steadied his hands on your shoulders as you turned your back to face him. A brief sigh of relief fell from your lips at the sound of the zipper rolling up, but it halted midway. He paused, blinking a few times before attempting to tug it up again. “Okay— um…”

“Oh my god.”

“No, no, it’s—  it’s fine.” But the laughter he was previously suppressing began to boil over to the surface. It came out as a controlled choke in his attempt to push it down, but you still heard it.

“It’s not funny!” 

“I’m not laughing!”

“You’re laughing at me!”

His teeth were sinking mercilessly into his bottom lip to avoid pissing you off anymore, but the wolfish grin on his face was making it increasingly difficult. Falling forward until his forehead laid against your shoulder, he shook his head with a boyish cackle. 

“Ohhh, you’ve made this night so much more entertaining for me.” He sighed wistfully before pushing you forward to dramatically haul his foot onto the toilet seat as if to brace himself. “Alright, deeep breath for me, let’s go.”

In spite of your humiliation, you too couldn’t help but begin giggling nervously at the absurdity of the situation. Gulping in a deep breath, you straightened your posture as stiff as you could as a theatrical grunt bubbled in his chest with his firm tug. The blasted zipper finally slid up the remainder of your back, leaving you both hollering in relief. 

“See?” Satoru was clutching onto your arms lest you double over with the force of your belly laughs. “You just needed a big, strong— ”

“Satoru?” 

Both your heads shot up to look at the now open door, and the woman you recognized as his mother now stood at the entrance with a less than impressed expression on her stern face. You could have strangled him for not bothering to even close the door, let alone lock it. 

Mortified wouldn’t be a strong enough word. 

Your fingers dug anxiously into your thighs as you sat at the painstakingly quiet table, sat right across from the woman who had just witnessed her son wrangling you back into your dress in the event’s restroom. At the very least, it seemed Satoru wasn’t fairing any better, staring down at his place setting as he took an absentminded sip of his wine. You had never seen him so… serious before. Though you had only known him briefly, it felt like a completely different man sitting next to you.

“So, I assume you two met at university?” His father’s stoic voice was finally the one to break the tension that he wasn’t even sure the reason of in the first place. 

Glancing up with a fluttering gaze, you found the man’s familiarly striking blue eyes directed at you. 

“Um, yes. We attend the same university.” You thought it best to not specify that that wasn’t where you two met, already having made an ill impression on his mother as it was. 

“Oh? And what are you studying?” His mother opened her mouth for the first time since redirecting the both of you to the table. You looked up as the wait staff set a salad in front of you, though you felt far too anxious to eat right now. 

“My major is in business.” You informed, picking up your fork in an attempt to at least look like you weren’t internally short-circuiting. There was a soft nudge on your thigh as Satoru subtly bumped his knee against you to get your attention. Peering over, you noted with flushed cheeks that he was tapping at the smaller fork at your placement, praying his parents didn’t make a comment to embarrass you any further. Gulping harshly, you moved to correct your mistake. 

“Business, huh?” His father’s face seemed to light up marginally at your answer, and he looked toward his son pointedly. “Perhaps you can talk some sense into Satoru then. He’s been so stubborn about this… what is it again?”

You watched from your peripheral as his hand clenched at his silverware in response to his father’s not-so-subtle jab.

“Quantum physics.” He responded bluntly, stabbing at the tomato on his plate a bit more aggressively than necessary. 

It was becoming clear to you the reason for his abrupt switch in temperament. You had only spent all of ten minutes sat with his parents, and it was evident how they seemed to drain that spark that was usually so easily present in his eyes. His response made your lips part slightly in astonishment. It’s not that you thought he was stupid, but you certainly had never pegged him as the type disciplined enough for such a rigorous field. 

“Quantum physics!” His dad held his hand out with a bitter laugh before looking back at you. “Now what do you suppose he is going to get out of studying quantum physics that will be more fruitful than if he stayed within the family business?”

You wanted to defend him, already preparing a curt but respectful response about how he’d get more out of studying something he was passionate about, but the older Gojo continued talking.

“Is that what you’re doing?” He asked you as he took a sip of his wine. “Studying to stay within a family business?”

The mention of your family spilling from the lips of the very man responsible for ninety percent of their struggles made your jaw clench. Perhaps it was the forlorn expression that had overtaken Satoru’s once lively face that gave you the courage to not simply brush it under the rug. 

“Actually, I’m studying business in hopes of buying my father’s farm from him in the future.” You clarified with your lips set in a firm line. Beside you, Satoru’s head slowly turned to face you as it seemed he had come to the realization faster than his parents were.

“A farm?” His dad scoffed with an amused smile. “That’s nonsense. No sense in wasting your efforts on a farm. You should hope to do better than your parents did, don’t you think? I certainly hope the same for my son.”

You felt the blood rush to your cheeks, cluching at the napkin in your lap. 

“Dad, that’s—”

“Better?” You laughed bitterly, cutting off whatever attempt Gojo was going to make to defend you. “Perhaps, sir, my father’s farm would be doing better if your company wasn’t driving him off his own land.”

It seemed that the man was finally putting two and two together, your last name falling from his lips in recognition. 

“I see what this is about.” He shook his head with a patronizing smile, wiping at his mouth with the stark white napkin. “Sweetheart, this is just the way society progresses. City’s grow, and—”

“As does your bank account, I’m assuming.” You bit back with a raised brow. “What progresses society is people who actually give a shit about that society.”

“A farmer’s mouth too to match her father’s. Boy, son, do you know how to pick them.”

“Dad! ” Satoru growled out in warning as his silverware clattered down onto his plate, and you weren’t sure if the flush in his cheeks was from anger or humiliation.

“Don’t bother.” You abruptly stood from your seat, hoping desperately that you could hold your mortified tears back long enough to not break down in front of everyone. “I think I’ve had my fill of playing dress up for one night.” 

As you stormed toward the exit, the bottom of your dress bundled up furiously in your hands, you could hear Satoru calling after you. You couldn’t bear to look back at him though, the tears falling in angry, stinging streams down your cheeks as the fresh air nipped at your face. His long legs seemed to carry him much faster than you anticipated though, and his hand was soon curling desperately around your arm.

“Please, I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”

“No, but I did, okay?” You cried, swiping furiously at the mascara you were sure was staining your face right now. “I knew better, and I still let myself be— be humiliated. So, please just spare me the pity and let me go home, Gojo.”

“I’ll drive you—”

“Alone. I want to go home alone.”

His movements faltered, a hushed guilt striking his handsome face. The moonlight’s illumination seemed to bounce off his incandescent eyes as his gaze fluttered. With a solemn nod, he strode toward the sleek, black car parked just out front and knocked on the window. When it rolled down, a black-haired man peeked out in question as he adjusted the square frames on his nose. 

“Take her home.” Satoru demanded simply before moving to open the back door for you. You kept your eyes focused on the ground as you ducked into the vehicle, but you could feel his solemn gaze burning a hole into the side of your head with every step. “I mean it— I’m sorry.”

After a pregnant pause with no response, he turned his head to the side, his Adam's apple bobbing with his strained gulp as he closed the door. 

For the first time in what seemed like years, you went home and allowed yourself to cry in your father’s arms. Of course, this entailed your explanation of what had actually been going on that night, but you were too beside yourself to care anymore. In truth, you wished you could have told him how much you hated it, how you were counting the seconds until you could leave and forget about whatever idiotic agreement you’d made with Gojo. You couldn’t though, and that made your bitter tears that much worse. 

Despite your rampant views on the lap of luxury these people draped themselves upon, it felt new and exciting to be at the front of it for the first time. As you desperately wracked your brain to explain your sudden change of heart, all clues pointed back to him, because it was exhilarating to waltz with him as though you had stumbled upon an ever gracious prince, and you could still feel the aching in your cheeks from the sheer force of the laughter he was able to pull from you even during perhaps one of the most embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions of your life.

You had come to the realization, and perhaps your father had as well, that it wasn’t the respect of the haughty company that had surrounded you two that night that made you feel so depraved as it was pulled from you— it was Satoru, and the way you couldn’t for the life of you find it in yourself to fault him for the impertinence of the masses, no matter how much easier it might have been if you did. 

A tear escaped you for every memory of each smirk, each lingering touch and longing gaze— because it was the brash reminder of your glaring differences that stung worst of all. It was the realization that at your very core, you and Satoru were one in the same— in a desperate pursuit against the expectations set before you, yet forcefully pulled into the sickening orbit of their consequences nonetheless. 

Satoru Gojo wasn’t at fault, you finally admitted to yourself as you stared up at your ceiling that night. You thought about the darkness that shrouded him with each insolent syllable that fell from his parent’s lips. You thought about how lonely it must feel in that grand house of his with no one around that didn’t have an agenda to push on him. 

You thought about how many times he must have hidden in that little alcove in his vast hallway— not because he was the Gojo family’s disaster, but because however grating the silence his seclusion provided mustn’t have compared to the gruelling disquietude of belonging to family who had everything in the world except an ounce of care for their only son. 

You had stopped crying for the shamed farmer’s daughter, and instead shed a tear for the forgotten prodigal son. 

In the midst of star-lit dreams of dance floors barren of self-righteousness, you were pulled from your slumber by the distinct, sharp thuds against your window. It was proven difficult to pry your eyes open, given the countless streams that had stung them to sleep. Rubbing sluggishly at them in hopes of waking up enough to assess the situation, you slowly sat up in your bed. You paused for a moment, wondering if perhaps you had just been dreaming the offending noise, but it soon sounded once again. 

Pulling yourself begrudgingly off your warmed sheets, you slowly made your way to the window, almost fearful of what you’d find as you peeked through the curtains. 

“Oh my god.” You rasped out at the sight before you. Ripping your curtains aside, you wrangled your window open with a soft grunt. “What in god’s name are you doing, Gojo?”

He looked up at you as if surprised that you’d actually appeared, and the stunned expression made you wonder how many of the windows in your house he had assaulted before finally finding yours. His neatly tailored, sleek black suit still sat proudly on his frame as he huffed out a sigh. 

“You were supposed to say ‘Romeo, oh Romeo—”

“Do you not remember what else Juliet tells Romeo in this scene?” You whispered furiously down at him, but he only blinked owlishly at you. “She tells him that he’s gonna get his ass beat if he gets caught. You’re not exactly my dad’s favorite person right now.”

“Then come down here.” He insisted pleadingly, holding up a bag for you to see. “I stole you a piece of cake.”

The two of you sat in the bed of your truck, shoulders slumped against one another as you passed a plate of cake back and forth. Neither of you were quite sure what to say, but you both knew it was comforting that the stars shining above you held nary an opinion about either of your paths. There was a blackening bruise lining his right undereye, the lid ever-so-slightly squinted shut. He didn’t mention anything about the way your eyes were still swollen from the tears you had shed, so you didn’t ask about his black eye or split knuckles.

“I’m sorry, Gojo.” It was the only thing you could think to say. Part of you was apologizing for the harsh manner in which you had prematurely critiqued him, the other part felt obligated to apologize for whatever had transpired between him and his father following your departure. 

“Don’t call me that.” He shook his head, that tired expression haunting his face once again. “That’s not who I want to be— not right now.”

Gulping down the lump in your throat, you corrected yourself. 

“I’m sorry, Satoru.”

It was silent for a few moments longer as you two finished your shared dessert. With a sigh, you leaned your head back to stare up at the myriad of stars shining down on you, and, from your peripheral, you saw Satoru do the same. 

“There’s a theory in quantum physics that says objects don’t exist independently.” He began, his good eye working to count each star that caught his attention— willing them into existence. “In other words, if no one is around to see it, it just… doesn’t exist.”

Your lashes fluttered as you soaked in his words, the implications weighing down on your chest as you cast a sidelong glance his way, but he was too busy assuring that each star was observed, acknowledged and therefore real. 

“I think it felt like that for me. Like the version of me I actually understood didn’t exist because no one was willing to acknowledge it.” He confessed, his head finally lolling to the side to observe you next. Each freckle and scar, each blink and trembling lip was confirmed under his watchful eye. “I don’t think anyone’s ever seen it.”

“I see it.” You reassured in a hushed whisper. A small smile finally curled at the corners of his mouth as he nodded softly. 

“You see it.” He confirmed.

You hummed pensively, a modest smile of your own lighting your features ablaze.

“So if you closed your eyes right now— I would just cease to exist then?” You challenged his theory teasingly, wondering when the last time it was that he had gotten to speak about his passion to anyone who actually cared. Although he knew the partially philosophical theory ran much deeper than the laden explanation you were giving, he couldn’t help but indulge your challenge.

“Science is science, princess.” Satoru shrugged with a beguiled smirk. 

“So, you’re saying— ” You leaned forward to tug on his already loosened tie until it came undone. The motion had a rushing heat swirling in his chest, taking note of the way the moonlight emphasized the mischievous glint hidden in your eyes. “If I tied this thing around your eyes— poof— I’m no longer here?”

“Well, a good scientist always tests his theories, of course.” He stammered breathlessly, his legs parting to accommodate your crawling between them. His lips parted as you slowly moved the tie over his fluttering eyes, your chests brushing together while you reached behind him to secure it around his head.

Moving away from him, you leaned back to observe your handiwork. Although blindfolded, you still tilted your head with a teasing smirk as though he’d be able to see it. 

“Well?” You whispered, watching the way his chest heaved with anticipatory pants. “Am I still here?”

The aged truck creaked ever-so-slightly as Satoru shifted onto his knees, his hands reaching out blindly until they met your ankle. Using it as a guide, he carefully crawled forward, hands snaking up your body until he was hovering above you. The ends of the tie that hung from the back of his head brushed against your cheek as he leaned down closer to you.

“Not sure yet.” His hushed tone sent shivers down your spine, and you laid back to stare up at him. 

Nimble fingers trailed up to search out your face, and a tickled smile fought its way onto his lips when he grazed your nose instead on his pursuit. Although it wasn’t his target, he still brushed a featherlight touch down the bridge of your nose before moving to cup your flushed cheeks.

“Your nose is still here, cheeks are still here.” Satoru murmured each checkpoint tenderly. Humming contentedly, he brushed a few lingering hairs behind your ears, thumbing against the delicate lobes in feigned assessment. “Hair, ears…”

His face was drawing closer with each confirmation, and soon the fingers that were still tucked behind your nape pulled your head up ever so slightly until his lips brushed against yours. It was barely a graze initially, a deliberate tease that he was quickly realizing he didn’t have the willpower to keep up, quickly abandoning it in favor of molding his mouth harmoniously against yours.

“Your lips,” He sighed wantonly against you, his voice almost falling into a soft whine. “Your lips are still here— thank god.”

You giggled against him, reaching up to run your fingernails down the short, velvety hairs of his neatly kept undercut. It made him shiver, a smirk curling into your frenzied kiss as he hummed appreciatively. 

“Your hands.” Satoru continued as you pushed at his suit jacket, making him pull away from you for a moment as he shrugged it off. The very hands that he’d just confirmed the existence of didn’t pull him back down right away, instead surprising him as they worked quickly to unbutton his dress shirt, and it was soon joining his jacket in a discarded pile beside you. He clutched at your wrists maneuvering them to run your tender hands down his chest. 

And so he disproved his own theory with the eager exploration of each heaven-sent inch of you, pulling your sweater over your head to confirm the way your breasts heaved against his chest, leaning down to brush his nose and lips across each one of good measure. You aided him with fumbling shuffles to pull down your sweatpants, his desolate moan nearly breaking the resolve of your patience as he carefully inched forward to lick a strip up your folds that glistened under the moonlight in a manner he wished he could see. 

“All here, princess.” Satoru murmured near drunkenly, pressing a few sloppy kisses against your throbbing heat to elicit a few more of those bewitching whimpers from you before making his way back up to press his lips bruisingly against yours.

“And if you leave would I still be here?” You panted against his lips, reaching down to fumble with the buckle of his belt before pulling his bottoms down past the lean curve of his ass. 

“I won’t leave— I’ll never leave.” He shook his head forlornly, glistening lips falling open as you grasped at his cock. Falling forward on his elbows, his clammy forehead pressed against yours.

“Swear it.” You gasped as his tip pushed blindly into you, your moans synchronizing in blissful tandem. Through his parted lips, you could still see the way his lips twitched up at your words.

“What shall I swear by?”

Your heels dug into the cool surface of the truck bed, driving your hips up, pushing him deeper into you as he ground down, the subtle impact sending his head reeling back up to face the stars.

“Not your parents, not your last name.” Your responses began to sound like mindless babbles, but he could swear he understood each syllable as he nodded desolately in raptured agreement. The blunt edges of your short nails dug into his nape to pull him closer to you, your lips brushing once again and sharing each exhale greedily into one another’s mouths. “By you, just you, Satoru.”

“I swear.” He gasped, his hips snapping up in a brutal pursuit of your mutual intoxication. Each of your saccharine moans sent tendrils of euphoric bliss twisting down his spine, and he clutched at your waist in an attempt to ground himself as he felt his own thrusts quickly losing their focus. “I swear— ah! I swear I’ll never leave, and you’ll— ” His rapturous moans cut rudely between his oath. “— and you’ll always be here.”

“I’ll always be here.” You confirmed, brows meshing up as you watched him fall apart with the reassurance of your promise. Reaching up, you pulled the tie down to fall around his neck, his eyes finding yours in an instant as though he would be able to pinpoint their warmth even blind, and he was sure he could— he was sure he could do anything as he spilled himself into you, riding out his high with slack-jawed, lanugid grinds.

“You’ll always be here.” 

And it was true even as you two woke beside one another that next morning after you’d snuck him up to your room. The bruise around his eye had spread substantially, the injured lid now swelled completely shut, but he swore even with just one eye to behold you that you were just as stunning as you had been beneath the moon’s gracious light last night underneath of him. Sitting up on his hands, he allowed the sheets to fall down his chest as he observed the way you seemed to still shiver even under the protective layers of your sweater and thick bottoms. 

Brushing the hair from your face, he leaned down to press his lips against your temple, each of his tender kisses pulling you farther and farther away from your slumber until you stirred beneath him. He smiled when you groaned in disapproval at his interruption of your coma-like state. 

“Sorry, I just don’t want your dad to catch—”

But, much like the theory he rambled on about the night prior, his acknowledgment of the man seemed to will him right into existence with a careful knock on your door. You shot up into a sitting position, eyes wide and frantic as you moved to push against Satoru’s shoulders, attempting with fleeting hope to wrangle his large frame into the closet or perhaps under the bed. 

No attempt would be fast enough though, not with your father’s burning desire to check on you following the state that you’d gone to sleep in the night prior, and the door creaked open.

“You doing okay, sweet—”

There in the cramped bed of his daughter was the very man you had cried against him for just mere hours ago— the son of the very family that had assured you’d never hope for your own aspirations in life, far too focused on fixing his that the Gojo’s had made their life mission to ruin. An unreadable mix of emotions swirled onto his stunned face in a way that had both of you holding your breath. 

His lips parted, but he took note of the swelled, gruellingly dark bruise that surrounded his eye and branched out subtly onto the bridge of his nose. He watched the way the Satoru still clung to your hand, and how your fingers curled in uncertainty into the fabric of his open, button down shirt. He thought about how despite all that you had told him last night—  you couldn’t find it in you to speak an ill word about him, only noting to your father how scared he’d looked at a dinner table with his own parents. 

Your father’s tired shoulders slowly deflated as he sighed. 

“Why don’t you two come down to get something to eat?” With that, he shut the door, leaving the two of you in stunned silence as his boots retreated down the stairs. 

“Is that—” Satoru licked his lips anxiously, his good eye flickering frantically around the room before falling on you. “Is that code for something?

You could only silently shake your head, your gaze still fixed upon the door he’d just left through. Although your heart was still pounding relentlessly against your ribcage, it was beginning to settle with the assurance that your father was a far more merciful man than you had ever given him credit for.

The two of you slowly creeped downstairs after having gotten yourselves together, Satoru’s white hair still disheveled from your pillow as he hesitantly poked his head out to peer toward the kitchen. Your father’s back was facing him, working to flip what looked to be a pancake on the griddle before him, but he turned around upon hearing the creaks in the stairs. 

You had to give him props, because even despite his nerves surrounding his life at the moment, he still stepped forward to bow to your father in greeting, a motion that had the smallest of smiles hinting at the man’s lips. With a hum, he turned back around to plate the pancake that had finished cooking.

“My daughter tells me you're a physicist, Gojo.” He commented, taking the plate of stacked pancakes to place them on the table. 

It took him aback, as he wasn’t sure anyone had ever called him that before— ever even acknowledged the path he had chosen for himself. You watched with a soft gaze as his good eye fluttered rapidly while he blinked away the misty haze that seemed to involuntarily cloud it. With a growing smile, he nodded slowly, taking a seat in the chair your dad had pulled out for him. 

“Trying to be, sir.” He explained breathlessly before looking up at you with a tender smile. “And it’s Satoru— just Satoru.”

masterlist | requests | talk to me ❤︎

I love hearing everyone's thoughts! ◝⠀(ᵔᵕᵔ)⠀◜

[mariacallous]

The longtime owner of a distillery and taproom in Virginia did something new last month: He emailed employees detailed instructions on what to do if immigration agents show up at the business.

Call the business owners immediately. Insist to the agents that they must speak to your employer. Ask them if they have a judicial warrant — signed by a judge. Remember, everyone has a right to remain silent in interactions with law enforcement. And, finally, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have the right to enter public facilities, employees who hear about immigration agents nearby should “feel free to move the tasting room sign to CLOSED and lock the door. EVEN IF WE HAVE CUSTOMERS HERE.”

Speaking about the new policy, the distillery owner, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation, told HuffPost he was focused on making his employees and customers feel welcome.

“I sensed there was some fear and apprehension about this topic, and so I wanted to assuage that and basically be proactive and say, ‘Here’s how we’ll handle it if it happens,’” he said.

The company-wide email is part of a growing trend since President Donald Trump’s inauguration. While presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama largely prioritized the arrest and deportation of undocumented people deemed public safety threats, under Trump, federal agents arrest any undocumented person they can get their hands on, regardless of their criminal record or employment status.

Often, that takes place at workplaces — including a Baltimore pizza shop, Philadelphia meat market, New Jersey kebab restaurant, Mississippi concrete contractor and countless others over the past two months.

In response, immigrant rights and legal groups have seen a surge in demand for “know-your-rights” material, which explains how to interact with law enforcement including immigration agents. Demand is notably high from workers and business owners, they told HuffPost.

“We’ve seen an immense uptick” in demand for know-your-rights training, said Wennie Chin, senior director of community & civic engagement at the New York Immigration Coalition. The coalition includes groups that serve farm workers, domestic workers, taxi drivers, street vendors and a variety of other professions. One recent training was held for restaurant owners who wanted to prepare their own workplaces for potential law enforcement encounters, she said.

“Our team’s now doing at minimum three [trainings] a day, in person and virtual,” Chin added. “The volume has more than tripled. There’s not a day where our members are not doing know-your-rights work in the community.”

“The trainings are often hundreds of people in attendance,” said Jessie Hahn, senior counsel for labor and employment policy at the National Immigration Law Center. “A lot of those trainings have been specifically about worksite immigration enforcement and helping people understand their rights with regard to encounters with ICE at job sites.”

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Common Dreams:

Climate defenders and farmers sued the Trump administration in federal court on Monday over "the U.S. Department of Agriculture's unlawful purge of climate-related policies, guides, datasets, and resources from its websites."

The complaint was filed in the Southern District of New York by Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY).

The case focuses on just one part of Republican President Donald Trump's sweeping effort to purge the federal government and its resources of anyone or anything that doesn't align with his far-right agenda, including information about the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.

"USDA's irrational climate change purge doesn't just hurt farmers, researchers, and advocates. It also violates federal law several times over," Earthjustice associate attorney Jeffrey Stein said in a statement. "USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources."

Specifically, the groups accused the department of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, Freedom of Information Act, and Paperwork Reduction Act. As the complaint details, on January 30, "USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee sent an email ordering USDA staff to 'identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change' by 'no later than close of business' on Friday, January 31."

"Within hours, and without any public notice or explanation, USDA purged its websites of vital resources about climate-smart agriculture, forest conservation, climate change adaptation, and investment in clean energy projects in rural America, among many other subjects," the document states. "In doing so, it disabled access to numerous datasets, interactive tools, and essential information about USDA programs and policies."

EWG Midwest director Anne Schechinger explained that "by wiping critical climate resources from the USDA's website, the Trump administration has deliberately stripped farmers and ranchers of the vital tools they need to confront the escalating extreme weather threats like droughts and floods."

[alicedrawslesmis]

(sorry this is from a week ago but) Wait, what's going on right now that's complicated with Amazonian farmers' land rights?

Not farmers, indigenous people

See, recently they put a new law through congress that severely reduces indigenous land to the borders established during the late dictatorship, or immediately post-dictatorship, in 1988. An absolute joke of a border that was dreamed up by some military assholes. People in america may recognize this type of society from the times of westward expansion and think this is a thing of the past because for you guys it is. But here it is a reality. Murder is rampant. The reach of the law is incredibly limited. Government is just too weak and landowners basically run things. THAT'S WHY it's so important to donate directly to the native peoples instead of random NGOs because native people are fucking there and the more power they hold in the land the safer the land will be from agroindustrial expansion.

Well the law was vetoed by the the president and the Supremo Tribunal Federal, aka supreme federal court, labeled it as unconstitutional. Which it is, because our 1988 constitution describes native american land rights in some of its first articles. We thought this would be it for the law

But then the senate (that already overrepresents landowners in rural states) just went along and approved it anyway. I had no idea they could approve something unconstitutional. The progressives and particularly the socialists are fighting this in court. But it happens that for now the legal border is the severely reduced version.

Doesn't mean they'll just give up, because as it happens we don't have any stand your ground laws so even if you own a piece of land, you cannot legally speaking just shoot everyone there. Or attack or threaten them in any way. They'll just have long legal battles individually for the rights to occupy land based on use. Also the Xingu national park, the largest preserved land of the Amazon described as 'larger than Belgium', is being encroached by huge farms that are poisoning their water supply. The border is Visible. I'll try to find video of it but essentially you have a forest and a desert separated by a strict line.

Just last week in the south of Bahia (not the Amazon, let me explain more about the Amazon situation in a bit) Hãhãhãe leadership Nega Muniz Pataxó was shot and killed by an armed militia group that invaded and occupied the Caramuru territory.

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The situation in the Amazon, specifically the yanomami territory in Roraima our northernmost state, aka deep forest, is more dire than average given difficulty of access, sheer size, and government abandonment. It's a place that depends on government aid for medicine. It's land that is being systematically invaded by gold miners, pandemic, toxins from nearby farmlands, wood extraction etc. (wood extration is rampant everywhere tho). Early 2023 saw a massive federal government operation by now president Lula to empty the mines and try to look for where funding comes from. Yanomami land is still being invaded to this day, the struggle is ongoing.

The yanomamis need support right now more than any other. Last year saw a massive heat wave that (well, one, caused a girl named Ana Clara Machado to die during the Taylor Swift concert. This is unrelated but I feel like not enough foreign media covered this, Taylor even lied about it as well.) dried up a lot of rivers, killed a LOT of fresh water animals including an unprecedented amount of pink dolphins. Access that was already hard became damn near impossible without boats. I cannot overstate how many pink dolphins were found dead.

Another technique that landowners use to clear space for farms is to just set things on fire and then occupy the empty land, which they legally can do to land that was naturally burned in a forest fire. It happened that Pantanal, another national park of swampland, was massively devastated by fires last year too

this article is from 2020, the year that the worst fire happened, but in 2023 there was another one. It's been happening yearly now due to a) deliberate action and b) climate change aggravation.

And this is not nearly all. Just off the top of my head. If you speak portuguese I recommend following the APIB or the COIAB on instagram to keep up with the news. The FUNAI is the government branch of indigenous organization, but it's not generally that well liked. Still.

[kabr0ztrousers]

Being a polite and charming lady at the useless desk jobs on chitinid earth and she gets a notification that she is being given an ambassador role. She thinks “finally something useful I can do!” but surprise! The ambassador role? Yeah it is dressing up in a skimpy outfit and being someone's pet. A population of humans, similar to a small country, is being given to a different alien species as a trade agreement. She is given to their emperor as icing on the cake. At this moment she is internally panicking because while Chitinids don't eat intelligent life this species does (she witnesses it). She is at least good at buttering people up. Fear fucking, giving body worship, and giving praise on this one.

Kabr0z Writes episode 131: Ambassadorial Duties

Find the rest of the Kabr0z Writes anthology here!

There's an AO3!

CWs: Minor gore; dubcon; sex with an audience; size difference; oral sex;

#####################################

You'd only received a memo from central governance once before. Just after the Chitinids won the war, to inform you of your new position at a former law firm. It's not like your life was awful now, you didn't need to worry about rent, or losing your job. Quarterly reviews were still a thing, but only to preserve the "authentic" Human culture for academic study. In reality they were just you and your manager discussing metrics that didn't matter, setting meaningless goals, then filling out a meaningless spreadsheet. Considering you worked data entry for a slightly scummy ad agency before the sixty minute war, this was almost a welcome change. Still the same drudgery, but minus the precarity of potentially being automated out of a job. It could have been a lot worse, but what's the point of belonging to a sprawling star empire if you live out your days on Earth?

So you put in an application to move offworld. You had enough presence of mind to request not to be put into agricultural work, knowing precisely the role human women played on a Chitinid farm. Maybe some people were into that, you'd heard of one guy who ended up on reality TV doing it, but being a dairy cow wasn't entirely your speed. Months passed, and you heard nothing. Just the usual humdrum of emails, reheated nutrient blocks, and omnipresent gunship patrols. Then it arrived.

An item in your "in" tray. Not an email, an honest to god letter, sealed with a crimson ribbon and a blob of wax. It felt good in your hand. The paper was thick and weighty, the ribbon was smooth and felt like it might be actual silk. You cracked the seal and read the neatly typed message. You'd been appointed as part of a diplomatic attaché, to travel to the capital of a nearby pre-FTL civilization and extoll to them the benefits of joining the Chitinids. You'd be picked up from a spaceport in what used to be Heathrow in a week. No need to pack, you weren't being allowed to bring any personal effects with you. Not that you really cared about the collection of tat you'd accumulated with your government mandated paycheck. You were just excited to finally be leaving the ball of dirt you'd lived on.

Before you knew it, you were in orbit. Shuttled up to an interchange station from Heathrow, then moved onto a pleasure yacht escorted by corvettes. A sleek, glimmering civilian craft flanked on all sides by menacing, spiky warships, bristling with armaments. A human attendant issued you all with clothing appropriate for your postings, as well as datapads containing assignment dossiers. You and about twelve others were to be sent to another world. The geographic brief indicated the planet was warmer than Earth by a few degrees, and more arid. Which explained the clothes. Flowing linens dyed in purples and reds, edged with gold. You dressed in your quarters, getting out of the governance-approved pantsuit and into your new robes. You looked resplendent in the robes, long and flowing, multi-layered and decadent. You knew you were a walking propaganda piece, tailored to show wealth and opulence, but damn if you didn't almost believe it yourself.

A chattering came across the intercom. A gentle knock came at your door a moment later "Jumping to Witchspace in five minutes, you might want to hold onto something if it's your first time"

Witchspace. You'd read about the altered reality used by Chitinids to accelerate faster than light, crossing lightyears in hours. It didn't bother them, but it was... Interesting for humans. You sat on your bed, expecting the worst. Rhythmic chattering crackled across the speakers. A countdown. You braced yourself, clinging to the mattress. You felt the jump. It was like being turned upside down and punched in the gut, except without the pain. A queasy feeling, like you'd drank far too much the night before and woke up still drunk, unable to tell if you're going to spend the morning vomiting or not.

Then it passed. A feeling like a headache in reverse came over you as the ship's normality fields kicked in, shrouding the vessel in a thin film of realspace, coasting through unreality at several thousand times the speed of light. It defied everything Human physics thought it knew about, well, physics, but it worked. The secrets to the drives were closely guarded to prevent any unauthorized FTL travel, but no information seal is perfect, and everyone knew it was only a matter of time. Maybe that's why there aren't any teachers any more, just legions of office drones, cattle, and pets.

You shuddered at the thought. Pets. In a way that's what you're going to be. Except instead of a Chitinid master, you'd be putting on airs for whatever the native population of this new world would be. You checked your dossier again. The planet was called Suum, apparently they'd had their own Alexander the Great a decade or so ago, but instead of dying of disease, he'd had chance to consolidate power and groom an heir who finished the work of world conquest. Now his successor was on the throne, a powerful god-king whom you would be personal attache to. For now, you stretched out on your bed, trying to catch what sleep you could before your new life.

You slept fitfully. The humming engine and the strange sensations of Witchspace travel, combined with the uncertainty of your future kept you tossing and turning. Even after you'd shed your new clothing, you couldn't sleep properly. You were already awake when a chattered phrase came over the intercom again, you'd guessed what it meant before the knock came at your door. Imminently dropping back to realspace. You dressed and went to the viewing gantry. A dozen of you, all dressed similarly. One moment you were gazing out as the light purple of Witchspace, the next the gate was behind you, you jolted back into reality like jumping into a swimming pool. Your bubble of normal causality merging with the stock-standard three dimensions you were accustomed to.

The planet lurked below you. A dustball, tan brown instead of green, a single huge continent rather than several, a great ocean covering well over half the surface of the world. The usher from before led your group to a shuttle, a shining golden needle-shaped vessel that you all filed into, sitting down and strapping yourselves in. For how sleek the exterior of the ship was, inside it was little more than a dropship, exactly large enough for you all to cram inside. The usher waved you off as you left the hangar, going into orbit before the shuddering re-entry. A moment later the vessel landed, the door opened and you filed out.

The Chitinids have been busy here. The spaceport wasn't as sophisticated as Heathrow, but it looked sufficient for the needle you were riding. Four armed Chitinids flanked your group, escorting you from the ship through the town. The market was in full swing, and you caught your first glimpse of the aliens who called this place home. They were pretty universally tall, and heavily muscled. Greyish skin, the colour of light stone, and two sets of arms. They bartered and shouted over the crowd, though what they were bargaining for sent a shiver up your spine.

Body parts. Human limbs mainly, though you're sure you'd seen a heart changing hands. You blanched, you'd not considered the possibility of becoming lunch for your hosts.

Stills the guards marched you on, through the city, into a palace where the lead gave a chattering speech to the assembled aliens. The largest, a hulking figure twice the size of the others, looked unimpressed, but kept a polite silence while the Chitinid spoke. Once the formalities were dealt with you were pointed to your assignments, though you didn't need to be directed. You could see which one of them fit the description you'd got from the dossier. Yours was the big one.

He displayed you like a prize. You didn't speak the local language, and you weren't sure if any of them spoke yours. You doubted it. At least none of them looked like they were eying you up for the main course. You avoided meat at dinner time, though there wasn't much else on the menu until someone noticed and gave you a chunk of coarse bread.

At last, night started to fall. The men took seats as more people entered the room. You noticed they were all dressed like you, flowing silks in purples and reds, edged with gold. They carried ewers, settling behind courtiers and starting to oil and massage their muscular shoulders. You looked around a moment before another servant gave you a similar jug. Taking some of the strong-smelling oil on your hands, you began to rub at the emperor's shoulders.

Your mind raced with questions: do these people really eat humans? Why are the Chitinids looking to convince them to join rather than just swooping in with gunships like on Earth? Were you really just to be a concubine?

The emperor answered your last question for you. He twisted in his seat, grabbing you and pulling you into his lap. The instruction was clear, whether or not you could understand the words. You pulled down his waistband, revealing his cock. He wasn't hard yet, but it was already as long and as thick as your forearm. You looked up at him a moment, before he pushed you back down with a grunt. Another courtier called out something, drawing a laugh from the huge one with his hand on your back. Your oily hands slid over the skin of his cock, feeling it harden in your grasp.

You took your time, hoping he wasn't going to try and stuff this monster inside you. Every stroke, every twist of your wrist caused it to thicken and throb. He was still holding you down, leaning you over one of his legs as you worked over it. You glanced around, the other concubines were doing similar with the others. The formalities of holding imperial court gone, replaced by the brewings of an orgy. Seeing everyone else doing the same thing made you a little bolder. You still didn't want to try and negotiate putting that thing up you, but the self-consciousness was gone.

You relaxed your shoulders, getting into a stride of jacking him off, feeling the length of him, finding the parts that made him groan when you played with them. For an alien species from across the stars, he worked a lot like the human men you'd been with. His tip seemed very sensitive, and he definitely liked it when you played with the ridge where it joined his shaft. Your other hand drew down to the base of it, cupping his balls. You smiled, of course he had four of those too. You rolled them around, listening to his deep breathing as you edged him.

You had an idea, rolling yourself over his leg so you knelt between them. Here you could see all of him, towering over you. You held onto his cock while you kissed his balls, licking and sucking the soft skin, slick with the oils you'd applied to him.

He was groaning now, restless in his seat. You could feel dozens of pairs of eyes on you as you went, jacking him off with your face nestled at the base of his cock. Maybe this was some great social faux pas? Oh well, you're here to do some cultural exchange, and you've never had a man complain about this back on Earth.

You could feel his balls tightening, He was trying to control his hips bucking. The cock in your hands was twitching and a thin stream of precum was flowing over your hands.

You knew just how to finish him. You straightened up. The huge cock pointed at you, curving towards you. The tip was already right where you wanted it. You opened your mouth and took the end of his cock inside you, filling your mouth with just the end, forcing your jaw open wide to accommodate it. You leant over him, baring your tits and rubbing them against either side of his cock while he leaked in your mouth. Your tongue flicked against the underside of his head. He grabbed the back of your head, holding you in place as he grunted, pushing you to the edge of your gag reflex.

You grabbed his balls, holding onto them as you felt them clench. Thick cum filled your mouth, leaking out of the sides of your mouth as you struggled to swallow it all. more and more pumped into you, you gave up trying to gulp it down, instead feeling it flow out of you.

He softened in your mouth and let go, letting you pull back from him and wipe your face. A servant brought you a goblet of something smelling like wine. The other members of the emperor's court were pointing at you, instructing their concubines.

You might not understand the lingo yet, but you'd waited enough tables in your life to understand "I'll have what he's having"

###########################################

At long last! The story that's been 3 sessions of writing, rewriting, editing, re-editing, I'm not refactoring it again so have fun with it, take it as it is and I wash my damn hands of it.

[boylied]

Animorphs Reread- The Message

I've been sick all week, but Cassie is here to heal me. Let's get into it.

These early books all do a great job of showing us what the kids would prioritize their powers for without the war. Rachel and Tobias become ecoterrorists. And Cassie investigates what's been eating her animals.

Also the first sign of Cassie having Magical Powers.

I don't know how much time has passed since book 3, but i love that Cassie and Tobias are all jokes now about him eating live rodents.

"I would be glad to give him a picture of me in a dress or something" -GIRL PLEASE

I know that the group (esp Rachel) can get antagonistic with Marco, but we have to give it to him here. He didn't get overly defensive or combative. He knows why they're acting this way towards him. And he just comes out and reassures them that he's on their side.

And the yeerks begin to suspect that the "Andalite Bandits" might actually be humans. I forgot that it was brought up this early in the series. Because these kids were thoughtful, but early on they really weren't as careful as they should have been. Truly the only reason their secret went on for so long was that no one was brave enough to tell Visser 3 he might be wrong.

As a kid I always had more of a crush on Marco. But the way Cassie talks about Jake? I get it girl. 13 year olds are swooning.

Wait. This farm has been in your family since the Civil War? Putting aside the theory that these kids are somewhere in California (not canon. i get it). You're telling me that this Farm has been in Cassie's African American family since the American CIVIL WAR??? Sure, Let's not explain further.

Cassie's book is also the first time we get the dialogue over the ethics of morphing. I understand some of the hate Cassie gets, but honestly, when people complain about her always talking ethics? Get over it. It's a good thing. These are middle schoolers. The fact that they're having discussions over the ethics of taking animal dna, cloning that animal, and then mind controlling it? And then the variances depending on which animal/their intelligence level/asking consent? We should want our kids talking about this kind of thing.

"We can all morph fine" -oh the humility. a humble queen. but no Cassie. You are an artist sculpting a beautiful pot, and the others are kindergarteners smashing clay into makeshift ashtrays that their parents won't use.

It's bittersweet how these kids only get to act like kids by giving in to the dolphin mind.

Hold up, THIS is when they think of using the morphing power to heal? I guess it is? Their missions so far have been failures, but they haven't involved near death injuries. This is a bizarre realization.

I really love this moment between Cassie and Marco. Cassie is often portrayed as this wise earth mother type. But here we get to see that this is a major growing up moment for her. She needs to start making active decisions, and not just letting other people take responsibility. The war makes this transition a bit more life and death than most teenagers get, but still necessary.

This plan! This is the one. They're finally being smart about this. Morphing gulls to get a ride on a ship? Resting before going dolphin? They're finally thinking strategically.

Ax's introduction is just so beautiful. He's a child, raised by a militaristic education system during wartime. And now he's alone and afraid and trying very desperately to impress and assess these aliens who in a matter of minutes have just told him that his older brother (the War Hero) has broken their most sacred laws and was murdered by Visser 3.

This is also the first time we hear the black and white version of the andalites vs yeerks. I know that the truth is much more complicated than what Ax is saying. But right now, it's just a group of kids talking. One side is fighting to save others. One is fighting to destroy others.

And there we have it. The team is all together finally. A lot of firsts in this book that I had forgotten about. I'm excited to re-experience these kids integrating Ax into the group. Also, grateful for magic talking whales.

[bleedingcoffee42]

Held off on this because it's becoming disheartening to see a lot of the BoB Tumblr research reposted or remastered with dubious credit, but at the end of the day I really want people to know about Norma Jean Darland Grant, Chuck Grant's wife.

Norma, I don't even know where to start with you. As I dive into the records to find people and make their stories known, nobody has had so much tragedy and absolutely bizarre circumstances revolving around their lives as you. I've never wanted to reach back in time and give someone a hug so badly as I do with this lady. I hope Chuck was your sunshine, I hope you found happiness, I wish you were not the victim of circumstances beyond your control.

Norma was born in Mahaska. Co, Iowa on February 11, 1923. Her father George was a farmer. Her mother Mable Moody Darland , was the daughter of a farmer. She had an older brother Donald. In 1925 they moved to Newton, Iowa, then ended up in Detroit.

Full stop, because George Darland...holy shit did this guy get into everything. And I do mean unbelievable non-stop news. In 1920 George was tearing down a cow barn with his father in law, barn collapses, father in law gets scalped. They have to take William Moody to town on a stretcher, George has a broken shoulder and helps carry him, Moody ends up with 21 stitches and no broken bones. In 1921 George , recently recovered from pneumonia, pulls some Oregon Trail shit and tries to get to his corn farming island in the river when the ferry rope broke, wagon fell off the barge, his team drowns and he almost drowns under one of them. Even the paper is like "damn, this is the unluckiest guy in Iowa." Oh...it's only 1921. Just wait.

He also got into a fight with some guy in town and got busted up earlier that summer, something about a cheese knife and billiard cue and- no- the article does not explain that. Oh, and don't forget the spreading viper he decided to catch in September. Throw in a modest sprained ankle in 1922. There are a few years without news, and I am sure it's just because it's not available to us a 100 years later, yet.

Mable Moody Darland dies in Detroit in 1929, of diffuse peritonitis, after what appears to have been a two year stint in the city to work at Braggs Mfg. After Mable dies, George goes home and the kids are at his parents in Barnes City while he heads to Des Moines to work for his brother. In 1930 Norma Jean writes to Santa and breaks my heart.

However, earlier that year in 1930 George gets involved in the B.O. Darland Grocery Store bullshit and gets shot. Here's the story.: There is a cop, William J. Aiken, who lives a few houses down from George's brother Bert and his family. George's brother Bert has a grocery store on the corner. George is working for him even though the census says he's a mechanic. Mrs. Aiken might be getting more than groceries from Darland's Grocery store. Husband goes to drag her out of the store, punches Bert, draws a gun, gun goes off and George is shot in the leg, then Aiken kicks the shit out of his wife all while Aiken's partner sits in the car and doesn't watch. Trial ensues, Aiken says he used the gun as a club to defend himself and doesn't know who's finger pulled the trigger. Front page Des Moines news, complete with maps! The Judge dismissed the case against Aiken, but Aiken loses his job as detective, and is also later arrested for bootlegging. Wild Norma has not one, but two, men in her life who get shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This poor girl.

It seems George rebounded and found a new Mabel to marry, Mabel Kerr in 1931. Mabel #2's husband Jack, a coal miner who had been working the mines since he was orphaned at 9, was arrested for bootlegging. That left her and their 6 children out of luck as Jack was sentenced to 3 months in jail and a fine of $300. Well, along came the unluckiest guy in Iowa and they were married at her sister's house in Raritan, Illinois in 1931. (If you think Raritan sounds familiar it's because Raritan, NJ was home of Basilone. The Raritan River was where the Nixon Nitration Works was located on. People from this area in NJ left in the 1850s to go start a town with NJ names in Illinois just to fuck with me.)

In 1932 in Tracey, Iowa the schoolhouse George and family are living in, burns down. How much family? Unclear.

1933 rolls around. In Des Moines, Darland's Grocery-- Bert specifically--gets robbed at gunpoint March 16, for $15, milk, sugar, butter and eggs. The same day Jack Kerr visits his family in Albia. George dies March 30, 1933 in Oskaloosa?(maybe?) and I have no idea how. Mabel #2 moves on an remarries in 1938, and her Kerr kids go with her and the Darland kids eventually go west with the Darland family to LA. Norma lives with her aunt Mrytle Darland Morrow and goes to school in Santa Monica. Bert Darland moves west too, restarts the grocery business out there and sells it a few times. He avoids being shot, but a poodle did bite him at one point and couldn't be found so Bert probably got a lot of painful Rabies shots.

George is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery where Mable #1 is, along with loads of Mable #2 family. There is a death notice in the paper, no obit. 'What Killed George Darland' haunts me because this man survived so much and there is no news about what finally got him.

Back to Norma . She goes to Santa Monica High School. Joins the World Friendship Club and Riding Club. In 1938 is at a party celebrating the engagement of her cousin Thelma. She joins the marines in 1943 and by war's end is a corporal. She is stationed at Miramar in San Diego, muster roll says she is with the aviation women's reserve squadron. In 1945 is maid of honor for a fellow marine friend. On her marriage certificate in Nov 1946 she lists her residence as Santa Monica.

How does she meet Chuck Grant who at this point has been out of the hospital a year and is dealing with paralysis and speech issues? Another burning question. However in November 1946 they go to Vegas with Chuck's friend Keith Morgan and his wife and get married. They move to San Diego where she becomes a cashier at the Naval Training Station. 40 hours a week as a payroll clerk. Chuck is used as an example of Navy efforts to assist wounded veterans in a newspaper article, possibly because Norma is working there. They have their first son Dan in 1947 and Charles Jr in 1951.

Then in September 8, 1954, Norma ODs. 7am Chuck goes to the bedroom and finds her, takes the kids to a friends house in Clairemont, and returns to call the cops at 9:15 am and answer questions. He told the detective he wanted to spare the kids the details of their mother's death and didn't want them present from the inquiry. It is ultimately ruled a suicide by the coroner, overdose by barbiturates.

Norma Jean Darland Grant was cremated and is buried in Rosecrans military cemetery in San Diego under her maiden name. I don't know if Chuck just signed off on paperwork and didn't correct it or what. The burial form stipulates there are interment rights in her grave but he ends up buried in Forest Lawn in LA instead.

Norma was 31 years old. From what we can tell, Chuck never remarried.

Thank you to @noneedtoamputate for caring about Chuck and his family and going on this journey of research into the Darlands. For every fact we unearth, we still gain no insight into Chuck's personality. But we've earned those Oregon Trail T-Shirts for learning about George. Thank you for listening to my screaming in the inbox because every. damned. person in Chuck Grant's orbit has some truly messed up shit in their lives. This post is a summary of months of research that has been interesting for sure.

[reasonsforhope]

"When Francois Beyers first pitched the concept of 3D ocean farming to the Welsh regulators, he had to sketch it on napkins. 

Today the seafood farm is much more than a drawing, but if you walked along the Welsh coastal path near St David’s, all you’d see is a line of buoys. As Beyers puts it: “It’s what’s below that’s important.”

Thick tussles of lustrous seaweed suspend from the buoys, mussels cling to its furry connective ropes and dangling Chinese lantern-esque nets are filled with oysters and scallops. 

“It’s like an underwater garden,” says Beyers, co-founder of the community-owned regenerative ocean farm, Câr-y-Môr. The 3-hectare site is part of a fledgling sector, one of 12 farms in the UK, which key players believe could boost ocean biodiversity, produce sustainable agricultural fertiliser and provide year-round employment in areas that have traditionally been dependent on tourism. 

Created in 2020 by Beyers and six family members, including his father-in-law – an ex-shellfish farmer – the motivation is apparent in the name, which is Welsh for “for the love of the sea”. ...

Pictured: Drone shot of Câr-y-Môr, which is on the site of abandoned mussel farms. Image: Scott Chalmers

Ocean farming comes from the technical term ‘integrated multi-trophic aquaculture’, which means a mixture of different seaweed and shellfish species growing together to mutually benefit each other. But it’s not just a way of growing food with little human input, it also creates ocean habitat. 

“You’re creating a breeding ground for marine animals,” explains Beyers who adds that the site has seen more gannets diving, porpoises and seals – to name a few – since before the farm was established.

Ocean farms like Câr-y-Môr, notes Ross Brown – environmental research fellow at the University of Exeter – have substantial conservation benefits.

“Setting up a seaweed farm creates an exclusion zone so fishermen can’t trawl it,” explains Brown, who has been conducting experiments on the impacts of seaweed and shellfish farms across the UK. 

Brown believes a thriving ocean farming industry could provide solutions to the UK’s fish stock, which is in “a deeply troubling state” according to a report that found half of the key populations to be overfished. “It would create stepping stones where we have safe havens for fish and other organisms,” he adds. 

But UK regulators have adopted a cautious approach, note Brown and Beyers, making it difficult for businesses like Câr-y-Môr to obtain licenses. “It’s been a tough old slog,” says Beyers, whose aim is to change the legislation to make it easier for others to start ocean farms. 

Despite navigating uncharted territories, the business now has 14 full-time employees, and 300 community members, of which nearly 100 have invested in the community-benefit society. For member and funding manager Tracey Gilbert-Falconer, the model brings expertise but most importantly, buy-in from the tight-knit local community. 

“You need to work with the community than forcing yourself in,” she observes. 

And Câr-y-Môr is poised to double its workforce in 2024 thanks to a Defra grant of £1.1 million to promote and develop the Welsh seafood industry as part of the UK Seafood Fund Infrastructure Scheme. This will go towards building a processing hub, set to be operational in April, to produce agricultural fertiliser from seaweed. 

Full of mineral nutrients and phosphorous from the ocean, seaweed use in farming is nothing new, as Gilbert-Falconer notes: “Farmers in Pembrokeshire talk about their grandad going down to the sea and throwing [seaweed] on their farms.” 

But as the war in Ukraine has caused the price of chemical fertiliser to soar, and the sector tries to reduce its environmental impact – of which synthetic fertiliser contributes 5% of total UK emissions – farmers and government are increasingly looking to seaweed. 

The new hub will have capacity to make 65,000 litres of sustainable fertiliser annually with the potential to cover 13,000 acres of farmland. 

But to feed the processing hub, generate profit and reduce their dependency on grants, the co-op needs to increase the ocean farm size from three to 13 hectares. If they obtain licences, Beyers says they should break even in 18 months. 

For now, Beyers reflects on a “humbling” three years but revels in the potential uses of seaweed, from construction material to clothing.  

“I haven’t seen the limit yet,” he smiles."

-via Positive.News, February 19, 2024

[randomfoggytiger]

Fox Mulder: Jewish, Dutch, Or Other Some Such (UPDATED)

In my curiosity to explore Jewish cultural practices, I stumbled on an enlightening article (and a couple noteworthy theories.)

AUTHORIAL INTENT AND OTHER INTERPRETATIONS

I've briefly explored this concept in another meta post here, but it's wisest to tackle the subject as thoroughly as possible.

**Note**: This post has been shelved, since it failed to achieve its original goal. Proceed at your own peril.

Chris Carter named the Mulders in honor of his mother, a descendant of Dutch-Americans.

April 2001:

Loyal “X-Files” fans may know that Fox Mulder, the brainy protagonist played by David Duchovny, was named after Carter’s mother, the late Catherine Mulder Carter. (Scully was named for longtime-Los Angeles Dodgers’ baseball commentator Vin Scully – no relation). But very few people know that Carter’s mother was born to a Dutch-American family in Manhattan, Mont.

According to McCoy [Carter's cousin], the Mulder family moved to the Amsterdam-Manhattan area from Grand Rapids, Mich. Seven of their nine children were born in the Gallatin Valley and after an unsuccessful turn farming here, the Mulders moved to Southern California to start a feed and grain business in Bellflower, Calif. Norman Mulder was the only one of the nine children in the family to return to the Gallatin Valley. While McCoy and Mulder are Carter’s closest area relatives, there are probably many distant relatives still living in the Gallatin Valley’s Dutch community, McCoy said. She added that the California and Montana Mulders have always been, and remain, close.

(**Note**: While Kuiper, Tena Mulder's maiden name, is also of Dutch origin, that does not exclude the possibility of Jewish heritage.)

Meanwhile, David Duchovny and Vince Gilligan had a differing view. David inherently played any character through his experience of the world-- culturally-ish Jewish-- while Vince worked in a reference to Mulder's "Jewishness" in a deleted portion of Drive's script:

Crump: You know... what kinda name is Mulder, anyway? What is that, like, Jewish?

Mulder: Excuse me?

Crump: Jewish. It is, right?

Mulder: No it's not, yes I am....

But there is, yet again, another schism of dissent: Howard Gordon, write of the episode Kaddish, agreed with Carter's perspective, stating that he didn't think Mulder was Jewish "or even half-Jewish." The purpose of his work was to set Mulder up as the outsider peering inward: "We had never dealt with the horrors of antisemitism and the power of the word [on The X-Files]. And because I'm Jewish, it was something that was really compelling to me personally." As explained in Paula Vitaris's Cinefantastique article, Gordon purposefully wrote in three references to Mulder's Gentile identity: Mulder is unable to identify a Jewish book, does not read or speak the language himself (" I don't speak Hebrew, I don't know what that means"), and is unwilling to pass up a reference to Jesus Christ's Christian resurrection ("A Jew pulled it off 2000 years ago") in response to an antisemite. Gordon's Mulder, then, is a man who related to all people while still remaining, fixedly, an outsider.

CHANGES IN JEWISH CUSTOM

When toying with the idea of Mulder's Jewish ancestry, I had assumed that matrilineal lineage was the opening and closing authority on the subject.

Not so, apparently (or not completely.)

REFORM

Chabad.org

The Code of Jewish Law clearly states that a child of a Jewish mother is Jewish, regardless of the father’s lineage (or whatever else may show up in a DNA test), while the child of a non-Jewish mother is not Jewish. Matrilineal descent has been a fundamental principle of Torah since the Jewish people came into existence.

The code, however, has gone under intense scrutiny in recent years.

As My Jewish Learning explains: Although the Hebrew Bible defines Jewish identity in patrilineal terms (determined by the identity of the father) the Mishnah [a record of the oral Torah in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple, 70 CE] states that the offspring of a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father is recognized as a Jew, while the offspring of a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father is considered a non-Jew. This talmudic position became normative in Jewish law.

This continued as the religious and ethnic norm for many centuries until, about, 1947: ...the CCAR adopted a resolution that stated that if a Jewish father and a gentile mother wanted to raise their children as Jewish, “the declaration of the parents to raise them as Jews shall be deemed sufficient for conversion.” And though the wording changed somewhat in 1961 ["The insistence on a “conversion” was dropped completely...."]

But it did not become-- in effect-- law until 1983 resolution:

By 1983, the CCAR was ready to spell out the patrilineal descent resolution in greater detail. By this time there was a broad-based commitment to egalitarianism. To many, it seemed unnecessarily biased to accept the child of a Jewish mother and a gentile father as Jewish while rejecting the child of a Jewish father and a gentile mother. 

[Rabbit Alexander] Schindler initiated a process that eventually led to the CCAR voting in favor of what became known as the Patrilineal Descent Resolution....

What this meant was that if a child was born of either a Jewish father or a Jewish mother, and was raised as Jewish, that child would be regarded by the Reform movement as Jewish. They were, however, expected to participate in the various Jewish life-cycle ceremonies which usually mark the life stages of a Jewish person.

1996 brought another development:  ...the CCAR created an 11-member task force to interpret and develop guidelines for the successful implementation of the patrilineal descent policy. The task force recommended that the resolution be referred to as “equilineal descent” or simply “Jewish descent” rather than patrilineal descent since the resolution accepted descent from either the mother or the father.

The radical shift, encapsulated, is as follows: While Jewish children had always been asked to prepare for their bar and bat mitzvahs, their Jewishness was never contingent upon successful completion of that ceremony or any other.  The Patrilineal Descent Resolution shifted the emphasis from birth to conscious choice.

DISSENT

Regardless, there is still broad disputation between Conservative and Orthodox Jews and Reform Jews:

...However, patrilineal Jews are likely to encounter problems later in life if they decide to become more traditional in their observance. A problem arises if Reform Jews who are Jewish by patrilineal descent choose to participate in ritual or celebrations at more observant synagogues. 

...Conservative and Orthodox Jews do not recognize patrilineal descent as a valid means of passing on Judaism. “Who is a Jew?” has been a controversial issue for several decades, and the Patrilineal Descent Resolution deepened the division between the opposing viewpoints. 

The article also raises an intriguing point:

Interestingly, this created the possibility that someone who had a Jewish mother, but had not been raised Jewish and had not had any public religious acts of identification such as a Jewish baby-naming ceremony, a bar or bat mitzvah, or a Jewish confirmation service could theoretically be regarded as a non-Jew despite his or her lineage. However, many rabbis recognize lineage alone.

SECULAR JUDAISM

If we work off of the assumption that Tena Mulder was a Jew, then Mulder's heritage is without question, as matrilineal descent is a core part of the Jewish identity.

It would then inherently inform Mulder's branch of Judaism, nonbeliever that he is--

Phoebe Maltz Bovy, The Canadian Jewish News:

Secular Jews are in some sense a process-of-elimination category. If other Jews register you as Jewish, if antisemites hate you for being Jewish, but you are not a practising member of any religion, then you are a secular Jew. It’s roughly the same as being nominally Jewish. It’s Jewishness, rather than Judaism, perhaps. A convert from Judaism to another faith might be culturally or ethnically Jewish but is not, obviously, a secular Jew. I will not belabour the terminological aspects of this....

“Secular” is a spectrum, and means different things to different people. It might mean avowed atheism, it might not. Secular Jews pick and choose from elements of their—our—religious heritage, but tend to interpret these as cultural, rather than spiritual, traditions. Though “pick and choose” suggests more intent than may enter into it.

MULDER'S EARLY PARENTAGE: A DIFFERING THEORY

Early canon states that Bill Mulder was Mulder's father, while later canon debates the issue back and forth a bit before settling on CSM in Season 9. In spite of this, the world en masse wouldn't have known the murky nature of Mulder's paternal origins; and, thus, would have regarded him in line with Bill's (and Tena's) ethnic heritage.

That being said, I do find it interesting that Mulder wouldn't have been considered a Jew until the 80s by the broader, entrenched community had his father-- and not his mother-- been a Jew.

Regardless, this speculation bears little weight on canon; and is just an interesting thought exercise.

CANONICAL INTERPRETATIONS (AND GAPS)

We are shown three Mulder family funerals: Bill Mulder's in The Blessing Way, Fox Mulder's in Field Trip, and Fox Mulder's again in Deadalive.

For Bill's funeral, Tena Mulder made the executive decision (or carried out his expressed wishes) to involve a minister, not Jewish Rabbi, in her ex-husband's final service:

For Mulder's Season 6 funeral, Scully glimpses a cross of white flowers standing above her partner's casket; and doesn't bat an eye:

For Mulder's Season 8 funeral, Scully chose a Protestant (or derivative thereof) minister-- not rabbi or priest-- to read from scripture and pray over her partner:

We aren't shown Tena Mulder's funeral; however, her burial wasn't within the traditional twenty-four hour timetable for Jewish custom (i.e. her body was likely preserved for multiple days while Mulder was tracking his sister.) Barring Shabbat or other religious observances, this points to two possibilities:

Tena Kuiper-Mulder was, like Carter originally imagined, a "generalized" American with Dutch roots.

Tena Kuiper-Mulder was a nonsecular Jew (with or without Dutch roots.)

Both interpretations work for her son, as well. Referring back to Howard Gordon's Kaddish, Mulder can't read or speak Hebrew; additionally, he is nonreligious (and devoutly so.) However: as @waxworkdaughter and @leiascully both pointed out (here and here, respectively), Jewish identity is a complicated, personalized topic that expands beyond simplified, black-and-white thinking. Mulder's lack of familiarity in Gordon's script could (and can) easily be explained if Tena Mulder distanced herself-- and by extension, her children-- from her heritage, for a myriad of reasons. Mulder's familiarity with other religious observances (i.e. kneeling in a Christian church and weeping for his sister in Conduit) could as equally be explained by many other factors without erasing a tie to that Jewish heritage.

With reference to the end scene in Conduit, Mulder's observance could simply be a shadow of Bill Mulder's WASP upbringing: Protestant symbolism tied to his father's upper crust, in-group sensibilities-- a societal expectation passed down as tradition.

CONCLUSION

Church and prayer, funerals and flags, could all be part of the nostalgic American 90s, symbols of meaning rather than actual belief.

Mulder could have been raised Christian, Jewish, agnostic; or all three. Mulder himself could be Jewish or Dutch or Dutch Jew or generic American (or a combination thereof.)

Tena Mulder could have been Jewish. Or Bill Mulder. Or neither.

The truth is, ultimately, what you make of it: everyone has their own perspective.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[afloweroutofstone]

New job reveal: I'm doing economic and climate policy with the Quakers, both national and international. In this role I'll be writing fewer investigative reports, but more policy explainers.

For example, here's my latest piece on why you (yes, you, dear reader), should care about the debate over agriculture going on right now in congress.

Everyone should have the food and nutrition they need to thrive. But today, people around the world face hunger in their daily lives, including 47 million in the United States alone. As prices at the grocery store have increased and COVID-era benefits have expired over the last two years, the number of people facing food insecurity has only grown. The climate crisis threatens to make this problem even worse. Droughts and floods damage crops, natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes disrupt harvests, and severe heat threatens the safety of those who grow our food. To ensure that everyone has the ability to feed their families, we must adopt an approach to farming that promotes sustainable agriculture, protects farmworkers and family farmers, and ensures that no one goes hungry. This is what makes the Farm Bill so important. This massive piece of legislation has a wide-reaching impact on our food system. It includes agricultural subsidies, nutrition assistance, climate resiliency programs, and more. While it is traditionally passed every five years, the 2018 Farm Bill was extended to last until September 2024. As Congress debates the newest version of this law, it is vital that they pass a just Farm Bill that provides for everyone’s basic needs and promotes sustainable agriculture to ensure food justice for future generations. Here’s what you need to know. 

Click through for more!

[contemplatingoutlander]

Technocrats argued that liberal democracy had failed. One Technocracy Incorporated pamphlet explained how the movement “does not subscribe to the basic tenet of the democratic ideal, namely that all men are created free and equal.” In the modern world, only scientists and engineers have the intelligence and education to understand the industrial operations that lie at the heart of the economy. Mr. Scott’s army of technocrats would eliminate most government services: “Even our postal system, our highways, our Coast Guard could be made much more efficient.” Overlapping agencies could be shuttered, and “90 percent of the courts could be abolished.” [color emphasis added] —Jill  Lepore , PhD, Harvard Professor of American History & Professor of Law

The historian Jill Lepore demonstrates how there are disturbing parallels between Elon Musk's recent political beliefs and that of his technocrat grandfather Joshua Haldeman.

According to another article by Davi Ottenheimer, Haldeman "fled" Canada to South Africa in 1950:

"Because he was under pressure following his 1940 arrest in Canada for being a part of an illegal political organization to destroy democracy called Technocracy. "Canada outlawed the political party as it had been determined to be a national security risk (anti-semitic, racist, and Nazi-adjacent)."

This is a gift🎁link, so there is no pay wall. It is worth reading, because it explains where many of Musk's peculiar beliefs about the importance of technocrats like himself taking over political systems. It also explains his weird fascination with "X."

Below the cut are some excerpts from the article.

Four years ago, I made a series for the BBC in which I located the origins of Mr. Musk’s strange sense of destiny in science fiction, some of it a century old. This year, revising the series, I was again struck by how little of what Mr. Musk proposes is new and by how many of his ideas about politics, governance and economics resemble those championed by his grandfather Joshua Haldeman, a cowboy, chiropractor, conspiracy theorist and amateur aviator known as the Flying Haldeman. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was also a flamboyant leader of the political movement known as technocracy. Leading technocrats proposed replacing democratically elected officials and civil servants — indeed, all of government — with an army of scientists and engineers under what they called a technate. Some also wanted to annex Canada and Mexico. At technocracy’s height, one branch of the movement had more than a quarter of a million members. Under the technate, humans would no longer have names; they would have numbers. One technocrat went by 1x1809x56. (Mr. Musk has a son named X Æ A-12.) Mr. Haldeman, who had lost his Saskatchewan farm during the Depression, became the movement’s leader in Canada. He was technocrat No. 10450-1. [...]

Technocrats argued that liberal democracy had failed. One Technocracy Incorporated pamphlet explained how the movement “does not subscribe to the basic tenet of the democratic ideal, namely that all men are created free and equal.” In the modern world, only scientists and engineers have the intelligence and education to understand the industrial operations that lie at the heart of the economy. Mr. Scott’s army of technocrats would eliminate most government services: “Even our postal system, our highways, our Coast Guard could be made much more efficient.” Overlapping agencies could be shuttered, and “90 percent of the courts could be abolished.” [...] Nevertheless, technocracy endured. Its spectacles grew alarming: Technocrats wore identical gray suits and drove identical gray cars in parades that evoked for concerned observers nothing so much as Italian Fascists. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was a technocracy stalwart. In 1940, when Canada banned Technocracy Incorporated — out of fear that its members were plotting to undermine the government or the war effort — Mr. Haldeman took out an ad in a newspaper, proclaiming technocracy a “national patriotic movement.”

Weeks later, when he tried to enter the United States for a technocracy speaking tour, he was denied entry at the border, possibly because of a new passport regulation that barred travel into the United States to “an alien whose entry would be contrary to the public safety” (something of an irony, given the current administration’s border policies). In Vancouver, British Columbia, he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to a fine or two months in jail. He later joined the antisemitic Social Credit Party, becoming its national chairman.

Mr. Haldeman retired from politics in 1949 and soon began thinking about moving to South Africa, which in 1948 announced the policy of apartheid. In 1950 he moved to Pretoria, where he wrote and distributed typewritten conspiratorial tracts. (Most have disappeared, but in 2023 I discovered several in university and private collections.) In May 1960, for instance, he wrote a pamphlet called “The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship and Its Menace to South Africa,” a response to the unrest after the Sharpeville massacre. During those protests, Nelson Mandela was among 11,000 people arrested and jailed. Mr. Haldeman suggested the uprising had been staged.

He furthermore believed the West had been the subject of an “intensive mass mind conditioning” experiment, in which ideas he considered ludicrous, like the equality of races and the immorality of apartheid, were being spread by newspapers, magazines, radio, television and especially university professors. Convinced that the government was riddled with waste, he also proposed a finance committee to combat inefficiency, writing in all caps, “A watchdog financial agency is needed.”

That Mr. Musk has come to hold so many of the same beliefs about social engineering and economic planning as his grandfather is a testament to his profound lack of political imagination, to the tenacity of technocracy and to the hubris of Silicon Valley. [...] In 1995, after studying at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Musk left a Ph.D. program at Stanford to become a tech entrepreneur. He started a company called X.com in 1999. “What we’re going to do is transform the traditional banking industry,” he said. (Technocrats also planned to abolish banks. “We don’t need banks, bandits or bastards,” Joshua Haldeman once wrote.) Mr. Musk made a fortune when eBay acquired PayPal, which had merged with X.com, but in 2017 he bought back the URL, and it was at hand when he purchased Twitter and renamed it X, hoping to kill what he called the “woke mind virus” — echoes of his grandfather’s “mass mind conditioning.” Much that Mr. Musk has attempted to do at DOGE can be found in the technocracy manuals of the early 1930s.

Mr. Musk’s possible departure from Washington will not diminish the influence of Muskism in the United States. His superannuated futurism is Silicon Valley’s reigning ideology. In 2023 the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who helped staff DOGE, wrote “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," predicting the emergence of “technological supermen.” It consists of a list of statements:

We can advance to a far superior way of living and of being. We have the tools, the systems, the ideas. We have the will. … We believe this is why our descendants will live in the stars. … We believe in greatness. … We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness — strength.

Mr. Andreessen cited, among his inspirations, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who in 1909 wrote “The Futurist Manifesto,” which glorified violence and masculine virility and opposed liberalism and democracy. It, too, is a list of statements:

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist. … We want to sing the man at the wheel. … We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism. … Standing on the world’s summit, we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

Ten years after Mr. Marinetti wrote “The Futurist Manifesto,” fists raised to the stars, he co-wrote the founding document of the movement led by Mussolini: “The Fascist Manifesto.”

Muskism isn’t the beginning of the future. It’s the end of a story that started more than a century ago, in the conflict between capital and labor and between autocracy and democracy. The Gilded Age of robber barons and wage-labor strikes gave rise to the Bolshevik Revolution, Communism, the first Red Scare, World War I and Fascism. That battle of ideas produced the technocracy movement, and far more lastingly, it also produced the New Deal and modern American liberalism. Technocracy lost because technocracy is incompatible with freedom.

That is still true, but unlike his forefathers, Mr. Musk does have a theory for the assumption of power. That theory is to seize power with the dead robotic hand of the past. It remains for the living to wrest free of that grip.

[graysnetwork]

i saw that you had keegan requests open and was wondering if could elaborate more on meeting or general relationship with southern!keegan ? i love the way you write him and so i got curious when you mentioned it hehe. totally fine to ignore this too ✮ <3 tysm for your writing !!

tysm babes🙈💕

I should totally make this another series🙇🏻‍♀️

a few headcannons

- A gentlemen.

Keegan has this law that he abides by to treats you with the utmost respect and care. Opening doors, buckling you into your seat, buying you flowers, providing for you, cleaning and fixing your car—because a pretty thing like you shouldn’t pay a thousand dollars on something your man can fix.

There’s been several times Keegan’s had to lecture you.

“I know you’ve always been an independent woman, and I.. admire that ‘bout you, but you’re with me now. Alright, sweetheart? I open your door for you when we’re together.” Keegan says and closes your door again just to open it for you.

- The boots👅

Okay, perhaps this is self indulgent🤓

Keegan owns 500 pairs of boots, work boots, clean boots, his rodeo boots, and a few others. He likes them and he knows he looks good in them—or really, he just knows you like seeing him in them.

And when he pairs his boots with his cowboy hat he might as well just meet you in bed already and smack the hat right on your own head.

- Working

The man is a hard worker on the field and off. Taking care of the little lambs and bunnies you wanted so badly on your small farm. He just looks so scrumptious when he’s walking to the little barn while you sit on the porch and pet your golden retriever.

Don’t even get me started on his body babes.

Keegan walks around the house house and land when you two are out on purpose. He likes how your eyes burn holes into his body as he lifts hay off his Ford F-150 and leads the horses back to the barn.

Sometimes he even goes out with a shirt so you can watch him take it off.

Something about the was his pants fit him so good, and he has those boots on and the cowboy hat sits perfectly on his head as he walks around in the sun, is just 👌

A lone drop of sweat making its way down his back as he adjusts his hat is better than any smexy romance movie you’ve watched.

- Truck

His truck is on of his most prized possessions—the first being you obviously🙄.

But he has an old truck from his dad that’s in the garage because it barely runs anymore but he can’t bring himself to sell it. So he still has it but he drives his newer Ford F-150 instead. It’s also very special to him since it’s his first car bought on his own. And he looks damn good driving it.

Especially at the family functions when he’s backing in, looking back as he’s parking. And he gets out to unload the coolers for the party.

Oh and trailing back to the thing about him providing for you. He definitely bought you a little G-wagon or a a Bronco because he doesn’t need you complaining about how his truck feels like driving a tank.

At this point he’ll buy you a car for each day of the week, or your moods.

—

You’d just been stuffed with food by your in laws at the family thanksgiving dinner and you and Keegan were just about ready to leave before the topic about some cars had rekindled. Now you had to stand in the garage by the rest of your (fairly new) family, watching as Keegan, his dad, brother, and his sisters husband talked about how to fix something to do with the engine. Or something like that, you didn’t really pay attention.

But now you were interested as Keegan explained he’d done the same thing to your car sometimes last week and he knew how to fix the damn thing.

You could feel yourself getting.. (erm👀) interested as Keegan mansplained how to fix whatever was wrong with the car. Something about the way he was taking initiative, talking, fixing, and leaning over the car was subtly reminding you his little habits in bed.

And once he finished fixing the problem and the car was as good as new, you pulled him out of the house without anymore side conversations and got him to go home quickly where he gave you the best night in bed.

—

Or when you watched him mowing the lawn as you sat on your porch. It was hotter than anything you’d seen in your life. Was it normal to be this attracted to your husband? You didn’t know.

But you sat there in your silk pajamas he’d paid for as he pushed the lawn mowers across the grass. His torso on full display as he did so. His muscles flexed as he walked with the machine. Maybe you’d have to drag him back to bed after all.

I absolutely loved writing this, i had sm fun (can you tell? *literally wrote too many paragraphs*)

i’m definitely gonna have to write more of this version of him. lmk some more things i should add to his list of green flags🙇🏻‍♀️

thanks for coming to my ted talk👅