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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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In the clubby world of Washington, D.C., trade lawyers, Robert Lighthizer was always an outsider. He became wealthy representing the steel industry in its decadeslong battles to block imports, while Republican and Democratic administrations alike pursued free-trade deals. “It was like he was in the Galapagos,” away from the action in Washington, D.C., where trade pacts were being hammered out, another trade lawyer told me.

But in Donald Trump, Lighthizer found a president who shared his protectionist ideas. Together they shifted U.S. economic policy away from engagement with China toward confrontation. While the shift had been gathering speed for some years before 2016, none of Trump’s predecessors had been willing to bludgeon China with massive tariffs to pursue U.S. goals. Reversing U.S. policy toward China is probably the Trump administration’s most important economic legacy.

In No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers, Lighthizer recounts how he fought China as Trump’s U.S. trade representative—essentially the top general in a three-year trade war—and recommends policies to finish the job. No challenge is more important, he argues. “China remains the largest geopolitical threat the United States has faced, perhaps since the American Revolution,” he writes, elevating China over Nazi Germany or Civil War secessionists.

Lighthizer has produced an important book, though a wildly uneven one. No Trade Is Free is sure to be a handbook for Republican presidential candidates searching for a China policy and economic nationalists across the board. During the Trump administration, Lighthizer was always in the running for White House chief of staff, and in our age-is-just-a-number political era, the 75-year-old Lighthizer is a likely candidate for that office or another senior post should Trump regain the White House.

No Trade Is Free is a kludge of two different books. The main part is an informative and provocative account of how he fought the China trade war and other trade battles. While he oversells his and Trump’s accomplishments and doesn’t acknowledge any of the failures, his efforts have important lessons for dealing with Beijing.

But he tacks on a shorter book in which he proposes truly radical policy recommendations to delink the U.S. and China. He would hike tariffs to towering levels, end the benefits China has received from the United States for joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), cut off investment between the nations, block Chinese social media companies, halt cooperation on technology—and keep the measures in place until China’s trade surplus, now nearly $400 billion, disappears. In other words, for decades if not forever.

He calls his proposals “strategic decoupling,” but there is nothing strategic about it. He would fully sever ties between the world’s two most important economies—with likely disastrous results.

Lighthizer and I have a long and complicated relationship. As a Wall Street Journal reporter, I began covering him in 1996 when he was the treasurer and unofficial idea man for Sen. Bob Dole’s ill-fated presidential run.

Back then, his swagger and protectionism were a novelty. He raced a red Porsche 911 Targa at a track in West Virginia. For his 40th birthday, he installed a big oil portrait of himself in the parlor of his suburban Maryland home. “I think everyone should have one,” he joked with guests. “I don’t mean a painting of yourself; I mean a painting of me.” When he moved to Florida, he kept the painting but moved it to a less prominent location.

When he was Trump’s trade representative, I covered him intensively, sometimes flying with him to Beijing in the hopes of getting a hint of his next move in the trade war. That rarely worked; he would sleep nearly the entire 13-hour flight. I co-wrote a book about the trade war where he played a major role.

Sometimes he took sharp exception to what I wrote and once even denounced me and my co-author, Lingling Wei, by name in a press release for a story he thought was false. He stopped answering emails after we wrote a piece arguing the U.S. didn’t win the trade war. But in my exit interview with him two days after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, he said this: “I don’t always agree with you, as you know, but I—you know, you’re a hardcore, old-school journalist in a—in a—I mean, you’re like a goddamned, you know, dinosaur.” (I took that as a compliment.)

It wasn’t obvious that Lighthizer, a big, showy personality, would thrive under Trump. But his work with Dole taught him how to get along with a boss who has no interest in sharing the limelight, a crucial skill for working with Trump. In an administration filled with leakers and bumblers, Lighthizer was close-mouthed and competent. He didn’t call attention to himself like advisor Steve Bannon or fight Trump decisions like Defense Secretary James Mattis. Lighthizer was one of the few Trump aides whose reputation was enhanced through his service.

Lighthizer used Air Force One flights to Florida, where his home was just a few miles from Mar-a-Lago, to get to know his boss better. He made friends with Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and counted on the latter to help sew up some trade deals. In his book, Lighthizer is unfailingly complimentary of Trump and doesn’t say a word about Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election or the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—the events that caused another prominent China hawk in the administration, Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, to finally resign.

The book recalls when Trump upbraided Lighthizer during a televised meeting with Chinese negotiators because Lighthizer was pushing for what’s called a “memorandum of understanding” with Beijing. In the trade world, an MOU is a deal that doesn’t require congressional approval, but in Trump’s real estate world it means a preliminary agreement. After making a brief effort to try to difference to Trump, Lighthizer recounts how he promised never to use the term MOU again. But he doesn’t say how his top aides later lobbied reporters to downplay any disagreement with Trump.

While he was trade representative, Lighthizer used unconventional means—tariffs on a scale not used since the 1930s—to produce a conventional outcome, a trade deal incorporating numerous U.S. compromises. Rather than decouple from China, strategically or otherwise, his Phase One accord envisioned increased trade between the two nations and had detailed procedures to work out disputes. Ironically, Lighthizer provided a roadmap for continued engagement, not decoupling.

The Biden administration hasn’t had the political will yet to try to build on his work. And irony upon irony, Lighthizer praises the Biden team for continuing the tariffs, but not the deal. “Fortunately, the Biden administration so far hasn’t taken the bait” of cutting tariffs in the hopes of getting China to import more U.S. goods, he writes.

Lighthizer’s own opposition to China is rooted in his disdain for free trade and the rapid pace of globalization since the 1990s. As a young official in the Reagan administration, he helped negotiate deals to limit imports of Japanese cars and computer chips. After Japan’s economy cratered, China became the next target for economic nationalists like Lighthizer.

He criticizes what he calls China’s mercantilist policies, although his definition of mercantilism describes his own policy preferences. “Mercantilism is a school of nationalistic political economy that emphasizes the role of government intervention, trade barriers, and export promotion in building a wealthy, powerful state,” he writes. Exactly the direction he wants the United States to head.

Yet he doesn’t explain why he thinks the radical decoupling he proposes is necessary only three years after he left office. He repeats the usual complaints about Chinese economic and military predation, threats to Taiwan, and violation of human rights—all of which were clear when he was in the government and none of which got in the way of him doing business with Beijing. In his book, he recalls how he ignored Beijing’s takeover of Hong Kong and demolition of democratic rights there because that would get in the way of finishing his trade deal. “I quickly responded [to Chinese negotiator Liu He] that the Hong Kong issue was not related to our discussions and that we needed to stay in our own lane,” he writes.

Lighthizer doesn’t mention his inaction on Taiwan. He discontinued low-level talks on trade and investment common in previous administrations and opposed deeper economic integration. Trump national security officials regarded Lighthizer as the biggest impediment in their push for a free-trade pact with Taiwan, which they believed would give Taiwan a political boost.

To Lighthizer, Taiwan was just another Asian export-hungry nation subsidizing its goods and stealing U.S. jobs, and one that could distract from a trade deal with Beijing. He called himself “a business guy” when I would ask about his policy toward the self-governing island. Foreign policy was for others.

As a trade negotiator, Lighthizer could be fierce. In Trump’s first meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, Lighthizer bluntly lectured Xi about Chinese cybertheft, pressure on U.S. companies, and the impact of big trade deficits on American workers. The Chinese side was stunned. “It was not exactly a setting known for open, critical speech directed at the highest authorities” of the Chinese Communist Party, he writes.

At a dinner afterward, the Chinese seated two of the seven members of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee on either side of Lighthizer to try to figure out how much influence he had on China policy.

In confronting China, Lighthizer calculated that the United States alone still had enough economic heft to force Beijing to change. For years the U.S. had largely worked out trade disagreements through the WTO, which takes years to reach decisions and whose rules don’t cover many U.S. complaints about China, such as unfair subsidization of domestic companies or the actions of state-owned companies.

Instead, Lighthizer dusted off Section 301 of U.S. trade law that sometimes authorizes the president to impose tariffs in response to unfair trade practices without turning to the WTO. Lighthizer found plenty of Chinese actions that met that definition, including theft of intellectual property, pressure on American companies to turn over technology, and regulations that disadvantaged American agricultural and other exporters. By the end of the three-year trade war, Trump imposed tariffs of as high as 25 percent on three-fourths of everything China sold to the U.S.

Lighthizer recounts in detail round after round of negotiations that produced a deal where, on paper, the U.S. came out ahead. China agreed to strengthen cooperation on intellectual property protection, end discriminatory regulations, vastly increase purchases of U.S. goods, and work out disagreements. The U.S. also kept in place nearly all its tariffs and said it would only roll them back when China carried out its pledges. He pats himself on the back for a “historic success” and says China has largely met its obligations, aside from purchases, though he now opposes any tariff rollback. But he doesn’t discuss any of the deal’s shortcomings or failures, or the times Trump backed off from tough actions when the stock market started to tank because of the trade war.

A fuller account of the trade war makes it clear that the U.S. wasn’t the winner—nor was China. Both the U.S. and Chinese economies suffered, though China’s more than America’s because it is more dependent on trade. China fell 40 percent short of its commitments to buy U.S. goods. The Office of the United States Trade Representative continues to complain about Chinese coercion, technology theft, and other misdeeds.

Trade is one of the many battles the two sides continue to fight in their deepening conflict. The Biden administration has picked up on Trump complaints about the shortfall in purchases and continued pressure by China on U.S. companies to hand over technology. Chinese negotiators still press the U.S. to lift tariffs as a sign of goodwill.

As for helping factory workers, tariffs did the opposite. Prior to the pandemic-induced recession of 2020, the United States was adding factory jobs, but 75 percent of the gain occurred before the first tariffs took effect against China in July 2018. Then growth in manufacturing jobs began to decline and stalled out before the pandemic reached U.S. shores.

The clearest winner from the trade war is Vietnam. According to calculations by Kearney, a management consulting firm, China shipped $50 billion less in manufactured goods to the U.S. in 2021 than it did in 2018, as tariffs on China increased. During that same time, Vietnam—free from those U.S. tariffs—increased its factory goods shipments to the U.S. by $50 billion. The additional export revenue helped Vietnam to build up its industrial parks, ports, and roads and attract higher-paying industries like electronics. In yet another trade war irony, many of those new Vietnamese export companies are Chinese-owned.

In one of the book’s biggest omissions, Lighthizer fails to detail the concessions Chinese negotiators agreed to make concerning industrial subsidies and the behavior of state-owned firms but then dropped in May 2019 when they were overruled by the Politburo Standing Committee. These areas were top U.S. priorities. Disclosing the text would have been enormously useful in understanding China’s economic red lines and helping future American negotiators push for change.

There is precedence for publishing preliminary text. In 1999, Clinton’s trade representative, Charlene Barshefsky, published China’s offer to sharply remake its economic policy to get Clinton’s backing to join the WTO, even though Clinton at that point hadn’t approved the deal. Barshefsky wanted to make sure the Chinese didn’t back off from its pledges, infuriating the Chinese. Her tactic largely worked.

Lighthizer doesn’t explain this omission. In earlier conversations, he said he wanted to act in good faith with Liu, China’s top negotiator, whom he had come to admire. In the trade world, gentlemen don’t reveal texts that aren’t included in a final deal.

Even if it wasn’t a U.S. victory, there are important lessons to learn from the trade war. Tariffs, even on the scale Lighthizer used them, won’t tank the global economy, as S&P Global and many on Wall Street had worried. Eliminating the China tariffs now could reduce inflation by roughly 1 percentage point, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a free-trade think tank that views tariffs the same way the Catholic Church views Satan. With inflation running around 4 percent or so, that isn’t an insignificant number, but it’s not economy-shaking, either.

Importers paid the tariffs and only sometimes passed them on to consumers, keeping the inflationary bite lower than expected. Trade with China has now reached pre-pandemic highs, although imports of tariffed goods lag behind, as customers shifted to producers outside of China.

Lighthizer, who considers himself a conservative Republican, also showed that tariffs and trade policy could be used to further some progressive goals.

During talks with Mexico and Canada, he negotiated a provision in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement requiring automakers to pay hourly wages of $16 for much of the work done on cars shipped to the U.S.—besting by $1 an hour Bernie Sanders’s dream for a new minimum wage. Another provision enables the trade representative to sue Mexico for labor violations at Mexican factories.

He also demonstrated that tariffs can sometimes preserve jobs. The 25 percent tariff he placed on Chinese auto imports helped blunt an automobile import surge from China that had swamped Europe. He now supports using tariffs to help fight climate change by raising the cost of imports made by carbon-intensive methods.

But Lighthizer takes his infatuation with tariffs too far. He proposes using them to eliminate the enormous U.S. trade deficit with China altogether. To do that would require a level of protectionism much greater than anything he advocated while in office.

The trade war showed that 25 percent tariffs reduced the trade deficit with China somewhat, but the overall trade deficit continued to rise. While he doesn’t name a number in the book, the tariffs he envisions would need to be much higher than 25 percent—probably more like 100 percent or higher—and they would have to be imposed widely to stop countries like Vietnam coming in to pick up the lost trade.

Levies of that scale could devastate the broad swaths of the U.S. economy—from importers of toys and clothing to makers of machinery and electronics that use imported parts from China. While Lighthizer argues that the income from the tariffs would be a boon to the U.S. Treasury, the trade war shows that wouldn’t be the case. The additional income the U.S. collected on 25 percent tariffs went to subsidize farmers whose sales cratered after China responded with its own levies. Tariffs high enough to fully block imports do just that—meaning there is no tariff revenue to collect.

And what if the Chinese retaliate with their own tariffs in the new trade war he proposes? Lighthizer is sanguine about the loss of U.S. exports to China. “To the extent that they [retaliate],” he writes, “that would also contribute to the strategic decoupling.”

Lighthizer doesn’t weigh the likelihood that China would retaliate in sectors where the U.S. needs imports to meet environmental and other goals. China gave a hint of the sort of pressure it could apply recently when it said it would restrict exports of gallium and germanium used to make advanced microelectronics. China dominates the markets for solar and wind power equipment, automobile electric batteries, and minerals used in electronics, among other industries.

Throughout his book, Lighthizer argues that eliminating the trade deficit is crucial to help workers and restore American power, but he provides little evidence to make his case. Right now, the U.S. unemployment rate, for instance, has fallen nearly to 50-year lows despite a mushrooming trade deficit.

Chinese imports certainly have hurt big swaths of the Southeast and upper Midwest where factory towns lost out to Chinese imports. Import competition is also one reason median incomes have been stuck for years. But other factors are important there, too, including automation and the falling level of unionization.

There have been enormous gains from globalization, too, which Lighthizer largely ignores. Imports have lowered costs for American businesses and consumers across the board, increased the range of goods available to consumers, and put pressure on U.S. industry to innovate. Foreign investors employ millions of Americans and have brought new technology to the U.S. Lighthizer isn’t alone in downplaying the traditional gains from trade. That’s been one of the impacts of the current swing to economic nationalism.

Lighthizer sees the trade deficit as enabling China’s rise. “It is no exaggeration to say that the biggest navy and biggest army in the world has been built with U.S. dollars and it is not in America,” he writes.

It’s also no exaggeration to say that the roughly $1 trillion Beijing invested in U.S. government securities is essentially held hostage in the U.S., giving the U.S. significant political leverage. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown, in a pinch, the U.S. can freeze assets held by foreigners. Despite China’s efforts to make the yuan a global currency, world trade is still dominated by the dollar.

It’s true that expanded trade means the U.S. sends hundreds of billions of dollars to China, which China has used to grow and prosper. That’s what was intended. That trade has helped transform China and lifted tens of millions of Chinese out of poverty.

He doesn’t consider what might have happened if the U.S. had kept China outside the global trading system. It’s not hard to imagine a still-poverty-wracked China, embittered at the U.S., looking to foment revolution and arming American adversaries with weapons, including nuclear ones, as it did for countries like Vietnam and North Korea before the rapprochement between the two nations in the 1970s.

Lighthizer’s view that the U.S. depends too heavily on China is now widely shared. The trade war followed by the pandemic showed that the U.S. relies too much on global supply chains for medicine, technology, and other critical goods. American companies also were late in realizing the need to diversify their manufacturing away from China. A correction is underway. But how to manage that correction? The Lighthizer of No Trade Is Free would undo the remaining ties between the world’s two largest economies. The Lighthizer who negotiated a trade deal with China held out hope that the two countries could continue to work together and sort out their differences.

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nebris · 1 year ago

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"It's the birthday of novelist Pearl S. Buck, born in Hillsboro, West Virginia (1892). Her parents were Christian missionaries in China who returned to America for Pearl's birth. But when she was three months old, they headed back to China. Buck's father, Absalom, was a fundamentalist Presbyterian preacher — and a distant father. In many of the villages where he traveled, he was the first white person the villagers had ever seen, and they were put off by him. They were unimpressed by his fire-and-brimstone sermons, and he estimated that he converted about 10 people over the course of 10 years. Still, he kept trying.

Pearl's mother, Caroline, resented being so far from her home in West Virginia. She tried her best to keep the mud walls and floors of their hut clean, and she planted American flowers everywhere. Finally, when Pearl was four, she told her husband that they were moving to a city or she was going home. So they moved to the city of Zhenjiang, but all they could afford there were three crowded rooms in an apartment in one of the poorest sections of the city, a district full of prostitutes and drug addicts.

Absalom and Caroline receive a small stipend for their work as missionaries, but Absalom squandered much of the family's budget on his pet project: translating the New Testament into Chinese. He spent 30 years working on it. Buck wrote: "He printed edition after edition, revising each to make it more perfect, and all her life [my mother] went poorer because of the New Testament. It robbed her of the tiny margin between bitter poverty and small comfort."

Chinese was Buck's first language, and her nurse told her bedtime stories about dragons and tree spirits. As a young girl in the village, she wandered through the countryside. In the city, she and her brother explored the streets and markets, watching puppet shows and sampling food. She was embarrassed by her blue eyes and blond hair, but she didn't let it hold her back. She enthusiastically joined in local celebrations, big funerals and parties.

When Buck was a teenager, her parents sent her to an English-language school for foreign girls like her. She did not fit in and was lonely, but fascinated by Shanghai. As a pupil, she was required to teach a knitting class at the Door of Hope, a shelter for girls and women who had been forced into prostitution and sex slavery. Usually, the white students from Miss Jewell's did not speak Chinese, but since Buck did, the women there told her all their stories of rape, abuse, and violence.

After a year there, Buck went to Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. She arrived as a total misfit. A woman named Emma Edmunds, a rural girl who became one of Buck's best friends at college, said about that first day: "I saw this one girl and she looked even more countrified than me. Her dress was made of Chinese grass linen and nobody else had anything like that. It had a high neck and long sleeves, and her hair was in a braid turned under at the back." But she cut her hair and bought some American clothes, and she managed to fit in well enough.

After college, Buck went back to China, where she met an American agricultural economist and missionary named John Lossing Buck. They were married, and in 1921 she gave birth to a daughter, Carol. But things began to fall apart. Her mother died not long after Carol was born, and her father moved in with the young couple. Her father and husband disliked each other, and increasingly, she didn't like either of them very much. Her daughter, Carol, had a rare developmental disability. On top of everything, the political situation in China was so tense that at one point the Bucks had to hide in the basement of a peasant family's home to escape Nationalist soldiers, and they ended up fleeing to Japan as refugees.

In 1929, Buck took nine-year-old Carol to an institution in New Jersey, where she hoped she would receive better care than Buck could provide — she called it "the hardest thing I ever did." She didn't have enough money to pay for the expensive tuition, so she borrowed money from a member of the Mission Board. Her marriage fell apart, and she was even more desperate for money, so she started writing. Her first novel was called East Wind, West Wind (1930), and she hoped it would cover the school fees, but it didn't sell well. The following year she published The Good Earth (1931), chronicling the dramatic life of a Chinese peasant farmer named Wang Lung from his wedding day through his old age. The Good Earth was a huge best-seller, and Buck won the Pulitzer Prize and, a few years later, the Nobel Prize in literature.

In her Nobel acceptance speech, she said: " My earliest knowledge of story, of how to tell and write stories, came to me in China. [...] Story belongs to the people. They are sounder judges of it than anyone else, for their senses are unspoiled and their emotions are free."

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®"

Thanks to the 26 Jun 2012 edition of The Writer's Almanac.

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virginiaprelawland · 2 years ago

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Arrest Warrant For Putin

By Noreen Karam, University of Virginia Tech, Class of 2024

March 21, 2023

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 17, for the alleged war crime of unlawfully deporting and transferring children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

The crimes were allegedly committed in occupied territory from February 24, 2022. Apart from Putin, an arrest warrant was also issued against Russia’s Commissioner for Child Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, a press release on the ICC website said.

Putin and Belova are allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute.

While the former relates to the “unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement”, the latter relates to the direct or indirect transfer of its own civilian population by an occupying power into the occupied territory or the deportation or transfer of the population of the occupied territory within or outside its territory.

The ICC said that it has reasonable grounds to believe that Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the crimes of (i) having committed the acts directly, jointly with others, and/or through others under article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute (ii) his failure to exercise control properly over civilian & military subordinates under his effective authority, committing or allowing the commission of such acts, as per article 28(b) of the Rome Statute.

The ICC, headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, was established under a 1998 treaty called the “Rome Statute” . It “investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.”

Presently, 123 countries are party to the Rome Statute, including Britain, Japan, Afghanistan, and Germany. However, the USA has kept its distance, maintaining that ICC should not exercise jurisdiction over citizens of countries that are not a party to it. Similarly, India and China have also abstained from membership.

The ICC was established to prosecute the most heinous offenses only when a country’s own legal machinery fails to act, as was the case in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Unlike the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which deals with countries and inter-state disputes, the ICC prosecutes individuals. However, the ICC’s jurisdiction is limited to offences occurring after it came into effect on July 1, 2002.

Additionally, the offences should be committed either in a country that ratified the agreement or by a national of a ratifying country. The ICC can also practice its jurisdiction over cases referred by the UN Security Council to it.

While Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the move would lead to “historic accountability”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia found this “outrageous and unacceptable”. He also said that any decision of the court was “null and void” due to Russia not being an ICC member, the news agency Reuters reported.

However, this move creates a situation where Putin risks arrest every time he travels. According to The New York Times, this move, along with the existing sanctions in the West, will further deepen his isolation and limit his overseas movements. Moreover, if he travels to a state party to the ICC, then that country must arrest him according to its obligations under international law.

Moreover, this is the first time that the ICC has issued an arrest warrant against one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

In November 2022, an ICC prosecutor sought to move ahead with charges of war crimes against Ugandan militant and founder of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony. Despite Kony turning kidnapped children into soldiers and being accused of murder, cruel treatment, slavery, rape, and kidnapping, he is still a fugitive and continues to be free.

According to the ICC’s official website, “Ukraine is not a State Party to the Rome Statute”, but it has twice exercised its options to accept ICC’s jurisdiction over alleged crimes under the Rome Statute, occurring on its territory, under Article 12(3) of the Statute.

Article 12(3) states that if the acceptance of a state that is not a party to the statute is required, the state may accept the jurisdiction of the court for a crime concerned, by making a declaration to the Registrar and cooperating without any delay or exception.

The alleged crimes, including the deportation of children, were detailed in a report by the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine”, an UN-mandated investigative body that said some acts may amount to crimes against humanity.

In its report dated March 16, the commission outlined the body of evidence and how it points to Russian authorities committing a “wide range of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in many regions of Ukraine and the Russian Federation.” Many of these amount to war crimes and include wilful killings, attacks on civilians, unlawful confinement, torture, rape, and forced transfers and deportations of children, the report states.

Contending that the Russian armed forces carried out attacks with explosives in populated areas with “an apparent disregard for civilian harm and suffering”, the report documented the indiscriminate, disproportionate attacks and failure to take precautions, thereby violating international humanitarian law.

The commission also found that the Russian military’s waves of attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure from October 2022 and its use of torture could amount to crimes against humanity.

It also recommended further investigation to hold the responsible agents comprehensively accountable, in a way that includes both criminal responsibility and the victims’ right to truth, reparation, and non-repetition.

______________________________________________________________

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/03/17/world/russia-ukraine-putin-news?campaign_id=57&emc=edit_ne_20230317&instance_id=88048&nl=evening-briefing&regi_id=180126664&segment_id=128121&te=1&user_id=878081f0d0ab48b13daa56190561a460

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2023%2F03%2F17%2F1164267436%2Finternational-criminal-court-arrest-warrant-putin-ukraine-alleged-war-crimes&psig=AOvVaw2llkYaB-FMt3HY-WCbMCTP&ust=1679506231731000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CBAQjRxqFwoTCPDeirfG7f0CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2023%2F03%2F18%2Feurope%2Fputin-icc-arrest-warrant-analysis-intl-cmd%2Findex.html&psig=AOvVaw2llkYaB-FMt3HY-WCbMCTP&ust=1679506231731000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCPDeirfG7f0CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI

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fardell24b · 2 years ago

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15th January 2023 Writings

15th

Excerpt from: Legacy of Westchester

Attempts by the RMCP to hunt her down are for naught.

The magical community in Frederickton decides to reveal itself after much discussion. They offer their assistance to the New Brunswick Provincial Government. The Provincial Government decides to accept that assistance by the end of the year.

United States

More Mothmen are seen in West Virginia through the year. Attempts to discover their nests are unsuccessful.

The attempts by the FBI to catch her only serve to chase her into Canada.

A Coven in Maine is raided in November.

(The Magical Community in Salem, Massachusetts decides to remain in hiding…)

Mexico

The Government searches for magical artefacts in Mayan ruins…

Caribbean

Increased sightings of Merfolk occur around most islands, but especially around Jamaica and Saint Martin.

There are more reports of Mermaids along the coast of Northumbria through the year.

Attempted exploration of the World Tree occurs through the year.

Warsaw Pact

Through the year, the decay of the giant snake would cause pollution, especially in the Baltic Sea, where most of the fish die…

Also through the year, various groups of werewolves would go back into hiding.

In July, the Snake’s venom glands would burst, further poisoning a region of east Poland.

Greece

Various parts of the population continue to transform…

This would lead to the establishment of the Antiquities Investigation Service by the Government.

Maghreb

The Algerian Civil War continues.

Horn of Africa

The Eritrean Civil War continues.

Central Africa

The Congo Crisis continues.

Southern Africa

The Angolan War continues.

Asia Minor

The Soviets occupy more of Turkey.

China

The Chinese Civil War continues as warlords capture more territory from the CCP.

The number of registered Mages in New Zealand passes 1000 in mid March.

Words: 287

Excerpt from: The Messed Up Magazine Girls

It was an ordinary day at Middleton High School. Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable were walking between classes when Mr. Barken came up to them. “Ms. Possible! You’ll never guess who’s waiting on the phone to hear from you!”

“Um, a crazy fan?” Kim wondered.

“I don’t think so, Possible. It’s…” He paused realising that Ron was there. “Sorry, Stoppable, this can’t be divulged in public. I’m sworn to secrecy,” he said in annoyance.

“No problem,” Ron said. “I’ll see you later, KP!”

Kim found herself in the teacher’s lounge. “It is Kel, as in The Kel!” Barkin said.

Kim was suspicious. “The only Kel I know of is the editor of that stupid teen magazine.”

Words: 116

Excerpt from: An Aquatic Second Contact

She found an assistant and raft waiting.

“Please step onto the raft,” assistant said.

“Don’t worry. I can swim,” Mariner said as she took out a pair of goggles.

“You don’t need to,” the assistant objected.

“But I want to,” Mariner said as she put on the goggles. She then dived from the airlock into the water.

As soon she had dived into the water, the HUD in the goggles activated, providing Mariner with the route information to the meeting room. Having memorised the information, she deactivated the HUD and started breaststroking through the water, taking breaths every twenty seconds.

It didn’t take long, but it allowed Mariner to take a closer look, so to speak, at the people. She saw that they moved their tail flukes up and down as Matt and Kimolu would and she accidentally got an eyeful of obviously mammalian anatomy as she almost crashed into a short-haired lady as they tried to round the same corner. “Sorry,” she said as they both surfaced.

“That’s OK,” the lady said. “To be expected with visitors. Besides I was preoccupied.”

“Oh?”

“None of your business!” the lady said before submerging and swimming off.

“Of course,” Mariner said. She continued on her way.

“Mariner!” Freeman exclaimed, exasperated at her daughter’s contrary nature, “you didn’t need to swim!”

“I wanted to,” Mariner explained as she clambered onto the platform between the Captain and Ma’ah. “Besides, neither you nor Ransom ordered me not to.”

“Obviously,” Freeman said with a sigh. “In any case I asked you to come here because of what Captain Ma’ah has informed us of.”

“And what is that?” Mariner asked Ma’ah.

Mariner watched the video of Martok’s information twice. That a rogue house would do such a thing didn’t surprise her.

Words: 294

Excerpt from: Sixteenth Doctor Adventures

“So, I’ve been informed by the Doctor,” the nondescript person responded. “Initiate the defence plans.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, where have you taken Xavier?” the Doctor demanded.

“Somewhere, Doctor.”

“You’re not going to use him as a human shield!”

“Of course not, Doctor, but you’ll be busy looking for him as we fight UNIT!”

“Don’t I know that!” the Doctor groused as she left the office.

Meanwhile, Xavier struggled against his artificial captors.

Words: 72

Total: 669

#alternate history #beckett mariner #carol freeman #doctor who #fanfic #january writings #kim possible #lower decks #ron stoppable #sixteenth doctor #star trek

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wutbju · 2 years ago

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Reverend Jake Woodyard Boggs, Jr. passed peacefully at age 97 early in the evening of Monday, January 10, 2022. Jake was blessed with good health and lived on his own in Mink Shoals (with some assistance in the last few years) after the passing of the love of his life, Betty Rae (White) Boggs, on January 24, 2016. He got the most out of his life and earthly body. He loved working outside, tending to his yard, building fences, and growing flowers. He cut his yard with a push mower until he was past 95 years, and he also drove until that same age when his children deemed it unsafe and took his keys (at great personal peril). The highlight of Jake's week was attending Emmanuel Baptist Church on the West Side, where he had held revivals, served as an interim Pastor, and was a member for over 50 years. His funeral service will be at Emmanuel Baptist Church at Noon on Saturday, January 22, with visitation beginning at 11 a.m. His body will be laid to rest beside that of his beloved Betty Rae, to whom he was married for over 65years, at the White family cemetery in Clendenin.

Jake was born to Jake Woodyard Boggs, Sr. and Ruby Oressa (Paisley) Boggs on May 9, 1924, in the town of Gassaway, West Virginia. He had one sister, Marian Boggs Smithers of Belle, who preceded him in death. Jake's family moved from Gassaway when he was a young boy, and he grew up in Belle where his father worked as a machinist for Dupont. His mother worked for many years in the women's coats department of Stone & Thomas. After attending schools in Belle, and with the help of local businessman R. M. Maxwell (founder of the People's Store, later Stone & Thomas, and also of the Bible Center Church), Jake attended the Prairie High School Academy and then Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada where he studied for six years. Following graduation, Jake continued his education at Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC, for four years. He married his wife Betty on November 23,1950, his senior year at Bob Jones. In his early twenties, Jake held revival meetings throughout West Virginia using an old piano and a collapsible meeting tent. He also had a Christian Radio Broadcast in Charleston and published a monthly paper called Christian Conquest. Betty worked as a surgical nurse at Charleston Memorial Hospital until Jake could grow his ministry. By the 1960s, he held revival meetings throughout the United States.

In the late 1960s, Jake started a travel business organizing and directing tours. He began with tours to the Holy Land, which was his favorite destination. He visited Israel and the greater Middle East 48 times. Jake also directed groups of travelers to the Soviet Union as early as 1970, and to China, Japan, India, Africa, Haiti, Hawaii, the South Pacific, and all throughout Europe. Jake still considered his most important work the revival meetings he held throughout America, and he had great joy in the more than 20,000 people who committed their lives to Jesus Christ in these meetings. Jake admired Dr. Billy Graham and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He met Billy Graham several times, and Billy joked with Jake that they had been successful because they both had been expelled from Bob Jones University (Jake for missing chapel services his senior year because he was spending too much time with his new wife). Jake heard Dr. King speak at an American Baptist convention in the early 1960s and was so impressed that he tracked him down and had a private conversation with Dr. King and his wife, Coretta, at a restaurant near the convention site. He considered Dr. King's assassination to be one of the great tragedies of American history.

Jake is survived by his two children, Deborah Faith (Boggs) VanderWoude of Bradenton, FL, and Jonathan David Boggs of Charleston, along with his four grandchildren: Michal Anne VanderWoude of Sarasota, FL; Marlin Boggs, married to Kathryn, of Arlington, VA; Garrett Boggs of Huntington; and Winsor Boggs, married to Abby, of Vancouver, Canada.

#Bob Jones University #Archive #Obituary #BJU Hall of Fame #BJU Alumni Association #2022 #Class of 1951 #Jake Woodyard Boggs #Billy Graham #Martin Luther King Jr.

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pain-suffering-even · 1 year ago

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them :)

Thomas set up the Scavenger Guild on the west coast and continued to stay there because his mom lives in California still, and he wants to stay close to her, even if that means he has to put up with the aftermath of Kamish being visible around him all the time

Laura makes a lot of good smoothies, coffee recipes, etc because she used to work at Starbucks for about three years while in community college

Christoper really likes the ocean, and was nearly a marine biologist. He loves looking in tide pools

Zhigang had a part time job at a bakery and makes really good bread rolls. This is why they sometimes go to China to celebrate Thanksgiving

Whenever people bring up the fact that Laura is technically not qualified for her position because she only has an associates degree Thomas just gives them his most menacing smile until they either shut up for mysteriously disappear the next day

(Laura doesn't care what people say - she knows she's qualified, and as long as Thomas avoids showing up on the news, she doesn't mind what he does)

When Christopher left the Scavenger Guild, he moved back up to Oregon, where he used to live. He also owns a house along the east coast in Virginia, where he spends most of his time (because its as far away from the west coast as possible, so he doesn't have to remember Kamish)

Lennart isn't allowed to drive whenever he visits the US since he's too used to driving on the left and has caused Thomas and Christopher too many heart attacks

Zhigang isn't allowed to drive anywhere, no matter where they are

Their road rage is so severe that their mana spikes can cause people to pass out, and it definitely scares Christopher and Lennart and just makes Thomas want to fight

Laura and Adam White became friends after she finally got Thomas to stop teasing him and causing him to worry if he pissed off the World's Strongest Hunter

Thomas got to decide where to host the Annual Guild Conference and of course chose Las Vegas. Even though everyone loved it, he was never allowed to choose where to host it ever again

Most commonly, the Annual Guild Conference is in Washington DC and lasts about two or three days, but most Hunters are in town for a week to attend other business in the States, whether it deals with Christopher, Thomas, or Kamish

Usually, Christopher sits out Guild Conferences, since Thomas goes to represent the United States most times. But, sometimes, if he's feeling petty, he goes just to irritate Thomas and steal the spotlight a bit, especially if its after one of their arguments. Christopher tends to always leave early anyways, because he only ever went to cause drama

Thomas has a side business growing and selling weed as well as custom bongs (he does glassblowing, since his body transformation gives him immunity to fire). The business is doing surprisingly well and Laura lets him get away with it since he's not doing it under the Scavenger Guild's name

The name of his little store? Sleepy Dragon - a little nod towards Kamish. It irritates Christopher so much, but Zhigang found it so funny they broke a table

Christopher has a huge fish tank in his house, with real coral growing as well. He's always getting more fish or sea creatures, it's becoming a bit of a problem. The size of his basement just keeps growing... Lennart is always impressed by the sheer size of it

He may or may not have caught some of the octopuses and other sea creatures by hand - Christopher gets bored in retirement, ok?

Thomas always donates to animal charities during Christmas time, since Laura would always bring home stray cats when they were kids

alright. that's all i can come up with for now. i do love this little band of insanely strong people just being humans and having strange little quirks and moments lmao.

also sorry for being on hiatus for so long - i'm not entirely back but i decided to at least clear out my drafts a little to give y'all something :')

various headcanons that i forgot aren't actually canon pt. 2

the americans (thomas, christopher, and laura), plus china (zhigang) and germany (lennart)

Thomas, Christopher, and Laura are childhood/middle school friends

Laura would always bring home stray cats and dogs

Lennart and Thomas become friends when Lennart asks for help with an S rank gate that spawned in Germany

Lennart isn't super close with Christopher, since him and Thomas tend to swing between being best friends or mortal enemies every week, but Lennart thinks he's nice

Christopher visits Europe a lot, since he's partially retired, so they get closer then as Lennart shows him around

Zhigang is usually too busy to hangout with Thomas or Christopher, but whenever the Annual Guild Conference is around, they tend to dedicate that week to hanging out

Christopher hates any mention of Kamish. Thomas doesn't care and thinks Christopher needs to get over himself. Hence their strained relationship

Zhigang is most definitely traumatized but works too hard to notice

Lennart wasn't part of Kamish, but did participate in the cleanup team. That's where he first met Zhigang and Christopher. Thomas was too busy recovering, so he never got to meet him

Hwang Dongsu gets on Laura's nerves, but Thomas usually steps in if he's eyeing her a little too creepily that day

After becoming friends, the group decided to attend the Annual Guild Conference dressed up with a theme. They've done pink (Barbie-esque), Aloha Shirts (wonder who came up with that one), emo/punk/goth, and the latest, Disney Princesses (Lennart loves Disney movies). There isn't much anyone can do to stop them. Even Laura participates

Thomas disregards a lot of his guild leader duties to steal Christopher and Laura and go on roadtrips. Sometimes, they go visit Europe to see Lennart

Zhigang basically never leaves China, being a hardcore workaholic, so they always have to plan to go see them on their birthday and for the holidays, etc

Thomas has a custom aloha shirt, except it's made to withstand S rank attacks. He used the Scavenger Guild budget money on it. As a tax write off. Laura wishes she could be mad but she's impressed he thought of such a thing

Christopher is scarred from Kamish due to seeing Thomas almost die from tanking attack after attack for him. He almost died. It sparks an argument, where Christopher leaves the Scavenger Guild, and their frenemies relationship begins

Once, Thomas sneaks up on Christopher and scares the ever loving shit out of him. Christopher accidentally sets the room on fire and sets off the fire alarm and emergency sprinklers. The entire building has to be evacuated

Thomas does the same thing (sneaking up on someone) to Lennart and his screech is priceless

They joke about putting a bell on Thomas, like they do with cats, just to be aware of where they are in the room. Laura is really, seriously considering it, because despite Thomas being 10 feet tall and built like a fridge, he can be quiet when he wants to be

Lennart casually mentions he has four sisters, and his first job was being a hairdresser in his village in Germany. This leads to him finally dealing with the mess that is Thomas' curly and knotted up hair

Zhigang got into university on a baseball scholarship, before all the awakenings happened. This is why they tend to swing their sword... like a baseball bat. And instinctively swing whenever they see an object flying at them. Thomas has recreated the game fruit ninja in real life using this information

Lennart started learning Chinese, because despite him knowing about three other languages, Chinese isn't one of them. This leads to the two of them having conversations that Thomas can't listen to, and it drives him insane (it's usually Lennart complimenting Zhigang, and then Zhigang compliments Lennart, etc etc)

Laura threatens to retire early whenever Thomas gets on her nerves a little too much and it always worries the entire Scavenger Guild, because she's kind of the only reason they're functioning. Thomas would solo too many gates on his own if it weren't for her

Lennart is one of the most put-together and polite hunters out there, but even he struggles not decking Dongsu in the face when he drops casual comments about his and Laura's physique in front of his face

Thomas has a lot of other S rankers in his guild from various other countries. He isn't very well liked, since he's "stolen" so many of them, like with Dongsu, but he doesn't mind (the trend started after Christopher left, when he no longer had a vice, or a sparring partner that could withstand his attacks. He's looking for a replacement, in a way, but it never feels right)

#solo leveling #only i level up #head canons #long post #thomas andre #christopher reed solo leveling #laura solo leveling #lennart niermann #liu zhigang #adam white solo leveling

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ukrainenews · 3 years ago

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Daily Wrap Up April 24, 2022

It’s been two months.

Under the cut: No evacuation corridors out of Mariupol; EU plans to open negotiations with India to let them move away from trading with Russia; West Virginia (US) is sending armored vehicles to assist Ukraine; U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv; Azovstal steel plant bombardment continues.

“Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that a evacuation corridor for Mariupol was not opened Sunday because the Russian side did not guarantee a ceasefire.

"We could not open humanitarian corridor for Mariupol, as Russia did not confirm the guarantee of a ceasefire regime," Vereshchuk said in remarks on national television. "We will try again tomorrow."

Vereshchuk expressed hope that the United Nations could broker a humanitarian evacuation, saying, "I think the UN should have been and should be the most effective now [in providing evacuation corridors]. António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, is going to visit Moscow sometime around April 26. We are not asking anymore, we are demanding the UN ensure a ceasefire regime and providing a humanitarian corridor from Azovstal [a steel factory that is a last stronghold for Ukrainian forces] — it's important to emphasize this, and from Mariupol as well — because there are currently 1,000 women and children in Azovstal now. Plus 500 or more wounded, 50 of whom require urgent medical care. And this is what Mr. Guterres should say in Moscow if he considers talking about peace."“-via CNN

“The European Union plans to relaunch trade talks with India in an attempt to give the South Asian nation a viable alternative to diversify away from Russia, according to a senior official familiar with the plans.

In addition to trade, the EU will pursue a technology council with India that could include discussions on the general data protection regulation, social media and broader digitalization efforts, said the official, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

The EU and U.S. both are trying to establish closer ties with India, which is the world’s top buyer of Russian weapons, which it says it uses to deter aggression from neighbors Pakistan and China “-via Bloomberg

“Gov. Jim Justice announced today that the West Virginia National Guard (WVNG) will aid Ukraine by providing armored personnel carriers for use against continued Russian aggression. Following a request from the Department of Defense (DOD), the West Virginia Army National Guard will give an undisclosed number of M-113 Armored Personnel Carriers (APC) to Ukraine as part of a drawdown of DOD inventories to support the country. M-113 APCs are used to move Soldiers and equipment across the battlefield while providing protection from small arms fire and the effects of artillery. “By joining with other states in sending numerous of these armored vehicles to Ukraine, we hope and pray that this will give Ukrainian forces a major leg up in their defense of their home country,” Gov. Justice said. “In West Virginia, we will always stand up for what’s right, which is why we stand united with Ukraine and will continue to help in every way possible, especially as we continue to learn about the war crimes and other atrocities that continue to occur in this unprovoked and intolerable attack on a nation and its people.” Today’s announcement is West Virginia’s latest effort to help Ukraine combat the unprovoked attack by Russia. Last month, Gov. Justice announced that he had directed the WVNG and the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security to help Ukraine by collecting unused or recently expired ballistic vests from law enforcement agencies across the state. The Governor also called on the West Virginia Legislature to join him in pledging $5 million in assistance for a Ukrainian maternity and children’s hospital that had been bombed by Russian military forces.”-via the Office of the Governor of West Virginia official website

“U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday, an adviser to the Ukrainian president said, in the highest-level visit by U.S. officials to Ukraine since the start of the war.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a senior adviser to Mr. Zelensky, said in a late-night video, that the U.S. officials had met with the Ukrainian president. The meeting, which the U.S. hasn’t confirmed, follows similar trips from other countries’ leaders and diplomats, as Washington and its allies step up efforts to help Ukraine defend itself.

Mr. Arestovych didn’t provide further details about the meeting, but Mr. Zelensky said during a news conference on Saturday that he expected to discuss military assistance with the visiting U.S. officials, as Russian forces build up for an offensive in the east of Ukraine.“-via Wall Street Journal

“Russian forces continued to bombard the remaining Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant on Sunday and may be preparing for renewed assaults on the facility, which would likely lead to high Russian casualties, the Institute for the Study of War has said in its latest analysis.

Russia had also made “minor advances” around Severodonetsk in the east of the country, the US-based think tank said, adding that it remained “unlikely to be able to launch massed offensive operations”.

“Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine continues to follow the pattern of their operations throughout the war, using small units to conduct dispersed attacks along multiple axes rather than taking the pauses necessary to prepare for decisive operations,” it wrote.

In southern Ukraine there had been no change in the military situation, it said.

Other key takeaways from its analysis:

Additional Russian forces are deploying to reinforce unsuccessful attacks on the Izyum front.

Ukrainian civilians in occupied Kharkiv Oblast are reportedly organizing volunteer movements to resist Russian occupation measures, similar to previously documented actions in southern Ukraine.”-via The Guardian

Tweet source

#daily wrap up #ukraine #russia #war in ukraine #mariupol #Azovstal steel plant #US #India #EU #UN

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whump-town · 3 years ago

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Ambushed

Warnings: attempt sexual assault and Emily's potty mouth

No Pairings

Summary: A bathroom break goes very, very wrong

It's whumptober so I have to at least try this month to make things awful. Also, this is for @olivinesea, who has been waiting on this fic for months... maybe longer

Hotch’s order had been for Reid to follow him, that it would be the two of them departing tomorrow morning at four a.m. for Charleston, West Virginia. The way Hotch had marched across the catwalk with his file spoke measures about his mood before his clipped tone did. The second Hotch roughly called his name Reid flinched, looking pleadingly to Emily. Knew he was the target and was pleading with her to find some way to save him. With a sigh of resignation, she leans her head into her palm, knows what she’s about to put herself through for the sake of Reid and Hotch.

If Hotch has a problem with her rather blatant insubordination, he doesn’t say anything about it. He comes in and sees her, her go-bag at her feet and two coffees in hand, and raises an eyebrow. Ultimately, he carries on his path towards their SUV. Sharing not a word just a glance that she takes to his equivalent of a motion for her to follow him. She knows his silence to be of low social battery drained by the early morning and fatigue, nothing personal.

Besides four a.m. is way too early to be talking to anyone.

It gives him time to think, to try and not sour this entire trip with his bull in a china shop mood. He’s just unsettled, has this awful feeling in his stomach that he’s grown accustomed to developing whenever they take cases in the mountains. It’s not that he is afraid of them, this isn’t a matter of ghosts or monsters, but there is so much uncertainty every time you enter them. He spent his entire childhood roaming the Appalachian Mountains, knows them by their many dimensions. Chasing squirrels, knee-deep in rotting leaves every fall. The cooling breeze sweeping through pine needles, snakes striking at ankles. The trees swaying to tunes unrecognizable to his ears. Hearing his mother’s voice calling his name, turning to find nothing but shadows. Knowing someone, something, is watching around every turn.

Quantico is about all the Virginia he can handle, the city nestled warmly where the southern Virginians rarely touch it but northern Virginians are everywhere to be seen. The accents not so thick and the city full of tourists-- people from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, etc. Fewer woods to get lost in.

Charleston?

He’s going to be neck-deep in the mountains everywhere he looks.

Emily’s here so that’s bound to make this whole trip more interesting. With her annoying wit and much to be desired charm. It’s like she can feel him thinking about her. With a yawn Emily sits up in her chair, shooting a sleep-stained scowl at him. She rubs her fists into her eyes, attempting to force herself back to awareness. “That coffee went right through me,” she tells him, clearly annoyed. She’s prone to oversharing but, for some reason, with him, it’s so much worse. He assumes it’s just because she knows it exasperates him. Doesn’t anger him but he typically sighs and shakes his head.

Secretly, he likes it. The way she’ll invade his person like no one else has the courage to. Casually laying across the couch and putting her feet in his lap or leaning against him. Talking like they’re lifelong friends and not two people distantly connected for the last twenty years as enemies, tied together by their hatred for one another. Only recently having learned there’s something more, still a nice enough connection that binds them as friends.

She squirms in the seat, bladder a little too full to be comfortable. The darkness outside consumes every indicator of where they are on the road. She can hardly make out the tree lines and aside from yellow precautionary signs aligning them with the turns on the road, there are only thick, choppy clouds of fog. It’s a little after five-thirty so they still have to be in Virginia. “Where the fuck are we?”

He grunts, furrowing his eyebrows at her explosive fuck cutting so harrowingly through the peaceful silence. It’s not an unusual occurrence, he’s used to the way she effortlessly tears through the walls and caverns he builds up around himself. “Strasburg.”

She groans, “really?” She should have made Reid come on this stupid trip. She could still be in her own bed, pressing snooze and rolling back over. Instead, she’s got to pee so freaking bad and she doesn’t know if Hotch is in one of his “no stops” moods or not. He’s such an asshole about making stops when they’re on the road. “I’ve got to take a leak, boss, so… We’re looking at a bathroom stop soon or new detailing on these seats.” She looks down at the worn seats, runs her fingers over the loose seams and torn fabric. “Not that they couldn’t use it.”

He seems more agitated with her oversharing than with having to stop-- looks like a bathroom break in her future.

She stays silent for a few minutes, just watching what she can from outside her window until the next town comes into view. She shoots him a glance, wonders if he’s actually going to stop, and breathes a sigh of relief when he uses the turn signal, pulling them in that direction. There was no way she was going that long without a bathroom break.

Hotch pulls the car into park, frowning when he sees the lack of lights guiding their path to the gas station and even around the side of the building where he knows the bathrooms are bound to be. Leaving them standing in the dark facing the woods. She’s already unbuckling, moving quickly so she can go pee, but he beats her out of the car. Opens his door first and announces, “I’ll go with you.” She frowns, cuts his back a dirty, confused look but doesn’t say anything.

He’s already standing on her side of the car when she gets out, glaring ahead at the empty field and then towards the woods.

“So you do care,” she mumbles, bumping her shoulder against his. “You don’t want me to get eaten by a bear.”

He grunts, still half-distracted by the darkness and the threat it presents.

She’s imagining him fighting a bear. “You know,” she keeps his pace, curiously looking around as they go. “I think you’re a really tough guy,” she says, “but Hotch vs. A Bear just… I’m rooting for you, really, but I’m not stopping to see who wins. No offense. I think you’d put up a good fight but I think, as a general rule of thumb, watching your friends get mauled to death by Pooh does not fall into the typical bonding experiences that strengthen dynamics.” She’s rambling, not in the same way Reid would have. At least with Reid, Hotch would still likely have the semblance of not only control -- the timing to include himself in conversation -- but also a clue about what the in the world they’re even talking about.

She sees him glare at her and so she glares back, “I said no offense!”

“Go to the bathroom, Emily.”

She smiles as she makes her exit, feeling triumphant with herself. She’d seen that little smirk, not a quirk of lips detectable to the naked eye but the way his eyes had flipped up. Looking to the stars, eyes searching up and away from her. A Hotch smirk and the very best kind.

Distracted by the graffiti all over the walls she hears the faint thump of something outside and humorously wonders if it’s a bear. “Hotch v Bear”, round one, and she’s in the damn bathroom.

While she’s washing her hands her stomach growls and she wonders if he’ll end up following her into the gas station too if she goes in for a snack. The man’s a shadow when he’s worried. She’ll probably try to reach for a snack and find him right underfoot mean-mugging the cashier for no apparent reason. A snack though… She’s starving and maybe if she’s feeling feisty enough she’ll start an argument with him until he gets a snack too. It’ll entertain her for a while.

“Hey,” she frowns when she steps out of the bathroom and finds that he’s not there. Not leaning against the wall like she thought he’d be. “Jesus, did that bear really get the--”

A gun cocks in her ear, slow but unmistakable.

“Slowly put your service weapon on the ground and raise your hands.”

She’s frozen in the spot. Eyes glued to their shadows cast out far around them. Drawn out caricatures of them.

“Do it or I’ll kill your friend.”

It wasn’t a bear.

She reaches for her gun, steady and slow movements. Her fingers curl around the metal and she wonders if she’d be able to move fast enough. That there’s a good likelihood if Hotch isn’t within her line of sight that he’s already dead and if she doesn’t do something she will be too. But she can’t risk it.

“Rob!” the man grabs her gun before she’s got it on the ground. Jerks it back from her grasp. To their left, coming around the section of the building facing the woods and completely dark, another man steps out. He’s younger than she is, probably thirty-fiveish, and dressed in work gear. Jeans that have plaster and paint stains and a t-shirt that is stained to the point of no return. “Get the G-man.”

Rob nods, disappearing just as quickly as he’d appeared.

“Listen--” as soon as she can open her mouth the gun taps the back of her head. A sharp warning followed by the order to shut up. No negotiating then.

A grunt turns both their attentions to the side of the building. Hotch stumbles out before Rob. His hands bound in front of him by rope and when he looks up to find her she watches him blink blood out of his eyes. There’s an open wound across his forehead, blunt force trauma split the skin open and now the wound weeps fat crimson tears down his face. His mouth is taped shut, deep grey cutting into his pale mouth. He’s disoriented enough to fall, tripping over his legs as he’s shoved forward.

Rob keeps a gun pointed at his head the whole time but looks to the man behind her. Waiting for the next instruction and as the man gives them she watches Rob react the same she does. Whatever is happening here Rob is an accomplice but he’s not in charge.

“Walk.”

The gun nudges her forward. She bites back her anger, annoyed with this constant nudging business, but her voice is still laced with it. She can play even-tempered but it’s going to take more control than she wants. But she has to play along. Unless she wants to die tonight or, worse, watch Hotch die. “Where?” she asks “Tell me where I’m walking.”

“The woods,” her answer comes, grunted and annoyed. “Now walk.”

Rob pulls Hotch up to his feet (so he’s stronger than he looks, Emily notes) and pushes him forward again. Hotch manages to stay standing this time, bringing his bound hands to his face to swipe at the blood. The glimpse she gets of his blood-stained fingers is what brings her to motion. To be close enough to inspect the wound herself.

“Straight ahead.”

She steps forward, shivering as the wind blows and she’s reminded that despite it being the middle of June it’s likely only sixty degrees out here. Getting out of the car, she hadn’t been planning on being kidnapped. If she had maybe she would have grabbed her jacket. Her fault, she supposes lack of forethought on her part.

As she steps into his gait, the two of them shoulder to shoulder but not close enough that she thinks Rob or the other man will say anything she glances over at him. A look she means to use to articulate her worry and to ask if he’s forming a plan on how to get them out of this. She’s met with his blood-stained eyes. He doesn’t know how they’re getting out of this. It hits her hard, unforgivingly.

If he’d set his shoulders and sent that haggard, worn look she’d understand he thought they were up against fools not even worth the exertion of escaping from. That the bump on his head pissed him off more than hurt him. Something akin to annoyance would mean he already had his plan, she should wait for the cue. Here, in the place she’s searching for his tactile brilliance, is trauma. He’s locking it down behind walls as quickly as he can but she still sees it. Trapped, they’re trapped and he’s blanking on what to do.

Well, maybe he gets a little leeway. He did get hit in the head.

So, fine, she’ll do it herself.

Can you fight? Dave said it was creepy, the conversations they passed through glances, and now she’s hoping creepy is enough to keep them alive.

He looks back, one glance over his shoulder, and gives a sharp nod.

Good.

Next comes the part she’s not really sure how works. The part where she never actually says anything at all, they just move together. Concisely at the same time. She moves for the unknown man and Hotch knows to go for Rob. Both trusting that the other can handle their target. She can hear Hotch take Rob off his feet at the same time her body smacks into the unknown man. The air is taken from her body, leaving her to pause for a dangerous second as her body fights to get it back. His elbow swings sharply into her cheek, smacking dancing lights behind her eyelids.

She’s trained for this kind of stuff. This shouldn’t be so hard.

It’s a bit of a panic, throwing her hands down. Just punching down blindly and hoping the blows land.

There’s a gunshot-- it takes her too long to recognize the sound. Her ears ring and her body aches. The wrangling limbs, the man underneath her, stops as they all identify who it is overcoming as the largest threat.

It’s Rob, blood-flecked across his face.

Hotch’s blood splattered across his face.

Emily screams, disembodied as she throws herself towards Rob but she’s stopped, grabbed by the hair, forced back down through the leaves, and sticks. The leverage pins her to the man’s chest, both pulled upright. All she can do is stumble back. She’s immobilized by the forearm he presses against her windpipe. “I oughta kill you,” he growls, smacking the gun against her temple. Not enough to draw blood but it cracks, makes the area of her scalp throb. “Stupid fucking bitch,” he pulls her tighter, ignores her fingers scratching at his skin as he cuts off her ability to breathe. “Both of you. I should have just killed both of you in that damn bathroom. Started with the G-man and I could have had hours, until day-light, with you trapped in that bathroom.”

He eases his hold on her not out of preservation of life but in his realization that he’s angry with himself for being so reckless. He and Rob had never had problems before. One woman wasn’t all that hard to control and after seeing Hotch and Emily walking so close, bumping together they thought it could be fun. Force him to watch and see if that makes this any more fun. To see him bargain for her life or sit there lifeless in his resignation that he could do nothing.

But Hotch was stronger than he looked.

“No!” her voice is scratchy from the pressure had against her throat. Combined with her desperation it cracks, pops like roaring embers in a hearty fire. “Stop! You’re killing him! Get off of him!”

Rob has Hotch pinned to the ground, his hands around his throat.

The other man holds Emily still, prevents her from being able to pull herself away. This isn’t how he’d intended for this to go but, he has to admit, this is fairly interesting as well. He’d expected it to be G-man that was forced to break. A big strong guy like him doesn’t take losing well. Feeling Emily shiver and cry in his arms is nice. Her desperation hums in his veins, arousing him in a way he hadn’t anticipated. He doesn’t want to lose that just yet.

“Get off of him, Rob.”

Hotch’s arms are still bound, all Rob had to do was push him over. It was over in a flash, leaving Hotch face down in the dirt one second and watching the trees above him fade out as Rob pushed down harder against his windpipe, his fingers digging into his neck. He couldn’t move. Unable to do anything more than turn and twist his hips, his arms pressed into his groin where Rob had immobilized them the second he threw his hips over Hotch’s.

Rob doesn’t let go, not immediately. He pushes down a little harder, wants to feel the snap of the other man’s neck but his name is called again. This time, not the light order the first had been. Rob doesn’t release Hotch and with an annoyed huff, the other man raises a gun. Emily cries out again, stunned by the gun right by her head, and flinches falls with a crash to the floor when the trigger is pulled. Her head a roaring buzz, trying to swivel its way off her neck. No matter how hard she pressed down on her ears she feels the throbs of pain as if her head was swelling. The world pulsing.

Rob’s dead.

She looks up and she’s looking right into his eyes. Shocked and open, not expecting the betrayal of his partner.

“Hey beautiful,” the other man crouches down beside her. Takes advantage of her confusion, of her shock. Her friend dead. Knowing she’ll follow soon after. “You never told me your name, you know. I’m Mark.” He strokes her hair back from her face, pushes her down to the ground.

Fighting is futile.

She had a chance with Hotch. Their odds nearly even, two against two. Even tied up and bleeding, they’re a threat that can’t be replicated and certainly not by an Unsub. Not one who takes women from gas station bathrooms in the ugly hours of the morning. Not ones dumb enough to take federal officers.

But it’s over.

It’s over and Hotch is dead.

“Don’t cry,” Mark whispers against her throat. He wipes her tears away with the back of his finger, shaking his head and mockingly comforting her. “But,” he holds her head, tenderly cupped in his palm. “You’re so pretty when you cry.”

Emily turns her head from Mark’s hand, finds herself looking at Hotch. His still body, head turned away from her. This is how it ends. Hotch dead and she’s powerless. She’s left his turned cheek, even he can’t bear to see. So she looks to the scar under his ear from New York, the hearing he lost and never fully recovered. A scab from shaving this morning. His hairline, the greys that were popping up around his temples and ear. Still sparse enough that he doesn’t look aged by them. And the blood. The wound Rob inflicted on him in their initial meeting. It doesn’t bleed now, it hadn’t been agitated in their fight. Color had started to creep into its edges, bruising to further demonstrate its anger in having been disturbed so violently.

Now he’s just dead.

She tries not to make a sound when Mark gets her pants undone, tries to make out unaffected. His hand cups at her hip, cold fingers curled around her. There’s a certain level of invisibility she’d felt on the other side of the yellow tape. After years of having used her body to get things, to win Ian Doyle’s trust and eventually his secrets, she’d thought herself too clever for this. Got too comfortable, perhaps. Surrounded by the likes of Hotch and Dave and Spencer and Derek. How many times had she stripped down to just an undershirt, leaned in too close over one of their shoulders just because she felt comfortable? Knew they wouldn’t hurt her.

But she’s losing.

After all the ways she’d won, all the ways she’d found victories in men’s selfish desires, and now she’s laying in the woods. She’s losing.

She’s going to die too.

But she doesn’t.

She jerks, unprepared for the sudden sharp pain across her temples. Her hands coming up to protect her ringing ears and not expecting the dead weight of Mark over top her. She writhes away, feels something hot and wet landing on her breast, sliding down her ribs. Sticks and rocks push against her shoulders but she fights with a terrified panic, crying in her blinding fear. Her fist connects hard with an audible crack of bone against bone and everything stops.

She pushes herself up and back, the back of her hand swiping through blood and sweat across her face. Leaves give beneath her, too slick with dew to hold properly as she moves backward. Sticks dig into her skin. Rocks turn over as she kicks them. Until she’s got an actual picture of what’s happening. Until her brain can work over details.

Mark is on his chest. His head split open, a terrifying weeping wound. Shot.

“Hotch?” she’s removed. Only partially aware of things as she takes them in. Of Mark’s death. Of the damp ground beneath her. Of the chill in the air. Of her own pounding heart. Of Hotch laid out on his back, eyelashes fluttering but open. Gasping sounds -- from her and from Hotch. His chest rising quickly with his shallow breathes.

Her knees scream smart pain as rocks and twigs dig into her flesh, deadened leaves chilled by the night’s air seeping through the material of her pants. She doesn’t even realize she’s moving, it’s automatic. It’s uncontrolled. “Hotch?” she touches his cold skin, taps at his cheek an indistinct beat she hopes will raise him from whatever unconscious solace he’s found. He breathes, shallow but audibly as his body tries to work again.

She touches his throat, grazes her fingers against miserable, chilled skin. He’s alive. Despite all the odds. Despite what she’d seen. Alive.

She cries as she leans forward, pressing their temples together. Cheek to cheek, their cold skin warm against one another. “I thought you were dead,” she sobs, fully allowing herself now to break. To feel the terror and isolation she’d felt thinking he was gone. Killed right in front of her. “You fucking bastard,” she holds onto his clothes, feels his hand come up and his fingers fumble to grasp her. To feel her alive and well. “I thought you were dead.”

He lets out a huff of breath, as close to relived laughter as he can manage. “Me too.”

She pulls back just enough to look down at his face, his pale lips twitching up and the blood caked across the side of his face. “I’m never going on a road trip with you again,” she says.

He nods, breathlessly whispering, “fair.”

She shivers, the breeze picking up. “Can you walk?” They can’t be that far from the car. She’s already pushing her hands into his pants pockets before he can answer, in search of the keys. Distracted to the point that she misses when he shakes his head. When he admits things are a little worse than what she thinks. “What do you mean--” and she looks down, his left hand shakily lifting off his abdomen.

“Shit!” she pushes his hand back over the wound. The first thing that comes to mind is to ignore the problem but that’s not very rational. “Why couldn’t it have been a bear?” That seems like it really beats watching him bleed out in the woods. She lowers her head, turns away from him for a second. She can’t lose her cool. He just saved her and now she has to return the favor. At this point, she refuses to go home without him.

Her earlier remark about bonding has aged like milk.

Something cold nudges her hand just faintly grazes her fingers. Despite everything they’ve been through in the last hour she still flinches, tries to move her hand away from what she suspects is a spider. There are sticks poking her back and ass but she’ll be damned if she’s going to become a jungle gym for a spider to crawl all over. Except she looks down and finds fingers, Hotch’s right hand pushing at her fingers.

It’s candy. Slowly, trying to find her courage and work through her panic, she lifts her palm back up. Looks at the stark contrast of his white mint on the decaying leaves.

She laughs.

They say nothing and yet they share an entire conversation. All glances, his pain pinching at the corners of his eyes, fatigue weighing him down quickly, and her slight humor over his grandpa candy. The mint is crushed, it hadn’t survived their rough journey well. “Are you trying to tell me my breath stinks?” she asks, tilting her head and raising an eyebrow to dare him. A playful sort of smirk on her lips as she declares, “Because I swear to God, I’ll punch you in the balls, Hotch.”

He smirks and as he opens his mouth a branch cracks, a flashlight shines right into their eyes.

“Hands up!”

Emily raises her hand to cover her eyes, wincing. “We’re -- We’re federal agents!” The flashlight lowers just a bit, enough so that she can see it’s a man standing before her.

“Your buddy hurt?” he asks.

Emily looks down, Hotch is already looking back at her. He’s shivering now and she knows whatever is about to happen is all on her. “Shot,” she answers. “Some guys they… they ambushed us? Dragged us out here.”

The man nods, “can he walk?”

She looks back down, Hotch’s eyes sinking shut, fighting to stay open. “I -- I don’t know? Maybe?” No. No, but she’ll drag his ass out of here if she has to.

“Alright,” the man steps forward, and Emily tenses. “I ain’t gonna hurt you little lady but you ain’t getting that big fella up without some help.”

Hotch remembers very little of what happens next. Standing seems to pull all of the blood from his body, at least there isn’t any in his head. Everything is confusing, a strange man is on his left and Emily on his right. He wakes up in a truck bed, rocking back and forth. His head in Emily’s lap and the cold wind grabbing at the blanket pulled under his chin. “We’re almost there, Hotch. Just hold on.” But she sounds like she’s underwater. Far away.

And then everything is still.

“And that’s how I saved us.”

He follows the sound of the voice over to his right, to Emily. She’s sitting up in bed, legs curled underneath her. There’s a chunk of gauze taped to her temple but she’s not wearing a hospital gown. She looks good, nearly restored to the Emily Prentiss he’s used to seeing around the office. The others are gathered around her, Dave smirking at what must have been a rather grandiose retelling of what happened.

“Technically,” he rasps, “I saved you first.”

Emily’s face betrays the first thing she feels hearing him. He’s been laying there for four days, unresponsive. He’d been on a ventilator the first two days. Throat nearly swollen shut from Rob’s attack, bruised badly. But now his eyes are open and he’s challenging her, picking a fight having been awake a whole minute. She's weirdly thrilled to see him glaring at her, too high and too exhausted to hide it.

“Are we really going to start keeping score?” she asks.

His eyes burn, they’re too heavy to keep open. He lets them slide shut, smirking still. A moment passes, maybe longer, and he feels a hand take his. Plastic sitting uncomfortably against his palm. It takes him a moment, the drugs trying so hard to pull him back under. It’s the mint he’d given her.

She doesn’t smile now, they share no knowing glances.

He hums, closing his hand around the mint.

“Considers us even,” she whispers.

He manages to crack his eyes open just a sliver, voice is completely gone but she just barely make out what he says: “not a chance.”

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss

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goreboundweqewqe · 3 years ago

Photo

[ 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 ]

𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬.

full name . jonathan keith flores - allerdyce . nickname(s) . johnny birthday & age . december 25th 1974 , twenty - two hometown . never ask him that , he will have a mental breakdown . birthplace . beijing , china . gender & sexuality . cis man & bisexual . ethnicity . mexican , scottish religion . atheist .

more info under the cut .

𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞.

height . five - foot ten inches . hair style & color . medium length brown hair , unruly when left uncombed . eye color . blue . tattoos . a tattoo of a knife on his chest . scars . none notable enough . vibes . so uncool that it’s cool . that’s it , that’s the vibes . more explanation down below in the style section .

𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐞.

apt for someone like johnny who has no idea how to answer the question of “ where are you from ? ” , his style is nothing short of eclectic and fluid . from grunge chic to graphic & obscure band tees , to knitwear , to flannels , to formal wear pieces being used so casually and even baseball and bowling alley uniforms ( he neither plays baseball or work at a bowling alley ) , johnny’s closet is full of flair and vintage sensibility . the mix & match of things might seem incredibly weird to some , but johnny’s confidence is enough to pull it all off and make it work . his don’t - give - a- fuck personality definitely shines through his wardrobe .

𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲.

personality type . entp — the debater . moral alignment . chaotic neutral . skills . skating , playing bass , johnny is just a bit of a serial hobbyist so he’s kind of a jack - of - all - trades but master of none . weaknesses . people who are mean to him ( he will fall in love with them ) , people who look like they’ve come down with a victorian illness ( he will fall in love with them ) , people who loves horror movies as much as he does ( he will fall in love with them ) likes . music , horror movies , drama , chaos . dislikes . people who can’t take a joke , only seeing his parents a few times a year . fears . drowning , the story of the freshwater giant squid that pulls people down with its tentacles that his grandma used to tell him when he was younger . mental health . unknown , he’s just kind of deranged in his own way .

𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲.

mother . ximena flores - allerdyce , ambassador - at - large . father . nathaniel flores - allerdyce , deputy under secretary of commerce for international trade of the united states . sibling(s) . none . grandmother . ramona flores , retired journalist . pet(s) . bully , his grandmother’s jack russell terrier . a diplobrat through and through , johnny considers himself to be a person from nowhere and everywhere . he spent his childhood moving from country to country — never staying in one place for too long due to the nature of his parents’ occupation , his personal identity becoming an assortment of cultures from the places he was raised in such as china , philippines , south korea , france , the united kingdom , among other countries . however , johnny spent every summer with his grandma in prosper , west virginia — a familiar and needed break from the constant packing and unpacking of his life to wherever his parents needed to be . while his relationship with parents has never been actually fraught despite the constant stress it put him through , johnny did always prefer living with his grandmother , charmed by a small town life and the mundane and yet entertainingly dramatic social dynamics of lockhorn county’s residents .

𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬.

loneliness was a prevalent theme in his childhood , an inevitable pitfall of having to pick up his life and begin anew every year or so . it was an exhausting pursuit to get to know someone , just to say goodbye to them and inescapably lose contact as they all went on with the motions of their lives . but nevertheless , johnny would consider himself an expert in the art of making friends by now . and now that he has taken a permanent residence in prosper , he can actually now choose who he wants to be friends with rather than just befriend anyone just to avoid being lonesome .

𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.

with his grandmother’s retirement due to an illness , johnny’s parents have asked him to look after her for a while . bored of college anyway , johnny complied without having to be asked twice .

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤.

johnny doesn’t really need to work with his parents sending him money every month , but working at the video store allows him to meet new people and convert them to the cult of loving campy slasher and horror flicks .

𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥.

johnny was one of those people who just generally excelled at school without trying . his grades were never bad but could have been better if only he applied himself more , but he just didn’t see the point and he was always so easily bored . university was specially a dull time , major undeclared for most of the time he was there — finding it really hard for him to choose one specific passion , always a mess of unfinished projects and ever - changing interests .

𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬.

honestly , he doesn’t have one . he initially wanted to be a diplomat like his mother , only because it was the most convenient path to take but with all the paperwork and shit that he saw his mother had to do , he thought that he’d be too lazy to go through all of that .

𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐲.

johnny doesn’t really have any strong feelings towards the rivalry except that it’s entertaining and he loves seeing chaos unfold . and with panic happening , he wants to capitalize on it and use it to spice up the rivalry even more .

#dphq:intro #psd credit to creationcolors !#also didnt proofread this one kdfsfvksgkg

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maybeimamuppet · 4 years ago

Text

tale as old as time

Cady is sitting across from Janis at their lunch table on the last day before winter break, chattering excitedly about her plans for the holidays when Damian suddenly mopes his way over and plops his tray down next to her, sitting down with a quiet huff and picking at his pizza. Neither of the girls know quite what to do, Cady cutting off mid-word to look his way. Damian comes to lunch directly from his theater class, usually full of energy and excitement about whatever new thing he’d learned that day.

“What’s the matter, Dame?” Cady asks sadly, hugging him gently.

“They just announced the spring musical. They’re doing Beauty and the Beast.” He pouts.

“Are you still that hung up on Phillip?” Janis teases.

“Janis, don’t be mean! Damian’s sad,” Cady scolds, going full koala and trying to wrap her entire body around Damian’s torso. It doesn’t quite work due to their size difference, but she doesn’t let it stop her.

“Yeah Janis,” Damian responds jokingly, returning Cady’s embrace. “Damian’s sad.”

Janis and Damian stick their tongues out at each other, Janis moving to his other side to hug him as well. “Sorry Damie,” she says, genuine this time as she rests her head on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, I know you were joking. I’m just wondering if it’s worth it. I’ve already been in the show before, y’know? Do I really need to do it here?” He asks, resting his head against Janis’.

“Damian, you have to do it! It’s your last ever musical at North Shore,” Cady gasps, aghast at even the mere suggestion of him pulling out.

“Yeah, Dame, don’t you want that experience?” Janis asks, now more worried about him. She didn’t think it was still that big of a deal to him.

“I don’t know. I want to, but I just have so many, like, tainted memories of it now or whatever. I don’t know if I wanna put myself through that again.” He says morosely.

“What if I did it with you?” Cady asks, completely out of nowhere.

“What?” Janis asks, stunned.

“You would do that?” Damian questions, also quite shocked.

“Yeah! I’ve been wanting to try theater anyway, it sounds like fun. I probably won’t get a big part, but we can still hang out at rehearsals and stuff. We’ll make new memories!” She chirps excitedly.

“I’ll do something too, Dame. Mister Gordon already asked me to do set design, I’ll see if I can be stage manager too, maybe.” Janis adds. What the hell, she has nothing else going on.

“You guys are the best,” Damian says, patting both of their cheeks.

“We know,” Janis jokes, moving back to her side of the table. “Grab the audition stuff for Caddy and ask Gordon about managing for me.”

“Done. Wait, has Caddy even seen the movie yet?” He asks, suddenly serious.

“Nope!” Cady says, stealing one of his fries.

“How did we miss that one? It’s a classic. Both of you come over tonight, it’s movie night anyway. Bring your sleepover stuff.” Janis says definitively, pounding the table gently with a fist.

——-

All three art freaks sit nestled on the small couch in Janis’ basement, Cady in the middle practically shaking with excitement at the opening credits and no fewer than four bowls of popcorn and candy on the coffee table in front of them.

As the movie goes on, Janis is watching Cady more than she’s paying attention to the screen. She’s trying desperately not to think about how her crush is pressed so close against her, how she could easily just lean over and be cuddled up with her. For all the staring she’s doing, she doesn’t notice how tense Cady seems to be growing as the tale is told.

Damian says, “Adam!” exactly like the Vine when the prince finally reveals his face, making both Janis and Cady burst out laughing.

“He was hotter as a beast,” Janis mutters, watching the final few scenes.

“Jan, you’re gay.” Damian says.

“And? Tell me I’m wrong,” she challenges.

“Fair point. What did you think, Cads?” He asks, looking to her.

She seems frozen for a moment before she suddenly yells, “IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!” and jumps to her feet, starting to pace back and forth.

“What do you mean?” Janis asks, glancing warily to Damian. They’ve never seen her this angry.

“The curse is either made permanent or has to be reversed by his twenty-first birthday, but in Be Our Guest Lumiere says they’ve been stuck like that for ten years, so the prince would’ve been what? Eleven when the enchantress showed up? He was a kid! He was absolutely right not to let some strange old hag into the castle! And why was he even answering the door in the first place? He’s the prince! They clearly had servants for that!”

“Okay, but-“

“And then why does he have a portrait and a bunch of stained glass of him as an adult if he was a kid when he was turned into the beast?! And also, he’s the prince! Where are the king and queen? Are they dead? Why does nobody talk about them?!”

“That’s fair-“

“AND when Gaston steals Belle’s book he asks how she can read it because there’s no pictures but when she was reading it by the fountain it showed that there clearly was a picture in it! And then- and then later Gaston just swallows a bunch of eggs! Whole! He doesn’t even crack them first, who does that?! And if he eats five dozen eggs every day, that’s twenty-one thousand, nine hundred eggs per year. The average chicken only lays three hundred eggs per year -don’t ask me how I know that- which means it would take a minimum of seventy-three chickens just to feed him!”

“Caddy-“

“And Maurice! He took a ‘shortcut’ to get to the fair, how is anything a shortcut if it goes in an entirely different direction?! That doesn’t work! The whole story could’ve been avoided if he just listened to the horse!”

Damian just silently passes a bowl of popcorn to Janis, as Cady shows no signs of stopping anytime soon and frankly her ranting is quite entertaining.

“And don’t even get me started on what goes on in the castle! Like when Cogsworth falls down and loses a bunch of gears, what were those supposed to be?! His kidneys? Did he break bones? What happens when Lumiere runs out of wax? Is he shorter when he turns human again? And can they feel what they do? Does Lumiere burn his hands a lot? Does Mrs. Potts feel like she’s drowning?”

She hasn’t noticed that they’re not even trying to interrupt her anymore.

“And then Chip! What’s his deal?! Where’s his dad? How old is he? He’s clearly younger than ten, so do they age while the curse is on? If not, then how does the timeline add up? And if they do, then how is he still a little kid? Also, who turns a little kid full of energy into fine china?! He’d break himself! How is the enchantress not the villain here?! And is Chip an only child? There’s clearly plenty of other teacups! Why is he the only one that matters? And then, for all her favoritism, Mrs. Potts doesn’t even realize when he runs away!”

Janis and Damian lock eyes, stunned. How did they not notice this stuff?

“And way later, everyone in the town seems to just suddenly realize there’s a big castle in the middle of the forest! Did they forget about the whole royal family? And where did the cooks in the castle get food and stuff?! Also, they don’t ever mention to Belle that the Beast is the prince, or that he’ll be human again if she breaks the curse! So was she just, like, down to date this monster who, to her knowledge, could’ve eaten the real prince or something?! And also, if it’s a kingdom, what happened to their international relations?! What do the other countries think happened?”

“Are you done?” Janis mutters, amused.

“No! Somebody stop me, please,” Cady hollers. Janis goes to pull her into a hug, rubbing her tense back and hushing her gently.

“Deep breaths, Cads. You brought up some good points, we can look into it later. Let’s go have some hot chocolate, hm?” She murmurs as Cady finally relaxes, panting slightly as she nods into Janis’ shoulder.

“Then we can watch the live action one!” Damian says.

“Damian, no!”

———

All of them went out of state a few days later for Christmas to visit family. Unfortunately, they all went to different states; Cady went to Indiana, Janis to Ohio, and Damian to West Virginia. This meant that Damian and Cady didn’t get to start working on their auditions together until just before New Years.

So now, they’re curled up next to each other on his bed, listening to A Change In Me on repeat so Cady can learn it. The audition cut is just a few bars towards the end, but she would have to know the whole thing on the off chance she got a callback. The first few times, she would just listen and read along with her sheet music, but she eventually starts humming the tune and murmuring little phrases under her breath as she caught on.

Once Damian notices she’s muttering the whole song, he asks if she wants to try singing it with the piano recording for the first time. She nods after another quick glance at her music.

Damian brings up the recording the director had sent out, explaining what she needs to do and when to come in, then handing her the phone so she could start whenever she felt ready.

She takes one deep breath before hitting the play button, and starting to sing. The second the first few notes flow from her mouth, Damian feels his jaw drop slightly. The girl could sing. She wasn’t perfect by any means, but she had undeniable talent.

“Holy shit!” He bursts out when she finishes, clapping for her.

“That was good?” Cady asks, blushing slightly.

“Yes, that was incredible!” Damian praises. “Oh wait, I should send you the recording so you can practice on your own. Let me do that before I forget,” He says as he takes his phone back.

“I have to go to the bathroom, can I try again after?” She asks shyly, as if she hadn’t just completely blown his socks off with her very first attempt.

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Little Slice,” he hums, already moving to text Janis.

sashafierce: Jan holy shit

sashafierce: Your girl can sing

gaylien: she’s not my girl

sashafierce: Yet

gaylien: shut the hell ur mouth

sashafierce: I Will Not

gaylien: anyway, caddy can sing ?

sashafierce: Yeah

sashafierce: Like ‘might get the lead even though she’s never set foot in a theater’ can sing

gaylien: damn

gaylien: proof

sashafierce: You just want to hear her voice you soft little dork

gaylien: shut the fuck

Cady comes back in at this point, so Damian puts his phone down. He asks if he can record her singing to help her get better, not mentioning he would secretly also be sending the recording to Janis. He feels a little guilty about keeping secrets, but this won’t hurt anyone. Janis won’t do anything with it.

Cady agrees, settling in again. Damian braces himself slightly before hitting record as Cady hits play again. She sings her cut, and then looks to Damian for feedback.

He stops the recording and fiddles with a few things to get it sent to Janis before asking if she’d like to hear it played back. Cady gives a shy nod and cuddles up to him again.

“See, you sound really good! We just need to work on your movement and expressions and stuff like that. If you can’t act nothing will happen, no matter how well you can sing. But really, that’s impressive, sweets.”

“Can we work on that later? I want to hear you sing too!” She pleads, gently nudging his arm.

“Oh, absolutely,” Damian says, bringing up

his own audition cut and striking a pose. Cady giggles at his antics, giving him a standing ovation when he finishes.

Their phones chime at the same time, Cady’s with a message from her mom telling her to come home, and Damian’s with a response from Janis. He hugs Cady goodbye before checking it, bursting out laughing when he sees what she’s sent.

gaylien: i just spat coffee all over my cat

gaylien: oh god

———

Auditions are held the day after they get back from break. Damian had been continuing to work with Cady over the break, in between movie nights and sleepovers with Janis.

Cady’s been shaking with excitement all day. She’d grown much more confident with all her practice, and she was also looking forward to seeing her friend truly in his element.

Damian leads her by the hand towards the theater classroom to get checked in, filling out their forms and grabbing their numbers. They have to wait a while before they get to go to the auditorium and get started, so they sit on the floor and look around. After a few minutes, Damian notices Cady start drumming her hand rapidly against her leg, her most common stim when she’s nervous.

“Do we need to get out of here for a minute?” He asks quietly, making sure nobody else can hear them. She nods quickly, taking his offered hand to stand up. Damian leads them into the hallway, where it’s less crowded and much quieter. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. There’s just... a lot of people in there. It’s really loud too,” She mutters, shifting her lips side to side, another anxious stim. “I’m nervous.”

“That’s normal. I’m a little nervous too, actually. We can just wait out here until it’s time to go start warm ups with everyone,” Damian comforts, pulling out his phone and earbuds so they can watch animal videos together. Cady takes the proffered earbud and puts it in as she cuddles into his side and focuses on the video.

Eventually Karen comes bouncing down the hall, lugging a slightly panicked Gretchen behind her. “Gretch, come on, you just have to sing part of a song once and then it’s all over! You can do it,” Karen comforts as her girlfriend freezes just outside the door. “Oh, hi Cady! Are you trying out too?”

Cady nods, feeling her confidence coming back with every passing second. “Yeah! I didn’t think you guys would be into this sort of thing,” she says. She had kept in touch with them throughout the year and they still hung out frequently, but Cady had distanced herself slightly from the former Plastics while the events from junior year were still raw in everyone’s minds.

“I’ve always wanted to try it, but Regina never let us. She said theater was for dorks. No offense, Damian,” Karen says sheepishly. She liked Damian, he was always nice to her even though she had to be so horrible to his best friend.

“None taken.”

“But yeah! I decided to go for it and got Gretch to do it too so I wouldn’t be alone!” She says, turning to look at her as Gretchen starts coaching herself through breathing exercises.

“Are you okay, Gretchen?” Cady asks gently.

“Mmhmm. I’m fine,” she responds, looking close to passing out where she stands.

“You guys should go get signed in and come wait with us out here,” Damian offers, much to Cady’s relief. She’s missed them, but didn’t want to invite them in case Damian didn’t want them around just yet.

“Sounds fetch! We’ll be back soon,” Karen cheers, dragging poor Gretchen by the hand into the classroom. They come out after a few minutes, noticing their numbers are just after Damian and Cady’s.

They chat happily for a few minutes, getting caught up on the events of the few weeks since they’ve last spoken. Eventually the theater teacher, Mr. Gordon, and the choir director, Mrs. Baker come down the hall, entering the room to let everyone know that group warm ups are starting.

They follow the crowd into the auditorium, everyone finding a place on the stage as Mrs. Baker takes a seat at a piano in the pit. Mr. Gordon explains the routine for those who were new, then passes it off to her to lead vocal warm ups.

They go by fairly quickly, and then everyone moves to their seats in the auditorium to watch individual auditions, clapping politely for each one. Damian goes just before Cady, rocking his cut before bowing sarcastically and returning to his seat.

Cady steps up, says her name, and then just tries to focus on everything Damian has taught her. She blinks and the song is done, so she moves on, giving Gretchen a sneaky thumbs up since she’s up next.

Gretchen can sing well, but it’s painfully obvious she’s panicking inside and she stumbles off the stage when she finishes. Surprisingly, Karen actually does quite well, she’s confident and it shows.

They listen to the rest of the auditions together and chat quietly on their way out of the building, splitting back into their duos as they reach the doors.

Janis is waiting for them by the main entrance, leaning casually against the wall. She stays after school to paint sometimes, so they don’t suspect anything, but she was actually hiding in the auditorium to watch their auditions today.

Cady squeals, “Janis!” as she rushes up to hug her, and Damian shoots Janis a look when they lock eyes. Janis just shakes her head and wraps her arms loosely around Cady.

“You guys wanna come over? Jules has a dance thing tonight so I have the house,” Janis says, letting Cady go. “Movie night?”

Damian has been trying desperately to get the two together since the school year began, any alone time they get together is a chance. “I can’t, my mom’s making my favorite dinner tonight,” he lies. Janis glares at him, she’s caught on to his plight. She’s also just known him long enough to know he doesn’t have a favorite dinner, his favorite food is just whatever he’s eating in the moment.

“I can go!” Cady pipes up happily, excited to have a little alone time with her crush. Janis hasn’t shown any signs of reciprocating her affections (that she’s noticed), but she tries to get as much alone time with her as possible regardless. She’s starting to realize it’s probably not healthy, but she doesn’t want to stop spending time with her abruptly in case Janis gets suspicious.

“Tits, what do you want to watch?” Janis asks, still glaring at Damian, which Cady somehow doesn’t notice.

“The Lion King?” Cady says sheepishly.

“Of course you do. You owe me a slasher, though.” Janis sighs, accepting her fate.

“I can live with that,” Cady giggles. “Just nothing too gory.”

“Fine,” Janis pouts. “Let’s go, Africa. We got movies to watch.”

Cady hugs Damian goodbye and rushes out into the parking lot, and he manages to call out, “Remember the callback list gets sent out at nine!” just before she’s out of earshot. She gives him a thumbs up and continues running to Janis’ truck, Janis jogging sluggishly after her.

“Later, Dame. Love you, loser.” She calls over her shoulder. “Have fun with your mom.”

“Love you too art freak, have fun with your date!”

“It’s not a date!”

———-

Pancakes makes a beeline for Cady as soon as she steps in the door, rubbing against her legs with a welcoming meow. She bends down to scritch behind his ears, cooing at him in a baby voice.

“Hello Pancakes, how is the best little cat in the whole wide world?” She says as she scoops him up for better snuggles.

Janis just glares at him, grumbling, “Oh sure, I had to spend months and have trainers to get you to like me but little Miss Kenya comes over a few times and she’s your new best friend,” under her breath.

“Aww, Jan, don’t be jealous. He still loves you,” Cady pouts.

“I’m not jealous. He’s a dummy anyway. He stuck his paw in my coffee this morning and then yelled at it for getting his foot wet,” Janis says, as if that somehow redeems her. She actually is a little jealous, but only that Pancakes is getting Cady’s cuddles instead of her.

Cady laughs at that. “Orange boy cats are always dumb, that’s why they’re great. Why did you name him Pancakes anyway?” She asks as Janis leads them to the basement, cat still laying contently in her arms.

“He was really fat as a baby and when he sat down the way he would squish out made him look like a stack of pancakes,” Janis says, digging through her DVD collection for a movie. “I dunno, I was thirteen, it fit at the time.” She mumbles as she finds The Shining and puts it in.

Cady plops down next to her on the little couch, pouting as Pancakes decides he’s had enough and leaves with his tail flicking arrogantly. Janis mutters, “Little bastard,” under her breath affectionately as he trips on his way up the stairs.

Cady inches closer to Janis as the movie starts, pretending to be slightly more scared than she actually is. She does genuinely jump and bury her head in Janis’ shoulder at the first jumpscare, deciding to stay there as Janis wraps an arm around her shoulders to keeps her close.

She peeks out eventually, only to see a man with an axe in his chest and hides again with a little squeak of fright.

“You said you watched a snake eat a whole cow, why are you so scared?” Janis teases gently, playing with her hair to comfort her.

“Because this is people? I never said I liked watching the snake eat the cow either,” Cady points out.

“Fair enough,” Janis giggles. “Should we just skip to The Lion King now so you can actually sleep tonight?”

“No, you can finish, I’ll just stay here,” Cady says, muffled by Janis’ shoulder. She’s secretly kind of glad she has a reason to be this close to her, content to just breathe in the comforting scents of vanilla lotion and paint that follow Janis as she’s held tightly.

Janis laughs again. “Suit yourself, Peanut,” she hums, resting her head against Cady’s.

Once the movie ends she stretches out, standing up to switch the tv off and holding a hand out to help Cady up. “Let’s watch the rest upstairs, this couch is too small,” she says.

Cady follows Janis to her room, jumping onto her bed and wrapping herself up in the pancake blanket so that only her face peeks out. Janis grabs her laptop to bring up the movie, laying down next to her but making sure to leave a little bit of space between them.

Cady decidedly ignores the gap and inchworms herself closer to rest her head on Janis’ belly, Janis freezing for a second before relaxing. Cady’s love language was obviously touch, and if she trusted you she would not hesitate to make that known. It had taken some getting used to for Janis, being made into a social pariah and then having that all collapse last year didn’t exactly lead to many pretty girls wanting to cuddle with her. Every once in a while it was still a shock, but she treasured every little hug and cuddle she got from her crush.

By the time Hakuna Matata is playing softly from the speakers, Cady rolls over and Janis notices she’s sound asleep. She turns the volume and brightness down on her laptop and switches to watching The Little Mermaidinstead. She only watches The Lion King with Cady now, and if she wasn’t watching anything she would just stare at her sleeping face the whole time. She just got people to stop thinking she’s some kind of creepy molester, she doesn’t need Cady waking up and noticing she’s been watching her sleep.

She only gets a few minutes into her movie before her phone chimes with Damian’s text tone. She stretches gently over to her nightstand to grab it, trying not to wake Cady up.

sashafierce: Is Caddy still with you?

sashafierce: She got a callback for Belle and she’s not answering my texts

gaylien: Sent a picture: she sleep

sashafierce: Aww

sashafierce: Gay

gaylien: no

sashafierce: Yes

gaylien: she’s just a cuddly person

sashafierce: Yeah, with you

gaylien: she cuddles with you all the time!

sashafierce: Only when you’re not around, you’re clearly her favorite

sashafierce: And she has never fallen asleep on my lap like a little kitten. Not once

gaylien: point made but i still say ur wrong

sashafierce: And I still say when y’all start dating you have to give me 20 bucks

sashafierce: Anyway I hate to disrupt that little burrito but you really should wake her up and tell her, she needs to make sure she knows the whole song by tomorrow

Janis tries to shake Cady awake, only getting a sleepy groan in reply. “Peanut, you gotta wake up really quick,” she murmurs, shaking her again.

“Wha’ happent? Why’d you wake me up?” Cady grumbles, cranky about being so rudely awakened.

“You got a callback for Belle, Damian wants to make sure you know the song for tomorrow,” Janis says, grinning as Cady rubs at her face like a cat.

“‘ll call’er back later. Lemme sleep,” Cady groans, smushing her face against Janis’ tummy. “Goodnight.” She says, muffled as she reaches up to pat Janis’ face before falling back asleep.

gaylien: she just said “i’ll call her back later” and went back to sleep

sashafierce: LMAO ok

sashafierce: I’ll talk to her about it in the morning I guess

sashafierce: Enjoy your little totally platonic sleepover, love you both

gaylien: she’s just a cuddly person!!!! she doesn’t like me back there’s no way

gaylien: i love u too but ur the worst sometimes

sashafierce: And you’re a whole idiot sometimes you oblivious sap

gaylien: damb i’ve been called tf out

gaylien: goodnight loser

sashafierce: goodnight dork

Janis texts her mom to ask if Cady can sleep over, since she definitely won’t be able to wake her up enough to get her home by this point. Her mom agrees, letting Cady’s parents know as well.

They both wore clothes they can sleep in, so Janis only has to wake Cady up to take her contacts out before they can both go to sleep. Janis boops Cady’s nose gently in an attempt to wake her, trying to contain her giggles as she scrunches it like a bunny and the corners of her mouth tick up in a grin.

Once Cady’s contacts are out, she flips down onto the bed and buries her face in Janis’ pillow. Janis reaches over to shut the light off before lying down next to her, making sure to leave a few inches of space between them.

“Goodnight, Caddy.”

———-

The next day is the dance call and callbacks. Everyone gets to meet the choreographer, Mr. Dunn, as he leads them through some basic stretches and a few pieces of basic choreography that would be in the show. He calls out certain people’s numbers after every section, making Cady nervous when hers is never called until she notices Damian’s was never called either. Maybe it’s a good thing.

She has a roughly ten minute break to cool down from the exercise and prepare herself for her callback audition, sucking down water from her small bottle and doing a few of the warm-ups Damian taught her. Belle callbacks go first, so she goes to stand with a crowd of about five other girls in line.

She’s more confident than she was yesterday, Damian’s new tips fresh in her mind since they had worked on it a little at lunch. She’s technically excused after she’s finished, but since Damian is her ride home she goes to take a seat in one of the cushy chairs and watches him do his.

Damian got a callback for both the Beast and Lumiere (again), but since the audition song was the same for both he was only required to stay for one. He shoots Cady a wink once he finishes, and she claps silently for him so she doesn’t disturb the other people preparing.

They meet in the cafeteria, Damian rushing to scoop her up and spin her around in congratulation. “You did so good, Cads! I seriously think you might get it.”

“You did good too, Dame. I hope you get whatever part you’re wanting,” She says as he sets her down again.

“We’ll find out later tonight, they’re sending the cast list out at eight. Janis wants to take you-us out to dinner, by the way. She says you get to pick,” He says, faking annoyance about not being allowed to pick where they go.

“Aww, that’s nice of her. We could go to that buffet place, they have everything. Then you can pick what you want too,” She says, trying to compromise even though he was joking.

“Sounds good, Little Slice. She’ll meet us there, let’s go,” He says, scooping her up again and carrying her towards the parking lot as she shrieks with laughter and wraps her arms around his neck.

———-

Once all three are absolutely stuffed, they meet back up at Damian’s house for a weekend sleepover. All of them immediately flop on the ground in the living room, Pippa coming over to sniff and lick at their faces before settling in on Cady’s chest for a nap.

“I’ve never been so full in my life,” Janis groans. “How did I even make it here, I shouldn’t have driven.”

“You drove me here,” Cady says, concerned.

“That’s on you for trusting me, dork,” Janis says as she somehow manages to peel herself off the carpet and trudge over to the couch. “What movie do y’all want to watch?”

“Let’s just nap,” Damian grumbles. “Come back, Jan.”

They form a cuddle puddle on the ground, Cady in the middle pressed against Janis, and Damian on her other side. Janis pulls her closer, squishing poor Pippa between them and resting her cheek against the top of her head.

When they wake up again, it’s dark outside and Damian’s mom is back from work. She put a blanket over the lot of them and gave them each a pillow, but Cady moved from hers in favor of laying her head on Janis’ chest.

“Morning, sleepy heads,” Mrs. Hubbard teases from the couch as they all sit up and rub their eyes.

“Hi, Ma. What time is it?” Damian asks blearily.

“Just after eight. I’m assuming you girls are spending the night?”

“Yeah. Cads, that means the cast list is out, come see,” Damian says, grabbing his phone as he stands up to stretch. He sees his mom sent him a photo of the three of them curled up on the ground, making it his lock screen quickly before moving to his email to bring up the document the director sent out.

Cady pokes her head around to look at the screen just as it loads, and they both gasp excitedly as they see the first name.

Belle: Cady Heron

Damian keeps scrolling, seeing he’s been cast as Lumiere once again. That makes him a little nervous, but he had a lot of fun in the role last time.

Karen was cast as Chip, and Gretchen was in the ensemble and would also be portraying the enchantress.

“Holy shit, Cads! You got the lead!” Janis cheers, stopping herself at the last second from kissing her and playing it off as a hug instead.

“That’s crazy, I thought they only gave big parts to people who’ve done it before,” Cady says dazedly, suddenly nervous as she returns Janis’ embrace. “But Damian is Lumiere, that means we get to be together a lot,” She adds as she pulls him in to make it a group hug.

“And I’m stage manager, we get more time together too,” Janis adds, rejoicing internally.

——-

Rehearsals begin on the first of February, Janis working on taping out the stage for blocking set pieces while Cady sits in the auditorium seats with the rest of the cast for their first read through of the script. Every time she hears her sweet, soft voice ring out Janis’ heart skips a beat.

Cady comes to find her when they get a break, while Janis is working on painting a piece that will eventually be the door to the house. “That looks really good, Jay,” She says, accidentally startling Janis as she comes up from behind.

“Thanks, Caddy. How’s practice going?” Janis says, plopping her brush into the water cup next to her and leaning back on her hands.

“It’s fun! Sonja keeps getting yelled at because she’s not supposed to swear but does anyway and Dawn doesn’t want to flirt with Damian, but I like it. Everyone’s really nice,” Cady answers as she sits next to her.

“That’s good, if they weren’t I’d show them my fists,” Janis says, brandishing her weapons. She had actually started working out lately, so that on the off chance she ever encountered a homophobe or bigot she’d be able to deck them with the most force possible. It’s a genuine threat.

“Your rings would hurt a lot,” Cady laughs, leaning closer to see how Janis reacts. She blinks at her for a second, but eventually also leans closer.

“I was listening to your run earlier, you sound good, by the way. You do her character really well.” Janis compliments.

“Thank you. It’s actually kind of easy. Belle’s a lot like me, I suppose. She’s from somewhere else and never quite fits in, loves to get lost in other worlds, she loves her family...” She falls for someone she never thought she would, Cady adds in her head as she trails off, looking meaningfully at the gorgeous girl sitting next to her. “I have to get back, I’ll see you later.” She stuns Janis with a peck on the cheek as she goes, leaving her blinking rapidly and gaping at the wall.

“Bye,” Janis replies, several minutes after Cady’s already left.

——-

They’re only more distracted by one another when they start dating two weeks into rehearsals. Janis nearly ruined one of the rose props because she was so distracted listening to Cady working on a scene, and Cady had lost count of the times she’d nearly fallen into the pit while looking to see where Janis was.

Cady also had a tendency to hyper-express her emotions; if she didn’t say out loud what she was thinking or feeling her face would let you know. It was quite useful when she was acting since she didn’t have to try very hard to get the mood across, but when she had other things on her mind it could be an issue.

She got several notes about it one day. She kept giggling during an emotional scene, remembering Janis trying to clean out the fog machine and having it puff out in her face. Then later, she looked too bored during Be Our Guest causing Damian to resort to increasingly ridiculous measures to get her back, but she was actually just disappointed that Janis wouldn’t be in her eyesight anymore now that she had switched to working up in the booth.

Janis was also struggling to keep on task, her mind occasionally elsewhere. She missed a cue she was supposed to call up to lightning because she was laughing so hard watching her (now literally) flaming homosexual best friend pretend to flirt with Dawn Schweitzer, who was Babette. A few days later, she was so distracted staring at Cady in costume for the first time that she absentmindedly started singing a song from High School Musical at one of Sonja Acquino’s (Mrs. Potts) lines under her breath.

It wasn’t until she heard “Sarkisian, your mic is still on,” buzzing into her headset that she realized she never hit the button after calling her last cue and scrambled over to the switchboard.

Eventually, the director has to pull them both aside before practice one day and ask them, politely, to get their shit together. They both nod, embarrassed, but he just ruffles their hair and says it’s cute, but they need to focus on the show during rehearsals.

———

As they get down to the wire, Mr. Dunn asks Cady if there’s any way she could work on the waltz scene on her own time for extra practice. She had terrible coordination with her feet, so she wasn’t too surprised she’d have trouble dancing.

“I just don’t know who to ask, I don’t know anyone who can dance,” She complains to Damian while they get their snack break, crunching frustratedly on her celery.

“Janis could help, she did ballet for almost ten years,” Damian says, putting a hand over his mouth as he does. “Don’t tell her I told you, she’ll kill me.”

Cady has to bite her lip to contain a squeal at the mental image of a young Janis in a leotard and tutu. “Don’t worry, Dame, I won’t tell her.” She says comfortingly once she’s recovered.

That night, Janis comes over for a movie night, sans Damian who was “busy”. Cady immediately pins her to the couch for cuddles, not that Janis is complaining. They lie there for a while, talking about their day and peppering kisses wherever they can reach. Eventually Cady pipes up again, saying, “I learned something interesting about you today.”

Janis tenses, that could quite literally mean anything. “Oh?”

“You never told me you were a ballerina,” Cady says, leaning on her elbows to hover over her and playing with the ends of her hair as Janis visibly relaxes beneath her.

“I haven’t told you a lot of things,” She teases. “Who told you?” It could only be Damian or Regina, they’re the only ones who know.

“Nobody.”

“Damian?”

“No.”

“I’m not gonna do anything to him, you can tell me,” Janis coaxes. “I’m not embarrassed about it or anything, I just have some bad memories associated with it. It’s how I met Regina, actually. Plus it just doesn’t really fit my vibe now, either.”

“Okay, yes it was Damian. But he didn’t mean to, I just need more help learning the dance for Tale as Old as Time, and he thought you could do it,” Cady mumbles.

“I probably could, I’ve watched you guys working on it enough. I think I know the steps,” She says, reaching for her phone to bring up the song as she stands up.

They push the furniture out of the way so they have room, Janis guiding Cady to where they should begin. “Okay, so you put your hand here,” She says, taking it gently and resting it on her own shoulder. “And then mine goes here.” She places hers on Cady’s waist, pulling her slightly closer.

Cady grins up at her as the music begins, following Janis’ movements and trying very hard not to step on her toes. It’s obvious she has some kind of dance background, she can follow the rhythm easily and the passion she puts into the movements makes Cady want to kiss her senseless right where they stand.

“That was good, Butterfly. Just loosen up a little, you’re so tense,” Janis says once they finish, still lost in each other.

“You’re really pretty,” Cady blurts after a second, staring into Janis’ eyes.

Janis laughs. “Thank you. You’re pretty too. Beautiful, even. Ma belle fille,” She coos, pressing a kiss to the tip of Cady’s nose.

“You know French?” Cady asks as they return to their starting positions to go again.

“Oui. My dad was French. I was born there, actually. He got sick a few years after, and he wanted my mom to have her family to support her through everything so we moved back here. My mom kept teaching me what she knew after he died, and his side of the family kept helping when she couldn’t anymore,” Janis says, smiling fondly as memories of her family run through her mind.

“That’s sweet,” Cady says, trying to remember the footwork and have a conversation at the same time. It does feel better now that she’s released some tension. “Wait, then why are you only in French 4?” She asks as the realization hits.

“Because nobody’s supposed to know,” Janis teases. “I get things wrong on purpose so nobody suspects anything. I didn’t want to be bumped up to a class with people I don’t know.”

“You’re such a dork, oh my god. Only you would purposely lower your grade in a class,” Cady laughs.

“What about you? I thought you were fluent in French too,” Janis points out.

“I used to be, but I speak so many things that are similar to it and I wasn’t using it regularly when we moved. I wanted to pick it back up, so that’s what I scheduled, and I tested into this one.”

“That makes sense,” Janis answers, spinning Cady out into a twirl before pulling her back. “Remember you’re gonna be in a big dress while this is happening, you’re not going to be able to be this close.”

Cady pouts. “But I like being close to you,” she whines.

How is she so cute? “You can be close for now, but you’re gonna have about five pounds of fabric between you and the Beast when the time comes,” Janis hums, kissing her soundly once the music ends again.

“I wish you could be my Beast. I like you much more than Jason,” Cady says lovingly. “Can you help me run lines while we eat?” She asks as her mom lets them know that dinner is ready from the other room.

“Thanks, baby. I like you more than Jason too,” Janis laughs. “Let’s go get food, I’m starving.”

———

Tech week hits and everyone is immediately exhausted. Other than in classes and watching each other on stage, the art freaks barely even get to speak. They still have homework and chores, so sleepovers and movie nights have taken a backseat and probably would until the show closes.

After the last hell week rehearsal, Janis is cleaning up backstage as everyone files out to head home. As she finishes, she notices Cady lying spread eagle in the middle of the stage, staring up at the ceiling. Slightly worried, Janis decides to investigate.

“You okay there, Butterfly?” She asks, nudging her with her foot gently.

“Yeah,” Cady says, patting the ground next to her. “Come lay with me?”

Janis does, settling next to her and resting her head against Cady’s shoulder. There is something relaxing about it, staring up at the scaffolding and set pieces hanging above them. It’s the first moment they’ve had alone all week, both of them soaking in the other’s presence as much as they can.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Janis asks quietly after a while.

“Yeah. I think I am,” Cady says softly.

“I’m so proud of you,” Janis says. “I can’t wait to see you in it for real.”

“I love you,” Cady whispers after another beat, rolling on top of her and leaning down to kiss her. Janis grips her hips tightly, pulling her closer and flicking her tongue against the seam of Cady’s lips.

They lie there for a while just kissing softly, lips meeting again and again as they’re illuminated by the stage lights. Cady pulls back after several minutes, drawing a frustrated whine from Janis. “Can you take me home? I forgot that’s why I stayed behind, I don’t have a ride,” Cady asks. “You can spend the night,” She adds seductively, rolling her hips slightly.

“Yes, I can, let’s go,” Janis says quickly, scrambling to her feet as Cady giggles. She shuts off the stage lights, and they escape the building guided by the soft glow of the ghost light, hand in hand.

——-

Janis is rushing around backstage frantically, headset around her neck as she nearly plows over several people. One of the bars broke on the dungeon set, and she has to find a last minute fix for Belle’s basket.

She’s dashing past the girls’ dressing room when Cady pokes her head out, barely hearing the “Janis?” called after her.

She spins around on her heel, heading back towards the room. “Yes, princess?” She asks breathlessly.

“Can you help me? I can’t get my bow in,” Cady pouts, holding out a blue ribbon. Janis takes it from her gently, spinning her around and tying it around her curly auburn ponytail.

“There. Vous êtes belle,” Janis hums, wrapping her arms around Cady’s shoulders and pressing a sweet kiss to her cheek. “You ready?”

“I’m nervous,” Cady mumbles, fiddling with the hem of her apron.

“You can do it. You’re my tough Kenya girl, this is just your next adventure. You’ll soar out there, my butterfly,” Janis comforts, squeezing her before letting go. “Break a leg, baby. Je t’aime.”

“Je t’aime aussi,” Cady giggles.

———

Cady is killing it. Janis can feel the energy of the audience, the way they’re totally engrossed in her performance. She is as well. She has to hold back tears as Cady weeps at being torn from Maurice, has to tamp down actual jealousy at her stage relationship with the Beast.

Damian’s a crowd favorite as always, getting laughs in all the right places and lots of applause when he finishes his number. Lumiere really is the perfect role for him. He does comedy better than anything, as Janis knows well. She’s been in the audience for every single show he’s done since they were freshmen, and she can tell he’s giving his all to the last one he’d do here.

Karen nearly gets more laughs than Damian, her comedic timing is on point, and Gretchen looks remarkably comfortable onstage surrounded by the rest of the ensemble. She had really come out of her shell during rehearsals, and Janis is oddly glad to see her looking anxiety-free for the first time in a long time.

She tries not to be too surprised when she spies none other than Regina George in the audience at intermission, two bouquets of flowers on the seat next to her and nibbling on some peanut M&Ms she’d bought at concessions. Regina has changed a lot over the past year. Janis doesn’t necessarily think they’ll ever be friends again, they don’t spend time together without Cady, but it’s still nice to see.

The whole show nearly goes off without a hitch, other than Jason getting stuck hanging from the ceiling during the Beast transformation scene and Cady nearly getting run over by a set piece during a scene transition. They’re both incredible actors and play both off in character near perfectly.

Before either of them are really aware of it, the show is over and the final number begins. Cady is looking directly at the booth as she sings the reprise of Tale as Old as Time, looking right at Janis. She’s unable to leave the box until the audience exits, but she cheers loudly for Damian during his bow with Mike Thurman, who played Cogsworth.

Cady’s bow is last, and she comes running out onto the stage in her poofy yellow dress with the biggest grin on her face. The audience (and Janis) claps loudest for her, giving her a standing ovation as she bows proudly and leads the acknowledgement of the pit and crew. She blows a kiss as she gestures to where Janis is in the booth, able to pass it off as going to the audience, but Janis knows it’s just for her.

——

Cady is standing amongst the crowd in the cafeteria with her parents, hugging them

both tightly and accepting the bouquet of roses they got her. People are constantly congratulating her, and she’s high off the adrenaline of the night.

She bids her parents goodbye and turns to go congratulate Gretchen and Karen, who are currently chatting with Regina. Aw, Regina got them flowers, she thinks, when suddenly a small form rockets into her leg and hugs her tightly. She looks down to see a little girl, no more than seven, wrapped tightly around her leg and smiling up at her with missing front teeth.

A woman, presumably her mother, comes rushing up, apologizing frantically and gently scolding her daughter. “I’m so sorry, she got away from me. Darling, I’ve told you not to leave my side.”

“Oh, it’s okay, she’s fine,” Cady says calmly. “Hello!” She chirps to the girl being pried from her skirt.

“Oh, she’s mute. Only speaks at home,” her mother sighs.

“Does she know sign language?” Cady asks.

“Yes, but we’re both still learning,” the woman answers, looking surprised as Cady crouches down to the girl’s eye level.

“Hello there, what’s your name?” Cady signs slowly.

“Hi, I’m Willow.” She signs back, fumbling over a few of the shapes.

The woman gasps, “You know sign?”

Cady nods. “I was mute too, I didn’t really speak until I was six,” she explains.

“I like your dress,” Willow signs once Cady looks back to her.

“Thank you! I like yours too,” Cady reaches out to tug gently on the hem of it, making Willow giggle. “Did you like the show?”

Willow nods rapidly. “Lumiere was so funny!”

Cady laughs as she stands up. “That’s my best friend, would you like to meet him?” She says out loud, holding out a hand. Willow takes it with an excited nod, placing her little hand in hers.

Cady leads them through the crowd to Damian’s tall form; made even taller by the candle hat he has on. He spins away from talking with Janis when she taps him on the shoulder, immediately pulling her into a tight hug.

“I’m so proud of you!” He exclaims, letting her go. “Who’s this?”

“This is Willow, she wanted to meet Lumiere,” Cady says, allowing the little girl to hide behind her skirt. Damian can be kind of intimidating if you don’t know how gentle he really is.

“Oh! Enchantée, petite,” He exclaims in character, turning his candle hands back on and kneeling down to her height. Willow seems to realize he’s not actually a threat, just very tall, and comes out from behind Cady’s ballgown signing excitedly to Damian.

“She says you were really funny, and you’re her favorite character in the show,” Cady translates, also bending down. “Oh, except for me.” She adds with a giggle.

“Ah, merci! I’m glad you liked it,” He laughs, adding, “Belle’s my favorite too,” in a whisper as if it’s some sort of terrible secret. Willow giggles again.

“Willow, we have to go now, darling. Say goodbye,” Her mother says from behind them. She frowns, but hugs Damian gently before throwing her arms around Cady again. Janis has to turn around to avoid cooing audibly at the adorableness.

Cady hugs her back just as tightly, saying, “Oh, adieu, little one. It was lovely to meet you,” as she passes her back to her mother.

Willow waves goodbye to them as she takes her mother’s hand, Cady and Damian both waving back. The mother thanks them both several times, nearly in tears as she leads her daughter out the doors, the little girl signing excitedly that Belle was just like her.

“That was sickeningly adorable, I hope you know that,” Janis says once they’ve gone. Cady is incredible with kids. Maybe they’d have a few mini-Cadys running around someday.

“I do indeed,” Cady giggles, finally getting to hug her girlfriend. “Now let’s go take some pictures, my mom wants some of all of us together before we get out of costume.”

——-

Damian drives them to Waffle House after they change into sweats, Cady still in full makeup and him with his gold-painted face.

Cady’s still off her face on adrenaline, chattering about how much fun she had that night so quickly that neither Janis or Damian can make a word out. She rushes inside the restaurant once they get there, bouncing excitedly at the promise of waffles. The waitstaff look a little frightened when they see she’s clearly in show makeup, but calm down once they notice it’s just the three of them.

They pick a booth, Janis pinning Cady to the inside so she can’t cause too much property damage with her excitement.

Once their food arrives, Cady wolfs down her meal and promptly falls asleep on Janis’ shoulder. Janis shifts to cradle her sleeping girlfriend like a baby, wiping some stray whipped cream off her lip and grinning down at her.

She continues talking to Damian as they finish eating, glad they finally have a chance to catch up. They didn’t get as many chances to hang out just the two of them now that she was dating Cady, and it had only gotten worse once the show had started getting more intense. They would always be first in each other’s hearts, platonic soulmates, but she’s still missed him.

“You two are so soft,” Damian teases once he’s paid for their food. Cady has to wake up for a minute so Janis can actually stand up, practically falling asleep on her feet until Janis picks her up. Working out also came with the added benefit of being able to carry her girlfriend around, which they both loved. Especially since Cady had a tendency to fall asleep in inconvenient places.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Janis answers as Cady wraps her arms around her neck and legs around her waist loosely, burrowing into her shoulder and going back to sleep.

Damian just gestures broadly at the whole situation as he leads them back towards his car. Janis decides to sit in the back, laying her girlfriend down gently before sliding in after and placing Cady’s head on her lap.

As Damian peels out of the parking lot, Janis smiles down at her girl, running her fingers through her soft auburn curls gently and trying not to giggle too hard when Cady puffs happily in her sleep and nuzzles into her hand slightly.

“Je t’aime tellement, mon papillon,” she whispers softly in French so Damian won’t understand. “Merci de m’aimer aussi.”

And they lived happily ever after.

------

thanks for reading! as always any and all feedback is appreciated, but please be kind.

lots of love,

ezzy

#cadnis #cady heron x janis sarkisian #paint by numbers #cady heron #janis sarkisian #damian hubbard #karen smith #gretchen wieners #regina george #karen smith x gretchen wieners #mean girls #mean girls musical #mean girls broadway

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chsamuseum · 3 years ago

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Journey to the West: The Life and Times of Frank (Pai-Fang) Lee

In front of the second gift shop, where we lived above, early 1970s. (Courtesy of Raymond Lee).

My father, Frank Lee (1925-92), was the second of six siblings to a successful merchant and his second wife. The family had moved from their hometown of Zhaoqing, Guangdong to Tientsin and Qinhuangdao to embark on various businesses, including a night club and general store in the early 1930s. After my paternal grandfather passed away in the late 1930s, he and his oldest brother were responsible for running the family’s affairs until Frank left for an extended visit to Formosa (Taiwan) in 1948. While touring the island, he received word from my grandmother that the Chinese Communists were poised to defeat the Nationalists (Kuomintang) and govern China in 1949.

Alas, he dared not return to the mainland, and settled in Taipei for the interim. After working at various odd jobs, he enrolled at the National Taiwan Normal University to train as a teacher. Upon graduation, he instructed at an elementary school in Taipei in the mid-1950s, before being reassigned as vice-principal at an overseas Chinese middle school in Tahiti in 1958. He realized, however, that this was a dead-end posting and left for America to seek his fortunes a year later.

In Polynesian sarong, 1958. (Courtesy of Raymond Lee).

Frank arrived in San Francisco on a tourist visa, but quickly changed his visa status to student after enrolling at John Adams Adult School. Through a mutual classmate, he met Virginia (nee Tsui), his future wife and our mother, in 1960. After a brief courtship, they wedded in January, 1961, followed by my arrival later that year. Frank taught Mandarin-Chinese at the Army Language School in Monterey during the early to mid-1960s.

In 1965, he resigned this teaching position to operate a retail stall inside the Chinese Cultural Center on Grant Avenue, selling colourful batiks painted by himself. The following year, he closed the stall and opened a gift shop next to the renowned restaurant, Shanghai Low, selling his artwork, imported handicrafts from Taiwan, Japan and Thailand, and sundry souvenirs of San Francisco. Three years later, a second shop was opened on the other side of Shanghai Low. Virginia helped run the businesses, while also employed as key-punch operator at several firms downtown.

Family portrait, 1963. (Courtesy of Raymond Lee).

Throughout the late 1960s to the early 1980s, my parents raised my brother, Oscar, and me, all the while operating the shops, which evolved to selling jewelry and higher-end merchandise in the 1980s. Frank was active in the Chinatown Merchants Association during this time. He instilled within us the importance of industry and self-reliance when we were old enough to help out. He also home-schooled me in written and spoken (Mandarin-)Chinese during after-school hours and on weekends.

I remember him as a firm but fair parent, an innovative entrepreneur, and engaged in the local community, who had various self-taught talents (besides painting, he played the erhu and snare drum), and was physically fit until the end. Regrettably, he did not live to know of his extended family, including grandchildren Nerys, Kaeden and Kendra.

Written by CHSA community member, Raymond Lee. Lee was born, raised, and educated in San Francisco. Raymond and his wife reside in Winnipeg, Canada, and Saint-Denis, France. He is currently employed at the Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 25, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

On Thursday and Friday of last week, April 22 and 23, President Biden convened a virtual meeting of 40 world leaders to discuss addressing climate change. It is no longer possible to ignore changes in the world’s climate: the last decade was the hottest in recorded history, and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached record levels. Arctic ice is melting; last summer’s fires in Australia, California, and Colorado were catastrophic.

In 2015, representatives of more than 190 countries, including the U.S., gathered in Paris and hammered out an agreement on mitigating climate change, adapting to it, and financing those changes. Former president Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. On his first day in office, Biden took the U.S. back into the international agreement.

But Biden seems not simply to be trying to adjust the nation’s energy production. With the Leaders Summit on Climate, Biden is taking what his Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm called “our generation’s moonshot,” a reference to the American determination to reach the moon in the 1960s, a goal that spurred previously unimaginable developments in technology, computers, and science.

In the past, refusal to address the issue of climate change has centered around the idea that cutting back on fossil fuels would take jobs from coal miners and those in related fossil fuel industries. That focus was always about more than jobs: the hardworking white man in a hardhat was a cultural symbol for a certain political stance more than it was about reality. Walmart, for example, employs about 28 times the number of people as does coal, even including executives, office workers, and so on. Still, it’s a trope that worked in 2016: Trump won West Virginia by 42 points.

But a lot has changed in the last four years.

For one thing, the market for coal has slid, illustrating that old blue-collar jobs are not coming back. Trump promised to make coal great again and seemed to think that slashing environmental regulations would do the trick, but even combined with an infusion of up to $1 billion, slashing regulations could not stop Trump’s administration from overseeing the fastest decline of coal-fuel capacity in U.S. history. The U.S. lost 10% of coal-mining jobs—5300 of them—between 2016 and 2020. Low natural gas prices and the rise of wind and solar alternatives pushed coal aside. At the same time, mechanization across blue collar industries means the recovery of old manufacturing jobs is not in the cards.

On April 19, the United Mine Workers of America, the largest coal miners’ union, backed Biden’s plan to move away from coal, so long as miners get government support to transition into similar jobs. In a plan endorsed by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia (who is well known for delivering for his constituents), the union asked for funding to plug abandoned oil and gas wells, clean up mining sites, and train workers for new jobs in new energy technologies.

The sentiments of business leaders have shifted, too, as they recognize that climate change is a financial disruptor. Earlier this month, leaders of more than 400 businesses that collectively employ more than 7 million Americans signed a letter asking Biden to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. “To restore the standing of the U.S. as a global leader, we need to address the climate crisis at the pace and scale it demands,” they wrote. “New investment in clean energy, energy efficiency, and clean transportation can build a strong, more equitable, and more inclusive American economy.” Signatories included Etsy, Facebook, Nike, Microsoft, Verizon, and Walmart.

Biden has already embraced the idea that addressing climate change is not a loss but an opportunity. It will, he insists, bring good jobs to ordinary Americans. “When people talk about climate, I think jobs,” Biden said on Thursday. “Within our climate response lies an extraordinary engine of job creation and economic opportunity ready to be fired up.”

Indeed, Biden’s American Jobs Plan already calls for $16 billion to clean up abandoned mining sites and more for the training in new infrastructure jobs coal miners want. It also addresses job losses in rural areas in an obvious but novel way: by supporting the caregiver economy. Caregiving jobs cannot ever be mechanized, and there are caregivers—and people who need care— in every single community in this country. Supporting those positions will bring money into towns left behind by the loss of jobs like mining.

Biden’s emphasis on new energy jobs is part domestic politics, but it is also a major play for redefining future world power. It was no accident that the overarching political theme of last week’s conference was “America is back.”

As the White House fact sheet on the conference stated: “Over the course of two days and eight sessions, President Biden convened heads of state and government, as well as leaders and representatives from international organizations, businesses, subnational governments, and indigenous communities, to rally the world in tackling the climate crisis, demonstrate the economic opportunities of the future, and affirm the need for unprecedented global cooperation and ambition to meet the moment.”

America is back, indeed.

But what does that mean, in this context? At the summit, Biden announced that by 2030 the U.S. would reduce emissions by 50–52% from the levels of 2005, more than doubling our commitment under the Paris Agreement. He called for other countries, which make up 85% of emissions, to “step up” to “tackle the climate crisis and support the most vulnerable.” (The U.S., which has 4% of the world’s population, emits 15% of the world’s greenhouse gases). This is all pretty standard for U.S. climate statements. Biden went farther, though, calling for changing the American economy over to renewables, including wind, solar, nuclear, and so on, to make the country carbon-free by 2035.

Still, what jumps out from the rest of the Biden proposal is what sure looks like a major reworking of the world economy and thus its political tensions.

While the U.S. focused on fossil fuels and refused to jump wholeheartedly into research and development of alternative energies, China did. That nation is still dependent on fossil fuels and expects not to reach its highest pollution levels until sometime before 2030, but it has heavily subsidized solar power and now has 8 of the top 10 solar companies in the world. America has one; Europe has none. Chinese dominance of the technology and supply chains for the solar industry threatens to sideline American technology and national security, as even American solar manufacturers depend on Chinese materials.

Dominating the world of alternative energy would give China a powerful geopolitical tool. Remember how hard the supply chain failures in China during the early days of the coronavirus hit the U.S.? Now, think energy. A recent piece by Emerging Markets journalist Kenneth Rapoza in Forbes is titled: “How China’s Solar Industry Is Set Up To Be The New Green OPEC,” a reference to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose oil embargo to the U.S. in 1973 slammed the U.S. economy.

Countries, especially weaker countries, would need to turn toward China if that’s where they get their energy technology. And even stronger countries would be dependent on China for one of their most vital needs. To forestall that scenario, Biden has stepped in to reclaim leadership on new energy technologies for the United States, enabling other countries to work toward an energy future that is not dominated by China. On April 22, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg signed onto the idea of NATO cooperation on climate change and other security challenges.

After four years in which our leaders saw the height of American strength as standing alone, our leadership is now focusing on the idea of international teamwork. Biden’s climate plan is about saving the planet, but it also seems to be about saving global alliances, binding countries together with a new climate agreement to retain their power over their own energy in the future.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political #Climate Change #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #history #global

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Thursday, November 26, 2020

Foreign observers shocked by chaos over U.S. election (Washington Post) These are challenging times for foreigners whose job it is to interpret American politics for people in other countries. As President Trump has used a string of maneuvers to attack the election he lost as fraudulent and illegitimate, many observers are perplexed as they watch the country they have known and admired floundering in a constitutional crisis and growing mistrust of democratic institutions. For many, it is a struggle to maintain confidence that America’s principles and ideals will prevail. “People who know the U.S. are shocked it’s going on so long,” said Michal Baranowski, the German Marshall Fund director of the office in Warsaw, of the post-election uncertainty and Trump’s refusal to concede. “We still say it will work out, because of the strength of U.S. institutions. But, man, it’s taking a long time, and I’m beginning to worry.” Some foreign observers are also struggling to explain the U.S. political drama to their baffled friends and colleagues.

California unemployment aid to inmates (AP) California’s system for paying unemployment benefits is so dysfunctional that the state approved more than $140 million for at least 20,000 prisoners, local and federal prosecutors said Tuesday, detailing a scheme that resulted in claims filed in the names of well-known convicted murderers. At least 158 claims were filed for 133 death-row inmates, resulting in more than $420,000 in benefits paid. Prosecutors said they learned of the scheme from listening in on recorded prison phone calls, where inmates would talk about how easy it was for everyone to get paid. They said the scheme always involved someone on the outside—usually friends or family members of the inmates, who would then receive the benefits. In some cases, inmates used their real names. In others, they used fake names and even fake Social Security numbers. In one instance, an inmate used the name: “poopy britches,” a district attorney said.

Failing grades spike in Virginia’s largest school system as online learning gap emerges nationwide (Washington Post) A report on student grades from one of the nation’s largest school districts offers some of the first concrete evidence that online learning is forcing a striking drop in students’ academic performance, and that the most vulnerable students—children with disabilities and English-language learners—are suffering the most. Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, which has been mostly online since March, published an internal analysis this week showing that, between the last academic year and this one, the percentage of middle school and high school students earning F’s in at least two classes jumped by 83 percent: from 6 percent to 11 percent. By the end of the first quarter of 2020-2021, nearly 10,000 Fairfax students had scored F’s in two or more classes—an increase of more than 4,300 students as compared with the group who received F’s by the same time last year. Experts have warned since the beginning of the pandemic, and the unexpected national experiment in online learning, that remote schooling would take a serious academic toll on children. Now, evidence of poor achievement in virtual classrooms is beginning to emerge nationwide: In the Independent School District in Houston, more than 40 percent of students are earning failing grades in at least two of their classes, according to data reported by the Houston Chronicle. Likewise in St. Paul, Minn., where the superintendent recently reported that nearly 40 percent of St. Paul Public Schools high-schoolers have failing marks, local TV station KARE reported.

White House considers lifting European travel restrictions (Reuters) The White House is considering rescinding entry bans for most non-U.S. citizens who recently were in Brazil, Britain, Ireland and 26 other European countries, five U.S. and airline officials told Reuters. The plan has won the backing of White House coronavirus task-force members, public health and other federal agencies, the people briefed on the matter said, but President Donald Trump has not made a final decision and the timing remains uncertain.

Punishing hurricanes to spur more Central American migration SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP)—At a shelter in this northern Honduran city, Lilian Gabriela Santos Sarmiento says back-to-back hurricanes that hit with devastating fury this month have overturned her life. Her home in what was once a pretty neighborhood in nearby La Lima was destroyed by flooding. The 29-year-old woman who never finished middle school had managed to build a life for herself, most recently cleaning COVID-19 wards at a local hospital. Now, having lost everything, she says she sees no future in Honduras at her age and with her level of education. So her plan is to leave for the United States. Inside shelters and improvised camps across Central America, families who lost everything in the severe flooding set off by the two major hurricanes are arriving at the same conclusion. The hurricanes’ destruction comes on top of the economic paralysis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the persistent violence and lack of jobs that have driven families north from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in great numbers during recent years. Add an element of hope from the incoming government of President-elect Joe Biden, and experts predict the region is on the verge of another mass migration. “This is going to be much bigger than what we have been seeing,” said Jenny Arguello, a sociologist in San Pedro Sula who studies migration flows. “I believe entire communities are going to leave.”

Swiss poll (Foreign Policy) Swiss citizens will vote on Sunday in a landmark referendum on whether to ban the country’s central bank and pension funds from holding shares in companies that make more than 5 percent of sales from weapons components. The initiative would also ban Swiss banks from lending to weapons companies. The Swiss central bank is against the measure, as are the major Swiss banks. Despite industry pushback, a recent poll showed 50 percent of respondents supported the ban, while 45 percent were opposed.

U.S.-Russia naval confrontation (Foreign Policy) The United States and Russia are offering competing explanations after a Russian warship confronted a U.S. destroyer on Russia’s eastern coast. Russia accuses the United States of overstepping its maritime border in Peter the Great Gulf by 1.2 miles, and allegedly threatened to ram the U.S. ship in order to get it to leave its waters. The United States asserts its ship was in international waters and was conducting a freedom of navigation operation in assertion of its right to travel through the area.

Coronavirus is roaring back in parts of Asia (Washington Post) Compared with the United States and Europe, countries in East Asia have been held up as success stories in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. But in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, governments are reimposing restrictions this week, as public complacency, policy blunders and colder weather fuel a new surge in virus cases. Japan is scaling back a contentious subsidy program designed to encourage domestic tourism and dining out, after it became clear the enticements were helping to fuel a third wave that has resulted in record new infections. In Seoul, officials ordered bars and nightclubs to close and limited dine-in service at cafes and restaurants this week, after an earlier easing of restrictions allowed the virus to roar back. Hong Kong also closed bars and nightclubs, days after officials postponed the launch of a travel bubble with Singapore—a highly anticipated experiment that was set to herald a reopening of quarantine-free travel in Asia—after the virus found gaps in the territory’s defenses to stage a comeback. The numbers of new infections here are a fraction of those in West, with Japan recently reporting more than 2,000 new cases a day, South Korea more than 300 a day, and Hong Kong recording 73 new confirmed cases on Monday—compared with more than 150,000 a day in the United States. Yet the infection rates are still high enough to ring alarm bells, especially given the high proportion of elderly people in places like Japan, as winter approaches and doors and windows close against the chill.

China mulls new rules on foreigners to ‘prohibit religious extremism’ (CNN) Foreign religious groups and worshipers could be the latest targets of a growing crackdown on organized religion in China under President Xi Jinping. Draft rules published this week by the Ministry of Justice call for new restrictions on how foreign worshipers operate in order to prevent the spreading of “religious extremism,” or use of religion “to undermine China’s national or ethnic unity.” The rules, currently open to public feedback but unlikely to change significantly from their current form, are just the latest move to control religious practice under Xi, who has repeatedly called for the “sinicization” of religion. Though the draft rules affirm China’s commitment to respecting “the freedom of religious belief of foreigners,” the list of potential new restrictions and requirements could make practicing that belief far more difficult. In particular, the draft rules include a list of activities that foreigners should not conduct within China, such as “interfering with or dominating the affairs of Chinese religious groups,” advocating “extremist religious thoughts,” using religion to conduct terrorist activities, or “interfering with the appointment or management of Chinese clergy members.”

Ethiopian leader rejects international ‘interference’ in war (AP) Ethiopia’s prime minister is rejecting growing international consensus for dialogue and a halt to deadly fighting in the Tigray region as “unwelcome,” saying his country will handle the conflict on its own as a 72-hour surrender ultimatum runs out on Wednesday. “We respectfully urge the international community to refrain from any unwelcome and unlawful acts of interference,” the statement from Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office said as government forces encircled the Tigray capital, Mekele, with tanks. “The international community should stand by until the government of Ethiopia submits its requests for assistance to the community of nations.” The government led by Abiy has warned Mekele’s half-million residents to move away from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front leaders or there will be “no mercy”—language that the United Nations human rights chief and others have warned could lead to “further violations of international humanitarian law.” But communications remain almost completely severed to the Tigray region of some 6 million people, and is not clear how many people in Mekele are aware of the warnings and the threat of artillery fire.

Terrorism in Africa (Times of London) Islamic State terrorism is surging in Africa while in the western world the threat from far-right extremists has overtaken that from jihadists. The 2020 Global Terrorism Index found that despite a fall in the global terrorism death toll for the fifth year running, Africa was suffering a dramatic increase in jihadist violence linked to Islamic State. “The center of gravity for Isis has now shifted to sub-Saharan Africa,” said Steve Killelea, founder of the Institute of Economic and Peace which produces the annual index. “Seven of the ten countries with the largest increases in terrorism all reside in sub-Saharan Africa.”

#headlines #news

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