#i have tried every possible fix that i have found that people alleged worked for them but nothing has solved this. i'm over it

[wlwaerith]

so photoshop isn’t working at all now & apparently it’s adobe’s anti-piracy thing or whatever but ?? i am unfortunately giving them my money. so idk what i’m going to do bc apparently they ignore all reports about this specific issue lol

[allthingsfangirl101]

Too Much–Zac Efron

Zac and I have been dating for six years. Most girls would be irritated that their boyfriend they were living with hasn't proposed after six years, but I wasn't. We've always had a close relationship and a ring wouldn't change that.

Until about eight months ago.

During his Netflix special, we didn't see each other that much. As hard as it was, we made it work. When he came back, things had changed. I couldn't put my finger on it, but Zac was different. He was short with people, he never seemed to smile, and he wasn't as willing to keep a conversation going.

The press hasn't helped either. Ever since people found out about Zac's rehab and accident, they've been trying to get a picture of us or the latest scoop on our relationship. Over time, it's put some strain on us.

I was at home, folding laundry when something on the tv caught my attention.

"Is there trouble in paradise? Could Hollywood's Favorite Couple be headed for trouble? After the break, we'll talk about the Efron Affair."

I rolled my eyes, angrily scoffing as I turned off the tv. I tossed the remote onto the bed and grabbed my purse. I headed to the store, my anger still radiating as I went through the aisles.

Everywhere I went, people were whispering. I saw a few magazine covers that hinted at the alleged affair. From what I could tell, rumors are going around that Zac cheated on me with his costar.

I ignored the looks as I checked out and headed back to our apartment. As soon as I parked outside our townhouse, my car was surrounded. My breath got stuck in my throat as I saw the cameras and the people. I carefully opened my door, not bothering to grab the groceries. I tried to walk inside, but I kept getting stopped.

"Y/N, is it true about the affair?"

"Y/N, are you still with Zac?"

"Why haven't you broken up with him?"

"Do you hate him?"

The more questions that were shouted at me, the more lightheaded I got. I was about to walk away when a reporter grabbed my hand.

"Zac cheated on you," he said, getting in my face. "What are you going to do about it?"

"He didn't cheat on me," I shot back. "It's just a stupid rumor you morons spread because you don't have anything better to do with your lives."

I ripped my hand out of his and stormed back into our place. I closed the door behind me, instantly locking it. I leaned my back against it, a sob getting stuck in my throat.

I struggled to calm myself down, only able to when I heard the news vans pulling away. I kicked off the door right as my phone started ringing. My breath got caught in my throat when I saw it was Zac calling.

"Hey," I answered.

"Hey, babe," he said, sounding strange.

"You okay?" I asked.

"I have to warn you," he sighed.

"About?"

"There's this stupid rumor going around about me cheating on you, but I swear it's not true. I would never cheat on you, baby. The woman in charge of the press for my new movie thought it would be a smart idea to start a dumbass rumor. I'm so sorry, darling."

"It's okay," I said, sitting down on the couch. "I umm. . . I ran into a couple of rumor spreaders after I got home from the store today."

"What?" He asked through his teeth.

"Yeah," I cleared my throat. "They cornered me at the car and wouldn't let me in the house. They kept yelling at me, asking what I was going to do about the affair."

"Oh baby," he sighed. "I'm so sorry. I hate that people never care about what happens to the non-famous partner in the relationship."

"Yeah," I scoffed. "How unfortunate."

"Y/N, I didn't mean. . ." he stuttered.

"It's fine," I cut him off. "Look, I gotta go. I left the groceries in the car when I got ambushed. I should really get them now that those leeches are gone."

"Y/N, are you sure you're okay? I know the rumor is. . ."

"Zac," I said harshly, cutting him off again. My voice broke as I finally said what I've been thinking for a while now. "This is getting to be too much."

"Wait," Zac cut me off, "Y/N, what do you mean? What's getting too much?"

I held my breath, tears returning to my eyes. I bit my lip, knowing that if I say this, it most definitely will change things.

"All of this," I finally confessed. "I'm getting tired of the distance, the rumors, the press. It's getting too much for me, Zac."

"Y/N, wait. . ."

"I'm sorry," I quickly hung up before he could say anything else.

                                * * * * *

After I hung up with Zac, I quickly walked up to our room and started packing a bag. I called my married friend and told her everything. She didn't hesitate to offer their spare bedroom for me to rethink my relationship in.

I grabbed my bag and my phone and headed out the door. The second I opened the door, my heart dropped into my throat when I saw an out-of-breath Zac on our doorstep. He glanced down at the bag in my hand, the look on his face sinking as he looked back up at me.

"Baby, don't go."

"I can't do this," I stuttered. I held my breath as Zac slowly walked up the steps until he got right in front of me.

"Y/N," he whispered as he looked down at me. "Please, let's talk about this."

"There's nothing to talk about," I said, my voice barely audible. "This is getting to be too much. I mean. . ."

As if on a perfectly horrible queue, a van full of paparazzi pulled up. I heard Zac swear under his breath as he quickly grabbed my hand and pulled me back into the house. I let go of his hand and walked over to the couch—not sitting down—as Zac closed the door, instantly locking it, and closed the curtains.

I quickly looked away from him as he turned around. He took a step towards me, but I took a step back.

"Y/N," he said, his voice getting caught in his throat.

"I know we talked about all of these possibilities when we first started dating, but things have changed so much," I started before he could get another word out. "And I don't think I can handle it anymore, Zac. I mean, rumors are constantly being spread about us. I can't go to the store without being bombarded by people asking way too revealing questions about us. Plus, I feel like we barely see each other anymore. And I can't do that. I can't have a relationship where I get your answering machine more than I get you. It's frustrating and painful and exhausting. And I can't do it anymore, Zac. I just can't."

By the time I finished, tears were streaming down my face. As soon as I finished, a sob got caught in my throat. Without hesitation, Zac took one swift step towards me and wrapped me tightly in his arms.

I continued to sob into his chest as he tightened his arms around me and leaned his head on mine. I started to slowly calm down when I felt him start scratching my back.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, finally breaking the silence. "But if it's any consolation, I don't think I can do this anymore either."

"You can't?" I asked under my breath as I slowly pulled out of his embrace.

He sighed, smiling sweetly at me as he grabbed my hand, instantly intertwining our fingers. I chewed on the inside of my cheek as he led me over to our couch; the same couch we've spent countless hours at night staying up late to talk about random things, amongst doing other things.

"The distance is rough," he laughed dryly, "I'm not going to sugar coat it. I don't sleep much when I'm out of town because I can't sleep without you next to me. Half the time when the director yells cut, I find myself searching the room for you. And whenever I can't find you, part of me. . . I miss you, Y/N. Every day, baby."

Silence fell between the two of us as we stared into each other's eyes. I held my breath as Zac reached up and cupped my cheek in his hand, catching a tear with his thumb. After lingering for a few beats, his hand finally dropped back into his lap.

"So, what do we do?" I asked under my breath.

"I don't want to give up on us," he said instantly. "I know it's going to take a lot of work to go back to how we were, but I'm willing to do it."

"Zac," I said, my voice breaking.

"I will do anything to keep you in my life, Y/N," he continued. "I love you, darling, and I can't imagine my life without you. Please tell me you think we can work this out. Because if you don't. . . I'll fix it. I will fix everything, baby. Whatever it takes to keep you in my life."

I chewed on my bottom lip, struggling to find my voice. It felt like a million thoughts went through my head as I studied the face of the man I'm in love with. It was instantly clear that I never stopped.

"I don't want to break up," I finally said. My cheeks burned when I saw the relief in his eyes. While keeping my hand in his, he reached over with his free hand and grabbed my other hand.

"That makes me so incredibly happy, darling."

"But I can't keep going on like this," I continued. "I'm willing to work through things but I can't be the only one. I understand that your job takes you away at times and it feels wrong to ask you to stop filming but. . ."

"I could meet you halfway," he said quickly. "Or more than halfway if that shows you just how much I love you. I would give up anything and everything to keep you in my life, Y/N. Please, let me show you just how hard I'll fight for us. You won't have to do anything."

"It doesn't just have to be you," I said, a small smile on my face.

"Yes, it does," he instantly corrected me. "I'm the one who's been getting on an airplane at 3 in the morning. I'm the one whose career causes tension. I'm the reason you're followed by the paparazzi. I'm the reason for everything."

I cut him off by leaning over and pressing my lips to his. I let out a small moan as Zac instantly deepened the kiss. The longer we kissed, the faster it got. I giggled, slightly breaking the kiss when Zac grabbed my thighs and brought me over to his lap.

I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair. We moaned as he started massaging my ass. I tilted my head back, squeezing my eyes closed tighter as Zac broke the kiss and started kissing my neck.

"Zac," I moaned, making him pull his lips away from my neck.

"I will do anything to get you to stay, baby," he said between his heavy breaths. "Please, don't leave me."

I reached up, gently grabbing his face in both of my hands. "I'm not going anywhere," I whispered.

"I love you so much, darling."

"I love you too."

[poguesrforlife]

Young and Beautiful | Rudy Pankow - Part 2

You guys are literally the best! Thank you so much for all the amazing feedback for this little weird imagination in my head :’) BTW I have no clue how the movie business works or if this is even close to accurate but just bare with my fantasies here okay :D xoxo

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Trigger warning: It gets a bit very smutty people, be prepared, angsty ???idk

Word count: 3295 (so I went totally over the top with this once again)

Y/N just got the role of her lifetime, starring beside the cast of Outer Banks in the second season as JJ’s love interest. It’s a dream come true and gets even dreamier when she meets Rudy Pankow her alleged love interest. Lines start to blur between reality and film and Y/N is left wondering if taking a leap of faith is worth risking her career.

A couple minutes later you found yourself in your trailer alone. Images and thoughts were flashing in your head, all of them revolving around that kiss. That kiss that didn’t feel like a normal kiss, or any kiss you ever had before. That kiss had been pure magic. There was no other way to describe it. Alone the thought of it send your heart into overdrive and quickened your breath. 

And that wasn’t even the worst part, in a couple of hours you were expected back on set after a scene change and doing that kiss with Rudy over and over only half naked. 

You had to calm yourself down right this second. Your possible feelings for him couldn’t get in the way of your big break. There was so much more on the line.

A soft knock on your trailer door pulled you out of your thoughts and after opening the door you were faced with a grinning Madelyne and Madison who immediately snuck into your four walls for now.

“What was that?” Maddie C squealed as she sat down on the couch and pulled you down with her. 

“What do you mean?” You feigned innocence and looked at them quizzically. 

“Hun, you’re a great actress but not that of a good actress and neither is Rudy,” Bailey stated and raised a brow at you.

“Like, Chase and I had our moments on set and even JD and Bailey but we never got so into it that we ignored the ending of the scene,” Maddie pointed out, big smile on her face.

“Guys,” You groaned, just thinking about the embarrassing moment from before. “I don’t even know what happened out there,” You admitted quietly hands over your face as you leaned back.

The girls shared a worried gaze between them as they looked back at you.

“Are you okay though?” Maddie asked and patted your thigh lovingly. 

You were so grateful for these two in that moment. You wished you could just bawl in their arms and let all your frustration out but bigger matters were at hand.

“Yes, I’m fine… well I don’t really have a choice,” You mused and gave them a reassuring smile. 

Bailey looked at you with a sympathetic smile and closed her arms around you. 

“No matter what else might’ve happened out there, you were great. Really really great,” She praised you and you couldn’t help but laugh at her sweet words.

“Thanks for supporting my kissing skills, I guess.” The girls chimed in with laughter at that and you stayed cuddled on the couch until it was time to get back on set.

“You’re going to rock this,” Maddie assured you when she saw your faltering confidence the closer you got to that scene, “and then we can talk about it properly after you had some time to think.”

You squeezed both of the girls’ hands as they led you back to the cameras and the action. You were grateful for their support but the only person you wanted to talk to right now was Rudy. Maybe you shouldn’t have split immediately after the scene and actually talked to him so it wouldn’t be awkward now. But you were an actress after all, you could pretend to not care as much for just a bit longer. 

As he came into view with his soft blond waves, where hours before your hands had been entangled in, your heart stopped for a second. 

But he didn’t seem to be too bothered as he joked around with the guys and laughed carelessly. Had you been the only one affected by the kiss? Was he just a better actor than you had thought?  The thought stung but you knew it would only be for the better. You could be just as nonchalant as him. 

“What’re we laughing about?” You chimed in and smiled at the guys. You cringed a bit at your overly joyous voice but couldn’t take it back even if you wanted to as all eyes were fixed on you.

“Rudy just told us how terrible his first kiss was,” Chase explained and smirked at his co-star. 

So they had definitely talked about your kiss otherwise they wouldn’t be on the topic, would they? You tried your hardest to look unbothered by it, hoping your face wasn’t turning crimson again.

“Well, I sure hope that I wasn’t your first kiss then,” You joked, “For your sake and for mine.” You bit your bottom lip as your eyes traveled over his face. 

He regarded you with an amused little smile playing on his lips as he took you in. 

“What? Y/N, as if. Yours would win all the most passionate kiss awards in the country,” JD babbled which earned him a stern look from Rudy and an eye-roll from you.

“At Rudy’s first kiss he actually accidentally spit a piece of gum-“ Chase started giggly but got interrupted by Rudy pushing a hand over his mouth and pushing him out of your ear-shot.

“Would you shut up!” He warned him under his breath and you had to suppress a giggle at his antics.

You could imagine all too well what might have happened with the piece of gum and the poor girl. 

For now though, you were just happy that all seemed to be calm and collected between the two of you. 

Sooner than you would’ve liked however you were back in business and a dozen people were around you, giving you instructions, doing your make-up, positioning you right and and and…

You loved your job, you really did, but right now you just wanted some piece and quiet. 

You were led together into the bedroom of JJ in the Chateau for the scene. It was supposed to be a bit more intimate and shown sex scene than what Chase and Madelyne had done in the first season. You couldn’t help but feel a bit uncomfortable but this wasn’t the first time that you did something like this and you were sure no one would ever get used to that kind of film-making. 

The directors sent everyone out of the room they did not especially need to make it as comfortable for the both of you as possible which you thought was infinitely thoughtful. 

“You guys have the scene in your hands okay?” Jonas assured you as he went over it with the both of you. “You do only what you’re comfortable with and stop whenever you want.”

“Thanks,” Rudy nodded at his kindness and dropped an arm around your waist. “You’ll tell me how far you want to go okay?” 

“We’ll work it out as we go?” You suggested and he pulled you closer to him with a sweet smile. His lips met your forehead in a soft kiss and your eyes fluttered shut for a second at the gentle contact. 

“You’ll be great, I’m sure about that,” Valerie gave you a thumbs up and then cameras were rolling. 

Rudy’s arm was still around your waist as he led you to the beginning of the scene. 

“Promise me, you’ll be honest with me when it’s too much” He whispered, lips grazing the shell of your ear barely and a shiver went down your spine. 

You turned your head slowly, eyes locking with his and the incredible saturating blue colour. You didn’t realise how close he was until then. Just a step forward and you would be kissing him. 

“Promise,” you gave him your word and watched as relief washed over his face. A simple gesture as him making sure you were comfortable was worth more than any gifts and roses he could have gotten you. Your heart swelled as you looked at him, so grateful that everything in the world aligned for him to meet you in that way. The word ‘destiny’ was dancing around in your mind. 

“Action!” You heard someone call and then reality was hidden for the next moments and you were back playing a part. 

His lips found yours immediately, just as passionate as before if not even more, and your hands grabbed at him, anything to get him closer to you. 

One of his hands pushed the door to the bedroom open as the other sneaked around your waist and you stumbled into the room, lips never leaving another. 

“Jump,” Rudy or rather JJ instructed you and you locked your legs around his hips as he grabbed your thighs. Goose-bumps erected on your skin as you felt his touch on the back of your bare legs. 

The both of you were already breathing hard, as you couldn’t keep away from each other long enough to catch your breath. It was like your bodies were melting into each other, always closer.

At last his lips left yours and you almost whimpered at the loss of contact but he found a new home on your jaw and neck as he pressed you against the walls of the wooden cabin. Your hand locked around his neck, pulling at the blond waves at the base of it when he met a particular sensitive spot.

“You good?” He asked and you weren’t sure if it was Rudy or JJ asking you. The lines were blurred once again in your mind, but God yes you were more than okay.

“Yes, JJ, yes,” Your voice was slightly hoarse and you thought you heard him moan as he pulled you tighter to him and lifted you off the wall to bring you towards the bed in the middle of the room.

Gently he let you down and hovered over you for a second, admiring your flushed cheeks and red swollen lips. He pecked your lips sweetly over and over and you pulled him in-between your legs, wanting him as close to you as possible. Your breath hitched when he discarded his shirt and you were met with the bare skin of his torso. Your eyes admired every valley and hill of his muscles and soon your hands followed, carefully touching the soft and strong grooves of his abdomen.

A sharp breath escaped him as your cold fingers met his stomach and he leaned back down, reattaching his lips to yours. His right hand found its way to your waist where your shirt had ridden up slightly and you gasped at the contact. His hand wandered to the small of your back, pushing slightly, a signal for you to sit up.

You pushed into him further, your chest pressed to his and he was fingering the hem of your shirt.

“May I?” He inquired kindly and stopped his actions to take a moment to look at you. His brows were drown together as his gaze met yours and you instinctively reached out your fingers to caress the worry of his face. You nodded willingly before you pulled him back into a short kiss and then he stripped off your shirt.

Your head hit the pillows once again and you felt his wet lips on your stomach seconds after. You were only in your bikini top and a pair of shorts now and you tried hard to blend the other people in the room out. Rudy was making a fantastic job of distracting you on that part. 

You felt your heartbeat quicken, felt your breath going faster and you knew that this wasn’t anything you could tell your body to do. This was a genuine reaction to this wonderful boy on top of you.

Your whole body felt like it was on fire and drowning in ice-cold water like-wise. You couldn’t remember the last time somebody made you feel like that. The thought that this wasn’t actually real was pressed to the very corners of your mind as you stared into Rudy eyes, his shirtless form hovering above you. God, he was gorgeous. When he looked at you like that and touched your bare skin with his slightly calloused warm hands, it was too easy to forget all the cameras and people around you. But all this was just in your head and you were playing your part just as he did. How you wished in that moment it would be true.

He leaned down further, one hand on your waist drawing lazy circles there and the other one holding him up to not crush you. His lips wandered from your cleavage up your throat to the sweet spot under your ear. Your legs locked around his hips and pulled him closer, his groin meeting the spot between your thighs and you gasped at the sudden sensation, pulling his hair where your hands were entangled.

“Can I take your top off?” He whispered only for you to hear and goosebumps were flashing on your skin at the soft vibrato of his voice. 

“Yeah,” You breathed out and arched your back to give him access to the knot between your shoulder blades. 

His hand was resting there for a couple seconds without moving and you grew concerned and pulled back to look at his face.

“Are you sure you wanna do this?” He was genuinely trying to make sure you were comfortable with the scene and your exposed body. Nobody in the world could’ve made you feel more secure in this decision than him. 

“I would do everything with you,” You whispered just loud enough for the microphones to pick up. You weren’t talking to JJ in that second, you were talking to Rudy. The flashing spark in his eyes and the easy smile returning to his lips told you he knew that as well.

He pulled you up against him and sat up with you straddling him, so your back was turned to the cameras. You gasped surprised at the sudden change of position but it didn’t escape you that he moved you like that so your bare breasts wouldn’t be seen by anybody but him.

“Thank you,” You let out under your breath just for him to hear. You looked at him with so much adoration in that moment and couldn’t help but let your heart fall for him just a bit more.

His eyes moved over your face, just like one of his hands, as if he tried to memorise every plain and freckle on it. You leaned back down to connect your lips and felt an enticing shiver down your spine as his calloused hand opened the knot between your shoulder blades and moved up your spinal column to your neck to remove the top from your upper body. 

You welcomed the sudden cold on your bare skin, everything was too hot in that second. But as soon as Rudy pressed his own chest to yours, creating friction on your nipples, it felt like lava was flowing through your veins. 

“God, you’re so beautiful,” He said between kisses and one of his hands wandered to your ribcage just below the soft skin of your breast, slowly caressing the skin there.

Your emotions were running high and so was your heart at his touch and his words. With your eyes closed you could pretend that he belonged just to you and nobody else was in the room. Just him and you. 

You started grinding on his hips involuntarily your body taking matters into its own hand and not listening to your mind anymore. You gasped when Rudy took one of your breasts into his way bigger hand.

“I need you closer,” He groaned and pressed his hands to the small of your back and your neck before he lay you down again, his chest pressed to yours so close, not allowing anyone to take a look at you.

His hand wandered down to your shorts and he looked down at you questioningly before you nodded and he removed another article of clothing. He removed his own shorts quickly afterwards leaving both of you only in your underwear. 

Before it could go any further however he grabbed a blanket lying around on the bed and covered both of you from the waist down and then pretended to pull your last clothes off as well.

“I’m gonna fuck you now, ok?” He groaned in your ear and you could feel his wicked smile pressed to your skin as he told you so. 

Holding your eyes locked to his he gave you one last sweet kiss and waited for your consent, which you gave, before he pretended to enter you.

You fake gasped as his hips bucked against yours and your fingers dig into his back as you held him close, chest to chest.

Even though this was all just pretend you couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to actually share this intimacy with Rudy. What he would feel like inside of you. What he would to you and with you when no one else was around. The thought alone made you wet and your nipples harden. 

His head rested in the crook of your neck as he moved against you and breathed hard, occasionally leaving wet sloppy kisses on your too hot skin.

“Fuck, JJ!” You fake moaned and locked your feet around his tight ass as you pulled him closer.

Rudy picked up in pace, you could feel his member even through the hard protective underwear he had to wear for scenes like that. And it drove you absolutely crazy. He through his head back, breaths coming in gasps as his hips grinded into yours.

You wanted him so bad that you felt your insides twisting and knees buckle. Your mind was filled to the brim with thoughts of him: his bright blue eyes and how they crinkled at the corners when he laughed, his brilliant smile with his adorable too sharp teeth, his sinful lips that drove you crazy, his strong body the shone in the late afternoon sun like a god’s. It was only him, him, him. 

“Cut!” You heard Jonas scream and the magic disappeared like somebody had hit you with a baseball bat right in the stomach. You could’ve killed him right there and then. 

Rudy hovered above you unmoving, still shielding you from the views of everybody else in the room and grabbed a shirt, JJ’s shirt, for you to cover up.

“Are you okay?” He asked once again as soon as the shirt was over your head. 

“Yeah,” You smiled at him thankfully, “Are you okay?”

“I am,” He laughed at your sweet question and pecked your forehead before pulling away from you so the both of you sat up in the bed. 

Your pulse was still a bit too fast as you faced the team surrounding you.

“Okay, that was wonderful. You two did great. Are you both comfortable?” Jonas asked and you nodded immediately. You were a bit too comfortable actually.

“I think, we’re gonna shoot this scene a couple more times, just to get some different angles and then just JJ and Y/C/N sleeping afterwards and you’re done for today,” Valerie mused and looked between the both of you and to Jonas. You all agreed and then the ordeal started all over again.

It didn’t get any easier to entangle your thoughts of JJ from your thoughts of Rudy however, no matter how often you did the scene. 

You were always just as enchanted by him as the first time. His skin on yours, his eyes, his lips, all this sent you right into an abyss of feelings and emotions where no return would be possible. 

You had always been good at differentiating between reality and fiction but right now you weren’t so sure if there was anything to keep apart. Because the way Rudy looked at you in-between scenes and during filming… it was the exact same passion and kindness in his eyes.

Tags: @lovelymaybankk​ @sspidermanss​ @1d5sosddl​ @arthiriticcricket​ @teamnick​ @lieswithoutfairytales

[bagog]

What On Earth Has Happened

Hey, no story here, no experiments. Just a play by play of an awful year in my life. Please don't reblog. Trying to just get it down in one place for people who care about me. Long, sob-story beneath the cut.

Air - 'Things are looking up!' I had started to drift a bit from tumblr. The porno purge came and a lot of my friends trickled off the platform after that. I went back to school, attempting to score myself a Masters degree in something that would pay enough to get me out of Student Debt. I was doing great, picking things up fast. I got a new job at a company doing pretty menial work, but the people I worked with were great conversationalists. The work didn't involve dealing with customers at all, paid well, and was small and accomplishable tasks. Essentially I was being prepped to take a better position at the place once I had my Masters. Covid happened, then. Earth - 'The Whole World Sucks Right Now' My company was "essential," so I continued going to work, now on weird schedules. The company I worked for was profiting off Covid, all the while making fun of it as an overblown conspiracy, even as their own epidemiologist urged them to take better precautions. Work became hard to swallow. Water - 'When your lowest place could be lower' The apartment I shared with my boyfriend flooded. The lowest place in any sewage system is typically the bathtub, such that if it backs up, it does so into that tub. Our lowest point is the toilet. So the apartment flooded. Three times. Roots growing through the sewage outflow meant that, often, you needed to wait a solid hour between toilet flushes, or else the toilet would back up with such gusto the sewage would slosh down the hallway and into the living room. We mopped many times. The problem was finally fixed 8 months later, necessitating our having to camp because our house had no water. Fire - 'To destroy all you've done' One afternoon, I smelled burning. Going to our bedroom, I found our shelf a column of flame. I could barely breathe for all the smoke, but I managed to grab a blanket and beat the fire out. On the other side of the room, the pages of the books upon another shelf had begun to crisp from the heat, the blinds on all the windows were warped. The whole apartment had been about to go up. I'm kinda scared of fire now. Heart - 'When moving is too much to ask' Personal health sorta hit a new low. Migraines kept me out of work for two full weeks. I have seasonal foot pain, I always assumed from hiking for a living in my 20s. Turns out it was gout, all the while. Gout is exceptionally painful: it's like a messy pile of razor blades in the ball of your foot every time you step down. At work, I could barely stand. Walking from my car to the door became something I needed to psyche myself up for. Not a lot can stop a gout flare-up once it's in full swing, so I just had to wait it out. For a month. Two. Some of the worst sustained pain I've been in. Little did I know that, in January, come the kidney stones. Kidney stones feel awful. Feel like total shit. Gout and kidney stones are comorbid--brought about as a result of the meds I take to help me focus. So any day I don't drink enough water is a day when my kidneys or my foot just starts aching. But going back to September of 2020... Homophobia - 'goddammit' Finally things are looking better. I'm limping quickly again. Then I am called into the HR office. I am told that two sexual harassment charges have been brought against me. I'm told that one individual has alleged that I, while in the restroom, used a reflective toilet brush to attempt to peep him under a stall wall. I did not do this. I do not understand--reflective toilet brush?? wtf. The second allegation: I just straight up looked over a stall at a guy. I didn't do this either. I'm asked to defend myself, I ask who or date or time of day. I am given nothing. I remark that I don't think I'm tall enough to see over the stall, and I do not understand about the toilet brush. Of the ten minutes of the meeting, I spend 8 of them trying to get my head around how a claim about a reflective toilet brush has me here. "Would you like us to go now to see if you're tall enough to see over the stall? If that would help your defense?" says the HR head. "Yes, I

would," says I. We did not go. I am told that the accusers have no reason to be collaborating, or to even know each other made a claim. This is bullshit, because it was a company of 80 people, and only a quarter of those employees used the restroom where my alleged harassment was to have taken place. Before I am dismissed from work for the day to go home and wait to find out if I'll be fired or not, I march into the HR office once more and say "I hope none of this is happening because I'm gay." The HR head looks positively offended. I got fired cuz I'm gay. Next day I got a call. They'd come to the "objective truth" (that phrase is burned in my mind), and were terminating me. Apparently they discounted the toilet brush rumor, after all. But they really honestly believed I looked over the stall at a dude. Nightmare - 'No Fear One Fear' Let me tell you something: this is a nightmare. This is my honest-to-god nightmare. I've been terrified of getting accused of something in a bathroom since I was 11 years old. I am incredibly self-conscious and careful in public restrooms. To be fired? From a place full of people I like? And all of them will think I'm a pervert. My boyfriend worked at the same place. He would now have to work there every day dealing with people looking at him and wondering what he must think of his boyfriend. That sent me on a spiral. I'm still out of work, almost a year later. It would have been the worst mental health crisis of my life if it wasn't for my boyfriend, my support network, and the meds I've finally been able to get ahold of. Oh, also. My two accusers? Were roommates. HR knew they were roommates. They basically collaborated on a story to get me fired. The story circulating around the place (I still have acquaintances I talk to working there) has dropped the reflective toilet brush entirely. I guess they thought it was too unbelievable. So anyway, the people who accused me are now telling a different set of events than what I was told. Absolute horse shit. Tried to go to my city's human right's council to see if my situation warranted further attention. I gave my side of the story--including tales of the straight manager who had had enough harassment charges brought against him that he was no longer allowed to meet female staff--which indicated I'd been treated differently and wrongly. My old job made an impassioned argument that the committee violated their First Amendment rights(?) ('Freedom of speech' is the biggie with the First Amendment, for people who cba re:USA). I won the vote!! But one member of the committee was missing. So there weren't enough people for the vote to pass. Dismissed. We took it to the EEOC to make an official federal complaint. Just a week ago, an agent of the US Government patiently explained to us that these laws are literally designed to fuck over the worker and protect the employer unless they are epically stupid, and unfortunately, mine had not been epically stupid. So there's nowhere to go, no recourse to be had. It's over, I guess. Family - 'How to sum it up quickly...' My family hit me with the old soft-disown. No more calls, no more communication. They think they are loving me by not having contact with me. By depriving me of my family, they hope it will make me realize that the path I'm on is destructive, and I'll return to them living an upright life. No. I'm living an upright life, now. And if my family can choose to throw me away, then they are not a family I choose. Then my dad hit me back two months later, absolutely gaslighting me and pretending we never had the disown conversation at all. Reality - 'I don't know who I am anymore' I have trouble knowing what's real, anymore. Every message my dad sends on the surface seems loving and supportive and plaintive. I feel I must be the one in the wrong. I got fired for bullshit reasons. It doesn't feel real. "My family can't possibly have ceased contact with me: that's one of those things I know can never happen!!" But that did happen. So what else that feels real, actually isn't? I do

mean to be so dramatic, and I won't apologize for it. But I truly do feel like my mind has been pretty thoroughly unseated by the last year. Whoever I am, I'm becoming someone different. More distilled, at very least. I've discovered a lot of things about myself: trauma that has likely led to a lot of my mental health problems. Discovered I actually have RAGING ADHD, and it has robber me of a lot of things I wanted to do, and now is sort of consuming me completely. I'm looking for help. Trying to get better. Here's hoping. Every bold point above could be its own book, for all my thoughts about them. But enough of that for now. Love you. Thanks for reading.

[storiesforallfandoms]

bad reputation ~ g eazy

word count: 1765

request?: yes!

“Diferent Geazy fan. Can I request an imagine like from enemies to lovers where reader is a bit taken aback because of gerald reputation? But in anin cliche way”

description: in which she hears he’s a bad boy and forms an opinion before meeting him, but is taken back when she finds the rumors are untrue

pairing: g eazy x female!reader

warnings: swearing

masterlist

Although I knew it was wrong, I had formed an opinion on Gerald before we had even met.

I saw his name through tabloid magazines and websites in scandalous headlines more than I could count. Countless tales of him being a partyaholic who loved to drink, smoke weed, and fuck anything that walked, numerous cheating allegations that Ashley had even confirmed to me when I met her on the red carpet, and overall just nothing good to be sad about Gerald ever.

He wasn’t the type of person I wanted to surround myself with, which was why I tried my hardest to stay away from him. That is, until my record label decided they wanted me to do a collab with him on my next album.

“There’s so many rapper I could collaborate with, why him?” I asked my manager over the phone as I drove to the studio.

“That’s just who the label wants. He’s one of the biggest modern rappers right now, they think it’ll be a huge hit for you.”

“He’s an asshole!”

“You’ve never met him, (Y/N).”

“I don’t need to meet him to know he’s an asshole. I’ve never seen one good article written about him.”

“You of all people should know that tabloid media is not the best thing to go off of in regards to someone’s character.”

I threw my head back and groaned, earning me a strange look from the cab driver taking me to the studio.

“Fine, I’ll try to work with him, but warn the studio that if he is as much of an asshole as he seems to be that I’m not doing it. I don’t care how big of a hit it would be, I’m not working with a certified dickwad.”

My manager chuckled. “Alright, I will. Good luck, hun.”

I rolled my eyes and hung up. I rested my head against the window, dreading the moment I would pull up to the studio.

That moment came quicker than I would have liked and, before I knew it, I was paying my cab driver and looking at the entrance to the studio. I would’ve done anything to turn around and go home, or at least to go to a different studio and record on my own. But I knew the label wanted this, and I couldn’t go against the label. Not without any concrete evidence that I actually couldn’t work with Gerald.

So, I had no choice but to suck it up and walk into the studio. I felt my dread growing as I neared the studio I knew we were working in, and the moment I walked in I was hit with an overwhelming stench of weed smoke.

Gerald was sat on the couch, a pad of paper balanced on his lap as he held a pen in one hand and a joint in the other. He took a hit from the joint and exhaled the smoke into the room. I wasn’t someone who was against weed, far from it actually, I found it helped with my writing process. But something about watching Gerald take puffs from his joint and exhale them into the windowless room just made my blood boil.

“Could you put that out?” I asked him. “It’s making the room feel claustrophobic.”

He looked up suddenly before smiling. “Oh hey! Sorry, didn’t hear you come in.’ He rose from the couch and extended a hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

I glanced at the joint in his other hand before reluctantly shaking his outstretched one. “It’s nice to meet you, too. Could you put that out?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, I find having a joint helps with my creative juices.”

He stubbed the blunt out in a nearby ashtray, one I assumed he had brought with him or taken from somewhere. The studio didn’t allow smoking under any circumstances. I wondered if we’d get in trouble for that.

I sat on the other side of the room as far away from Gerald as possible. I folded myself in the usual manor that I did when writing and rested my notebook against my legs.

Across the room, I heard Gerald chuckle. I glared at him over my notebook. “What?”

“That doesn’t look comfortable,” he noted, nodding to how I was sitting.

“It’s how I write,” I snapped. “It’s comfortable to me.”

“Okay, okay!” he said, putting his hands up. “Sorry, just making a note. I figured the couch here with be more comfortable.”

“I’ll just sit about the same way,” I told him. “I like it over here.”

Gerald rested his head against his hand, looking at me. “You don’t like me.”

“What gave you that idea?”

He chuckled at my response. “I’m just wondering what I did to offend you so bad. We’ve only just met.”

I sighed and placed my pen and paper aside. It was obvious that I wasn’t about to do any actual writing any time soon. “You are a bonafide bad boy, and I don’t like bad boys. Especially not the ones that are so stereotypically bad that it’s almost comical.”

A small smirk tugged on Gerald’s lips. “Who told you I was a bad boy?”

“Believe it or not, you’re very well written about. I’ve seen basically every story - ”

“Every tabloid story?” he cut me off. “I feel like, if anyone should know how bullshit those are, it should be you. I’m sure you’ve had a good few written about you.”

“Of course I have,” I said with a shrug. “But there’s a difference between tabloids writing and people confirming. I mean, two of your past girlfriends have admitted you cheated on them, there’s numerous videos of you out partying till the brink of dawn basically every night, and when I walked in you were smoking a joint in a studio that very clearly has a sign stating no smoking.”

He looked amused by my answer, and that pissed me off a little. “Okay then, tell me all those stories are wrong.”

“They’re not wrong, but they don’t automatically made me an asshole.”

I raised an eye at him, silently encouraging him to go on. Gerald sighed and placed his notebook aside as well, sitting forward and looking at me.

“I did cheat on Lana and Ash, I’ll admit that. Fuck, I’ve admitted it so many times I can say the words in my sleep. It was a mistake, both times were mistakes. I was in unhappy relationships and didn’t know how to get out, so I just moved on to the next girl. The girl I was with after Ash, when things started going downhill I left her. End of story, that was it. I’m not proud of what I did, and I’ll never be able to make it up to Lana or Ash for what I did, and I don’t deserve that, but it’s in the past and I’m working to fix that.”

I felt myself soften with every word he said. I was shocked at how mature he sounded. Part of me thought he would just deny the cheating allegations despite them being confirmed by Lana and Ashley themselves. To hear him own up to them, and to say he was trying his best to not be that person anymore, shocked me. I wasn’t sure what to say.

Gerald used my speechlessness to keep talking. “And yeah, of course I like to party. I’m fucking 31! I’ve been doing this shit since I was in my twenties, sometimes I need an escape from the bullshit of being famous, and drinking, smoking, and partying does just that. And, to ease your worried mind, I asked the woman at the desk if it was okay to smoke a little before we started recording. She said it was fine, we won’t get in trouble.”

I sighed as he finished talking. I ran my hand through my hair and slumped back in my chair. “I’m a total dick.”

Gerald smiled and chuckled a little. “I wouldn’t say total. Only partial.”

I smiled back at him, my first genuine smile. When I did, I watched his face brighten even more.

“I’m sorry I judged you before I even really got to meet you,” I told him. “That was beyond stupid of me, I shouldn’t have just assumed you’d be a bad boy because of your image.”

“At least you’re admitting it,” he joked. “I’m fine to move past that. It’s over now, we’ve gotten it all out there.”

I agreed and, being the dorks we were, Gerald and I decided to shake on it.

The writing process went very smoothly after that. We ended up writing two songs as both of us kept coming up with so many lines that we realized they couldn’t possibly fit in the one song. By the time our studio time was up, we had figured out the two songs and the partial beats for both.

Gerald offered to drive me back to my place, which I graciously accepted. The car ride was silent, but it was a comfortable silence. I didn’t feel as tense or angry as I had on my way to the studio. I was glad Gerald and I managed to get along, and I was grateful for the new music partner I had made in the short time we were together.

“This is me,” I said as we pulled up in front of my house. “We’ll have to scheduled another studio day sometime soon. The label is gonna want these songs as soon as possible.”

“Maybe we could figure out a time and a date over dinner tomorrow night?” Gerald suggested.

I looked at him, confused, for a moment, like the naive fool I was. “If we’re both free for dinner, why don’t we just go to the studio then?”

Gerald laughed and rolled his eyes. “I’m trying to ask you out on a date, dummy.”

My mouth opened in mock offense. “Rude! I don’t think I’ll accept your dinner offer now!”

“Fine by me, we have to meet up in the studio anyways. I’ll just ask again.”

He smiled and I felt my heart racing seeing the way he looked at me. I smiled back at him before opening the door to his car. Before closing it, I leaned down to look at him one last time before saying, “Pick me up at 6:00 sharp, if you’re even a minute later I’ll lock my doors and go to bed.”

He laughed and nodded. “It’s a date then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, G.”

[bottleofspilledink]

God’s Watching, Put on a Show || Chapter XV

Now, normally a love confession would be followed by an answer. It was only rational. Declare your love and wait for a response. Either get a relationship or get rejected.

Lilith was not, however, what society by and large would actually deem ‘normal’ and neither was this confession. The word ‘love’ was not mentioned once, leaving her to wonder if Eve actually did understand her…

As the days passed, what was unspoken but clearly there blossomed, from a pinky-sized seed into a lush bouquet that filled their chest with an indescribable yearning and their conversations with heavy pauses, gazes overflowing with a tenderness that far surpassed what was appropriate between fond friends.

Soon, though, the rubber band holding the bouquet together would snap.

Soon, Lilith would come to know that Eve understood her quite well.

From the tension that sat in the five inches of space between their two chairs, something akin to electricity buzzing there, to the way Eve would eagerly ramble about the (not forbidden, she was still too shy to talk about what exactly was in the book Lilith snuck into her bag) books she’d read during lunch, to the patience Lilith would show as they ran through equations in study hall.

What was unspoken was slowly growing whether Lilith or Eve wanted it too. Like an unkillable weed that always grew back, no matter how many times you’ve pulled it out of the ground, no matter the chemical you chose to douse it with. But far more beautiful… That is, if the gardener would allow it to grow.

And everyone who was willing to see it would know it was there, what was there, even if the people feeling it were too scared to give it a name, even if the people seeing were too scared to admit it existed.

...

It was Thursday night on the same week as the incident, Lilith and Joan sat drinking cola in the shack, crickets and cicadas chirping in chorus outside, no one else with them busy with part-time jobs and family dinners and catching up on a week of homework.

“Hey.” Joan said, trying to steer the conversation away from their light-hearted chats and towards something a bit more… complicated, a tad more touchy.

“Yeah?”

“Are… Eve, I mean.” The brunette took a long sip from her can, the relaxed air between them shifting as she stalled what she needed to say. “Are you sure we can trust her?”

“What do you mean? She’s obviously gay and in denial-”

“That’s the point.” Joan fixes her with a soft stare, trying to strike the balance between firm and sympathetic. “I doubt Eve’s even admitted it to herself, and even if she has, she’s no friend of ours yet.”

“Where’s all this coming from all of a sudden?” Lilith can’t help but be defensive. After everything she’d told Joan about Eve and how she felt for her, after everything Joan had seen Eve go through just that Monday, how could she still be against the girl?

“They’re holding confession tomorrow.”

“What?”

“In the afternoon, just before club. There’s going to be confession.” Another sip from her drink, faster this time. “The holy type.”

Lilith knew exactly what Joan was implying, now considering the possibility herself having remembered what was happening tomorrow and every week after that. She wouldn’t admit it, though, refusing to doubt Eve despite the danger it may pose to trust her, to… love her.

Aster blue eyes widened, if only a fraction, in shock.

“And what’s that got to do with anything?”

“Are you sure she won’t crack?”

It hurt to think of. The chance of betrayal very real and very close, the things it may cost them all hung heavy in the air. What they’d worked for during the past year – the subject of many serious chats, full of tears and thinking and uncertainties, the cause of many sleepless nights, weighing risk and reward, planning – could vanish in an instant and make them vanish with it.

She could practically feel the ‘Godly Living’ brochures in her hand.

It was another thing she tried not to think of too much; her friends strapped into electric chairs and deadly hydrotherapy chambers, pumped full of pills that made them nauseous at the very thought of love with women or ones that didn’t let them think at all, the possibility of getting lobotomized.

“- could out us! She could out you!”

Joan’s voice pulled her from her mind before she could go too deep.

The emphasis on ‘you’ nearly made Lilith cry.

At the end of it all, even with the threat it brought to their gay little family, made up of people so vastly different yet somehow so similar, Joan was thinking about her.

And she was right to.

Tomorrow, if Eve did give her away, the others would be able to lie their way out of it, come up with alibis and excuses and cry ‘I have a boyfriend’ because Eve hadn’t spent enough time around them to gain anything as evidence because Eve had only been around Lilith.

“I don’t think she will.”

She tried not to sound scared.

“The only thing she really has against me are words anyways…” There was no reason to tell the other of the note she’d written for Eve. Painful as it was, the girl had probably thrown it out by now, especially since she knew what it meant. “And she can’t mention experience without admitting what almost happened between us a week ago.”

Joan was unconvinced.

“Are you really going to take this risk?”

She tossed Joan a few quarters. Enough for three phone calls on the payphone a mile or so away.

Maybe Lilith was going to risk herself for the sake of some girl.

But she’d be damned if she let her friends do the same thing for her.

“Call the others. Tell them to pack essentials and paperwork. Tell Colette to bring the check.”

“Only if you pack a bag too.”

It seems they would do the same for Lilith, whether she wanted them too or not.

“Joan-”

“No. If we have to leave tomorrow, you’re coming with us.”

And that was that.

...

It was a fine Friday morning in St. Agnes School For Girls. Maybe even her last.

Lilith tried to stay calm. Even as she packed her bags, even as she snuck into her grandfather’s office to retrieve her personal papers, even during the walk back to the shack, even while Paula and Joan and Julia and Colette went over what to say if they were questioned about their relationship with one another, their closeness, their relationship with Lilith, specifically.

It was agreed they would never throw each other under the bus. Agreed that, they’d deny all allegations against each other despite the proof, even if it may mean making them complicit.

After all, if they had to flee, they’d flee together.

If even one of them were found out, the plan was to run and pull a fire alarm, notifying the others.

Joan’s truck was parked just a few streets away from the school, no more than a quick sprint needed to reach it, key in her pocket, Paula carrying a duplicate, bags already in the back, fastened, Julia had forged a note for them about an after-school activity, buying them some time before a search was called if the school didn’t immediately call their guardians, and Colette carried all she needed to cash the check in on her person.

The last thing they did were practice statements, crafting sentences that left no room for interpretation and had no strange implications, absent of loopholes and additional clauses.

“What do we say if any of us are questioned about homosexual activity?”

“I know nothing about that.” They said, all in synch, drilling the words into their heads exactly as they were so there was no chance of them being taken out of context and used to spin a narrative. If the nuns wanted any of them sent to conversion therapy, they were going to have to lie through their teeth. “I’ve never taken part in such things and know no one who has.”

They sounded nothing like themselves, Lilith realized in between breaks.

Though she supposed that was the point.

“Again!” Said Joan. “What do you say if they accuse your friends of being homosexuals?”

“My friends and I are good, Christian people who would never willingly associate with homosexuals. I have personal anecdotes to prove the innocence of the girl you are accusing.”

It made them sick to their stomachs, having to say such things.

It made them safe, though.

And for now, that was all that mattered.

They were prepared.

But they didn’t want to leave. Not yet.

 ...

As the day went on, Lilith began to lose her cool, anxiety creeping deep into her bones, growing fidgety and restless. Her leg shook under the table, fingers tapping against the desk and clicking pens, eyes always shifting, looking for another sign that they needed to go.

Was this what Eve felt like every day?

The fear of being found out was in no means foreign to Lilith, nor was the fear of God, a tyrant she used to believe in and worship just like Eve did. But it had faded, her hiding of herself perfected to a science, fear turning into anger as she realized that everything she was raised on was a sham.

It had been too long since she felt this real, crushing anxiety.

She didn’t like it.

...

It was time.

Lilith and Eve sat next to each other in the small chapel on school grounds, just a bit behind the actual building but before the convent, not an inch of space between them as they were squeezed into the pews filled with those yet to receive the sacrament of confession. The seats were divided so that there were two groups of pews, one for waiting, the other for prayer, where many would do their penance. Two confessional booths were far behind them, having been placed like that so none of the girls would see who went in when or be able to hear a peep.

She knew how this was going to happen, how they could possibly get outed.

Priests were not allowed to break their vows and tell the nuns of the sins they’d heard during the confession but a penance was to be given to those who had sinned.

It could be anything from a prayer to an act of service.

It could be telling the nuns what you’ve done or know someone’s done as a way of repenting.

No doubt, if anyone confessed something of significance, they would have to tell Mother Cecilia.

And since most everyone who did this in earnest would believe their soul was on the line, if the girls in this school were truly the people they claimed to be, they would tell the nuns, friendships and loyalties and love be damned as the person they tattle on.

“Eve?” The girl whispered, finally snapping. “The note I gave you, do you still have it?”

The blonde did nothing more than look to the marble floor, hair shielding her face. There was no way for Lilith to tell if she was ashamed or guilty or planning to-

“Please answer me.”

“I still have it.”

For the first time in years, far longer than what most would consider healthy, Lilith felt herself minutes away from bursting into tears, eyes stinging from having to hold it all in.

“Where?”

“Why?”

Eve refused to meet her eyes when she ducked down to try and catch a glimpse of her face.

“With me, right now, in my pocket.”

Before the girl could answer her, a nun appeared to lead Eve into the booth, giving her a light scolding as they went.

“Time before confession should be used to reflect on your sins, Miss Peccator.”

“Yes, Sister Jane. I’m sorry.”

And with that, she was gone.

...

It was an eternity later when Lilith left the chapel, finding Eve just outside, to the right, standing amongst stone pillars that had barely started growing moss, waiting.

They were as alone as they could be, the only things watching them were the unseeing eyes of the statue saint surrounding them, whatever creature lingered in the cracks on the chapel’s stone, and God.

Perhaps what resided in the chapel was God.

“Eve…” She stepped closer to the girl, desperation potent. “What did you tell them?”

No response.

All she was given were downcast brown eyes and fidgeting fingers, guilt.

Lilith took another step forward, grabbing the other by her hands, letting Eve feel her warmth, her pulse, the softness of her flesh, of the blood that flowed through her veins, of her humanity.

“Eve, what did you tell the priest?”

Lilith had fallen to her knees, in a plea, in a prayer, the ground beneath her unforgiving and now stained with her blood, dark red and sinful. Eve’s hands clasped in hers and pressed to her sweat-soaked forehead as sobs wracked her body harder than it had in years.

She was screaming now, pulling on the other’s hands hard enough to hurt, something, anything to make the girl look up at her, unaware of the tears streaming down her own face.

“Eve? Eve?! What did you tell the priest?!”

They were the image of repentance, a holy figure, a dirty sinner; Eve towered above Lilith as she cried, immaculate and unattached as the girl wept into her skirts and her hands, a holy portrait commissioned by a long-gone pope.

If only they weren’t both sinners in His eyes.

“What did you tell the priest, Eve?!”

__________________

HAPPY HOLIDAYS HAVE A FUCKING CLIFF HANGER ψ(｀∇´)ψ

Lmao yes I know it's only the 24th but I’ll be back on actual christmas day with the next chapter tho so please don’t be mad at me and I’m very sorry for this (┬┬﹏┬┬)

Anyways, I would like some reblogs as my present this year <333

Taglist: @atahensic @anomiewrites @leahstypewriter @madame-ree @melpomenismask @littlemisscalamity @phillyinthebathroom @gaypeaches @extrabitterbrain @pirateofblood @i-wanna-be-a-rock

[theculturedmarxist]

Below is the story of my day touring Tema with Prince Philip, in this chapter from my book “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo”. You may be surprised to read that I rather liked him.

The African Queen

One morning I was sitting in the lounge at Devonshire House, with its fitted wool carpets and chintz sofas. I was drinking the tea that our steward, Nasser, had brought me. I heard movement in a corner of the room, and thought it must be Nasser cleaning there. But looking round, I saw nobody. Puzzled, I got up and walked towards that corner. Rounding a settee, I nearly stood upon a thin, green snake. About four feet long and just the thickness of your thumb, it was a bright, almost lime green colour. There was not much wedge shape to its head, which rather tapered from its neck. Its tongue was flickering toward me, perhaps a foot away, its head raised only slightly off the floor. I took a step backwards. In response it too retreated, at surprising speed, and zipped up the inside of the curtains.

I stood stock still and yelled “Nasser! Nasser!” This brought Nasser hurrying into the living room with Gloria, the cook. “Nasser, there’s a snake in the curtains!” Nasser and Gloria screamed, threw their arms in the air, and ran together into the kitchen and out the back door of the house. This was not altogether helpful.

I remained where I was to keep an eye on the snake, not wanting it to be lurking inside the house unseen. After a while the front door opened and somebody, presumably Nasser, threw in Nasser’s scruffy little dog. The dog was normally banned from the house, and celebrated this unexpected turn of events by immediately urinating against the hall table. Then the dog too ran into the kitchen and out of the back door.

Abandoning my watch, I went out and recruited the reluctant gardeners and gate guards. They armed themselves with long sticks and came in and beat the curtains until the snake fell onto the floor. As it sped for cover under a sofa, Samuel the youngest gardener got in a solid blow, and soon everyone was joining in, raining down blows on the twitching snake. They carried its disjointed body out on the end of a stick, and burnt it on a bonfire.

Everyone identified it as a green mamba. I was sceptical. Green mambas are among the world’s deadliest snakes, and I imagined them to look beefy like cobras, not whip thin and small headed like this. But a search on the agonisingly slow internet showed that indeed it did look very like a green mamba.

The important question arose of how it had entered the house. With air conditioning, the doors and windows were usually shut. Nasser seemed to have solved the mystery when he remarked that a dead one had been found last year inside an air conditioner. The unit had stopped working, and when they came to fix it they found a snake jammed in the mechanism. That seemed the answer; it had appeared just under a conditioner, and it seemed likely the slim snake had entered via the vent pipe, avoiding the fan as it crawled through the unit.

This was very worrying. If anti-venom was available (and we held a variety in the High Commission) an adult would probably survive a green mamba bite. But it would almost certainly be fatal to Emily, and possibly to Jamie.

A week or so later, I was constructing Emily’s climbing frame, which had arrived from the UK. A rambling contraption of rungs, slides, platforms and trampolines, it required the bolting together of scores of chrome tubes. I was making good progress on it and, as I lifted one walkway side into position above my head, a mamba slid out of the end of the tube, down my arm, round my belly and down my leg. It did this in no great hurry; it probably took four seconds, but felt like four minutes.

There was one terrible moment when it tried an exploratory nuzzle of its head into the waistband of my trousers, but luckily it decided to proceed down the outside to the ground. It then zig zagged across the lawn to nestle in the exposed tops of the roots of a great avocado tree. Again the mob arrived and beat it to death with sticks. I persuaded them to keep the body this time, and decided that definite action was needed.

I called in a pest control expert. I was advised to try the “Snake Doctor”. I was a bit sceptical, equating “Snake Doctor” with “Witch Doctor”, but when he arrived I discovered that this charming chubby Ghanaian really did have a PhD in Pest Control from the University of Reading. As Fiona had an MSc in Crop Protection from the same Department, they got on like a house on fire and it was difficult to get them away from cups of tea to the business in hand.

He confirmed that the dead snake really was a green mamba. We obviously had a colony. They lived in trees, and he advised us to clear an area of wasteland beyond the boundaries of our house, and build a high boundary wall of rough brick at the back, rather than the existing iron palings. He also suggested we cut down an avenue of some 16 huge mature trees along the drive. I was very sad, but followed this sensible advice. That removed the mamba problem from Devonshire House. But I continued to attract mambas on my travels around Ghana.

The second half of that first year in Ghana was to be almost entirely taken up with preparations for the State Visit of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in November 1999. A huge amount of work goes into organising such a visit; every move is staged and choreographed, designed for media effect. You need to know in advance just where everybody is going to be, who will move where when, and what they will say. You need to place and organise the media to best advantage. You need to stick within very strict rules as to what the Queen will or will not do. Most difficult of all, you have to agree all this with the host government.

I had been through it all quite recently, having paid a major part in the organisation of the State Visit to Poland in 1996. That had gone very well. The Poles regarded it as an important symbol that communism had been definitively finished. It was visually stunning, and at a time when the Royal Family was dogged with hostile media coverage, it had been their first unmixed positive coverage in the UK for ages. I had handled the media angles, and my stock stood very high in the Palace.

I am a republican personally; I was just doing my job. The Palace staff knew I was a republican, not least because I had turned down the offer of being made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) after the Warsaw visit. I had earlier turned down the offer to be an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) after the first Gulf war.

Rawlings was delighted that the Queen was coming. He craved respectability and acceptance in the international community, which had been hard to come by after his violent beginnings. But he had turned his Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) into a political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and had fought elections in 1992 and 1996 against the opposition New Patriotic Party, which had an unbroken tradition running back to Nkrumah’s opponent J B Danquah and his colleague Kofi Busia. There were widespread allegations of vote-rigging, violence and intimidation, and certainly in 1992 the nation was still too cowed to engage in much open debate.

Even by 1999, social life was still inhibited by the fact that nobody except those close to the Rawlings would do anything that might be construed as an ostentatious display of life, while Rawlings had sustained and inflated the personality cult of Nkrumah still further (he is known as Osagyefo, “the conqueror”.) Open discussion of the disasters Nkrumah brought upon Ghana was almost impossible. It is still difficult for many Ghanaians today, after decades of brainwashing. As Rawlings had gradually liberalised society, the increasing freedom of the media, particularly the FM radio station, was giving a great boost to democracy. But there was still much prudent self-censorship. The media was particularly reticent about investigating governmental corruption.

The NDC government was massively corrupt. There was one gratuitous example which especially annoyed me. A company called International Generics, registered in Southampton, had got loans totalling over £30 million from the Royal Bank of Scotland to construct two hotels, La Palm and Coco Palm. One was on the beach next to the Labadi Beach Hotel, the other on Fourth Circular Road in Cantonments, on the site of the former Star Hotel. The loan repayments were guaranteed by the Export Credit Guarantee Department, at the time a British government agency designed to insure UK exporters against loss. In effect the British taxpayer was underwriting the export, and if the loan defaulted the British taxpayer would pay.

In fact, this is what happened, and the file crossed my desk because the British people were now paying out on defaulted payments to the Royal Bank of Scotland. So I went to look at the two hotels. I found La Palm Hotel was some cleared land, some concrete foundations, and one eight room chalet without a roof. Coco Palm hotel didn’t exist at all. In a corner of the plot, four houses had been built by International Generics. As the housing market in Accra was very strong, these had been pre-sold, so none of the loan had gone into them.

I was astonished. The papers clearly showed that all £31.5 million had been fully disbursed by the Royal Bank of Scotland, against progress and completion certificates on the construction. But in truth there was virtually no construction. How could this have happened?

The Chief Executive of International Generics was an Israeli named Leon Tamman. He was a close friend to, and a front for, Mrs Rawlings. Tamman also had an architect’s firm, which had been signing off completion certificates for the non-existent work on the hotel. Almost all of the £30 million was simply stolen by Tamman and Mrs Rawlings.

The Royal Bank of Scotland had plainly failed in due diligence, having paid out on completion of two buildings, one not started and one only just started. But the Royal Bank of Scotland really couldn’t give a toss, because the repayments and interest were guaranteed by the British taxpayer. Indeed I seemed to be the only one who did care.

The Rawlings had put some of their share of this looted money towards payments on their beautiful home in Dublin. I wrote reports on all this back to London, and specifically urged the Serious Fraud Office to prosecute Tamman and Mrs Rawlings. I received the reply that there was no “appetite” in London for this.

Eventually La Palm did get built, but with over $60 million of new money taken this time from SSNIT, the Ghanaian taxpayers social security and pension fund. Coco Palm never did get built, but Tamman continued to develop it as a housing estate, using another company vehicle. Tamman has since died. The loans were definitively written off by the British government as part of Gordon Brown’s HIPC debt relief initiative.

That is but one example of a single scam, but it gives an insight into the way the country was looted. The unusual feature on this one was that the clever Mr Tamman found a way to cheat the British taxpayer, via Ghana. I still find it galling that the Royal Bank of Scotland also still got their profit, again from the British taxpayer.

So while the State Visit was intended as a reward to Jerry Rawlings for his conversion to democracy and capitalism, I had no illusions about Rawlings’ Ghana. I was determined that we should use the Queen’s visit to help ensure that Rawlings did indeed leave power in January 2001. According to the constitution, his second and final four year term as elected President expired then (if you politely ignored his previous decade as a military dictator). We should get the Queen to point him towards the exit.

Buckingham palace sent a team on an initial reconnaissance visit. It was led by an old friend of mine, Tim Hitchens, Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen, who had joined the FCO when I did. We identified the key features of the programme, which should centre around an address to Parliament. A walkabout might be difficult; Clinton had been almost crushed in Accra by an over-friendly crowd in a situation which got out of control. A school visit to highlight DFID’s work would provide the “meet the people” photo op, otherwise a drive past for the larger crowds. Key questions were identified as whether the Queen should visit Kumasi to meet Ghana’s most important traditional ruler, the Asantehene, and how she should meet the leader of the opposition, John Kufuor. Rawlings was likely to be opposed to both.

The recce visit went very well, and I held a reception for the team before they flew back to London. Several Ghanaian ministers came, and it ended in a very relaxed evening. Tim Hitchens commented that it was the first time he had ever heard Queen and Supertramp at an official function before. It turned out that we had very similar musical tastes.

Planning then took place at quite high intensity for several months. There were regular meetings with the Ghanaian government team tasked to organise the visit, headed by head of their diplomatic service Anand Cato, now Ghanaian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. We then had to visit together all the proposed venues, and walk through the proposed routes, order of events, seating plans etc.

From the very first meeting between the two sides, held in a committee room at the International Conference Centre, it soon became obvious that we had a real problem with Ian Mackley. The High Commissioner had been very high-handed and abrupt with the visiting team from Buckingham Palace, so much so that Tim Hitchens had asked me what was wrong. I said it was just his manner. But there was more to it than that.

In the planning meetings, the set-up did not help the atmosphere. There were two lines of desks, facing each other. The British sat on one side and the Ghanaians on the other, facing each other across a wide divide. The whole dynamic was one of confrontation.

I have sat through some toe-curling meetings before, but that first joint State visit planning meeting in Accra was the worst. It started in friendly enough fashion, with greetings on each side. Then Anand Cato suggested we start with a quick run-through of the programme, from start to finish. “OK, now will the Queen be arriving by British Airways or by private jet?” asked Anand. “She will be on one of the VC10s of the Royal Flight” said Ian. “Right, that’s better. The plane can pull up to the stand closest to the VIP lounge. We will have the convoy of vehicles ready on the tarmac. The stairs will be put to the door, and then the chief of protocol will go up the stairs to escort the Queen and her party down the stairs, where there will be a small reception party…” “No, hang on there” interjected Ian Mackley, “I will go up the stairs before the chief of protocol.” “Well, it is customary for the Ambassador or High Commissioner to be in the receiving line at the bottom of the aircraft steps.” “Well, I can tell you for sure that the first person the Queen will want to see when she arrives in the country will be her High Commissioner.” “Well, I suppose you can accompany the chief up the steps if you wish…” “And my wife.” “Pardon?” “My wife Sarah. She must accompany me up the steps to meet the Queen.” “Look, it really isn’t practical to have that many people going on to an already crowded plane where people are preparing to get off…” “I am sorry, but I must insist that Sarah accompanies me up the stairs and on to the plane.” “But couldn’t she wait at the bottom of the steps?” “Absolutely not. How could she stand there without me?” “OK, well can we then mark down the question of greeting on the plane as an unresolved issue for the next meeting?” “Alright, but our side insists that my wife…” “Yes, quite. Now at the bottom of the steps Her Majesty will be greeted by the delegated minister, and presented with flowers by children.” “Please make sure we are consulted on the choice of children.” “If you wish. There will be national anthems, but I suggest no formal inspection of the Guard of Honour? Then traditional priests will briefly make ritual oblations, pouring spirits on the ground. The Queen will briefly enter the VIP lounge to take a drink.” “That’s a waste of time. Let’s get them straight into the convoy and off.” “But High Commissioner, we have to welcome a visitor with a drink. It is an essential part of our tradition. It will only be very brief.” “You can do what you like, but she’s not entering the VIP lounge. Waste of time.” “Let’s mark that down as another issue to be resolved. Now then, first journey…”

The meeting went on for hours and hours, becoming increasingly ill tempered. When we eventually got to the plans for the State Banquet, it all went spectacularly pear-shaped as it had been threatening to do. “Now we propose a top table of eight. There will be the President and Mrs Rawlings, Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh, The Vice President and Mrs Mills, and Mr and Mrs Robin Cook.” Ian positively went purple. You could see a vein throbbing at the top left of his forehead. He spoke as though short of breath. “That is not acceptable. Sarah and I must be at the top table”. “With respect High Commissioner, there are a great many Ghanaians who will feel they should be at the top table. As we are in Ghana, we feel we are being hospitable in offering equal numbers of British and Ghanaians at the top table. But we also think the best plan is to keep the top table small and exclusive.” “By all means keep it small,” said Ian, “but as High Commissioner I must be on it.” “So what do you suggest?” asked Anand. “Robin Cook” said Ian “He doesn’t need to be on the top table.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Neither could Anand. “I don’t think you are being serious, High Commissioner” he said. “I am entirely serious” said Ian. “I outrank Robin Cook. I am the personal representative of a Head of State. Robin Cook only represents the government.”

I decided the man had taken leave of his senses. I wondered at what stage can you declare your commanding officer mad and take over, like on The Cain Mutiny? Anand was obviously thinking much the same. “Perhaps I might suggest you seek instruction from headquarters on that one?” he asked. “Anyway, can we note that down as another outstanding item, and move on to…” I don’t know whether Ian secretly realised he had overstepped the mark, but he didn’t come to another planning meeting after that, leaving them to me and the very competent Second Secretary Mike Nithavrianakis.

The most difficult question of all was that of meeting the opposition. Eventually we got the agreement of Buckingham Palace and the FCO to say that, if the Queen were prevented from meeting the opposition, she wouldn’t come. But still the most we could get from Rawlings was that the leader of the opposition could be included in a reception for several hundred people at the International Conference Centre.

I had by now made good personal friends with several Ghanaian politicians. Among those who I could have a social drink with any time were, on the government side John Mahama, Minister of Information and Moses Asaga, Deputy Finance Minister, and on the opposition side John Kufuor, leader of the opposition, his colleagues Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Shadow Foreign Minister, and Nana Akuffo-Addo, Shadow Attorney General.

In the International Conference Centre the precise route the Queen would take around the crowd was very carefully planned, so I was able to brief John Kufuor exactly where to stand to meet her, and brief the Queen to be sure to stop and chat with him. As he was the tallest man in the crowd, this was all not too difficult.

Once the Queen arrived and the visit started, everything happened in a three day blur of intense activity. Vast crowds turned out, and the Palace staff soon calmed down as they realised that the Queen could expect an uncomplicated and old fashioned reverence from the teeming crowds who were turning out to see “Our Mama”.

The durbar of chiefs in front of Parliament House was a riot of colour and noise. One by one the great chiefs came past, carried on their palanquins, preceded by their entourage, drummers banging away ferociously and the chiefs, laden down with gold necklaces and bangles, struggled to perform their energetic seated dances. Many of the hefty dancing women wore the cloth that had been created for the occasion, with a picture of the Queen jiggling about on one large breast in partnership with Jerry Rawlings jiving on the other, the same pairing being also displayed on the buttocks.

After the last of the chiefs went through, the tens of thousands of spectators started to mill everywhere and we had to race for the Royal convoy to get out through the crowds. Robin Cook had stopped to give an ad hoc interview to an extremely pretty South African television reporter. Mike Nithavrianakis tried to hurry him along but got a fierce glare for his pains. Eventually everyone was in their cars but Cook; the Ghanaian outriders were itching to start as the crowds ahead and around got ever denser.

But where was Cook? We delayed, with the Queen sitting in her car for two or three minutes, but still there was no sign of the Secretary of State or his staff getting into their vehicle. Eventually the outriders swept off; the crowds closed in behind and we had abandoned our dilettante Foreign Secretary. Having lost the protection of the convoy and being caught up in the crowds and traffic, it took him an hour to catch up.

Cook was an enigma. I had already experienced his famous lack of both punctuality and consideration when kept waiting to see him over the Sandline Affair. His behaviour now seemed to combine an attractive contempt for protocol with a goat-like tendency – would he have fallen behind to give a very bland interview to a male South African reporter? He was also breaking the tradition that the Foreign Secretary does not make media comments when accompanying the Queen.

When we returned to the Labadi Beach Hotel, there was to be further evidence of Cook’s view that the World revolved around him. He was interviewing FCO staff for the position of his new Private Secretary. Astonishingly, he had decided that it would best suit his itinerary to hold these interviews in Accra rather than London. One candidate, Ros Marsden, had an extremely busy job as Head of United Nations Department. Yet she had to give up three days work to fly to be interviewed in Accra, when her office was just round the corner from his in London. Other candidates from posts around the World had difficult journeys to complete to get to Accra at all. I thought this rather outrageous of Cook, and was surprised nobody else seemed much concerned.

The port town of Tema, linked to Accra by fifteen miles of motorway and fast becoming part of a single extensive metropolis, sits firmly on the Greenwich Meridian. As far as land goes, Tema is the centre of the Earth, being the closest dry spot to the junction of the Equator and the Greenwich Meridian. You can travel South from Tema over 6,000 miles across sea until you hit the Antarctic.

There was in 1999 a particular vogue for linking the Greenwich Meridian with the Millennium. This was because of the role of the meridian in determining not just longitude but time. Of course, the two are inextricably linked with time initially used to calculate longitude. That is why Greenwich hosted both the Naval Academy and the Royal Observatory.

The fascination with all this had several manifestations. There was a BBC documentary travelogue down the Greenwich meridian. There was a best-selling book about the invention of naval chronometers, Longitude by Dava Sobel, which I read and was as interesting as a book about making clocks can be. There were a number of aid projects down the meridian, including by War Child and Comic Relief. Tema and Greenwich became twin towns. And there was the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Tema.

I think this was the idea of my very good friend John Carmichael, who was involved in charity work on several of the meridian projects. It was thought particularly appropriate as one of the Duke of Edinburgh’s titles is Earl of Greenwich – though the man has so many titles you could come up with some connection to pretty well anywhere. We could make it a new game, like six degrees of separation. Connect your home town to the Duke of Edinburgh.

Anyway, Tim Hitchens had warned me that the Duke was very much averse to just looking at things without any useful purpose. As we stood looking at the strip of brass laid in a churchyard which marks the line of the meridian, he turned to me and said: “A line in the ground, eh? Very nice.”

But we moved on to see a computer centre that had been set up by a charity to give local people experience of IT and the internet (providing both electricity and phone lines were working, which thank goodness they were today) and the Duke visibly cheered up. He was much happier talking to the instructors and students, and then when we went on to a primary school that had received books from DFID he was positively beaming. The genuinely warm reception everywhere, with happy gaggles of people of all ages cheerfully waving their little plastic union jacks, would have charmed anybody.

We returned to Accra via the coast road and I was able to point out the work of the Ghanaian coffin makers, with coffins shaped and painted as tractors, beer bottles, guitars, desks, cars and even a packet of condoms. The Prince laughed heartily, and we arrived at the Parliament building in high good spirits. There he was first shown to a committee room where he was introduced to senior MPs of all parties. “How many Members of Parliament do you have?” he asked. “Two hundred” came the answer. “That’s about the right number,” opined the Prince, “We have six hundred and fifty MPs, and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.”

The irony was that there was no British journalist present to hear this, as they had all thought a meeting between Prince Philip and Ghanaian parliamentarians would be too boring. There were Ghanaian reporters present, but the exchange didn’t particularly interest them. So a front page tabloid remark, with which the accompanying photo could have made a paparazzi a lot of money, went completely unreported.

On a State Visit, the media cannot each be at every occasion, as security controls mean they have to be pre-positioned rather than milling about while the event goes ahead. So by agreement, those reporters and photographers accredited to the visit share or pool their photos and copy. At each event there is a stand, or pool. Some events may have more than one pool to give different angles. Each journalist can probably make five or six pools in the course of the visit, leapfrogging ahead of the royal progress. But everyone gets access to material from all the pools. The FCO lays on the transport to keep things under control. Organising the pool positions ahead of the event with the host country, and then herding and policing the often pushy media in them, is a major organisational task. Mike Nithavrianakis had carried it off with style and only the occasional failure of humour. But he had found no takers for Prince Philip in parliament, which proved to be fortunate for us.

I should say that I found Prince Philip entirely pleasant while spending most of this day with him. I am against the monarchy, but it was not created by the Queen or Prince Philip. Just as Colonel Isaac of the RUF was a victim of the circumstances into which he was born, so are they. Had I been born into a life of great privilege, I would probably have turned out a much more horrible person than they are.

Prince Philip then joined the Queen in the parliamentary chamber. Her address to parliament was to be the focal point of the visit. I had contributed to the drafting of her speech, and put a lot of work into it. The speech was only six minutes long (she never speaks longer than that, except at the State Opening of Parliament. Her staff made plain that six minutes was an absolute maximum.) It contained much of the usual guff about the history of our nations and the importance of a new future based upon partnership. But then she addressed Rawlings directly, praising his achievements in bringing Ghana on to the path of democracy and economic stability. The government benches in parliament provided an undercurrent of parliamentary “hear hears”.

But there was to be a sting in the tale: “Next, year, Mr President,” the Queen intoned, “You will step down after two terms in office in accordance with your constitution.” The opposition benches went wild. The Queen went on to wish for peaceful elections and further progress, but it was drowned out by the cries of “hear hear” and swishing of order papers from the benches, and loud cheers from the public gallery. There were mooted cries of “No” from the government side of the chamber.

I had drafted that phrase, and it had a much greater effect than I possibly hoped for, although I did mean it to drive home the message exactly as it was taken.

For a moment the Queen stopped. She looked in bewilderment and concern at the hullabaloo all around her. The Queen has no experience of speaking to anything other than a hushed, respectful silence. But, apart from some grim faces on the government benches, it was a joyful hullabaloo and she ploughed on the short distance to the end of her speech.

Once we got back to the Labadi Beach Hotel, Robin Cook was completely furious. He stormed into the makeshift Private Office, set up in two hotel rooms. “It’s a disaster. Who the Hell drafted that?” “Err, I did, Secretary of State” I said. “Is that you, Mr Murray! I might have guessed! Who the Hell approved it.” “You did.” “I most certainly did not!” “Yes you did, Secretary of State. You agreed the final draft last night.”

His Private Secretary had to dig out the copy of the draft he had signed off. He calmed down a little, and was placated further when the Queen’s robust press secretary, Geoff Crawford, said that he took the view that it was a good thing for the Queen to be seen to be standing up for democracy. It could only look good in the UK press. He proved to be right.

The State Banquet was a rather dull affair. Ian Mackley’s great battle to be on the top table proved rather nugatory as, in very Ghanaian fashion, nobody stayed in their seat very long and people were wandering all over the shop. There were a large number of empty seats as, faced with an invitation to dinner at 7.30pm, many Ghanaians followed their customary practice and wandered along an hour or so late, only to find they would not be admitted. This caused a huge amount of angst and aggravation, from which those of us inside were fortunately sheltered.

Mrs Rawlings had chosen a well known Accra nightclub owner named Chester to be the compère for the occasion. His bar is a relaxed spot in a small courtyard that features good jazz and highlife music, and prostitutes dressed as Tina Turner. It was a second home for the officers of the British Military Advisory and Training Team (BMATT).

Chester himself was friendly and amusing, but amusing in a Julian Clary meets Kenneth Williams meets Liberace sort of way. Chester says he is not gay, (regrettably homosexuality is illegal in Ghana) but his presentation is undeniably ultra camp. It is hard to think of a weirder choice to chair a state banquet, but Chester was a particular pet of Mrs Rawlings.

Chester was stood on the platform next to the Queen, gushing about how honoured he was. His speech was actually very witty, but the delivery was – well, Chester. I turned to Prince Philip and remarked: “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two Queens together before.” To give credit to Chester, I gather he has been telling the story ever since.

High camp was to be a theme of that evening.

Fiona and I accompanied the Royal party back to the Labadi Beach Hotel to say goodnight, after which Fiona returned home to Devonshire House while I remained for a debriefing on the day and review of the plans for tomorrow. By the time we had finished all that it was still only 11pm and I retired to the bar of the Labadi Beach with the Royal Household. The senior staff – Tim and Geoff – withdrew as is the custom, to allow the butlers, footmen, hairdressers and others to let off steam.

The party appeared, to a man, to be gay. Not just gay but outrageously camp. The Labadi Beach, with its fans whirring under polished dark wood ceilings, its panelled bar, displays of orchids, attentive uniformed staff and glossy grand piano – has the aura of a bygone colonial age, like something from Kenya’s Happy Valley in the 1930s. You expect to see Noel Coward emerge in his smoking jacket and sit down at the piano, smoking through a mother of pearl cigarette holder. It is exactly the right setting for a gay romp, and that is exactly what developed after a few of the Labadi Beach’s wonderful tropical cocktails.

We had taken the entire hotel for the Royal party, except that we had allowed the British Airways crew to stay there as always. Now three of their cabin stewards, with two Royal footmen and the Queen’s hairdresser, were grouped around the grand singing Cabaret with even more gusto than Liza. Other staff were smooching at the bar. All this had developed within half an hour in a really magical and celebratory atmosphere that seemed to spring from nothing. I was seated on a comfortable sofa, and across from me in an armchair was the one member of the Household who seemed out of place. The Duke of Edinburgh’s valet looked to be in his sixties, a grizzled old NCO with tufts of hair either side of a bald pate, a boxer’s nose and tattoos on his arms. He was smoking roll-ups.

He was a nice old boy and we had been struggling to hold a conversation about Ghana over the din, when two blokes chasing each other ran up to the settee on which I was sitting. One, pretending to be caught, draped himself over the end and said: “You’ve caught me, you beast!” I turned back to the old warrior and asked: “Don’t you find all this a bit strange sometimes?” He lent forward and put his hand on my bare knee below my kilt: “Listen, ducks. I was in the Navy for thirty years.”

So I made my excuses and left, as the News of the World journalists used to put it. I think he was probably joking, but there are some things that are too weird even for me, and the lower reaches of the Royal household are one of them. I have heard it suggested that such posts have been filled by gays for centuries, just as harems were staffed by eunuchs, to avoid the danger of a Queen being impregnated. Recently I have been most amused by news items regarding the death of the Queen Mother’s long-standing footman, who the newsreaders have been informing us was fondly known as “Backstairs Billy”. They manage to say this without giving the slightest hint that they know it is a double entendre.

The incident in parliament had made the Rawlings government even more annoyed about the proposed handshake in the International Conference Centre reception between the Queen and John Kufuor. My own relationship with Ian Mackley had also deteriorated still further as a result of the Royal Visit. I had the advantage that I already knew from previous jobs the palace officials and Robin Cook’s officials, and of course Robin Cook himself, not to mention the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. All in all, I suspect that Ian felt that I was getting well above myself.

As the party formed up to walk around the reception in the International Conference Centre, Ian came up to me and grabbed my arm rather fiercely. “You, just stay with the Queen’s bodyguards” he said. I did not mind at all, and attached myself to another Ian, the head of the Queen’s close protection team. I already knew Ian also. Ian set off towards the hall and started ensuring a path was clear for the Queen, I alongside him as ordered. Suddenly I heard Sarah Mackley positively squeal from somewhere behind me: “My God, he’s ahead of the Queen! Now Craig’s ahead of the Queen.” If I could hear it, at least forty other people could. I managed to make myself as invisible as possible, and still to accomplish the introduction to John Kufuor. The government newspaper the Daily Graphic was to claim indignantly that I had introduced John Kufuor as “The next President of Ghana.” Had I done so, I would have been in the event correct in my prediction, but in fact I introduced him as “The opposition Presidential candidate”.

As always, the Queen’s last engagement on the State Visit was to say farewell to all the staff who had helped. She gives out gifts, and confers membership of the Royal Victorian Order on those deemed to merit it. Only once in the Queen’s long reign had she ever been on a state visit and not created our Ambassador or High Commissioner a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order – that is to say, knighted him. Ian and Sarah were to become Sir Ian and Lady Sarah. This seemed to me to mean the world to them.

The day before, Tim Hitchens had turned to me as we were travelling in the car: “Craig, I take it your views on honours have not changed.” “No, Tim, I still don’t want any.” “Good, you see that makes it a bit easier, actually. You see, the thing is, we’re trying to cut down a bit on giving out routine honours. The government wants a more meritocratic honours system. We need to start somewhere. So, in short, Ian Mackley is not going to get his K.” I was stunned. Tim continued: “And as well, you see, it hasn’t exactly escaped our attention that he has … issues with the Ghanaians, and some of his attitudes didn’t exactly help the visit. Anyway, if you were to want your CVO, then that would be more difficult. Ian Mackley is going to have one of those. So that will be alright.”

No, it won’t be alright, I thought. You’ll kill the poor old bastard. For God’s sake, everyone will know.

I wondered when the decision had been taken. The kneeling stool and the ceremonial sword had definitely been unloaded from the plane and taken to the hotel: that was one of the things I had checked off. When had that decision been reached?

We were lined up in reverse order of seniority to go in and see the Queen and Prince Philip. I queued behind the Defence Attaché, with Ian and Sarah just behind me. She was entering as well – nobody else’s wife was – because she was expecting to become Lady Mackley. Tim was going to tell them quickly after I had entered, while they would be alone still waiting to go in.

You may not believe me, but I felt completely gutted for them. It was the very fact they were so status obsessed that made it so cruel. I was thinking about what Tim was saying to them and how they would react. It seemed terribly cruel that they had not been warned until the very moment before they were due to meet the Queen. I was so worried for them that I really had less than half my mind on exchanging pleasantries with the Queen, who was very pleasant, as always.

If you refused honours, as I always did, you got compensated by getting a slightly better present. In Warsaw I was given a silver Armada dish, which is useful for keeping your Armada in. In Accra I was given a small piece of furniture made with exquisite craftsmanship by Viscount Linley. Shelving my doubts about the patronage aspect of that (should the Queen be purchasing with public money official gifts made by her cousin?) I staggered out holding rather a large red box, leaving through the opposite side of the room to that I had entered. Outside the door I joined the happy throng of people clutching their presents and minor medals. Mike Nithavrianakis and Brian Cope were Ian Mackley’s friends, and they were waiting eagerly for him. “Here’s Craig” said Mike, “Now it’s only Sir Ian and Lady Sarah!” “No, it’s not, Mike”, I said, “He’s not getting a K” “What! You’re kidding!” It had suddenly fallen very silent. “Ian’s not getting a K, he’s only getting a CVO.” “Oh, that’s terrible.” We waited now in silence. Very quickly the door opened again, and the Mackleys came out, Ian with a frozen grin, Sarah a hysterical one beneath the white large-brimmed hat that suddenly looked so ridiculous. There was a smattering of applause, and Sarah fell to hugging everyone, even me. We all congratulated Ian on his CVO, and nobody ever mentioned that there had been any possibility of a knighthood, then or ever.

Personally I don’t understand why anyone accepts honours when there is so much more cachet in refusing them.

[janegilmore]

New Post: https://janegilmore.com/fixed-it-this-is-not-a-child-sex-case/

Fixed It: This is NOT a "child sex" case

The Australian reported that the alleged victims of rape and sexual abuse by 21 year man are going to give evidence in closed hearings ahead of his trial next year.

Firstly, this case has nothing to do with sex, it’s about allegations that a man raped and sexually abused nine little girls. Secondly, erasing the alleged perpetrator from the headline of the story is failing to tell readers what the story really is and who is responsible for an alleged crime of child abuse.

To be clear, this man has not been tried on these charges. He is entitled to the presumption of innocence and therefore this commentary is not about his guilt or innocence, it is specifically and only about the way the charges against him are described by the media. Given his right to a presumption of innocence and the vital importance of not identifying any of the alleged victims, I have chosen to not name him or the venue where the abuse allegedly occurred.

Also, as a side note, this is The Australian. Whatever else we can expect from them, we should at least expect sentences that make sense. The man was not accused of molesting the little girls in closed hearings ahead of his trial. He was accused of molesting them while he was working as a swimming instructor.

Why this matters

“Child sex” is not a thing. Children cannot have “sex”. Sex requires consent, children cannot legally or morally give consent so it is not “sex”. Rape, sexual abuse and sex are not the same thing and they can not be used interchangeably in headlines.

Here are the reasons this matters, in every case, with every headline.

The victim impact statements from child abuse trials are harrowing, a testament to the lifelong injuries suffered by people who were sexually abused as children. They are the litany of drug addition, alcohol dependence, gambling problems, depression, crippling anxiety, relationship breakdowns, suicidal thoughts, shame, self-hatred, mistrust of others and long term emotional damage so common in survivors of child sexual abuse. Children who have been abused are also significantly more likely to suffer further abuse, both as children and as adults.

The effects of sexual abuse of children then lead to the cycle of horror where victims become unreliable witnesses to their own abuse.

When the media, as it so persistently does, labels sexual abuse of children as “child sex”, it weakens the public understanding of the extent and effect of such abuse. This has serious effects. A study conducted for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that juries who have a better understanding of the facts of child sexual abuse are less likely to make mistakes in their assessment of evidence given in court.

Children cannot have sex with adults. Sex requires consent and children, by definition, cannot give consent, so it’s not sex. It’s rape, it’s child abuse, it’s sexual abuse, it’s any number of terms that accurately describe a crime. An act perpetrated on an innocent victim, someone who was unable to defend themselves from the violence done to them, and who suffers for years, possibly decades, from the trauma caused by an adult’s choice to commit that violence.

That word choice is the key. Sex is a choice made by every person involved. Rape and abuse are a choice made only by the perpetrator. The victim has no choice.

No child has ever chosen to be abused. No child has ever done anything that caused or incited abuse. No child has ever wanted to be abused. No child has ever willingly participated in their abuse. No child has ever been in any way responsible for abuses committed against them by adults.

Despite this, many abused children believe they are willing participants. It is tragically common for abusers to manipulate vulnerable children into thinking the abuse is something that makes them special. Because they are children, they don’t understand that it is abuse and they don’t know what their abuser is doing is wrong. They only know that it was a secret, that they were the special ones for that moment because they were manipulated by their abuser.

That belief can become so central to the abuse that it can stay with the victims well into adulthood.

This is the tragedy of abuse, that so many victims do feel responsible for what was done to them. The shame that belongs only to the abuser is taken on by the abused child and incorporated into their lifelong view of themselves and their worth as a person.

Words matter.

When we name abuse as “sex”, we imply victims had a choice. We tell them the violence someone else chose to do to them when they were a child is the same as sex they can choose to have as an adult.

It isn’t.

Raping children is a horrific concept, we should feel a natural revulsion at the very idea. But we can’t protect vulnerable children or deter predators by diminishing the reality of sexual abuse. And we further damage survivors with the implication that the crimes committed against them are something less than a horrific and violent crime.

There are far, far too many of those victims. You could fill the MCG eight times over with the number of children living in Australia, right now, who have been or will be sexually abused. You could empty out Brisbane and entirely refill it with adults who have suffered sexual violence in their lifetime. All these people see headlines.

Sexual abuse is not sex. Children cannot have sex with adults. Stop calling it what it isn’t and start calling it what it is.

FixedIt is an ongoing project to push back against the media’s constant erasure of violent men and blaming of innocent victims. If you would like to help fund it – even $5 a month makes a big difference – please consider becoming a Patron

1800 RESPECT Sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling and support.24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ph: 1800 737 732www.1800respect.org.au  Suicide Call Back Service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ph: 1300 659 467 www.suicidecallbackservice.org.au Kids Helpline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Phone: 1800 55 1800 www.kidshelp.com.au

MensLine Australia 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Phone: 1300 78 99 78 www.mensline.org.au

Child Wise National Abuse Helpline Mon-Fri: 9 am – 5 pm Ph: 1800 99 10 99

##FixedIt

#FixedIt, #InvisiblePerpetrators, #RapeIsNotSex

[thetravelerwrites]

Commitments: Part 2 (Gargoyles Fanfic)

Rating: Teen Fandom: Disney’s Gargoyles Relationships: Goliath x Elisa Maza Additional Tags: Marriage, Wedding Day Trigger Warnings: Light Language, Sex Mention Words: 3443

It's the day of the ceremony. Elisa has a heart to heart with her mother and father. Please leave feedback!

October 24th, 1999: Goliath and Elisa had chosen this date for the ceremony because it was five years to the night of their first meeting, when he had plucked her from the sky after, admittedly, scaring her off a parapet.

Unfortunately, their union could only be symbolic and not legal. It would also have to be a secret from everyone except for their family and closest friends, but they figured, what else is new? Elisa had long been a target of hate groups for merely having alleged, unconfirmed connections to the Gargoyles, and coming out publicly as one of their staunchest supporters hadn’t done her any favors, but openly marrying a Gargoyle would not only have been extremely controversial, it could have cost her her job, home, safety, and possibly even her freedom.

After talking with Amy, Goliath’s public defender who now acted as the Gargoyles’ legal representation in all civil matters, he had learned that there was a law prohibiting humans from marrying any being that was not also human, regardless of level of sentience or intelligence. Which meant that Elisa’s relationship with Goliath was technically bestiality and as such, illegal. Attempting to obtain a marriage license could have landed them both in jail.

There had been no such law as of 1997, Amy had told him, and she surmised the law had been pushed through in secret around the same time the Gargoyle Civil Rights Movement was being fought in court.

Eighteen months after Gargoyles had become public knowledge, the Gargoyles of the Manhattan Clan and many of their allies had testified in front of a grand jury for the Gargoyles’ very right to exist without persecution. After a lengthy battle and many sacrifices and concessions, they had won.

Following the trial, a bill had been passed granting the Manhattan Clan American citizenship, basic civil rights, and put them on the endangered species list, which automatically protected them against unlawful imprisonment, exploitation, experimentation, assault, and murder.

Before the GCRM, ending a Gargoyle’s life had no legal ramifications whatsoever, but after the bill was passed, the act of killing a Gargoyle while they were awake had been classified as murder. Any person responsible for the killing of a Gargoyle could face up to 25 years in prison.

Destroying a stone Gargoyle was seen as a “common law murder” and carried with it a much lesser sentence, but the prosecution would have to prove that the stone statue the defendant destroyed was a living gargoyle. Otherwise it was simply malicious property damage, though it could possibly be tried as a hate crime.

The bill also protected any human that associated with the Gargoyles from retaliation or discrimination, which finally allowed Elisa the chance to proudly support her friends for the entire world to see. It felt great to stand with them as an advocate after hiding them and keeping her friendship with them a secret for so long.

Despite this historic victory for their kind, there was still much prejudice and hatred toward Gargoyles and the people who stood up for them. Their bold willingness to take on public opinion had afforded them some liberties, but in the eyes of the world, Gargoyles were still practically animals, and the bill had done nothing to change that.

 There were new laws in place to protect Gargoyles against threats and violence, but seemingly nothing to defend them from discrimination. In fact, several xenophobic laws that had not previously existed prior to the GCRM seemed to have quietly popped up out of nowhere.

There was a law that protected the right of any public, private, or federally owned business to refuse service to Gargoyles, including hospitals and clinics. Gargoyles also could not secure a job, license, or any property that exceeded $2000 unless they could procure a valid social security number, while at the same time there was a law prohibiting Gargoyles from legally obtaining a social security number. Gargoyles were also barred from attending any state funded schools, including trade programs, and could not earn any certificate, diploma, or degree. Amy was working to change the laws, but progress was slow and she was meeting opposition from all sides.

It baffled Goliath and infuriated Elisa, who was now forced to uphold these ridiculous laws. She hated it. It was unconstitutional and disgusting and she loathed every second that she had to be a part of it. It very nearly caused her to quit the justice system altogether, because this wasn’t justice, it wasn’t freedom, it wasn’t the same system that had convinced her to join the police force in the first place.

This was a perversion of civil liberties, bigots hiding behind a mask of equality, using the publicity of the Movement as a distraction to quietly impose their will on her friends without anyone realizing it. It made her sick to her stomach, mostly because there was nothing she could do to fix it.

The only thing stopping her from planting her boot firmly inside someone’s rear end the next time she heard the term “flying rats” was Goliath’s steady patience and temperance. He constantly reminded her that no one couldn’t stop them from affirming their love for each other, regardless of these new laws. He didn’t care who found out or how many jail cells he’d have to sleep in, he was committed to becoming her mate and nothing would stand in his way.

He loved her; nothing else mattered. He told her this every night, and every night she needed to hear it just to maintain her daily composure. But she was still angry.

The day of the ceremony arrived cool and comfortable. Elisa awoke at noon in her parent’s apartment, where Beth, Maggie, and Derek had also been staying, not just for moral support but protection in case word got out.

Since there were six hours until sundown, the process of getting ready was leisurely and relaxed. Elisa had decided to forgo several things considered normal for a wedding. There would be no bridesmaids or groomsmen, no flower girl or ring bearer, no best man or maid of honor. How would they choose one, anyway?

The ceremony itself would be short and simple with no frills or embellishments, other than Goliath and Elisa reciting vows that they had written for each other.

One thing would be done according to tradition, her father insisted, was walking her down the aisle himself. The ceremony would be taking place in the main hall of Castle Wyvern. Goliath would be standing at the fireplace with Diane with all their friends and loved ones gathered around them, and Peter would hand her off to Goliath. But, she said pointedly, he would not be giving her away as if she were property. Peter had held up his hands in acquiescence, laughing.

She wouldn’t be wearing a wedding dress; she instead wore a simple gown made of sapphire blue satin, to match the ring, with a low back and a short train. Attached to the straps was a small glass lily suspended on a silver chain that would dangle halfway down her spine. It was sleek and elegant with just a hint of slink. Beth had bought it for her in New Orleans during her post-semester vacation a few months ago, before Goliath had even asked Elisa to wed him. She and Beth often didn’t see eye to eye on fashion, but she had to admit this dress seemed like it was made for her.

She wouldn’t wear a veil or carry a bouquet, either. She did put her hair up, though, held back with a kanzashi in the shape of a blooming peony that Katana had given her as a wedding gift.

An hour before sundown, Elisa and her party loaded into two taxis and headed toward the Eyrie building. Maggie and Derek took to the rooftops and likely would arrive at the castle before them.

As they approached the building, Elisa had to admit she was feeling nervous. She tapped her foot anxiously and wrung her shaking hands.

“Wedding jitters?” Diane asked, sitting beside her.

“Yeah, I guess,” Elisa replied shakily.

Diane laid a calm, warm hand on her daughter’s cold, clasped ones. “Second thoughts?”

“No,” Elisa said firmly. “None whatsoever. I love Goliath. Marriage is unnatural for Gargoyles; he’s only doing this for me. And I want this, Mom. I really want this.” She shook her head and exhaled a trembling breath. “I don’t even know why I’m so nervous.”

Diane laughed gently. “It’s completely natural to be a little nervous, sweetheart. I needed several bellinis and a shot of tequila to marry your father, and even then, I thought I might ruin his shiny new shoes. Of course, that could have been the tequila.”

Elisa breathed a soft laugh. She looked at her mother shrewdly. “You’re really okay with this, aren’t you? Me and Goliath, I mean?”

“Of course I am, baby,” Diane said. “I want you to be happy. If Goliath makes you happy, then that’s what I want for you.”

“Dad wasn’t so sure.”

“Yes, but that’s just how fathers are, Elisa,” Diane tutted. “Remember your first boyfriend, Lucas?”

At that, Elisa laughed out loud. “Junior prom, first date, Dad sitting at the dinner table, cleaning his guns. How could I forget?”

“He did that with every boy you brought home,” Diane chuckled. “He also really liked giving those boys a rundown of all his arrests and showing them awful case files, just to shake them up.”

“Ricky ran from the house before I had time to get dressed for our date, remember? He was too scared to even look at me in class for weeks.” Elisa laughed.

Diane nodded, and they found themselves in a fit of giggles, holding each other. After a moment, they tittered to a stop.

“Goliath isn’t intimidated by Dad’s gun collection,” Elisa said.

“No, that he is not,” Diane agreed. “To be honest, honey, those boys you dated before were no match for you. You need a man who is just as strong as you are, even if he isn’t exactly a man. You’re good together. You’re a lifeline for each other. That’s something you don’t just give up on because it’s hard; the trials are what make it all worthwhile. And the two of you have had your fair share of trials. You have earned each other. Nothing else is important.”

Elisa smiled gratefully at her mother and hugged her around the shoulders.

“Thank you, Mama,” She said.

“Always, baby girl,” Her mother replied, returning her hug.

The taxis pulled into the private carport reserved for the Xanatos family. Xanatos had given Elisa and her family a code to use so they could avoid getting out in the company parking complex or in the street outside.

Peter and Beth had exited first, and Peter opened Elisa’s door and offered Elisa his hand, who smiled up at him and accepted it. She walked arm-in-arm with her father to the elevator, with Beth and her mother trailing behind, holding hands.

The sun was going down as the elevator opened to the top floor. The Maza family walked out into the open courtyard to reach the private room just off the main hall, and could see the Gargoyles on their perches in the red-gold light of sunset.

Unlike the other Gargoyles, who faced outward in their typical vigilant poses, Goliath stood inward, straight as a rail, head bowed, with his wings folded around him. According to him, this was traditional gesture for when a Gargoyle declared their intentions for another. It was also traditional to stand in the perch of one’s intended mate, but Elisa didn’t perch, so that aspect was overlooked.

Waiting for them in the private room was Derek and Maggie, who had arrived first as Elisa predicted. Owen had rather thoughtfully put out a small refreshments table for the bridal party. Xanatos had offered to throw them a big wedding with a reception and everything, which Elisa had refused in no uncertain terms. This smaller touch was much more fitting.

Also in the room were the stone figures of Angela and Broadway, crouched defensively around their egg. They were understandably protective of it and had taken to sleeping in this room during the day, as it was far more secure than standing out in the open over a one hundred and thirty story drop. Since the castle no longer had a rookery, and even if it did, keeping a single egg in there would be superfluous, the anxious parents-to-be took to guarding their precious cargo closely. When they were awake, the bundle never left Angela’s arms. Even during missions, Broadway and Angela took turns staying with the egg, keeping it within view at all times.

Elisa understood. It took a very long time for Gargoyle children to be born: six months gestation in the body of the female and then a full ten years as an egg. Elisa thought nine months was a long time to wait for a baby. She couldn’t even imagine the kind of apprehension and patience it took to wait for over a decade to meet your own child.

But, she reflected, if that’s what it took even for humans, she would do it. She would do anything to have a child. Before she met Goliath, it wasn’t something she had given much thought. Back then, she was much more focused on her career and wasn’t sure if she even wanted kids. If and when she decided she did, she figured she had plenty of time. Now that she knew it wasn’t a possibility with Goliath, it was all she could think about.

Elisa had talked to Beth and Maggie about it the night before. Maggie lamented that she wasn’t sure her augmented body was capable of bearing children or what effects her’s and Derek’s altered DNA would have on them. Beth and her girlfriend Serena, both only 21, had no interest in children. They both sympathized with her, but what could be done?

In Goliath, Elisa had found her true equal and soul mate. She was overjoyed to be with him and wouldn’t change a thing about their relationship, other than more social acceptance. Her mother was right, they had earned each other and they deserved to be happy. A child wouldn’t necessarily make it that much better, but still. Still. It would always be in the back of her mind, the one thing just out of reach.

Just as they settled in, cracks began to form in Angela’s and Broadway’s stone exterior. Instead of the normal explosive way they shed their skin, they carefully shifted this way and that to slither out of their cocoon, diligent even in sleep about protecting their offspring.

“Elisa!” Angela exclaimed upon seeing her, rising to her feet. “You look lovely!”

“Thanks, Angela,” Elisa said, embracing her.

“Are you nervous?” Angela asked as Broadway came up behind her, holding the egg.

“A bit,” Elisa said.

“I’ve never seen a human wedding before,” Broadway said. “Other than on T.V.”

“Neither have I,” Angela said.

“Well, this won’t be your average wedding, Big Guy,” Elisa said. “I dumped a bunch of the traditional stuff I didn’t think was necessary. This’ll be pretty bare bones compared to most other ceremonies.”

The door opened. Lexington, Brooklyn, and Katana entered the room with Matsuko, who had her tail wrapped around her father’s hand.

It was an odd contrast to see Brooklyn next to Lexington now, who had at one point been his and Broadway’s equal in age. Brooklyn no longer crouched when at rest anymore; that was apparently a trait among young Gargoyles or ones on the smallish side, like Lexington. Brooklyn had aged over forty years in the time stream, though it was more like twenty in equivalent human years, and his countenance reflected it. He stood much taller than before and straight as a post next to his mate, resting a hand on her shoulder.

Elisa felt a little like Lexington had gotten the short end of the stick. Compared to Broadway and Brooklyn, who were both mated and fathering children, Lexington seemed a little left out. He was always his usual cheerful self, though, and never seemed bitter about how things were.

“This is so exciting!” He said brightly. “Aren’t you excited?”

“That’s one word for it,” Elisa said wryly.

Katana grinned to see her gift in Elisa’s hair. “It suits you,” she said. Brooklyn smiled fondly at her.

“I love it, thank you again,” Elisa said.

“Goliath is in the Main Hall,” Brooklyn said, his voice deeper than it used to be. “He and the others are setting up and getting ready.”

“We’d better join them,” Derek said, nodding to the others in the room. All except Elisa and her father moved toward the door.

“Hey, guys, before you go,” Elisa said, addressing her Gargoyle companions and her family. “I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am to have you all in my life. You guys have been the best friends I’ve ever had, and I don’t know how to thank you for it. I know that this is all a little alien to you, and I’m honored that you’re all a part of it. I don’t know who I would be without you and I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate each of you. I love you guys.”

“Aw, Elisa,” Lexington said shyly. “We love you, too.”

“I look forward to becoming part of your family,” Angela said. “My father loves you. His joy is my joy.”

“We’d better get going,” Diane said. “I need to get into position and prepare Goliath for the ceremony.”

Elisa nodded. They hadn’t done a rehearsal. This was all being done with no prep-work, largely because the ceremony itself was going to be short and to the point, so they hadn’t felt the need for it. Elisa was rethinking this now, perhaps a bit too late.

The others left to get into their places, leaving her alone with Peter. He held out his hands for hers, and she took them, facing her father and willing herself not to cry.

Peter shook his head, smiling gently at her. “I can’t believe it.”

“What?” Elisa asked.

“My baby girl. My firstborn. Getting married.”

Elisa laughed. “Technically. Not legally.” She looked up at him, wincing. “Does that bother you?”

Peter shrugged. “Laws change. In ten years time, who knows? Maybe you’ll renew your vows with a real license in hand.”

“One can dream,” Elisa said wistfully. She looked up into her father’s eyes. “I’m glad you and Mom are being so cool about all of this. I can’t imagine what you thought when Goliath first spoke to you about it.”

“Well, to be honest, we’d have supported it regardless. Nothing Goliath could have said would have actually mattered,” Peter replied.

Elisa frowned. “Why not?”

“Because I trust my children,” Peter said. “If he had asked you and you said yes, there must have been a damn good reason for it. Even if I don’t fully understand it, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad decision. You’ve always been a good kid, Elisa. You were the one out of all your siblings I never had to worry about. You always had a good head on your shoulders. Hell, you never even had a rebellious phase, and you could have been a real monster if you wanted to be.”

Elisa flinched at the use of the word monster.

“Sorry,” Peter said. “Not what I meant. I should have said disaster.”

She playfully nudged him, laughing a little.

“You’re smart, Elisa,” Peter continued. “Smarter than your old man ever was. If you say this is what’s right for you, how am I supposed to argue?” He pulled her into a hug. “I’m here for you, kid, no matter what.”

She squeezed him tight. “I don’t deserve you guys.”

“Yes, you do,” Peter said. “You deserve the world. What kind of dad would I be if I didn’t give my little girl the world?”

A knock came at the door and Brooklyn peeked his head in. Peter and Elisa parted.

“Everyone’s ready,” He said. Elisa nodded with a shaky smile of thanks, and he withdrew.

“This is it,” Peter said. “Ready?”

“Yes.” Elisa closed her eyes and sucked in a breath, holding it for a five count. She exhaled slowly, opened her eyes, and said, “Lets go.”

He extended his elbow and she hooked her arm through it. Straightening her spine, she let her father lead her out of the room.

Since my work is no longer searchable, please do me a favor and reblog this story if you enjoyed it. Help me reach a wider audience! To help me continue creating, please consider buying me a Kofi, becoming a Patron, or donating directly to my PayPal!

Thanks for reading!

My Masterlist

The Exophilia Creator’s Masterlist

[orbemnews]

Terry McAuliffe wants to be Virginia's governor again. His opponents say it's time to move on. The former governor of Virginia, four years removed from the end of his first term, is vying for another shot at leading the commonwealth, running as the closest thing to an incumbent in a place that bars governors from serving successive terms. McAuliffe enters the race as the clear frontrunner, buoyed by a significant fundraising advantage, a who’s who list of endorsements and near total name recognition. But both Democratic politics and Virginia have changed since McAuliffe’s successful 2013 run, a shift exemplified by the Democratic legislature — which went blue in 2019 with McAuliffe’s help — moving to abolish the death penalty, tighten gun laws and reckon with the legacy of the Confederacy in a commonwealth closely tied to the Civil War South. With less than three months until the Democratic gubernatorial primary, McAuliffe — who faced no primary challenge eight years ago — is now being pushed by younger, more liberal challengers to explain how a leader synonymous with the political establishment reflects the future of the commonwealth and not the politics of a bygone era. The anti-McAuliffe charge ahead of the June 8 primary has been led by former Virginia delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy and Del. Lee Carter, two gubernatorial candidates who have been unabashedly critical of the former governor. Two other Democrats — state Sen. Jennifer McClellan and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax — haven’t been as pointed in their criticism of McAuliffe, but they have all echoed a similar message: McAuliffe’s time has passed. “He was the right candidate for that moment. He was the right governor for that moment,” said McClellan, referring to McAuliffe’s 2013 bid, which she supported. “Times have changed. Virginia has changed.” McAuliffe, a figure whose story in the Democratic Party is defined by millions of dollars raised, the Clintons and a tenure as chair of the Democratic National Committee, dismisses any suggestion he isn’t the future of the party. He points out that even after his time as governor, Virginia Democrats called on him to lead the effort that eventually won control of the Virginia General Assembly, giving the party full control of the state’s government for the first time in more than two decades. “I don’t pay any attention to them,” he said of his opponents suggesting his time has come and gone. “I’m laying out my own plan on why I’m running.” Any Democrat who wins the primary will be facing a Republican Party in turmoil, one where Virginia Republicans are searching for a standard bearer at a time when the national party is split between tying themselves to the vision of former President Donald Trump or breaking away from the failed 2020 candidate. A series of Republicans are laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial bid, including state Sen. Amanda Chase, businessman Pete Snyder, Del. Kirk Cox and businessman Glenn Youngkin. McAuliffe has already flooded his Democratic opponents in three things: Money, policy and endorsements. The prolific fundraiser fired a warning shot early in the campaign when he announced he had raised $6.1 million in 2020, a staggering number that dwarfed his opponents’ own efforts. And when he announced in December, his candidacy came along with a long list of endorsements, including a number of high-profile Democrats who serve with some of his primary challengers. Since then, McAuliffe has rolled out policy after policy, aiming to both burnish his progressive credentials and argue that because Virginia is now in Democratic control, something the governor did not enjoy during his tenure, he will be able to get more done. “I leaned in (as governor), but I had a Republican legislature. Now, with a Democratic legislature, all the big things that need to be fixed, we can get done,” he said. “Heck, I just warming up. You give me a Democratic legislature, there is no stopping me.” ‘The appetite for career politicians… is long gone’ McAuliffe’s desire to run for a second term as governor has long been one of the worst kept secrets in the commonwealth. The former chair of the DNC and CNN political commentator relished the job, often joking about how his election — after Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson served as Virginia’s first and second governors — was a sign of American exceptionalism. If McAuliffe were to win in November, however, he would do something neither Henry nor Jefferson ever did: Serve two four-year terms as the commonwealth’s chief executive. The Virginia constitution prohibits governors from serving two successive terms and very few Virginia politicians have done so. The last person to do it was Mills Godwin, a segregationist who won as a Democrat in 1966 and as a Republican in 1974. McAuliffe argues that even though he feels like he accomplished everything he could as governor — “I don’t know if you could find (a regret). I mean, I worked like a dog,” he said — it just makes sense for him to reprise a role that is part Virginia’s chief executive, part commonwealth cheerleader. Virginians “know I can get things done,” McAuliffe said. “I did it before and they all know with a Democratic legislature, boy, I feel bad for those other 49 states cause I’m telling you Virginia is going to lead the country.” But his third run at governor (he tried and failed to win the party’s nomination in 2009) also means standing in the way of possible history: If either McClellan or Foy were to win, she would become both the first woman to lead Virginia and the first Black woman governor in US history. The significance of making such history, especially in a state that once housed the Capitol of the South during the Civil War, is powerful to both women. “I feel the weight of it because… to know what my family has gone through, the fights that my parents and my grandparents and my great grandparents had to fight, to know that I’m still fighting those fights and I need to keep my children from fighting those same fights, I feel the weight of that,” said McClellan, growing emotional as she described the potential for history. “I feel the weight of knowing I am running for a position in a system that was never built for me.” To McAuliffe’s opponents, the reasoning for his candidacy is deeply flawed. And no candidate is more eager to go after McAuliffe than Foy, who resigned her assembly seat in December to focus on her gubernatorial run. “I can’t allow Terry McAuliffe to run a status quo race, while he romanticizes his time as governor,” said Foy, who has argued her experience as one of the first women to every graduate from Virginia Military Institute and a mother of two who still struggles with child care and student loan debt is more representative of the commonwealth. Foy has attacked McAuliffe on everything from donations he has taken to deals he made as governor to the fact he did little to address Confederate monuments. But her overarching criticism is that she represents Virginia’s most progressive future, while McAuliffe represents the past. “The appetite for career politicians who have continued to maintain the status quo that has hurt so many Virginians is long gone,” she said in an interview. But Foy is not alone in trying to run on McAuliffe’s left. Lee Carter, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist state delegate with deep ties to the Bernie Sanders network of supporters and liberal organizations, has begun to lambast the former governor as not progressive enough. “I see him as the guy that got us here and that’s in very, very real ways,” Carter told CNN, hammering McAuliffe for his support of pipelines through the state and economic policies that focused more on the rich than the poor. “We’ve spent the last eight years fighting against some of the worst things from McAuliffe’s time as governor.” Neither McClellan nor Fairfax has been as direct in their criticism of McAuliffe as Foy and Carter, but their differences are primarily in tone, not substance. “The voters decide what they are looking for in their candidates and in their visions for the future. But I do think it is very clear that people want their leaders to be focused on a vision for the future,” said Fairfax. For Fairfax, opposing McAuliffe is personal. During a chaotic period in Virginia government, Fairfax was accused of sexual assault by two women in 2019. Both women still stand by their allegations. Fairfax denied both accusations and continues to fight them to this day. He had filed a defamation suit against CBS, in which he alleged the network defamed him when, in 2019, it aired interviews with the two women. A judge dismissed the case last year, but Fairfax has appealed the decision, the Associated Press reported. It is apparent that it still bothers the lieutenant governor and people close to him that McAuliffe, by then the former governor, had quickly called for him to step down due to the allegations. Voters are “totally against the politics of the past and the traditional tactics of personal destruction that we have seen govern for too long,” Fairfax said, a not-so-subtle nod to McAuliffe. ‘People are looking for tested leadership’ McAuliffe supporters, when pressed on the attacks facing the former governor, will often compare him to another centrist Democrat who has found recent success: President Joe Biden. “People are looking for tested leadership,” said Louise Lucas, the president pro tempore of the Virginia state Senate and a McAuliffe campaign co-chair. “They need people with experience who can hit the ground running day one, who doesn’t have to try to cultivate all those relationships.” Referring to Biden winning in 2020: “That in and of itself tell me people are looking for tested leadership.” Virginia overwhelmingly backed Biden during the 2020 primary, selecting him over liberal leaders like Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. And the state, which was once considered a battleground but has moved towards Democrats in recent years, would later back Biden over Trump by 10 percentage points in November. And McAuliffe is very close, both politically and personally, with the President. Comparisons to the 2020 presidential election, however, ignore the fact that Democrats were as motivated to vote against Trump as they were to vote for Biden. “That’s so simplistic, I don’t even know what to say,” said McClellan. “Biden won in large part because he was the candidate who had the most government experience and the most experience solving people’s problems. … I have more state government experience and public service experience addressing the needs of Virginia than all of my opponents combined, including Terry McAuliffe.” Foy was even more pointed, comparing McAuliffe’s candidacy to Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential run. “The comparison I hear about is Barack Obama and Hillary,” she said. “How you had people saying that there’s a person who is inevitable, who is a money machine, who has been around politics for a very long time and therefore everyone needs to make way.” The issue that these anti-McAuliffe candidates run into is space. People close to McAuliffe cheered when Carter entered the race, believing he will further box out candidates like Foy. And the longer the four challengers stay in, the harder it will be for either candidate to make up for their lack of statewide name recognition or consolidate the anti-McAuliffe support. “If you believed that was so important, wouldn’t you gather together and consolidate your vote?” asked Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Sabato concluded that, along with Virginia Democrats’ desire to win, will help McAuliffe. “Because Democrats lost for so long in Virginia… Democrats still have a minority mentality even though they are in the majority and because of that, they do tend to make practical decision in primaries,” he said. “That may be the best thing McAuliffe has, other than incumbency and money, on his behalf.” CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect first name for Glenn Youngkin. Source link Orbem News #Governor #McAuliffe #move #Opponents #Politics #Terry #TerryMcAuliffeviesforfourmoreyearsinachangedDemocraticenvironment-CNNPolitics #Time #Virginias

[dipulb3]

Terry McAuliffe wants to be Virginia's governor again. His opponents say it's time to move on.

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/terry-mcauliffe-wants-to-be-virginias-governor-again-his-opponents-say-its-time-to-move-on/

Terry McAuliffe wants to be Virginia's governor again. His opponents say it's time to move on.

The former governor of Virginia, four years removed from the end of his first term, is vying for another shot at leading the commonwealth, running as the closest thing to an incumbent in a place that bars governors from serving successive terms. McAuliffe enters the race as the clear frontrunner, buoyed by a significant fundraising advantage, a who’s who list of endorsements and near total name recognition.

But both Democratic politics and Virginia have changed since McAuliffe’s successful 2013 run, a shift exemplified by the Democratic legislature — which went blue in 2019 with McAuliffe’s help — moving to abolish the death penalty, tighten gun laws and reckon with the legacy of the Confederacy in a commonwealth closely tied to the Civil War South.

With less than three months until the Democratic gubernatorial primary, McAuliffe — who faced no primary challenge eight years ago — is now being pushed by younger, more liberal challengers to explain how a leader synonymous with the political establishment reflects the future of the commonwealth and not the politics of a bygone era.

The anti-McAuliffe charge ahead of the June 8 primary has been led by former Virginia delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy and Del. Lee Carter, two gubernatorial candidates who have been unabashedly critical of the former governor. Two other Democrats — state Sen. Jennifer McClellan and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax — haven’t been as pointed in their criticism of McAuliffe, but they have all echoed a similar message: McAuliffe’s time has passed.

“He was the right candidate for that moment. He was the right governor for that moment,” said McClellan, referring to McAuliffe’s 2013 bid, which she supported. “Times have changed. Virginia has changed.”

McAuliffe, a figure whose story in the Democratic Party is defined by millions of dollars raised, the Clintons and a tenure as chair of the Democratic National Committee, dismisses any suggestion he isn’t the future of the party. He points out that even after his time as governor, Virginia Democrats called on him to lead the effort that eventually won control of the Virginia General Assembly, giving the party full control of the state’s government for the first time in more than two decades.

“I don’t pay any attention to them,” he said of his opponents suggesting his time has come and gone. “I’m laying out my own plan on why I’m running.”

Any Democrat who wins the primary will be facing a Republican Party in turmoil, one where Virginia Republicans are searching for a standard bearer at a time when the national party is split between tying themselves to the vision of former President Donald Trump or breaking away from the failed 2020 candidate. A series of Republicans are laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial bid, including state Sen. Amanda Chase, businessman Pete Snyder, Del. Kirk Cox and businessman Glenn Youngkin.

McAuliffe has already flooded his Democratic opponents in three things: Money, policy and endorsements.

The prolific fundraiser fired a warning shot early in the campaign when he announced he had raised $6.1 million in 2020, a staggering number that dwarfed his opponents’ own efforts. And when he announced in December, his candidacy came along with a long list of endorsements, including a number of high-profile Democrats who serve with some of his primary challengers.

Since then, McAuliffe has rolled out policy after policy, aiming to both burnish his progressive credentials and argue that because Virginia is now in Democratic control, something the governor did not enjoy during his tenure, he will be able to get more done.

“I leaned in (as governor), but I had a Republican legislature. Now, with a Democratic legislature, all the big things that need to be fixed, we can get done,” he said. “Heck, I just warming up. You give me a Democratic legislature, there is no stopping me.”

‘The appetite for career politicians… is long gone’

McAuliffe’s desire to run for a second term as governor has long been one of the worst kept secrets in the commonwealth. The former chair of the DNC and Appradab political commentator relished the job, often joking about how his election — after Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson served as Virginia’s first and second governors — was a sign of American exceptionalism.

If McAuliffe were to win in November, however, he would do something neither Henry nor Jefferson ever did: Serve two four-year terms as the commonwealth’s chief executive. The Virginia constitution prohibits governors from serving two successive terms and very few Virginia politicians have done so. The last person to do it was Mills Godwin, a segregationist who won as a Democrat in 1966 and as a Republican in 1974.

McAuliffe argues that even though he feels like he accomplished everything he could as governor — “I don’t know if you could find (a regret). I mean, I worked like a dog,” he said — it just makes sense for him to reprise a role that is part Virginia’s chief executive, part commonwealth cheerleader.

Virginians “know I can get things done,” McAuliffe said. “I did it before and they all know with a Democratic legislature, boy, I feel bad for those other 49 states cause I’m telling you Virginia is going to lead the country.”

But his third run at governor (he tried and failed to win the party’s nomination in 2009) also means standing in the way of possible history: If either McClellan or Foy were to win, she would become both the first woman to lead Virginia and the first Black woman governor in US history.

The significance of making such history, especially in a state that once housed the Capitol of the South during the Civil War, is powerful to both women.

“I feel the weight of it because… to know what my family has gone through, the fights that my parents and my grandparents and my great grandparents had to fight, to know that I’m still fighting those fights and I need to keep my children from fighting those same fights, I feel the weight of that,” said McClellan, growing emotional as she described the potential for history. “I feel the weight of knowing I am running for a position in a system that was never built for me.”

To McAuliffe’s opponents, the reasoning for his candidacy is deeply flawed. And no candidate is more eager to go after McAuliffe than Foy, who resigned her assembly seat in December to focus on her gubernatorial run.

“I can’t allow Terry McAuliffe to run a status quo race, while he romanticizes his time as governor,” said Foy, who has argued her experience as one of the first women to every graduate from Virginia Military Institute and a mother of two who still struggles with child care and student loan debt is more representative of the commonwealth.

Foy has attacked McAuliffe on everything from donations he has taken to deals he made as governor to the fact he did little to address Confederate monuments. But her overarching criticism is that she represents Virginia’s most progressive future, while McAuliffe represents the past.

“The appetite for career politicians who have continued to maintain the status quo that has hurt so many Virginians is long gone,” she said in an interview.

But Foy is not alone in trying to run on McAuliffe’s left. Lee Carter, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist state delegate with deep ties to the Bernie Sanders network of supporters and liberal organizations, has begun to lambast the former governor as not progressive enough.

“I see him as the guy that got us here and that’s in very, very real ways,” Carter told Appradab, hammering McAuliffe for his support of pipelines through the state and economic policies that focused more on the rich than the poor. “We’ve spent the last eight years fighting against some of the worst things from McAuliffe’s time as governor.”

Neither McClellan nor Fairfax has been as direct in their criticism of McAuliffe as Foy and Carter, but their differences are primarily in tone, not substance.

“The voters decide what they are looking for in their candidates and in their visions for the future. But I do think it is very clear that people want their leaders to be focused on a vision for the future,” said Fairfax.

For Fairfax, opposing McAuliffe is personal. During a chaotic period in Virginia government, Fairfax was accused of sexual assault by two women in 2019. Both women still stand by their allegations.

Fairfax denied both accusations and continues to fight them to this day. He had filed a defamation suit against CBS, in which he alleged the network defamed him when, in 2019, it aired interviews with the two women. A judge dismissed the case last year, but Fairfax has appealed the decision, the Associated Press reported.

It is apparent that it still bothers the lieutenant governor and people close to him that McAuliffe, by then the former governor, had quickly called for him to step down due to the allegations.

Voters are “totally against the politics of the past and the traditional tactics of personal destruction that we have seen govern for too long,” Fairfax said, a not-so-subtle nod to McAuliffe.

‘People are looking for tested leadership’

McAuliffe supporters, when pressed on the attacks facing the former governor, will often compare him to another centrist Democrat who has found recent success: President Joe Biden.

“People are looking for tested leadership,” said Louise Lucas, the president pro tempore of the Virginia state Senate and a McAuliffe campaign co-chair. “They need people with experience who can hit the ground running day one, who doesn’t have to try to cultivate all those relationships.”

Referring to Biden winning in 2020: “That in and of itself tell me people are looking for tested leadership.”

Virginia overwhelmingly backed Biden during the 2020 primary, selecting him over liberal leaders like Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. And the state, which was once considered a battleground but has moved towards Democrats in recent years, would later back Biden over Trump by 10 percentage points in November. And McAuliffe is very close, both politically and personally, with the President.

Comparisons to the 2020 presidential election, however, ignore the fact that Democrats were as motivated to vote against Trump as they were to vote for Biden.

“That’s so simplistic, I don’t even know what to say,” said McClellan. “Biden won in large part because he was the candidate who had the most government experience and the most experience solving people’s problems. … I have more state government experience and public service experience addressing the needs of Virginia than all of my opponents combined, including Terry McAuliffe.”

Foy was even more pointed, comparing McAuliffe’s candidacy to Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential run.

“The comparison I hear about is Barack Obama and Hillary,” she said. “How you had people saying that there’s a person who is inevitable, who is a money machine, who has been around politics for a very long time and therefore everyone needs to make way.”

The issue that these anti-McAuliffe candidates run into is space. People close to McAuliffe cheered when Carter entered the race, believing he will further box out candidates like Foy. And the longer the four challengers stay in, the harder it will be for either candidate to make up for their lack of statewide name recognition or consolidate the anti-McAuliffe support.

“If you believed that was so important, wouldn’t you gather together and consolidate your vote?” asked Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Sabato concluded that, along with Virginia Democrats’ desire to win, will help McAuliffe.

“Because Democrats lost for so long in Virginia… Democrats still have a minority mentality even though they are in the majority and because of that, they do tend to make practical decision in primaries,” he said. “That may be the best thing McAuliffe has, other than incumbency and money, on his behalf.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect first name for Glenn Youngkin.

[jonathanalumbaugh]

What I learned

January 20th, 2018, 8th issue. A roundup of what I learned this week, sources linked. Published weekly. All blurbs written by yours truly unless otherwise noted. Grouped in quasi-random order.

Design

Companies that value design will take initiatives that are not just good for the consciences of the people who work there, but for the consumer as well. — CVS bans photo manipulation in store beauty brands, pressures suppliers

Finance

Some investments pay dividends. Investments that do are not using that money to reinvest in the company, which would ideally bolster the value of the investment. However, dividends can be reinvested to further grow. — A Beginner’s Guide to Dividend Investing

Short answer: you can't write off services. — How to write off non-profit work? - Professional Webmaster Business Issues forum at WebmasterWorld - WebmasterWorld

A single actor has been manipulating the price of Bitcoin for kind of a while now. — Just One Person Found To Have Caused Bitcoin’s Jump Fr... | News | Cointelegraph

Roth IRAs are good. Go to one of the many providers and set one up. — Roth IRAs Just Became an Even Better Deal for Retirement Savings

Jordan Peterson

Controversial figure Jordan Peterson has popped up a lot in my news feed lately. Why? I read a bunch of stuff to figure it out. It's hard to find articles that don't either herald him as the second coming (hyperbole) or denounce him as worse than the devil (hyperbole again), but I might have found one.

Be prepared. Going into a situation knowingly underprepared is negligent. — Fight Club: Jordan Peterson vs. Cathy Newman « Why Evolution Is True

Probably the most non-partisan sounding article about Peterson that I've read thusfar. — What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson? - The Chronicle of Higher Education

We depend on verbal communication to form and re-form our ideas. Claiming the "right not to be offended" preconcludes the possibility of the difficult discussions that are necessary to hone our views. — Why We Cannot Have the Right Not To Be Offended

Life

Leave events without saying goodbye to everyone. — 10 Reasons ‘Ghosting’ at an Event Is 1,000 Times Better Than Saying Goodbye

Could we change the discourse on alcohol by changing how we approach our desires? — It Was Only When I Quit Drinking That I Realized How Bad It Was for Me - VICE

Knowing the difference between a thought and an emotion is helpful as it allows us to deal with our emotions. — Learning Thoughts and Emotions | Psychology Today

The Pugh Matrix is a simple but powerful decision making tool. It is most useful in situations where there are multiple options as it allows an objective comparison of the options based on your criteria. — Pugh Matrix — Pugh Matrix step by step

Neat!

Apparently Volkswagen is still alive and kicking. — 2019 Volkswagen Jetta redesigned and revealed at Detroit Auto Show - Autoblog

I JUST ASKED SIRI IF A CERTAIN BOY WOULD EVER TEXT ME AND SHE SENT A TEXT SAYING WILL YOU EVER TEXT ME TO HIM. My funeral will be held at 8pm this Thursday.

— Ceci ✮ (@CeciMula)

January 17, 2018

— Siri betrays human friend by texting her crush

The hottest pepper ever was developed as an alternative anaesthetic for those who are allergic to anaesthetics, the pepper is so hot that it numbs the skin. — The World's Hottest Pepper Is Actually Lethal | Tasting Table

Miscellaneous

Build a wall they said... — Border Wall Models Thwart US Commandos In Tests « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

I'm not sure why this info is valuable but it was somehow interesting despite the fact I didn't understand about 50% of it. — It is *not* possible to detect and block Chrome headless

Scandal

Excerpt: When the conversation centres around assault instead of encompassing what leads to it, we lose crucial insights into what can change on a more organic, fundamental level. What Ansari did doesn’t quite count as assault in the legal sense—but it begs the question of why legality is the only benchmark we keep for ourselves. To reduce the dehumanisation and discomfort of a woman to “bad foreplay” is to excuse the willful, clumsy disregard for a woman as a person. (Emphasis added.) — Aziz Ansari is not the woke desi feminist we thought he was — Quartz

Excerpt: Whatever Ansari deserved, isn’t something broken? And how do we start to fix it? — Aziz Ansari sexual-misconduct allegation: We're all very sick - The Washington Post

Excerpt: sexual assault [is] “not a ‘mistake’ but a deliberate decision to treat another person like a soulless object.” — Aziz, We Tried to Warn You - The New York Times

The relationship between men and women must be fixed or it will continue to be one "of permanent war." — Catherine Deneuve and the French Feminist Difference

I don't know what to do with this information. — The email a Babe.net writer sent to HLN's Ashleigh Banfield about the Aziz Ansari story - Business Insider

The comment section of every article resulting from the firestorm that is the #MeToo movement is a place that makes me wonder when internet outrage will die. The internet is a fake outlet, allowing trite responses to be dissipated into the nothingness of a virtual reality. Occasionally it will bring about real change, but so much more often it's a place to let off the steam that would otherwise boil over into real action. — The Hollywood Tide Turns on Woody Allen - The Atlantic

While apologists continue to say the Aziz Ansari story is an example of a movement gone off the rails, and as tempting as it can be to choose that view, it's not hard to imagine that "Grace" didn't just say no out of fear. — The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari - The Atlantic — Opinion | Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader. - The New York Times

Social Media

Those who hold the reigns to our entertainment are in an unprecedented place of power right now. The generation that has/is growing up in social media is hyper-aware of its power, and know how to make use of it. — Jake Paul Is A Terrifying Genius And We Should All Be Scared

Your personal statement should be a short story about what you do, accomplish, value, how you're different, and why you are valuable. — How To Write A Stellar LinkedIn Summary