#in any case the bennet women were never going to be left out in the cold by the gardiners

[anghraine]

I always find it interesting that no one in P&P has any doubt that Mr Gardiner could and would have shelled out ten thousand pounds to bribe Wickham.

Mr Bennet is determined (at least at the time) to eventually repay him, when he believes Mr Gardiner paid it, but he does believe that. Mrs Bennet simply shrugs off the vast sum of money that everyone believes was expended to preserve Lydia's reputation. Her justification is that she and her daughters would have inherited all her brother's money if he hadn't gone and got married and had children of his own (how dare!). His assurance that she's going to be fine is not an empty one.

Elizabeth doesn't seem to doubt it, either. And earlier, at Pemberley, she assumed that Darcy had mistaken the Gardiners for members of fashionable upper-class society—a believable mistake to make, apparently, and he is surprised that they're Mrs Bennet's relatives. (I mean. Fair.) Their summer trip is likely not a cheap one. They're doing quite well.

In any case, I do think the Gardiners' prosperity and its bearing on the Bennets' situation is kind of overlooked by the fandom.

[pennsylvaniaprelawland-blog]

Governor Cuomo Faces Multiple Sexual Harassment Accusations

By Sophia Gengaro, Villanova University Class of 2022

March 9, 2021

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is facing legal trouble, and it does not look like it will be going away. The Governor of New York has been accused of sexual harassment, both in the workplace and outside of it, by three separate women.

The first woman who came forward with accusations against Governor Cuomo was Lindsey Boylan. In December, she also publicly accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, but it never escalated. Lindsey Boylan alleges that “Mr. Cuomo had a “crush” on her, said the governor went “out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs.” In October 2017, during a flight back from an event in Western New York, Ms. Boylan said Mr. Cuomo told her they should “play strip poker.” And in 2018, she said Mr. Cuomo gave her an unsolicited kiss after a one-on-one meeting in his Manhattan office”. [1] Governor Cuomo’s office continuously denied these claims.

The second woman who came forward, two days after Lindsey Boylan accused Governor Cuomo of sexual harassment was Charlotte Bennett. She is a 25 year old former aide of the Governor who left her job in the State Capitol in November. Charlotte Bennet accused Governor Cuomo of making inappropriate sexual advances towards her, asking “about her sex life and whether she had ever had sex with older men” and “if she thought age made a difference in romantic relationships, remarks she took as overtures to a sexual relationship”. [1]. After Charlotte Bennett told the Governor’s Chief of Staff about the inappropriate interaction between her and Cuomo, Bennet was transferred to a different job in a different place. Governor Andrew Cuomo denies the fact that he was inappropriate or harassing towards Charlotte Bennett. [1].

While the first two women who accused Cuomo of sexual harassment were women that he worked with, the third woman did not work for the Governor. At a wedding in September of 2019, Governor Andrew Cuomo allegedly inappropriately touched 33 year old Ann Ruch repeatedly. First, Governor Cuomo put his hand on her lower back during a conversation about a speech he gave at that same wedding. When Ann Ruch “removed his hand with her own, the governor remarked that she seemed “aggressive” and placed his hands on her cheeks and asked if he could kiss her. Ms. Ruch said she pulled away as the governor drew closer”. [1]

In light of these allegations, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo only “apologized   for workplace comments that he said “have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation”, but denied that he inappropriately touched nor sexually harassed any of the three women.” [2]While the investigation of accusations against Cuomo are not complete, ironically, in 2019, Governor Cuomo passed New York legislation which makes it easier for women to legally pursue men who sexually assaulted them. [3]Prior to these laws, it was difficult for women to make a strong case against a man unless the sexual harassment was “pervasive over a long period of time for you to be successful. The new law eliminates that requirement and even an isolated or singular incident could be the subject of a lawsuit." [3]In addition, these new laws give women who accuse men of sexual assault more protection from retaliation by the accused employer. Instead the new laws focus on how the harassment was interpreted by the woman and to what extent the actions affected her". [3]

The investigation will be led by Attorney General who will use investigators from a specially selected law firm that is independent from the government. These investigators will be given power to subpoena the government’s office, as well as the opportunity to interview any relevant personal from the government’s staff. In addition, electronic records such as text messages, phone calls, emails and photos will be searched through and elected. Once the investigators collect evidence and create a full report, “those investigators will give their report to the attorney general to make a possible civil or criminal referral for action”. [3]

When the report is developed, it will be released to the public. In the past cases, of sexual harassment by elected officials has caused them to resign, regardless of whether or not the case is pursued in court. Public knowledge of the report by the investigators, once it is released by the Attorney General, has strong potential to force Governor Cuomo to resign and potentially face civil or criminal charges prior to during, or after his potential resignation from his elected position as Governor of New York. [3]

______________________________________________________________

[1] Ferré-Sadurní, Luis. "Sexual Harassment Claims Against Cuomo: What We Know So Far." The New York Times. March 01, 2021. Accessed March 05, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/article/cuomo-sexual-harassment-nursing-homes-covid-19.html.

[2] Ferré-Sadurní, Luis. "Cuomo Could Be Compelled to Testify in Sexual-Harassment Inquiry." The New York Times. March 02, 2021. Accessed March 05, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/nyregion/cuomo-sexual-harassment-testify.html.

[3] Plants, Author: Ron. "What Could Happen with Sexual Harassment Case against Gov. Cuomo." Wgrz.com. March 03, 2021. Accessed March 05, 2021. https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/politics/what-could-happen-with-sexual-harassment-case-against-new-york-governor-andrew-cuomo/71-0991f9c1-58bd-45b9-8522-54b1676557db.

Photo Credit: Delta News Hub

[lilyvandersteen]

Out of the Blue: Chapter 3

Cover art: @redheadgleek​

Beta extraordinaire: @hkvoyage​

Author’s Note:

I'm in a terrible mood whenever I haven't slept enough, and Blaine in this story is just as moody and irritable when sleep-deprived :-) You have been warned!

Chapter 3: Mr. Grumps Down in the Dumps

Mr. Bingley had soon made himself acquainted with all the principal people in the room; he was lively and unreserved, danced every dance, was angry that the ball closed so early, and talked of giving one himself at Netherfield. Such amiable qualities must speak for themselves. What a contrast between him and his friend! Mr. Darcy danced only once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Bingley, declined being introduced to any other lady, and spent the rest of the evening in walking about the room, speaking occasionally to one of his own party. His character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come there again. Amongst the most violent against him was Mrs. Bennet, whose dislike of his general behaviour was sharpened into particular resentment by his having slighted one of her daughters.

(An excerpt from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

That Saturday, Blaine was in a horrible mood. He’d been woken in the middle of the night by loud squeals. Cooper’s latest conquest was a screamer, it seemed. What’s more, she hadn’t left discreetly after the hook-up. Instead, she stayed for breakfast, never noticing how her shrill peppiness made both Anderson brothers wince, and she addressed Blaine like he was a child. Now, he’d be the first to admit that he wasn’t too tall and that he looked young, but he looked teenager young, not toddler young.

When she exclaimed over his ‘cute curls’, and threaded her fingers through them, he gritted through his teeth, “Don’t touch me!” and stomped away, his stomach growling in protest when he left his breakfast half finished.

He was working on an essay for school when Cooper came in and flung himself onto Blaine’s bed. “She’s gone, squirt.”

“Don’t call me squirt,” Blaine snapped. “And good riddance. You sure know how to pick them, ugh.”

“She had great boobs.”

“That must have been the only great thing about her.”

Cooper tilted his head to the side, conceding the point.

“And now I’m starving because she chased me away from breakfast!”

Cooper chuckled. “Aw, Blainey, you didn’t like having your curls played with by a beautiful lady?”

Blaine shot him a dark glare, but it only made Coop laugh out loud.

“If you’re only coming here to laugh at me, you can clear out. I have work to do, and I don’t need any distractions.”

Coop rolled onto his stomach. “I came here to touch base about our plans this evening.”

“Plans?”

“The wedding! It starts at 6.30 PM, it says on the invitation. And it’s in Brooklyn, so we should probably leave by 5.30.”

Blaine groaned. He’d forgotten all about the wedding.

“I got you your guitar!” Cooper said, dashing out of the room, and coming back with a gleaming guitar case. “Here you go!”

Blaine’s fingers itched to open the case and try out the guitar, but he had school work to do, so with another groan, he turned away from Cooper and his bribe and focused on his research.

“And I’ll bring you a sandwich. And coffee. Okay?”

True to his word, Cooper brought Blaine food and coffee five minutes later. Blaine grabbed the sandwich right away, bit into it and mumbled a fervent thanks.

“5.30, squirt, don’t forget!”

Blaine, his mouth full to bursting, just nodded, letting the ‘squirt’ slide for now. Getting food in his system was more important. Ah, but he was hungry!

K&B

At four o’clock that afternoon, Cooper bounded back into Blaine’s room.

“Blainey… Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the wedding? I know how long it takes for you to fix your curls and make yourself pretty!”

Blaine let out a deep sigh. “All right, all right, I’ll stop working and hop into the shower.”

Cooper beamed. “I’ll be in the living room.”

“Oh, Coop? What did you buy them as a wedding present?”

“The pet pavilion, of course! They’re going to be so pleased!”

Blaine rolled his eyes. “If you want me to tag along, buy a NORMAL present in my name, please. You can waste your money on this ridiculous overpriced cat stuff, but I want to give the brides something useful.”

“Like what?” Cooper asked.

“Like a nice duvet. Or a set of bath-towels. Or some top-of-the-range kitchen stuff. Let me see the invitation, please?”

Cooper went to fetch it, and handed it to Blaine, who looked up the wedding registry. He was pleased to see that the brides had, in the meantime, added regular stuff like pots and pans and a clothes hamper.

“Get me that set of fruit bowls. That’s a nice gift.”

                        Cooper saluted. “Consider it done. A fabulous gift from me and a boring one from you.”

By the time Blaine was showered and groomed and suited up, Cooper had bought a beautiful bouquet of flowers with a congratulations card for the brides as well, and handed it to him with a wide smile. “All set now! Let’s go!”

When the town car came to a halt at the address mentioned on the invitation, Blaine frowned as he got out. The neighborhood looked derelict. And the people hanging around seemed a little too interested in Cooper’s gleaming car, which stood out like a sore thumb.

Blaine shivered and hoped they wouldn’t get mugged. That was all he needed to ruin the day further.

Cooper seemed to get the same vibe, and said to their chauffeur, “Best not stay here, Bill. I’ll call you when I need you to come pick us up.”

“Right, sir. Good evening, sir.”

And the car drove off. At once, Blaine felt very vulnerable. Holding the bouquet, he wouldn’t be able to fight if someone were to attack him.

“Let’s go inside,” he urged Cooper.

The building looked just as run-down on the inside. There was no elevator, and the stairs were worn and creaky.

The apartment numbers weren’t clearly indicated, but there was music floating down, so they only had to follow the sound to find the right place.

When Cooper knocked, nobody seemed to hear him. Not the first time, not the second, nor the third. After five tries, Blaine huffed, shoved the flowers at his brother, and tried to open the door. It slid open easily to reveal a loud and colorful chaos. All the guests were clapping and dancing, and in the middle were two gorgeous women in white dresses, singing Valerie and dancing with each other and giggling.

“Well, nothing like jumping straight into the party,” Cooper said. He put the flowers and the card on the nearest table and joined the dancers.

Blaine stayed where he was, looking at the brides and their guests and feeling very much out of place.

“Ooooh,” the brunette bride sighed as she sank onto the sofa after the song. “You know, Britts, that was the first time. That I felt like… I wanted to be with you forever. You were dancing with Mike, and I came to dance next to you, and you smiled. And I just knew. That you were the one.”

“Awwww,” Cooper cooed loudly, and more than just the brides’ heads snapped up.

“Oh, the last guests have arrived!” said a clear, high voice. “Welcome, welcome!”

The voice belonged to a tall man with blue eyes, a high coif and a clear complexion. He was dressed in a velvet burgundy three-piece suit that hugged him in all the right places.

Blaine felt attraction flare up bright and wild, but squashed it quickly when he saw that Mr. Gorgeous only had eyes for Cooper. Figures. Who’d see me next to Coop?

He wished he could just disappear. Nobody wanted him here anyway, not even Cooper, who was charming everyone already and having a splendid time, so it seemed.

But he felt himself grabbed by the arm as Coop loudly proclaimed, “And this is my younger brother Blaine. He was in show choir too!”

Blaine, taken off-guard, could do no more than say, “Uh, hi!”

Coop whispered in Blaine’s ear, “Smile! I saw you looking at the fashionable guy. If you want him, hit him with that Anderson charm!”

Blaine did as he was told, but he might as well have been invisible for all the reaction he got - a few polite nods and a once-over from a few of the girls. Mr. Gorgeous didn’t even spare him a glance. He was too busy sucking up to Coop, and mentioning emphatically that he was single, and hadn’t had much luck in love so far. Unlike Ohio, where he was from, New York City had plenty of gay men, but none that wanted to commit, it seemed.

Coop nodded. “I know what you mean. I’m not ready to settle down yet, but my brother is, and he tells me the same as you.”

Coop helpfully pointed to Blaine again, but Mr. Gorgeous didn’t look his way.

Blaine sank deeper into his sulk, scowling when Mr. Gorgeous urged everyone to head up the fire escape to the roof for the ceremony and then went up the stairs right in front of him, flaunting his endless legs and perfect ass in pants that seemed painted on.

He paid little attention to the ceremony, though he noticed that the man officiating was delectable too, tall, dark and handsome, and with a smile that rivalled Cooper’s in charm and intensity.

After the ceremony, Mr. Gorgeous and a tiny loud brunette went around with sparkling wine and platters of hors d’oeuvres. There was a wide assortment of finger food, all of it delicious, and for dessert a cake that was light and fluffy and so scrumptious that Blaine indulged in it until his stomach hurt, and then he felt disgusted with himself and even grumpier than before. He sat down on the nearest chair, feeling queasy, and hoping that Coop wouldn’t stay too long.

The brides’ first dance was beautiful. Even in the midst of his sulk, he had to admit that. Their faces were radiant, their moves were flawless, and they were perfectly in sync at all times. After the dance was over, they stayed put for another while, holding on to each other and whispering in low voices, punctuating each sentence with a kiss.

It wasn’t until the others joined them on the makeshift dance floor that it dawned on Blaine he had seen hide nor hair of the brides’ parents. Wasn’t it customary to have a father-daughter dance? And where were the drunk uncles and the loud aunts? Come to think of it, Blaine hadn’t seen anyone around from another age bracket than his own. Well, except for Cooper.

Even the officiant looked student-aged. Hmm…

Blaine looked around at the terrace. Tastefully decorated, yes, but it had clearly been done on a shoestring budget.

The food, too, however stellar, had all been clearly home-made, including the wedding cake. The sparkling wine had tasted great, but it had definitely not been champagne.

When he heard police sirens cut through the music for a moment, all his misgivings about the neighborhood came back with a vengeance, and he wondered who on earth would want to get married in a place like that.

It was nice enough for a party, he had to give them that. Lots of room, good acoustics. But it had more of a party vibe than it screamed wedding.

He headed to the table that held the presents from people who hadn’t bought something from the wedding registry, and got even more suspicious. The only decent gift on the table was a set of crystal champagne glasses in a silver bucket, donated by someone who called herself Sugar. The rest was a mishmash of cheap kitchen accessories and low-quality booze. How anyone could think a six-pack of Budweiser constituted a proper wedding gift, Blaine couldn’t fathom.

Nearby stood a tray with wedding favors. Blaine raised his eyebrows at the tulle bags holding a few tea lights. It was elegantly done, yes, calligraphed with the brides’ names and a romantic quotation, but again, they had kept their expenses as low as possible.

If they were all this poor, how on earth had they gotten acquainted with Cooper? The Andersons were an old money family, and Cooper had struck out on his own and become richer still. He hung out with celebrities and other billionaires all the time. When and where would he have met the brides? Did they actually know him at all? Or did they just send the invite to angle for a handsome gift? That was it, wasn’t it? Cooper had been duped into spending a fortune on that stupid pet mansion, or whatever it was! And they probably weren’t even getting married for real, and this was all a sham for Coop’s benefit!

Blaine was livid in Cooper’s stead, and stewed in silence until the brunette bride tapped on the bedazzled pink microphone they were now using for karaoke, shushed everyone and thanked all the guests for coming, and in particular Kurt (pointing to Mr. Gorgeous), who was the best friend anyone had ever had, and who had planned the whole wedding, apparently.

Cooper whooped and clapped, and Blaine couldn’t keep it to himself any longer, so he let it all out.

“Okay, this charade stops NOW! Maybe you fooled Cooper, but I can see right through you. This whole party is as fake as all get out! If it were real, you’d be getting married with your family surrounding you, not with just a handful of friends! If it were real, you’d have chosen an actual wedding venue, instead of this… this dump in the middle of nowhere! If it were real, you’d have had everything handled by professionals, instead of taking advantage of your friend to whip something up on the cheap for you. And all that for what? For that ridiculous pet pavilion that Cooper shelled out good money for? Is that really worth all this deception? You disgust me! You’re awful to take advantage of my brother this way, and I won’t stand for it!”

As soon as Blaine had gotten it all off his chest, he looked at everyone’s shocked faces and felt awful. Had he misjudged? The brides seemed aghast at his accusations, the guests looked at him like he was a train wreck happening, and Kurt… Gorgeous Kurt glared at him as if he wanted to tear Blaine limb from limb.

[bamon4bamily]

TVD 9x05 Halloween Special (part 1 of part 2) Enjoy! =)

Cut back to – 1921, Halloween Ball at the secluded hotel. Stefan, Klaus, and Rebecca are having drinks at a private booth.

STEFAN: Well this is quite the party, loving the decadence.

KLAUS: Oh, my friend, the fun hasn’t even begun.

REBECCA: (To Stefan) It seems like your plus one found something or someone to entertain him, he’s been gone for a while.

STEFAN: He’s a curious guy, he’ll be back eventually.

KLAUS: Remind me again why you brought him along? Or why we haven’t torn into his vanes?

STEFAN: He is off the table, so lose the temptation.

REBECCA: Why do you even care?

STEFAN: He’s a close friend, let’s just leave it at that. Anyway, what are we having for dinner?

KLAUS: Trust me, you will find it to be plenty tasty (snaps his fingers, a woman walks into the booth and sits beside them).

STEFAN: You know my taste…

REBECCA: And mine. (They tare into her neck; when they finish they leave the dead body sitting there as if nothing had happened).

STEFAN: (As he is wiping the blood from his mouth) Lovely appetizer, but I’m ready for the main course.

KLAUS: Patience, mate, have another drink. Let’s get someone to clean our little mess, first.

STEFAN: Well, make it quick, I’m still hungry.

REBECCA: (Serves him more champagne) Don’t worry, love, I’ll go find someone to take care of this (kisses him, then leaves).

KLAUS: So, Stefan, are you sure it is safe to leave your “friend” to wonder about?

STEFAN: He can handle himself.

KLAUS: If you say so…

(A breathtaking woman comes into the booth, they both freak out given the scene).

LADY: Relax gentleman, nothing I haven’t seen before (winks, then casually sits next to the dead body and licks some blood from her neck). Yum… Care to offer this thirsty lady a drink? (Both, completely hypnotized by her beauty, head for the champagne bottle, Stefan gets to it first).  

STEFAN: (As he pours her a drink) Can I just say you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. (Looks at her hands) Love the glove… looks beautiful, and dangerous (smirks)…

LADY: (Flirting) Just as I am, dear (winks).

KLAUS: If ever I have seen true beauty… (kisses her hand).

LADY: Thank you, gentleman, you are not bad on the eyes yourselves. Listen, I brought you a gift from the Mayor (hands them a black box), a small token of his appreciation for attending tonight. (As they are about to open it) Not yet, my dears, they must be opened at midnight; trust me, they are worth the wait. In the meantime (she snaps her fingers and two beautiful women come into the booth; she kisses them on the lips then cuts their throats with her glove, licks some of the blood and kisses Stefan and Klaus), enjoy, boys.  

STEFAN: Wait, you are leaving? Please, stay, indulge with us.

LADY: I’d love to, but I have some business to attend to. I’ll be back for dessert, I promise. (When she walks out, Katherine, who has been lurking outside the booth, catches a glimpse of her, then vamps away).

Cut to Matt’s house. Tyler and Khuyana are having breakfast. On the background, playing on the TV is a breaking news story about a couple that has been found brutally murdered in a cabin outside Mystic Falls.

 TYLER: So, he left early this morning?

KHUYANA: I think so… I’m not even sure if he came home at all. I went to bed alone and woke up alone.

TYLER: What do you think we should do?

KHUYANA: I know this might sound awful, but I think we should have a backup plan just in case he’s a no show.

TYLER: This is so strange, and totally out of character… we need to figure out what’s going on with him. When did it start?

KHUYANA: I guess I started noticing some strange behavior when I came back from a trip… after the massive aneurysms’ attacks.

TYLER: Bonnie told me about that, it happened before the Darius linking ritual, right?

KHUYANA: Yes.

TYLER: So this must be related to Darius… maybe his under some sort of spell?

KHUYANA: Can’t be that, Bonnie put a spell block on all of us after the linking incident.

TYLER: There is a spell against being spelled?

KHUYANA: I guess so, I still don’t understand how the witchy woo stuff works…

TYLER: Okay, well, Darius is also psychic, so, mind control?

KHUYANA: Can’t be that either, Bonnie psych-blocked us against that too.

TYLER: Doesn’t make sense… if he’s not under a spell or mind control… (Matt walks in).

MATT: Wow, you just won’t let it go… mind control, really? I told you guys, I’m fine, just exhausted, irritated, and under a lot of stress. All I need is some sleep to recharge, then I’ll be good to go.

TYLER: Are you sure, man?

MATT: I’m sure. I’m gonna go take a nap (kisses Khuyana; as he is walking out, turns around) and please, stop talking about me behind my back, it’s annoying (leaves).

Cut to – Mikaelson mansion, Klaus and Danae in the living room.

 KLAUS: I still think you should have told them…

DANAE: What for? Sometimes it’s better not to know.

KLAUS: Well, that is true… Are sure you are up for this?  Your migraines seem to be getting worse, love.

DANAE: I’ll be fine… it’s probably because subconsciously I’m nervous about being so close to my brother.

KLAUS: You have my word that you will be safe; under no circumstances will he find out you are alive.

DANAE: Thank you, dear, you are my knight in shining armor, always and forever. (Kisses him on the cheek). You know, if I didn’t have a thing for the ladies, I’d be madly in love you.

KLAUS: I know, love, as would I (winks, gives her a tender hug). Everything will be fine, I promise (kisses her forehead).

DANAE: What about Bonnie? Do you really think she will be able to keep control? Once her psychic-block is released, there is no doubt that she will be overwhelmed; and yes, I can help control her energy levels but there is no guarantee that it will be enough. One psychic blast and she can wipe us all out…

KLAUS: Bonnie is very strong-willed; I reckon she will find a way to keep it under control. To be honest, what worries me most is if she will be able to resist the temptation of not succumbing to her dark side.

DANAE: And if she does?

KLAUS: Well, if it comes to that, we’ll deal with it…

DANAE: As in, kill her? That seems a bit harsh, dear.

KLAUS: No, of course not, I mean contain her.

DANAE: With that kind of power, how on earth are we going to be able to do that? 

KLAUS: Emotions always have a way to control us, and I’m pretty sure I know her weak spot; we make her connect with those feelings so she doesn’t lose her hold...

DANAE: Whatever happens, let’s hope it ends well… I really like her. 

KLAUS: (Gives her a smirk) Oh, do you now?.

DANAE: Not like that, dear, I mean, if I knew I had a chance, don’t doubt for a second that I wouldn’t try… she is a spitting image of Marie… (becomes nostalgic).

KLAUS: I know...

DANAE: (Teary-eyed) No matter how many years go by, the hurt just doesn’t seem to go away (Klaus holds her tight).

KLAUS: It’s understandable, she was the love of your life. What happened to her was tragic, of course, the pain lingers, but eventually, you will find your way back to each other.

DANAE: Dear, I am immortal, how is that ever going to happen?

KLAUS: Never give up hope, love. After all, who would have thought there would be a way for the dead to make their way back? Look at Stefan, Tyler, Lexi, Katherine…

DANAE: They all had a connection to Bonnie, that’s the only reason they were able to come back.

KLAUS: I hardly think Bonnie wanted Katherine to return.

DANAE: It might have been a bad connection, but it was still a connection… 

KLAUS: Well, there is no stronger connection than blood...

DANAE: Yes, but Bonnie never knew Marie, probably doesn't even know she existed ... Anyway, let me stop with the self-pity, we have more important things to focus on right now. Listen, how about I start preparing everything for the “party” while you go get us some costumes, otherwise your friend Caroline is going to flip.

KLAUS: Oh, she most definitely will. Any special requests?

DANAE: You’ll be lucky just to find any so we really can’t get picky; whatever you can find will work.

KLAUS: Okay, love, let me know if you need anything else, I’ll be back soon. (Kisses her forehead, then leaves).

 Danae starts reminiscing about her past love. Flashback scene to a 1920′s party…

MR. NORTHCOTT: Ms. Bennet, I must say, I find your views on Baudelaire’s work rather controversial, and, if I’m being honest, somewhat unstudied.

MARIE: Well, he was way ahead of his time which is clearly, not your case...

DANAE: Marie is quite the literary scholar; you can trust she knows what she is talking about, Mr. Northcott.

MR. NORTHCOTT: I mean no disrespect, but you must admit that it is not often that you find a woman with such views… it is somewhat intriguing.

MARIE: Really? (Rolls her eyes).

MR. NORTHCOTT: Please, don’t misunderstand me, if anything I respect you even more. But, enough with controversy, let us have a toast... to literary masterpieces!

DANAE: (Whispers to Marie) Want to disappear for a while? This man is really getting on my nerves.

MARIE: (Whispers back) I’ve been waiting for you to say that all night… (they excuse themselves from the table and find a cosy spot to share some lovin’).    

 Cut to – Elena and Sam in his apartment, he hands her a plate of chilaquiles.

 ELENA: You spoil me too much... (Gives him a lustful look) Come here... (kisses him).

SAM: Mmm... or we can just skip breakfast...

ELENA: (Composes herself) No, no, we need to eat at some point ... Wait, am I going to have to jug a gallon of water like the last time?

SAM: You are such a wus! Don’t worry, I turned it down a notch.

ELENA: I mean, I loved them, but I seriously thought my brain was going to explode.

SAM: We are going to have to do something about that… when we go visit my mom, she won’t be as a lenient as I am.

ELENA: Great, now I have another thing to worry about when I meet her.

SAM: She is going to love you (kisses her). (Looks at his packed boxes) So, I’m pretty much ready… we are actually doing this…

ELENA: We are! And I’m excited about you meeting the rest of the gang tonight, even if it’s just for a brief hello, goodbye. 

SAM: Is this the first time you are going to see Stefan and Tyler since they… well, came back?

ELENA: Yes… wow, I hadn’t even thought of that!

SAM: I’ll be honest, I’m kind of psyched about meeting more of your supernatural friends, it’s like going to Comicon but for real!

ELENA: (Laughs) I have no idea what a Comicon is, but I guess so?

SAM: Okay, just so I don’t mess things up, let me see if I got this right: Bonnie  is a psychic-witch; Caroline, a vampire; Tyler, an undead hybrid; Stefan, an ex-vampire undead human; your ex, a vampire turned human; Alaric, a vampire hunter turned vampire then human again, Indiana Jones type of thing; Matt, a human, and the town Sheriff… am I missing anyone?

ELENA: Nop, that’s pretty much the main core. God, hearing you makes me realize just how insane my life has been… I love them all but I have to admit that I’m happy to be leaving that craziness behind… I just want a normal, human life, you know?

SAM: Well, normal and human is all I’ve ever known, so I’m no point of reference… what about Jeremy, is he going to the party too?

ELENA: No, no…

SAM: Aren’t you going to say goodbye?

ELENA: We are, just not in person… I’m afraid that if I see him, I won’t be able to leave, so, we decided video chat was the way to go…

SAM: Are you sure?

ELENA: Trust me, I’m sure.

SAM: Okay… So, I went to pick up our costumes earlier (looking very excited), I can’t believe you agreed to go with it!

ELENA: Couldn’t bear to break your geeky heart (kisses him, looks at her watch). Listen, I need to go to the administration office to finalize some paperwork, we’ll start getting ready when I come back. Love you (kisses him, then leaves).

Cut to – 1990, Halloween night, Mystic Falls General Hospital. Paramedics bring a bleeding woman into the E.R.

 E.R DOCTOR: What do we have?

PARAMEDIC: Multiple stab wounds to the back, massive blood loss, heart rate erratic, pulse dropping fast… and Doctor, she is pregnant. Fetal heartbeat detected but it’s very low.

E.R DOCTOR: (To the Medical staff) Quick, prep the O.R for emergency surgery. (After a few hours, the Doctor comes out of the OR to talk to Police Officers).

E.R DOCTOR: Officers, there was nothing we could do; time of death was 24:05. Were you able to contact any family members?

POLICE OFFICER 1: The only family member we could track was her mother, but she has no idea who she is. She has been locked up in an insane asylum for years… other than her, she has no family.

E.R DOCTOR: Well then, I think you need to call child services, the victim was with child. Thankfully, we were able to save the baby, but he is in critical condition.

POLICE OFFICER 2: How on earth was the child able to survive?

E.R DOCTOR: If I’m being honest Officer, I have no idea, the child should have been dead upon arrival. I don’t believe in miracles but if I ever did, this would be the moment to make me doubt my beliefs.

POLICE OFFICER 1: If the baby makes it through, child services will take custody. For now, Doctor, we will need your, and your staff’s statements.

E.R DOCTOR: Of course, anything you need Officers.

Cut to - the Mayor’s house. Edward walks into his room and finds his costume laid out for him, along with a black box tied to a red balloon. He looks puzzled, somewhat scared. He slowly takes the box, unties the balloon and opens it. Inside, is the same chess piece he had sent Darius earlier, along with a note that reads: “Tasty, tasty, beautiful fear. Who is checkmate now?” He leaves the box and note on the bed, walks to his turntable and plays “Mr. Sandman”. Then, walks to the mirror, and stares in a daze…

TVD 9x05 Halloween Special (part 2 of part 2) coming very soon! Hope you stop by, read and enjoy! =)

[parabelled]

Can you explain why Anne Elliot is your favourite Austen heroine?

Surely! (This literally took like, two and half hours of writing and editing. What is my life).

Background:

So, essentially, to get into this analysis, I have to preface this with Persuasion being written in 1817, near the end of Austen’s life and published six months after her death. Really, if you compare the type of satirical protagonists she was writing at the beginning of her career (see Northanger Abbey, which convinced my entire English Literature 2 class in university that Austen was insipid despite being prefaced as a gothic parody), to later, Pride and Prejudice, to Persuasion, I think it really traces the development of Austen as a writer (Austen referred to her in one of her letters as “a heroine who is almost too good for me.”)

Not to say she didn’t have more ‘mature’ protagonists early on; Elinor Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility is really my second favourite protagonist from Austen’s works, and she is essentially the one person in the Dashwood household who keeps everything together; without her, the entire operation would fall apart. It’s the reason why she’s the ‘sense’ in the aforementioned title.

But where Anne Elliot differs I think, is that Elinor, despite being the ‘older’ sister, is never really seen as being devoid of prospects in regards to her future and marriage, despite the family falling on hard times. Anne, on the other hand, is actually a marked difference from Austen’s usual protagonists. Whereas her other protagonists are usually concerned with climbing the social ladder of society (or essentially, scorning the playing of this game in society, but still knowing it’s expected of her anyway (See Lizzie Bennet), Anne is from a noble family that due to her father Sir Walter Elliot’s vanity and selfishness, is on its descent down on the social ladder, a caricature of the old, outdated, titled class in a world of new British industry. 

Sir Walter Scott, and the Changing Ideal of The Gentlemen in Society:

This is another place where Jane Austen differs in her characterisation and brings up an important contrast that is lacking in her other work to an extent in terms of her other main heroines: while the other heroines are more concerned with upward mobility through marriage because that is what society has expected of them, Anne Elliot’s father (who’s will dominates her own), is concerned with DOWNWARD mobility. The idea that he will be seen as ‘lesser than’ for allowing his daughter to marry someone she loves. 

The difference is, is where you have CHOICE to an extent in a burgeoning middle class family, even if you were marrying for money, you have that upward mobility. You have opportunities. When your family is so focused on maintaining the facade of an untouchable deity, you are literally frozen into that mold, even if you want to be a part of that changing world and changing model of what should be considered an ‘ideal’ match, or a modern pairing.

While unadvantageous matches are dismissed in other Austen works, it is often due to the person having some fault of character (I.E: Philanderer, drunkard, etc.) that’s obviously not going to change anytime soon, and what someone is, to an extent, able to control. People are able to control whether they cheat on someone or not; people are able to control showing up and embarrassing themselves at social functions if they have an inkling of self-awareness. And these matches are usually rejected outright because of the family’s concern for the daughter’s feelings (See Lizzie and Mr. Collins, for example, even though it would be an advantageous match (-INSERT LADY CATHERINE DE BOURGH QUOTE HERE-)

But the sad thing in Anne’s case, I think, is that it shows the dying breed of noblewomen, who, once they get ‘older,’ have nowhere to go but down socially if they don’t become a ‘spinster’ or completely devoted to their family household and name. These older, more distinguished families during 1817, were slowly and surely becoming more and more obsolete, and I think it’s VERY astute of Austen to recognise that. Men could now make their fortune at sea- they COULD be “new money.” More and more, these noble people who didn’t work and didn’t have a profession besides being a member of the landed gentry, were becoming more and more dated in the movement of England towards mechanisation and the new Victorian age of industry. 

‘Captain Wentworth is the prototype of the ‘new gentleman.’ Maintaining the good manners, consideration, and sensitivity of the older type, Wentworth adds the qualities of gallantry, independence, and bravery that come with being a well- respected Naval officer.

Like Admiral Croft, who allows his wife to drive the carriage alongside him and to help him steer, Captain Wentworth will defer to Anne throughout their marriage. Austen envisions this kind of equal partnership as the ideal marriage.’

Meanwhile Sir Walter does not present this same sort of guidance for the females in his life. He is so self-involved that he fails to make good decisions for the family as a whole; his other two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, share his vanity and self-importance. While Anne is seen as a direct parallel with her good-natured (dead) mother, she still has to deal with these outdated morals, before coming her true self. She still has to learn to support her own views, even if they are contrary to those in a position of power in her life, and essentially, dominate her day-to-day dealings and her actual character of how she defines herself.

Becoming One’s Self: Learning Self-Assurance and The Positives of ‘Negative’ Qualities:

The one thing I do love about Anne is that she doesn’t have a ‘weakness of character,’ contrary to Wentworth’s bitter words which are clearly directed at her when they first meet again after so long. That’s one thing I usually see (predominantly male) commentators say Anne’s fault is as a female protagonist is as simple as a reading of the title; namely, that she’s too easily persuaded.

However, that’s an overtly simplistic view. Often people directly correlate an individual being persuaded as simply being ‘weak-willed.’ Anne Elliot is anything but. She constantly rebels against the vanity of her father and the stupidity of her sisters, at the same time being aware of the social structure in which they must operate. She is the individual at the beginning of the novel who is dealing directly with money; and while this was at the time often seen as a ‘man’s’ role, it is Anne taking control of getting their family back into good stead and out of debt after her dippy father gets them into debt and remains completely useless throughout the entire procedure except to complain about who they might let the house out to, simply because they ARE ‘new money.’ She IS open to new roles in society, and new conventions. 

This leads directly to the biggest criticism levelled against her at the beginning of the novel: that after being dismissed by Anne, Captain Wentworth basically publicly declares (because #bitteraf) that ‘any woman he marries will have a strong character and independent mind.’

The funny thing is, Anne already has these. She never lacked them. ‘What ‘persuasion’ truly refers to is whether it is better to be firm in one’s convictions or to be open to the suggestions of others.  

‘The conclusion implies that what might be considered Anne’s flaw, her ability to be persuaded by others, is not really a flaw at all. It is left to the reader to agree or disagree with this. ‘

Anne is not stupid in that she is convinced or persuaded by any Joe Schmow who comes along; she considers the opinions of those she respects. She ultimately comes to the right decision in marrying Wentworth later in life, but it’s understandable how a nineteen year old would doubt this decision when advised by those adults around her. It is now that she is older, in considering other people’s opinions, that she is more likely able to come to her decision herself, rather than letting other people’s opinions overweigh her own.

‘Anne is feminine in this way while possessing none of what Austen clearly sees as the negative characteristics of her gender; Anne is neither catty, flighty, nor hysterical. On the contrary, she is level-headed in difficult situations and constant in her affections. Such qualities make her the desirable sister to marry; she is the first choice of Charles Musgrove, Captain Wentworth, and Mr. Elliot.’

Ageism: Austen’s Hinting at an Age-Old Philosophy against the Modern Woman:

At twenty-seven, Anne is literally considered a woman ‘far past her bloom of youth.’ She is constantly surrounded by younger women, both demonstrating interest in her father and in Wentworth. While ageism wasn’t clearly developed as a recognised societal practice in the 19th century, I think it demonstrates, when Jane wrote this so close to her death, and having never married herself, the pressures on women in society even later in life. This is seen more bluntly in the character of Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice, but I think the fact that people constantly remind Anne of something she cannot control could arguably draw parallels to social status and how birth status cannot be controlled, by a more modern reading of the piece. Women cannot control ageing, any more than a man can control being born into a lower class. But while men could continue to marry for upward mobility or money (up to ridiculous ages and with ridiculously younger wives), women don’t have that luxury once they are ‘past their prime,’ even if they also have the avenue of upward mobility through marriage (see Charlotte Lucas again).

Lost Love, aka THEY TOTALLY MIGHT HAVE BONED BUT PROBABLY NOT:

“There could have never been two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.” 

The best thing about Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot’s love story is that we already knew they WERE in love; as opposed to all her other stories, which involve individuals arguably falling INTO love rather than HAVING been in love (Looking’ at you, Mansfield Park), Wentworth x Anne Elliot was a THING. They were a hot and HEAVY thing. 

I essentially have nothing to add here except that makes their entire story 10000000x more painful when they clearly still have feelings for one another and have to run in the same social circles.

That is all.

Separate Spheres: AKA LETS ALL HELP EACH OTHER MMKAY AND BE EQUAL PARTNERS IN LOVEEEE:

Lastly, Austen also considers the idea of ‘separate spheres.’

‘The idea of separate spheres was a nineteenth-century doctrine that there are two domains of life: the public and the domestic. Traditionally, the male would be in charge of the public domain (finances, legal matters, etc.) while the female would be in charge of the private domain (running the house, ordering the servants, etc.). 

This novel questions the idea of separate spheres by introducing the Crofts. Presented as an example of a happy, ideal marriage, Admiral and Mrs. Croft share the spheres of their life. Mrs. Croft joins her husband on his ships at sea, and Admiral Croft is happy to help his wife in the chores around the home. They have such a partnership that they even share the task of driving a carriage. Austen, in this novel, challenges the prevailing notion of separate spheres.’

As mentioned before, from the beginning of the novel, as a noblewoman, Anne is already crossing the line of separate spheres by undertaking financial and legal matters since her father is essentially too much of a pussy to do so (this antiquated ideal of gentlemanly qualities). She has already made a discreet step into the public domain by her actions, without ever really truly making a bold statement. 

By the insertion of the Crofts within the narrative, it really foreshadows how this sort of relationship can work as equals, and how such an amalgamation of the spheres should not be looked down upon. It’s a subtly progressive message that none of the other books really deal with (besides perhaps a tad in Sense and Sensibility with Elinor), and I love her all the more for it.  ♥

[crookednatvre]

⋆ ◦ ° ☾ chloe bennet+ cisfemale + she/her — have you met clara munro? they are a twenty six year old known around town as the deadpan snarker. they’ve been in the gang life for three years, and currently work for the cobras as a thief. they are a bisexual gemini, which means they are strategic + adaptable, as well as cunning + uncouth. ripped jeans, muddy boots, split lips.

under the cut you guys can find clara’s new story.. her surname isn’t the only thing i’ve changed about her btw !! i’ve completely retconned her entire backstory, so she has never been a member of the savages. cobra blood has always pumped through this girls veins !! 

BACKGROUND 

Clara spent most of her childhood in her father’s office, playing games such as pretending to be the CEO of a million dollar company and ordering his escorts around like she was the queen bee and they were her servants — most of the girls humoured her as she was simply a bored, harmless eight year old who had no siblings to entertain herself with. Most of the girls took sympathy on her, while others kept their distance and turned their nose up at the presence of a child at a brothel.

It wasn’t an ideal situation by any means, but trust worthy babysitters didn’t come by very often in Valdez and her mother had been killed in a mugging gone wrong ( or at least that was what the police reports said, but their was reason to believe they had been fudged )

Her father did his best to protect his daughters innocence, not wanting hers to be tainted from an early age just like his had been. But with a habit for being too curious for her own good, it was only a certain amount of time before Clara decided to sneak out of her father’s office in search of some other form of company other than her powerpuff girl dolls.

She had been told constantly by her father not to open the office door to anybody else but himself, so the first time she left his office in the middle of the afternoon while he was attending to business she crawled through an air duct she was just able to squeeze through — she wasn’t technically breaking any rules, she didn’t leave the office without his permission or open the door for anybody else.

Clara would spend hours in the air ducts, crawling through the building and spying on the women who worked for his father — some of them danced for men in expensive suits, others undressed themselves ( clara would scurry along when ever she came across those girls rooms )

Neither her father or his escorts were none the wiser of her escapades, she always returned to his office just moments before he would come to collect her to take her home, oblivious to the fact she was exposing herself to the world he tried his hardest to keep from her.

When Clara was fifteen years old, she witnissed one of the escorts being physically assaulted by one of her clients— she was in one of the air ducts at the time, holding her breath for what felt like a lifetime until the girl screamed at the man until he left. She followed him through the air ducts, dropping down into the alley beside the brothel and bumped into him as he fixed his shirt and adjusted his tie. It only took a simple collision, neither of them looking where they were going for Clara to scoop his wallet from his pocket. She slipped what money he had in his wallet under the door of the escort he assaulted, with a note that read: He’s a douche bag, but now he’s a douche bag missing $400. Shhh!!

This became somewhat of a habit for Clara, watching the escorts from the shadows like a wraith and pick-pocketing the ones who would put their hands on them and sliding her scores under their doors like a thieving fairy godmother.

When she was just shy of her nineteenth birthday, Clara overheard her father arguing with another man about poaching his girls and stealing his income. Instead of asking her father who the man was or what he was talking about ( she was more than aware of who her father really was now ) she followed him home, cased the joint and broke in when she knew he wouldn’t be home.

When she returned home that night, she emptied a paper bag in front of her father, thousands of dollars spilling across the kitchen table and told him that should more than cover what he lost to the man who had dared to step on his turf.

From then on out they agreed to have no more secrets, only complete and utter transparency between the pair of them. So, when her father was considering joining the cobras, he shared this with his daughter who told him she would go with him if he wanted to defect. Clara was never officially recruited into Balthazar Caito’s crew, so it was easy for her to follow her father into the snake pit.

WANTED PLOTS

NO WOMAN SHOULD EVER SUFFER AT THE HANDS OF MEN

gimme a plot where clara has helped/helps one of the escorts out of a bad situation with one of their clients — this could be something where clara’s witnessed their client get physical with them and she either threatens/pick-pockets them like she’s done in the past for the girls ( i’m open to this being something that’s already happened and has turned into a friendship or something we could write in a thread and develop the friendship from there ) i’m also open to this being plotted between clara and other female characters affiliated with the gangs, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an escort but bonus points if it’s between clara && a savage !!

WHAT’S THE MATTER? WAS MY FORM OFF?

i really want somebody to teach clara how to fight tbh. she’s been with the cobras for three years so whoever it is that’s teaching her how to throw a punch and defend herself could have started teaching sometime in the last three years or more recently. i’m leaving this one open for discussion because i haven’t really got a set direction i want this to go in???

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

clara is the daughter of ajax anderson 

she believes harlow procter is her cousin, but in fact she’s her sister !!

shares an apartment with ashley mills && nikki redford after they all joined the cobras around the same time as each other

raspberry ripple ice cream is her favourite flavour, if you eat hers she won’t be held responsible for any action taken against you 

[nataliesnews]

The law tearing Palestinian families apart 5.7.2021

The law tearing Palestinian families apart

The controversial Citizenship Law is supposedly about maintaining Israel’s security. In reality, it’s a tool to engineer Israel’s population.

BySamah SalaimeJuly 2, 2021

Palestinian women wait to cross Qalandiya checkpoint as an Israeli security officer stands guard outside the West Bank city of Ramallah August 28, 2009. (Issam Rimawi/Flash90)

In 2003, at the height of the Second Intifada, the Israeli government passed an emergency order titled “The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Emergency Order).” Since then, the legislation has taken on many names: the family reunification law, the demographic balance law, the “security threat” law. But the goal of this law has remained the same: to prevent Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza from marrying Arab citizens of Israel, and thus obstructing their path to Israeli citizenship.

The so-called Citizenship Law harms thousands of Palestinian families in Israel. It has been renewed every year since its passing — until this year. The order is set to expire on July 6, and currently the government does not have the parliamentary majority to re-extend it. While several MKs from the center-left Meretz and Labor parties have made their opposition to the order clear, it is unclear how they will vote next week when the law comes up for a vote in the Knesset.

Asmahan Jabali is one of those affected by the law. She was born in Taybeh inside the Green Line, but her parents were from Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank and were never registered as Israeli citizens or residents. As such, Jabali was registered as a West Bank resident, even though she has only ever lived in Israel. She married her partner, also from Taybeh, 26 years ago, and they have three children together. But her legal status in Israel was never sorted out. She has been undocumented, an “unlawful resident,” her entire life.

 “Every year at around this time, I feel unwell, physically and mentally. I break down,” Jabali says. “Deep down, I know that the law will pass, but there’s also always a spark of hope that humanity will win out, and that someone in the Knesset will come to their senses and understand how much their voice can affect my life and the lives of thousands of women.”

Jabali is intimately familiar with the hardships caused by this law. She knows that children who are out of status can only attend school as guests, that they cannot receive matriculation grades, and that they cannot go on to attend college in Israel. She describes what it is like to try and run a household under the shadow of this law, and sets out the agonizing path people like her need to take in order to pass the law’s many “steps:” from being undocumented to becoming a temporary resident, then getting an ongoing residence permit, then full residency, and finally citizenship, which is never granted to any Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza.

Each of these steps has profound implications on everyday life. There is a drastic difference between a residence permit that doesn’t allow for a driving license and one that does, or one that grants the right to work and one that does not. If someone works without the proper permits, tax and insurance payments reach unmanageable sums.

“It’s not just that I couldn’t go to college or earn a living, I’m also completely dependent on my partner, and I’m not alone in that respect,” says Jabali. “I’m lucky, as I have a partner who can support the family alone. What can a vulnerable woman who is less fortunate do with a partner who is violent or unemployed?

“Deep down, I know that the law will pass, but there’s also always a spark of hope that humanity will win out,” says Asmahan Jabali, an undocumented Palestinian affected by the Citizenship Law. (Courtesy of Asmahan Jabali)

“Imagine that your child falls over at school and shows up at the hospital bleeding, and you need to sign paperwork in order for them to undergo surgery,” Jabali continues. “Then they tell you that you are not your child’s guardian and that they can’t take your signature. What do you do when your child is waiting to have surgery and because of the ‘emergency order’ the doctors won’t treat them? I experience these situations every day in the shadow of this law. Then there’s the fact that as a family we don’t have the right to fly abroad together. I’m not allowed to fly out of Israel with my children, we can’t have ‘family holidays.’”

Jabali acknowledges that her situation is, relatively speaking, better than that of women who pay exorbitant sums for health insurance, yet who nonetheless discover that they are still not entitled to expensive treatments, such as cancer therapies.

And it’s not just medical treatment that is expensive. In order to settle their children’s legal status, every mother has to take a paternity test to prove that the father of her children is the person she is seeking to live with. This places a heavy burden on families, who need to pay thousands of shekels for each test, and sometimes repeat tests for the same child. No matter that it seems logical to do a paternity test for just one child in order to prove that both parents and their offspring deserve to live under the same roof.

 Israeli soldiers obstruct a symbolic wedding party in protest of the controversial Citizenship Law, near the Hizma in the occupied West Bank, between Jerusalem and and the Palestinian city of Ramallah, on March 9, 2013. (Issam Rimawi/Flash90)

Hilda Qadesa, a 48-year-old resident of Lydd who is also affected by the law, describes how the “emergency order” strips couples of the right to public housing if one of the partners is a resident of the occupied territories. And even if both partners work, they are not entitled to a mortgage.

For the past 22 years, Qadesa has been married to a man from Ramallah, and she is an activist against the citizenship law. Her partner was supposed to become a citizen just before the law passed in 2003, and the process has been stalled ever since, forcing the family to begin the application process from scratch.

Three years ago, as part of then-Interior Minister Aryeh Deri’s attempts at alleviating the situation, the government issued 1,500 residence permits — including the rights to work, drive, and obtain social security and health insurance — to those who began the naturalization process prior to 2003. Qadesa is not, however, getting worked up about the compromise currently being proposed, which would similarly issue residence permits including the right to work and drive to those who applied for citizenship before 2003.

“The previous interior minister did this, and then MK Osama Saadi [Joint List] helped us present the most difficult cases,” Qadesa says. “The minister can grant these permits at any time, with no need to do favors for Mansour Abbas [Ra’am]. The humanitarian committee they’re talking about is always running, and they didn’t [give out any permits]. This [compromise] is idle talk to allow Ra’am and Meretz to go back on their word. Qadesa is referring to the “humanitarian committee” that was appointed as part of the passage of the 2003 law, and which has the authority, in exceptional circumstances, to grant legal status to those affected by the law. Adi Lustigman, legal counsel for Physicians for Human Rights — Israel, has represented hundreds of families in their legal battles with this law. She confirms that many women are negatively impacted by this law, and that the humanitarian committee almost never confers legal status, even in the most drastic cases in which women are in life-threatening danger and have nowhere to go in the West Bank. According to Lustigman, both the right and the left have rejected thousands of petitions filed on humanitarian grounds.

 Prime Minister Naftali Bennet with with head of the Ra’am party Mansour Abbas in the assembly hall of the Israeli parliament on June 21, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Only those with family in Israel can petition the committee. It can grant temporary residence or a temporary identity card which confers rights upon the holder. But Lustigman notes that the committee almost never wields this authority, except for in cases that reach the courts and which put pressure on the Interior Ministry. And the committee cannot grant citizenship or permanent residence status.

The law has a profound impact on Palestinian women whose partners are undocumented or who are undocumented themselves. It can sabotage relationships and a couple’s ability to have a normative and functioning family. Sumaya Abu Zar, also from Lydd and who married her cousin from Gaza 20 years ago, says that he insisted on being present at the birth of their third child, even though he did not have a residence permit.

“One of the nurses realized that he couldn’t fill out the forms and that he didn’t have a blue [Israeli] identity card, so she called the police who arrived and arrested him, even as I was experiencing severe labor pains,” Sumaya says. “I gave birth alone, and went into a deep depression. I had three children and didn’t see my husband for two years, until he managed to leave Gaza and enter the West Bank, and from there came back to us.

“My baby didn’t have a father for the first two years of her life, and it continues to be traumatic for the whole family. My husband is a diligent worker, a talented gardener, I opened a business in my own name, and drove him around for years because he was barred from driving,” Sumaya continues. “That was my role — morning, noon, and night — to take him around from place to place, and take care of our children in between. Since we received the residence permit, my life as a woman and a mother has completely changed.”

Lustigman is representing a family in which the woman has been living in Ramle for almost 30 years, but continues to only have temporary status due to the law. Her son was seriously injured by Israeli Jews in a nationalist attack and another daughter has a severe disability. But because of the law she needs to renew her permits every year. She struggles to visit her parents who emigrated abroad, and the humanitarian committee is yet to respond to her.

Palestinian women cross the Qalandiya checkpoint, outside of the West bank city of Ramallah, on June 23, 2017. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

The state argues that Palestinians who have been naturalized through family reunification have been involved in hostile activities. But Lustigman has been grappling in court with this claim for years. “The data has never backed up the law’s supposed security rationale,” says Lustigman. Rather, she adds, the law has always been about demographics, meaning, maintaining a Jewish majority.

“No effort has been made in the past few years to support the security claims [of this law],” Lustigman continues. “The law is causing serious and sweeping harm to [people’s] basic rights, in all areas of life. Its existence is unacceptable in a supposedly democratic country. It’s no wonder that nowhere else in the world has a similar law that discriminates according to people’s origin.”

Israel claims that it knows how to identify Palestinians who are security “threats,” and it deploys this so-called expertise when it issues work permits to tens of thousands of Palestinians every day. There is nothing preventing the state from applying these methods to similar adjudications regarding Palestinian couples, who have lived in Israel for decades and present no security threat whatsoever.

It’s unclear why the state cannot grant citizenship to women and mothers who pose no danger other than being possessed of a womb. They “threaten” only the population registry and the Jewish character of the state. If the law is required to maintain the security of the Jewish state, how can extreme-right Knesset members oppose ratifying it? How dare they harm national “security?”

We need to call things by their name. The purpose of this law is to control Palestinians and engineer the terms of their citizenship and presence in this country. It preserves and perfects 2021-style apartheid, which maintains a hierarchy of people who live here: at the top are the pure Jewish citizens, below them undocumented Palestinians, and perhaps beneath them asylum seekers and migrant workers. That, in my view, is the essence of the law. Demographics, and nothing else.

Hassan Jabareen, the general director of Adalah, which has submitted countless petitions against this “emergency order,” says that the law is one of the three most racist pieces of legislation in Israel, alongside the Absentee Property Law and the Jewish Nation-State Law. “The state has repeatedly struggled to address the fact that no other country in the world that bars entry to a couple because [one of them is] of a different nationality,” Jabareen says. 

Even apartheid South Africa, Jabareen adds, lost a famous court case involving a Black woman whom it had banned from her white boyfriend’s neighborhood. “The right to family unity won out over apartheid laws, which segregated Black and white [South Africans],” he says. 

Jabareen believes that the issue of the citizenship law will be examined by a special UN Human Rights Council committee, which is also supposed to investigate the most recent war on Gaza and the accompanying violence against Palestinian citizens in May. “This is the first time that an international body is getting involved in [matters concerning] Palestinian citizens of Israel, and not just the West Bank and Gaza,” he says. “The testimonies of those affected by the citizenship law will provide important material for opposing Israel’s policies against Palestinians wherever they are, and perhaps then we can start discussing the real question, which has persisted for 73 years: Is Israel a democratic state or an apartheid state?”

I’m a woman who loves people and stories about simple folks like myself. They are the protagonists of the stories I write. You’ll hear a lot of criticism from me about Israel’s leadership but also creative solutions to problems that affect us all. Things that I’ve learned from life, in no particular order: sewing, criminology, cooking, social work, gender, fashion design, education and administration, embroidery and a little law — at least until I started dozing off in class. You’ll hear more about the connections between all of those things eventually. I can proudly say that I enlisted in the most gentle — and largest — army in the world, which tries to lead the longest and quietest revolution in human history: the feminist revolution. As a first step I started the AWC (Arab Women in the Center) NGO, which I manage pretty much on a volunteer basis. I was born 40 years ago to a refugee family Sajara in northern Israel (known today as Ilaniya), and most of my close family live in refugee camps in every corner of the world. I dream of the day when there is peace, some of them return, and we can build a home. We will have calm Jewish neighbors with whom we fight only about the question of whose dog (the Jew or the Arab) made a mess on our shared street. Until then I will be living in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam raising my three boys together with my partner Omar, and no, we don’t have a dog.

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More About Local Call

 Jewish parties ‘compromise’ against Palestinians and call it democracy

Negotiations over a settlement outpost and a racist law show that Zionist parties of all stripes will find common ground to deny Palestinian rights.

By Orly Noy July 1, 2021

Inside Beita’s protests: ‘The settlers didn’t understand who they were dealing with’

For weeks, Palestinians in Beita have been burning tires, shining lasers, and defying army violence day and night to resist an Israeli settlement outpost.

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‘Open Gaza immediately,’ says manager of Israel-Gaza crossing

The Erez Crossing manager debunks myth that restrictions on Gaza uphold security, believes Israel should engage directly with Hamas.

By Meron Rapoport June 21, 2021

Jewish parties ‘compromise’ against Palestinians and call it democracy

Negotiations over a settlement outpost and a racist law show that Zionist parties of all stripes will find common ground to deny Palestinian rights.

ByOrly NoyJuly 1, 2021

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett sits with Labor Party head Merav Michaeli in the plenum hall of the Knesset, Jerusalem, June 2, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Sometimes you need to give credit where it’s due. And to the credit of Israel’s center-left parties, they had prepared their constituents in advance for the fact that entering the new government — which, in any composition, was going to rely on a clear right-wing majority — would have to involve making serious compromises.

A few days before the last election, Health Minister and Meretz head Nitzan Horowitz himself said “we will agree to make compromises to send Bibi home.” In the name of that same compromise, Labor chair Merav Michaeli agreed to relinquish top portfolios in order to sit in a government headed by a right-winger who once represented the settler movement, and who won the same number of seats as her party.

Meretz and Labor were required to foot the bill earlier than expected. Only two weeks after its inauguration, the government has already shown how far it is willing to go in order to reach a compromise with the outlaws of the Eviatar outpost in the occupied West Bank, in a shameful surrender that has once again rewarded the criminal behavior of the settler movement.

Political compromises are intended to enable the promotion of one’s core ideological demands, while making certain concessions on less critical issues. And to do this, red lines must be drawn. I am not a Meretz voter, but it seems to me that the party’s voters are entitled to a clearer understanding of its leadership’s red lines, particularly given their disgraceful silence in the face of the Eviatar compromise. If deepening the theft of Palestinian land, expanding the occupation, and complete contempt for all legal or moral norms are not beyond their red lines, it is unclear what is.

Minister of Health and Meretz head Nitzan Horowitz arrives to the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, June 14, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Is religious coercion — one of the party’s foundational values — a red line? What about Netanyahu’s removal from power? Liberal Israelis could have easily voted for Avigdor Liberman, a right-wing nationalist who touts his liberal credentials, instead of Meretz and would not have noticed a difference when it comes to policy. If within only two weeks since the inauguration of this government, the differences between Meretz and Liberman have blurred almost beyond recognition, we are facing a very big problem.

But the crucial point in this story is not the compromise in the Eviatar affair, but the very essence of compromise in Israeli politics. In general, political compromises tend to be made by the strong toward the weaker party: men “compromise” over women’s rights, straight people “compromise” over LGBTQ rights, and in Israel, above all, Jews “compromise” over Palestinian rights.

In their moment of truth, the center-left Zionist parties — who during election cycles passionately court the Arab voice (Meretz’s last campaign focused heavily on opposing the occupation and the settlements), while promising to take care of their Arab interests — feel completely comfortable sitting around the table with other Israeli Jews and negotiating the extent to which the most basic rights of Palestinians can be denied.

Israeli settlers seen walking through the settlement outpost of Eviatar, West Bank, June 21, 2021. (Sraya Diamant/Flash90)

This goes beyond the occupation. The Knesset will next week vote on the family unification law, a “temporary order” that for 18 years has been renewed in order to ban Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza who marry Israeli citizens from living permanently in Israel with their spouses, while denying them a path to citizenship. This order has turned the lives of thousands of Palestinians into a daily hell and presents them with the inhuman decision between tearing apart family members or leaving their land entirely.

At best, Israeli Jews will yet again sit on both sides of the table and negotiate over the right of Palestinians to fall in love, marry, and lead a normal family life in their homeland. Although Meretz saved some of its dignity and has announced that it will not support the law, others will certainly keep their mouths shut in the name of that sacred compromise.

The recent decision by a number of leading human rights organizations to declare that Israel maintains a single apartheid regime between the river and the sea, including within its official borders, was received with anger by the Israeli public and the political establishment. But one must be voluntarily blind not to see how deeply these intra-Jewish “compromises” on Palestinian rights are a profound expression of the apartheid logic that undergirds Israel’s regime of Jewish supremacy.

This goes far deeper than the denial of the rights of citizens in the occupied territories: the Citizenship Law deprives Palestinian citizens within the State of Israel — those who supposedly enjoy its glorious democracy — of the most basic right that is naturally reserved for every Jewish citizen of the country, and even Jews abroad.

Palestinians present their documents to Israeli Border Police members as they make their way through Israeli Qalandia checkpoint, West Bank. April 16, 2021. (Flash90)

This shameful racist law, whose supporters have tried to disguise its demographic aspirations under the cloak of “security,” is further proof that under Israel’s apartheid regime, as far as the Palestinian public is concerned, the distinction between national and civil demands is meaningless. A young woman from Nazareth who falls in love with a man from Ramallah and wants to build a life with him does not do so as a political statement. She is simply demanding the basic right that every Jewish citizen of Israel enjoys. After all, the neighbor of that young Palestinian, a Jewish woman living in a nearby town who falls in love with a Jewish man from the settlement of Ofra near Ramallah, can marry him and live with him in her town without trouble.

If Israel insists on scrutinizing the security aspect of granting citizenship, then — as Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi noted at a recent Knesset committee meeting on occupation and apartheid — the number of Jews who were granted citizenship under the Law of Return and who committed acts of terrorism against Palestinians in fact far outweighs the Palestinians who were granted Israeli citizenship and committed acts of terrorism against Jews.

Israel’s proclaimed logic would therefore require the immediate abolishment of the Law of Return. But an apartheid logic that seeks to establish Jewish supremacy — including demographic supremacy — means there is one law for Jews and another for Palestinians. All of this takes place within the tradition of internal Jewish compromises over Palestinian lives, and with the approval of the Supreme Court of the Jewish apartheid regime.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid (right) and Ra’am Mansour Abbas attend a discussion in the Knesset, July 01, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

One cannot understand these compromises without taking into account the positions and compromises of the Islamist Ra’am party, which opted to join the government last month. It is true that Ra’am also has to make difficult compromises to ensure the continued existence of this government. The party’s Knesset members remained silent in the face of the Eviatar agreement, although one can only assume they were not pleased with it. But without criticizing or supporting Ra’am’s decision to back the government, it is worth examining the list of demands it put forward before entering the coalition — not only to understand the party’s red lines, but to learn something about the reality that forces a Palestinian party in Israel to remain silent while the rights of Palestinians are trampled upon.

In exchange for equitable education budgets; the possibility of receiving building permits; the recognition of villages, some of which existed before the establishment of the state; and an end to home demolitions of Arab citizens, Ra’am must stay mum on Palestinian rights in the occupied territories. In exchange for these basic rights, which should be a given for every citizen of every democratic state, the MKs of Ra’am are required to allow the government to do whatever it pleases to their brethren across the Green Line. This is not called political compromise. This is called apartheid.

A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.

Zionist Left

Local Call

Citizenship Law

Ra'am

Meretz

Orly Noy is an editor at Local Call, a political activist, and a translator of Farsi poetry and prose. She is a member of B’Tselem’s executive board and an activist with the Balad political party. Her writing deals with the lines that intersect and define her identity as Mizrahi, a female leftist, a woman, a temporary migrant living inside a perpetual immigrant, and the constant dialogue between them.

Since you’re here…

A lot of work goes into creating articles like the one you just read. +972 Magazine is nonprofit journalism based on the ground in Israel-Palestine. In order to safeguard our independent voice, we are proud to count you, our readers, as our most important supporters.

[albionscastle]

First Impressions Part 3

I finally have a little bit of down time so I’m working on everything at once. 

I changed the name of the Jaina character to Maya....for personal reasons. As soon as I can I will go back to the other chapters and change her.

Kind of a filler chapter, Jack is attracted to Lizzie, Lizzie is attracted to Jack and neither one of them is happy about it.

FIC MASTERLIST

Fine Eyes

FINE EYES

LIZZIE “What an asshole! I mean seriously, what a stuck-up, holier than thou fucking douche canoe. How dare he look down on me. Fucking prick.”

Lizzie was on a roll, ranting as Maya sat quietly on her bed. She just couldn’t get over the gall of the man, his rudeness. Whipped up into a storm of self-righteous anger she managed to conveniently forget that her feelings were hurt. The twinge of disappointment she felt was covered now by fury at the way he’d talked to and about her.

He didn’t know her, so who the hell was he to have an opinion about her looks, or her character, or her choice of language for that matter.

Sitting down with a huff on her own bed, Lizzie looked over to see the far away smile on her sister’s face. Some of the wind blew out of her sails as other events of the day returned to the forefront of her mind.

“Tom was certainly lovely, wasn’t he?” she said with a smirk, watching Maya’s eyes light up. “And handsome, charming, all the good things.”

“Do you think so? I hoped it wasn’t just me. He really is so sweet and funny.”

“And sexy, which always helps.” Lizzie laughed as Maya lowered her head bashfully.

“I can’t believe he sat next to me for so long.”

“I can, that man didn’t take his eyes off you from the moment you were introduced. He’s smitten.”

“Oh Lizzie, he is not, don’t be silly.”

“Of course he is, who wouldn’t be smitten with my smart, kind and gorgeous baby sister? I bet Mom is looking at fonts for the wedding invitations right now...OOMPH!”

The pillow that Maya threw hit Lizzie square in the face as both girls laughed.

“I’m sorry Jack was such a dick to you. Maybe he was having a bad day?”

“Don’t sweat it, it’s not worth the effort to worry about it anymore.”

“Still, it was really wrong of him to say what he did.”

“Yeah. But it just, if it wasn’t me he was talking about it wouldn’t seem so bad. It’s not the first time I’ve been insulted. Remember Kevin from high school? He used to call me fog light because I was so pale.”

That guy was an ass.”

“Yeah, and I loved him right up until graduation. So Jack’s opinion doesn’t blip on my radar.”

Maya just looked at her as if to say ‘whatever’ and Lizzie shrugged, determined not to let it get to her any longer. Switching off the light, both girls settled down, Maya no doubt thinking about Tom and all his considerable charm. She tried to get comfortable but for her own part, try as she might, she couldn’t get Jack’s words out of her head. As Maya’s breathing evened out, Lizzie couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy, and then self-recrimination. She’d felt hope when she bumped into Jack that day, a spark of attraction and his disdain had flattened her. She wasn’t his type. She wasn’t anyone’s type. As she drifted off to sleep, Lizzie admitted what she would only ever admit to herself….

That she was lonely.

JACK

“I can’t believe you Jack! Did you have to be such a prick?” Tom stormed through the door that joined their rooms.

Jack looked up from his book, irritated at the interruption.

“Ye ever hear o knockin?”

“Fuck you, mate.” Tom sat on the chair, obviously not about to go anywhere. “That was really low, even for you.”

In honesty, Jack had already come to the same conclusion, he had acted like an asshole and the poor girl hadn’t deserved that. But he also didn’t take too kindly to being reamed out by his younger friend and his hackles rose.

“Tom, fer fuck’s sake, did ye no see the whole thing was a fucking set up?”

“I knew Ben had daughters, jack. He told me, and he warned me about his wife, who by the way is by all accounts a very lovely woman. I was hoping for a set up because Carl had told me all about Maya and Lizzie and I was hoping to hit it off with one of them. Your fucking performance may have just ruined any chance of that.”

“Good. Tom do ye really wantae involve yerself wi some girl from the other side o the world?”

“If she’s the right one then fuck yes. And Maya is amazing.”

“She’s gorgeous yeah, but what could ye possibly have in common?”

“Turns out, a lot. You find that sort of thing out when you talk to women instead of treating them like objects. You should try it.”

“I’ll pass, I donnae need tae know anythin more than I already do.”

“Like you’d get a chance to now, Lizzie is likely to kick you square in the balls if she sees you again.”

Jack winced inwardly, knowing he would deserve it.

“Well good thing I won’t be seein her again then, me balls will stay intact. Go tae sleep Tom, go dream yer pretty conquest and leave me be.”

“Jack, one day you are going to meet someone who will make you realise that Lisa was nothing,  and I hope to God you don’t treat her the same way you just treated Lizzie Bennet. No one wants to grow old alone, not even you.”

Once Tom had left, Jack threw the book aside no longer interested in reading. He had a point, not that Jack would ever admit it. He was an ass, and he made a point of pushing people away. Except for the women who offered him nothing but a few hours of their time. Admittedly he had become adept at escaping into meaningless sex with whoever was offering. They used him as much as he used them and he still felt empty.

For the past few months though he hadn’t even indulged in that form of escape. Maybe he was extra irritable because he needed to get laid. He was fooling himself if he thought that was the case, he was a prick even when he was getting laid. He never called, never stayed, never bothered to even learn their names.

He was secretly heartily ashamed of himself.

That being said, even if he wasn’t a cunt, that night’s ‘adventure’ would still have  been met with derision. The family was a joke, he cringed at the thought of Chloe Bennet’s shrill admonishments, and the  gleam in her eye when Tom had been so struck with Maya. That look was exactly why he’d sat next to Ben rather than give into the momentary temptation to take the seat Lizzie had offered. He didn’t want the woman to get any ideas about him. The girls themselves he just didn’t understand, obviously several of them were adopted or something, but a more rag tag group he’d never seen. Lizzie and Maya seemed relatively normal but the other three, well they run the gambit from punk to nun to tart and he just didn’t even want to understand it. They were weird and he didn’t want anything to do with people who might embarrass him in the public eye.

It was just a shame that Lizzie Bennet had such big pretty eyes, he thought as he nodded up.

LIZZIE

More than three weeks went by before Lizzie even had to think about Jack Lowden again and in her opinion it wasn’t long enough. She was still salty, but she kept quiet about it for Maya’s sake. Tom had become a fixture at the house when he wasn’t needed on set, much to her mother’s glee and delight. Lizzie was happy for her sister, anyone with half a brain could see that Tom was completely gone on her. She deserved to be happy, Maya was the best of them, Lizzie couldn’t fault her choice as she already adored Tom.

Tom’s friends though were a whole different story. Jack notwithstanding, (pretentious bastard) their female co-star was apparently an old friend, a stunning woman in her early thirties who treated the whole family as if they were peons beneath her notice. Except for Maya, caro was all over Maya in a way that made Lizzie ill, but her sister wouldn’t hear a bad word about the woman. Rather than cause an argument, Lizzie had simply stood back, her feelings on the matter secondary to Maya’s happiness.

Coming home from work to find Tom, Caro and Jack in her backyard, however, was not something she could easily hide her displeasure at. It looked like her mother had decided on an impromptu party for Kate’s birthday, which Lizzie knew her sister would loathe.

Sure enough, she found Kate hiding in the kitchen as she snuck into the house.

“How did this happen?” Lizzie picked up the dish that Kate was pulling down from the cupboard and piled it on the others.

“Mom decided to have Dad pull out the grill and then Tom came by, so he invited Jack and Caro, then the neighbors started showing up.”

“I’m sorry kiddo, I know you hate the fuss.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m 18 now so I can finally do what I want.”

“Your plan still to go to the Carmelites?”

“I leave in a week, haven’t told Mom yet.”

“You probably should, Katie, she’s going to be hurt if you don’t.”

“She’s going to be upset.”

“Yes, but it’s not a secret that you want this, and she’ll get over it. She loves you and she’s going to understand that you have to do what’s right for you.”

“What do you think about it?”

“I think that you were never meant for this world, not like that anyway.”

“You always did understand Lizzie.”

“Because I’m the best sister ever.” Lizzie laughed. “I got you something.”

Kate teared up as she opened the small package to see a delicate gold cross, a tiny birthstone for each member of the family dotted along its length.

“Lizzie, it’s beautiful.” “So you don’t forget your other sisters in your new home.”

“Girls!” Chloe came in the door, her shrill voice making Lizzie wince. “Stop lollygagging about and get out there. What will our guests think?”

“That we don’t want them here and they should go home.” Lizzie muttered as she walked toward her room to change.

“I heard that Lizzie! You never know who Tom might know so you need to make a good impression.”

“Because so far his friends are such stand up guys, right mom?”

“I admit I can’t stand that Jack fellow, but he may know someone else who’s eligible. Besides don’t you want to prove that you are better than that Scottish prick?”

“Mom!” Lizzie had never heard her mother talk that way.

“No-one insults my girls, I don’t care how famous, rich or whatever they are.”

Lizzie felt a wave of love for Chloe and pulled her into a hug.

“I love you Mom.”

“I love you too, now go show him what he’s missing out on.”

There was no way she cared what that asshole thought of her. No way at all. Still, Lizzie found herself pouting over the frizzy mess her hair was as she tried to tame it. And she pulled out a white top she’d never worn because it was cut too low. She just wanted to look nice after a day sweating in a kitchen covered in flour. That was it. She didn’t give two shits about what anyone else thought.

She managed to avoid everyone except Kate for at least a couple of hours, much to her relief. Not much of a people person to begin with, Lizzie found socializing difficult when she was tired and even more so when she wasn’t fond of the company. For once there had been relatively few issues, and after her quiet talk with Lydia about her lack of clothing, the afternoon had gone smoothly.

Despite Kate’s protests, torches had been lit and music rang forth from the deck. Several guests were dancing and some were even playing ‘soccer’, Charlie included. Lizzie was making her way over to them when his Dad stopped her short.

“Lizzie my girl, we haven’t seen you in ages. Here, young man, trust me couldn’t find a better dancer in this town.”

Lizzie groaned inwardly as he pulled her to where he stood next to the one person she wanted to avoid more than anything. Acknowledging Jack with a nod, she tried to move away, but Mr. Daniels’ grip was vice-like on her arm.

“You know I don’t dance, not since Charlie broke my wrist that time.”

“Jack here says he doesn’t dance either, but honestly, you won’t find a prettier girl in all Chicago to dance with with.”

In his defense Lizzie saw that Jack was as uncomfortable as she was as they looked at the people dancing. There was no way in hell that she was going to grind her ass against some guy’s crotch like that, least of all his.

Jack cleared his throat, cheeks pink.

“I mean…..would ye like tae dance at all?”

The pity ask just made her irritated, after what he’d said why would he even think for a moment she would dance with him?

“Thanks but I’m going to go play soccer, I don’t feel like dancing.”

She made sure she was polite, kept a pleasant smile on her face. No-one would ever be able to accuse her of being rude. Walking off though she could feel his eyes on her, a trend that continued as the game progressed. From time to time she would look over to where he stood, usually with a scowling Caro at his side, to see him watching her, face infuriatingly blank.

“So Lizzie-bean, what’s with you and the Scot?” Charlie had his arm around her as they sat on the swing, the game declared a draw.

“What the hell are you talking about, butt-wad?” the bastard was still staring, even when she met his gaze defiantly.

“He hasn’t taken his eyes off you all night, there something I should know?” he waggled his eyebrows, earning him a punch on the arm.

“He’s just trying to intimidate me. I must have hurt his tiny man-feelings when I said no to dancing with him earlier.”

“Bitch are you nuts? Why would you say no that?”

“He’s all yours if you want him, Charlie. The guy is a prick.”

“Baby I’d take him in a heartbeat, just thinking about what those hands would do…”

“Ewwww gross. I do not want the image of that man doing anything in my head. Fantasize silently for fuck’s sake.”

It was close to midnight before the party finally broke up, thankfully so because Lizzie was dead on her feet. Grabbing the soccer ball she snuck away from the goodbyes, aiming for the shed, coming up short when she saw the shadowy figures locked in a passionate kiss against the wall.

Damn Maya, go get him, she chuckled to herself as she backed away to give them some privacy, slamming straight into Jack.

Fuck.

“Have ye seen Tom?”

The man couldn’t even be friendly. Asshole.

“He’s ummmm, a little busy right now.” she turned, realising too late that Jack hadn’t stepped back when  she ploughed into him.

For a microsecond everything stopped, the clean, spicy smell of him invaded her nose and her eyes landed on his hands. The image of those fingers on her neck as he pushed her against the wall and his mouth against hers, flooded into her brain and out again, leaving a surge of pure desire in its wake.

Jesus fuck, no. No way this was going to happen.

The moment passed, Lizzie was pretty sure Jack hadn’t noticed a thing so she made her escape, stalking into the house.

“I hate you, Charlie.” she muttered as she closed the door behind her, resolving to never think about Jack Lowden again.

JACK

How Tom had managed to talk him into coming to this party was a mystery. For three weeks he’d been able to avoid every invitation he’d extended, using ‘learning lines’ as an excuse. Tom knew it was bogus but he left Jack to it. Caro on the other hand was thrilled to spend time with the Bennets, mainly so she could bitch about them to a sympathetic ear afterwards.

Jack never bothered to tell her to stop, he just zoned her out as he had done for years. The only time his ears ever perked up was when Lizzie was mentioned, much to his irritation. Where Caro seemed to dote on Maya, she loathed Lizzie Bennet and made so secret of it. Her hair was too ginger, too curly, her skin too pale. She was barely civil, always coming home covered in flour, never showing Caro the respect she felt she deserved. It was petty and mean, but he never saw fit to put a stop to it. He didn’t want to care about the woman who’d so firmly put him in his place, without so much as a word. It still hurt his ego.

And yet, here he stood in said woman’s family backyard with a beer in his hand, wondering what the fuck he was doing, and where she was. An uncomfortable hour passed, Chloe Bennet shot daggers at him and Caro kept whispering in his ear about bad breeding and trash. Tom was so caught up in Maya he had no real idea what was going on.

Then Lizzie arrived.

He knew she worked as a baker so the white dust coating her was no big deal, despite Caro’s smug “I told you so.” He felt an unwanted twinge of disappointment as she went straight into the house, seemingly irritated with the whole thing. Finding himself watching the door for her he went and helped Ben on the grill, disgusted with himself.

He had to admit Ben was a stand-up bloke, simple in his love for his girls and his sports. Jack could respect that. They were discussing the rugby world cup when Jack noticed Lizzie reappear with bowls of salad. He couldn’t help but admire her, hair loose making her eyes look huge. The shirt she wore was cut just low enough to make him swallow, imagining the curves that teased, just out of reach.

Well shit.

A few hours passed, his time spent mostly with Caro or Ben. Lizzie didn’t come near him, which gave him ample opportunity to watch her. The she loved her family was obvious from every interaction, even when she pulled Lydia aside and had her go change. She did it in such a way that no-one but him noticed, sparing the girl any embarrassment. Even her mother was dealt with, an affectionate eye-roll and a hug to quiet her when she started on a tangent about getting her girls settled.

“Could that girl’s shirt get any lower? She looks almost as cheap as that other one.” Caro was in his ear again.

He refrained from pointing out that her halter showed off far more skin that Lizzie’s shirt. That he knew she’d worn it for his benefit made him doubly determined not to point out the difference. Caro was a shark and Jack wasn’t about to let himself get caught in her teeth.

When dancing began out of nowhere he cringed, noticing how quickly young couples started bumping and grinding on one another. He wasn’t a dancer at the best of times, but what passed for dancing in the States just….there was no way. An older gentleman approached him as he twisted open another beer, introducing himself as Lizzie’s friend’s father. He seemed pleasant enough, though he seemed to thoroughly approve of what passed for dancing.

“You younguns have it better than we did.” he chuckled. “We would have been thrown out of any establishment if we’d tried dancing like this.”

“I prefer swing.” Jack answered honestly. “Back when dancing involved some skill and thought.”

“Ah, an old soul. I bet you like Sinatra and old movies.”

“Ye’d be right.”

“Young Lizzie can dance like that, she used to fly that one did.”

“Used tae?”

“Not since…..Ahh Lizzie!”

She looked perturbed as she was all but dragged in front of him and offered up as a potential partner. Her cheeks flushed as she brushed it aside, something about Charlie breaking her wrist. He found himself, just for a moment imagining taking her out there, pressing up against her...rolling their hips together.

The stumbled invitation was out of his mouth before he could stop it, his own cheeks going pink as she looked both surprised and amused. Even with him she was firm but kind in her refusal, preferring to go play football instead. Against his own will he watched her, unable to take his eyes off of her.

Over and over he told himself the same thing. She wasn’t his type. Her family was nuts. She was just some random girl from a backwoods, mouthy and probably not even willing to really do anything other than what she already did. A million reasons why he should look away. Until she looked, caught him staring, and those gorgeous eyes of hers flashed with annoyance.

He couldn’t look away.

“God, how much longer do we have to stay here? I feel like I’m surrounded by rednecks.”

Jack wouldn’t have gone that far, in fact the simplicity of the event rather appealed to him, even if the company didn’t. He didn’t give Caro’s bitchiness the attention she wanted, not even acknowledging she’d spoken and instead sipping his beer as he watched Lizzie kick the ball.

“I see you’re having a marvelous time, Jack.” she cooed snidely. I bet you’re hoping we don’t get roped into any more podunk soiree’s like this.”

“Actually I’m no havin a bad time. I was just thinkin about how pretty the Bennet girl is.”

Caro made a sound like a strangled seal.

“Really? I wouldn’t have thought she was your type.”

“I guess ye thought wrong.”

He didn’t bother watching her walk away in a huff, instead he went and found Tom, enjoying his and Maya’s conversation until the evening began to wind down. Helping Ben put chairs away, Jack lost sight of Tom and found himself looking around aimlessly. Lizzie came around a corner looking preoccupied, and this time he didn’t mind in the slightest when she bumped into him.

Have ye seen Tom?”

Honestly, he had nothing, he was tongue-tied, for some reason he just couldn’t talk to this woman. She was stuttering about Tom being preoccupied, her cheeks were red and she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

This was going well. Not.

He had absolutely no control over this situation, and he hated it.

She was gone again before he knew it, disappearing inside and leaving him to wonder what the hell was going on.

It was late when they made it back to the hotel, Tom raving on about Maya and Caro snidely poking fun at every aspect of the evening. Especially Lizzie. Jack felt his jaw tic as she launched into a tirade against the younger woman. No aspect of her was left un attacked, from her hair to the way she laughed. Still he said nothing, his mind preoccupied with his own conflicted attraction to her and his dislike for her family and the whole lifestyle of the area he was in. Not to mention the fact that Lisa had fucked him over so thoroughly that he could only see this attraction as an annoyance, something to get over or fuck out of his system.

Somehow he didn’t think that the second option was going to be something that Miss Elizabeth Bennet would go for.

He was so irritated that he tossed and turned, unable to sleep as he wrestled with a mixture of lust and disdain. He was still awake when Tom came crashing through the door at 4am.

“Get up. There’s been a fire.”

[eloiseduval]

a klutzy encounter

a/n: another little ficlet, this time with @jace-bennett thanks claire! this is exactly where I left off on my challenge 1 fic, but you don’t really need to read that to get this. don’t mind any typos, or the abrupt ending I got lazy. expect a fic with nate soon! 

“Oof- Oh gosh, I’m so sorry,” I said as I backed away from the solid chest I had run into. Leaning back, I immediately recognized the person I had practically knocked. Jace Bennet’s face was one I had come to know well over the past few years, pictured usually right next to Nate. Although he normally looked friendly, his current expression was one of remorse.

“Oh no it's my fault, I wasn't paying attention.”

I shook my head. “No really, I definitely wasn’t paying attention. Trying to deal with,” I gestured to my dress, “this.”

He chuckled, looking at the obvious orange stain. “What happened? Get a little too nervous?”

I smiled. “Surprisingly no. Had an unfortunate run in with a Selected and her drink. Waste of a good drink, really.”

He easily returned my smile. “Yeah, do you need help with that?”

“Nothing a change of wardrobe can’t fix.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, thinking back to how excited my maids had been showing me the stunning white gown this morning. “I do feel bad about ruining this for my maids, though. Think you can show me where I can clean this?”

“Yeah, I'm probably not allowed to take you down here but whatever. Follow me,” he said, beginning to walk down the hallway.

I took a couple of quick steps to catch up with his long strides.

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.” I suddenly realized he probably had no idea who I was. “Oh! I’m Eloise by the way, Eloise Duval.”

He waved away my fear. “I won't don't worry. I'm Jace but you know that already.”

I smiled. “Definitely. Best friend to Nate, and practically a royal yourself.”

He laughed. “Practically. So what are you?” I was confused for a moment, wondering if I should respond “a female?” before I realized.

“I’m a Four, my parents own Duval Studios, the record label.” I paused. “Well, a Three now.”

He let out an easy laugh, “You should sign Nate, he's really good.”

“So I’ve heard! He played it down during our introduction but I could tell he’s definitely more talented than he lets on.”

“I’ll have to hear him before we sign him though,” I said jokingly.

“He's not super confident playing in front of people he doesn't know. But he's getting better.”

I nodded. “I can understand that. I’m definitely curious to hear him someday, though.”

He shrugged. “Just ask him, it's hard for him to say no.” As much as I believed him, I would hate to push Nate on something he wasn’t necessarily comfortable with. I had seen far too often what stage fright could do.

I smiled gently. “I’ll give him some time. What about you, any musical talent?”

He laughed loudly. “Oh god no. You never want to hear me sing or even touch an instrument.”

“I’ll be sure to keep my guitar far away from you then,” I said, giggling.

“That would be best for the guitar.” He laughed. By now we had reached a part of the palace I didn’t recognize, and he led me down a hidden set of stairs to what I assumed was the basement. We walked into a large room with washing machines and dryers lined up along one wall and tables scattered around the middle of the room. The servants took no note of us, continuing with their work.

“Here just hand them your dress, the stain will be gone in like 2 hours tops.” He said it so casually I doubted he realized what me taking my dress off would mean.

I raised an eyebrow. “See, that sounds fine, but I don’t exactly have anything else to wear.”

“Oh um,” he trailed off, looking around for a moment, “here just take this.”

He suddenly unbuttoned the first few buttons of his dress shirt, slipping it off and handing it to me in one clean move. I tried not to look at his now shirtless upper body, but it was difficult to avert my gaze.

Well he’s definitely not shy. And not unattractive.

I blushed, wondering if I should deny it but figured it was the best option for now. “Um- okay, thanks.”

I stepped behind a screen near us, tucked into a corner of the room. When I walked out a servant quickly came by and grabbed my dress, not sparing me another glance as if this happened all the time. I tugged on the hem of his shirt, unsuccessfully trying to cover my legs. At least I was short.

He laughed at my actions. “Yeah, sorry I couldn't do any better.”

I shook my head with a smile. “I appreciate it.” I fiddled with the buttons on his shirt. “Were you headed to breakfast before I almost knocked you over?”

He bobbled his head slightly. “Kinda, I wasn't sure if interviews were over and I didn't want to walk in a disrupt everything so I was kinda just pacing the hall until a maid or someone walked out that I could ask if they were over or not.”

“Gotcha. You should still head over if you can, those pancakes are to die for.” The food was incredible, something I knew Alex would kill to try if he ever got the chance.

“I am a sucker for the palace pancakes, or really any pancakes.” He paused, examining my lack of clothing with a chuckle. “You should probably change into something more than just my shirt.”

I flashed him a wry smile. “Your mom might have a heart attack if she saw me in this.”

His expression turned wary. “Oh yeah I forgot about her. Hm I feel like no matter what if I walk with or without you it could look bad.” He thought the dilemma over before answering. “Um I'll just go with you in case we are seen I can tell the story.”

I laughed. “Doomed either way I suppose. Ready to head back?

“It’s more like are you ready?

I smirked. “Born ready, in fact.”

“Good,” he answered with a smile.

We walked back up the stairs into the regular part of the palace, thankfully Jace leading the way so I didn’t have to worry about accidentally flashing him. Although there weren’t many people walking around, just a few guards in the distance, a maid stepped out of a room at the perfect moment to spot us. Her eyes widened at the state of our clothing, or rather lack thereof, and pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. I winced, feeling my cheeks warm, but Jace didn’t seem to notice her or my reaction as the maid scurried off.

“So other than the Selected being clumsy, what are they all like?”

I looked away for a moment, mostly to hide my blush, while thinking over the girls I had personally talked to. “Everyone I’ve met so far has been pretty nice, which is reassuring. Although no one seems to be remotely similar to one another,” I said with a laugh, “which should be fun for Nate.”

I peered back him once I felt the warmth disappear from my cheeks, curious. “Why? Excited to meet the rest of us?”

“Yeah I wanna meet all the girls, but I just really hope Nate finds someone good enough for him.” He shrugged. “just looking out for him.”

His commitment to looking out for Nate wasn’t what I was expecting of him, but I admired it. “That’s sweet of you. I have no doubt he’ll find who he’s meant to be with. Although I’ve heard that you’re a contender,” I added jokingly.

He rolled his eyes, laughing. “Oh yeah that's both of our plan b's.”

“I’ll be front and center at the wedding, wishing you the happiest of marriages,” I declared, giggling.

“I'll let you be my bridesmaid.”

I poked his shoulder, smiling. “I’m holding you to that.”

He pointed to his shirt, “And that's going to be your dress.” The image of Nate and Jace standing together at the altar while I stood off to the side in just his shirt and high heels was too much, making me laugh way too hard. I almost bent over, but realized at the last second that nobody needed to see what was underneath Jace’s shirt.

“Even better. I can see it now, women all over Illéa following my lead and starting the bridesmaid trend of the century.”

“Obviously, and it's all thanks to the girl who spilled her drink all over you.” At that comment I tried to recall her face and see if I recognized her, but the interaction was so rushed and odd I only remembered her dark hair.

“And your chivalry of course. Where I would be without it?” I gave him a pointed look with a smile.

“Naked and afraid.”

I giggled at that. “Oh completely. Although you definitely don’t seem to have a problem with,” I gestured at his upper body, “lacking clothing.”

“This isn't the first time I've walked around the palace shirtless, I do it all the time.”

That explains a lot.

I raised an eyebrow. “Adventures with Nate take a weird turn?”

“No, shirts are just tight and uncomfortable,” he said, laughing, before he whispered. “And it's funny watching the maids try not to look.”

I shook my head with a laugh. “You’re horrible, they probably have no idea what to do with themselves.”

“I know, that's the best part,” he admitted with a smile. Then he gave me a pointed look.

“You do know all the guards have been looking at you.”

I looked around then, surprised at his comment, only to see several guards turning their heads away quickly when I made eye contact. “Well that’s not embarrassing,” I muttered.

He gave me a look that said “I told you so.”

I rolled my eyes with a smile. “What a pair we are.”

“Look at us go making all the palace staff be jealous of us.” I wasn’t sure if jealous was the word I would have used, but when a guy was… well endowed like Jace was, I could see why he thought that way.

“One for the books, that’s for sure. My parents will definitely be pleased to find out I ended up half naked, walking around the palace with an equally half naked guy. All in the first day.” I laughed, sincerely hoping that my parents wouldn’t actually hear about this story. At least not for another year. Or two.

He laughed. “Only the first of many”

“We'll see about that,” I conceded with a smile. At this point we had reached my room, and I stepped up to the door to face him.

“Thanks for the shirt, Jace. Give me one sec.” I opened up the door and scurried into my room heading straight for the dresser. I managed to find a suitable pale blue dress to change into, quickly taking off Jace’s shirt and slipping into the dress. It was only when I was struggling with the zipper and felt another hand help me zip the dress closed, that I realized I wasn’t the only person in the room. When I turned around, Blair’s green eyes were amused as she stood in front of me. Sienna and Harper looked shocked, their jaws dropped and eyes wide.

I put my hands out in front of me. “I’ll explain everything, but first I have to return this.” Before they could say a word, I picked up Jace’s shirt that I had let fall to the ground and stepped outside of my room, handing it to him.

“I'll see you around, hopefully not about to knock you over or in need of your shirt,” I said with a laugh.

He quickly buttoned his shirt back on. “This has been quite the mini adventure. And you're welcome for not letting you walk around the palace in just a men’s shirt all by yourself. I got you.”

“Ever the gentleman,” I remarked with a smile, waving goodbye.

He waved back. “I'll see you down at breakfast. And try not to spill anything.” He gave me a pointed look, making me roll my eyes.

“Will do.” He pointed a finger at me and made an expression that said “I’m watching you” before turning around and walking away.

Not wanting to linger around in the hallway - and knowing I owed my maids a lengthy explanation - I opened the door and stepped inside, leaning against it with a sigh as I closed it. They immediately stepped up to me, talking over one another and evoking a laugh from me. I then took the next fifteen minutes describing everything in detail, much to their content.

[allurehq-blog]

blood status: pureblood clubs: charms club, hogwarts choir pronouns: up to player sexuality: up to player

BIOGRAPHY

to be written by player

CONNECTIONS

fabian prewett; the pest. from the day that she was born, bertha has been independent - exactly the way she likes it. her family comes from old money, pureblood riches lining their pockets for as long as they could remember. she grew up wanting for nothing, as any material item was given to her without a hesitation. rather than memories or friendship being used as the things to bolster her happiness, money and items were instead equated with joy in their household. and as her parents were more interested in being her friend than being her parents, they encouraged this materialistic behavior that had developed - whatever bertha asked or desired, she received the answer she wanted. to this day, it still remains the same way - only now that’s she’s gotten everything that she’s wanted, there’s nothing more that can truly excite her. the idea of spending time with people and simply talking seems trivial to her, as she figures that there are far better ways that she could be spending her time. interacting and conversing with people in school for anything more than her own personal gain is a waste of her time, and she’s not afraid to make that known. most people seem to understand this by now, having come to the terms with the fact that bertha is not someone who is particularly friendly or outgoing. they keep out of her way - only coming to her unless they have tidbits of gossip to share with her, a desperate attempt to possibly save themselves from any impending wrath of hers. it’s refreshing and relaxing, not having to waste her energy on things that don’t concern her anymore, as it seems that everyone has caught on. everyone, at least, for fabian prewett. bertha can’t seem to shake them and their relentless attention. they’re there around every corner, eager to talk to her or try to get her to spend time with them. perhaps they’re not that intelligent, or perhaps they have nothing better to do with their time than chase pointless dreams, but bertha is growing tired of it. it’s difficult enough to constantly try and dissuade them from whatever their goal is, insults and annoyance dripping off of her tongue in thick waves. but to make it worse, fabian insists on staying persistent and refusing to give up. it’s not every day that bertha has to continually deal with the same person - unless it’s fabian prewett.

mary macdonald; the toxic relationship. it was supposed to be simple. bertha had wanted it to be that way when it had started - emphatic on the notions that this was going to be no strings attached, one time only sort of deal. mary has always been one of the few people that seemed to be immune to the cynical and cool nature that bertha gave off in waves - in the worst way possible. while bertha could say one thing that would leave others leaving without a second glance and questioning the decision to speak to her in the first place, mary was almost to impossible to rid herself of. no matter what she could say to her, mary would just respond with a shrug and a continuance to what she had been saying previously. it went like that in cycles - mary trying to seek bertha out and talk to her or give her attention, bertha acting cold, and mary not getting the hint. on one afternoon that bertha wasn’t interested the same thing that happened again and again, she launched off into a tirade, hoping that it would’ve been enough to get the other girl off her case. but instead of mary even saying anything in return or leaving - she found a way to finally shut bertha up, kissing her straight on the lips. it had left bertha stunned, because she wasn’t expecting it, and more importantly, because she wasn’t expecting to enjoy it. and despite her best tries to make a fuss and act as if it was a great offense against her, she knew that by letting mary kiss her - and in return kissing her back - she’d already shown far too much of her hand. following that incident, bertha desperately tried to overcompensate with insults and anger, but time and time again the two of them found each other in the same way, tangles of limbs and soft lips that were tender in one instance and bruising in the next. she couldn’t understand what was wrong with her, what was allowing bertha to let mary get under her skin like this - but she was there and she was annoying and bertha had to get her out. and just like the way that she knew best, bertha slowly began to use the information she had on mary against her - that mary was just something to occupy her time, that bertha wasn’t even interested in women, that mary meant nothing to bertha. the words would flood from bertha’s mouth whenever she and mary crossed paths, determined to show that the other girl had no effect on her or her feelings. she would say it enough in hopes that she could get herself to believe it - even though knowing that mary macdonald meant… something. whatever it was.

peter pettigrew; the project. if there’s something happening within the school, bertha makes it her mission to know what it is. there’s something about knowing all of the information on people around her that makes her feel powerful - especially if it’s secrets that people want to keep hidden. knowledge is power, after all. and although bertha is not the type to exceed in the knowledge of spells or book smarts, she’s found another way to show her power, and that’s through the command of gossip. at first it started out small - learning the information of who was dating who, or who was cheating on who. she’d do it through simple eavesdropping, for no one was suspicious of the small hufflepuff girl sitting alone in the courtyard, they’d felt safe enough to start speaking about their secrets there and then. she could observe quietly and people watch from a distance in the great hall during meal hours, learning these secrets and putting together the puzzles before the people involved even had the chance to. but eventually, there’s only so much enjoyment that can come out of relationship woes or friendship drama. bertha began to grow bored with these stories, and became hungry for juicier information. rather than passively sitting and waiting for it to fall into her lap, she began an active search for the stories that she thought were hiding within the school - like when she discovered that the seeker for the ravenclaw team had only been given the position because he’d slept with the captain. it left her feeling powerful, for who could doubt her intelligence or disrespect her when she had enough information to potentially ruin their reputation with just a word. the case of remus lupin, however - that one has proved to be the most difficult. they say that he’s just sickly, that he’s ill all the time or that he’s off visiting his mother at home. but bertha isn’t that easily fooled. how coincidental that on every single time remus is off being ‘ill’, his friends show up late in the great hall with unkempt clothes and dark circles lining their eyes. how coincidental that he falls ill every single month, and the professors just seem to sweep this under the rug. she knows that she’s onto something, and perhaps the quickest way to find out would be to go straight to the source of remus himself - but he won’t be that easy to crack. peter pettigrew, however. that’s a totally different story.

rita skeeter; the rival. bertha has a way about her that makes it clear that she’s not around to play games or to deal with people she doesn’t want to. she was charismatic and manipulative, a dangerous duo when it came to twisting words and bending them all out of shape until it was impossible to remember which was was up in the first place. bertha had never been the smartest person in her class, as her mother was the type to emphasize the importance of beauty over brains. bertha wasn’t born to save the world, she’d remind her daughter. she wasn’t created to change lives or to make a difference - her importance was within the family and continue their legacy. it’s clear that people show their authority in many different way - some get respect through intelligence and knowledge, others through power and intimidation. bertha, however, would show hers through her wealth and her personality. it was a force to be reckoned with, after all. people seemed to take notice, and they would listen to what she said without a second thought. that was, until she crossed paths with rita skeeter. rita was smart and sharp, she wasn’t the type who could be easily swayed by the flash of something expensive or the words of intimidation. rita was headstrong like bertha, having gained a reputation on her own through her rise to the top of the social hierarchy. it was something of a question, though - because for the two of them, it wasn’t as if the two of them were popular or well-liked among their peers. people feared them, people were intimidated by them, people respected them in a different way. but to bertha, it didn’t matter if she was feared or if she was loved - what mattered was that she remained in the position that she so rightfully deserved - the position of the most powerful girl at hogwarts. it’s true, power was relative, for someone could easily say that the most intelligent student was the most powerful - but it’s not about that. power is knowing that people will go through with your every whim, and as long as rita skeeter is in her way, there’s something in the way of her reaching that goal.

BERTHA JORKINS IS PORTRAYED BY CHLOE BENNET, AND SHE IS OPEN FOR APPLICATION.

[pollaidh]

In-line meta 221B just before the hug

221B Scene. Discussion between John and Sherlock. End of TLD.

SHERLOCK: “Perhaps the drugs opened certain doors in my mind.” (Like closet doors, last time he took drugs, in TAB.) … “Intrigued.”

JOHN: Makes dismissive/semi-humorous comment showing Sherlock John’s care for him is merely duty, a duty he is sharing with others.

SHERLOCK: “I thought we were just hanging out.” The softening of Sherlock’s gaze at the end shows this is the truth. He wishes they were just hanging out, but he thinks John’s there out of duty, not because he wants to be. Reinforces this with: “I do think I can last 20 minutes without supervision.” (Duty again. The tiny self-deprecating smile at the end. He’s hoping John will joke back as usual, continue their old camaraderie. He’s setting up for a private joke, but John doesn’t respond.) Just says -

JOHN: “If you’re sure.” Doesn’t meet Sherlock’s eye, his gaze is straight ahead until the last second.

JOHN: Makes comment about going to Rosie.

SHERLOCK: (Voice soft). “I should come and see her.” (Beseeching look.) Unusually subdued. Ah yes, Rosie is the most important to him now. And instead of throwing out some joking, petulant statement, he calmly accepts he no longer can come first to John. The subtext: Do you still want me to be part of your life? Sherlock looks at John as John talks with head-Mary. John unsure how to take this - does Sherlock seriously want to spend time with Rosie?

  JOHN: Gives an unwelcoming yes. He’s not engaging.

SHERLOCK: Looks away. How to make him stay, how to get this back on the old footing? He taps his hand on side of mug - frustration, indecision. Pleased he has found something to say, he looks up. The case. Yes. John’s always interested in the case. That’s why he’s interested in Sherlock, for the excitement, the two of them fighting crime together. 

SHERLOCK: Starts in his light professional voice to discuss case. John isn’t thawing. Sherlock trails off with a little laugh. He’s nervous. 

JOHN: “That’s good.” (Low intonation at end, shutting down this conversation. Might as well have said ‘that’s nice.’)

(This part of the scene, the stops and starts, and averted looks, talking about anything but the real story, reminds me of the Mr Darcy meets Lizzie Bennet scene in the Colin Firth version: A couple who are in love but don’t know they are in love, have argued, and see each other again in difficult circumstances, don’t know what to say to each other, or how the other feels.)

JOHN: Clenches hand (sign of John’s stress that Sherlock must have picked up on over the years).

SHERLOCK: Looks to his tea. This isn’t going well. John is upset. John is leaving. He’s going to have to go deep.

SHERLOCK: “Are you okay?”

(Such a loaded question. This isn’t ‘how are you?’ as a greeting or a post-bomb check. His voice is raw, all pretence gone. He cares. It’s hard for men to get onto this plane of conversation. He REALLY cares.)

JOHN: Laughs, but returns.

SHERLOCK: Watches John’s reaction, accepts the anger he feels is his due. He knows he’s broken them so no smart arse comments, he doesn’t argue, he just accepts….

SHERLOCK: “In saving my life she conferred a value on it, a currency I do not know how to spend.” (Without you I don’t know why my life is. He earlier said he couldn’t commit suicide because of the value of his life to John, but he doesn’t know how to live if John doesn’t even want to be friends. He can’t live or die without John.)

JOHN: Still not forthcoming, but his choice of words “It is what it is” have deeper meaning for the audience. Could be interpreted by Sherlock as ‘tough, this is what we’ve got’.

SHERLOCK: Swallows. That’s all he’s getting. He’s glad to get that forgiveness (he thought he’d broken any feelings romantic/platonic John had for him. He can’t say anything here because John’s talking about Mary (on the surface), he’s still in love with her. Sherlock’s culpability (which he feels even if forgiven) means he can’t talk about her. He has no right.

JOHN: Back to his duty - he’s on the 6-10 watch. The meaningful moment is over.

SHERLOCK: Tears in his eyes. Bravado: “Looking forward to it.” It’s all he’s got left.

JOHN: “Yeah.” A blank little ‘yeah’ and an eye-roll. He’s not.

IRENE?: Text alert!!!

JOHN: Jealous.

SHERLOCK: Plays innocent. (Could he have set that up?) Starts analysing whilst John stalks back over. Why does Irene’s ringtone make him come back. John was always jealous of Irene. …

SHERLOCK: “Oh. Okay. That’s good.” (For John’s deduction. He has no idea what this will be, He’s wrapping a protective coat around himself. Complete change of tone - a subdued version of his own mocking tone. This tone last used when John asks him to be best man, and he really doesn’t understand what’s being asked. Eyes flicker, he’s analysing, possibly responding mentally. Sips tea at the end there too. (And why does he keep his birthday secret?) All very polite and formal between them.

JOHN: “Seriously, are we not going to talk about this?”

SHERLOCK: (This being him and John, or something else?) “What? (Doesn’t dare say anything leading.)

Clarify 2 X more. Normally Sherlock predicts what John will say but here he really doesn’t know.

JOHN: “Woman..”

SHERLOCK: Screws eyes shut. Seriously? FFS John, how dense can you be?

JOHN: Lots of subtext about losing chances, with a very hetero “mate” as last seen in TSoT.

SHERLOCK: WTF? How can John still think he’s in love with Irene Adler? He made this clear. He’s confused. Something he’s missing. Right. Revert to standard line. “Romantic entanglements, while fulfilling for other people…” (Is this because he thinks if John really thinks Sherlock’s in love with Irene, than all his assumptions about what is between them must be flawed.)

JOHN: Talks about chance. “Chances don’t last forever… gone before you know it.” 

(Surface - about Mary, which means Sherlock can’t really respond. Also foreshadowing Last Problem. Subtext - he’s talking about chances between him and Sherlock, and telling unwittingly telling Sherlock to go for it.)

SHERLOCK: Eyes fall. This hits hard, He knows he’s lost his chance with John, back before he realised he loved him. This is an incredibly raw moment. Sherlock has a raw, earnest expression. 

JOHN: Talks about needing someone who completes you and makes you a better person.

SHERLOCK: “Forgive me…... I can safely say..” You complete me, you taught me to be a better man. That’s what love is. You are the better man, and you taught me. Except he doesn’t get to finish what is basically a confession of love, unlike Culverton Smith, whose confession couldn’t be stopped.

JOHN: “I cheated.”

SHERLOCK: Utter shock. Did he really not know? Then he realises Mary’s in the room, in John’s head. How can he replace a dead person. It’s heart breaking watching John talk to his dead wife. Sherlock analysing - so he still sees her and talks to her, but he cheated. Sherlock calculating WTF is going on here?

JOHN: Confesses all to Mary, himself, and Sherlock. Subtext, despite Mary being the mother of his child, he still cheated. He was only with her for the baby, but even that couldn’t stop him wanting more.

JOHN: “But I wanted more.”

SHERLOCK: Analysing. More with Faith? Or more than he got from his relationship with Mary. More with Sherlock? This is the moment Sherlock starts to wonder if there’s still a chance. He raises a wondering gaze, dawning hope in his eyes. John wasn’t committed to Mary like he’d assumed. What does that mean? (Sherlock is probably never going to be great at understanding emotions, though he’s improving.

JOHN: “I still do.”

SHERLOCK: (With who?)

JOHN: “Not the guy you thought…” 

(Surface level to Mary and Sherlock - I’m not a good guy. Subtext - I’m not the (straight) guy you thought I was. John’s equating good and straight because of internalised homophobia.) “I never could be.” (He’s always been this way - hmm that sounds familiar.)

JOHN: “But that’s the point…” You love warts and all. 

SHERLOCK: Subtext: Sherlock can be loveable even though he’s not perfect. John could love Sherlock. 

JOHN: “Who you thought I was is the man I want to be.” (2 levels - good man/straight man. Equating these is a sign of his internalised homophobia. And he’s telling the audience and Sherlock, that they have made false assumptions (that’s he’s straight).

MARY-in-John’s-head: “Well, John Watson, get the hell with it.” 

(Emphasis on hell. John has seen Mary tell Sherlock to go to hell, so links hell with Sherlock. He’s telling himself to get the hell on and tell Sherlock before it’s too late.” What else could this refer to - the recovery at surface level (John, get the baby, come back to life), but it’s much much deeper. As John stares, Mary smiles and disappears. John’s two sides (the conflict between Mary/John in his head, AND his good and bad side, and his side where he loves women and side where he loves men). John is integrated again. He accepts himself, warts and all, good man and bad, and all parts of his sexuality.

JOHN: Sobs, overwhelmed. He has given himself permission to be the man he was always supposed to be, to love himself entirely.

SHERLOCK: Absolutely serious, raw, none of the usual jokes and mania or glee, just entirely genuine and natural, puts down his tea and slowly, quietly, goes to John to comfort him. (He presumably hasn’t heard Mary’s contribution in John’s head, only John’s side. So he only sees John admit to Mary that he cheated, that he’s not the guy they thought. He doesn’t know John has just told himself to go for it. He seems John overwhelmed with guilt, as he sees it, not relief.) THEY HUG.

Compared to the wedding hug, which was so awkward, like John teaching Sherlock to hug, this is so natural. Mr Homes knows exactly what to do. Sherlock still cautious. Not sure how he’ll be received, this is not the moment for any declarations. But the hand on John’s neck is possessive and intimate, and John lays his head against Sherlock’s chest.

SHERLOCK: Glances up at the sky (thank god? Is this right? Am I doing it right?) All he cares about is that John is hurting.

Like the scene at the end of TSoT when Sherlock deduces the pregnancy, leaving him to realise there’s no chance with John now, this is such a raw, open, tender scene. They are being honest with each other and within themselves. There are still some miscommunications to clear up, but they are born of love and waiting for the right moment.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: The summer of 1919, called “The Red Summer” by James Weldon Johnson, ushered in the greatest period of interracial violence the nation had ever witnessed. During that summer there were twenty-six race riots in such cities as Chicago, Illinois; Washington, D.C.; Elaine, Arkansas; Charleston, South Carolina; Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee; Longview, Texas; and Omaha, Nebraska. More than one hundred Blacks were killed in these riots, and thousands were wounded and left homeless. The seven most serious race riots were those which occurred in Wilmington, N. C. (1898), Atlanta, Ga. (1906), Springfield, Ill. (1908), East St. Louis) Ill. (1917), Chicago, Ill. (1919), Tulsa, Okla. (1921) and Detroit, Mich. (1943). — Robert A. Gibson, The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950 A war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct. — California Governor Peter H. Burnett, 1851 At the time, Executive Order 9066 was justified as a “military necessity” to protect against domestic espionage and sabotage. However, it was later documented that “our government had in its possession proof that not one Japanese American, citizen or not, had engaged in espionage, not one had committed any act of sabotage. These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. — Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps, March 1, 1978 The recent attack in Charlottsville hardly stands out as in any way unique in American history. But there are several very telling aspects to this display of organized white supremacist values. First, how is it the police allowed it to happen? Well, ok, we know the answer. That was rhetorical. The next question would be perhaps the media coverage of this. Third would be the President and his response. In a sense, the media coverage actually encloses the other issues. For the narrative being manufactured by the NY Times and Washington Post and all the rest, CNN and MSNBC is pretty much the same, with only variations that are designed to target specific demographics. The story of U.S. racism and colonial plunder, of a settler mentality and the reality of Manifest Destiny and genocide is simply erased. In its place is the fairy tale of white American goodness that I and millions of others were taught in school. Charlottsville is thus not a result of Trump, of his personality, of his friends such as Steve Bannon. It is part of a deep current in the collective psyche of the U.S. There has never been a time when America was good. There was goodness in America, certainly in culture, in art and even in certain movements for social justice. There was the Wobblies and early socialists and union organizers. But the overriding reality has been one of acute racism, both institutional and individual, and of conquest and since WW2 of a rabid all consuming anti communism and quest for global hegemony. The U.S. was founded on the twin pillars of slave labor and the genocide of six hundred indigenous tribes. It is a settler colonial project that has never wavered in support for the Capitalist system. It was founded by rich white men, and that also has never changed. Blacks can’t run it. Nowhere, and they won’t be able to for a hundred years, and maybe not for a thousand. … Do you know, maybe one black country that’s well run? — Richard Nixon (Whitehouse tapes) I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of 10 are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the 10th. — Theodore Roosevelt I mean one could just go on and on. Woodrow Wilson worked to keep blacks out of Princeton when he was that University’s president. Calvin Coolidge, Andrew Johnson, James Polk — who deserves a special place as the most pro slavery president, perhaps, in U.S. history. In fact, it’s pretty hard to find a president who wasn’t overtly racist. While it may be tempting to dismiss 500 knuckle-dragging racists marching through Charlottesville waving Confederate flags as unrepresentative of a nation that takes pride in values of tolerance and racial equality, it would be wrong. Those who took part in those ugly scenes are the reality rather than the myth of America. They know that the American exceptionalism which Obama, while president, declared he believed in with every fiber of his being, is in truth white exceptionalism – ‘white’ in this context being not only a racial construct but also an ideological construct. — John Wight, “Charlottesville: Outrage, Hypocrisy & Obama’s Betrayal“, Greanville Post, August 16, 2017 But what has struck me is the outcry from the educated white class. Those gatekeepers to media and what passes for culture these days. The outrage is extreme and this has served to amp up the anti Trump sentiments even further than they already were. But none of these people uttered a peep about Obama and his CIA support for radical head chopping takfiri killers in Syria, and not a word when Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland (and John McCain) orchestrated the coup in Ukraine that installed a full-on Nazi Party, complete with swastikas. But then U.S. foreign policy has a long history of support for fascism. In Africa, the U.S. supported war lords and mass killers…as Keith Harmon Snow wrote… The violence wreaked on Congo-Zaire by Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame was exported by perpetrators who first waged genocidal campaigns and coups-d’état that violated the most fundamental international covenants on state sovereignty first in Uganda, then Rwanda, then Zaire (Congo). On 6 April 1994, they assassinated heads of state from Rwanda and Burundi, again the most fundamental and egregious violations of international law. The U.S., U.K., Canada and Israel could not have been happier. These first campaigns of Tutsi-Hima guerrilla warfare set the stage for unprecedented violence as the terror regimes of Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame tortured, slaughtered, raped, disappeared, assassinated, and terrorized millions of innocent non-combatant civilians from Uganda to Rwanda to Burundi to Congo (and in South Sudan). They had the backing of western intelligence and covert operations at the start. Or take Haiti. The U.S. ushered out President Aristide at gunpoint and replaced him with former Ton Ton Macoute fascists. The U.S. removed Zelaya in Honduras (on order from Hillary Clinton) and replaced him with a far right wing fascist. The U.S. supports fascist Leopoldo Lopez and his friends in Venezuela at this very moment. But rarely if ever do I hear a word from those people *outraged* at the tiki torch Blood and Soil pro confederate neo Klansmen in Virginia this week. The U.S. openly supported the fascist loving Croatian secessionists under Franjo Tudjman, an ardent admirer of the fascist state of Croatia in the 1930s under Ante Pavelic, as they dismantled socialist Yugoslavia. The racist murderers in Charlottsville are ideologically the same as countless parties and leaders the U.S. has supported for sixty years. No, for two hundred years and supports today. I read a meme on social media yesterday that described Trump as having disgraced the office of the President. This is from a liberal and a Democrat. Honestly I’m not sure what one would have to do to disgrace that office. Harry Truman ordered the destruction of two Japanese cities with Atomic bombs, the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians, women, children, the elderly…everyone. Disgrace the office? The School of the Americas, now rebranded, taught torture and subjugation to several generations of right wing dictators, and helped train death squads throughout Latin America. I suspect that if Barry Goldwater returned from the dead and ran as a Democrat today he would be hugely successful. There is a certain swooning adoration for rock ribbed conservatives in liberal America. It is the result of an endless inculcating of the idea of money equating with merit. Most Americans have an unconscious knee jerk respect for the wealthy. Listen to how the owners of major sports franchises are talked about…it is always MISTER Bennet, MISTER Dolan, MISTER Snyder, MISTER Kendrick. It is a kind of weird hologram of the plantation system brought to you on network TV. While demanding an Open Door in China, it had insisted (with the Monroe Doctrine and many military interventions) on a Closed Door in Latin America-that is, closed to everyone but the United States. It had engineered a revolution against Colombia and created the “independent” state of Panama in order to build and control the Canal. It sent five thousand marines to Nicaragua in 1926 to counter a revolution, and kept a force there for seven years. It intervened in the Dominican Republic for the fourth time in 1916 and kept troops there for eight years. It intervened for the second time in Haiti in 1915 and kept troops there for nineteen years. Between 1900 and 1933, the United States intervened in Cuba four times, in Nicaragua twice, in Panama six times, in Guatemala once, in Honduras seven times. By 1924 the finances of half of the twenty Latin American states were being directed to some extent by the United States. By 1935, over half of U.S. steel and cotton exports were being sold in Latin America. — Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1980, Chapter 16, “A People’s War?” The white liberal today operates from an ideological position of intellectual containment. One might think Hiroshima would be condemned without qualification. This is not the case. The intellectual containment is to partition aspects of history and simply ignore the disturbing parts — things like the reality of slavery, for example. Hollywood goes a long ways in sanitizing the story of the slave trade, and more, of the enduring scars, emotional and psychic, that such barbarism produced. White supremacism is, as John Wight rightly notes, is an ideological construct. So back to Charlottsville. The goofy Hitler haircuts and ridiculous tiki torches (Wal Mart sells them by the by) make for good TV and provide an easy target for hand wringing liberals, but the reality is, of course, that most people have no desire to upset the status-quo. How many white American football fans applaud Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the anthem? According to a Reuters poll 72% of Americans saw Kaepernick as unpatriotic. The overt racism and fascist symbols in Virgina are easy to denounce. They seem almost made for that. And the attendant cries of how empowered the Trump base is seem almost silly (for one thing Trump’s real base is upwardly mobile whites, suburban usually, and nominally educated). The cartoon crackers in Virginia are not a significant force. But they do have symbolic weight. And yes, a woman died. Killed by a former Marine. Quelle surprise says I. The police watched. The U.S. domestic police system was born of militia hunting runaway slaves. It has not traveled a very great ideological distance since. As an internal colony in what some refer to as a prison house of nations that characterizes the U.S. nation state, black communities are separated into enclaves of economic exploitation and social degradation by visible and often invisible social and economic processes. The police have played the role not of protectors of the unrealized human rights of black people but as occupation forces. — Ajamu Baraka, “Philando Castile, Charleena Lyles: The Body Count in the U.S. War against Black People Continues”, Black Agenda Report, June 21, 2017 The U.S. society is one in distress. There is a desperation in the affluent classes that suggests a growing recognition that the system they believe in, that has protected their privilege, is starting to fray at the edges. And maybe worse than fray. A recent study on addiction to smart phones among teenagers links depression and feelings of isolation with smart phone usage. It also has resulted in a generation that goes out less, has less sex, and desires independence less. Teens live at home longer, and wait longer to get their driver’s license. One in four Americans take anti depressants. Jonathan Crary’s excellent book 24/7 dissects the global present in which most Westerners today live. And disruptions of sleep play a prominent role in the infantilization of U.S. culture. Everyone today sleeps less. Six and half hours a night compared to eight hours only a generation ago. In a society that metaphorically sleepwalks when awake, the material reality is that people sleep less. They are more anxious, and more afraid. The anti war movement (of the 60s) had spawned an identification with pacifism and public empathy for the victims of war; but in the 1980s the conditions nurturing these currents had to be eliminated and replaced in all areas with a culture of aggressivity and violence. That millions of supposedly liberal or progressive Americans will not dutifully avow that they ‘support our troops’ while remaining silent about the thousands murdered in imperial wars attests to the success of these counter measures. This marked the conscious ridicule of the sixties counterculture in mass media. It also marked the start of an aggressive re-writing of history, even recent history. Today it is a criminal offense in many places to feed the poor. It is criminal in many places to grow a vegetable garden in your front yard. It is illegal to criticize the Israel, too. Poverty is shameful, and worse. Against this has come an onslaught of demonizing all communist leaders from Castro to Mao. Chavez is routinely called a dictator, a caudillo, a strongman. Never mind this is only more racism, it is also untrue, factually untrue. No matter. It is a society of mass propaganda on all levels. So Charlottsville will distract the educated white populace for a week or so, and Trump will be made fun of and denounced. One wonders who watched his TV show, though. I mean it can’t have been just those guys in Hitler haircuts, right? Now Trump is a vile and dangerous man. Clearly close to illiterate, weak, resentful and insecure. But Trump is only a signifier for a wider problem. And that problem is that the United States has never altered its basic course. It began as a settler colony, one with genocidal tendencies and a thirst for violence. And so it is today. Eight hundred military bases across the planet. And allies like Saudi Arabia, where women are beheaded for being witches. Where confessions are the result of torture. Torture that isn’t even denied. The UN appointed Saudi Arabia as head of their human rights council. You see the problem…its much bigger than Charlottsville. If a society has stopped reading, and cannot sleep, and is the most obese in history, and where fertility rates are in steep decline; well, one suspects this is the dawn of the Empire’s collapse. Ajamu Baraka summarized it best I think. Looking at white supremacy from this wider-angle lens, it is clear that support for the Israeli state, war on North Korea, mass black and brown incarceration, a grotesque military budget, urban gentrification, the subversion of Venezuela, the state war on black and brown people of all genders, and the war on reproductive rights are among the many manifestations of an entrenched right-wing ideology that cannot be conveniently and opportunistically reduced to Trump and the Republicans. George Jackson wrote… The Capitalist class reached its maturity with the close of the 1860-64 civil war. Since that time there have been no serious threats to their power; their excesses have taken on a certain legitimacy through long usage. Prestige bars any serious attack on power. Do people attack a thing they consider with awe, with a sense of its legitimacy? The U.S. military lays waste to parts of every continent on earth, or threatens to. There are U.S. troops killing people in Yemen, in Syria, in Afghanistan. The U.S. threatens small nations without real power. And the leadership today, and not just Trump, is infantile and narcissistic and ill-educated. It is as if the very worst and most stupid people in the country are now running it. But this has been trending this direction for thirty years now. It is not new. It has only gotten much worse, I think. There were mass pro Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden in the 1930s. Americans adore royalty, too. The same Euro royals who have supported and protected fascists for hundreds of years. There is an unmediated worship of power and authority. Nearly anyone in uniform is fawned over. The American bourgeoisie always side with authority. With the status quo. With institutional power. Charlottsville is indeed a symptom, but it is not in any way an aberration. http://clubof.info/