#is crueler to kill them or subject them to the island

[pebbles-scatter]

my strangest headcanon ive developed (that im not even sure is supported in canon even a tiny bit) is that i see the dakotas as being cruel to one another. or at least not seeing dakotas as something important, seeing each other and themself as something expendable.

i guess the scenario in my mind is dakota not really understanding why cav cares about the well-being of the other dakotas. this isn't out of like ... self-centeredness, more akin to self-hatred. but cruel nonetheless.

a special kind of cruelty. one born out of self-deprecation but not self-inflicted. it hurts no one but dakota, but is it a victimless act? not as i see it.

[moiteneia]

Federation Report: Experiment 0010.

The two guinea pigs, 0001 and 0010, have shown themselves to be very promising. Being twins, we were able to closely observe the changes in their bodies upon contact with Perfection. However, they still demonstrate serious personality flaws.

01 is an intelligent and calm girl, observing her surroundings before making any decision and can distinguish puzzles from false riddles. However, it shows weakness with animals and is aggressive towards physical experiments.

As for her brother, 10, he is an unsociable and protective boy, showing high levels of anger when we approach his sister. He demonstrates the same level of intelligence as his sister, spending hours on our puzzles to deliver them perfectly solved.

Given their levels of aggression, we decided to separate them, promising each other that if they obeyed, the other would not be being attacked.

From there, we were able to move on to the ARENA experiment.

There, we put the best cobals we collected to face each other in pairs. By uniting 10 and q!Bbh, one of our oldest guinea pigs, we achieved spectacular results.

This was the first time the experiment was given a "name". q!Bbh seems to have become fond of the child and named him "Dapper".

0010 doesn't seem to show the exact feeling of affection or protection for q!Bbh, just being understanding and calm. The two seem to get along well and q!Bbh managed to use 10's aggression to capture and kill his opponents more easily. This seems to have made the child crueler than Perfection would have liked.

The Federation then determined that 0010 would be sent to the prison where we send the rest of our failed experiments, while we will erase part of q!Bbh's memories so that he does not remember the experiments accurately and hinder our efforts to achieve the perfection.

0010 in prison demonstrated irrationality. Having had contact with cruelty, he became manipulative and used fear to obtain protection and what interests him. So much so that he used a fake cell phone to attract and win over gangs who, interested in contact with outsiders, approached him.

This cell phone gave him a new nickname, "Cell". The Federation has not yet decided whether names are bad aspects for our experiment, but momentarily it seems that this will not affect our experiments.

However, two failed test subjects managed to manipulate 0010. Although he managed to escape from our prison, he demonstrated confusion numerous times and his irrationality, along with the intensity and impulsiveness of his actions, blinded him.

Last time we saw him, the duo, along with a third individual, they had arrested him in a type of cave on a small island. He only had in his possession a gun with a single bullet.

Fearing that we would lose one of our most promising results, the agents rushed to rescue him. However, upon arriving on the island, he had somehow escaped.

The Federation determined that we must get it back immediately before we lost everything we had gained in years of experimentation. The agents have been thinking about using 0010's sister to lure him, as we did to keep him obedient, however, we don't know exactly through which channels we could do this.

For now, our main mission is to continue the experiments with the other test subjects and track where "Cell" or 0010 could be.

xXx

Report Update: Arrival of Brazilians and "q!Cellbit/0010".

We managed to track down the location of experiment 0010. He was on his way to Australia on a boat with the prison duo and two other test subjects.

We immediately tried to attract the ship with our mechanisms, however, we were surprised. Subject 0001 managed to reach communication and sent a message to the ship's captain, trying to warn them to stay away from the island, as they were heading towards danger.

It appears that 0001 has been following the investigation for the past few years, looking for her brother and a way to join him by escaping. Luckily, we managed to find out before she arrived to meet her brother. We immediately erase all her memories involving him and will keep her locked up until further notice.

Now, we need to revisit the experiments of 0010, or q!Cellbit, as he appears to have given himself, and find out how far he is from his latest progress while still in our domain.

We also need to know if it is still of use to the Federation so that we can achieve Perfection.

[starshipsofstarlord]

God is With You, Even as You’re Sinning

Pairing | Sam Winchester x reader

Summary | it was your first time not killing a monster, and in its place, taking the life of one of your own. Guilt entraps you, and it is up to Sam to break you out of your pitiful hypnosis.

Warnings | mentions of death, blood, angst, guilt, some smut, oral sex (fem receiving), penetrative unprotected sex, fingering, swearing, mentions of murder

Requested ✖️

Quick link to my masterlist, if you’re interested in reading more of my crap 😬

Fuck God. This was all his fault, everything was to be fair. He had left the world to continue on its own accord, the apocalypse threatening to spill over the planet and destroy it and all beauty that was lingering through the existence of humans.

They killed each other, and the creator of all could care less. It was his smallest problem, he didn’t mind that the murderer was succumbed to guilt, or how many restless nights that he or she endured. God was cruel, even if he held up a facade of being your ally, and trying his hardest as he supposed, to be your friend.

Your hands shook as you remembered the entailment of your mistake. It was a slip up, a vast and surreal experience that people usually learned from. But what were you supposed to do, not kill a human again? Yeah you had gotten that, after all, the initial deed had not at all been intentional.

There was the victim��s blood dried upon the outer layer of your skin, casting you in the perfect image of murderous intent. However, you had no thirst to kill, instead, your hunting of monsters, alike to many others partaking in a similar lifestyle, executed the mythical beasts to protect the human population.

It pained you truly, to know that you had killed a person. You hadn’t even spared the familiar body a second glance, and out of panic, you fled the scene, leaving the body of the city cleaner in the gutter, laying in the remnants of his friends’ and family’s waste, burying him in their crude excrement.

The thought alone, and the sight that was engrained in the peripheral of your mind had you feeling sick. Slowly, you plodded down the steps of the bunker’s entrance, surely leaving footprints trademarked in all kinds of grotesque evidence.

Without much care for what lay heavily inside, you dropped your duffel from your shoulder, allowing it to fall on the ground with a disgruntled clatter. Nothing meant anything anymore, not if you were indeed a real killer. Whilst some monsters had weaselled their way into society, ending their pathetic attempts at normality was different than taking away the life of an innocent and mortal bystander.

Often, with the darker and crueler species, there were reasons as to why they pretended to be of human birth. Mostly, it was so that they could feed from the naive flock, or kill for their own amusement. Either way, none of their reasons were good.

But now, you thought of yourself as no different than them. A creature that needed to be put down for their crimes. Filing, you breathed in, only inhaling the various moulds of putridity that was weaved into your hair, and stuck to your skin like a face mask.

“Should I call you Cassie now?” At the joke, a laugh from the speaker was triggered. He was quite amused with the sight of you, and thus, you sneered at the tall man, hating him a little bit more than usual.

“Your pop culture references aren’t appreciated Winchester, it’s more Dean’s street.” Shoving past him, his high shoulder floundered back at the harsh and ignorant impact, an expression of offence covering his stupid face. Like a fawn, he tumbled after you, watching as you walked sullenly into the kitchen, yanking the door to the fridge open, and extracting one of his brother’s store bought beers.

“I’m going to guess the hunt went bad.” Sam speculated, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, and staring expectedly down at where you popped the cap off the bottle recklessly with your teeth. He almost winced at the sight, but he wished to keep this arrogant demeanour up with you, it was a natural desire to piss you off, and he’d be pissed at himself if he let it slip out of simple pity.

“Guess correct. Well done, you’ve won a trip to Hawaii.” You waved your free hand mockingly in the air, as the other raised the liquor to your mouth, allowing you to wilfully gulp the bitter liquid down. At his presence that remained nursing over you, you cocked a brow, leaning forwards as you expectedly looked back at the moose. “Just leave me alone Sam, I’m not in the mood for putting up with your bullshit.”

He, however, seemed not to be phased by you wanting to be left alone, and instead, quickly snatched the poison out of your hand, leaving you throughly prepared to keep him right in the balls. “What the fuck?” You all but screamed at the not so jolly giant. In turn, he crossed his arms across his chest, placing the bottle down on the island.

“I could ask you the same y/n.” His tone was dominantly serious, causing you to cower back into your shroud of guilty conscience. “Tell me what happened on that hunt, of which i told you that you shouldn’t have went on alone, since you wouldn’t have been able to handle it solo.”

You felt demeaned by his words, they sparked an anger out from the firm pit of your stomach. But you knew deep down, he was getting through to you, which was something that you had not managed to even do by yourself. Air heavily passed through and out of your nostrils, as acidic tears pooled in your eyes; a crack was falling down your walls, and out of all people, it was Sam Winchester whom had caused it.

“You’re right, I shouldn’t have gone alone, but you know what, I thought of what a Winchester would do. And then I remembered, I am sure as hell not a Winchester and I don’t have a brother anymore! Not now, he didn’t even know who I was earlier, didn’t even recognise a single genetically identical hair on my head as he watched me parade through the town, the very one that I ran away from when he was a baby and I was seven, wanting to hunt a monster. Yet, i didn’t kill a damn monster Sam, I murdered my brother because you’ve been right all along, I’m not fit for this job. I am a mess, so congratulations, you finally have got me to admit the one thing that you keep reminding me of.”

“Y/n...” Sam wasn’t sure how to respond, he felt the waves of shock ripple through his body. Never so freely had you been vulnerable around him, and here you were now, with very visible tears cascading down your utterly torn face. He understood it was an accident, and the times that he and Dean had tried to kill each other under supernatural circumstances had him wondering what if.

Shaking your grime tethered head at the sound of his cracked voice, you stormed past him, and immediately raced towards the shower room, finding to your luck, which had been non existent during the rest of the day, the halls were barren of life. Walking through the door, you tore your ruined clothes off, chucking them upon the floor without much acknowledgement, before you went under the warm spray of the shower head, trying to calm yourself.

To rid your skin of its evidential accessories, you had to scrub your skin until it was immediately raw. Everything within you ached, as you flicked back to the memory of the clueless expression that had been worn by your blood brother. It was probably a good thing that he didn’t know who you were, or else, he’d have known that his own sister murdered him due to her incompetence to listen to others.

Now, you were not even sure what were your tears, and what droplets of water belonged to the shower itself. For over an hour, you basked int eh warmth that seemed unable to cure your cold blooded system, turning the spritz off, and covering your body in a fluffy towel, that you were sure belonged to someone else, but right now, you could care less about who owned what.

As you reached the door to your bedroom, you found it to be preached slightly open, and as you pushed it the rest of the way, you saw Sam sat on the corner of your bed. You held your arms around yourself, insecure on the fact that beneath the stolen towel, you were nothing more than you. A wolf in sheep’s skin.

“Can I help you?” You bitterly asked, your eyes still burning from your own faulted loss. Sam breathed in, his eyes trailing up to your face, that was naked from any gruesome cosmetics or make up. The bareness to your completion illustrated an aura of innocence, and evidence that you were the same as him - human.

“That’s my towel.” The male hunter laughed, in hopes of changing the previous and well wounded subjected to ensure that you felt better. But what was he kidding, nothing could fill the void that you had dug in your own heart, nothing was closer than the bond between siblings, even if you were considered as strangers.

“Take it back then.” Too exhausted from your gruelling day, you dropped the material, your confident action making his eyes go wide, as he tried to look away from your exposed skin to respect your boundaries. It was impossible though not to allow his hazel hues to slip up the trunks of your thighs, up to- no, that was wrong, very wrong.

You had just lost your brother, not to mention, by your own hand, and he was prone to checking out your freelancing body, taking in every curve and twisted scar that was prominent to his speculating eyes. His eyes dropped to the discarded towel, which he had purposely left on the heating rail for later use, and then, they switched back towards you.

He stood, walking behind you as you looked through comfort clothes within your dresser. A light touch of his hand brushed your hair away from your neck, as he breathed a sweet hoax of hot air upon your scare. Sam was relieved that you didn’t reject the contact, and instead, pressed his lips upon the flesh, finding succession whence you hummed deliriously to yourself.

This interaction had been inevitable for a long time, but now no longer were the suspected intentions for such an exchange to be to release well endorsed frustrations. No, he was going to clear your mind for some sensual moments, and make your pretty little head forget for a moment that you had pained yourself in the worst of ways.

Turning, you laced your hands through his chocolate locks, massaging his scalp as you pulled him closer so that your lips could endure a rougher clasp against his. There was no passion, behind each contribution there was a spur of hunger, he grasped your ass cheeks, pulling you up to be sat upon the top of your heavy dresser.

Obliging his command, you spread your legs so that he could stand between their partition, his hands now running up the windows of your thighs. For a while, the pair of you did nothing more than make out, and cup a feel here and there, but soon after, Sam dropped to his lanky knees, leaving kisses in the wake of his descent.

His thumb and forefinger spread your fluttering folds, watching as your slit squirmed for attention. Sam licked his lips at the sight, running his middle finger up the expanse, until he came to your yearning entrance. Slowly, after making sure you were wet enough, Sam slipped his digit inside, you wiggling your hips to adjust to the thrust of his one finger.

To add to the sensations that were overriding your body, he moved his mouth to closer proximity, smelling the divine aroma that pulsed out of you. It was far too addictive to not get a taste, and thus,he pulled his finger out, sucking off your juices contently.

But that small sample just wasn’t enough, which encouraged him to dive face first into your pussy - literally. His long tongue teased your folds, slurping at the lips, and then switching to your clit to heighten the stimulation. He kept up a rhythm, using it as a pattern to push you closer to that edge, and he was surely certain that you were enjoying his oral work as you ground your face against him, moaning at his succulent administrations.

“Sam.” Oh god, was it pleasant to hear his own name fall out your mouth in such an erotic manner. It was far different from the way that you usually used it to snide at him, though, the thought of your regular treatment of him aided only to spur his lustful actions on. He wanted you to cum, for your juices to run down his face in waterfalls, looking as though someone had tried to drown him.

His work would not be complete until you found it difficult to even pronounce his short name. Digging his tongue in the hood of your clit, tracing around the protective area, his fingers returned to their earlier placement, and he quickened their pace until he could hear a satisfying squelch in the air.

Rapid sounds of parted moans raked from your mouth, your chest sticking out as you breasts heaved with your heavy breathing. It was noticeable that you were close, not just from that, but you were squeezing the circulation out of his fingers. “Fuck.” Left you in the form of a squeal, as you pussy wept its juices.

Sam was quick to lap everything that left you up, once more, tasting those that clung to his fingers. He went back in for another taste, but you tightly grouped his hair, pulling him away from your sopping cunt. “Need you to fuck me Sam, now.”

In an instant, the hunter stood, working precariously on undoing the buckle of his belt, and pushing all material that covered his lower half to the bottom of his thighs. He read already hard, and oozing precum. You swept your finger across the tip of his dick, bringing it to your lips to taste his foreshadowing seed.

Sam huffed at the sight,picking his prick up in one hand, and jerking himself a couple of times. And then, he aligned himself with you, rubbing his cock around your wet crevice a couple of times, slapping his tip teasingly against your puffy clit.

“Want my cock baby?” He asked, smirking as he watched you nod your head repeatedly. With that being all the confirmation that he needed, he pushed into you,feeling even more turned on as he heard you mewl, and watched the ecstatic expression cross your face as his dick fit inside of you all the way.

He grasped your hips, pulling out once before pushing in again. He repeated the action, his own eyes rolling to the back of his head at how tight you were. This would make you forget the cruel method of god, his story was not as epic as he though, for his characters were screwing against his will, basking in a distraction rather than the regretful pain that seethed in your trodden heart.

Another thrust had your nails clasping onto Sam’s covered back, biting onto his shoulder through the plaid, as you held back the tears that were trying to creep out of your blissful eyes. A few grunts left Sam, as his pace increased, and with every thrust, which only served to fuel him further, the dresser smashed into the wall behind it, most likely leaving a decent dent within the historical architecture.

“Gonna cum.” You told him, dragging him in for another tongue filled kiss as your cunt pooled around him, coating his cock in the honey from your delicious pot. He soon followed after, and for a moment, he remained against you, allowing you to bask in the comfort of his strange presence.

And then he pulled out, watching as his distraction dripped from your entrance, trailing down your thigh in a white streak. An orgasm smile was pulled onto your face, but it was certain to not last long for when you returned to the reality that laid waiting for you to return.

Sam stepped closer again, moving his fingers towards your cunt, and pushed his seed back inside of you, watching as your puffy pussy lips swallows any part of him that it could get. He would distract you for as long as he could, and then, deal with the inevitable.

[tanadrin]

I’m reading One Long Night, because the interview with Andrea Pitzer on Chris Hayes’ podcast was so interesting; and the book does not disappoint, though the subject matter is in equal measures depressing and infuriating. I want to talk about it at length when I’m through with it, but I was particularly struck today by her discussion of the Soviet gulags and how concentration camps arose in Germany, and how they marked a transition away from how concentration camps had been used before then.

The background is this: the concentration camp as we know it is only a little more than a century old. The individual kinds of violence that all inform the modern concentration camp have plenty of predecessors, some as old as time: internal deportations, native reservations, forced expulsions, detention without trial. But prior to the modern era, the characteristic feature of a concentration camp--the long-term detention of large numbers of civilians not convicted of any crime--would have been prohibitively expensive in manpower and effort. Two major technological innovations altered that calculus, Pitzer argues: the automatic gun and barbed wire. Those two devices permit a small number of guards to contain a much larger number of people; all that was needed was the will to do so.

The concentration camp as we know it was invented during Cuba’s struggle for independence; the advantages enjoyed by the rebels meant that Spain struggled to clear them out of the countryside, and the general in charge of Cuba, Arsenio Martinez Campos, noted that the only way to win the war would be to relocate basically the entire rural population of the island to Spanish-held towns to cut off the rebels’ base of support and prevent them from hiding among the rest of the population. And this he refused to do, considering it unthinkable under the rules of warfare. So Spain replaced him, and his successor, Valeriano Weyler, was all too happy to attempt what Campos would not. The resulting atrocities--including starvation and the spread of disease--were one of the things that spurred the American public to support war with Spain shortly thereafter, and while the Maine provided the immediate casus belli, Spanish conduct in Cuba was, in the public’s eyes, just as important a reason for going to war.

What is so bitterly comedic about that justification, though, is that after the war, when the U.S. found itself in possession of former Spanish colonies like Cuba and the Philippines, it found itself struggling against the very same rebels that Spain had failed to suppress; in the Philippines, the military immediately adopted tactics almost identical to the ones the Spanish had used in Cuba; and when during the Boer War in South Africa, the British likewise rounded up both Boer and black civilians in the Boer republics, it could cite the U.S.’s use of concentration camps as a justification for its own. And so on--each subsequent generation of internment drew on the precedent its predecessors had established, and if you wanted to object to (say) the policy of Germany interning all the British in the country at the start of World War I, you had to contend with the fact that they were doing nothing the British hadn’t done a few years before. (Indeed, it was the British internment of enemy aliens specifically that set off reciprocal treatment all over Europe; Pitzer relates the account of one Israel Cohen, a British man, being arrested in Germany and interned at Ruhleben, who, when the police came for him, was told ‘You have only your own Government to thank for this.’)

In fact, World War I is very important--internment of enemy civilians established not only a general precedent in favor of concentration camps in the eyes of the public, but it created the expectation that if you went into a concentration camp, you would come out again. The conditions in these camps were not good by any stretch of the imagination, but they were not as awful as the camps of Cuba, the Philippines, or South Africa, where famine and disease killed thousands. Concentration camps became decoupled from actual battlefield strategy, arising not “out of the local chaos of warfare, but instead represent[ing] a deliberate choice to inject the framework of war into society itself.’ (p. 103)

To this grim precedent, the Soviets added another innovation: the gulag was the first time concentration camps were used in peacetime particularly, and they were integrated into the Soviet state apparatus as a normal part of its justice system. And more than just the semi-punitive labor that, say, German POWs had been forced to perform during the war (and after--Germany had to release the POWs it held when WWI ended, but thousands of Germans continued to be detained long after the war), the Soviets hoped to make gulags profitable to their economy on net. Whatever their original justification, it quickly becomes clear as the labor camp is institutionalized in Soviet society that much of the behavior of the Soviet state around forced labor is shaped by the age-old impulse of conquerers to use conquered peoples to enrich themselves. After Poland was divided with Germany, thousands of Poles were shipped to the gulags and forced to work. And not only was the USSR thus inheriting the system of forced labor that Tsarist Russia had used, it was making it significantly crueler.

The premise of using labor to reeducate problematic citizens to be part of a bright Soviet future gave way to the idea that detainees themselves represented raw materials to be consumed in building that future.

In reality, Frenkel [an administrator at the Solovki camp] did not invent the tiered ration system from scratch. Likewise, the shift from idealized rehabilitation to a more permanent system maximizing forced labor may have been inevitable. Stalin appeared impressed with the possibilities of detainee labor and believed in the profitability of the Solovki endeavor (despite the fact, as Anne Applebaum has noted, that Solovki required a subsidy of 1.6 million rubles--perhaps due to graft). (p. 132)

Under the tsars in previous centuries, Polish insurgents resisting Russian rule or political prisoners convicted for offenses against the tsar were shipped off to remote Siberian katorga, working in mining or logging. Their penal labor had often been brutal, but it had come after conviction in an actual trial. Compared to penal labor under the tsars, Gulag workdays were longer and the rations shorter. A daily quota for earth mined by a single Decembrist prisoner at Nerchinsk under Tsar Nicholas I was 118 pounds; in the Soviet era, the same lone prisoner might be expected to excavate 28,800 pounds. And while tsarist courts had long sentenced political prisoners to labor camps, the Gulag was orders of magnitude larger from its very beginning. The Soviet Union had grafted the worst of Russian penal history onto the extrajudicial detention of internment, creating a vast malignant enterprise. And it would continue to grow. (p.133-34)

The scale of the gulags declines after Stalin’s death, but it never quite disappears.

Neither self-sustaining nor productive in the long run, the system required tremendous resources, and the economic burden of the camps had weighed heavily on the Soviet Union in wartime.

Still, as historian Steven Barnes has pointed out, ‘The Soviet leadership never entertained the notion of dismantling the system.’ The USSR had always had a camp system; its tendrils had grown into agriculture and industry, as well as becoming a key facet of government interactions with citizens. The Gulag was intrinsic to the state itself. (p.155)

And then there’s this passage, about the camp at Solovki, which was almost painful to read:

Prisoners heard from the radio station that [Maxim] Gorky was coming. Detainees could hardly wait for him to tell the world what was happening on Solovki: ‘Gorki will spot everything, find out everything. ... About the logging and the torture on the tree stumps, the sekirka [punishment cells], the hunger, the disease... the sentences without conviction.... The whole lot!’

Before Gorky’s visit, contingents of prisoners were hidden in the forest to lessen evidence of overcrowding. Sick patients were given new gowns to wear ... . Gorky visited the sick bay, a labor camp, and stopped in at the children’s colony that had been formed since Likhachev first encountered the urchins hiding under his bunk.

Gorky asked to speak to one boy privately and stayed with him a long time. Standing outside with the rest of the crowd, Likhachev counted forty minutes on the watch his father had given him. He recounts that Gorky emerged weeping and climbed the stairway to the punishment cell at Sekirka.

Yet when Gorky’s anxiously awaited piece on the trip came out, the section about Solovki was relegated to Part Five of the report, with the devastating conclusion that ‘camps such as “Solovki” were absolutely necessary. ... Only by this road would the state achieve in the fastest possible time one of its aims: to get rid of prisons.’

The German system, of course, did not start out as a program of genocide. It did not even necessarily start out as a program of forced labor (i.e., slavery) like in Russia. Its immediate predecessors, in fact, might be said to be the concentration camps established before the Nazis even came to power to keep Roma away from cities like Frankfurt (cf. p. 183); the Roma were subject to registry before any racial laws about Jews were passed, before the Nazis ever took power, and they were swept up along with the homeless during the Olympics to keep them out of sight of the international press (p. 187). But as the classes of political prisoners and other undesirables swelled, so did the concentration camp system.

Once war broke out, of course, the temptation to use prisoners for war industry was not resisted.

By late 1941, the camps had grown dense and squalid from the flood of detainees arriving from abroad, yet the war placed still more demands on the camps. ... a complex network of labor projects emerged, spread across thousands of sites. Every camp and subcamp used prisoner labor in some fashion. Prisoners working for the I.G. Farben rubber plant lived in a dedicated compound at Auschwitz. Fur linings in the coats of the SS came from hutches of rabbits under the administration of prisoners at Dachau. At Neuengamme, detainees were set to work clearing rubble from the bombed roads and buildings outside Hamburg. ... Both Nazis and Soviets went to war on the backs of their concentration camp prisoners. Forced-labor Gulag efficiency expert Naftaly Frenkel had suggested the system be optimized to get the most out of prisoners in their first three months, after which they were disposable. He would have been ideally placed to appreciate that before the end of the war, average life expectancy at Neuengamme concentration camp had dropped to twelve weeks. (p. 200-201)

What is perhaps the most bitter flourish on the German concentration camp system is that there was a very real possibility it could have been entirely avoided. Pitzer argues that even after the death of Hindenberg and Hitler’s adoption of the title Fuehrer, there was a very real possibility that the Nazi regime might have proceeded along (still cruel, still inhumane, still racist) legalistic lines, keeping continuity with German law, rather than relying on extrajudicial terror. Himmler’s desire to strengthen his position within the government and the purge of Rohm and the SA led to him expanding the concentration camp system further; and this was what ensured that, when the systematic, wholesale extermination of the Jews was decided upon, there was a preexisting infrastructure in place to facilitate it. (see p. 178-179) In the early years, local prosecutors actively sought to arrest and try sadistic guards, and the notion that the concentration camps were sites of abuse or torture was hotly contested.

In his first months as commandant at Dachau, Theodor Eicke flew into a rage, haranguing prisoners about the vicious rumors in the community about conditions there. Reminding them that detainees had already been killed for spreading word about the camp--including Dr. Katz, who had helped so many prisoners--Eicke threatened that more could be executed at any point. He seemed especially offended by any suggested comparison to Soviet tactics. ‘There are no atrocities and there is no Cheka cellar in Dachau!’ he insisted. ‘Anybody whipped deserves to be whipped.’

Even the Nazis, one supposes, would balk at being compared to the Nazis.

Special mention goes to two people in this section of the book: Margarete Buber-Neumann, a German communist who fled to Russia and, who along with her husband, was arrested and thrown into the gulag. She survived; her husband did not--but survived only to be handed over to the Nazis after the invasion of Poland, as part of a prisoner exchange, whereupon she was shipped to a Nazi concentration camp. She survived the war, at least, and seven years total of internment; she lived until 1989.

Hans Beimler was a Communist elected three times to the Reichstag, the last in May of 1933. He was arrested in April and imprisoned in Dachau, where he was repeatedly beaten and humiliated and encouraged to kill himself. Nighttime beatings and the murder of his cellmates (some of whom were friends of his) made him resolve to escape, since he figured it would be better to be shot trying to break out than to be murdered and have it staged to look like a suicide.

[A] friend who was a prisoner outside the bunker managed to slip him a tool to unscrew the grate over his window and tin snips to help manage the barbed wire. Later reports claimed he strangled a storm trooper and took his clothing, but Beimler simply crawled out of his high window, taking a board with him. He navigated three layers of barbed wire--the middle one electrified--using the wood for insulation, and climbed onto the six-foot wall surrounding the camp’s exterior. Waiting there a moment to make sure he had not been seen, he jumped down the other side and made his way to Munich.

The next morning, Steinbrenner arrived to find an empty cell. Frantic searches were made, prisoners were interrogated. For some time, guardhouse staff remained certain Beimler was hiding somewhere on the grounds. Dogs were used to search, and a hundred-mark reward was posted in the local paper Amper-Bote. But Beimler remained in hiding until he could safely get to Berlin and cross the border to the east.

Once out of the country, he mailed a postcard to Dachau telling the camp commanders to kiss his ass. Some three months after his escape, he was sitting in Moscow writing a searing indictment of Nazi atrocities. It was printed in three languages and circled the globe. (p. 173-174)

It’s important to observe that no system of mass detention ever sets out with the cruelty that (sooner or later) inevitably manifests in mind. From reconcentracion in Cuba to the Nazi crimes, there is never a single point of no return for the countries involved, nor a single moment of moral clarity where the architects of these policies are forced to confront what they are creating. It is always possible for those responsible to hide behind precedent, behind political rhetoric, behind expedient to justify to the rest of the world as to why their camps are not only right but necessary, to argue away any evidence for the gravity of these sins as ‘a few bad apples’ or ‘an unfortunate excess.’

And the corollary to this is that you will never get one moment you can point to and say to the people around you, “Look! There it is! That’s the moral event horizon, and they just crossed it. You can’t possibly support them now.” Because there will always be a way for people to rationalize their support of such policies. I suspect the only antidote, individual or collective, is an ironclad moral will that rejects the dehumanization of others outright--and to fight like hell to shut such evils down when they first begin to appear.

This all has obvious relevance to the present political moment--that’s why Pitzer was on Hayes’ podcast, that’s why I wanted to read this book to begin with. I don’t think that, outside genuine, self-described neo-Nazis, even in the darkest imagination of the most reflexively prejudiced Trump supporter, the desire for Soviet or Nazi-style gulags exists, I really don’t. But things can always get worse. The cruelties build on themselves incrementially--and the only way to prevent that, to actually make sure that kind of thing can’t happen here (or anything like it--there is, after all, plenty of evil that is not outright genocide) is to refuse to permit the creation of the institutions that are its necessary predecessors.

[hypermanga]

Out of my mind (Victor Creed x reader)

Word count: 2402

Summary: After recieving an unexpected visit in the X-Mansion, you engage in an adventure that will test your life as well as the relationship you have with a certain feral man.

~~~~~

Debris was all you could see : falling from the sky that landed dangerously near you, creating big craters. Then you saw them, both jumping, Victor first and Logan next, before they disappeared in the dust.

Running towards the mist, you came face to face with Gambit, the only mutant who had been able to escape the island "Remy?" "C' mon (Y/N), let's get you to safety" You wanted to protest, to run to the feral brothers, but you found yourself too tired to put any fight. As you were being dragged to the helicopter, a bang could be heard in the distance, two, three.

And darkness.

Waking up in sweat, you gasped for air "Nightmare?" Ororo asked, startling you "How long have you been here?" "A couple minutes, I guess, I came to tell you-you have a visit". Still startled from the nightmare, you bolted out of bed and freshened up a bit. It was not every day you had someone visit you.

The thing was, you had no clue who could that be.

Straightening your jacket, you descended the stairs, where you could make out some voices at the Mansion's entrance. As you saw who had come to visit you, you skipped the three last steps, jumping right into his arms "Victor!"

“Long time no see, kitten” He smirked, engulfing you in his arms. You were more than surprised to see Victor, and even dumbfounded that he remembered you "How did you-" "Hightened senses, remember?" "Oh...Yeah, that's true" You laughed sheepishly.

Even all these years apart hadn't changed the crush you had on him "Well, we'll leave you be" Ororo concluded, turning back to Victor" Don't try anything. If you betray us, it will be worse for you"

Closing the door to your bedroom, you turned to Victor, who watched you intently.Your smile turned into a straight line "I have to tell you something"

As soon as you said it, sparks appeared in your hands, making Victor's eyes widen "Since when?" "Five months ago, nobody knows…You're the first one" They danced in between your fingers, settling on your right hand before a ball was formed "Do you control it?" "More or less…But that's not the issue…I'm afraid I will put people in danger with my mutation, or even kill someone accidentally…Charles always says that this is a gift, but to me, it's a nightmare" Your sad eyes held embarrasment and fear, and the feral could feel the latter emane from you.

Victor's eyebrows furrowed, and a growl escaped his lips "Look" He said, taking your hands in his "I'm not the best one to give goodie two shoes advice, but this ain't something that can be taken from you, you're stuck with it. This changes your life, you and I both know it, but you either suck up and train to be strong or get experimented on and killed" Your eyes watered,even though you knew everything that having a mutation involved, the reality seemed much crueler "Hey kitten, don't worry, you'll be fine. I'm with you, ain't I?" Reassuring you, Victor gave your hands a soft shake, before retreating to his room.

~~~

"Well, if this is true, what are we waiting for?" Scott interveened, making you turn your head "For all we know, this could be a trap" Logan replied, crossing his arms "But what if it is not?" Your voice rose from the back of Charles's office "What if there are kids imprisoned or being experimented on?" "There's only one way to find out" Charles's concluded, ushering everyone out while Scott and Hank went to prepare the helicopter "(Y/N), could you stay for a minute?" "Of course, what's wrong?" "You'll be staying" "What?Why?" "Your mutation is not controlled enough, and we are not certain if the person who is conducting the experiments is-" -My father" Your balled your fists, making a disgusted face "But I know how to control it! I can be useful" "You won't go to this mission and the decision is final"

Leaving the office, you ran to the main entrance, where you found Jean "They left already" You opened and closed your mouth,she didn't need any questioning "But Victor is in the living room, if you were wondering" Smiling, you thanked her and went to find him.

"Charles doesn't let me go the mission" Plopping on the sofa, you awaited his reply "But you want to go, right?" "Yes, I feel that perhaps I will find answers to my questions" "Then don't listen to the old man and go: if there are kids congratulations, and if there is your father then you hit jackpot. If not, well at least you made a daytrip" He shrugged, getting up from the armchair he was resting on "The factory is not far, but how are we gonna get to it?" He didn't reply, just guided you to the back of the mansion, where a van stood "Your ride , princess"

"It seems pretty abandoned…" But even if it looked abandoned, you knew better than that, as the Island had looked like this factory.The eerie atmosphere was overwhelming, and the feeling on your gut that there was something very wrong made you shiver to the core "C'mon let's go" You took off running, Victor following close behind "I'm coming with you" "Suit yourself, but if we want to end quicker, we must divide"

After half an hour or so, there was still no luck in finding any kids, nor did you encounter the Xmen "Now…Let's see" Standing in front of a locked door with coding, you created some lightning to break in, expecting that there was to be something important inside. As the door opened, you stared into a dimly lit room, full of pipes and wires "What the-" Before you could finish your sentence, your head started to hurt, as if needles were inserted to them "Shit! Victor!" You cried, falling to the floorn, withering in pain "Please Victor! Help!" Starting to feel numb, you stopped fighting the tears, screaming with all your might "Screaming won't help you much, (Y/N)" A figure stepped from the shadows, wearing a soldier's suit.

William Stryker…Your father.

"What?Why?" "All in time, my dear daughter…For now…I have some questions that need answer…"Was all you heard before you succumbed to the pain.

Stryker smiled proudly, calling some guards to take you to the laboratory, where someone was already waiting for you.

"Shit! Victor!" In no time, he was crossing the factory, leaping through the floor in marvelous agility. His heart was pounding, and he could not concentrate on anything, but getting to you "Please Victor! Help!" He sped up, if it was even possible anymore. It all became blurry, he just saw the door, which looked to have been blown up, and crossed it.

"Where's (Y/N)?!" He roared, preparing himself to fight against the whole team of soldiers that were awaiting him.

But what was waiting in the last lab of the corridor was something he was not preparing to face.

Clutching on the safety ropes around your ankles, you watched frantically around the room : Needles, tubes, machines…Something out of a sci-fi horror movie "My (Y/N), so young and yet so dangerous" He looked old, tired "You don't know anything about me! Let me go!" "Sorry, but you're too much of a trouble to let go…You see, your mutation is something out of this world…Almost godly, you see" Zipping your mouth, you listened to him making his speech, trying to charge your power "So…It is of vital importance that you are subjected to experimentation" "You would to this? To your own daughter?"

"Well, I had to do it to your brother too, didn't I?" As if on cue, a light revealed a man, disheveled, and on a wheelchair. Was this…

"You fucking psycho! You'll pay for this you bastard!" As a blast was thrown from your hand, your brother's mutation kicked in, making you scream once again in pain "Please! Stop this!" Your screaming did nothing but increase as you saw your father approaching you with a syringe "This will prevent you from escaping nor killing me" "Nothing will stop me, I will not stop fighting to end with your madness!"

Just then, a ruckus was heard, getting nearer and nearer "It seems we have company…I should have killed Victor in the island when I had him under my control" "He would've beat you, you're no rival to him" "That's why you'll be the one to kill him" Your eyes shot open at that statement, fear pumping in your veins "This is a mind control serum, I'm pretty sure your new self won't have any inconvenience in killing him…Now don't cry (Y/N), don't feel sorry for the monster that he is" "He is no monster, you are!"

His face scrunched up in disgust at that, he even looked hurt "To know that my daughter feels anything for that…That animal…Makes me even sicker" A sharp pain shot up in your body, making you dizzy "I won't…Kill him…I won't succumb to this…This serum" Tears fell from your eyes, as you fell in a deep sleep.

At last, Victor arrived to the lab, throwing the door down with a swift kick "Kitten?" There was nobody, it was quiet…Way too quiet "Ah, Victor, so glad you could make it" Stryker appeared, clasping his hands together "Where is (Y/N)? I'll kill you if anything has happened to her" "Your "kitten" is here, she's adjusting" "Adjusting? To wha-?" He had no time to finish, as an electric blast sent him across the room. Your form appeared, levitating from the ground: your body was surrounded by lightning, as well as your eyes, that held no pupil whatsoever. Your clothes also had changed, they seemed godly like.

"To this. She fought hard, but not enough" "You'll pay for this!" He launged himself, but was yet stopped by you "Kitten! Goddamnit, get some sense in your head!" He dodged every attack, what was he else to do? He couldn't harm you in any way, he had promised it to himself. Your bolts were getting more precise as time passed just as Victor grew tired and started to lose hope.

"Now, (Y/N), that is enough playtime, just finish him off" His eyes widened, as you used a lightning bolt to strangle him, applying more preassure as you shocked him "Kitten, you don't want…To do this!" He choked up "Oh, I think she does" Stryker smirked, as he saw the feral starting to lose consciousness" "You've got to take control! Get your self back! Please, (Y/N)!"

At that, the pressure stopped, it seemed to have hit a nerve. Your head decayed to one side, as if you could be listening to him "(Y/N), you have to fight this, do not believe him, you're not like this…You've never been and will never be a monster! You're the most beautiful human being I've ever met, as well as the most caring…(Y/N) I…" Just then, his neck was missing air again "And you thought some cheesy love declaration would help anything?" Bolts were springing to Victor's body, making him growl in pain, baring his teeth "I'll bring you back, I will never stop trying it…Because I love you" He grabbed your waist, pulling you to him, making you gasp as his lips came in contact with yours.

"That's your last resort? Pathetic" Stryker spat, watching the scene in front of him.

He felt the most unbearable pain, but didn't care anymore.

He had to break you out.

You kept trying to overcome the serum, but try as you might, it wasn't enough, it was too strong; You were going to kill Victor, and there was nothing you could do about it.

You were ready to give up, to succumb to it, when you felt Victor's arms pull you to him, and his rough lips on yours. A gasp escaped your lips.

He still believed in you, he was sure that you wouldn't give up.

Not now, not ever.

With this new wave of energy, you resumed your fight against your father and your brother. Gathering all the strength you could muster, you fought against the chains that held you to this ill-driven fate.

Victor broke the kiss and watched as your eyes changed to normal and back to no pupils at all. "C'mon (Y/N), make them bite the dust" Clutching your trembling form in his arms, he awaited the lightning bolts that were to come. He was never going to let you go, even if the pain was too much to endure.

Your body changed from trembling to convulsing as the lightning strikes became stronger and deadlier, making Victor scream in pain. With a final blood-curling scream, you let out the biggest wave, falling unconscious and consequently making you both fall to the ground.

Victor got up as quickly as his healing factor let him, watching your silhouette, which wasn't moving at all. He heard your heart beating, making him huff in relief. Your eyes opened, quickly closing them as the blinding light hit you, but soon Victor's form shielded you from it "Victor?" You let out a breath "Yes, (Y/N)?" His gaze held worry, which soon turned to tenderness "Is this a dream?" "No (Y/N), this ain't no dream" He smirked, kissing you softly. It was not the kind of kiss you had imagined from the feral man, but reciprocated nevertheless.

Stryker could not believe his eyes. He had been defeated by something out of a children's book, a true love's kiss "This is impossible! How could yo-" His form was thrown against the wall, Victor's hand in his neck "Victor! Don't" You slithered to them, holding Victor's arm, preventing it from delivering the final blow "He deserves to die for what he's done" "His death will make matters worse, we will embark in a war we have to be prepared for" Baring his teeth, he knocked your father unconscious "If I didn't love you, I wouldn't have let this through…Nobody gives me orders" "Lucky me huh?" Smiling, you took Victor's hand, pulling him away from the lab and back to the X-Mansion.

Your words proved to be true, as the army was prepared to attack if anything had happened to your father.

Lucky for you, you were going to live today to fight tomorrow, but not alone.

With Victor at your side, not anymore.

@creedslove @imagines-to-quench-thirst

----

MASTERLIST

Requests are open!