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myqueenjudeduarte · 6 years ago

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Something Like Trust: Chapter 1

Here it is y’all... the fic you’ve been waiting your whole lives for... a 10k word first chapter of Jurdan BDSM.

Post-The Wicked King

Tags/Warnings: Slapping (in a sexual context), references to spanking, teasing, orgasm delay, uhh angst and emotional fuckery, BDSM obviously, alcohol, also alcoholism because Cardan is present, kind of exhibitionism, I can’t accurately prepare you guys for this fic so just don’t read it if you aren’t comfortable with BDSM relationships. The later chapters will have a lot more intense stuff so just... be warned. OH also warning for them both being COMPLETELY out of character like honestly y’all this is DISGRACEFUL.

Summary: “I was thinking of an arrangement which would allow you moments of powerlessness. An arrangement in which I would take the control, allowing you to experience the feeling of an utter lack of responsibility, a feeling in which I am in command of all and you have no worries to speak of.”

Word Count: 9,426 I’m sO SORRY

Let me know if you want to be tagged in my fics!

Everyone who knew Jude Duarte came quickly to realize that what she sought, above all else, was power. Control. Influence. That she had long felt powerless, and that she remedied this through a combination of scheming and working to rise to the top.

And rise to the top Jude had.

There were few higher places for an 18-year-old mortal girl to be than by the side of the High King of Elfhame, ruling a kingdom with him. And there were few people more profitable to be close to than the High King himself.

There were times, though, when Jude — though she would never admit it — craved above all else a respite from the power. The control. The influence. Craved, in fact, a moment of return to that place of powerlessness, when the worries of the kingdom had been anyone’s but hers and she was free to rest and roam rather than reign.

And there were moments, now, after nearing 6 months since Jude’s return to Elfhame and eventual semi-reconciliation with Cardan, when Jude imagined herself as powerless once more and still imagined Cardan by her side, not ruling together, but simply being together.

When these thoughts struck Jude she would roughly and with decisiveness shove them to the back of her mind and pretend she had never experienced them. Jude could no more afford a break from her power than she could afford to become emotionally involved with her fellow ruler. These were thoughts she had no choice but to keep to herself, as she did most of her thoughts and all of her feelings.

Until tonight, when Jude was drunk.

Jude was, to be quite transparent, far past drunk. Jude was heavily intoxicated, and, she reasoned, through no fault of her own. She had overheard several subjects of Elfhame debating how, exactly, they were expected to take seriously a queen who was not only mortal, but didn’t even drink. The King, of course, drank his fill — why was the queen so serious all the time? How could she ever expect to fit in with faeries if she wouldn’t even let loose at a revel?

Jude, of course, wanted nothing more than power, and power was a child, born of respect and fear. She rationalized, then, that to fit in in Elfhame more fully would be to earn respect, and with respect, power. She gained from this the idea that she had no choice but to drink.

And drink she did.

Cardan looked on from his throne in bewilderment and something akin to amusement as Jude danced and drank with the people of Elfhame. He wanted nothing more than to join her in her drunken fun, but felt that this was something, strange as it was, she needed to do on her own.

When Cardan was falling asleep on the throne and the sun was beginning to make the day known, Jude finally approached the dais, stumbling and smiling and so, so stunning — at least, that was all Cardan could think of as she draped herself over her throne, positioned beside his.

“Cardan, I danced,” she said. Cardan made a most concerted effort to school his face into seriousness, or at least not to laugh at her. He didn’t want to ruin this.

“Yes, Jude. I watched,” he said in a low voice.

To Cardan’s surprise, he saw a faint blush spread over Jude’s cheeks.

“Did you?” she said, and pushed herself with some difficulty closer to him. “Would you like to watch me further? Perhaps in my chambers, and perhaps wearing less than we are now?” Jude whispered the words, but Cardan was still taken aback. It was rare — unheard of, really — of Jude to be so forward, or forward at all.

Cardan and Jude were no strangers to sleeping together, but Cardan usually initiated it, delivering smirks and pointed remarks until Jude rolled her eyes and almost admitted to having desire of her own. Now, though, Jude was too drunk to care that her want could be used against her as a weakness.

As strongly, though, as Jude’s words and posture affected Cardan, he was loathe to do anything with Jude that she would regret in the morning, or that he would regret as taking advantage of the woman he had begun to admit to himself that he had feelings for.

“I think, my dear Jude, that you have had too much to drink for me to consider your admittedly delightful proposal.”

Jude merely smiled and closed her eyes, swaying slightly. “I love it when you call me dear,” she said softly.

Cardan felt a pressure on his chest, the sensation that his ribs might break and puncture his heart and end his immortal life right here and now.

“And I love that you’ve told me that, but I think I should return you to your chambers before you say anything else you will hate yourself for in the morning.” The words were sad, and so was Cardan as he considered what Jude would likely do to herself for even that small admission.

Jude and Cardan didn’t share chambers, and certainly not for Cardan’s lack of trying. Jude refused to become closer with Cardan than sex and a rare moment of shared silence afterward, than discussing the workings of the kingdom. Cardan had asked — near begged, really — Jude to move in, but she had steadfastly refused to assent.

“Your chambers, today, I think,” said Jude, her voice low. Cardan felt his blood heating despite himself, but pushed the thoughts away — now was not the time to lose himself in his passion for her.

“My chambers, then, but to sleep.”

Jude positively pouted. “You’re no fun. Why are you no fun? I’m supposed to be the no fun one.”

Cardan smiled at that. “Yes, those are our usual roles, aren’t they? But tonight, you’ve had a little too much fun, so I am saddled with the role of the serious.”

Jude continued to pout. “Are you gonna take care of me?” she asked, brightening slightly at the thought.

“For the night,” Cardan said quietly, before standing and offering Jude his hand. “On any other, you would run me through for the barest implication that you needed caring for.”

Jude laughed. “I wouldn’t run you through. You’re Cardan!”

“So I am,” he replied.

“I wouldn’t run Cardan through. I’d miss him.”

Realizing that Jude seemed to have forgotten with whom she was speaking, Cardan led her in silence to his chambers, still mulling over her words. It was nice, at the basest level, to hear that she had no desire to kill him. Even that small mercy took him by surprise. “My ruthless girl,” he thought, and then corrected himself. She was not his girl, after all.

When they arrived in his chambers, Cardan helped Jude into bed before lying down beside her. He may have been unwilling to engage in anything sexual while she was in her present state, but he had no qualms about taking advantage of it to be close to her. The morality of his behavior had improved over the past months ruling with Jude, but he adopted no pretense of being perfect.

To his shocked delight, Jude snuggled close to him, tucking her head against his chest when he rolled toward her. He tentatively placed an arm over her side, and she hummed happily. Jude and Cardan had shared time, shared kisses, shared rule of a kingdom, but they had not shared true intimacy since the night they were married. Until, that is, this moment, a moment Cardan placed quietly into his heart to cherish in the days, weeks, months of cold that were sure to follow this night.

He thought this was the end of the happy moments, that Jude would drift off to sleep and that he would face an angry, hungover mortal the next day, but instead, Jude spoke.

“I know I’ll be too afraid to say this tomorrow,” she whispered. “I’m not so drunk as to forget my own nature.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t—“

“I’m cruel to you anyway, Cardan, wouldn’t you rather hear what I have to say now and face my wrath tomorrow?”

Cardan remained silent.

“Sometimes I don’t want this power,” Jude spoke, slowly, softly. “Sometimes I want to feel powerless again, to feel like the weight of a kingdom doesn’t rest on our shared shoulders. Like we’re kids again, like you’re treating me badly during lessons on warm evenings in the gardens. Or like we’re older, and you’re kinder, and we have time to be away from all of this. Can you imagine if we had the space and time to be powerless, even for a second?”

Jude sighed. “I know it makes no sense,” she said, “I know you think that everything I am seeks power, but there’s something else there, inside me. Don’t forget that there’s something else, ok?”

Her words grew more desperate, and with the desperation, more slurred, as she continued speaking. But Cardan barely noticed her fading — an idea had come to his mind, one he could not release despite its insanity, despite the fact that all would be lost when they woke.

“It makes perfect sense, Jude,” he spoke as she drifted off to sleep. “And I know exactly what you need.”

—

“What is it?” These were the first words Cardan heard upon waking. He had slept until nightfall, they both had, and he could see the rays of the setting sun outside the window, the pink and purple hues of the night-turning sky. For a moment, he didn’t even process the question.

“What?” he asked sleepily, beginning to sit up only to find a hand on his chest pinning him to the bed.

“I asked you what it is,” Jude said, voice nothing more than mildly annoyed despite the harshness of her actions. “What is it that I need?”

“You remember that?”

Jude rolled her eyes. “I may have been mildly intoxicated, but I still remember the morning, Cardan.”

Cardan smiled at what she termed “mild” intoxication. “Do you truly want to know?”

“Yes.” Her voice was solemn now, almost nervous, as if she could sense that his answer would not be an easy one.

It wouldn’t.

Cardan’s smile turned to a smirk as he looked up at her, hair and clothes rumpled from sleep, eyes wide with anticipation. She was beautiful, and he was glad to be telling her this, despite how she would surely react.

“I was thinking, my Jude, of an arrangement of sorts.”

“What kind of—“

“Let me finish, Jude.”

She was quiet.

“I was thinking of an arrangement which would allow you moments of powerlessness. An arrangement in which I would take the control, allowing you to experience the feeling of an utter lack of responsibility, a feeling in which I am in command of all and you have no worries to speak of.”

“You would take charge of the kingdom?”

“I would take charge of you, Jude.”

There was silence for several moments, utter, complete silence as Jude studied him. He expected at any second for her to yell, hurt him, get up and leave, or in some other way snap. It would be worth it. But, to his surprise, she merely said,

“Explain.”

And explain he did.

“I would take charge of you — specifically of your body, and specifically sexually, but your mind would follow, I expect. My every command you would follow, or risk punishment. This could be situational or constant, depending on your level of comfort. That means that we could either have assigned stretches under which these conditions are met — you obey me, I care for you, and the focus is on the sexual — and the rest of the time we would be the same Jude and Cardan we are now, bickering and never once obeying the other, unless forced to do so” (this he said with a pointed look, reminding Jude of their past arrangement). “Alternatively, we could have a constant arrangement, one in which you always obey my commands or you are punished. In this way, you could both have power and powerlessness simultaneously, depending on the situation. Both of these, I assume, sound far outside your comfort, but Jude, I implore you to at least consider what I suggest, even if you do no more. Consider what it would mean for you.” With this last desperate plea, Cardan fell silent, awaiting the stormy anger he expected from Jude. This time, his expectations were met.

“Do you think,” she said in the deadly calm he had learned to fear in their time together, “that I trust you, Cardan?”

“No, but I think that you need to.”

“For this? For your deranged sex idea?”

“For this, for our ruling together, for our marriage, for your health.”

“Our marriage has been a sham since you exiled me,” she spat, bringing up wounds Cardan had never been so bold as to think healed.

“I should like it not to be.”

There was a moment of silence before Jude spoke once more.

“What kind of punishments?”

Cardan felt acutely the whiplash of this conversation.

“Some physical, some lack of privileges, depending on the intensity of the relationship. Some pleasant and playful and some less so.”

“Would you ever hit me?”

“Only with your explicit permission and desire.”

“Hit me. I desire it.”

Concentrating on the effort not to let his shock and his own desire show on his face, Cardan brought a hand up from where it had rested on the bed, reached to where Jude still hovered over him, and slapped her thigh, hard. She still wore her dress from the revel of the night before, allowing his hand to connect with bare skin.

Jude gasped in surprise, then rolled onto her back beside him.

“And what if I did obey?” was her next question, asked tentatively.

“I would reward you.”

“What kind of rewards?”

“Would you like me to demonstrate those, as well?”

Jude’s silence served as assent, and Cardan rolled onto his elbow to hover over Jude’s frame.

“I might start like this,” he said, trailing his hand across the high neckline of Jude’s dress, over her throat.

“And move lower,” he added, running his hand over her chest to cup her breast gently. “Like this.”

Jude bit her lip, rubbed her missing fingertip against her thumb, the tell-tale sign of her nervousness. Cardan continued.

“I might tease you a bit, even when you had been good, because the important aspect of this is that you are subject to my desires. No matter how good you’ve been, if I want to punish you, I may, and if I want to reward you, I will do so at my leisure.” As he spoke, he grazed his fingertips over her breast, studiously avoiding her nipple. She wasn’t wearing a bra — she must have removed it in her drunken sleep, and he could see the peak of her nipple under the thin fabric of her dress.

When, after several long minutes, he finally brushed her nipple with his knuckle, Jude breathed a sigh of pleasure.

“Here,” Cardan said, pausing his ministrations, “I might give you an order. I might tell you to be quiet, or not to move, or both, and if you break the rules...” he slapped her thigh hard once again. “You might find you rather dislike the results.”

Cardan could see the effect he was having on Jude and pushed forward, wanting nothing more than to convince her that this was what she needed. He had never expected to get this far on a subject he expected her to shut down immediately, and he would not sacrifice the opportunity.

“Next, I might move lower...” he slid his hand down over her stomach, felt the softness there that covered hard muscle.

“Down to here, perhaps,” he said as he reached the junction of her thighs. “And since this is a reward, I would likely not make you wait too terribly long for what you would so desperately, desperately want.”

As Cardan’s hand slipped under Jude’s dress, he felt the wetness between her thighs and knew his words and actions had their desired effect.

“I see that this is already what you desperately, desperately want, my dear Jude?”

Jude’s hand darted out and clasped Cardan’s wrist, pulling it out from under her dress. He could never hope to be stronger than her, so he waited in anticipation for what she would say.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly, and Cardan relaxed slightly. “Alright, Cardan. Let’s try. You have tonight to convince me that this is anything other than a horrible idea.” Here she paused, and he saw a shadow come over her face, knew that whatever she was about to say was hard for her.

“I don’t trust you, Cardan, and maybe I never will—“

“Jude—“

“But,” she said emphatically, “I’m willing to try. To see how it goes. And besides, I suppose that I trust you more than most people in my life, okay? That’s something.”

Cardan felt the familiar chest-crushing feeling as he gazed at her in the wake of that admission, one that would have been small had she been anyone but Jude Duarte.

“Does my time start now?” was all he replied, not wanting to get emotional and ruin this moment.

“I suppose,” she said, feigning a lack of care when Cardan could tell she was still flustered from his actions.

Cardan leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to Jude’s lips. To his continual surprise, she didn’t pull away- instead, she reciprocated, deepening the kiss slightly. This, if nothing else, revealed how aroused she was, and Cardan couldn’t help but smile at her willingness and desperation.

When he finally pulled away, it was because Cardan had business to attend to before they could truly begin the day that might change everything.

“There are a few things we need to discuss, and they happen to be the type of things that are best gone over with paper and pen.” He moved to retrieve both of those items, and to his delight Jude remained still on the bed, awaiting his return. Perhaps, he mused, she would be more obedient during this whole endeavor than he ever expected.

When he returned, Cardan sat cross-legged on the bed as Jude drew a knee up on which to rest her chin.

“The first item we need to discuss is your limits. These are the things I am absolutely, under no circumstances, allowed to do to you or to order you to do. These can be sexual or not, and this list can be edited at any time as you think of more.”

“I don’t...” and here Jude paused, taking a moment to overcome embarrassment over what she was about to say. “I don’t think I know enough about the things we might be doing to know what my limits would be.”

“And that is utterly acceptable,” Cardan said, rushing to reassure her. “They can be anything. For example,” and with this, he ran a hand down the side of her arm, leaving goosebumps in its wake, “you’ve made it abundantly clear that you have no qualms about being slapped. If you did, we would add it to the list. But if it helps you, I can list some things I may do and you can enlighten me as to how you would respond to them.”

Jude nodded, and Cardan steeled himself against his arousal, driven higher by the prospect of listing potential acts, to focus on the task at hand.

“How would you feel,” Cardan asked, “if I made you wait to orgasm for, say, 2 hours as I teased you?”

Cardan could see, feel the change in Jude’s posture as she became more aroused.

“I’m sure I would not feel good about that in the moment,” she replied, eyebrows raised, “but hearing about it, it sounds... appealing.”

“And if I made you wait for a day?”

Jude snorted. “As if you have the time as High King to take an entire day to tease me.”

“Nothing would be stopping me from ordering you to tease yourself when I was otherwise occupied.”

Jude flushed now. Cardan had been trying, to little avail, to help Jude become more comfortable talking about sex. They were doing it, after all, but outside of the act itself when Cardan brought it up Jude often became irate or uncomfortable.

Maybe, Cardan mused, some part of that was to do with the fact that he, as frequently as possible, brought it up loudly and in public.

Still. This conversation was a significant step towards growing Jude’s comfort in the topic, and Cardan planned to milk the opportunity for all he could.

“And if I didn’t have the time?” Jude asked at length, returning to the conversation.

“You might be surprised,” Cardan said, lowering his voice and leaning closer to Jude’s ear, “how easily you can slip out of a meeting and into a closet when the threat of my hand on your beautiful ass looms over you.”

Jude tried to jerk away from Cardan, but he held her chin tightly and pulled her back.

“You forget, I think, that we have already begun. You will not pull away from me, do you understand?”

Jude flushed hotter and grumbled something that resembled, “okay.”

“That was your first and only warning. Back, now, to the limits. Answer my last question.”

“Yes, I think I would accept waiting a day.”

“And a week?”

Jude’s eyes grew wide. “I... would prefer not to, but it isn’t a limit.”

Cardan, alert to the smallest minutiae of Jude’s actions, noticed as she shifted near imperceptibly closer to him. He smiled inwardly. What this small action conveyed to him was that his plan to make Jude desperate for his attentions, both sexual and non, before they even began was beginning to work.

“And if I wanted to brand you?”

“Limit.”

Cardan grinned, having known, of course, that this would be the answer.

“And there, my dear, is an example.”

Jude rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry that I needed to make clear that ‘permanent disfigurement’ is off the table.”

“You need to make everything clear, Jude, to reduce the possibility of my doing something that genuinely distresses you. And,” he said, growing serious, “I will allow it for now, but when we are done with writing and discussions and begin in earnest, I will expect a more respectful tone from you than that.”

“And if I don’t, you’ll punish me?”

Cardan could hear in Jude’s voice that her reply was no form of backtalk, but one of apprehension and excitement.

“Yes, Jude,” Cardan said, leaning closer once more. “I will punish you, and you will not enjoy it.”

“And if I do?”

Cardan frowned. “It is... a complicated line, to answer you with honesty. I want you to enjoy all that we do, because that is the main purpose of all of this. My role, above all else, is to protect and care for you while putting you in positions of vulnerability, and to make sure that the things we do while I am in control serve you well. However, a part of your enjoyment and powerlessness will be the knowledge that when you transgress, you will be corrected, and that the correction will make you want to avoid repeating the offense. So while I want you to enjoy the process, I do not expect you always to enjoy the particular instance of punishment. Confirm whether or not that makes sense to you.” This was Cardan’s attempt to help Jude grow used to following orders, and it succeeded as she obeyed without question on this small matter.

“Yes, it makes sense.”

Cardan saw Jude rub her legs together, almost too lightly to be noticeable, and smiled.

“Growing a bit desperate, are we?”

Jude scowled, then realized herself and schooled her face into neutrality. Cardan smiled wider at this indication that she was beginning to behave.

“Are you trying the teasing thing now? Trying to make me desperate?”

“Oh, Jude. If and when I tease you, I strongly suspect you shall know. No, when we finish this,” and he waved the paper and pen, “I will make sure your desperation is alleviated.”

“Then let’s get back to work.”

“Begging?”

Jude scoffed again, then looked guiltily at Cardan. It would take some time to break her of these habits, and Cardan fully expected to enjoy every moment of doing so.

“You are free to try to make me beg,” she replied, opting for a neutral statement that still conveyed her derisiveness.

Cardan smiled. “I love a challenge,” he retorted, “thought I doubt that it will be one after I have brought you to the appropriate headspace.”

“What does that mean?”

Cardan set down the paper and turned toward her for this section of the explanation.

“Sometimes, during arrangements such as the one we’re forming-“ At this, Jude raised her eyebrows, reminding him that this arrangement was far from settled.

“The one I hope to form,” he corrected himself. “During these arrangements, there is a certain state of mind you can enter. I have done it at the hands of others- it is a most wondrous, delightful feeling, as though everything in the world is taken care of and the person in control can do no wrong. I tell you this in advance of its happening because I want you to know that I in no way am provoking this state in you for my own gain, or so that you will think more highly of me. I do it because I want you to feel that incredible feeling, and to feel that you are safe and cherished. Do you understand?”

Jude nodded, but then a shadow passed over her face, as though thinking of something she would rather not.

“How do you know all of this? Who made you feel that way? Have you made others feel that way before?”

The jealousy present in her tone was uncharacteristic, and Cardan couldn’t help experiencing a rush of pleasure as he heard it.

“I have a good deal of experience with the topic, and a good deal of knowledge in how it can go poorly,” he answered with a sad smile. “There was a time when, in search of that feeling, I would entrust myself to anyone willing to help me. Many of them took advantage of the situation to cause me pain, not that I can say I didn’t often deserve it. But this is my promise to you, Jude - I will cause you pain, but it will never be more than you can tolerate, it will never be emotional pain, if I can prevent it, and it will never be for the reason that I want you to genuinely suffer. If I punish you, it is to correct you, and if I hurt you because I want to, it is for both of our pleasures.”

“But to your other question. Yes, I have made others feel this way, but never one who I... cared for, as I care for you. It will be entirely different. I hope you can believe that.”

“Nicasia?” was all she replied, unwilling, of course, to acknowledge the depth of feeling in his statement.

“Among others.”

Jude nodded, apparently satisfied for now with his answers.

“I think I understand the limits now. I would not like to be permanently disfigured,” she said with a pointed look, “nor would I like to be overly disgusted by anything we should do.”

“Elaborate.” He knew this would be a challenge for Jude, to speak explicitly about her likes and dislikes.

“I would not like... spit,” she said, “if that was even an option. Nor would I appreciate an excess of any fluid to touch me. I would like to remain relatively clean. Is that—“ Jude caught herself about to ask if that was acceptable and stopped there, frowning as it came to her attention that she had already begun to enter a place of asking his approval.

“Yes,” Cardan answered, as if she had finished the question. “Very good. Lie on your back.”

Jude tentatively did as instructed.

Cardan leaned over her, bringing his mouth to her breast and pressing light kisses along its top, still working through the fabric of her dress. His tongue moved lower to circle her nipple before he sucked it into his mouth, hard. Jude gasped in pleasure and Cardan hummed against her tender flesh.

He pulled back, but left a hand lingering on her cheek. “When you do as you are instructed, you are rewarded,” he said lightly, before returning to the paper. Jude tried to sit up with him, but he held up a hand.

“I want you in that position until I indicate otherwise.”

Jude lay back down.

“Good,” said Cardan with a smile. “Now. Any other limits you can think of currently? It is completely understandable if not, and we can add more at any time.”

Jude shook her head.

“Then we will move on to apprehensions. What are you apprehensive about going into this?”

Jude thought for a moment before replying.

“Vulnerability,” she said slowly. “Putting faith in someone other than myself, not that I even have too much of that in myself lately.” She turned her head away after speaking, realizing she had shared more than she meant to.

Cardan reached over to take her hand gently. “Keep going.”

“Being without weapons, without defenses. Being in a situation where I need to be protected. Being in a situation where I can’t protect you.” The apprehensions came out of her in a rush now, to Cardan’s relief.

“I’m also apprehensive that I will be bad at this, that I won’t be able to bring myself to be obedient and that you will quickly tire of trying to correct me.”

“Oh, Jude. I will never tire of correcting you, and you never need worry that you will be too disobedient. You have already shown me, given your actions of tonight alone, that you will be good at this, not that there is even a way you could be bad.”

Jude shot Cardan a quick grateful look before continuing.

“I’m apprehensive that this is going to make me seem weak.”

“To me?”

“To you, to the kingdom. To anyone who knows.”

“No one will know without your express permission, Jude. Besides, who would I tell?” Cardan spoke the words with some bitterness, reminding Jude that he had few people in his life besides her. The thought crossed her mind that she should endeavor to treat him slightly more kindly, as he had her.

“Those are all of my apprehensions for now,” was all she said. “What else do you need to write down?”

“You need two words - one which stops everything we are doing completely, and one which signals me to make sure you are okay before we continue.”

“Nicasia and Locke.” She answered without hesitation.

“Fitting,” Cardan said, amused. “Our ex lovers.” He hurriedly wrote down her answers before continuing.

“What shall you call me?”

“Cardan, perhaps?” she answered sarcastically.

Cardan frowned at her.

“A name which denotes respect, Jude. May I suggest ‘My Lord’ or ‘My King’? I won’t make you go so far as to call me master.”

“My Lord,” Jude replied after a brief moment of consideration.

“Good. For the rest of the night and day, from this moment on, you will address me as ‘My Lord’. You will respond to my questions with answers like ‘Yes, My Lord’ and ‘No, My Lord.’ Is that clear?”

“Yes, My Lord.” Jude said quietly. Cardan leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her lips.

“Good. That concludes the information I need to gather for now. I will store this sheet safely for future use.”

“You seem quite confident that there will be future use.”

Cardan raised an eyebrow but let the disrespect in her tone slide. “I think you need this, Jude, and I think you will come to realize that by the end of the time you’ve allotted me. Another thing to note is that from this moment forward, I will not take your disrespect quite so lightly.”

Jude nodded once, and Cardan seized her chin in his hand once more.

“Say, ‘yes, My Lord’.”

“Yes, My Lord,” Jude replied, averting her eyes, still unable to believe she had put herself in this position.

Cardan smiled. “So far, you have been fairly obedient, and completed all that I’ve asked of you with a minimum of complaint. Frankly, I’m impressed, and I do plan to reward you.”

Jude shivered.

“But first, I want to address something you said earlier, about my viewing you as weak. Jude, to submit to my control will be the ultimate show of strength. I know what it would take from you, and how bold you will have to be in order to do so. I will never, never think you weak for giving up a small piece of your power. I will see you as all the more powerful for it, do you understand?”

“Yes, My Lord,” she said quietly.

“Good. Then let us begin.” With that, Cardan returned his mouth to Jude’s breast, licking and sucking over the fabric of her dress as his hands inched the bottom upward, baring her upper thighs. He finally pulled back to remove her dress entirely and stayed hovering above her, gazing down at her near-naked form.

“Tell me what you think of your body, Jude.”

Jude blanched, and Cardan could see the panic in her eyes, wondered if he had gone too far. Then, though, she reminded herself of his prior words - that this was strength, power, not weakness and defeat.

“I think it is strong, and serves its purpose, but is out of place among those of the faeries. You are all so... well, thin, and I am not. I have always wished to look as you do, despite knowing I never can.”

Cardan nodded, having suspected exactly this response.

“And would you like to know what I think of your body, Jude?”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“I think your body far surpasses the beauty of that of any faerie I have ever seen. I think there is nothing more attractive to me than your muscles and flesh. I think that the more of you there is for me to touch,” and he touched her, “kiss,” and he kissed her, “and caress the more I will be satisfied. And I think that your body gives you life, and that is the most beautiful thing of all. After the undersea, when you had so little flesh on your bones, I was terrified. I would never want to see you like that again. I am grateful for every day that you have enough to eat, and I count myself lucky to share the bed of someone strong enough to snap my body in a heartbeat.”

Jude laughed at this. “I meant what I said, though. I wouldn’t kill you.”

Cardan put his hand over his chest and said with mock sincerity, “and you have no idea what that means to me,” but they both knew it was far from sarcasm.

“Thank you,” Jude said softly, “my lord, for what you said.”

“I speak only the truth, unlike some,” he replied, touching her face lightly. “Anyway, Jude, would you like me to return to the task at hand?”

“Very much so — my lord.” He heard her stumble, forget herself for a moment, and resolved to push her deeper into the headspace she so desperately needed to enter.

He started by kissing his way down her stomach, running his tongue along the bones of her hips, the line of her pelvis. He nipped the skin of her inner thigh gently, causing her to yelp, and grinned against her.

Finally — finally — he attended to her burning need, pulling her remaining underwear down her legs and situating himself between them. He heard her give a sharp intake of breath as she realized what he was going to do, as she did every time they did this, and smiled once more at the familiarity of the situation.

With one hand, Cardan spread Jude before him, as he pressed his tongue against her folds.

“Spread your legs for me, Jude, dear,” he muttered against her, and she squirmed even as she did as he asked. Demanded.

When she had obeyed, he resumed his actions in earnest, licking and sucking with vigor, trying to bring her to the edge as quickly as possible. He entered her with two fingers so suddenly that she gasped in surprise, and he pulled back to grin up at her and gaze at her flushed cheeks and half-closed eyes.

“Your nipples. Touch them,” he commanded, and she did as instructed, pulling and rolling them between her fingers, moaning lightly at the sensation and more loudly as he curled his fingers inside her, still watching.

“You are stunning,” he said simply, before resuming the work of his mouth against her. He flicked her clit with his tongue, slowly at first, but increased speed with his tongue and fingers until she was on the edge, crying out that she was about to go over it.

He stopped all motions, pulled back, and said, “hands at your sides.”

“I thought this was a reward,” she said, anger flashing in her eyes even as she obeyed.

“It is,” he replied. “The reward is the fact that I’m touching you at all. And I don’t appreciate your attitude. Spread your legs.”

She had snapped them closed in the wake of his motions ceasing, but opened them again now. Cardan pushed them farther apart roughly.

“In the future, know that it is my right to stop touching you at any time, and that you have no leave to contest my decision. I won’t fully punish you now, because this is a first infraction, but I will give you a small reminder of your place.”

With those words, he slapped her directly on the junction between her legs, one of his many rings hitting her clit. While he congratulated himself on his excellent aim, Jude cried out in shock and pain.

“Car— My—“ she sputtered, trying to find something to say that wouldn’t provoke another slap. Cardan merely raised an eyebrow, waiting for her decision.

She stayed silent, biting her lip against the desire to protest and the residual stinging between her legs.

Cardan looked down at her. “Next time, your punishment will not be so easy to bear. And before I forget, there is a rule I want to set for the future- you ask me, rather than tell me, when you are close to orgasm. Do you understand?”

Jude closed her eyes briefly before responding. “Yes, My Lord.”

Cardan could see the struggle in Jude, sense the way she worked to control the impulse to resist him, and found himself impossibly proud.

He lay down beside her and began steadily stroking a finger in circles around her clit, so slowly that there was no risk of her coming from the stimulation. Jude bit her lip and moaned.

“Normally, at a time like this, I would be waiting for you to beg,” Cardan said conversationally, as if discussing the weather in Elfhame. “But, as circumstance has it, begging will do nothing for you here. I plan to let you come—“ with those words, Jude’s wide eyes shot to his, but he continued with a small smile “but not for some time.”

Jude’s face fell, but lacked the spark of anger it had earlier held. Good. That meant she was beginning to accept that she had no choice but to allow Cardan to do what he would with her pleasure.

He continued his gentle ministrations on her clit, listening for small moans and breathy sighs as she wished for more stimulation, for several minutes. Then, without warning, he rose.

“Get dressed,” he ordered.

“Why?” she asked, even as she stood from the bed.

Cardan raised an eyebrow by way of answer, and Jude paled.

“I will, My Lord.”

Cardan knew that Jude was likely still allowing this sort of behavior from herself by rationalizing that it was only for the night, but it still pleased him to see signs of her growing obedience.

Jude had dresses in one of the many closets contained by Cardan’s chambers, for those times when hers became rumpled and dirty and she didn’t want anyone to know what she had been doing or with whom. She pulled one on now, not bothering to search for a bra, knowing Cardan would likely stop her anyway. She did, however, pick her underwear back up from where Cardan had carelessly discarded it earlier, but he tsked and plucked it from her hands.

“Not tonight,” he said decisively, and she had no choice but to obey.

When she was dressed and had smoothed down her hair enough to be presentable to... wherever it was they were going, Cardan led Jude from the chambers and into the halls of the palace. When they reached the throne room, a horrible thought occurred to Jude. Surely, surely, Cardan didn’t expect her to spend hours on the throne as she usually did at night, watching revelers and hearing complaints from the citizens of Elfhame. Surely he wouldn’t be so cruel, when she could still feel the wetness between her thighs and knew her clit remained as swollen as ever.

But he was so cruel, and in they went to settle on the twin thrones, side by side, perhaps an inch of space between the two seats.

“Bring a table,” he ordered loudly to the room, “with a cloth.”

Cardan was quickly obeyed, and a table was set before their thrones on the dais, covered in a white cloth that reached to the floor. To Jude’s shock, Cardan actually thanked the faeries that delivered the table. He was clearly on his best behavior in an attempt to convince her that this was a worthy arrangement.

Jude had no idea why Cardan would request a table when, again to her shock, he did not appear to be drinking. His reason soon became apparent, though, as his hand slipped across the space between their thrones and under her dress once more, blocked from the sight of the room’s revelers by the cloth on the table.

She realized at that moment that Cardan planned to keep her on the edge of orgasm for the entire duration of their time in the throne room, and closed her eyes as a flush began to rise on her face.

“My lord,” she said, too quietly for anyone but Cardan to hear her. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“You can,” he responded, “because I know your limits, and because I am telling you that you can, and because you want to please me.”

Jude was surprised to find that she did, indeed want to please him.

“My lord,” she started again, “you aren’t drinking. I was just wondering why.”

Cardan’s face grew serious. “As greatly as it pains me to go a night sober, I don’t believe in engaging in this sort of... activity while intoxicated. One of my main responsibilities is to ensure that I can read you well enough to know your limits, and I can’t easily do so with an alcohol addled mind.”

Jude nodded, touched and realizing for the first time that Cardan’s role in this was as difficult, if not more so, as hers.

“So, in the hypothetical and far from plausible situation that we made this arrangement permanent...”

“I would still drink on occasion, but any rewards, punishments, commands, or otherwise would wait until my sobriety.”

Jude found herself slightly disappointed. She wouldn’t admit it to him, but she worried about his drinking, about the fact that his drunken state seemed the only time he even bordered on happiness. Not that she did much to help with the misery he experienced in life.

All thoughts shattered in Jude’s mind as Cardan brought her nearly over the edge once more.

“My Lord, can I-“

He pulled away.

Had they not been in the middle of a room full of faeries, Jude might have cried out in frustration.

They passed the next hour in silence, Cardan bringing Jude to the edge again every time she got far enough from it to be comfortable. She spent the hour in misery, near writhing in her seat from the arousal. She knew she would have a damp spot on the back of her dress when they finally left the throne room, and couldn’t bring herself to care. She couldn’t even care, in fact, that all of this was happening publicly, and that someone could rise too high on the dais and see what Cardan’s hand occupied itself with at any moment.

“Alright, Jude,” Cardan said loudly, finally taking pity on her. “Let us retire for the rest of the night.”

Jude sighed in relief and stood, following Cardan out of the throne room. When they reached his chambers, Jude had no time to react as Cardan pinned her to the wall, holding her wrists above her head.

“You’re mine, Jude,” he said, stroking her wrists with his thumbs. “I love having you as my own, to do what I will with. You have no idea how deliciously appealing you looked on the dais, sitting in your throne and letting me touch you like the slut you are quickly, beautifully becoming. Tell me - are you enjoying yourself?”

“No, My Lord.”

“Are you lying?”

“Yes, My Lord.”

Cardan smiled. “It’s not nice to lie, Jude.” He slapped her in the face, hard enough to sting and take her by surprise but softly enough not to leave a mark. Jude exclaimed in surprise.

Cardan knew he had taken a risk, that face slapping was something they had not discussed and something with which Jude might be wholly uncomfortable, but she said nothing, merely looked at the floor in guilt.

And she did feel guilty — guilty for lying to him about her enjoyment in one last, desperate attempt to pretend this wasn’t exactly what she needed, that she couldn’t already feel a glimmer of the feeling Cardan had described, that she wasn’t close to total surrender.

“Look at me,” Cardan said softly.

Jude looked at him, biting her lip gently, willing him to forgive.

“There’s something important which I neglected to tell you.” He continued stroking her wrists in small, reassuring circles. “After I have punished you for whatever infraction you’ve committed, it’s over. I harbor no more negative feelings about it, and you have no more repentance to do unless I explicitly tell you otherwise. A punishment is an absolution.”

“Yes, My Lord,” Jude said, lifting her head in an attempt to push the conflict from her mind. “I will not lie again.” She meant the promise.

Cardan bowed his head. “Noted and appreciated,” he said, before looking up at her, sternly but with mischief on his face.

“Now. Get on your knees.”

Jude dropped to her knees immediately, growing more and more eager to please, and reached up to undo the buttons of his breeches.

“No,” he said, and stilled her hands. “Take off your dress.”

She obeyed, sliding it over her head eagerly and casting it aside, leaving herself naked before him once more.

Cardan cast his own shirt over his head and undid his breeches himself, much to Jude’s disappointment, before sliding off the remainder of his clothes.

“Start slowly, and using only your mouth.”

Jude obeyed, leaning forward to kiss her way up and down the length of him, pausing to give particular attention to the head before moving back down. Cardan braced a hand against the wall behind her.

“Lick me. Stay slow, but be thorough.”

Jude did as instructed once more, licking and gently sucking her way around his cock, over the head, pausing to swirl her tongue around his balls.

After several minutes, Cardan gave his next order.

“Pull as much of me as you can into your mouth. You may use your hands now, and do go a bit more quickly.”

Jude smiled, hearing the effect she had on him in his voice, and proceeded to do as told, sucking him into her mouth and blowing him in earnest.

Cardan’s sounds were like a reward, as they always were on the rare occasions that she did this, and she smiled as she worked on him, desperately wanting to bring him over the edge, desperately wanting to please.

“Jude,” he groaned, “yes, yes, like that.”

Quickly, Cardan went over the edge, spilling come into Jude’s mouth which she swallowed diligently before wiping her face with her hand. She smiled up at him when she finished, a mixture of sweetness and wicked pleasure on her face.

“Evil, talented girl,” was all he said before pulling her to her feet and pushing her across the room, onto the bed. “It’s my turn now.”

Jude did not point out that Cardan had, in fact, taken many turns already, merely lay on her back awaiting him. When he arrived, he quickly got back to the task at hand, spreading her legs and using his tongue to work her clit, alternating speeds to keep her from coming to the edge too quickly.

Still— after hours of torment, it was a matter of moments before she was at the edge, legs trembling hard beneath Cardan’s hands.

“May I come, My Lord, may I come?” she pleaded, close to begging, desperation evident in her voice.

“Yes,” he paused just long enough to say before resuming his ministrations.

He didn’t stop, nor even slow down, as she came, crying out and tangling her hands in his hair, chanting his name and “my lord” and “god, god, god” intermittently. Nor did he slow down when she came a second time, writhing beneath him. By the time she neared a third orgasm without a break, Jude had tears of pleasure and overstimulation in her eyes and was pleading with Cardan alternately to stop and keep going. He chose to continue, and she came four times before Cardan finally slowed to a stop and pulled back to look at her.

Cardan moved to the top of the bed and pulled Jude into his arms, head resting on his chest. She let out a slight whimper of protest, a part of her uncomfortable with this level of intimacy, but was too spent and needed to be held too badly to resist.

“Are you in a space where you can listen to me, my darling Jude?” Cardan asked, so heartbreakingly gentle in voice and touch that she felt as though her chest was cracking.

“Mm hmm,” she said in assent.

“Another important thing to remember about what we’re doing is that you must allow me to care for you. This is undeniably important. This sort of... play, if we might call it that, can only happen with the knowledge that I will care for you afterward. You cannot protest when I pull you into my arms after whatever we’ve been doing, whether punishment or pleasure. You cannot prevent me from tending to any injuries I may have caused or ensuring your safety, health, and wellbeing. If it is my responsibility to correct you, and to keep safely your power, then it is also my responsibility to care for you, and I take it quite seriously. Do you understand?”

“Yes, My Lord, I understand,” Jude tried to say, but it came out more like “hmmlord derstand.”

Cardan smiled tenderly down at Jude, and knew in that moment that he was much farther gone than he had ever suspected when it came to his feelings for the woman he held.

Jude, for her part, was terrified. Since her return from exile, she had never allowed herself this kind of intimacy with Cardan, and she was shocked by how desperately she desired it. She was mentally and bodily exhausted and wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in his arms, but her mind would not allow her that, setting off all the warning bells of the danger she could be getting herself into by allowing this, and with him.

But she had promised to be honest, and knew that he would consider keeping her thoughts a secret when they needed to be shared a lie of omission, so she spoke.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

“I know,” he replied, and for a moment they were silent. “I don’t want to put pressure on you, but if you’ll give me the time to do this right, I’ll prove to you that you have nothing to be afraid of.”

Jude opened her eyes. “I want to,” she whispered, as though saying something shameful. “I don’t want this to end, but I don’t know if I can do it.”

“I do. I know.”

“Where did this resounding faith in my strength come from?” Jude’s words were teasing, but her sentiment was genuine.

“I’ve had it for a long time, I think. Since I’ve known you. I was cruel to you in part because it was easier than acknowledging my feelings and in part because I saw strength in you where in myself there was only weakness, and I hated you for that.”

For reasons Jude could not understand, the reminder that Cardan had ever hated her nearly brought tears to her eyes at this moment, but she remained silent as he continued.

“I now see that hating you for your strength was the solution of a child. You have my apologies and my regret.”

They both were silent, unspoken emotion crackling between them, for several minutes.

“Why can’t this be easy?” Jude said at last.

“It’s not too late,” Cardan whispered, and kissed the top of Jude’s head, the mortal curve of her ear, the tip of her nose. “Jude, admit that you need this.”

“I do, but that doesn’t mean I get to have it when it feels like giving up all that I’ve worked for.”

Cardan closed his eyes in frustration. “You’re giving up nothing, Jude! You would only be gaining a new form of freedom. You lose nothing by surrendering.”

“I lose the war between us.”

“What war!” Cardan exclaimed, raking his hands through his hair. “The war of children? The war of two people who have been horrible to each other and now have a chance to be good? There is no war for me, Jude - not any more.”

Jude was choking back tears now, impossibly distressed at having gone from the sweetness of a few moments ago to the harsh reality of their situation and of Cardan’s frustration with her.

“I’m sorry,” she started, but then Cardan was there and he was holding her again and comforting her and kissing her temples and oh god, Jude had never been so overwhelmed by emotion and sensation and desire.

“No, Jude, do not apologize. It was my responsibility to keep myself calm after putting you into that emotional place and I failed. The responsibility is mine, and I am truly sorry.”

Jude didn’t cry, not any more, but she came close now, squeezed her eyes shut to hold back the tears, and finally, finally assented.

“I don’t know what I can commit to, and I don’t know that I won’t back out at any moment, because I’m terribly, terribly afraid. What I do know is that I want this, and I’m willing to try.”

“That’s more than I expected from you, Jude,” and she could hear the grateful tone behind his words.

“We can try it all the time, if you still want to.” The words came out of Jude in a rush of nervousness, and Cardan took her trembling hands in his own.

“I would love to, Jude. Go get the paper and pen from earlier.”

“Yes, My Lord,” she said, already relieved to be back to this, showing her just how badly she did need this arrangement.

She returned with the paper, which Cardan quickly signed at the bottom.

“Sign this when you’re truly ready to begin,” he said. “I won’t rush you. You can take all the time you—“

With decisiveness, Jude signed the document.

#my fic #my posts #there we FUCKING GO #jurdan fic #tfota #the folk of the air #jurdan #jude duarte #cardan greenbriar #judecardan #the cruel prince #tcp #the wicked king #twk #post-the wicked king

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duhragonball · 6 years ago

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[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (94/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

Previous chapters conveniently available here.

[26 May 234 Before Age. Interstellar Space.]

It was taking too long.

Aboard the Emerald Eye, Zatte stood in the engineering room and held her finger over a button on on of the consoles. Next to the button was a time display, which counted down to zero. When that moment arrived, she would press the button, which would disengage the ship's hyperspatial drive. After that, she would take sensor readings and compare them to other readings she had taken several hours earlier. After that, she would begin laboriously calculating the ship's position relative to her destination.

Normally, all of this would have been done automatically by the ship's computer, but its navigational functions had been sabotaged by King Rehval's agent, Pozet. Pozet's mission was to keep Zatte out of the way while the rest of Rehval's plan fell into place. Zatte had destroyed her hours ago, but she had to admit that the miserable creature had probably succeeded anyway. Pozet's original plan was to confuse the navigational computer by replacing its charts and tampering with its fundamental understanding of the universe. The genius of this had been that the ship appeared to be working properly. It set a course and followed it perfectly. The only problem was that it now believed the shortest distance between two points was an elliptic curve, so the ship simply flew laps in space, unaware that it was getting nowhere. Zatte had solved that problem by disconnecting the navigational system altogether. Her plan was to fly the ship manually, and navigate by the stars, but this was no simple matter. The longer it took, the more Zatte wondered if her efforts made any difference.

At last, the timer reached its end, and Zatte pressed the button just as the display read zero. The engines made a low hum as they reduced power and the ship returned to normal space. She sighed with relief, then activated the ship's sublight thruster. With that, she turned on one heel and left the engine room to go to the observation deck.

Ideally, Zatte would have done all of this from the bridge, where engineering and sensor controls could all be accessed from a central location. But the bridge had been badly damaged during the fight with Pozet, and it would take days of repairs before life support could be restored there. In any event, the ship needed to move through space for a least a half hour so the sensors could get the necessary data for her to calculate her position. There was nothing she could do in the meantime, so she preferred to spend her down time on the observation deck, where she could see the stars for herself from the transparent canopy that surrounded it. She walked past a pair of tables where she had been working on her calculations, and sat down in a lounge chair to stare at the heavens.

The brightest star was the sun of the Pflaume system. She had made that much progress, at least. Her best guess was that it would take four or five more jumps at superluminous speed to bring the ship close enough that she could navigate with greater confidence. Until then, she had to be careful. A single, long trip at superluminous speed would cover more ground, but even a slight error in the math could put the ship far enough on course to delay her, even further. Fuel was also a consideration. Pozet's little "detour" hadn't consumed too much antimatter, but it was enough that Zatte couldn't risk running the engines without being certain they were going the right way.

"I'm trying," Zatte said as she looked up at the star. She wasn't sure if Luffa was even there. Pozet claimed she was, but she might have been lying, or simply mistaken. It was also possible that Luffa was dead by now, or that she had found some other means of escape. Or maybe...

"Maybe you really did buy what King Rehval was trying to sell you," Zatte said to herself. "Maybe the two of you left together. Or you're waiting for me to show up, so you can laugh at me to my face."

She didn't really believe it, but she couldn't entirely dismiss the possibility either. Saying it out loud forced her to confront it. Luffa was too proud, too contemptuous of Saiyan royalty. Even if Luffa had feelings for Rehval, there were too many incompatibilities there. And Rehval had lied about a great many things since Zatte and Luffa had met him. And yet... Zatte still couldn't convince herself that it was impossible.

Luffa's telepathic powers had allowed Zatte to see into her mind. They had tried to cut back on this, since the exchange of unvarnished truths about their innermost thoughts and feelings had caused a rift to form in their marriage. Still, Zatte knew enough to know what her wife truly felt towards her. They were in love, that much was unquestionable, but there were many things that left Luffa unsatisfied. She would have never admitted it, but Luffa had a homesickness to her. It wasn't a longing for any particular place, but she missed her family: not just her parents, but also the family that she might have had with her late husband and unborn son. It frustrated Luffa to be apart from other Saiyans, and it frustrated her to be among them, only to find that they didn't share her lofty ideals. Maybe Rehval had an answer to those issues. In spite of his moral failings, maybe he had something to offer Luffa that Zatte simply couldn't provide.

Perhaps that was what troubled Zatte now. She couldn't truly believe that Luffa would join him, but she couldn't quite shake the possibility that Luffa should join him. If Rehval had some happiness for Luffa, some way to cope with the unspoken longing Luffa felt, and if Luffa rejected this, then what? Zatte also wondered how she herself would handle the same choice. Rehval was trying to secure the future for the Saiyan race. What if he was right? If Luffa refused him, then was she condemning her own people to ruin? No Dorlun could make that kind of choice, but then, Luffa was no Dorlun. Luffa was willing to risk everything for what she thought was right. She was even willing to jeopardize her own people. That idea horrified Zatte, but maybe not as much as the alternative.

She imagined arriving on Pflaume to find Luffa dressed in royal blue, her short black hair framed by some elegant tiara, her arm in the arm of Rehval. Her marriage to Zatte would be effectively over, but the Rehval Dynasty would be preserved for centuries. The Saiyans would prosper and thrive for generations to come. The next Super Saiyan would be born to the royal house, and he would lead his people to an even brighter tomorrow. That made all the sense in the world, but not for Luffa. It just didn't fit her.

On the other hand, Zatte could imagine arriving at Pflaume, and finding Luffa standing over Rehval's broken body. Regicide and interstellar incidents meant nothing to her. The Saiyan Kingdom would declare war on the Federation, and there was no telling what would happen in the aftermath. It might take decades for another Saiyan leader to arise, and their fate as a species would be uncertain at best. Luffa would smile that savage grin of hers, and spit on the body of the Saiyan King. "He had it coming, Zattie," she would say. "And so does anyone who has a problem with that."

That Luffa seemed much more realistic to Zatte. More importantly, that version was the one that excited her, the one that inflamed her passions. No Dorlun could ever do that, but then, Luffa was no Dorlun. Zatte was beginning to wonder if she was much of a Dorlun herself. Her people would never dream of standing with someone so dangerous as a Super Saiyan. If Luffa was willing and able to jeopardize her own species, then what could she do to others? Zatte often wondered if she rationalized Luffa's behavior as a way to justify her own approval of it. She also wondered if she was simply overthinking things.

By the time the ship's sensor scans were complete, Zatte was no closer to an answer than before. She was grateful for the distraction the sensor data would offer, though she knew it would only make her more frustrated in the end. The computer could help her calculate the coordinates, but only up to a certain accuracy. Without the navigational computer to read data and adjust course automatically, the best she could manage would almost certainly be billions of miles off-course. Persistence was her only hope. Each try would bring her closer and closer to the target, and then she would finally reach the goal.

She only hoped that there would be something to find when she got there.

*******

[26 May 234 Before Age. Planet Pflaume.]

There was no trace of Xibuyas or King Rehval on Pflaume City. By now, Luffa could only assume that they had either escaped or been killed in the attempt. Alone, and with nothing better to do, she focused on keeping herself alive.

The battle with her son had severely damaged the city's interior, though they had both been careful not to hit the outer hull. That didn't seem to matter much, as the low groaning she heard suggested that the hull had been taxed to its limits anyway. A city directory on one of the less broken levels showed her the way to the operations center, where a crew of engineers and technicians normally kept the city floating in the Pflaumian atmosphere. This crew had abandoned their posts along with everyone else in the city when Rehval had it evacuated, but Luffa expected to find something she could use at their stations. Information, equipment, supplies, any of these would improve her chances.

The ops center was located near the bottom of the city, requiring Luffa to dig through tons of debris to get at it. Blasting her way through was too risky, so she burrowed down the old fashioned way. To conserve her strength, she powered down to her normal form. Her Super Saiyan power gave her the strength to clear the rubble faster, but speed would get her nowhere if she damaged the very facility she was trying to reach. For an hour, she threw chunks of metal and plastic over her head, occasionally using her ki to cut through the more unwieldy pieces. The hull continued to groan, and she was sorely tempted to transform again, though she could find no practical purpose for it.

"I don't need you," she muttered, addressing her transformed self. Over the years, she had gotten used to the idea that her transformation was a part of her, but never completely. Early on, it had taken a great deal of concentration just to suppress it, and even then it seemed to claw at her from the inside of her skin, demanding to be released. In a way, she was more comfortable in that form. Her senses were sharper, and her body was stronger and faster.

Instead, she curled her tail around her body, and looked at it while she dug. This had been her source of strength throughout her life. The tail was the weakest, most vulnerable point of the Saiyan anatomy. It could be overcome, but the training needed to strengthen the tail was far more difficult than the work needed to build up an arm or a leg. It was a rite of passage for a Saiyan warrior, or at least that was what her mother had taught her. For most Saiyans, overcoming the tail's weakness was the most harrowing challenge of their lives. Defeat that, her mother had promised, and you can defeat anything. For Luffa, training her tail was probably the fifth or sixth greatest ordeal of her life at this point, but it still gave her comfort in times of trouble.

Only, this time, it wasn't helping much. Looking at her tail only reminded her that Rehval had cut his own tail off. He was the king of the Saiyans, and he preferred to mutilate his own body rather than deal with a minor inconvenience. Then he took her own son from her, raised him as his own, and cut off his tail. There were plenty of Saiyans on Planet Saiya who still had their own tails, but it apparently didn't bother them at all to be ruled by a man who would willingly amputate his own. He took children from their mothers, and his subjects meekly tolerated this. It made her sick to her stomach, and as the rage welled up inside her, she wanted to release it in a storm of golden light--!

No. She refused to give in to that. This was a battle, as much of a battle as she had faced with any warrior. Her opponents were time and despair and the environment. She had to stay focused, or they would destroy her, and then King Rehval would be able to claim victory. She refused to give him the satisfaction. And so Luffa denied her Super Saiyan power, refusing to indulge the golden thing that howled from within her.

When she reached the operations center, she was encouraged to find that it was well-reinforced, and had withstood the upper levels collapsing down onto it. It also had very little in the way of security, and she was able to force open a door and reseal it with no difficulty. Luffa found a command terminal and called up a status report. The good news was that the hull had not been breached, and the ops center was designed to be able to function and sustain a crew even if the rest of the city were to be destroyed. That meant this was the safest place to wait for help to arrive.

The bad news was that the city was losing altitude. Planet Pflaume was an ice giant, and while Luffa had a general understanding of its composition, the ops center computers gave her a precise display of her problem. Unlike terrestrial planets, Pflaume had no solid surface. Its core was composed of iron, nickel, and silicates, and this was surrounded by a mantle of "ice"-- a mixture of water, ammonia, and methane. Despite the term "ice", these chemicals were actually hot and fluid because of the immense pressure at that depth Without a solid crust to separate the mantle from the atmosphere, this boundary was arbitrarily defined by a certain pressure: about 1.5 million pounds per square inch. Similarly, the "surface" of Pflaume was arbitrarily defined as the depth where the atmospheric pressure was equivalent to that of a terrestrial planet, about 15 pounds per square inch. Pflaume City floated just below this altitude, and while it was designed to withstand higher pressures, the outer hull would buckle if it sank too far into the planet. The city's propulsion systems were riddled with backups and failsafes to keep it aloft, but these had been damaged during the battle, or Rehval had sabotaged them to make certain she never escaped the city alive. According to the computers, she had very little time left.

She stood up from the command terminal and searched for any food the crew had left behind. The situation was grim, but she saw no reason to die on an empty stomach. There were several crates of emergency rations in a back room, and she devoured these as quickly as she could, using the time to consider her problem.

It was conceivable that she could move the entire city with the power of her Super Saiyan form. She had never tried anything like that before, but she couldn't rule out the possibility of simply carrying the entire city to a safe altitude. The problem was that she would have to concentrate her force onto a single point somewhere along the city's superstructure, and she suspected that it wasn't designed for that. It would be like trying to balance a large animal on the tip of a nail. Even if the nail were impossibly durable, the animal would simply be punctured by the nail and fall.

The ops center was smaller, and she considered trying to cut it apart from the rest of the city, but she wasn't sure if it was designed to support a crew without the rest of the city surrounding it. The temperature outside was well below the freezing point of water, with gusts of wind moving at supersonic speeds. There was no oxygen to breathe in the Pflaumian atmosphere either. As strong as Luffa was, she would be killed almost instantly if she ventured outside the city.

"I'm trying," Luffa said aloud as she drummed her fingers on a table in the ops center break room. None of this would matter unless someone came along to find her. Even if she found a way to keep the city floating, sooner or later something else would go wrong, or she would exhaust her supplies of food and water. The only thing keeping her going was the fact that Zatte was headed for Pflaume City when they parted, and the only thing Rehval had done to stop her was to send that homunculus after her. Pozet was nothing more than a cheap copy of Zatte, and Luffa was completely confident that the copy was no match for the original. She was certain that Zatte had defeated it and was on her way. All Luffa had to do was stay alive in the meantime. She had let Zatte down before, but she could honor her in this respect at least. She could find a way to survive, and then...

Before she could continue on that train of thought, an alarm sounded in the ops center. Luffa leaped up from the table and raced back to the command terminal. She couldn't imagine how things could get any worse, but the status report explained it all very simply.

Two of the propulsion thrusters were gone. For a moment, she thought that the computers were telling her that they no longer functioned, but then she realized that they were literally no longer connected to the hull.

Luffa had no idea how this had happened, but her best guess was that they had been shorn off of their mountings by the atmospheric currents. By now, the city had fallen to an altitude where the pressure was several times more intense than normal. While the hull could withstand that pressure, the weather patterns buffeting the city were now denser, and the winds hit with greater force. Without those thrusters, the city would only sink even faster, and sustain even more damage. There was no time to waste. She had to do something quickly, before--

Suddenly the entire city shook, and she heard a very loud noise. It was already too late. She checked the readout at the command terminal, which confirmed her worst fears. Methane levels had skyrocketed in the past few minutes. The outside atmosphere was leaking into the city, and that could only mean the hull had begun to crack open. The ops center was still safe for the moment, but she only had a few minutes left. She had to do something, and quickly, before--

And then, at last, Pflaume City imploded.

NEXT: The Morning After.

#dragon ball #fanfiction #lssjluffafic #super saiyan #luffa #zatte #pflaume

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sinrau · 4 years ago

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(Jamiel Law for The Washington Post)

By Editorial Board August 21, 2020

AFTER HE is nominated by a pared-down convention next week, President Trump will make this argument to the American people: Things were great until China loosed the novel coronavirus on the world. If you reelect me, I will make things great again.

Our democracy in peril

Part one of a series of editorials on the damage President Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term.

Seeking reelection in the midst of the worst public health crisis and sharpest economic downturn of our lifetimes, this may, realistically, be the only argument left to him. But, fittingly for a president who has spoken more than 20,000 lies during his presidency, it rests on two huge falsehoods.

One is that the nation, his presidency and, above all, Mr. Trump himself are innocent victims of covid-19. In fact, his own negligence, ignorance and malpractice turned what would have been a daunting challenge for any president into a national disaster.

The other is that there was anything to admire in his record before the virus struck. It is true that the economic growth initiated under President Barack Obama had continued, at about the same modest rate. Mr. Trump achieved this growth by ratcheting up America’s deficit and long-term debt to record levels, with a tax cut that showered benefits on the wealthy.

But beyond the low unemployment rate he gained and lost, history will record Mr. Trump’s presidency as a march of wanton, uninterrupted, tragic destruction. America’s standing in the world, loyalty to allies, commitment to democratic values, constitutional checks and balances, faith in reason and science, concern for Earth’s health, respect for public service, belief in civility and honest debate, beacon to refugees in need, aspirations to equality and diversity and basic decency — Mr. Trump torched them all.

Four years ago, after Mr. Trump was nominated in Cleveland, we did something in this space we had never done before: Even before the Democrats had nominated their candidate, we told you that we could never, under any circumstances, endorse Donald Trump for president. He was, we said, “ uniquely unqualified ” to be president.

“Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together,” we warned. “His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to be more fragile than we knew.”

The nation has indeed spent much of the past three years fretting over whether that experiment could survive Mr. Trump’s depredations. The resistance from some institutions, at some times, has been heartening. The depth of the president’s incompetence, which even we could not have imagined, may have saved the democracy from a more rapid descent.

But the trajectory has been alarming. The capitulation of the Republican Party has been nauseating. Misbehavior that many people vowed never to accept as normal has become routine.

A second term might injure the experiment beyond recovery.

And so, over the coming weeks, we will do something else we have never done before: We will publish a series of editorials on the damage this president has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term. And we will unabashedly urge you to do your civic duty and vote: Vote early, vote safely, but vote.

“I alone can fix it,” Mr. Trump proclaimed at his convention four years ago.

How has that turned out?

His campaign, as our columnist Michael Gerson has noted, was based on the premises that Mr. Obama and all his predecessors had made such a botch of things that nothing could get worse — and that expertise and moral leadership were not only irrelevant, they were handicaps.

Mr. Trump has decisively refuted these premises.

By most objective measures (the stock market indices being the exception), things today are worse.

But, you say, is it fair to blame him for the coronavirus?

No. Mr. Trump did not cause the pandemic; and China, as he says, mishandled it at the start.

But every other nation in the world has had to deal with the same virus, and most of them have done so far more competently, and with more evidence of learning and improvement as they go, than the United States.

More people have died of covid-19 in the United States than in any other country. Even adjusted for population, the death rate here is almost five times worse than in Germany, and almost 100 times worse than in South Korea.

These are facts. This is reality. And the excess deaths and illness are directly attributable to Mr. Trump’s failures of leadership.

He failed to prepare the nation for a pandemic, though experts for years had warned of the possibility.

When the virus emerged, he first praised China’s handling of it, then imposed travel restrictions too slapdash to offer any protection.

For months, when he could have been preparing the nation, he insisted the virus would just go away.

When reality washed that nonsense away, he allowed government experts to guide the nation for a few weeks. But as the nation began to make some headway, Mr. Trump — more concerned with the impact on his reelection prospects than with the risk to human life — urged Americans to ignore expert advice and “liberate” their states, never mind masks or social distancing.

The result is the worst of all worlds: unneeded deaths, no possibility of real opening and intensification of the markers of “ carnage ” that Mr. Trump railed against four years ago: unemployment, inequality, opioid addiction.

Perhaps most frightening: Even now there is no plan, no learning, no strategy for testing and reopening. Under his leadership, it is all too easy to imagine that our children will still be out of school a year from now, or two, or three.

A president’s first duty is to keep the nation safe. If he has failed at home, maybe Mr. Trump has a better record overseas?

He continued a successful campaign to demolish the Islamic State, the self-styled caliphate that established itself on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border after Mr. Obama’s premature disengagement. The recently announced peace deal between Israel and the tiny United Arab Emirates is a step forward. Mr. Trump has kept the nation out of major conflict.

But neither the country nor the world are safer four years on. The nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, which Mr. Trump said he could easily take care of, are less constrained than ever. Russia continues to illegally occupy parts of three sovereign nations, including Ukraine. The malign dictatorship in Venezuela, which Mr. Trump vowed to dislodge, remains firmly entrenched.

To the greatest challenge of our time, Mr. Trump has failed most destructively. That challenge is the rise of authoritarian powers, most notably China. Like dictatorships before them, they threaten the values upon which this nation was founded: individual dignity and liberty, the freedom to worship and speak and think. But unlike past dictatorships, they are bolstered by technologies that enable unprecedented surveillance and intrusion into what was once the private sphere.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt said 80 years ago, when democracy was similarly under threat, “There can be no ultimate peace between their philosophy of government and our philosophy of government.” If they should gain the upper hand around the world, “We should enter upon a new and terrible era in which the whole world, our hemisphere included, would be run by threats of brute force.”

Mr. Trump, in his fourth year, has branded China an enemy, mostly because he needs a pandemic scapegoat, but also because he hopes it will give him a campaign issue.

But for three years, he embraced and admired Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, and made clear his indifference to China’s genocide of its Muslim population, its stifling of Hong Kong, the repression of its own people. Mr. Trump’s one concern was mercantile, and even there he failed: China’s economy is no more open to U.S business than it was four years ago.

A president truly attuned to the Chinese threat would be investing in American universities and science; welcoming the smartest young people from around the world to study and work in the United States; building alliances with like-minded democracies such as South Korea, Japan, Canada and Germany. In each case, the president has done the opposite.

Most of all, he would be modeling the virtues of democracy, but again he has done the reverse, admiring and embracing the methods of strongmen such as Mr. Xi. Mr. Trump denigrates a free press, makes a mockery of free markets, elevates insult over civil exchange, shows contempt for the rule of law in civilian and military courts, devalues truth, and dismisses legitimate oversight from Congress, the courts and executive branch inspectors general.

Last fall, Mr. Trump became the third president in history to be impeached. The House of Representatives charged him with what amounts to extortion for personal political gain: Mr. Trump held up an arms sale and a White House meeting in an effort to pressure the president of Ukraine to slander former vice president Joe Biden. The House also charged him with illegally refusing to cooperate with its investigation.

In February, the Senate voted to acquit the president, with Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah the lone Republican honest enough to acknowledge that the evidence was irrefutable. A few other Republicans, perhaps embarrassed by their own moral collapse, suggested that Mr. Trump would be chastened by impeachment and mend his ways.

Instead, he has been emboldened, and his behavior in the half-year since provides an indication of the lawlessness we can expect if Mr. Trump is reelected. He has swept aside U.S. attorneys who would not bend the law to his whim; fired officials throughout the government whose only offense was to do their jobs honestly or seek to hold his administration accountable; sicced unbadged troops on peaceful protesters in D.C. and Portland, Ore., for the benefit of his reelection campaign; ignored and lied about credible reports of Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers.

He has sought to undermine confidence in democracy itself, lying about the prevalence of fraud, floating the possibility of delaying the election and even suggesting he may not accept its results.

These are high crimes and misdemeanors, as the framers of the Constitution understood the term. But this time it is up to us, the American people, to remove Mr. Trump from office.

#IFTTT #WordPress

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khalilhumam · 5 years ago

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Putin 5.0?

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/putin-5-0/

Putin 5.0?

By Angela Stent On July 1, Russia finished a weeklong period of voting in a referendum on 200 amendments to the 1993 Yeltsin constitution. President Vladimir Putin had first called for changes to the constitution in January, and, within a few months, all the amendments were ready. Official figures heralded a triumph for Putin: a 65% turnout, with 78% voting in favor of the amendments and 21% against. Of course, there were claims of ballot stuffing and vote fraud, as well as of medical personnel and others being pressured to vote. But the amendments had already been passed by the Duma (Russia’s legislature), so the plebiscite was cosmetic — intended to boost Putin’s popularity and legitimacy during the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic downturn. The amendments include a ban on same-sex marriage, in addition to stipulations that Russian laws supersede international law, that the Russian language takes precedence over others, and that officials with high national security responsibilities cannot have dual citizenship or own bank accounts and property abroad. God is explicitly mentioned. Russian citizens are prohibited from questioning the official historical narrative about the victory in World War II. The new constitution generally embodies conservative social values and a new emphasis on Russian nationalism. But the most important amendment is the one that resets Putin’s electoral clock. Instead of retiring in 2024 at the end of his fourth term in office, he can now stay in power for another two terms — until 2036. At that point, aged 83, he will have been in power a decade longer than Josef Stalin. The question of what comes after Putin has been answered, at least for now. It is Putin. But what would a Putin 5.0 or 6.0 term look like? So far, the new constitution promises more of the same, with an increasingly aging leadership. Indeed, some are already likening it to the late Brezhnev era — domestic stagnation coupled with foreign policy activism.

Modern Russia is still taking shape”

The day after the referendum, Putin thanked the country, making it clear that he would be the guarantor of stability to protect his people during unsettled times:

Here we have the improvement of the political system as well as social guarantees, strengthening of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and, finally, our spiritual, historical and moral values that link our generations. However, we must not forget one more thing: from a historical perspective, it has been only a short time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and, of course, modern Russia is still taking shape. This is true for all aspects of our life: the political system, the economy, and others. We are still very vulnerable in many ways; a lot, as they say, was done in a hurry. We need internal stability and time to strengthen the country and all its institutions. So thanks again to those who supported the amendments.

Putin moved to extend his power indefinitely because he wanted to quash the succession maneuvering that had been underway since he was re-elected in 2018. Now, the elite must accept that he will remain in the Kremlin. For those who fear for their political and economic future once he is gone, this is a welcome move. For others, as public opinion data shows, the prospect of decades with little change and limited opportunities for upward mobility is disheartening. Only a quarter of the population says that it trusts Putin. With the COVID-19 pandemic still in full swing, oil prices too low, and GDP predicted to fall by as much at 10% this year, Putin faces serious domestic challenges.

Economic reforms unlikely

Foremost is the economy. After his re-election in 2018, Putin announced the National Projects, an ambitious $400 billion spending plan. The aim is to boost living standards by 2024 and focus on 13 key policy areas, such as health care, education, technology, and infrastructure. The economic dislocation caused by COVID-19 has forced the Kremlin to scale back these projects, but Putin is determined to show that Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin can deliver. The collapse in oil demand and prices, exacerbated by the ill-advised oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia in March, has put further strains on economy heavily dependent on hydrocarbon revenues to sustain its budget. Demographic decline — exacerbated by a steady brain drain — continues. Putin has been reluctant to undertake significant economic reforms which threaten vested interests or arouse popular discontent. Is he any more likely in the next decade to pursue needed reforms that diversify the economy away from dependence on oil and gas and create a more modern state? Past performance would suggest that he is not.

Foreign policy adventurism

Putin’s newly-endorsed political longevity could also affect Russia’s foreign policy. So far, the pandemic appears not to have impacted Russia’s drive to reassert itself as a major power with global interests and entitlement. Relations with the West remain brittle; there has been no progress on ending the war in Ukraine; Russia continues to back Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war; and the pandemic has driven Russia and China closer together. Putin has long been adept at seizing opportunities presented to him by a disunited and distracted West, and he has already been in power longer than most major international leaders. Many of Russia’s assertive international moves are undertaken on the cheap: the wars in Ukraine and Syria, and the involvement in Venezuela and Libya, for instance. The growing use of mercenary forces run by individuals close to the Kremlin means that Moscow can pursue its agenda — and often thwart U.S. or European interests — without draining its state coffers and arousing public opposition to sending Russia soldiers in harm’s way. Putin may well pursue a more activist foreign policy going forward, especially if the economic situation at home further deteriorates. The “Crimea effect” — appealing to patriotism and blaming the West for Russia’s economic ills — has long worn off, but the Kremlin could undertake new ventures to distract public attention from economic hardship. There could be more pressure on neighbors who are seen to challenge Russia, such as Belarus. There could be more concerted efforts to take advantage of the deep divisions in Europe over Russia policy and create a more united group of countries — led by France — that are seeking a new reset with Russia. Similarly, if U.S-European relations continue to deteriorate — or even if they begin to improve if presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins the November election — the Kremlin could more actively seek to benefit from those fissures. Russia could also deploy its wide array of cyber and social media capabilities to intensify its information wars with the West. Russia’s ability to increase its international influence will also depend on what other countries do. With the United States withdrawing from global involvement — most recently from the World Health Organization — Putin can increasingly position Russia as a multilateral leader and responsible global stakeholder, and reinforce Russia’s reputation as a pragmatic, status-quo power with which most of the non-Western world believes it can do business. Putin 5.0 could, therefore, ensure that Russia — despite its limited economic capabilities (a per capita GDP the size of Italy’s) and a military much smaller than that of the United States — becomes an even more influential international player.

Surprises are still possible

But will there be a Putin 5.0? Putin has not yet committed to running for another term in 2024. The immediate goal of the constitutional referendum was to end internecine power struggles focused on succession, and, for now, these have subsided. This has strengthened Putin’s hand. But public opinion polls show that the Russian public wants change. Putin may not be a lame duck, but it is not clear that Russians would support another 16 years of his rule. As has been the case throughout Russian history, things appear to be stable until suddenly they are not. Putin likes to surprise, as was clear from his hastily-arranged constitutional referendum. But he himself could face unanticipated challenges to his plan to stay in power indefinitely.

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marielbalermo · 5 years ago

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Graduation Testimony: Acads or Orgs? Why Not Both!

Student – leader \ˈstü-dənt ˈlē-dər\ noun whether in a formal position or not, nurtures abilities in themselves and others in order to make an ethical and socially just impact on campus or in the larger community.

This is my testimony about how God did his holy work and blessed my life – a journey towards victory paved with failures.

I am one of those students who believe that,

“Learning is not acquired from the confines of the corners of a classroom alone. It can be found everywhere.”

Stepping out of those boundaries means stepping out from your comfort zone. Taking that first crucial step in my journey of a thousand miles was difficult because I was initially held back by my own apprehensions, insecurities, and fear of rejection. It was daunting to take the mantle of a leader after enduring so many heartbreaks caused by past disappointments and mistakes. It was even harder to stand up, make the right choices, and do whatever it takes to reach journey’s end because such things were holding you back – that was until God called and reminded me to serve with joy and humility and not to be enthralled by fame and power. I obeyed Him with the thought, “Lord, let me serve You through these people.”

I became an active member of an organization within the Department of Psychology wherein I participated in several of their activities. Eventually, I was given a chance to become a member of the committee and take part in the organization of events during the annual Psych Season. Afterwards, I was duly elected as an officer within the organization and became part of the Executive Committee (ExeComm) during my junior year in the university. I consider this year as my “golden year” despite the 3 to 4 hours of sleep I was lucky enough to have, I also lost weight, gained another layer of eyebags, encountered some fun sabaw moments, sneaked sleep during some of my classes and examinations (most memorable was during our final examination in Clinical Psych), skipped meals to save some money for photocopies and other supplies, went home at around 1 o’clock in the morning despite of my 7:30 AM class the next day, crammed my assignments in jeepneys and inside the train, got low scores in a few tests, collapsed and got hospitalized for days within two consecutive years, met different people through fund-raising projects, talked to professionals from various fields, reached out and provided aid to less-unfortunate people during the season of giving, and handled major events. During these times I became adept at troubleshooting and budgeting and I’ve learned to extend myself in service so that I can provide a holistic kind of leadership.

Experiences and values, likewise, are not exclusively found in books. Fortitude, maturity, patience, courage, trust, commitment, hopefulness, excellence, and faith are the values imparted to me by this organization. I’m not saying that being a part of an organization is the only way to develop such values, rather it takes you a step – a big step – further in improving your character. Being a student-leader requires both compassion and passion – compassion to serve people and the passion to lead them. Always choose to work while still having fun, seek growth and excellence, and have the determination to rise again after every downfall. Above all, put your trust and confidence in the Lord. Faith in God leads to many victories, for instance, when He rewarded our efforts during the First Gawad Pandayan Award, Top 3 Best Organization in the University, Best Department in our College and now, I am about to graduate with flying colors. Indeed, all things work together for good to those who love Him. (Romans 8:28)

This will never be possible without the help of these people. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the following people.

To the PUP Psychology Students Association for being my home for years and giving me a huge family. For sheltering me with love and hope. For trusting my potentials and abilities. For bringing out the best in me and for letting me experience the hardships that come with success. You will forever be in my heart.

To the PUPPSA ExeComm (2016-2017) and co-volunteers, for the amazing rollercoaster ride of a term with you. To our friendships, midnight talks, BPI/BDO sessions, long meetings, sabaw moments, and to all the stories behind our achievements. I share this victory with you. Cheers to our success!

To BiKada and PorTu (Batch 2018), for being my favorite humans. For sharing all the comforts and love, friendship and kindness, victories and failures. I love you all. I will always appreciate your existence, guys! Finally, we made it!

To my family and relatives, for your support and love in everything I do. Your encouragements, faith in me and provisions helped me to have the confidence and guts to reach my dreams. I am grateful to have every one of you.

To my parents, for their unconditional love, emotional, moral, and financial support. For extending your arms to embrace my weaknesses and failures. For wiping out the tears and for encouraging me every time I lose hope. For tapping my back and reminding me of my worth and strengths. Thank you for being more than my parents. I love you so much! You guys were the best thing that ever had happened to me. My success is your success too!

And lastly, to the Almighty Father, thank you for everything that you’ve done in my life. Without You, I am nothing. Without Your grace, I’m not saved. I owe every victory I have had and I’ll ever have to You, my Lord. I glorify You for all the blessings You’ve showered upon me – my life, my family, the gift of friendships, support, and alike. For being with me in every season of my life, for holding me during my darkest hours, and for guiding me through this path. Thank you for helping me to rise and rise again with humility after every setback. For fighting with me against every battle and through the pain, trauma, and depression. For continuing to love me even if I thought I’ve failed You. I love you, Jesus!

All Glory belongs to You, God! Acads or Org? Why not BOTH.

Polytechnic University of the Philippines Bachelor of Science in Psychology PUPPSA, Vice President for Internal Affairs (2016 – 2017) Cum Laude

I posted this two years ago in my Facebook account. Sharing this here with the hopes to inspire someone that it was a great experience to push your self beyond your limits.

#graduation

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bountyofbeads · 6 years ago

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BREAKING: Deputy AG Rosenstein thought the Trump’s decision to fire James Comey over the Trump-Russia probe obstructed justice, he was afraid he’d be caught walking out of the Oval Office the key piece of evidence, which he later gave to Andrew McCabe.

#ReadTheMuellerReport #impeachmenthearingsnow

Timeline of Deceit: From Trump’s Draft to Rosenstein’s Cover Story

Murray Waas | Published June 26, 2019 | New York Books | Posted June 26, 2019

In a confidential draft of a letter that President Trump wrote, firing James Comey as FBI director, the president repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s covert interference in the 2016 presidential election. That the FBI’s inquiry was the president’s main complaint in the original four-page May 2017 draft provides new and previously unreported evidence that Trump’s primary motivation in firing Comey may have been to impede the Russia investigation, a potential obstruction of justice. Although the existence of the draft was first disclosed by The New York Times in the fall of 2017, and it was discussed at some length in the Mueller Report, the text of the letter itself has remained secret; also previously undisclosed is the fact that President Trump so directly linked the firing of Comey to the FBI’s Russia investigation.

In the letter, President Trump railed against the Russia investigation as “fabricated and politically motivated.” He complained about then Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s involvement in the investigation, claiming bias since McCabe’s wife had run for state office as a Democrat. The letter also expressed frustration that Comey had refused to issue a public statement saying the president was not under investigation. In part because of these things, the draft letter said, morale was at an all-time low at the FBI.

Finally, as I have previously reported, Trump claimed that shortly after he became president, he had told Comey that he was only allowing him to stay on in his job as FBI director on a probationary or trial basis; he had then decided to fire Comey when he failed to improve his performance—a claim that Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded was likely concocted by Trump. By the time a final version of the letter was made public, the president’s advisers had intervened and the letter was cut from four pages to only five sentences, with all of the president’s aforementioned references to the Russia investigation removed.

These new disclosures of what Trump said in the draft termination letter highlight the central parts played in the affair by then Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Even though Trump had provided them copies of the draft letter, the nation’s two top federal law enforcement officials agreed to assist the president in his effort to fire Comey. Notably, Rosenstein has said he had no reason to believe that Trump fired Comey to undercut the FBI’s Russia investigation until after Comey’s firing. The draft letter appears to directly contradict that claim.

Contemporaneous notes made by then White House Counsel Don McGahn and then Deputy White House Counsel Uttam Dhillon indicate that both men had concerns at the time that the president’s firing of his FBI director could be considered an obstruction of justice. According to the Mueller Report: “McGahn and Dhillon said the fact that neither Sessions nor Rosenstein objected to replacing Comey gave them peace of mind that the President’s decision to fire Comey was not an attempt to obstruct justice.”

In a speech he gave on May 16 this year, only days after his resignation from the Justice Department, Rosenstein said: “Nobody said that the removal was intended to influence the course of my Russia investigation. The notion that replacing the FBI Director with a new FBI Director would influence the Russia investigation — or any other investigation — never crossed my mind.”

But the very first sentence of the draft letter that Rosenstein read says otherwise:

While I greatly appreciate your informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation concerning the fabricated and politically-motivatedallegations of a Trump-Russia relationship with respect to the 2016 Presidential Election, please be informed that I, along with members of both political parties and, most importantly, the American Public, have lost faith in you as the Director of the FBI and you are hereby terminated. [emphasis added]

That one excerpt was cited in the Mueller Report (Vol. II, p.65), but I was able to review the draft termination letter in its entirety, as well as other still confidential White House records related to the president’s efforts to thwart various investigations into Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election. Some of those records aided my reporting for a series of articles I wrote for NYR Daily from July 2018 examining whether President Trump obstructed justice. The records were provided by a former Trump administration official under strict conditions imposed at the time: in some instances I could use information from them without acknowledging having read them, while in other instances I could only paraphrase what they said; these restrictions have eased over time.

*****

Trump made the decision to fire Comey largely on his own on May 5, 2017, according to the Mueller Report (Vol. II, p.64). The president was spending the weekend at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort. The weather was dreary and it was raining. Over dinner with his son-in-law Jared Kushner, other family members, and his senior adviser Stephen Miller, Trump said he wanted to fire the FBI director. Miller took notes as Trump dictated ideas about what a termination letter might say. Miller’s notes record that Trump dictated a version of the draft letter’s first sentence:

While I greatly appreciate you informing me that I am not under investigation concerning what I have often stated is a fabricated story on a Trump–Russia relationship pertaining to the 2016 presidential election, please be informed that I, and I believe the American public—including Ds and Rs—have lost faith in you as Director of the FBI.

The draft letter that Trump shared, a few days later, with Sessions and Rosenstein and most of the president’s most senior staff began with a sentence virtually identical to this, which is significant because it shows that Trump himself—and not an aide—wanted to make clear that Comey’s firing was related to the FBI’s Russia investigation, which Trump considered illegitimate.

On the morning of May 8, the president convened a meeting in the Oval Office to inform his top advisers that he was going to fire Comey. Aides came and went during the meeting, but all present at one time or another were: Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Vice-President Mike Pence, Steve Bannon, McGahn, Dhillon, Kushner, and Miller. Trump made clear that his decision was final, three of the president’s top aides told the special counsel. McGahn, in an effort to slow down the process in hopes of changing Trump’s mind, reminded the president that he already had a scheduled meeting later that day with Sessions and Rosenstein—and suggested that the president’s team get the input of the two top Justice officials.

At noon, Sessions and Rosenstein met with McGahn and Dhillon. They hoped the attorney general and deputy attorney general would be allies in a last-ditch effort to stop Comey’s firing: “Everyone except Jared Kushner thought that it wasn’t a good idea,” said one person familiar with the matter. McGahn and Dhillon were thus stunned to find Sessions and Rosenstein enthusiastic about firing Comey.

At five that afternoon, the president met with Sessions, Rosenstein, McGahn, Dhillon, and other members of the president’s senior staff. Trump distributed his draft termination letter to everyone present, including Sessions and Rosenstein. At some point, it was suggested that Sessions and Rosenstein should write their own recommendations that Comey be fired. Both men readily agreed to do so, having read the draft letter and knowing full well that the president wanted to fire Comey primarily because of the Russia investigation (the very first sentence, after all, cited the “fabricated and politically motivated” investigation as the chief reason for firing Comey).

In another previously unreported portion of the letter, the president also bitterly complained about the continual involvement by then FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe in overseeing the investigation—and criticized Comey for not removing him. The president protested that McCabe was biased against him and pointed out that McCabe’s wife, Jill, had run as a candidate for the Virginia State Senate as a Democrat. At a series of rallies in the fall of 2017, Trump repeatedly attacked McCabe, claiming without evidence that the fix was in because of McCabe’s supervision of the case. In effect, Trump was saying in the draft letter that he wanted to fire Comey for not firing McCabe. If Trump’s intent in the removal of either was to affect the outcome of the investigation, one or both cases might constitute an obstruction of justice. For reasons that are unclear, the Mueller Report makes no mention of Trump’s complaining about McCabe in the draft letter.

In another portion of the draft, President Trump expressed his frustration that Comey had refused to issue any public statement confirming what Trump said the FBI director had told him privately: that he wasn’t personally under investigation. Worse, from the president’s point of view, at a May 3, 2017, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Comey had refused to rule out anyone in the Trump campaign as potentially a target of the criminal investigation, including the president. This was the exact opposite of what Trump had wanted—and expected—Comey to say. Six days later, Trump fired Comey.

In fact, these comments of Comey’s that so enraged the president had been pre-authorized by Rosenstein and other Justice Department officials. While meeting with the president in the Oval Office, together with Sessions and the others on May 6, Rosenstein could have told the president that he, too, was responsible for what Comey had told senators three days earlier. But Rosenstein kept silent.

Six weeks earlier, on March 20, 2017, a second senior Justice Department official, Dana Boente, who was at the time acting attorney general, helped formulate the almost identical congressional testimony for Comey that the FBI director gave to the House Intelligence Committee. As the Mueller Report found (Vol. II, p.52), Boente directed Comey on that occasion, too, not to say whether or not the president was under investigation. This decision, which Comey agreed with, was made by Boente and Rosenstein, according to three former and current federal law enforcement sources. After the president initially called Comey to complain, Comey told Trump that the White House Counsel should talk to Boente instead of him. This was in part because post-Watergate executive branch rules created to assure the apolitical nature of the FBI dictated that a president should only communicate with the FBI about a criminal case through the Department of Justice and, in part, because Boente was in charge of what Comey could tell Congress anyway.

According to the Mueller Report, an increasingly frustrated president directed McGahn to talk to Boente about having either the Justice Department or the FBI make a public statement that Trump was not under investigation. But Boente demurred, saying that he “did not want to order Comey to do it because that action could prompt the appointment of a Special Counsel” (Vol. II, p.59). In fact, it was unlikely that a special counsel would have been appointed for such a reason; the Justice Department could not ask for the appointment of a special counsel for a decision the Department itself had made. Moreover, an FBI director doesn’t make such a decision anyway—that decision is solely made by the Justice Department. But by saying this, Boente redirected the president’s rage away from himself and back to Comey.

Then, for good measure, according to the Mueller Report (Vol. II, p.55), Boente, who is now the FBI’s general counsel, suggested that Comey be fired: “McGahn recalled Boente telling him in calls that day that he did not think it was sustainable for Comey to stay on as FBI director for the next four years, which McGahn said he conveyed to the President.” Boente told the special counsel that he could not recall saying this to McGahn, but did not deny the comments either.

Citing these various matters, the president’s draft termination letter claimed that morale in the FBI was at an all-time low. On the afternoon of May 10, Sarah Sanders, then deputy press secretary, defended the president’s firing of Comey, asserting, “most importantly, the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director.” When challenged by a reporter about how she knew this to be true, Sanders replied: “Look, we’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that say very different things.” During a briefing for reporters, the following day, on May 11, 2017, Sanders repeated the claim. Michael Shear of The Times questioned whether she had really spoken to “countless” FBI employees: “I mean, really? So are we talking…” Sanders responded: “Between like email, text messages—absolutely.” “Like fifty?” “Yes.” “Sixty, seventy?” “Between, like, email, text messages, absolutely. Yes, We’re not going to get into a numbers game. I mean, I have heard from a large number of individuals that work at the FBI that said that they’re very happy with the president’s decision.”

As has been established, Sanders was lying. The Mueller Report says of this episode (Vol. II, p.72): “Sanders told this Office that her reference to hearing from ‘countless members of the FBI’ was a ‘slip of the tongue.’” Her comments, the report continues, were “made ‘in the heat of the moment’ that was not founded on anything.” The Mueller Report might be mistaken on this point: the false claim that Comey was immensely unpopular among the FBI’s rank and file originated in the president’s draft termination letter, which the president had shared with most of his senior staff.

****

Rosenstein agreed, just after reading the draft letter, to write his memorandum for the president providing a different and specious rationale for Comey’s termination—severely criticizing the FBI director’s handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. At the time he did so, Rosenstein fully understood that the president’s primary reason for firing Comey was related to the Russia investigation. He also knew from the draft that the president wanted McCabe removed as well. Further, Rosenstein knew that the president wanted to fire Comey for refusing to say Trump wasn’t under investigation even though this was what Rosenstein himself and Boente had instructed Comey to do. Rosenstein also knew that the notion that Comey was only serving as FBI director on a probationary or trial period was an absurd falsehood.

Apparently none of these things caused Rosenstein, a near-thirty-year veteran of the Justice Department, serious concern. His main preoccupation, Rosenstein said in his May 13, 2019, speech, was the near-impossible deadline that the president had set for him to complete his memo. President Trump “told me to deliver a memorandum to the Attorney General… the following morning… I had only a few hours to write my memo.” Rosenstein wrote in the memo he delivered to Trump the morning after the Oval Office meeting that Comey’s actions in the Clinton case made it “unlikely” that the FBI would be able to “regain public and congressional trust” until Comey was removed as FBI director. The memo did not mention the FBI’s Russia investigation at all. For his part, Sessions wrote a letter accompanying Rosenstein’s memo to be sent to the White House: “Based on my evaluation, and for reasons expressed by the Deputy Attorney General,” Session wrote, “… I must recommend that you remove James B. Comey” as FBI director.

Many of the president’s staff were elated with this development. They could now say Comey’s firing was made on the deputy attorney general’s and attorney general’s recommendations—and had nothing to do with Russia. In the White House Counsel’s office, there was simply relief: Annie Donaldson, then chief of staff to McGahn, wrote in her contemporaneous notes, apparently based on what McGahn had told her (and recorded in the Mueller Report, Vol. II, p.68), that it would be better for the White House to offer “no other rationales” for Comey’s firing besides Rosenstein’s memorandum. As for the president’s draft letter firing Comey, the White House Counsel’s office hoped that it would “not [see the] light of day,” wrote Donaldson.

President Trump himself personally devised talking points for the press, falsely asserting that Rosenstein’s recommendation was the main reason that he, Trump, had fired Comey. The president’s men then faithfully adhered to this narrative. On the evening of Comey’s firing, then White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, when asked who had made the decision to fire Comey, answered: “No one from the White House. That was a DOJ decision.” The following morning, reporters besieged Vice President Pence during a visit to Capitol Hill. Asked if Comey’s firing was related to the Russian probe, Pence said: “Let me be clear with you, that was not what this is about… [T]he President’s decision to accept the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general to remove the head of the FBI was based solely and exclusively on his commitment to… ensuring that the FBI has the trust and confidence of the people of this nation.”

Sanders took things even further, telling reporters that Rosenstein had “on his own” decided to review Comey’s performance as FBI director, and then, again, entirely “on his own” expressed his reservations that Comey remain in his job. Watching all of this unfold on the evening of the firing, Rosenstein became distraught. He feared for the reputation he had spent a lifetime building, he later told colleagues. Rosenstein called McGahn and asked the White House to stop spreading the president’s version of Comey’s firing; he suggested to McGahn that he would have to set the record straight himself if the White House did not. Trump called Rosenstein later that same night to pressure the deputy attorney general to hold a news conference to say firing Comey was his idea. Rosenstein refused.

The following day, the president reversed course. In a televised interview with NBC news anchor Lester Holt, Trump said: “[Rosenstein] made a recommendation. But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.” Trump added: “And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself… I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.” The Mueller Report concluded that the president told the truth only because he had little choice (Vol. II, p.77): “Although the President ultimately acknowledged that he was going to fire Comey regardless of the Department of Justice’s recommendations, he did so only after DOJ officials made clear to him that they would resist the White House’s suggestion that they had prompted the process that led to Comey’s termination.”

In the days after Comey’s firing, Rosenstein appeared confused, at times angry, and even erratic, according to at least three people who were around him. In a previously unreported episode, Rosenstein told one long-time Justice official with whom he worked closely that he wondered after he read the draft letter whether it could be crucial evidence in a potential obstruction of justice investigation against the president. Rosenstein told this same official that he was nervous as he considered walking out of the White House with the letter in case he was detected spiriting it away. He also later pondered whether, if he went along with the president’s cover story that Comey was fired on his and Sessions’s recommendation, he himself might have unwittingly acted as an accessory to a presidential obstruction of justice.

The previously undisclosed account that Rosenstein wanted to take the letter from the White House because he was concerned that it was potentially incriminating evidence sharply diverges from his other versions of events surrounding Comey’s firing. Above all, these new developments raise the question of why such an experienced prosecutor went along with enabling Trump to fire the FBI director under pretexts he knew to be false.

Intent is one of the foundational building blocks of any obstruction of justice case a prosecutor considers bringing. In analyzing virtually the very same information that Rosenstein had at the time, the special counsel concluded there was strong evidence that the president had the intent of obstructing justice by firing Comey. In his report, Mueller said:

The President and White House aides initially advanced a pretextual reason to the press and the public for Comey’s termination. In the immediate aftermath of the firing, the President dictated a press statement suggesting that he had acted based on the DOJ recommendations, and White House press officials repeated that story… The initial reliance on a pretextual justification could support an inference that the President had concerns about providing the real reason for the firing. [Vol. II, p.77]

In the days after Comey’s firing, Rosenstein met with McCabe and other DOJ and FBI officials. It was then that Rosenstein volunteered to wear a wire while meeting with the president, and discussed the idea of invoking the twenty-fifth amendment to have the president removed from office. Rosenstein has since explained that if he said any such thing, it was merely sarcasm. What is not in dispute is that at some point Rosenstein gave McCabe a copy of the president’s draft letter firing Comey. The deputy FBI director put the document in his safe, where it remained until he turned it over to the special counsel.

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reblogs-and-writings · 7 years ago

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Do You Guys Ever Wonder How Many Strikes It Takes Until You’re a Bad Person?

Do you guys ever wonder how many strikes it takes until you're a bad person? Like, I know that everyone has faults, and to expect perfection from yourself or anyone else is ludicrous. But I wonder how many faults you can have before you're just a faulty human being. Like, I've often struggled a lot with jealousy and envy. When a friend tells me something good has happened to them, I'm more inclined to be jealous the good thing didn't happen to me, than to be happy it happened to them. Even when they complain about their own issues I find myself bubbling with that hot, bitter feeling. Like when my friends complain about boy troubles, and I sit alone and wondering why no boy seems to bother with me. And I wonder if that makes me a bad person. I'm also very lazy. I have all these lofty ambitions, but I never seem to be getting any closer to accomplishing them. I rarely even take steps to find out the pathways that would lead me to getting closer, because I think I have this fear of failure that paralyzes me from even trying. If I don't try to accomplish my goals, then at least I can think back and believe I had a chance. But if I give it my all and I still don't succeed, then I'm just a failure. So I don't even try, and that's just silly and defeatist, but I keep doing it. And I feel like I pity myself way too much for it to be an acceptable level. So what if I don't accomplish my dreams? I wouldn't be the first person in the whole world to not get what they want. If so many other people have suffered the same fate, does it even count as suffering anymore or just as a fact of life? And I often bemoan the fact that I'm alone and no boy likes me, and when I like a boy he doesn't like me back, but what can I expect? I never make any advances at men, because I'm too shy. Once again I don't try, because I'm afraid I'll fail, and when I'm at fault I can't feel bad about my failures, since it all comes down to me being responsible. Not to mention I never leave my house. I go to school and work and church, and that's really it. If I wanted to meet more people I should just join an after school activity, right? I mean, there's like 20,000 people on campus, and I know around 50. And sometimes I think my standards may be too high. I'm sure I'm like most every girl. I want a Prince, but I'm not a Princess. Relationships have to be equal right? If I want a guy with a certain list of criteria, then I have to meet those criteria too. It'd only be fair if that were the case. And when I think about the person I want, I don't think I'm worthy of them. And then I worry if my ideals for men are just unrealistic, and I'll never find a guy who meets that criteria. Even if I did, like I've stated, I wouldn't be equal to them, and I don't think it would be fair to ask a Prince to downgrade and date beneath his status, ya know? Because as much as people may hate to admit it, there is a ranking to social interactions. 10s dates and befriend 10s. Same with 9s, 8s, 7s, 6s, 5s, 4s, 3s, 2s, and 1s. That's just how life works. There are exceptions of course, but to hope to the exception to the rule may be too much of a pipe dream. I wonder if acknowledging my faults makes me better or worse than someone who's unaware of them. I know I could be more confident. I know I could lose a few pounds. I know I could put more effort into my appearance and try harder at my dreams and be a better person all around, but I never seem to be able to improve my faults. I know I'm bad, but I don't know how to become better. And there are good people and bad people. I don't buy into the whole morally grey stuff. Of course there is good and bad in everyone, but just because you're nice to your cousin doesn't mean you're not a douche bag to everyone. That's why I have some issues with positivitiy posts. On one hand, it's nice to be told you're special and great and better than everyone else once in a while. On the other hand, sometimes that's just not true. Sometimes you and me and everyone is a terrible person and our problems are a direct result of the choices we've made. Because no matter what sob story I have, no matter what bad mood I'm in, ultimately the choice to do bad or not do good is MY choice. Just as it is YOUR choice, and EVERYONE'S choice, because no one is in control of our actions, but us. If I'm bad, then I'm bad because I chose to be. ...I fear bringing up these issues to the people around me, because I don't want to bother them with my issues. A lot of my issues stem from low self-esteem and self-pity, and by god those are the most annoying problems to talk about with someone. Because it always seems like I'm just fishing for attention and someone to tell me I'm wonderful, because quite honestly? I am. I just want someone to tell me I'm a good person and I'm pretty and smart and talented and everything will be okay. And I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be the "Pity Party" Person. I've already built up a reputation as the Happy Girl TM. I'm joyful and bubbly and energetic. I listen to the problems of others, and I'm nice. Everyone always tells me I'm nice. Just this year I've heard 5 people tell me I'm the nicest person they've ever met. And that makes me happy. Because although I certainly do play up aspects of my personality while around others, I am Happy Girl TM. Because often I am happy. I'm happy, because I have such wonderful friends. Friends who would cross states to visit me when I'm down. Friends who give me rides to places without asking for gas money. Friends who bring me tea and soup when I'm sick. Friends who write me letters, and no doubt friends who would be willing to listen to my problems if I ever told them. I'm happy, because I have family. Even if it's just recently grown smaller than it was before, I have such wonderful people I share blood with. People I'm proud to claim as my family. They're a whole cast of characters that inspire and infuriate me, and I love them. And they love me so much. If I have nothing else in this world, I know that I have them. I'm happy, because I'm not all bad. I am nice. I don't want to toot my own horn about that, but I think I'm pretty good at being nice. It's the one thing I know I'm good at. And when I see people laugh at my joke or smile when I give them a Happy Card or even just grin at a random compliment, I get so happy, because I got to cause someone else's joy. And I'm very proud that I can do that as often as I do. And I've at least worked on one fault pretty successfully. I've gotten much more patient with people, and that is one area that I have seen significant progress in. Even if it took forever, I did it! And sometimes I even have a good creative idea or a burst of energy and time management that lets me accomplish things. And when I actually work at things for long enough, I can see progression. However slow, however minute, I get better at the things I work at. I do. I'm happy, because I have God. Sometimes I don't understand why he does things, and sometimes I struggle with my faith. But at the end of the day, I know he's with me. I know he's right beside me as I type out my little pity party, and he's gotten me through the toughest times of my life and no dout will continue to support me. I'm sure you guys know the whole "One Set of Footprints" story, and although it may seem like a cliche to say to people when they're having a rough time, it often helps me put things in perspective. It makes me feel better, and it gives me hope. Without hope, I'd have blown my brains out long ago. So I guess it's not all bad. And no doubt in a day or two, I'll be right back to normal. Worrying about regular things like that test I procrastinated studying for or a bad hair day. I'll go back to being Happy TM. I'm not even sure why I've taken so long to type this out. Maybe I just needed to vent. Maybe I really am just looking for attention. But I know that soon it'll be okay. Things will be normal again...And yeah, I also know that I'll have another episode like this, where I sit and reflect on my various faults and the deep loneliness that seems to creep up periodically, but I know that'll episode will end too, just like all the others that have come before it. It's not how many times you fall, it's how many times you get back up again, right? And I always get up. Yeah. I always do. Maybe I'm not a good person, but I'm an okay person. I'm working on it.

#late night #late night blogging #late night blog post #emotions #sad #lonely #hopeful #?#it'll be okay

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personalcoachingcenter · 6 years ago

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Personal Development Tips For A Fulfilling Life

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/personal-development-tips-for-a-fulfilling-life/

Personal Development Tips For A Fulfilling Life

The task of personal development may be challenging to start. This is because your psyche has many facets; therefore, you need to decide where you are going to begin. This article was designed to point you in the direction of simple actions that enhance your personal development goals. You will find numerous tips to help you reach your personal development goals.

Stress is the foe of happiness. You are harming yourself mentally and physically when there is too much stress in your life. To start thinking clearly and reaching for calm, purposeful goals, destroy your mind’s stress. Set aside a period of time each day when you can be alone, clear your thoughts, and completely relax. Taking some time to renew will help you to stay calm, and will improve your self-confidence.

Personal Development

Unfortunately, stress is quite a killjoy to a person’s state of happiness and joy. Stress in the mind hurts us both mentally and physically across our body. If we desire to work toward our goals calmly and methodically with a clear head, we have to eliminate the stress inside our heads. Set aside time daily to relax and be by yourself. This mental break each day will improve your peace and clarity of mind, and help improve your self-image.

Be sure to read positive books on the subject of personal development. Make sure you choose books that are in line with your goals for personal development. It is always best to check the reviews for a book. Personal development books can be very poorly written.

Always be ready to capture your good ideas when they occur, wherever you may be. Keep a small notepad and pen with you at all times. Whenever an idea strikes, write it down, and when your creative juices start flowing later, you can act on it.

Your core principles are important, and your actions should reflect them. Every person has beliefs that serve their core sense of self. If you stay on top of your morals you will have a boost in self esteem and you will have a good base to defend them. This practice also promotes consistency, which is a great trait to have.

The first step towards personal development is learning how to be a leader. Leadership has many definitions, but many people think of it as “influence.” Identify the leadership qualities you possess. Have certain people and events made more significant impacts on your life? How have these events shaped your life? What are the things about you that make you a great fit for a team? By examining these questions, you will be aware of how you can fit into a team setting.

One aspect of personal development is becoming a leader. Most people would define leadership to mean someone who has influence over others. Analyze your leadership progress. What events have you been most impacted by in your life? In what ways have you changed due to these events? What is your best attribute that makes you a team player? It is through these questions that you can best determine your role in a team environment.

You must know your own values to come up with a personal development plan. It wouldn’t make sense to develop a trait that was contrary to who you are. When your efforts are focused on development that is aligned with your core values, your time and effort will be rewarded. By spending your time in these specific areas, you can make the changes in the areas that matter and have these changes stick with you.

Tell other people positive things. Doing the opposite and taking the initiative to be kind to others helps you to be kind to yourself too.

In order to properly advance in matters of personal development, it is very important that you declare lowliness. When you accept that you are but a tiny speck in the scope of our universe, you can begin to realize that there is much to learn if you hope to advance. You can then focus your attention on positive growth and development.

You can’t tend to others needs until your own needs are met. It doesn’t matter if you are succeeding or failing in your path. You should always find time to rest your body so that you can renew yourself.

Speaking to a therapist or religious official can really help you out. These professionals are trained and experienced in helping you understand and manage the issues you have. They are there to help you analyze and sort through issues and feelings that occur on your personal journey to enlightenment. Talking to someone who knows how to listen and help will make you happier, and allow you to reach your goals.

Complex Carbohydrates

In order to get as much as you can out of your efforts with personal development, you need to take care of your body physically. Always keep a healthy routine that includes exercise, diet, and sleep in order to be successful. It may seem simple, but sometimes the simplest things in life are actually the most difficult.

When you are handling depression stay focused on the things you eat and eat more complex carbohydrates. If you don’t get enough complex carbs, you will be low on serotonin. Increase your consumption of fresh fruits, raw vegetables, nuts, brown rice, assorted beans and whole grains to have a diet that is enriched in complex carbohydrates.

Determine which aspects of your life you truly value, and concentrate solely on those. You should be happier and more peaceful if you know what matters to you, and concentrate on these things.

One great personal development goal you can set is to practice being more selfless. It might be hard at first, but do your best to make sacrifices and help others. When you can decide to make a sacrifice that will help another person, and it doesn’t end up jeopardizing your well being, then you will become the person you’ve been searching for.

Create an emergency fund. Many people think that a credit card counts as an emergency fund. Even if you can only save $10 per week, do so. It will come in really handy when something goes wrong. This fund will help you grow in the short and long term, our debt will go down and not grow.

Making improvements in your health will put you on the fast track of personal development. Everyone feels better when they in are healthy. Healthy bodies and minds let you think clearly and avoid trips to the doctor. Make a concerted effort to adopt healthy practices.

Taking occasional risks, on a small level, can help you lead a happier life! A lot of people find themselves stuck in their comfort zone, because they do not dare take risks and fear rejection. Being capable of undertaking risks may ultimately be a contributing factor in one’s overall happiness.

Personal Development

People should not be afraid to investigate professional therapy to deal with serious problems. Resources designed for self-help may be helpful up to a point, but they do not provide the expertise or specialized attention that a patient can get from a therapist. Sometimes, success happens by simply talking problems through. Books don’t provide the give and take, back-and-forth communication, that a personal meeting with the therapist can.

As you can see, personal development is simpler than it looks. By breaking your personal development process into small, manageable goals, you’ll find yourself closer to your goals by the end of every day. You’ll be able to practice what you’re seeking to adopt as habit, and you’ll increase your own morale to continue. These tips are only a springboard, it’s up to you to build a better life.

#complex carbohydrates #personal development goals #Personal Coaching

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olusegundare · 6 years ago

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Appointed to Marry

Alafia and Lójàjù were female and male friends living in Òjìjí town years ago, before the recent technological advancements and the introduction of the myriads of social media, it was Facebook that was first known in their town, Òjìjí before others started emerging like vk.com, Google+, Pinterest and many others too numerous to mention. The world has changed greatly and it is yet evolving everyday because the scientists have not relent in making life easier for all and sundry globally.

Lójàjù and Àláfíà were very found of each other in their class at the College of Education, Òjìjí town.When they graduated, each left for its town. They were both thinking about of each other for a while after their graduation from the institution, but because distance has kept them apart now and with near no possibility of coming together as before, they were soon to grow over this thought about each other.

At each person's location, they were trying to make advancements academically and otherwise, because they do not want to put all their eggs in the same basket. What was eventually established was their academics as they got admitted into different universities to further their education. Not long afterwards they graduated from their respective universities. It was not too strenuous for them to secure employment at their respective location because they have moved up on the job seeking pyramidal level from more crowded regions to less crowded level.

After securing employment they were promoted at their respective places of work and their status and profiles started rising.

However both of them have difficulties getting someone to be married to where they were because those they were seeing do not fit in to the kinds of persons they will love to be settled with maritally.

When social media came on board, and people were saying there are many nude and other obscenities on those channels, both of them were not ready to be a part of the obscene development that has overtaken the world like torrents because they were both religious and of high moral standards.

They continued like this for years until one day that a lady who has been Alafia’s friend since when they were young came across her where she was walking. It was an un-expected contact. Alafia took the time off her work to take the lass out to one of the big eateries in town where they really had time to talk at length about their pasts, what they have been doing. It was during this time that Alafia knew her friend has been married to one man who has been troubling her when they were living together and she was happy that they were married because the guy is really a nice guy.

Soon enough this lady decided to leave and she was seen off. While leaving they exchanged their telephone numbers and promised to be talking. In the meanwhile the lady asked Alafia if she is on any of the social media. Alafia replied that she is not on any of them, because it is better to flee what is wrong than trying to manage it, “I do not want to be exposed to those nude pictures that is common on those social media”, Alafia enthused.

Her friend told her that it is not like that. When one joins social media you will look for those that match you, those of your faith, those who have the same ideologies and believes like you are to be friends with, and it is not important to be friends with many people, you can make the circle small by being friend to families and close friends. If you can give it a trial you will see that it worths it because through it you will be connected with old friends like me and can relive the past as often as you wish.

Alafia heard what she said and promised to give it a trial. That was how she got registered to one of the sites that her friend registered to. “At least she will be putting me through”, she reasoned as she joined the social media.

The social medium to which she joined has some other old friends there where a group has been formed for them through which they can be sharing things together. Alafia started enjoying this.

It was not long after this that the news of her being on the social media gets across to Lójàjù, he really wanted to see how Alafia looked now after decades of parting thus Lójàjù joined the social medium to which Alafia belong and they re-ignited their age long friendship again. Lójàjù was very elated to see that Alafia has not changed much, she added weight, but other than that not much of her has changed.

It was very surprising to him seeing this. From this group connection they started private discussions and friendships and they were getting on well with each other. Old friendships on fire, old friends are better than new friends they would say to each other. They started sharing common things started discussing about their private lives after all they were not all that strange from each other before.

They were living in the same building outside the campus while students at Òjìjí town and had shared many good moments together before their graduation from the institution.

Their seeing became close, and it became increasingly difficult for each of them to go out of the house nor go to bed without telling the other party though hundreds of miles away.

One day, Lójàjù decided to pay Alafia a visit in the town she was living in and working. He left his place very early having taken two days off the work he was doing and was ample ready for the hotel bills and other things before he sees her.

Soon enough he located her, and he discovered that she was sharing her 3 bedroom apartment with a friend who has just been employed in her work place. This member of staff is junior to Alafia, she has just finished her University too and was from a very low class in the society. Pending the time she will have money to get her own apartment, Alafia decided to offer her a room to be living with her in her apartment after all they were both females and single.

The lady was elated for this kind gesture shown unto her by her boss in the office.

Thus when Lójàjù called Alafia that he was in town, Alafia became speechless and was thinking he was around on official assignment, but when she heard that there was no official assignment that could have taken him to their town now, except if he registered with United Nations Voluntary work and he was posted there with others, but outside that, there is no way he could have come to the town. The kind of work that usually involves his office with the town she is working in is usually being handled by his juniors in the office.

Alafia could not hide her surprise. She showed him to different people in her office as a friend who has come to pay her a visit.

Everyone in her office was elated to see a young charming man paying her a visit. After taking him round, she decided to take her to the same eatery where she took the lady she unexpectedly came across months back to and through whom she registered into one of the social media which engineer though unknowingly this coming together again.

The social media have realy been of assistance, you are not different from the pictures I was seeing in the medium, Lójàjù said. Alafia replied that is true oh, you are also not different oh. Do you know I have been skeptical of becoming registered to any of the social media sites until lady Ibukun’s unexpected contact? The same with me, Lójàjù replied, in fact it was when I was told that you have registered to the site that I decided that I would be a member of the site, Lójàjù said.

“Uhmn! I take that with a pinch of salt, can’t someone else make you join the site?” Alafia asked.

My best of friends have made frantic efforts to make me join but all to no avail. All I used to tell them is I will give it a consideration. Since it is not by force neither is it going to fetch me money, they decided to let me be.

Well that is good. I feel elated that through me someone also joined the social blog to which I belong, Alafia said, as she continued to drive him through the town.

Alafia now has a car, she took the loan to get a car from the office, they were in her car talking and laughing. They were not that new to themselves, much so that the social medium has bridged the gap before their eventual seeing now.

Soon enough, Alafia parked at the eatery and they walked into the eatery with Lójàjù examining her from head to toe, saying within himself, that this lady is a paragon of beauty, her beauty is improving everyday.

They were in the eatery talking and laughing, as phones of either of them keep ringing, those calling them were the junior members of staff in their respective offices and they want them to put them through some things they are attending to since they were neither on seat nor in the premises. They will put them through and continue with their discussion.

The office hour was over and Alafia knows that she could not return to her office again, she asked where Lójàjù would put up for the night, thinking that he had a friend in the town, but when Lójàjù told her that he would be putting up at a hotel on the outskirts of the town, Alafia would not agree with him because she has an empty room in her apartment and she wants him to come and put up with her there.

They went to the hotel got his things from the hotel hand over the hotel room’s keys and left for her place. There they were able to see, discuss and play at length.

It was old friendship come alive.

It was not difficult for them to know that they are really meant for each other.

Two weeks after Lójàjù’s visit, Alafia also paid Lójàjù visit in his town, and it was all fun.

Lójàjù proposed to Alafia during her visit to him, and it did not take time for her to reply him.

When others heard of this development, they were elated, very happy for them and what friends who had known them started saying was that, they are appointed to be husband and wife for no one could say they would come together again after about 12 years of separation.

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frenchraisins · 5 years ago

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I decided to write a mid-year blogging recap and life update because I felt like a lot has happened in the past few months that are worth sharing. That is even if we were confined in our homes most of the time because of the quarantine. View of Metro Manila Mid-Year Blogging Recap + Life Lately IN THIS ARTICLE In particular, I would also to share some of my learnings with regard to blogging, my experience (and travails) as a working professional amid the lockdown, reflections during the lockdown, and life in general. It’s my first time to do this type of update, something really personal, so please bear with my if I sound incoherent at times. Anyway, let’s start. Blogging The COVID-19 lockdown has hit the blog hard in terms of traffic. I once shared that I achieved a blogging milestone last year when I hit 10,000 monthly page views starting July. I was able to maintain that until the end of the year. If you are curious to know that’s about 70% to 80% organic traffic and around 30% or 20% social media traffic. All my effort to learn SEO has finally paid off with the page view achievement. Being a non-techie person, I found it quite hard to understand the technical stuff of SEO but I eventually learned it through a lot of research. I was also fortunate to have met some amazing bloggers who were kind enough to share their knowledge when it came to SEO. One of those bloggers that I wanted to give credit to is Mr. Jonathan Espina of the popular Jon To The World Travel Blog who was very generous with his SEO know-how and would not hesitate to provide answers when I would consult him, even if I have not met him in person yet. I would probably treat him to a bottle of beer or a cup of coffee when I get the chance to meet him. On the other hand, the social media traffic, though small, involved a lot of effort and ate up a lot of my time because I was participating in a lot of blog engagement groups. I immediately realized that it would be hard to depend on social media traffic so I put more effort to increase my search engine traffic. However, at the start of the year, the COVID-19 pandemic grew in proportions. It affected mainly travel blogs; since nobody was searching for travel-related articles and destinations, traffic plummeted. My content is mostly food and travel, both industries that were greatly affected by the pandemic. My traffic went down to as low as 3,700++ page views in June, but that’s also because I stopped participating in blog engagement threads because I wanted to really gauge how bad my organic traffic is. I also wanted less time from social media and more time with my kids. Anyway, when I observed the decline in traffic, I again made adjustments with regard to SEO. Probably one of the best SEO lessons I learned during the last few months was to remove zombie pages from the blog. That means looking at and assessing content that are not getting any traffic or are essentially dead. From there, you can consolidate and repurpose content or totally delete those that you think are non- salvageable. The idea is that when Google sees that majority of your content is getting good traffic, the search engine giant would take it to mean that you are providing valuable information to your readers. Therefore, Google will elevate your search engine results rankings. In my case, I removed my old personal entries like poems and rants from almost a decade ago since they do not have any SEO value. I consolidated some of the poems into one personal post, like a collection of stories, that was getting good traffic. I also removed old press releases, optimized old posts with new information, and rewrote some articles to make them evergreen. I made a lot of consolidations because my tendency before was to create daily journal entry types instead of coming up with one whole travel guide about the places that we visited. I also optimized photos which meant reducing file size to make them lighter and adding alternative text (alt text), things that I knew nothing about when I was just casually blogging. It was hard work but it kept me busy during the quarantine. On top of these, I did my best to come up with new content because I wanted to replace the old content that I was removing so that it would not negatively impact my domain authority (DA). Over the three months that I did it, was able to raise my DA from 29 to 31. In terms of traffic, I observed some positive results with regard to organic search although it is still a long way to go before I hit the 10,000 page views again. Speaking of new content, I had the confidence to submit entries in blogging competitions again. The prize money was enticing so I wanted to try my luck again and partly because I want to force myself to create new content for my blog. I joined the RedDoorz blogging content, which I did not win but I received a consolation prize which is a free overnight stay in one of their properties. I also submitted an entry to ComCo Southeast Asia’s Write to Ignite Blogging Project, which aimed to collect positive stories during the pandemic. Fortunately, I placed 7th among 70 participants in the Write to Ignite Blogging Project, which was not bad at all. It was definitely a welcome change after losing in the previous contests that I joined, despite the fact that I knew I had a good fighting stance. No matter, what’s important is the experience that I gained from those competitions and the determination to try again despite failing. In terms of revenue from blogging, it came as a surprise that I had higher income from Google Adsense despite this blog’s low traffic. I also have income from two more ad networks but they have not been meeting the payment threshold during the lockdown as compared to Adsense. But the main revenue stream of this blog is sponsored posts. As such, I can only be thankful to the clients for their trust. Working from home Since April, I had been working from home except two weeks last June when I had to report every day to the office. But all throughout the lockdown, I can only be thankful to our company for continuing to provide us with income despite the work suspension during the early days of the quarantine. Hoping for the day when we can enjoy the simple pleasures Honestly though, I find working from home a lot stressful because our outputs and tasks are more closely monitored as compared to when we were in the office. And since it’s we from home, expect a lot of distractions from the kids as well as from household tasks that need attention. Again, I’m trying to look at the situation positively in the sense that I am with my children and I can take care of them in the morning and immediately after work. Furthermore, because of the pressure to businesses brought about by the pandemic, it’s a natural tendency to have shake-ups within the organization. Sometimes, you would also hear words from your leaders that you may find to be unfavorable. Just think that they are also pressured but they are doing what they can to boost employee morale and keep the business afloat during these trying times. In the end, the hard truth is that we can all lose our jobs and livelihood anytime during the lockdown because of income loss. I pray that it does not happen though because I do not have big savings to support our family in the months to come. Reflections during the lockdown I think my thoughts during the quarantine resonate with most people’s thoughts and that is being appreciative of the things that we have, no matter how small and simple these things are. In a snap, things can change and disappear right before our very eyes. I remember our last date, that was in February. It was our Valentine’s date but we were so busy the days before so we had to postpone it for a week. Even so, we were glad that we pushed through with it because that was our last date in the old normal. I might sound selfish in this statement but I would say it anyway. I probably needed the quarantine, or at least the time off from office work provided by it. Several months ago, I was wishing for more time with my children. In fact, I was considering to shift to a home-based job. That way, I can at least keep watch on my children. But with the lockdown, I suddenly had so much time with my kids. We spent most of it playing out in the yard every morning and afternoon. I can only be grateful that I was able to spend so many happy moments with my babies. In a way, what we get is actually what we prayed for. It may not be in the form that we were expecting (or hoping) it to be but if we look closer, it’s really what we asked for. Life lately Aside from working from home, there’s nothing new with our life lately. We had all plans postponed because of the pandemic such as finding a new condo, finding a house that we could possibly buy, and traveling to Boracay and Nueva Ecija. Hoping things turn out for the better soon so that we could go on with life. One thing that had us concerned was when my son’s therapy had to be postponed. Earlier this year, he was diagnosed with global developmental delay (GDD). With that, the recommendation was to enroll him to play school and undergo occupational therapy sessions so that he could catch up. However, two months into school, all classes had to be suspended because of COVID-19. We were worried that, with the postponement of the therapy, he would not be able to catch up. The school proposed that we do online therapy but we were doubtful of its efficacy. We were offered a trial online session but, admittedly, we did not try it because we had reservations. Our pediatrician also told us that she was skeptical with the online therapy and said that it might be best to postpone it for now since he is still young anyway. Anyway, we can continue with the activities for our son and involve him in chores and a lot of play, of course. So far, we are seeing improvements when it comes to his concentration and eye contact. Our son also remembered some of the letters that we showed him. It’s not just memorizing the ABCs; he would pick up random letter and read it. Nevertheless, it would be best if we get the help of a professional occupational therapist. As for our younger son, we are resigned to the fact that we will hold a quarantine first birthday for him. We wanted to give him a memorable first birthday like his Kuya but that might prove to be a challenge given the current scenario. On a positive note, we can always do the party at home with some friends and family. Epilogue That’s it for now. I know this entry is too long but I do hope that I was able to help you in some way. Keep in mind that we are all struggling and we are all fighting our own personal battles each day. Do not lose hope, reach out to people who can help you, reach out to people whom you think might need help. Tomorrow is a new day Don’t hesitate to tell us your story if that will make your load lighter; the comment section is open as well as our email and social media inboxes. We will do our best to help you to the best of our abilities. These will all pass. For now, take care of yourself and your loved ones. Stay safe at all times! mbtTOC();

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