#makes the enemy suffer more from degradation and panic

[lord-squiggletits]

Bolts upright from my bed

In an AU where Pharma lives the Adaptus thing and comes back on the Lost Light, wouldn't he find out that the crew had to deal with being cornered and nearly killed by the DJD and a bunch of other Decepticons?

And then Pharma could get to be like "oh I see :) you were under threat by the DJD :))) why didn't you just run? Oh you couldn't and had no means of escape? Funny :)))) didn't you call for help? Oh you did right??? And did anyone come???? :)))))) did anyone come in time to save you from the DJD????? DID THEY????? DID YOU JUST CALL FOR HELP AND RUN AWAY AND THE DJD JUST LET YOU GO????? :))))))))))) OH THE DJD BLOCKED COMMUNICATIONS AND HAD YOU SURROUNDED????? OH HOW TRAGIC I GUESS YOU COULDN'T ESCAPE AFTER ALL AND A LOT OF YOUR FRIENDS DIED :)))))))))))))))) AND THE ONLY REASON YOU WON WAS BECAUSE YOU HAD A LOT OF SUPERPOWERFUL FIGHTERS ON YOUR SIDE???? WOW IMAGINE WHAT MIGHT'VE HAPPENED IF YOU HAD NO FRIENDS AND BARELY ANY MILITARY SUPPORT AND THE DJD CAME HUH??? WOW WHAT A RELIEF THAT DIDNT HAPPEN"

-

In other words, I'm pretty much convinced that the reason Pharma is remembered as "the evil cowardly doctor that murdered innocents to save his own skin" instead of "the Autobot that got mindbroken by Tarn into thinking that making a plague and killing everyone was his only way to escape" is because he got introduced before the DJD were established as a pants-shittingly evil and sadistic group of freaks, and unlike Rodimus' crew he didn't have the luxury of being a main character whose thoughts and experiences were shown on screen. Pretty much his reputation as "crazy token evil Autobot" was sealed from MTMTE #5 and by the time MTMTE #50-something brought Dying of the Light, Pharma was a footnote in the story and never got to have this new information about the terror of the DJD factored into his own character.

[jen-with-a-pen]

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Dirty Dishes

Bucky x F!Reader (CATWS/CACW time periods)

You and Bucky share an apartment in Bucharest. Some nights are fine, others are tough. Nights with storms are especially tough.

WARNINGS: Angst, Bucky having flashbacks, panic/anxiety attacks

18+ Impressions On the Inside of Your Thigh

Beefy!Cowboy!Bucky Barnes x F!RanchHand!Reader

Head Ranch Hand James "Bucky" Barnes has had a very, very long day. Only way to remedy it is to make you squeal.

WARNINGS: grinding, pet names/name-calling, making out, dirty talk, oral sex (f!receiving)

→ Fan Favorite on AO3!

18+ FOXHUNT

WS!Beefy!Bucky Barnes x F!Avenger!Reader

Not only has HYDRA successfully executed their infiltration on S.H.I.E.L.D., but they have also reclaimed their finest weapon. Your safety isn't the only thing that's compromised.

WARNINGS: being hunted, implied non-con elements, violence, cursing, blood, bruising, beating, passing out, forced nudity

18+ Chains Around My Feet

Bucky Barnes x F!Reader; established relationship/friendship and most of work is told out of Reader's POV.

Being held captive and experimented on definitely wasn't in your job description. After what seems like months in HYDRA captivity, rescue finally arrives– but what is rescue if not relief from the suffering?

PLEASE SEE POST FOR FULL LIST OF WARNINGS major warnings: graphics horror elements, blood + gore, whump, hurt and absolutely ZERO comfort, major character betrayal, major character death, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT

18+ FILTHY, IMPETUOUS SOULS

parings: Protective!Avenger!Bucky Barnes x Sniper!Agent!Curvy!F!Reader

After what you assumed would be a successful mission, things veer off-course and you're stuck with Bucky Barnes in Istanbul with no way out until morning. The tension between you comes to head and nothing will be the same again.

warnings: enemies to lovers, angst, canon-level violence with just a bit more blood, guns, reader is a sniper/sharp-shooter, hate-making out, degradation, fighting, insults and cursing, teasing/banter, reader and bucky don't know how to talk about their feelings (or to eachother), spanking, doggy, angry-horny, rough-ish sex, pent up anger, pent up sexual tension, power dynamics, protective!Bucky, vague hinting to Bucky's PTSD, no use of y/n, reader is tagged as curvy and is described as such but body description is kept to a minimum

Honeysuckle

Bucky x F!Reader

The adventures of one James "Bucky" Barnes and our reader, Honeysuckle, mixed with a lot of mutual pining, with some help from Sam 'Wingman' Wilson. No real story line, just a mix of one shots that might end up loosely connected one day.

WARNINGS: mutual pining, requited love, idiots in love, slow burn, tooth-rotting fluff, maybe a little angst, established friendship, yes this takes place in the Tower

This House Had Swing In It - Coming Soon/Being Rewritten

DEVILISHLY HANDSOME, ENTICINGLY BEAUTIFUL - Coming Soon

FALLEN STARS - Coming Soon

If You Go, I Go

CAFTA!Closeted!Pre-Serum!Steve x CAFTA!Closeted!Sergeant!Bucky Barnes

It's Bucky's last night before deployment. The evening does not go the way Steve, nor Bucky, thought it would.

WARNINGS: angst, loneliness, pining, closeted feelings, messing with canon

Dancing in the Kitchen

slightly possessive!Best Friend!Steve Rogers x Best Friend!F!Reader

Tony dumps you. Steve picks you up and puts you back together again.

WARNINGS: fluff and angst, insecurities, verbal abuse and insults/language, VERY SLIGHT possessiveness, emotions™

18+ ALL TIED UP (IN A BIG RED BOW)

Art Student!Frat Brother!Steve Rogers x Film Student!Sorority Sister!Reader

Inexperienced and still freshly-traumatized by his first heartbreak, Steve Rogers decides to finally move away for college after taking two gap years to work, save, and help his Ma around the house. It’ll be good for him. Away from his ex. Away from his hometown. He's excited to finally chase his dreams and begin again as a promising fine arts student at Richards College. Well, almost. Thanks to a generous scholarship spanning the next four years of his life, Steve is required to participate in on-campus Greek life. It’s simple: join a frat. They shouldn't be too intimidating. At least they're not as bad as they are in the movies, right? Right..?

general series warnings: frat bros being frat bros, sorority sisters being sorority sisters, manipulation, coercion, blackmail, fluff, angst, whump, explicit forced s3xual acts, slow burn, dissociation, nud1ty, dubcon (bordering noncon), forced drvgging, mentions of kidnapping, emotional damage, Steve's just trying his best, Bucky and Sam are major frat bros, Tony and Clint are somewhere I swear

18+ ALL WRAPPED UP (IN A BIG RED BOW) - COMING SOON

The Weight

Modern!Avengers!Stucky

Steve betrays Bucky in the worst way possible.

WARNINGS: angst, cheating, emotional damage/hurt, no comfort, swearing, mentions/desc. of vomiting

Coming Soon

Reading Lists

This House | Honeysuckle | DHEB

Fic Recs | Spicy Fic Recs | Not My Masterlist

OMEGAVERSE

DEVILISHLY HANDSOME, ENTICINGLY BEAUTIFUL

Honeysuckle Vibes

Hurt/Comfort

This House Had Swing In It

This House: The Swing Collection

Tooth-Rotting Fluff

ENEMIES TO LOVERS

@/natrace's Stardust Reblog Challenge Masterlist

@/flordeamatista's Jardin de Poemas Challenge

@/targaryenvampireslayer's Blind Date Writing Challenge

WHUMPTOBER 2023 MASTERLIST

[youryanderedaddy]

War prize

Summary: You get taken as a war prize once the barbarians take over your homeland.

Tw: nsfw, non - con, mentions of blood, slight corruption kink, size difference, slavery, deregatory language, degradation, possessive behavior, minor character death, spanking, mention of war

There is now part 2

Yoo guys, don’t worry if you voted for the other two options, I will write for them too soon enough. Anyways, enjoy.  

You weren’t supposed to be here right now with your legs covered in heavy metal chains and a dirty cloth shoved up in your mouth. Your friends weren’t supposed to be either captured or dead. Your side wasn’t supposed to lose against the barbaric tribe. So many things weren’t supposed to happen tonight and you were slowly getting used to the fact that your supreme leaders had failed, the army had raised the white flag high and you were currently in the enemy territory with slim chances of escape, with absolutely no memories of how you got there in the first place.

You could hear his heavy prolonged footsteps, the way the sharp heel of his boot dug into the rich soil and stomped all over the daisies and weeds just like he had done with your own people hours ago. He was getting closer to the tent by the minute and his shadow was growing bigger and bigger until the soldier finally pulled back the curtain-like fabric to the side and entered the tiny space you were forced into.

He was very tall, unnaturally so, nothing like the men in your tribe who, despite being strong and capable, were born on the shorter side. His face was rough and raw, his features symmetrical and fierce in their cold perfection, deep charcoal eyes, dark lips and a straight nose. The knight fancied his long black hair free and wild, letting it fall against his muscular shoulders softly, shiny, silky and healthy. In these territories the warriors wore very little clothing, finding anything covering their chest or ankles to be too distracting and suffocating during a battle. You tried to look away from his half – naked form but his upper body was sweaty and smooth, caramel in color, making it hard to look at anything else. In return the male simply stared at you for a few moments, grinning in amusement or maybe even satisfaction, and kneeled down next to the mat you laid on.  

“Hello, my little captive.” His voice was throaty and deep when he finally called out to you, a cunning smirk adorning his lips, giving him a sly foxy expression. The man reached out to cup your cheek and wipe away a tear slowly falling down, causing you to squirm away from his touch as if he held a hot iron against your face.

“Don’t touch me, you brute!” You shouted out before you had the chance to reconsider your poor choice of wording. The knight simply chuckled in respond and grabbed your hips roughly, making sure to dig his nails deep into the clothed skin before pulling you closer to his naked chest. You couldn’t help but turn red when forced to take in the warmth and firmness of his body – you had never been so close with a man before, much less your commune’s arch enemy.

“I will do so much more than that, sweet girl.” Raven whispered against your ear and kissed your neck softly, pulling your hair down so you would arch your back and whine miserably. “I won you fair and square, little slave.” He growled against your collarbone and bit down hard on the soft part of your throat. You couldn’t stand the hot wet sensations and you desperately wanted to get away from the warrior’s cruel grip, but you were helpless in your struggles, and even if you weren’t thoroughly tied up, you were still too scared to put up a fight against the barbaric male twice your size.

“You are so small and fragile, so vulnerable underneath me. I’ve always wanted something soft and pretty to warm my bed at night.” Raven admitted huskily as he tore apart your white satin robe, revealing your chest to the lingering glittering light coming from the gaslight above. Your pitiful whimpers were muffled by his lips slamming on yours and his wet slippery tongue forcing his way deep down your throat. The warrior was caressing your bosom, squeezing and fondling at it shamelessly, pinching and licking your nipples until they stood at attention red and swollen like cherries. “Such a pretty little slut, tied down at my mercy.” The knight moaned and slapped your breast lightly, enjoying the sheer look of horror on your beautiful face, twisted in panic. “I’m gonna make your tits bounce while I take you like a bitch in heat.” The man mumbled sadistically and slapped your other breast, this time using more force. “ I’m gonna make you my whore.” He cursed under his breath and lowered his head to suck on your neck once again.

Soon Raven got bored of playing with your tits and moved on to spread your legs wide open, pulling your panties down to your ankles. The sight of your sweet tight pussy exposed and displayed so wantonly was mouth-watering to the barbarian, and he could already feel his member harden painfully against your slit. You pleaded silently with your eyes to be spared, muttering quiet pleas, “no’s”, sobbing and clutching to the last bit of hope for mercy. Unfortunately, the warrior couldn’t hear a word, too fascinated by your luscious body and his own wild hunger.

“My beautiful little prize, all mine.” The man whispered almost affectionately, kissing you nice and slow this time, with his throbbing erection pressed on your entrance, inches away from your untouched virgin hole. “I saw you earlier today while you were tending to your parents’ wounds, pet.” He spoke suddenly, his length teasing your folds by slowly sliding in between your soft thighs. “You looked so precious in your desperate attempt to save them during the final fight.” The warrior continued, one hand coming up to stroke your hair in a sick yet comforting manner. “A sweet little thing like you shouldn’t be on the battlefield.” Raven kept going while rubbing slow circles on the palm he had forced you to open when you were clenching your fist tight. “You look so much better by my side, pretty girl.” The soldier placed a small peck on your temple, the lingering gentleness of his actions and the cruelty of his words making you sick to your core. You felt tired and overwhelmed yet the worst was still in store.

“I will tell you a little secret, slave.” The dark-haired male snarled at you and raised your chin up so you had no choice but to meet his cold black eyes. “I killed your father and took you all for myself.” He confessed in a low vicious voice, his scarred fingers tightening around your throat. The wet fury in your heart tangled together with the pain and grief of your loss, but the deadly grip around your neck forced you in place, still and lifeless like a doll. You wished you were dead just like your family so you wouldn’t have to suffer the humiliation of entertaining the enemy and his twisted desired any longer. “Now I am going to steal your innocence and make you mine, little bird.” Your face froze in terror and agony, having realized that, by the end of his words, the man had already pushed his manhood into your tight heat, piercing through your body, unprepared for the shock and the pain. “Sing for me, slave.” The barbarian hissed under his breath and moved roughly in and out of you, each new thrust sharper and deeper than the last one. You didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing you broken down so easily, but you needed a way to cope with the harsh reality, so you cried out for him. You chocked on your pitiful sobs, screamed in pain and whimpered miserably just to survive another second of this meaningless torture.

Raven looked ecstatic, enticed by your lovely moans and whines, your sweet despair delicious on his tongue while he claimed your lips and explored your throat. Your tight pussy squeezed hard on his length, milking every bit of pleasure out of it. His eyes were blacker than the night sky, filled with lust and thirst for blood, unquenched even after hours of slaying the innocent souls determined to protect their land. Laying down on the cold ground, sweaty, violated and stripped of your pride, you wondered whether you were just another conquest to the warrior, perhaps ruining your purity was his way of proving that he and his people were the new rulers of the territory.

“What a sweet little virgin you were, and now you are bleeding on my cock while I take you, pet.” The barbarian cooed at you cruelly, choking you lightly, not tight enough to put your life in danger, but enough to keep you motionless and complacent, just a hole for him to fuck into. “I am going to cum in your cunt now, slave, and you are going to stay there and take it.” The man announced sternly and kept shoving his manhood down your channel roughly, pounding into you relentlessly until he came with a growl and released his seed deep inside you, painting your walls white. Your pussy felt raw and puffy, pulsating in pain around the cock still buried in. He wasn’t pulling out of you.

“Oh, little bird, did you really think that I would be satisfied with having you just once?” Raven taunted you gleefully, a sadistic gleam in his dark eyes as he took in the panic on your face, drinking it like a glass of honey mead. “I fought for you after all, precious.” The warrior muttered slowly, mere inches away from your swollen lips, bruised and red from all the biting and rough kisses. “I am going to savor you little by little.” He paused to catch your gaze and held it for a moment too long before focusing on your mouth again.

“You’re mine now, don’t you ever forget it.”

[thithesandofferings]

“Open Wide”- Ogami Shirou x Reader

TW: 18+ MINORS DNI!! Dom!Shirou/Sub!FemReader, Comeplay, Choking, Voice Kink, Rough Sex, Praise Kink, Degradation, lil bit Size Kink SMUT!!

This is bad .

“Look at you Alan, I thought you said Purebloods didnt get Nirvalys Syndrome? Let me put in into you, before you lose your mind”

Who says stuff like that to the enemy? Ive never seen Shiro this angry before. Especially to say words like that. He barely speaks at all most days. Only when he absolutely has to. This should surprise me or- or stress me out but-

It's so hot.

Link to my Ao3 for this fic= https://archiveofourown.org/works/25414948

This is bad .

“Look at you Alan, I thought you said Purebloods didnt get Nirvalys Syndrome? Let me put it into you, before you lose your mind”

Who says stuff like that to the enemy? Ive never seen Shirou this angry before. Especially to say words such as that. He barely speaks at all most days. Only when he has to. This should surprise me or- or stress me out but-

It's so hot.

“Hey you! Look alive we gotta go!” Michiru yelled, startling me out of a downward spiral.

She was right. I had to get out of there before the place was destroyed to shreds. I could barely think. All I could think about was Shirou splitting that evil bastard's mouth open and putting his power inside it.

I couldnt help but feel jealous.

His wolf had such a presence on its own, how could I not be affected.

I needed to get it together, there were still people that needed to be saved. I shook my head and ran after Michiru towards Shirou. She was chattering excitedly, but I honestly couldnt understand anything she was saying. My eyes were on him.

He must’ve caught something in my gaze because he turned his attention to me.

“You okay?” His voice was gruff from exertion and I had to take a calming breath from the shiver that coursed down my spine. He caught that too.

“I should be asking you that Shirou” I looked away, but with a sideways glance I grumbled that he was, in fact, amazing. He raised his nose a notch, almost an afterthought,  and I could see him take a deep breath.

With his penetrating gaze solely on mine, I could feel my pulse jump and my temperature rack up a thousand degrees, I had to look away. He scoffed, almost smugly, and slid attention back to Michiru, who was still talking and running around. Something about having Shirou howl to the town.

We watched as he changed into his silver wolf form again to howl into the microphone. It was a beautiful site to see. Seeing all the animals completely stop what they were doing just to howl with him. Alan had no idea what he had been talking about.

Shirou had the Howl.

Michiro and I could only watch in awe. We were born human turned animals so we didnt have the innate instinct to go along with him. It was such an eye-opening experience, so much so that I felt a little empty at not being able to do it. Shirou looked so regal, the urge to fall on my knees in front of him was an encompassing feeling.

Shaking violently at the thought, I had to blow out a long soul-suffering sigh. Michiru glanced with eyebrows in an “are you okay” motion and I could only just nod.

What is going on with me? Where are my thoughts?

I had hoped that thoughts of Shirou would leave. The attention was of us and finally life was, in all intensive purposes, back to normal. Michiru was able to hang out with her fellow friends, and I- was able to start my work in the office.

Except, I could get nothing done.

Shirou was constantly in my peripheral, working on whatever case was in that week. But when he wasnt there, he was in my mind whispering in his growling voice about the things he could do to me.

I was dying.

There would be times where I would stare at a research book, never turning the page, just staring. It was becoming so hectic that Shirou asked if I needed time off.

“I know its been hard for everyone” Shirou had said. He had been in that leather jacket again. Who wears gloves inside? Why was it so hot?

Its not fair.

“What's not fair?” I looked up from his gloved hands and I could feel my heart rate sky rocket in panic.

I said that out loud.

His gaze is so piercing, it felt like he was staring into my soul. He was leaning on my door frame, completely relaxed. His usual bored expression was placed with something that was almost- teasing? Not that couldnt be right.

But it had been the same expression and mood for weeks now. His casual bumps and grins were so much that Ive had to actively avoid him before I had a heart attack. I wasnt in control of my emotions half the time, so any sort of embarrassment would make me change into my animal form. Even through his cold demeanor, it still seemed like he was laughing at me. I'm sure he could tell that I was flustered, especially when he turned into his wolf form. It always made my blood pressure go up and something slick slide down my thighs.

Which is what was happening now.

Oh no.

I prayed that he wouldnt notice anything amiss, but the world wasnt on my side. He lifted his nose up again and sniffed. It was as if he was trying to find someone miles away, but when he finally looked towards me, his pupils were wide open. Alert.

“You never answered my question.”

There was a hitch in my breath at that tone. That growl that Ive been dreaming about for weeks.

I’m so fucked.

���I-i uhm… sorry what?” I could feel myself blinking rapidly. I couldn’t get my thoughts in order. This was getting ridiculous.

“You humans are very odd,” Shirou rose up from the door, and for a moment I felt relief only to freeze when he closed my door.

With him still inside. We’re alone.

“You even more so.”

He walked slowly towards my desk. Well more like prowled. There was intent in his walk.

I’ve never felt more like prey than right now.

“I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me” He’s whispering now. His gloved fingers gently spread out to the edge of my desk and he leans over it.

He’s so close.

“I smell you all day. Its intoxicating.” One hand lifts up and brushes my cheek, I know he can feel the heat.

“You’re the first human that I have ever wanted”

I froze.

Hes been feeling the same? From his expression and the dropping of at least two octaves, it was definitely confirmed.

“I- uh I want you too” My voice was hoarse from emotion. He could hear it just fine it seemed because if his pupils werent blown out before, they sure were now.

Shirou visibly licked his lips and I couldn’t help but follow the motion. He watched me watch him and he grinned, showing his fangs in satisfaction.

“Good because I plan to devour you. Stand up”

I could barely hear the order due to his growling. His ravenous expression was drowning me. I was swimming in heat and desire.

“I wont ask again”

Shirous’ voice snapped me back into reality and with shaky sweaty palms I pushed my chair away and stood. He never told me to move so I just stayed there. He seemed very pleased that I didn’t move.

Not like I could, I was barely able to breathe.

He stalked slowly around my desk until he was behind me, moving the chair completely across the room. It crashed into a plant and I jumped, still not moving an inch.

I could feel his breath across my nape and goosebumps coursed down my skin. I could feel him smelling my hair, breathing in the sweat that I felt that I was pouring out. I tried to move away, embarrassed, but I could feel his grip tighten and him growl at my into my neck.

“Stay still” He whispered. “You can be a good girl and do that for me right?”

I froze at the pet name. I’ve never heard him call me anything other than my last name. I couldn’t believe how it affected at me. I could feel myself become even more drenched.

He could tell.

“Oh? You like that huh?”

I felt his leathered hands slide slowly underneath my shirt and palm my breast. I gasped, my head falling on his shoulder at the groping. This was getting intense fast. I heard something tearing and tried to glance down only to have one of his hands press lightly at my neck. Holding me still.

Shirou shushed me, keeping his hand curled around my throat. Murmuring something about not needing this or that, I felt fabric fall at my feet and my chest became covered in hot leather. I let out a choked moan, only to have his grip tightened.

“You’re gonna have to be a quiet pup, you don't want all your colleagues to know what you're doing right?” He was so mocking, I couldnt help but feel flustered with how demeaning he sounded.

I nodded knowing I couldnt say anything in this position.

“Thats right, good girl, now go on bend over the desk” He slipped his hands away and disorientation readily slid back into my head.

I laid over my desk, paper be damned, and wrapped my hands over the edge to hold on. I heard him growl in confirmation at the act and I preened at the act of pleasing him.

I’ve never felt this way. I was completely ok with him taking the reigns. I didnt have many braincells left, I could barely think. All I could do was just do.

Shirou hands caressed my ass in appreciation, his ungloved hand (when had that happened?) made a purposeful track up to my waistband, hastily taking them off. I was completely soaked and hearing him swear obscenities definitely didnt help.

“I can’t wait to knot you, pup” I felt his weight against me, his bare chest completely covering my whole body. He was so warm, degrees hotter than his normal, his breath hot on my cheek as he licked my face from chin to forehead.

“The real question is,” he says through licks down my spine. “Which form do I want to take you hm?” I shivered violently at the thought of Shirou taking me in my wolf form. Outside of Anima city it is forbidden to have any of those kind of thoughts. But you couldnt help that you constantly thought about Shirou fucking you in his wolf form.

I could hear his deep chuckle at my spine. He knew my answer.

I felt him nose my wetness and my breath hitches. It didnt last for more than 5 seconds and I could hear myself grown out against the desk.

“I would love to taste you, but unfortunately we dont have that kind of time.” There was a zipping noise and I tensed, gushing even more at the thought of what it could be.

“I would need hours to be satisfied from your taste” He is suddenly in my ear. “But I plan to fuck you like you need it.”

I could hear myself mewling at the thought. I’ve been wanting this for weeks. I cant believe someone like Shirou even wants to touch me. Shirou, cool-mannered and distant, wants to fuck me five ways to Sunday is honeslty an eye opening experience.

There is a clicking sound and I gasped. I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I didnt feel the fingers. I could feel myself clenching around and my mewling became even louder. Colleagues be damned.

There was an surprised hum from behind me.

“You’ve been touching yourself?” All I could do was nod embarrassed. He cooed sweetly and added 3 fingers inside of me.

“What were you thinking about? Were you thinking of me? Tell me” I gasped in affirmations. I couldnt take it anymore. I needed inside of me now.

I felt like I was going to die.

“P-please Shiro, I need it.”

“You need what pup?” He grinned savagely and I felt something hard and hot against me.

I wiggled in frustration. Only to have him laugh and hold my hips still. Using his strength to make me stay still.

I was going to have bruises.

“Please fuck me Shirou” I whispered into my shoulder. I knew he could hear me. I felt my chest tighten at the gasp and growl.

“Good girl.” I shivered and gasped as he pushed the head in with a savage force of his hips.

“I wont hold back pup” He laid his furry chest against my back “You might be ruined for any one else.”

“I dont want you to Shirou, give me your all”

A growl was heard and then the most intense feeling of my life was radiating through my whole body.

He thrusted so hard that I could hear the desk screeching. The other colleagues, if they were still there, would definitely hear it. I prayed that they weren’t gonna check to see if I was okay. I wouldnt be able to speak anyways. I’m pretty much holding on dear life on the desk. There was no way I was able to explain anything.

Shirou didn’t seem to care either. The constant growling and heavy breathing that was coming from him was telling.

“Youre so tight, I cant believe all of me fit inside of you” He groaned and all I could do was tighten around him, which made him go even faster. There was a crack from the desk, but I ignored it. All I could concentrate on was the heat and his cock bruising my insides.

“Mine mine mine MINE” He stopped abruptly and pulled out. Only to pick me up effortlessly and turn me around, my back hitting the desk.

He entered me again and with that the world was crashing around me. I’d never come so fast in my life. Watching him in his wolf form growl over me as he pounded me into the afterlife, I wasnt gonna last long.

Seemed like he wasnt either, his thrust got more savage and I got louder. He took his right hand and placed it at my throat again to cut off the noise.

“Be quiet while I shove my knot inside you, I need to concentrate” It made me fall again, shivering while he grinded his knot inside me. He came with a roar, tightening his hands on my throat, cutting off my sound.

“Shhhh, good girl, you did so good” He whispered praises to me while he continued to grind himself inside me. He lifted his hand and I gasped dazed.

He looked up at me and caught my disheveled appearance and grinned.

“Dont move, I’m not done.”

I returned the grin.

“Good Shirou, cause neither am I”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Barrage

For @whumptober2021 day 3:  taunting | insults | “Who did this to you?”

CW: War whump, WWI, dehumanization, vampire whumpee, degrading language, negative/panic stimming due to sensory overload, casual ableism (it’s not intended as such, but effectively is), period-appropriate xenophobia, implied future loss of limb, brief religious talk at end

1918, the Western Front of World War One

-

If he’s screaming, he can’t hear himself over the sounds of the artillery.

Shells fly through the air with the only warning a high whistle before they burst apart in blasts that shake the trenches like an infant with a rattle, knocking free dirt from the sides of the trenches.

It drifts down to land on his shoulders, settling over the hands he has over his head. His palms press against his ears and it does nothing, absolutely nothing. There are tears in his eyes, fear bleeding pink into mud that simply turns darker, seeing no difference between vampiric saltwater and blood. 

Not that there is much of a difference, really. 

His mouth is wide open against the ground, throat taut, lungs tight with the expulsion of air but the vibration of sound in his throat is so overwhelmed by the rumbling of the earth and the barrage slamming into the ground around him that he can’t feel if he’s making any sounds or not.

If he had a beating heart it would be pounding, but it lays still in his chest, locked in the final heartbeat he’d had more than a decade before. 

That he is already dead never quite undoes the visceral horror of sounds too loud for a human mind to understand, destruction too total and complete. The part of him that is still human shrieks at him to run, but there isn’t anywhere to go.

The barrage is everywhere, it’s in everything. The trees blast apart above their heads, branches and fragments of bark and leaves rain down into the trench. 

The other men hunker down, trying not to look directly up, each of them with eyes closed or staring off into space, flinching now and then, hands trembling so hard their rifles rattle. There’s no point in moving - the shells will find them if they so much as pop up over the bags. All they can do is wait, and wait, and hear the sounds without knowing which come from their own side and which from the enemy.

In a moment like this, the human body knows only terror, and there is nowhere to run to escape it.

Finally, the sounds start to die off. A final whistle, a single explosion, and then everything falls silent.

Not that the vampire boy can tell, not at first.

His ears keep ringing, painful noise that is inside him and not without. He slowly pulls his hands off from his ears and pushes up to his knees, shuddering, rocking back and forth in an attempt to soothe his nerves. He can feel, now, the vibration in his throat. He can’t hear himself but he must be humming, low and tuneless, trying to drown out the panic. 

Once the shells have finished, the gunfire begins.

“Here they come! Steady aim, boys, the Krauts are on us!”

The sound of the soldier’s voice seems tinny and small, so distant, trapped behind the ringing in Tristan’s ears. He screams himself, into the mud beneath him. Someone races past, stopping briefly to pat his head. If they speak, he can’t hear them over the shrieking noise inside his mind.

Short reports break through the air like thrown knives, the soldiers in the trenches alongside him popping briefly up from behind their protective shield of sandbags to fire on the German infantry who come out of the shell-smoke like a swell of horrible phantoms. 

They fall, they cry out, they hit the ground.

Sometimes the Americans let out a cry themselves, someone is fired upon and falls. Someone else yells in fierce victory. Someone shouts a curse. 

He hears a man shout, “I won’t die today!” and hopes it’s true.

Tristan loses time, shivering compulsively and curling into himself, humming and rocking until the ringing finally starts to die down. Longer, still, as long as the rifles continue to fire. He hears a wild, high-pitched cry, and glances up to see a German with a bayonet through him drop to his knees and then fall into the trench, landing less than three feet away.

The man’s probably dead before he hits, but Tristan still screams and pushes back, scrambling until his back hits the wall. His knees are damp from the mud he’s curled up in and he doesn’t care, he’s never cared. All that matters is finding some small hint of peace.

It seems like an eternity before even the gunfire starts to go quiet.

There’s a voice that calls, but he can’t care enough to let the sounds filter into understandable words. He smacks his hands into the mud, again and again, pushing himself forward and back, finally leaning down to knock his head into the ground, over and over. Each contact with solidity is a soothing rush, slowly working its way down his spine and through his muscles, reminding him that the noise is gone, the noise is over.

The voice calls again.

There’s no more guns firing, no more shells. The world settles into an awful heavy silence that is nearly worse than the sounds. They’re in the middle of a forest more vast than any Tristan has ever seen before, and there are no birds, because there are no more trees for the birds to live in.

Only the doughboys and the enemy, everyone the walking dead. They’re as dead as Tristan is, their bodies just haven’t figured it out yet. And they won’t get back up when they fall.

The vampire keeps knocking his head into the ground. It helps to stop his thoughts from spinning and swirling in a mad spiral inside.

It doesn’t help enough.

He’s brought back to himself by a kick, a fellow soldier’s boot knocking hard into his hip and sending him onto his side. He grunts and looks up, squinting. The German soldier’s corpse is gone - they’ve moved it while he was locked within himself, within his terror. The sky above them has a sickly glow beneath heavy clouds brought on by smoke from the fires and explosion. 

The soft sound of distant wounded calling for help filters into his understanding. 

The soldier that kicked him, Kirk, gives him a grin. The man’s face is streaked with mud, dark with it, and only his teeth and his eyes show white. “Hey, medic. Didn’t you hear the officers?”

Tristan looks up at him, and slowly shakes his head. His ears ring, a little, but all their ears ring. They’re all shouting just to be heard.

“Huh. Well, trench got blown apart off to the east. It’s your time to do what you do best, fangs. Go sniff out the ones we can save.” Kirk grins. “Like a fucking dog.”

The vampire closes his eyes, shuddering, looking away, shaking his head more in denial than in real refusal. It feels like the shells are still breaking apart inside him, shuddering rumbles inside his nerves now, not up in the sky. His whole body shakes. “I, I, I c-c-can’t, can’t, I-... I c-can’t go, go up there, c-can’t-”

“Doesn’t matter what you wanna do or not, bloodfuck. You think any of us would be here if anyone important gave a damn about our feelings? Gotta earn your bloodbags, don’t you? Get up there with the dogs where you fucking belong. ”

The other soldiers laugh as Kirk kicks him again. Their laughter isn’t even mean, exactly, but carries an edge of hysteria. It’s a release of tension after the barrage for them, after the gunfire, after the loss or three or four of their own, listening to how Kirk talks to him. It makes them all feel better, reminds them they’re still alive by reminding them that the vampire isn’t.

And, for whatever it is worth, it seems they’ve held the line.

To Tristan’s mind, a bit of land doesn’t seem worth what they are being asked to suffer.

He uncurls himself slowly, his bones aching in protest of his movements, his body begging him not to show himself above the bags, to be potentially seen by a German sniper just waiting for the American soldiers to pop up thinking it’s all over and make excellent little targets.

The vampire reaches out with a trembling hand to pick up his helmet where it’s been discarded beside him, stuffing his hair up underneath as he pulls it on. He tries to buckle it, but he keeps dropping the straps. His fingers won’t close, they’ll only shake. 

Kirk finally huffs a sigh and leans forward, grabbing him by one arm and yanking him over, taking the straps in hand and doing the buckle himself, jerking it too tight until the vampire whimpers at the pinch. “You’re fucking useless, bloodsucker. Go on. Serve your fucking country, like the rest of us. We’ll see you later. Hey. We made it, huh? This time we keep breathing. Well, we keep breathing, anyways. You keep… uh, whatever it is you do.”

The vampire nods, slowly, eyes searching Kirk’s for some hint of something other than his hatred. 

For the first time since they were shipped out, Kirk’s expression does soften. 

Just a little bit. 

“Come on, bloodfuck.” He says the insulting name almost like an endearment. “Don’t look like that. You’ll be all right,” He says, voice low, giving the vampire’s chin a playful little shake. “It’s just the artillery, just a little scrap. They brought out their big guns, and look at us, we still got our limbs, ain’t we? You still got those chompers. Hell, none of us wet ourselves this time, so we’re doing a sight better than last time.”

The other soldiers chuckle, a little. Someone mumbles, “That was once.”

“Oh, hush it, Fallows, nobody looks down on you for it, everybody’s a bit crackers the first time they get shelled.”

“Yeah, Fallows, we’ve all been there.”

“Listen, after my first time it took me three weeks to go to the latrine without a buddy just in case, you’re all right.”

The soldier who must be Fallows shifts, but he half-smiles, a little, comforted by the camaraderie around him. Tristan’s heart hurts, wishing he could be part of it, not kept apart by the curse in his blood. 

A different soldier - Tristan thinks the man’s name is Davies - pulls out a canteen of what is probably supposed to be water and almost certainly isn’t. The American army doesn’t imbibe, officially, but Tristan’s never seen an officer who didn’t look the other way after a battle if his men needed liquid courage to make it to the next one. 

“I, I, I’m scared,” The vampire whispers. A tear trickles down the cleared path along the dirt in his face, following the trails of those he’s cried before. Kirk looks at him and rubs his thumb over the vampire’s high cheekbone, smearing dirt back over. Like trying to fill in a dried riverbank. “I’m, um, sc-scared of the sounds, Kirk.”

“So’re the rest of us. Fritz never does it halfway, does he? I get you. We’re still here, for now.” Kirk pats the side of the vampire’s face, almost gently, and then pushes him backwards with a sudden resurgence of his usual careless violence. “Now go find the crump-hole Fritz made of the others and pull out the wounded.”

He has to do this. It’s his job, and it’s the only reason he hasn’t been staked out like the ones who refused to go willingly. The vampire swallows, nodding slowly, and turns away. He has to jog down the narrow line of the trench, past rows of soldiers who watch him with dulled eyes that stare far, far past him. Twice he pops his head up, just for a second, to get a better look at where he should go. 

Ahead of him, the No Man’s Land stretches. It’s a hellscape, cratered and with any hint of greenery long gone. A morass of mud and the still-standing stump of the occasional tree. There are dead men out there, he can smell them. Some new dead, mostly old, the ones that aren’t worth pulling back behind the lines, not yet. Some wounded men who call for water, for help, but who mostly call for their mothers.

Tristan would call for his, too, if he thought it would help.

There’s dead Germans out there, he can see their uniforms on the prone, still bodies. Some of their wounded cry mama, mutti, mutterchen. A few cry papa, vaterchen. Tristan has seen enough dead - some by his own hand, though he never wanted to kill anyone, William didn’t tell him how not to and he had to find that out on his own - to know that nearly everyone, at the end, thinks finally of who they love most.

Someone cries, in a broken voice, “Cady, help me,” and Tristan closes his eyes against the pleading in the sound. 

Seems like more Germans than Americans, this time, and he might see some French, too. It’s hard to tell, with the smoke is still rolling over the land.

He hopes they don’t try to gas each other again. It doesn’t affect the vampires, but he’s seen too many men die choking on their own lungs already, he’s ready to never see such a thing ever again. 

He sighs, gets back down into the trench, and keeps moving.

The ranks thin out, and he finds himself utterly alone for the last few hundred yards.

There’s a brief burst of gunfire that has him shaking again, flinching and stumbling into a depression underneath the top, where a soldier might sleep at night. The vampire stays there, curled up tight staring in fear, until the gunfire subsides.

Once it fades, he hears the barking.

Ambulance dogs.

“Medics! We have wounded!” A man’s voice cries, rough-edged. “We need help!” Ahead of him, the trench collapses in on itself, blown apart by shells. A soldier’s rifle lays in the mud, bayonet glinting faintly. Next to it, a photograph, a young man and woman standing next to each other, dotted with dirt. The woman has a slight smile on her face, and the young man’s arms are around her waist. They look happy.  

The vampire’s throat closes as he looks at it. She’s very pretty, he thinks. She’ll be very sad when she hears that her soldier isn’t coming home. He wishes he had any photographs of his parents. 

If he must be damned to never see them again, even in Eternity, it seems doubly unfair that he can’t even find an image of them to remember them by. He’s sure there were photos taken at the island where they were processed, but those photos weren’t for them. They were kept by the men and women who barked orders at the young Tristan and his parents as they went through the line. 

“We have living wounded!” The man calls again, much closer, and the vampire jolts back into motion. He picks up the photograph and tucks it into one of the pouches at his waist, next to a small vial of plain alcohol he uses to wash out wounds.

He can see the dogs up top as they dig, paws burying themselves with incredible speed in loosened mud as their handlers move next to them, encouraging them. Every dog wears a big white square patch with a cross on each side, marking them as ambulance dogs. The vampire has a patch on his left arm like that, marked with a cross for medic - and a V to make sure he is always known for what he is by anyone who sees him. 

As if the fangs don’t give him away. As if the way his eyes look in the darkness isn’t a clue all its own. 

There’s a high-pitched bark and a shout of triumph, and the vampire looks up and sees a man so covered in dirt he seems less human than golem being helped to his feet. He’s miraculously uninjured except for having been half-buried in mud. 

“Let’s go, soldier,” The dog’s handler says, and then moves quickly away. The soldier follows him, shuffling more than walking, staring around in amazement that he’s still alive.

The Germans could fire again at any moment, of course, and the vampire finds himself frozen, staring up into the yellow-tinged dark sky. There’s a low rumble, a whistle and boom, and he flinches before he realizes the sound is so distant that it must mean shelling much further down the line than he is.

That doesn’t mean what they’re doing is safe.

He’s still staring up at the sky, waiting for the barrage to begin again, when something closes tight around his wrist and he jolts to the side with a cry of shock and fear.

It’s a hand.

A hand, reaching out from the mud. Dirt is ground into every knuckle, under the torn fingernails, into the callouses worn into the pads of his fingers. The hand grasps wildly, blindly, trying to find anything to hold onto.

There’s a living man buried under the mud.

The vampire has to work his throat to find his voice, and when he does he cries out, “We, we, we have living wounded! Living wounded! B-buried, buried, help! I need help!”

There’s a flurry of movement as the vampire lurches forward, gripping onto the hand and digging with his other, trying to give the man who must be in there some reassurance that he is felt, seen, found.

Trying to give him some air before whatever he’s got runs out. 

One of the other medics hops down and lands roughly on their feet next to him. It’s another vampire, one that Tristan has never seen before. They’re older-seeming, with straggly long dark-blond hair barely held back in a plait down their back. The vampires aren’t usually allowed to speak to one another for fear that they’d plan some sort of mutiny, and so the other medic is silent other than a soft grunt, digging into the dirt with their bare hands with inhuman rapidity, uncaring for the possibility of injuries because they simply cannot hurt their muscles any longer.

Tristan feels the hand he’s holding squeeze and he gives two squeezes in return. We’ve got you, just hold on, hold your breath, just a little longer.

Eventually the frantic work of the other medic reveals dirtied blond hair, helmet-less, marked with mud and blood in equal measure from a cut they can see as the man’s forehead is revealed. Then his eyes open wide and very blue, he gasps in air.

“Pl-please,” He manages, his voice a rasp. “Please, help me-”

Tristan exhales an unnecessary breath in relief, and smiles. “Hold, hold, hold on, hold on, we’ve got you, soldier.”

The man sees his fangs but he’s too full of the rush of adrenaline at the prospect that he has been saved from suffocation to be scared of them. Instead he starts to cry, weeping and holding onto Tristan with a bone-crushing grip. 

The other medic hisses as they dig in and find a dead soldier on top of the living one. This one has the telltale slightly-open eyes of someone long gone, body still warm. There’s an awful caved-in look to one side of his head that Tristan refuses to allow himself to see. “Must have protected him that way,” The vampire notes, coldly informative, uncaring. “Dead took the brunt of the blows. One lucky man, one unlucky one. Flip of a coin, living or dying.” They sound like they don’t care at all.

Tristan wonders how long they’ve been a medic. If they maybe felt more at the beginning.

The smell of blood moves through the air like a bubbling stew, making Tristan’s mouth water. He holds back as best he can, pulling to help dislodge the survivor from the dirt his compatriots have died in. 

Some of them still haven’t yet - the vampires can scent the difference between dead and living, and there are more soldiers still breathing under the rubble. He can smell that some are so wounded they won’t last long. Others, though, they’ll get out in time.

Tristan doesn’t look at the slack expression of the dead soldier whose body kept this one alive as he is revealed. The survivor comes free - first his shoulders, then his arms come up to grip tightly around Tristan’s waist. His torso is revealed, his hips…

It’s only when they finally get him fully freed, laying on the ground, that Tristan realizes one of his legs is… wrong. Bent wrong, nearly blasted off. He swallows at the sight.

“We, we, we need a stretcher,” Tristan says, frowning. The soldier groans, as if only now beginning to feel the pain of the shattered bones from his thigh down to his foot. “He, he, he can’t walk. He’s gonna lose the, um, the the the leg.”

“God, no,” The soldier pleads to no one in particular. “Please, no, not my leg…”

“Hush. Better that than your eyes or your face, mouthbreather.” The other vampire launches themself at the side of the trench, clambering back up - only for there to be a sudden burst of new gunfire, and Tristan stares up in panic as the vampire’s body jolts as three bullets pass through them.

They stumble backwards, briefly, then bare their fangs in the direction the gunfire came from and hold up their hands with middle fingers raised high above their head. They give a loud, half-mad trill of laughter.

“Have at it, Huns, I’m already dead!” 

Then they turn on their heels, moving at a rapid jog towards the medical tents nearby. There are bullet holes in the back of their uniform, new fresh ones alongside several that have already been patched up from earlier hits.

“Please, I have to-... have to go home,” The survivor of the bombardment says in a whisper, and Tristan turns back to him, nodding slowly. The man’s face is pinched with agony, but… but he’s familiar. “I can’t die here, fangs. I can’t.”

“Don’t, um, don’t don’t don’t worry… you’ll go home, you will.” He doesn’t know that, not really, but it’s what every soldier wants to hear, and the doughboy beside him lets out a breath of relief and smiles, a little, trusting him. Tristan hitches in a breath, and digs into his belt-bag, pulling the photograph out. It’s the same young man as the subject of the photo, his sweetheart next to him. Maybe she’ll see him again after all.

He holds it out. He sees the soldier blink, struggling to focus.

Tristan clears his throat. “I, I, I… um, I found this.”

The soldier grabs it with his free hand and gives a hysterical, relieved laugh, pulling it to his lips and giving it a kiss. “Marta,” he breathes. “Oh… thank you, fangs. Thanks for finding it.” he looks up at Tristan with a bright smile, teeth seeming terribly white in his dirt-coated face.

They are so rarely kind to him, the soldiers. 

The vampire closes his eyes against a new rush of tears. He whispers, “Look, look, look at the, the, the photo for just a moment for me,” and lifts the soldier’s wrist to his mouth. The soldier knows the score - he doesn’t even go tense. He's probably been bitten a few times before.

When the vampire sinks his teeth in, it’s as gentle as possible. He takes little blood, only pushes venom into the wounds until the soldier’s body goes limp and relaxed, his eyes still locked on the photo of the woman he wishes badly to go home to.

“Tell, tell, tell me, um, about… about, about Marta,” The vampire says, glancing up. He can hear further shouting. The other vampire’s voice, which  means help is on the way. “While we wait for the stretcher.”

The soldier’s eyes drift shut.

“She’s… she’s nineteen. Preacher’s daughter, her ma and two sisters died from the flu this year. She’s got four little brothers who made it, though. We were married just before I was sent to basic training, last fall… Hey.” The soldier looks right at him, meets his eyes. “What’s your name, fangs?”

No one ever asks him that.

He blinks once, twice, three times. “What?”

“Your name. What can I call you?”

“Uh, Tristan, um, Medical, um, Un-dead Medical Private Tristan Higgs.”

“Huh. I’m Dennis. Just… I don’t care for all the titles we get. Just say Dennis. Tired of bein’ called by what I am and not who.”

He nearly laughs. He knows the feeling. “Nice, um, nice to meet you, Den, Dennis.” 

“You, too, Tristan. You’re Irish, right?”

Tristan nods, a little, his smile widening slightly. “Was. Been in New York since, ah, before the turning of the, um, the the century.”

“Were you a vampire when you came here?”

Tristan swallows, looking away. “No.”

“Oh.” Dennis falls silent, for a moment, then squeezes his hand. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to bring on bad memories.”

“That’s, um, that’s all right.” Tristan settles onto the muddy ground, with the body of the soldier who didn’t make it visible in the dug-out part of the cave-in, and listens. The other soldier, he thinks, likely would have his own people waiting for him, who now must be told the terrible news - but this man, Dennis, he’ll go home to his Marta, one-legged but alive. 

Dennis never lets go of his hand. 

Whenever his face starts to show his pain again, Tristan lifts the man’s wrist back to his mouth, fills him with venom again, and asks him more questions about home.  

Dennis thanks him for it, every time. 

He says Tristan reminds him of his own brother, who’s still back home working the dairy farm he grew up on. “He’s always been better with the cows than people, anyway. He’d hate all this racket,” Dennis murmurs.

“I, I, I hate it, too.” Tristan smiles, just a little. “I’d say you, um, you get used to it, but…”

“You don’t,” Dennis says, heavily.

“Right. You… no, um, you don’t.”

Tristan hopes Dennis gets to go home to his pretty Marta, his brother and the cows, and never come back to this hell the rest of them are trapped in until its bitter end. He hopes, deeper than that and in a secret place within himself, that he will redeem some of the damnation of what he was turned into by doing as much good as he can while he’s here.

He can’t go home.

Home is people, not a place, and his are long, long gone.

But maybe if he suffers for the good of the living, he’ll be seen as redeemed enough by God and His angels to be allowed to see his mother and father again.

-

@mylifeisonthebookshelf @insaneinthepaingame @keeper-of-all-the-random-things @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @newandfiguringitout @astrobly @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @pretty-face-breaker @doveotions @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @what-a-whump

[just-some-random-blogger]

Angel Bride

SHINee Pirate!Lee Taemin x Reader Characters: Lee Taemin, mentions of Choi Minho Summary: Unwanting to get married, you stow away in a ship called Shinee, unbeknowst that it held the sea's worse pirates and the most viscous captain, called Sea Serpent. Word Count: 2k+ Warnings: Old-ye misogyny,  kinda graphic, fluff, smut if you squint, TYPOS cause they always escape me, etc.

A/N: once again i dunno how to write smut so ??? ALSO I'M SO SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO DO THIS @skylions-den ASHDJEKSKNDMSOSOKSMSM and if pirate!taemin took you off guard bwahahHAHAHAHHA

The man gripped my wrist tightly, even through how weak he was in his fever. The man was thin, and surely if he was not so sick, he would twice more as handsome as he was now. “Are you a dream, angel? Am I dying?”

I knit my brows at the urgent, somehow demanding sound of his voice that contrasted to the expression he held. For a moment, I was confused as to how he wondered I could be such a creature, up until I saw his heavy gaze on my body. I found myself chuckling dryly at the white wedding dress clung around me.

How could I forget?

I shook my head, “No, I am stowaway on your ship, pirate. I did not want to get married.”

“Married,” his voice hardened, “To whom?”

I rolled my eyes at the memory and huffed, “Lord Minho of the Chois.” I think of the said man’s handsome face, broad shoulders and unmissable cruelty and discrimination, then scoff. “He wishes to tame me into becoming a perfect wife, or so unkindly put, a diligent maid.”

It was then that I found the sense to try and pull my wrist away from the man’s hand. I turned to him with knit brows and tried to soothe his anxiety over me, “I am only trying to help you?”

“Help me?” he chuckled and found a small cough in the end, “You are bad luck, angel of death.”

My face fell and I released a breath. “I already told you, I am no angel.” I tried to pull away again but with much more persistence. “I cannot believe with how high your temperature is, your head still has enough fight in it to blabber on about such senseless hullabaloo.”

It was then I finally got out of his grip.

I rubbed the captured area.

  Though he looked at me with such stark eyes, I continued on my initial actions of wiping his face with a towel and warm water. Now, how I got this towel, this warm bucket of water, and how I wound up in this sick pirate’s quarters are stories for another day for it is so unbelievably long and complicated.

I dabbed the man’s face with a lot more force than I had originally, just to put across the message I was not pleased with him. However, when he pulled a pained reaction, I found myself falling guilty and my motions becoming once again kind and gentle.

  I frowned at him and decided to speak, “You can throw me overboard, if you like, honestly. I have nothing to come home to nor to live for anyway at this point. Tell your captain I fear not death.”

The man found it in himself to scoff though I knew from how he sounded, his throat was not in good conditions. “You think the captain would pity you? Pah! He is the famed Sea Serpent, whose blades have slit the throat of his enemies.”

As he spoke, the man swatted my hand away from his face. I growled lowly and gave up on him wiping his face at this point.

I knew he meant every word he spoke about his captain. I had heard the terrible stories of this man who allegedly had only one eye left and one foot. However, I was only annoyed with his reaction.

Perhaps it was his soft and feminine features that made his words seem lighter, but I could not find it in myself to cower over them.

“Why do you treat my words as if I spoke in riddles, boy?” I raised my voice and threw the towel into the bucket.

“Boy?!”  he let out yet another painful scoff, “Women are bad luck at sea! You are probably the reason why I am sick in the first place.”

I let out a hearty laugh, “Ahhh, and I suppose your filthy kitchen and dirty handed cooks have nothing to do with it. Oh, and the fact your soup is made with spoiled ingredients doesn’t mean a thing, does it?”

“Ha! The food is rancid for you have cursed us, hag!”

“I cursed you? I suppose all thinking women are a curse to dim-witted men. Tell me, you leave your vegetables out to get wet by the water of the storm and rot, and yet you eat them! You should set them aside somewhere safe and dry.”

“The storm is your fault! The skies frown upon your face.”

“Alright, if that is true then explain how it has only rained two days ago and not on the start of our journey? If what you say truly is true, then the skies should’ve frowned on me since the beginning.”

“It is because you were hidden!”

“Hidden?” I laugh, “Hidden from what? I have not hidden that I am a woman once! And it was not as if a member grew between my thighs and fell suddenly, and now the sky is angry.”

  It was here the man fell at a loss for words. I find my insides smiling at his silence.

“What difference does it make a woman on land and on sea?”

“I get it, angel. Pardon me for not being learned.”

I pull my head back, “I am not learned! Women are not allowed to learn, shamefully. All I know is from experience. Everyone expects a woman to a good mother and yet no one will allow us to learn about the things our children might ask about.”

The quiet man looked at me for a long while, up until his eyelids grew heavy.

  “Why then, angel, do you help a sick, unlearned pirate?”

His eyes close in exhaustion and my lips part at his degrading statement. “You may be a pirate, but I am sure you have a family.”

He laughs, and suddenly his chest racks out a violent cough. My brows and hands rise in concern.

Once his barking subdued, he lets out a long breath, “I am an orphan. It is why I am a pirate.”

“… well your pirate ship will be one less pirate if you are gone. I’m sure they cannot like that idea.”

The man says nothing.

“I have always wanted to help the sick. My heart always bled for others and when my own mother was taken by a fever, I was determined to help those that I can and save their families from the heartache this illness brings.”

The man, I think, did not hear my explanation, as he had already drifted off to sleep.

It was then I stood from this stool I sat on and went to the other side of the dim, candle lit cabin. However, a hot hand on my wrist yet again held me back. “No, do not leave me angel.”

I turn to the man laid on his small bed and find myself smiling a small smile. “I will not. I am only sleeping over there on your pile of clothes.”

His eyes open and turn to me, “You have been sleeping in my pile of clothes? You must not have had a pleasant sleep at all.”

“Actually, compared to the nets behind your crates in the kitchen, it is far more pleasant.”

“Well,” he then shifts to sit, “sleep here. I have slept—“ “No! You’re still sick! And if I were to sleep there now, I would be sick too.”

He crumbles back on his back. I place my hand on top of his. “Sleep pirate, and gain strength to scare the storm away.”

“As you say, angel.”

As cold, harsh waves crashed against me, the memory as to how I wound up bound in the middle of this ship’s deck left me.

“A WOMAN!”

“A WITCH!”

“SHE IS THE REASON WHY THE SEA SPITS US OUT!”

  “How have you come here, witch!” a tall, bearded man spat in front of my face. The sea spat on both of ours. I felt my heart pounding in my chest. Though I wanted to answer him, the water gushing to me choked the words back down my belly.

  “SHE IS WHY WE’RE SUFFERING!”

“SHE IS WHY OUR CAPTAIN IS SICK!”

There was a loud and angry roar amongst them, and there was a defining statement that got everyone into a riot. “THROW HER OVERBOARD!”

It was then they started cheering and grabbed either of my arms roughly. It felt that my shoulders were going to give in as they ungracefully but efficiently brought me to the side of the side.

However the loud and piercing shriek from the crow’s nest above made the men all around me turn to each other in fear.

“ROCKS! ROCKS! ROCKS EVERYWHERE!”

They started to panic amongst themselves, whether to throw me out quickly or do something else entirely.

  Then, the sky cracked into lightning and thunder and a man emerges into the storm, instantly getting drenched in rain and sea water.

“UNHAND HER AND GET TO YOUR STATIONS, CREW!” he commanded just as sternly as the sky poured its fury.

The men dropped me and I cried in pain as my knees collided with the floor. I shook out of my binds and then a man went in front of me. “I forbid a hair be hurt on my angel’s head,” he spoke, grabbing my hands and standing me up. “Go inside and dry yourself up.”

I placed my hands on his face and felt his unusual heat, “But you are still sick, being out here is—“

“I command you!” he shouts, grabbing me by my shoulder and leading me off anyway. “I am not to see your face until we steer away from this danger.

  I was shoved back into the room I met the man who had some questionable authority. I heard screams and shouts from outside along with the sloshing of water and patter of rain.

I jolted at the sound of thunder and found myself shivering in cold and fear. I whine and try to dry myself, but only find annoyance in the heavy, damp dress around me. And so I pull it off and wear a long shirt I found in the same pile I slept in. The room was dark for the candle had already died out.

I moved around and looked for a match box, once finding one, lit the only candle capable of being lit.

  Moments melted away in tension and even more screams were heard from outside.

Suddenly, the door to his place opened, catching me off guard. The figure stalked to me, and when the fire revealed his face, I realized who the drenched man was.

“We have steered…” he starts, however his eyes drift down from my face. It was then I realized his shirt did not do much in covering my chest. I placed my hand on my heart and pull back.

“Angel…” he speaks stepping forward, “you look… holy in my attire.”

I open my mouth but find nothing to protest back.

His eyes turn back to me, but they looked at me in a different way.

“There are no more rocks that endanger us, angel,” he says, stepping closer, removing the boots on his feet with the other. My own bare feet mimic his, only instead of moving forward, they move back.

He then lifts his shirt and throws it away, revealing his lean and defined torso that made my face heat.

“What are you doing?” I barely ask.

“I am trying to dry quickly,” he says, still slowly walking towards me, “may you aid me, angel?”

“I—“ my back hits the wall, “I have no clothes or towel to give you.”

  The man places his palms on the wall behind me by either side of my head and I feel my pulse quicken drastically. “I am indebted to you, angel. By your hand health has found its way back to me. I, Lee Taemin, captain of this ship, the terrible Sea Serpent thank you.”

My brows raise, “You—you’re the sea serpent?”

He chuckles darkly, “Why do you think they listened to me then?”

“But you are no older than I.”

“It is my youth and wit that makes me so terrible,” he answers, lips curving, eyes turning to my own lips. “Never have I seen such fairness and kindness in one being, my lady. I understand wholly why such horrible men are drawn to your light.”

At this point, his face was a matter of inches away from mine.

“I wish to kiss you,” he says, “make love to you, and make you my own bride.”

  My chest heaves heavily at his words.

His hand travels down to my side, just above my right him and my body feels electrified. “Angel, you are deathly cold,” Taemin says in concern. “I can warm you easily, if you let me.”

My breath hitches, “How many women have you seduced before, snake?”

He throws his head back slightly at my words and once he turned back to me, he moved in even closer. Now his breath was against my neck. “I have never had to seduce a woman before in my life.”

“Then-“ I say, forcing the shakiness of my voice down, “-you should start trying.”

  Taemin laughs, “How then should I begin angel?” he speaks lowly and then plants a hot kiss on my neck, making a shiver run down my spine. He chuckles and peppers kisses down my shoulder, pulling his shirt on my out of the way. His hands travel to my back and push me against him.

“You taste like the sea, angel,” he hums. His fingers press against my skin and run down from below my shoulder blades to the bottom of my derriere. And from my neck, Taemin pulls away and places his lips on mine. In between his breathing, he moans out soft words, “I take your lack of retaliation as permission, angel.”

He then pulls away, just enough so his hands could then travel upward from behind me, to the side of my hips, to my rips, to my breasts and to my neck. The pad of his thumbs caress my skin and attempts to sooth the juncture by my jaw. His fingers that rest behind on my nap entangle themselves in my hair. “You are now mine to claim.”

  Swiftly, I was brought to his bed and laid before him like dinner. A cold gust of wind tickles my stomach as he pulls the cloth around me off.

He proceeds to scold me when hide, “Nuh-uh-uh, no treasure to be hidden from my eyes, angel.”

He slowly creeps up to me and plants another kiss on my lips His hands secure my thighs around him. I gasp when I feel him against me, and he let out a laugh against my lips. “My precious angel, I shall treat you with as much goodness as you have shown me.” 

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[lovecanbesostrange]

I have a lot of feelings about the latest Grey’s Anatomy ep “Silent All These Years” and so let me ramble a bit. I can’t put everything into well written and organized words, but I have to type something:

First off all, hats off to writer Elisabeth R. Finch and director Debbie Allen. Amazing work. The script is tight, tackles so many issues about trauma (related to rape/abuse) all at once, without ever losing the focus that is on the victims. The SURVIVORS. They are the ones talking, they are the ones the camera follows, no unnecessary distractions. We are here to listen to their stories and empathize with their emotions. As hard as it is.

That said, I want to get one tiny thing out of the way. I like how the guys are handled, that we do see. There is Alex, supportive husband #1 who clearly wants to do everything that helps, having no clue what is going on (being concerned, not mad). There is DeLuca, who catches on to what Jo is saying without saying it and from there on following her lead, whatever she asks. And we get this minimalistic b-story about Tuck dating and getting a very important talk about consent from Warren. That is really good, because he is the young generation, the one we have to raise to be better. (Warren could’ve thrown in that Tuck can say no himself anytime as well, but that’s the smallest missed opportunity ever. The sports analogy of a time out is so good and easy to grasp.)

Where to even start? Just to pick something let me go with how trauma is not an Olympic discipline where the winner gets a medal. Because they have all lost already. In different ways. And you can’t deny somebody their feelings of pain and hurt, because you have been hurt as well. It does not work like that and that is the biggest take away I get from Jo and Vicki meeting. It should be a common sense statement, something we can agree on easily, but we are so trained to look for somebody being wrong, for somebody being right, for a conflict with clear edges. There are none.

Vicki was raped. At a time when she wasn’t even allowed to think about it as rape, because she said yes to a date. (It always makes me sick knowing that it was only in 1997 when German law ruled that rape in a marriage was a crime at all.) She felt all the shame and guilt and was completely alone, because how to even ask for help? To hammer this point home we get Abby’s storyline. Who so randomly bumped into Jo at the hospital and so accidentally found a person who would not leave her for a second. (I know Meredith would have caught on, just like Teddy did. But Jo was in this headspace already, and sometimes finding the help you need is dumb luck and that is a terrifying reality.) Vicki had nobody to push her, to talk to. She went down the path of staying silent. And nobody has the right to yell at her for that.

But of course Jo is hurt. And she has to now re-arrange everything she ever imagined about her biological mother and the circumstances that lead to her being left at a firestation as a baby who never did anything wrong. Just think about it, with all the crap that Jo has lived through, the one thing she never imagined was that she was conceived during rape. That was too far a reach for her. And I guess that is in part because she herself had an abortion, because she could not imagine bringing a child into her marriage with Paul.

That bomb went off. Wow. Like I could already see some pro-lifers gleefully using this episode. That if Vicki would’ve had an abortion, like we advocate for rape victims to have the choice to, there would be no Jo. It would be so easy to fall into this trap. But nope, Jo then talks about how she was in a different, yet also desperate, situation and she did the best she could think of – which was an abortion. And I dare anybody to try to weigh these two things and tell me there is an outcome that won’t leave people traumatized one way or the other. It is so not a sport and there is no always right/always wrong answer. And that makes this scene, that is just a long conversation, so difficult and powerful and brutally honest. That is something that more people need to fully understand.

Vicki never wanted to hurt Jo. The fact she clung to these stories that mothers feel all the love and joy once the child is born – she tried. And I admire that so much. But then there was only more pain. For nine months she was reminded of this event, she didn’t even dare name rape and the baby that came out of it made this open wound so much worse. And how much do you think she hated herself for resenting a baby? How do you even start to get back into your right mind? The way Vicki talks about this – it’s a memory, it’s a thing in the past, and with one flick of a switch it’s all fresh.

Michelle Forbes does such a good job to show this. Vicki opens the door, her kids are in the kitchen, she’s open to whoever just knocked, she gets the mail and all is well. All is this normal world she knows. And one word from Jo, who is a stranger, and it’s like her rapist is breathing down her neck. That is a trigger. They just show the thing. (btw as always such a good Meredith voice over for the beginning and end to remind us about this week’s theme) Vicki has a good life, a family, a job where she helps others. And all that is taken away in a second and she is put back into the worst place she was ever in.

I like how both, Vicki and Jo, have a moment where they get up from the table. The way Vicki asks if Jo came to hurt her and that worked. So here is something I wonder about Jo in this situation. Letting out her frustration and anger that has built up over the years is one thing. And it’s clear to us that she doesn’t have a real game plan. What to say, what to expect, what to even get out of this. There is a lot of uncertainty and she lets emotions take over. But what does it do to her to realize that her very existence is a trigger for Vicki? When she asks if she looks like her father. A word Vicki rejects for his contribution (she is the biological mother, not a mom though, but he is even less – a point explored in the film [i]Room[/i], with a far different set up of course). That nameless TA, that raped Vicki, never knew about Jo and now she has to live with the knowledge that this connection hurts somebody so bad on so many levels…

Vicki just listens to whatever Jo has to say. And how does that feel, that the baby she gave up had no break in life from the start and fell for an abusive man. (This is also of note, Jo makes it very clear when talking to Abby, that she suffered through domestic violence, but was not raped, nothing “like this” happened to her.) Once again, a tiny bit of luck was all that was missing. Being placed with a good foster family at the right time and Jo’s life could’ve been completely different. And now Jo and Vicki are facing off, both with their very own trauma, that can all be traced back to one night. But it was society that failed them both. They are not enemies, but how to reconcile the different points of view here?

Abby is the story in the now that anchors it all. As sickening as it is, I’m sure if we just had that diner conversation randomly thrown in as maybe even the B-plot, it would be easy to dismiss. Jo being angry, a woman talking about a rape that happened over 30 years ago… but seeing what Abby has to go through, just to get help, is the reminder of what rape means. And it is not about some quick sex. It’s not over and done and here is what the immediate aftermath looks like. Without being exploitative. They show how invasive and almost degrading it is to get that rape kit done. Even with the most compassionate people by your side, it’s torture all over again. And in the end that is for the benefit of the survivor.

Those moments before, when Abby vocalizes her fears, how she knows these stories and how that damn kit might never do anything good and she wants it done and be over with it – I felt all of that in my bones. So, another kudos here to Khalilah Joi. Both guest actresses give it their all. But Jo pushes. Against protocol. Teddy does everything the best she can think of and I like how she talks about giving Abby the tiniest bit of agency back in all of this. But Jo pushing with the right words, putting it into perspective that later on emotions change and this is about having a chance.

I love how Abby grabs Jo’s hand in a panic and then they never let go of each other. You can even see Jo switching hands so she can close the curtain and so it’s clear she did that again when getting her coat off. Never letting go. It’s such a simple gesture, yet so powerful and the clear picture of not being alone. Jo saying “I got you, Abby. I’m not going anywhere.” It’s a lifeline and I wish we could live in a world where this is the default response to get from doctors (other people in general, especially those with the knowledge/power to directly help). This is all about Abby, helping her and never is it made about the rapist or even the exact circumstances. It should not matter that she was out to get drinks. And that she questions herself if she should’ve taken another route home…

The most striking visual is of course lining up all the women so Abby won’t have to see a male face. And more than that, faces of so many women who are all willing to be here for her, symbolizing she is not alone. On the one hand it is mortifying, but on the other Abby isn’t the one who needs to hide. She survived. The only thing she deserves is help and support. And so we get this scene as a heavy show-don’t-tell of sorts.

“It’s not your fault.”

This is not an episode about fault. The abandoned-child-seeks-biological-parent has been played out in very many different ways. But this is not that story. Jo’s anger is understandable. Vicki’s behavior is understandable. Abby’s reluctance is understandable. Three women, all have their own story and in some ways Jo and Vicki have hurt each other, are hurting each other, but it’s not their fault. Because it is very complicated.

Oh, I haven’t mentioned her specifically, Camilla Luddington is once again doing all the small details just right. I have to say, in the end when Alex walks up to her and she is somewhat startled, that was like watching her back in “1-800-799-7233” again. Jo is on auto-pilot flight mode. That hurts. One day she sits down with her mother, triggering her pretty much by existing. And the next she is with a freshly traumatized patient being the emotional support.

[austenpoppy]

Mental Torture in the Wizarding World (1)

Warning : Very long post. So long that I had to split it in different parts. I have no idea how to make it under a cut "keep reading". Highly Upsetting topics such as self-loathing, madness, suicide and torture.

This post really means a lot to me. It may be one of the most important. Torture is something which makes my blood boil and that I want to fight until I die. So often overlooked or judged necessary, it destroys people. Literally.

Mental torture is a topic which is unfortunately too often overlooked. People often consider that the level of pain is not the same as physical torture, if they even consider that it causes pain at all. Because there is no scar, no mark, no trace on the body, mental torture is less visible - yet minds can be destroyed.

The wizarding world makes no exception. If torture, embodied by the Cruciatus Curse, is loathed, mental suffering caused by psychological methods are barely, if ever, evoked.

But they exist, and they are not in any way less painful than the Cruciatus curse.

Let's agree upon a definition of torture : "United Nations conventions that bar torture refer to it as "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental," study author Metin Basoglu of King's College wrote" .(https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSN0535973620070306)

This is the particularity of mental torture : it aims the disintegration of the personality : "We conclude by examining the specific evil of mental torture: the merciless attempt to break down and occupy the personality of the victim." (Mental Torture: A Critique of Erasures in U.S. Law by David Luban and Henry Shue)

And for those of you who might doubt that mental torture and physical torture are on the same level : "Sadly, psychological torture can in fact be counted on to cause harm, which is indeed often severe and prolonged. Even worse, substantial research suggests that psychological torture, as well as some cruel and inhuman treatment that might not qualify as torture at all, can cause more severe long-term damage than some physical torture tends to." (same study)

1. The Dementors

I am utterly awed every time a "good" character in fanfiction threatens somebody of being kissed by a Dementor or expresses regret that the Dementors are no longer guardians of Azkaban after the war.

The Dementors have been created by the author to be a symbol of depression. Indeed, they make revive to their victims the worst moments of their lives and give them the impression that they will never be happy again.

However, I have to notice that they are more than allegories of depression. They act like torturers.

A depression is something self-induced, which means that the brain of the person itself is no longer able to grip on good thoughts, but only on the bad ones. It can be expected in certain circonstances : when a person is in mourning, during a burn-out - even if sometimes the burn-out itself can be considered a depression - after certain traumatic events (especially if the person in question suffers from PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), after having been bullied... Or it can be the consequence of life-long insecurities (especially if the person in question has a crippling low self-esteem) aggravated by small or not so small events in daily life. It is absolutely horrible, a daily drowning, the impression that nothing makes sense anymore... It can be helped with medicines and psychological sessions, but ultimately, it is a struggle that the he or she has to do himself/herself. If he or she is not willing to fight against it, you can't do anything (To be clear, I am not making any judgement, I am just noticing that depression is a daily struggle, and a very hard one - because there is no external enemy, the enemy is in your own head). Not to say that depressed people should be left alone - in the contrary, they have to be backed up, loved, to know that people care about them.

But what the Dementors do, the way they harm human beings and other creatures is definitely not something people self-induce. They are external forces, who can act for themselves. And even if the pain they cause leaves horrible lingering effects - we will come to that later -, it is a pain which affects everybody and not just vulnerable people.

This is the description of a torturer, according to an article I found on the Internet (reference : http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-10/beard-cheney-defends-torture/5957372)/

Specifically, it is defined by an intention to degrade a detainee to a sub-human state in which he or she is morally and psychologically dis-integrated. Torture is an act motivated by a torturous attitude, which means it requires people who are willing - literally - to pull another human being apart."

The worst Dementors can do is to suck the soul out of their victims, which means that they can literally disintegrate their victims'personality, spirit and intelligence and turn them into empty shells (which would be quite a heartwrenching metaphor for people forever broken by torture and mental pain).

This is the description of the Dementors' kiss by Lupin :

"'They call it the Dementors' Kiss,' said Lupin, with a slightly twisted smile. 'It's what Dementors do to those they wish to destroy utterly. I suppose there must be some kind of mouth under there, because they clamp their jaws upon the mouth of the victim and - and suck out his soul.'

Harry accidentally spat out a bit of Butterbeer.

'What - they kill -?'

'Oh, no,' said Lupin. 'Much worse than that. You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you'll have no sense of self any more, no memory, no... anything. You'll just - exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever...lost.'"

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K.Rowling

But that's not all.

"Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and hapiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can't see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory, will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself - soulless and evil. You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.

(...)

The fortress is set on a tiny island, way out to sea, but they don't need walls and water to keep the prisoners in, not when they're all trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought. Most of them go mad within weeks."

The first thing I want to notice is that the victims of Dementors go mad from pain. The only other characters we have been talked about who went mad were the parents of Neville. Funny coincidence, isn't it ?

Moreover, what is obvious here is that the "methods" used by Dementors lead to the disintegration of the personality : victims are even described as "soulless", "trapped in their own heads".

Well, that's exactly what mental torture leads to - and physical torture as well, in terms of psychological consequences, according to the study I have quoted above.

Furthermore, it is important to underline that victims of Dementors are left helpless, unable to be happy or hope. Feelings of permanent helplessness are one of the consequences of mental torture.

And they don't have any control over they suffering. They are just a bundle of fears and terrors, unable to control themselves, unable to distinguish reality from what is in their heads. Their nightmares become the reality and the reality is an eternal nightmare.

To quote once again the study above :

"People also often say that what they fear is not so much death but dying. It is one thing to have gone, it is another to continue to survive but in despair and with no grounds for hope. One of the special terrors of torture is that like dying, as distinguished from death, being tortured is a continuing process, not a single event or a final state. It is a process filled with dread, despair, hopelessness, and the awful awareness that one has absolutely no control over one’s own condition. One can try to end the torture by trying to cooperate, but the torturer may well not be convinced and may well not admit it even if he is. Like the flies to the wanton boys, and like us to the gods, in the words of Shakespeare’s blinded Gloucester quoted at the beginning, the victim is the torturer’s plaything. The vulnerability is absolute, and the mental suffering accompanying that awareness is awful."

"One is of course rarely in full control of one’s fate -- the panic at the recent world financial crisis in part reflected many people’s frightening sense of having lost any firm grip on how their lives would go in future. But the fear of a depleted pension is nothing to the fear that one’s own self will be undermined so that one will not retain even the underlying psychological integrity necessary for having desires and beliefs that are one’s own, much less the psychological capacity (the agency) to act effectively on them -- that one will be returned to the infantile state of being an uncoordinated bundle of desires and fears with no integral self to organize them."

"Psychological torture, in contrast, undermines the structure of the personality -- it literally breaks apart the self, unhinging its parts from each other."

Not all the prisoners become mad. Some, like Hagrid, are released because they were innocent. When Hagrid describes his experience in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he presents anxiety disorders, a typical reaction of victims of mental torture and torture in general (p. 239-240) : just talking about what he went through makes him shiver and cry, and he would do anything to never go back to Azkaban, even if he has to loose Buckbeak (the same Hagrid who made enter an Acromentula in Hogwarts, and bought a dragon's egg even if it is absolutely illegal and dangerous).

Another study I've read, Les pires cicatrices ne sont pas toujours physiques : la torture psychologique by Hernán Reyes (The worst scars are not always physical : mental torture) backs it : "The victims of mental torture have symptoms associated with anxiety disorders."

Moreover, what he says is striking : in his cell his only will was to die to end his suffering, and he had lost any hope to quit the prison.

"Thought I was goin' mad. Kep' goin' over horrible stuff in me mind...

(...)

'You can' really remember who yeh are after a while. An' yeh can' see the point o' living at all. I used ter hope I'd jus' die in me sleep..."

[dfroza]

Paul illuminates the significance of writing to convey thoughts

in Today’s reading of the Scriptures with the 3rd chapter of the Letter of Philippians:

“This is true righteousness, supplied by God, acquired by faith. I want to know Him inside and out.”

[Philippians 3]

It is time that I wrap up these thoughts to you, my brothers and sisters. Rejoice in the Lord! (I don’t mind writing these things over and over to you, as I know it keeps you safe.)

Watch out for the dogs—wicked workers who run in packs looking for someone to maul with their false circumcision.

We are the true circumcision—those who worship God in Spirit and make our boast in Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King—so we do not rely on what we have accomplished in the flesh.

If any try to throw around their pedigrees to you, remember my résumé—which is more impressive than theirs. I was circumcised on the eighth day—as the law prescribes—born of the nation of Israel, descended from the tribe of Benjamin. I am a Hebrew born of Hebrews; I have observed the law according to the strict piety of the Pharisees, separate from those embracing a less rigorous kind of Judaism. Zealous? Yes. I ruthlessly pursued and persecuted the church. And when it comes to the righteousness required by the law, my record is spotless.

But whatever I used to count as my greatest accomplishments, I’ve written them off as a loss because of the Anointed One. And more so, I now realize that all I gained and thought was important was nothing but yesterday’s garbage compared to knowing the Anointed Jesus my Lord. For Him I have thrown everything aside—it’s nothing but a pile of waste—so that I may gain Him. When it counts, I want to be found belonging to Him, not clinging to my own righteousness based on law, but actively relying on the faithfulness of the Anointed One. This is true righteousness, supplied by God, acquired by faith. I want to know Him inside and out. I want to experience the power of His resurrection and join in His suffering, shaped by His death, so that I may arrive safely at the resurrection from the dead.

I’m not there yet, nor have I become perfect; but I am charging on to gain anything and everything the Anointed One, Jesus, has in store for me—and nothing will stand in my way because He has grabbed me and won’t let me go. Brothers and sisters, as I said, I know I have not arrived; but there’s one thing I am doing: I’m leaving my old life behind, putting everything on the line for this mission. I am sprinting toward the only goal that counts: to cross the line, to win the prize, and to hear God’s call to resurrection life found exclusively in Jesus the Anointed. All of us who are mature ought to think the same way about these matters. If you have a different attitude, then God will reveal this to you as well. For now, let’s hold on to what we have been shown and keep in step with these teachings.

Imitate me, brothers and sisters, and look around to those already following the example we have set. I have warned you before (and now say again through my tears) that we have many enemies—people who reject the cross of the Anointed. They are ruled by their bellies, their glory comes by shame, and their minds are fixed on the things of this world. They are doomed. But we are citizens of heaven, exiles on earth waiting eagerly for a Liberator, our Lord Jesus the Anointed, to come and transform these humble, earthly bodies into the form of His glorious body by the same power that brings all things under His control.

The Letter of Philippians, Chapter 3 (The Voice)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 13th chapter of the book of Jeremiah that continues with Judgment for idolatry and lies:

The Eternal directed me.

Eternal One: Go and buy a linen undergarment; put it around your waist next to your body beneath your clothes, but do not wash it.

So I bought the undergarment, just as the Eternal had told me, and put it around my waist. Then the Eternal spoke to me a second time.

Eternal One: Now take off this undergarment you’ve purchased and have been wearing around your waist, and go to the Euphrates. I want you to hide it in a crevice in the rocks there.

So I took the undergarment to the Euphrates and hid it in the rocks, just as the Eternal told me. After many days had passed, the Eternal spoke to me a third time.

Eternal One: Now go back to the Euphrates, and get the linen undergarment I told you to hide there.

When I went back and dug up this garment from the place where I’d hidden it, I found it had begun to rot. This garment that was once new and clean was now completely worthless. The word of the Eternal came to me to drive home His point.

Eternal One: Mark My words, for the same thing will happen to the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. I will ruin these haughty and wicked people who ignore My words, who follow their own stubborn hearts, who run after other gods, who bow down to lifeless idols. They will end up like this rotten undergarment in your hands—completely worthless! Just as the undergarment clings to a person’s waist, so did I, the Eternal One, make Israel and Judah to cling tightly to Me. They were to be My people, known by all, bringing honor and glory to My name. That was My plan for them, but they did not listen.

Eternal One: Speak this word to the people as well: “Listen to what the Eternal, the God of Israel, has to say: ‘Every jug will be filled with wine.’ When they respond, ‘Tell us something we don’t already know, prophet! Don’t you think we know that every jug will be filled with wine?’ Go on telling them, ‘This is what the Eternal says: “I am going to fill all who live in this land with drunkenness—the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the false prophets, and all the citizens of Jerusalem. And then I will smash them together in confusion and panic—smashing fathers against sons in the chaos of the enemy invasion. I will have no pity on them. My sorrow or compassion will not keep Me from ruining them.”’”

Listen carefully to me!

Stop being so smug, because the Eternal has spoken.

It is time to honor the Eternal your God before He makes the darkness fall

and you stumble on the darkening mountains.

You will long for the light,

but He will make the darkness deepen as the gloom settles in.

If you still won’t listen, I will weep for you in secret.

From the depths of my soul, I will cry bitter tears,

Because the Eternal’s own flock will be taken captive.

Tell the king and the queen mother:

“Come down from your thrones, and take a seat in a humble place,

for your glorious crowns will be taken from you.”

The cities in the Negev have already shut their gates.

There will be no one to open them.

The people of Judah will be taken captive,

all of them carried away into exile.

(to Jerusalem) Now look to the north and see who is marching toward you.

Where is the beautiful flock that was entrusted to you?

What will you say when He appoints your so-called allies,

the very ones you trained, to rule over you?

Will not the pain stab at you

as it does a woman in childbirth?

When you begin to ask yourself, “Why is all this happening to me?”

know this: it is because of the weight of your sins.

This is why your enemies will tear off your skirts and violate your bodies.

And still, you will not change.

Can the Ethiopian change his skin?

Can a leopard change its spots?

It seems just as unlikely that you will change your ways and do good,

when you are so used to doing evil—it has become such a part of you.

Eternal One (to His people): This is why I will scatter you

like chaff driven by the desert wind.

This is now your fate—retribution measured out for you from the Eternal—

for you have forgotten Me and trusted in the lies of another.

For all this, I will be the One who lifts your skirts over your face,

exposing you and letting others see your disgrace.

As for your faithlessness, your adulteries and your lustful ways,

as for the degrading way you prostitute yourself to other gods out in the open, I see it all.

For all this, your fate is sealed. O Jerusalem—how bad it will be for you!

How long before you are clean again?

The Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 13 (The Voice)

A link to my personal reading of the Scriptures for Thursday, August 26 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons about the sacred promise of being in Love:

“I go to prepare a place for you... on the other side of this veil; the place of my secret chamber. Look into my eyes before I go; see my heart's passion: I am aflame for you, and yet I must go; I must... There is no other way but through, through the waste places, into the darkest pitch, across that chasm... But don't let your heart be troubled, for this demonstrates my love and seals my word to you forever. And though we must be apart for a season, I swear I will come again for you, to take you through this veil to be with me forever. Do not lose heart, my beloved. I am coming soon; my hand is upon the door...”

Do you have trouble receiving these words as your own? Henri Nouwen keenly wrote: “There are two realities to which you must cling. First, God has promised that you will receive the love you have been searching for, and second, God is faithful to that promise.” You must believe the “yes” that comes back when you ask, “Do you love me?” You must choose this “yes” even when you do not experience it” (Voice of Love). You have to trust the place that is solid, despite the gnawing sense of inner emptiness and the inevitable changes of life... [Hebrew for Christians]

8.25.21 • Facebook

and another about being in Light:

In the Gospel of John it is recorded that Yeshua said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (i.e., ᾽Εγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή), no one can come to the Father apart from my hand" (John 14:6). The Greek word translated "truth" in this verse is aletheia (ἀλήθεια), a compound word formed from an alpha prefix (α-) meaning "not," and lethei (λήθη), meaning "forgetfulness." Truth is therefore a kind of "remembering" something forgotten, or a recollecting of what is essentially real. Etymologically, the word aletheia suggests that truth is also "unforgettable" (i.e., not lethei), that is, it has its own inherent and irresistible "witness" to reality. People may pretend or even lie to themselves, but ultimately the truth has the final word... "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5).

"For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light (Psalm 36:9). When you enter a dark room with a lamp, the darkness flees and is overcome by the light. So also with teshuvah: When we turn to the Lord spiritual darkness is overcome by the Divine Radiance. In Yeshua is life, the light of the world; those who receive Him behold ohr ha’chayim (אוֹר הַחַיִּים) - the “light of life.”

During this Season of Teshuvah -- and always -- may the LORD God of Israel help us walk in the unforgettable and irrepressible radiance of His glory. May God help us shine with good works that glorify God's Name (Matt. 5:16). "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness' (יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי־אוֹר), has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Yeshua the Messiah" (2 Cor. 4:6). [Hebrew for Christians]

8.26.21 • Facebook

from an email by Glenn Jackson that reflects upon (A secret elopement):

August 26th

* According to My divine Justice, Truth must be revealed, in His Absoluteness, to the masses in this final hour. And, as the Spirit of Truth is poured out upon all mankind [through a Glorious Church] it will SURELY turn the world "upside down" - and only those who have made the steadfast choice to harden their heart against me shall remain under the "deceptive practices" of the Evil One.

For in these days, the knowledge of My Glory [manifested Presence] shall begin to "flood" the earth as never before and the Enemy and his schemes shall be put to flight at every turn. This will usher in a "torrent" of My divine Prosperity and Goodness [divine Favor] in the midst of My people that will lead vast multitudes into an "exact" [revelative] knowledge of My true Nature and Character - and, then, in a short while, I shall "catch up" all those who have truly aligned their hearts with Me and there will be a glorious Feast in Heaven for seven years.

THEN, after that time, we shall mount our final attack on the Evil One and his forces - and, in defeat, he shall be chained in the "bottomless pit" - and, so, shall My Dear Son establish the fullness of His divine Government in the earth for a thousand years.

...."For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words".... 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18 NASB

...."And a voice came from the throne, saying, "Give praise to our God, all you His bond-servants, you who fear Him, the small and the great." Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, "Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready." It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he *said to me, "Write, 'Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.'" And he *said to me, "These are true words of God."... Revelation 19:5-9 NASB

"These will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with Him are the called and chosen and faithful".... Revelation 17:14 NASB

...."And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, "KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS".... Revelation 19:11-16 NASB

...."And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season".... Revelation 20:1-3 NASB

...."And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." And He who sits on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new." And He *said, "Write, for these words are faithful and true".... Revelation 21:3-5 NASB

Today’s message (Days of Praise) from the Institute for Creation Research

August 26, 2021

Our Rock: The Creator

“Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.” (Deuteronomy 32:18)

Just before his death, Moses predicted the coming apostasy of Israel in a prophetic “history” of Israel. Not only did his prophecy come true for the nation of Israel, but the same could be said for much of Western Christianity today.

Moses recounted the fact that Israel had been blessed greatly of the Lord, but instead of drawing closer to Him, they grew “fat, and...Forsook God which made [them], and lightly esteemed the Rock of [their] salvation” (Deuteronomy 32:15). The use of the term “rock” refers to the rock that Moses struck, yielding water to sustain them in the parched desert region. The rock followed the people on their journeys and provided an ever-present reminder of God’s marvelous provision. (If one should further doubt as to the identity of the Rock, “that Rock was Christ,” 1 Corinthians 10:4.) They totally forgot, however, the God of their creation and salvation, and sacrificed to demons, old gods, and to any new gods around (Deuteronomy 32:17).

God has given us life, and without His daily sustenance all life would cease. How foolish it is to attempt to live life without the One “that begat” us—who gave us life and even now maintains it. All too often the Creator God is excluded from our churches, our government, and our schools. Even many Christians live their lives as practical atheists, making decisions and living their lives just as if no God exists. Let us recommit ourselves to giving the rightful place in our lives and in our sphere of influence to “the Rock that begat” us.

“I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deuteronomy 32:3-4). JDM

[monotype-on-phantom]

Another Analysis of Danny? Yeah, I Guess So.

Not too long ago, I stated that I headcanon the entire Fenton family as neurodivergent. This led to quite a bit of discussion, and eventually I said that I specifically think Danny has clinical depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

I didn’t really go into more detail, because while those are all things I myself suffer from, I want to tread carefully when talking about things like this. The last thing I’d want to do is accidentally say something hurtful.

However, multiple followers expressed interest in me going into more detail about why I have these headcanons. Since these are all things I actually struggle with, they reasoned that my personal experience would help me address this with tact.

So, alright. I’m giving in.

As a disclaimer, I’m not a psychologist and I don’t have a ton of knowledge about psychology. I’m just a dude who likes seeing himself in characters he relates to. This is going to be more based on my own personal experience than anything else.

Now that you know all that, let’s finally get into it.

To keep things organized, I’ll just go through each one individually. A lot of symptoms of these mental illnesses can overlap, so this will keep things from getting messy.

Since the depression was the first one I picked up on, let’s start with that.

Clinical Depression

My Brother’s Keeper is a good one to address this. Granted, Spectra’s MO is making people feel miserable, but she does that by picking at struggles the kids are already dealing with, not by necessarily causing those struggles (though she’s willing to do that, too).

I’ve heard depression described by others who have it as “the emotional equivalent of watching paint dry,” and I don’t think there’s a better description for it in the world.

Depression is way more than just being sad all the time. More often than not, I find it’s just a feeling of emptiness and hopelessness. When I’m in a bad depressive episode, I just stop feeling like things matter. Everything sucks and it’s not getting better, so what’s the point in trying?

Danny shows a lot of the symptoms that come with this feeling of hopelessness. He doesn’t eat or sleep very well. His energy levels are usually very low. He doesn’t have as much motivation to do things that he enjoys. He fixates on his failures and past mistakes and blames himself for most things that go wrong in his life. He has a harder time focusing on things, particularly in class. He can be forgetful and not notice details that might seem obvious.

A lot of these things are caused by his ghost hunting, but since Danny has made it clear that he doesn’t enjoy it, and every time he tries to take some time to himself it backfires, it makes perfect sense for him to feel trapped and hopeless.

Ghost fighting is one of the causes for his depression, not a replacement for it.

I’ve also mentioned that Danny is a really angry child, and anger can be a symptom of depression. When you’re feeling down all the time, you can become more irritable. Things bother you more. You lash out more. Even small things can get to you.

My Brother’s Keeper is, again, a good example of this. Danny’s lashing out at Jazz a lot, and even his friends notice that he’s taking things more seriously than usual. This is far from being exclusive to this episode, though. The Fright Before Christmas and Life Lessons both show Danny being irritable and frustrated, even though he usually still means well enough.

Danny even lashes out at Dash sometimes, someone that he’s afraid of, because he’s just too tired to deal with his crap.

Danny’s irritability was actually one of the biggest clues for me that he has depression, coupled with his tendency to degrade or blame himself.

As someone who deals with this, let me tell you, depression is exhausting. Even though I’m usually not doing much, the empty feeling alone zaps me of my energy. A lot of the time, I just want to sleep through my days and not bother with anything. I’m not allowed to, though, so I can get irritable.

Even if you don’t have depression, you’re probably familiar with this feeling. When you’re kept up late at night or you’ve had a rough day at work, you’ll feel exhausted, and that results in you getting annoyed more easily. Small things like people leaving the toilet seat up or the kids being noisy or people repeatedly knocking on the door will drive you crazy, when they’re usually not that big of a deal. You’re tired, and you don’t want to deal with even these small annoyances. You just want to be left alone.

It’s worth noting that Tucker, Sam, and Jazz don’t have these struggles, despite also being moody teens with a lot of pressure on them. They have bad days, but they’re usually more chipper than Danny (yes, even Sam.)

To me, Danny is a textbook example of a depressed teen. It’s not even a question. This kid needs to talk to someone. Unfortunately, he’s not looking to do that any time soon.

Anxiety

There are a huge number of anxiety disorders, and I’m still not the best at differentiating between them. I don’t often feel the need to pinpoint exactly what’s causing the anxiety. For me, it’s just when certain things happen (or don’t), the warning bells start ringing in my head and I struggle to focus on anything else. In a lot of ways, it’s like hearing that music in a horror movie right before something scary happens, except nothing ever happens. The music just keeps playing, making you feel more and more worried about what’s coming next.

The anxiety disorders I’m the most familiar with (meaning the ones I struggle with the most) are social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. I don’t feel like I need to cover the first one much, though, because despite being shy and self-conscious, Danny doesn’t really panic when he has to be in social situations. He can be awkward, but he can brush off embarrassment easily enough and he doesn’t have an issue with badmouthing people he dislikes to their faces. These are all things I’d die before doing.

The fact that he can stomach social situations alright doesn’t prevent him from worrying about every other thing that could possibly go wrong, though.

While not as common as Angry Danny, Panic Mode Danny shows up with some regularity.

Public Enemies (and TFM, though I don’t wanna rely on that example) is a good episode to demonstrate this.

The town’s on high alert and ghosts are everywhere, but just about everyone is handling the situation better than Danny. His paranoia is warranted, but he can’t bring himself to focus on anything except for what could go wrong. He overthinks all the details and worries excessively about all of them.

Danny’s parents are at his school. Ghosts keep showing up at the worst times. Danny doesn’t even know that Walker’s behind everything or what he’s up to, but he’s not in the right state of mind to think about that. This isn’t Detective Danny Time, this is Worry Time. And it prevents him from being as productive as he could be.

One of A Kind is another good example, where Danny’s so worried about Skulker that he can’t even eat, though Sam and Tucker are trying to encourage him to. It’s not like the eating itself is dangerous (as far as he knows), but he’s too busy worrying to even think about eating.

He’ll also worry about things that wouldn’t actually turn out as bad as he thinks. He fears his parents dissecting him if they find out his secret, or Valerie not liking him if she finds out, or Vlad being behind every bad thing that happens, even when he’s actually not.

It’s not as pronounced as his depression, but when Danny worries, he worries hard and can even get extremely paranoid. It even starts getting so bad that Danny himself starts questioning if he’s hallucinating in The Fenton Menace, because his constant worrying and paranoia fit that explanation. (And that’s the last time I’m referencing that episode in here. Bleh.)

There’s another disorder that’s classified as a type of anxiety, though, and I don’t think there’s any point in arguing that Danny has that.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

This one’s far less about Danny showing symptoms (though there’s that, too), and more about the fact that no child who goes through the stuff he does would not have PTSD.

The symptoms of PTSD overlap a lot with depression and other anxiety disorders. Things like guilt, negative thoughts, feeling on edge, constantly looking out for danger, and struggling to feel happy or even to trust others are a few symptoms that can overlap with depression and anxiety. The difference is that, with PTSD, these things are triggered by a specific, traumatic event. And that’s where most of my focus is.

Danny’s been shot at by his own parents, hunted, tortured, brainwashed, threatened with experiments and even actually been experimented on (counting the cloning experiments), almost died several times, listened to his parents talk about wanting to dissect him, watched loved ones die (even if they ended up being alright), and that’s not even mentioning some of the other stuff Vlad puts him through or the fact that he was ruthlessly bullied long before any of this happened.

For me, it’s less a matter of if Danny was negatively impacted by all of this and more a matter of how in the world could he not be?

As previously mentioned, a lot of his anxiety and depression is the result of his ghost fighting. He’s paranoid about danger showing up at any time. He’s always trying to stay alert. He barely sleeps or eats. He blames himself when things go wrong. He doesn’t even trust his parents anymore, eventually believing that, if they found out he was half ghost, they’d dissect him without hesitation.

Heck, even the accident that gave him his ghost powers seems to have had a huge effect on him. He’s questioning his own humanity, he’s understandably afraid around a lot of his parents’ technology, he’s paranoid about being found out and not being accepted.

Personally, though,  I feel the show should’ve shown more effects. There’s no way he doesn’t have a fear of mental health specialists after what happened with Spectra. Is there anyone who thinks he wouldn’t have nightmares about things that happened in The Ultimate Enemy, Kindred Spirits, and D-Stabilized? How much does he remember from Control Freaks, and how often does he think about it? How much more does he let himself get hurt because he’s terrified of turning into Dan?

In a better show, this stuff would’ve been explored more thoroughly, but as it is, I don’t think there’s any denying that this kid’s been traumatized. Hopefully Jazz can get her psychology degree quickly, because she’s probably the only psychologist Danny would trust, and he needs to talk to one.

And I think that covers things well enough. I did also mention that I think the Fentons all show symptoms of ADHD, but that’s another can of worms entirely. Besides, this post is long enough as it is. I’m pretty sure I’ve been working on this for over two hours straight. I’ll just leave things here for now, and maybe I’ll touch on the ADHD in the future (if people are interested).

Thank you for your patience, everyone! And now I can move on to other things that people may or may not have been waiting for since this blog began.

[adversitybloomed-a]

🌸┊ @xthesparequeen​ asked:    What is a something you regret?

Truth Serum! II ACCEPTING your muses can now ask mine anything and they will be forced to answer honestly! Or you can send anons!

𝕚 𝕨𝕚𝕤𝕙 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕙𝕒𝕕 𝕟𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕒𝕤𝕜𝕖𝕕

                          her gaze glazed over as memory triggered to her past. it was nearly a YEAR to this day as she neared the completion of her strict training. her ORDERS clear as day, as the emperors command could not be ignored. in the dead of night, dressed within all black with her face covered so she could not be seen for WHO she was, she stole into the night. weapons decorated her body, blades ready for the kill that awaited her. two others -- - ASSASSINS who were to watch her complete her last test and mission joined. each positioned on top of the walls, WATCHING her move swiftly within the house. 

                             she knew only that she had no choice but to complete the orders given, OR MORE BLOOD would have been split on this night and dishonor would come to her family name. and so she moved swiftly into the house, her steps silent as her heart raced. her mind, TIRED from the consent hours of training, beatings and fighting left her feeling bare as she went into each room. the first kill of the night, three woman, two who served as the husbands concubines to bare him male heirs, the other his main wife. she did not give herself time to feel as she KNEW her that she had no choice but to turn on the children, the two men WATCHING from the shadows should she fail. a single tear fell from her eyes, as she cut down the guards who came into the room, TRYING to defend their master who coward into the corner, tossing things her way. 

                                                                 𝖘𝖍𝖊 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖇𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖔𝖋 𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖓𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙 

                            for non of their blades could touch her. BLOOD SOAKED through her clothing, splattering around her. the WARMTH of it forgotten within the moment as she DANCED WITH DEATH. 

ℂ𝕦𝕥 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕧𝕠𝕚𝕕, 𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 𝕓𝕖𝕨𝕚𝕝𝕕𝕖𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥. ℂ𝕦𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕖𝕟𝕖𝕞𝕪 𝕒𝕤 𝕢𝕦𝕚𝕔𝕜𝕝𝕪 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕕𝕚𝕣𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕝𝕪 𝕒𝕤 𝕡𝕠𝕤𝕤𝕚𝕓𝕝𝕖. ℂ𝕦𝕥 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕪. ℂ𝕦𝕥 𝕕𝕖𝕔𝕚𝕤𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕝𝕪, 𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕝𝕦𝕥𝕖𝕝𝕪. ℂ𝕦𝕥 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕖𝕟𝕘𝕥𝕙. 𝔽𝕝𝕠𝕨 𝕥𝕙𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕘𝕒𝕡𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕘𝕦𝕒𝕣𝕕. ℂ𝕦𝕥 𝕙𝕚𝕞. ℂ𝕦𝕥 𝕙𝕚𝕞 𝕕𝕠𝕨𝕟 𝕦𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕝𝕪. 𝔻𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕠𝕨 𝕙𝕚𝕞 𝕒 𝕓𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕙. ℂ𝕣𝕦𝕤𝕙 𝕙𝕚𝕞. ℂ𝕦𝕥 𝕙𝕚𝕞 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕥 𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕔𝕪 𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕡𝕥𝕙𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕤𝕡𝕚𝕣𝕚𝕥. 𝕀𝕥 𝕚𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕓𝕒𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕥𝕠 𝕝𝕚𝕗𝕖: 𝕕𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕙. 𝕀𝕥 𝕚𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕕𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕙.

                               the chat from her lessons SUNG within her head. her blade moving with swift motions soon none were left standing. the battle had been over with quickly, THE BLOOD of innocence resting upon her skin, CAUSING IT TO BURN. her breath was heavy with realization of what she had done, bodies of those she was MEANT to target and those who had stepped in her path around her. claps could be heard behind her, as the two assassins emerged. ICY GAZE stared towards her as they nodded their approval. she looked down at her weapon, the blade once SHINING now dripped red to the ground. she remembered to show NOTHING -- - for any weakness with these two would only lead to failure. yet her heart RACED in dread. 

                                                       𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 

                              all she had longed for was to be a PROTECTOR to those who were innocent -- - to guard and bring HONOR to herself, to her family and to her kingdom. yet here she stood, degraded and torn. WHERE WAS THE HONOR IN THIS?

                                 that evening, as she returned to the training grounds, she said nothing to anyone. instead she made her way to her room and only once alone did her PANIC set in. she could barely BREATH as she ripped off her clothing, tossing it into the flames before rushing to the bathroom to PUKE. her body shook as she looked at herself, the dried blood upon her making her feel nothing but HATRED for her actions. rushing to the water, she drew a bath, desperate to wash off the FEELING upon her skin. she did not wait for the water to raise and instead began to scrub herself, TEARING at her skin in desperation as she sobbed. for hours, she cleaned herself, until her skin felt raw and RED. after she knelt at the side of the tub, uncaring if she was undressed and wet, as her mind broke itself into two.  it was within that time she swore to herself she would not allow herself to become an assassin again -- - SHE WOULD NOT TAKE THE LIFE OF AN INNOCENT just to appease her emperor and prove her loyalty. instead, she would rise above this, and take their faces into her heart.

                                   blinking herself into awareness, she felt once more the TEARS begin to form within her dark gaze. lifting herself from the QUEENS side, she took to walking towards the window, HOPING none would learn her dark secret. her hands began to shake as she placed them before her, MEMORY threatening to trigger another episode as she sighed.  ❝   ...not saying no... ❞   she whispered in a broken tone, refusing to speak another word as she tried to focus on collecting herself. 

SIDE NOTE: this is a personal hc of mine. the final test mulan had to do was kill a man who had given secrets away that threatened the emperor. depending on the enemy within the movie, the emperor learned the hard way not to let the children or family of the enemy live, and so her orders were clear. KILL THEM ALL. being young at the time & having completed a really gruesome two years of training without seeing her family or speaking to them. she felt she had no choice but to complete these dark orders and after developed a fear of having blood of others spilled upon her, if its by her own hand. thus her reason for constantly wanting to stay clean. 

she is able to actually kill, especially on the battlefield, and will not show her internal suffering until she is alone. there is only one person she has TOLD the truth to and thats hanzo ( @koeii​ ) because he has seen this trigger happen on a couple of occasions, plus her nightmares from it, along from war. the other person who knows, would be Jesse ( @huckleberrytm​ ) because he would have been there when it happened, and heard about what she did. i am pretty sure she would have let him seen her that night too. 

sorry for the dark theme, go have water and a cookie. byeeee

[pax-deimos]

(jamie campbell bower ) ・゜。・。・゜ pax deimos who is the child of pain is 23 years old and grew up on the isle. they didn’t have magic before the charmings gained the throne, and now they’ve noticed they can disappear. they use he/they pronouns and are demisexual (polyamourous). i wonder how they’ll handle their new magic….

Carrying the actual name Halphax but far preferring to use the nickname ‘Pax’, there are really only a handful of people who know it’s not a given name. Even fewer know that the nickname comes from the sister and her pronouncing parts of it wrong when she was learning to speak.

Pax did not grow up in any sort of luxury, like most of the kids from the Isle the first in life being nothing was fair, and second that anything a person wanted they had to be smart enough to grab for themselves. The only real ease in the misery were parents who actually cared and a few true friends to count on. That home was still at best a mess though, even by Isle standards.

Being raised in dire straights Pax has a hang-up when it comes to food and grows uneasy when hungry, loves to eat; somehow that metabolism keeps up with the extremes but very often in the habit of eating when stressed. Very wary of not be able to keep that ache at bay, it’s something of an old fear from childhood. That has translated to being rather good at cooking however, with an impressive amount of skill in the idea.

One of the hardest points in life for Pax was the loss of their younger sister Lezabel due to the difficult life on the Isle and the terrible conditions. She died shortly after Pax turned thirteen, being only six herself, from sickness that Pax knows could have been easily treated outside the Isle. There was no way for the family to reach out for help beyond that prison at the time, however. Losing her left a deep scar and a bitterness towards those with power over the lives of others, those who have never tasted the ache of feeling so helpless being unable to save someone who was guilty of nothing more than being born under a family name considered ‘evil’.

Pax disappeared around the age of fifteen, hellbent on the idea that not being there would make everything better for the family with one less person to look after and still unable to shake the recent loss. There was a huge amount of difference between surviving with the protection of a family and surviving alone, however, as they quickly learned. Upon returning, long months later, the family was more than happy but Pax wasn’t the same after that; more confident but also more grateful for those who cared.

On the subject of family, Pax’s parents have always adored them. Pain, having never been known as more than Hades’ minion, is exceedingly proud of Pax for never taking that easier route instead of being independent. One of the reasons Pax struggles so much with anger towards the royal families is knowing how much misery and degrading treatment Pain suffered, and being determined to never see that happen again.

Pax is a master manipulator, knows how to throw on the false charm and flash a winning smile, then dig claws into anyone foolish enough to trust those intentions. Knows how to get what they want and when something is in reach there isn’t much to stop that effort; Pax learned far too well how to play the game of letting someone else take the fall. Acting the part of minion is easy enough when you know how to feed the boss’ ego and let them think they’re in charge, but running the show behind the scenes is where Pax really shines.

Loyalty is something that is practically iron with Pax. Incredibly difficult to gain because it does have to be earned, they do not offer it easily. It’s very easy to forge weak bonds and false promises but real loyalty is reserved for a very few. Pax really only fully bonds with those closest to them, and bonds excessively and with an almost fixated affection towards them. In spite of all the rough edges, when it comes to friends Pax is a surprisingly good one, playful at times but deeply compassionate and devoted to those they care about.

Not exactly what most would call a moral person, Pax is without a doubt a follower of whims and chasing desires. Much of life is about pushing the limits, striving for the impossible and gaining everything. When in the company of people on even ground they’re happy to share the blame but if it’s a matter of having someone of higher standing there to take the blame that’s where it will land. There’s something deeply satisfying in knowing that the sort of treatment Pain suffered as a minion to higher powers can be paid back bit by bit in tripping up those who would try to rule over others.

One of the few exceptions to the rule of breaking down the higher ups would be Hades’ son; the boy has always treated them like a friend rather than a minion and that has forged a deep and strong friendship between them. Pax is always quick to pull Hadie along into wayward plans but will turn around and viciously defend him if things go wrong. The only other person who holds as much close regard to Pax is their ‘uncle’ Panic’s son Zeffer, whom they consider a counterpart in lofty goals and other half of sorts.

Pax is extremely clumsy, it’s hardly a normal day that doesn’t end it with a few bruises and cuts along the way. All of life that affliction has followed and a seemingly natural talent for injury as well, so much that Pax has learned to ignore the small aches and such that goes with it. Stubborn to a fault about that, better to grin and bear it than show weakness.

A recent discovery, magic, where as they never had any before now Pax has a fledgling ability to disappear. Since only beginning to use this talent, and frankly uses it mostly to sneak up and scare people, it can be unpredictable. It pops up at random, usually when Pax is upset, which then causes a panic worse not being sure of how to be visible again. When they panic that much generally Pax has to be talked down, otherwise they can’t calm down enough to get a hold back on the power. They’re actually deeply afraid of entirely disappearing one day, but refuses to admit it to most people.

Being quite the liar by design, and amusement, any story Pax tells might change at any given time. Most people who know them have figured out how to tell when it’s some trick but Pax is shamelessly entertained by crafting the most outlandish tales and exaggerating things to a point well beyond any logical belief.

Pax carries a chip on their shoulder over the fact that Pain wasn’t a ‘proper’ demon and rather an imp. Pax does love their dad but is not too fond of the idea of just being an imp and has goals of finding some sort of magic that will make them not only a demon, but a full demon with real powers like possession and shadow manipulation. Don’t point out that Pax is an imp, it’s very likely to get someone punched in the face.

Early on in life Pax came to the conclusion that they didn’t fit the typical idea of gender. Very often felt neither extreme and at times both very strongly, but there was never much desire to sort out the logic of pronouns and such. Pax uses agendered by default but is for the most part non-binary, just as apt to play with gender roles and ideas than not any given day without much regard to what other people might think.

It’s no more odd to Pax to flirt with either gender, but is distinctly set on the idea of not sharing their bed with just any stranger they might have caught the eye of. Pax is demisexual and polyamorous, but tends to stick to the idea of intimate contact with friends only without trying to sort out the romantic notions to things. Pax loves their friends, they’re playmates and partners in crime, and that’s about as close to the idea of relationships as Pax can really grasp.

There is an ongoing project, since childhood when Pax first came to the conclusion that one day they would leave the Isle behind and find their own fate, that Pax has worked tirelessly on. It’s The List, otherwise known as ‘The List of People Pax Will One Day Destroy’ and has been re-written endless times in an old notebook stashed away. Littered with notes and names, and sometimes just titles of people never met but somehow use their power to keep those like themself in misery, it’s a delusional security blanket of sorts that Pax buries into when feeling overwhelmed; a nice little focus for frustrations in life.

It’s very true that Pax has some sadomasochistic tendencies and views a little bit of edge in life as interesting. Pax finds that pain, perhaps because of their own linage, is one of those purest sensations in life. To suffer for another person is a very worthwhile thing, something only granted to those worthy of trust entirely, to suffer for a cause makes it all the more important. Pax operates entirely on the lines of willing victims, unless of course they’re out on the trail of some enemy, so for Pax it truly is all fun and games, and maybe even a little of their own version of twisted affection.

[courtneytincher]

How to Prepare for Gray-Zone Competition

“Under present-day U.S. posture in the region, most American and allied bases and forward-deployed ships, troops and aircraft would struggle to survive a PLA salvo attack, and would be initially forced to focus on damage limitation rather than blunting the thrust of a Chinese offensive.”This rather ominous-sounding assertion from the newly released Averting Crisis study is not a new revelation. It has been the normal state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula from 1950, as well as a compelling state of affairs in Europe and other places during the Cold War. It is a new threat to Japan, where we are still deployed and organized much as we were during the Korean conflict. The fighting then was on the peninsula, and Japan was a sanctuary. Since the end of the Cold War we’ve become very comfortable with the luxury of bases as sanctuaries, complete with Baskin Robbins thirty-one flavors and weekly surf-and-turf dinners.Moving out of range is not an option. We should have learned, from our 9/11 attack, if not from Pearl Harbor in 1941, that this gambit is highly dubious. Nothing is “out of range.” Today weapons have global reach and have forward-deployed presence in every domain of conflict. More important is that our allies cannot change their geography. As a Japanese general reminded a Council of Foreign Relations audience a few years ago, “Japan is already under the Chinese [anti-access, aerial-denial] umbrella.” And Seoul, the capital of South Korea and one of the world’s largest mega-cities, is within range of a massive arsenal of rocket and tube artillery in North Korea’s Kaesong Heights, a clear and present danger. Our forces there, and the South Korean forces of course, maintain a “fight tonight” posture and readiness condition for good reason.China and North Korea have developed abilities to project power well beyond the confines of their geography, ensuring that any renewed Korean conflict will not be confined to Korea. This power projection plays a key role in today’s “gray zone” competition as a powerful instrument of coercion and cost-imposition. North Korea continues its missile and nuclear programs, regularly demonstrating their missile achievements in clear violation of UN sanctions. China continues to expand its comprehensive power projection with their Maritime Militia, state-controlled mercantilism, armed fishing vessels, PLA ships and aircraft and other means penetrating the sea and air space of their neighbors on a daily basis. China celebrates their “Guam killer” and “carrier killer” missiles. Surveillance is pervasive and ubiquitous, and weapons are accurate at distance.Bases are hardly obsolete. Our bases in Korea, Japan and elsewhere serve vital political and military objectives long before the master arming switch is turned on. They show our commitment to our allies and friends in a very profound way. As many know from practical experience, the presence of our forces in allied countries requires constant compromise on the principles of sovereignty on the part of both parties. This is hardly theoretical, and is more accurately a daily, even hourly, engagement. Policy and strategy of both countries have to align at the top, of course. But it’s equally essential that the continuous contact between our servicemembers and the local communities be productive and welcomed. Bases also are the only cost-effective way to develop, maintain and train forces in a forward-deployed posture. Bases also provide a cost-effective way to develop and expand alliance combined capabilities. This capability development within our alliance forces is critical if we are to integrate, in real time, the fires and maneuver of our forces in defense of Japan, Korea, and the First Island Chain.We are not obligated to fight from our bases, but we can. We practice operations under attack from air bases, and we’re adept at rapid runway repair and other necessary functions. An attack, even a surprise attack, is not necessarily the end of the issue. Readers of a certain age will recall our massive aerial campaign against North Vietnam and its forces. The result should relieve any panic that even a sudden salvo attack will force us or our allies to surrender.The study does make a strong point. Unexamined doctrine becomes dogma, no longer relevant to the problem. As technology advances, military doctrine and organization must change, or suffer the fate of the combatants in World War I. In that unlikely conflict triggered by a single assassin, the nations of Europe marched to conflict seemingly unaware of the cumulative combat effects of early twentieth century technology. Inconclusive stalemate, massive carnage, and the collapse of four empires followed, and war returned around the globe in a couple decades. The technology of our era brings more changes more frequently, even adding more combat domains to the familiar air, land and sea battlefields. Adaptation is critical.Advances in surveillance, weapons accurate at distance and other factors led Defense Secretary Robert Gates to call for our forces to adopt a “widely distributed, politically sustainable, operationally resilient” posture. Defense Secretary James Mattis expanded this concept in our National Defense Strategy, describing our needed operational force posture in four layers: contact, blunt, surge and war-winning. Contact forces are widely distributed continuously in execution of our “engagement” operations, competing in the growing “gray zone” competition. Blunt forces “delay, degrade or deny adversary aggression.” Given intelligence warning time and competent decisionmaking, these forces would assume a widely distributed posture across air, land and sea.The power of the air and sea threat means that we can no longer allow forces on the ground to await the arrival of the enemy. Battles will not be sequential. They must be integral to the fight for air and sea control. Ground forces deployed in compact, agile and mobile “company task force” elements, equipped with weapons capable of reaching out at distance, would integrate their fires and in support of air and naval elements in the fight to maintain air and sea control. These concepts and more are embedded in various emerging service doctrines. These include the Marines’ “Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations”—EABO in the inevitable acronym. This name was deliberately chosen to emphasize a return to the Marine Corps’ role in combat ashore within naval campaigns. The U.S. Army is rapidly developing “cross domain” and “multi domain” operational concepts in pursuit of similar goals.Much work remains to be done to bring these concepts to operational deployment. Distributed operations require distributed logistics, but emerging technology helps here, too. In Afghanistan Marines employed the K-Max twin-rotor cargo helicopter, originally built for the logging industry in logistics support. The single pilot was replaced with autonomous systems. Only one example, for sure, but it is an indicator of things to come. The journey to update our doctrine and organization has begun, but Mattis and others are gone, and every bureaucracy and organization tends to resist change. We can’t let that happen.Wallace C. Gregson, a retired Marine and former assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs (2009–11), is currently a senior advisor at Avascent International and senior director for China and the Pacific at the Center for the National Interest.Image: Reuters

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

“Under present-day U.S. posture in the region, most American and allied bases and forward-deployed ships, troops and aircraft would struggle to survive a PLA salvo attack, and would be initially forced to focus on damage limitation rather than blunting the thrust of a Chinese offensive.”This rather ominous-sounding assertion from the newly released Averting Crisis study is not a new revelation. It has been the normal state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula from 1950, as well as a compelling state of affairs in Europe and other places during the Cold War. It is a new threat to Japan, where we are still deployed and organized much as we were during the Korean conflict. The fighting then was on the peninsula, and Japan was a sanctuary. Since the end of the Cold War we’ve become very comfortable with the luxury of bases as sanctuaries, complete with Baskin Robbins thirty-one flavors and weekly surf-and-turf dinners.Moving out of range is not an option. We should have learned, from our 9/11 attack, if not from Pearl Harbor in 1941, that this gambit is highly dubious. Nothing is “out of range.” Today weapons have global reach and have forward-deployed presence in every domain of conflict. More important is that our allies cannot change their geography. As a Japanese general reminded a Council of Foreign Relations audience a few years ago, “Japan is already under the Chinese [anti-access, aerial-denial] umbrella.” And Seoul, the capital of South Korea and one of the world’s largest mega-cities, is within range of a massive arsenal of rocket and tube artillery in North Korea’s Kaesong Heights, a clear and present danger. Our forces there, and the South Korean forces of course, maintain a “fight tonight” posture and readiness condition for good reason.China and North Korea have developed abilities to project power well beyond the confines of their geography, ensuring that any renewed Korean conflict will not be confined to Korea. This power projection plays a key role in today’s “gray zone” competition as a powerful instrument of coercion and cost-imposition. North Korea continues its missile and nuclear programs, regularly demonstrating their missile achievements in clear violation of UN sanctions. China continues to expand its comprehensive power projection with their Maritime Militia, state-controlled mercantilism, armed fishing vessels, PLA ships and aircraft and other means penetrating the sea and air space of their neighbors on a daily basis. China celebrates their “Guam killer” and “carrier killer” missiles. Surveillance is pervasive and ubiquitous, and weapons are accurate at distance.Bases are hardly obsolete. Our bases in Korea, Japan and elsewhere serve vital political and military objectives long before the master arming switch is turned on. They show our commitment to our allies and friends in a very profound way. As many know from practical experience, the presence of our forces in allied countries requires constant compromise on the principles of sovereignty on the part of both parties. This is hardly theoretical, and is more accurately a daily, even hourly, engagement. Policy and strategy of both countries have to align at the top, of course. But it’s equally essential that the continuous contact between our servicemembers and the local communities be productive and welcomed. Bases also are the only cost-effective way to develop, maintain and train forces in a forward-deployed posture. Bases also provide a cost-effective way to develop and expand alliance combined capabilities. This capability development within our alliance forces is critical if we are to integrate, in real time, the fires and maneuver of our forces in defense of Japan, Korea, and the First Island Chain.We are not obligated to fight from our bases, but we can. We practice operations under attack from air bases, and we’re adept at rapid runway repair and other necessary functions. An attack, even a surprise attack, is not necessarily the end of the issue. Readers of a certain age will recall our massive aerial campaign against North Vietnam and its forces. The result should relieve any panic that even a sudden salvo attack will force us or our allies to surrender.The study does make a strong point. Unexamined doctrine becomes dogma, no longer relevant to the problem. As technology advances, military doctrine and organization must change, or suffer the fate of the combatants in World War I. In that unlikely conflict triggered by a single assassin, the nations of Europe marched to conflict seemingly unaware of the cumulative combat effects of early twentieth century technology. Inconclusive stalemate, massive carnage, and the collapse of four empires followed, and war returned around the globe in a couple decades. The technology of our era brings more changes more frequently, even adding more combat domains to the familiar air, land and sea battlefields. Adaptation is critical.Advances in surveillance, weapons accurate at distance and other factors led Defense Secretary Robert Gates to call for our forces to adopt a “widely distributed, politically sustainable, operationally resilient” posture. Defense Secretary James Mattis expanded this concept in our National Defense Strategy, describing our needed operational force posture in four layers: contact, blunt, surge and war-winning. Contact forces are widely distributed continuously in execution of our “engagement” operations, competing in the growing “gray zone” competition. Blunt forces “delay, degrade or deny adversary aggression.” Given intelligence warning time and competent decisionmaking, these forces would assume a widely distributed posture across air, land and sea.The power of the air and sea threat means that we can no longer allow forces on the ground to await the arrival of the enemy. Battles will not be sequential. They must be integral to the fight for air and sea control. Ground forces deployed in compact, agile and mobile “company task force” elements, equipped with weapons capable of reaching out at distance, would integrate their fires and in support of air and naval elements in the fight to maintain air and sea control. These concepts and more are embedded in various emerging service doctrines. These include the Marines’ “Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations”—EABO in the inevitable acronym. This name was deliberately chosen to emphasize a return to the Marine Corps’ role in combat ashore within naval campaigns. The U.S. Army is rapidly developing “cross domain” and “multi domain” operational concepts in pursuit of similar goals.Much work remains to be done to bring these concepts to operational deployment. Distributed operations require distributed logistics, but emerging technology helps here, too. In Afghanistan Marines employed the K-Max twin-rotor cargo helicopter, originally built for the logging industry in logistics support. The single pilot was replaced with autonomous systems. Only one example, for sure, but it is an indicator of things to come. The journey to update our doctrine and organization has begun, but Mattis and others are gone, and every bureaucracy and organization tends to resist change. We can’t let that happen.Wallace C. Gregson, a retired Marine and former assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs (2009–11), is currently a senior advisor at Avascent International and senior director for China and the Pacific at the Center for the National Interest.Image: Reuters

August 26, 2019 at 03:22PM via IFTTT

[asryakino]

I know no one can really help. But I need to get this out of my system before I actually tell my dad off to his face and kick him out of my life over it. 

I’m trying. I’m trying to be responsible. I have had to give up on every dream I’ve had for the past five years, every minor dream has been shelved because I’ve had to drop my entire life to conform to taking care of my mother. 

Just over ten years ago it was getting bad. I had to drop everything and be home by 9-9:30, and if I wasn’t, then she would assume I wasn’t coming (no matter what I had said or told her previously, ,even hours before) and would walk to work. Something she would then use as leverage against me in every conversation about reliability. And something she would then use against me in conversations with others to -prove- how horrible I was. It didn’t matter if I was working or if I was out with friends trying to have a social life. If I wasn’t either constantly on the phone with her to tell her I would be there in ten minutes, in five minutes in however many minutes... she would declare me unreliable, her enemy, say I was trying to sabotage her job, and that I was intentionally trying to get her fired for being late. 

Note, her job didn’t start until midnight, we lived less than ten minutes away from her work. 

I had to make sure any job I took worked around her schedule, and didn’t start at 8 or 9, because she got off at 7:30-8 in the morning. But rather than come home so I could have the car to go to work at 8 or 9... she would, instead, “run errands” with no care about whether I had to work or not. I would be forced to call her (she wouldn’t answer) or call a friend to pick me up for work. At which point I would be yelled at for “not telling her I had to work” and “insulting” her by not trusting she would be home in time for me to go to work. (spoiler: she was -rarely- home in time for me to go to work.

Five years ago she broke her arm. Very badly, as in it was shattered into seventeen pieces. But her work refused to let her take off properly for it.  And so insisted she go back to work. Because she wouldn’t shut up about worker’s compensation and other issues... it’s a long story.

But it boils down to the fact I was working THREE jobs at the time. All part time. All on different schedules. But it equated me in working every day from 10 to 6 or 10-4 (or some combo of between 6-8 hours a day) 

Recall, she had to be at work by midnight 5 nights a week. And I had to make sure I was at the house before ten. I had to make her lunch, push her to get ready, make her coffee and because now she refused to drive herself, I had to drive her to work.

Except. She would laze around fucking around on her computer until 11:30, then yell at me for making her late. I would get her to work but her injury would only allow her to work until about three in the morning. 

I worked. Every. Day. For between 6 and 8 hours a day. I had to stay up until midnight to take her to work. I was then expected to do SOME housework when I got home. Plus it was the only time I got to myself. Ever. So I would try to relax just a little. 

If I fell asleep, I would sleep through her calls at 3-4 in the morning and she would have to get a ride home from her coworkers. Which would result in, you guessed it, me getting yelled at for being “unreliable” for trying to sleep. Before I had to go work in the morning.

I didn’t get days off. I had to work weekdays and weekends. I would pick her up from work on the few days she would work all night and she would INSIST that we just HAD to go shopping for this item or that item and it was “gonna be really quick” (spoiler: it WASN’T) and we would then roll (she in a wheelchair) around walmart at LEAST five times because she would go from one side of the store to the other. Exerting no energy herself because she was in a motorized wheelchair (or manual, which I had to push) and I would have to walk all over the store.

Then I would be late to work. Or call in for a later shift. EVERY TIME because of her forcing me to be late.

I had to make sure I was in a job that was just flexible enough I could do this because for FIVE YEARS this was my life. 

I would get three hours of sleep, if I was lucky, and then bee forced for function for eighteen hours straight. With the vague hope I would get a full night instead of an hour and a half nap. 

Mostly I would sleep 90 minutes at a time in the night. I actually forcibly adjusted my sleep cycles in order to accommodate her wants.  I suffered mentally, emotionally, and physically for taking care of her. And I continue to do so, even after she was fired for being racist. 

Ever since she was fired I now have to take care of her 24/7. If I begin to clean, she goes into panic attacks. So I can ONLY clean if she’s not in the house. Which is never. I can only do dishes when she isn’t looking. Which means when she’s asleep. 

Which is better than when she would do dishes, which would be at three in the morning, loudly banging the dishes together and clattering everything (while refusing to use the dishwasher. Ever.) Then yelling at me for not getting them done.

She would do THAT on days I would outright say “By the way, I’m doing the dishes in the morning when I wake up, so lemme get to it.”  4 am rolls around *BANG CLATTER BLASH CRASH CLATTER BANG* Of her smashing pots and pans and plates together while doing dishes, then cussing at me and yelling at me for not getting them done and FORCING her to do them.

I woke up in a bad mood nearly every day. I LIVED in a black cloud of anger, frustration and impotence. Because there was, and still is NOTHING I can do about this. I physically can’t leave. I emotionally can’t leave, and because of several mental disorders (now dialed up to eleven because of her most recent years)  I simply CAN’T leave. 

I’ve been left with the inability to deal with customers, I’m not physically able to work in a factory setting, and I can’t emotionally, physically, or mentally handle the stress of any customer, food service, or factory employment. 

I’ve been trying, for the past year, to try to take care of myself. When my suicidal thoughts turned closer and closer to sucidial actions... I realized I had to stop. I had to, or I was going to break down, take every pill I could get a hold of, and possibly blow my own brains out with one of the guns in the house. All to escape the existence that has become my life. 

I’m trapped here. I can’t have a job because it would give ME support, and therefore, my mother would ensure that I would never be allowed to keep it. As demonstrated with my last job. In which she insisted she couldn’t stay at the house by herself.

Note: my last job was at a store she liked to go to. And so she would shop all day, bug me at work, stop me from working in order to talk to me and ask me to do things for her specifically... and use me and my position at the store to shop. While I was forced to cover her bills  with my paycheque. Essentially in the end I was paying thee store to work there because of her. 

She hordes. The house is full of junk, broken shit, and useless items with no purpose but to take up space. And I’m not allowed to throw them out or sell what’s useful but not being used. Constant ‘gifts’ from the store I WORKED AT of items I didn’t want but had only looked at and marveled at them being ‘neat’ or ‘interesting’. That was her way of making it up to me. To buy me shit I didn’t ask for, need, or want. 

And when I would ask for something specific, she would buy the shitty knock off version that wasn’t right, didn’t work, or didn’t fit. 

I’ve been out of work for a year now. Hanging onto one job that contracts me to work on weekends 3-5 times a year handing out phamplets and freebies. 

It’s not good enough for my dad. Who has taken to trying to force me into working in a factory (I can’t physically do factory work) and has been bitching at me that I need to be responsible. 

Except. I’ve tried. No where will hire me. I don’t pass their personality quizes, I don’t pass their interviews. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. But whatever it is, even Walmart won’t hire me. On top of that, Mom’s health has degraded to the point dementia has been setting in. And no one will listen to me when I tell them it has.  She has spent my entire life making everyone around us believe that I am a lazy, entitled, expensive child who lies, or has no memory for anything. And who obviously only wants her for her money, and not out of love or respect. 

She has gaslighted me my entire life so that, until recently, I BELIEVED HER. I thought I really couldn’t remember things right. That No matter what I thought it was wrong. Until I realized that she’s been lying. That she’s been lying for nearly my entire life. 

I finally had proof that I had told her one thing, and she insisted that no, I had said something different. And this became constant. I noticed it, I realized it, and while no one else will believe me now because she’s manipulated them into thinking I’m some kind of selfish idiot... I know I’m not. I’m FINALLY starting to get better. 

And here comes my dad. A man who abused me as a kid, went to jail, and I have been feeling guilty about the fact his later life has been ruined because my family convinced me it was My FAULT he went to jail. That it was MY FAULT that he couldn’t get a good job. 

He’s finally mouthed off to me about not having a job, reefusing to understand the circumstances I’m currently living under and why I can’t have a full time or even part time job, and I’ve finally snapped and come to the realization that no. It isn’t my fault.

It’s his fault. His choices have gotten him to the position he’s in now. His choices wrecked his future. His choices to do the things he did have affected him now. He’s sick, and dying, and I will cry more for him than I will for her. But I am not responsible for his situation. 

But he, and his generation, and her and her generation ARE responsible for the situation -I- am currently in. There are a lot of things that are strictly my fault and my choices. I accept that. But the environment created around me, the abuse I’ve been suffering for over a decade at HER hands and the distance HE put between me and himself.... no. That wasn’t my choice, that wasn’t my fault. 

And he can fuck off with his bullshit and calling every attempt I make shit. 

[clubofinfo]

Expert: In terms of suffering caused, there is often not, in fact, much to choose between dismembering and burning people alive with high explosives, shredding them with shrapnel, and choking them with poison gas. Modern ‘conventional’ weapons can be far more cruel and devastating than, for example, chlorine gas. But chemical weapons, prohibited by international law, are extremely potent in allowing Western ‘humanitarians’ to justify ‘intervention’ in response to crimes – real, hyped or imagined – that the West has itself far surpassed using more respectable forms of mass murder. Noam Chomsky has observed that ‘propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state’. This is certainly true for social control at home, but propaganda also allows nominally democratic states to wield their military bludgeons abroad in much the same way as totalitarian states. Thus, in April, it happened again: the entire corporate media system rose up with instant certainty to damn an enemy state for crimes against humanity on April 7, in Douma, Syria. This was not acceptable death by bomb and bullet; this was a nerve gas attack. The villainous agent on every journalist’s lips: sarin, a highly toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound that has no smell or taste, but which quickly kills through asphyxiation. As we discussed at the time, there was no question that this was a repetition of the fake justification for war to secure non-existent Iraqi WMDs, or to prevent a fictional Libyan massacre in Benghazi. Instead, the Guardian editors insisted that this certainly was ‘a chemical gas attack, orchestrated by Bashar al-Assad, that left dead children foaming at the mouth’. From the safety of his Guardian office, assistant editor Simon Tisdall hammered the drum for a war that risked even nuclear confrontation: ‘It means destroying Assad’s combat planes, bombers, helicopters and ground facilities from the air. It means challenging Assad’s and Russia’s control of Syrian airspace. It means taking out Iranian military bases and batteries in Syria if they are used to prosecute the war.’ By contrast, Scott Ritter – a former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq who understands the issues – was more cautious: ‘The bottom line, however, is that the United States is threatening to go to war in Syria over allegations of chemical weapons usage for which no factual evidence has been provided. This act is occurring even as the possibility remains that verifiable forensic investigations would, at a minimum, confirm the presence of chemical weapons…’ No matter, on April 14, three days after Ritter’s article appeared, the US, UK and France attacked Syria in response to the unproven allegations. Robert Fisk of the Independent visited Douma and spoke to a senior doctor who works in the clinic where victims of the alleged chemical attack had been brought for treatment. Dr Rahaibani told Fisk what had happened that night: ‘I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.’ When Fisk’s report wasn’t ignored, it was sneeringly dismissed. A headline in The Times read: ‘Critics leap on reporter Robert Fisk’s failure to find signs of gas attack’ The Times, which is no stranger to controversy, suggested that there were big question marks over Fisk’s record: ‘Fisk is no stranger to controversy.’  No Organophosphates Found On 6 July 2018, the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), issued an interim report on the FFM’s investigation regarding the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma. The passage that jumped out of the report: ‘No organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties.’ No sarin! But is it possible that any nerve agents had degraded and disappeared before OPCW investigators reached the site? An April 17, Guardian article had reported: ‘The OPCW has been racing against the clock to collect samples from the site of the attack, a three-storey house in Douma, in which scores of people died in a basement. Jerry Smith, who helped supervise the OPCW-led withdrawal of much of Syria’s sarin stockpile in 2013, said samples of nerve agent rapidly degrade in normal environmental conditions… The Russian military and Syrian officers have had access to the house since last Thursday, raising fears that the site may have been tampered with. However, Smith said it was likely that residual samples of nerve agent would remain for at least another week, even after an attempted clean-up.’ The OPCW later commented: ‘On 21 April 2018, after security concerns had been addressed, the FFM team conducted its first visit to one of the alleged sites of interest, and it was deemed an acceptable risk to enter Douma…’ In other words, OPCW’s race ‘against the clock’ appeared to have been successful. Charles Shoebridge a former Scotland Yard detective and counter terrorism intelligence officer, observed: ‘if OPCW find no traces, likely not due to any inspection delay’ Before we examine ‘MSM’ reaction to the OPCW report, particularly to the failure to find ‘organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products’, let’s look at their initial reaction to claims of a nerve agent attack on April 7. Initial Response: ‘Those Symptoms Don’t Come From Chlorine’ CNN reported on April 14: ‘Senior US officials expressed confidence Saturday that both chlorine and sarin gas were used in Syria’s alleged chemical weapons attack on the Damascus enclave of Douma last week…’ CNN cited reports ‘from media, nongovernmental organizations and other open sources’ that ‘point to miosis – constricted pupils – convulsions and disruptions to central nervous systems. Those symptoms don’t come from chlorine. They come from nerve agents… It’s a much more efficient weapon, unfortunately, the way the regime has been using it, and it’s resulted in higher deaths, it resulted in terrible pictures.’ The Financial Times cited Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of the UK’s chemical biological radiological and nuclear regiment (see here on his credibility as an impartial source): ‘There’s no doubt this was a major chemical weapons attack. The big question is whether it was chlorine or sarin. I am favouring a mix of the two.’1 A Telegraph article opened with this harrowing line: ‘The victims were found exactly where they had been when the gas hit. Their silent killer had given little warning.’ This clearly suggested a very powerful nerve agent, as the article explained: ‘Medics on the ground reported smelling a chlorine-like substance, but said the patients’ symptoms and the large death toll pointed to a more noxious substance such as nerve agent sarin. ‘”The number of casualties is so high and that’s not typical for chlorine,” said Dr Ahmad Tarakji, president of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), which assists hospitals in Eastern Ghouta. “Unfortunately, because of a lack of resources, we can’t take blood samples.”‘ The claims did indeed suggest something much more powerful than chlorine, as The Daily Mail made clear in a report also citing de Bretton-Gordon: ‘If it was chlorine, they could have escaped. But they died after just taking a few steps.’2 The Mail cited an ‘activist’ making the same point: ‘Ibrahim Reyhani, a White Helmet civil defence volunteer, said anyone who touched the bodies started getting sick, and said he believed a mixture of sarin and chlorine had been used. ‘He told the Sunday Times: “If it’s just chlorine, if you smell it you can escape. But sarin you breathe and it kills you.” The Telegraph published an op-ed by de Bretton-Gordon: ‘There have been a number of chlorine attacks, but it would appear that chlorine, although outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention, is below the threshold for the UK and France to strike. ‘Saturday’s attack, with so many deaths and casualties, looks possibly to be a mixture of chlorine and the nerve agent sarin, and this atrocity must surely stretch above their threshold for action.’ It is worth reiterating again – as media responses to the OPCW’s latest report, conspicuously, have not – that chlorine was not a sufficiently deadly agent to cause either the claimed level of carnage or the claimed level of Western moral outrage. In 2015, Barack Obama noted: ‘Chlorine itself, historically, has not been listed as a chemical weapon.’ Charles Shoebridge commented: ‘while headlines of chemical weapons are undoubtedly dramatic, the relatively low lethality of chlorine makes it an ineffective – and therefore arguably also unlikely – choice of weapon… ‘Indeed, given the low toxicity of the allegedly small amounts used and the unpleasant bleach smell that always betrays chlorine’s presence, in most instances people could avoid being killed by simply walking away – another indication of its near uselessness as a weapon. Perhaps the only way it could be tactically effective is if used to drive people from trenches or bunkers to allow them to then be killed with bombs and bullets – but again, the amounts of chlorine needed would be far more than is alleged, and the accuracy needed to target in this way is unlikely to be achieved using unguided rockets as alleged this week in east Ghouta, or by dropping a “barrel bomb” from a helicopter.’ Chlorine gas was not included in the list of Syrian chemical weapons reported to the OPCW. It is an unsophisticated weapon that could also be deployed by ‘rebel’ forces and to which they have had access. The OPCW reported in August 2016: ‘Chlorine is available to all parties in the Syrian Arab Republic.’ A Guardian leader also linked the alleged attack in Douma to sarin: ‘Dozens of civilians in the Douma district were killed by Syrian government chemical attacks on Saturday.’ It continued: ‘This is not the first time this has happened. Since the use of sarin at Khan al-Assal in 2013 there have been dozens of chemical attacks by the regime.’ Peter Hitchens commented on the Guardian‘s coverage in the Mail on Sunday: ‘Here is the Guardian, on 9th April 2018: “Aid workers and medics described apocalyptic scenes in the besieged city of Douma, where at least 42 people have died from what appears to be a chemical attack, as they scrambled to save the survivors of the latest atrocity in Syria… ‘”Doctors said the symptoms had been consistent with exposure to an organophosphorus substance.”‘ Hitchens asked: ‘Which doctors? Note the absence of named, checkable sources in a story written some distance from Damascus. This was typical of almost all western media reports of the episode at the time.’ Hitchens observed that OPCW had found no traces of organophosphates but that ‘The quoted “doctors”, being unidentified, cannot now be approached to ask for their response to this.’ Responding To OPCW’s July 6 Report The skwawkbox website noted that the BBC had covered, and distorted, OPCW’s July 6 report. A BBC headline read: ‘Syria attack was chlorine gas – watchdog ‘The deadly attack in Douma in April left dozens of civilians dead and caused and international outcry.’ This was complete invention. As skwawkbox commented: ‘the OPCW report emphatically does not say that chlorine gas was used‘. The report actually said: ‘Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.’ (Our emphasis) Chlorinated organic chemicals are extremely common, found in degreasers, cleaning solutions, paint thinners, pesticides, resins, glues, and many other mixing and thinning solutions. The BBC amended the article, which later read: ‘The report said two samples from gas cylinders recovered at the scene tested positive for chlorine.’ Skwawkbox commented again: ‘This is a classic example of a technically-correct claim that is completely misleading. ‘The [OPCW] report does note the presence of chlorine in some samples tested from the cylinders – but not chlorine gas or the residues that would be expected from its reaction with other substances… ‘The relevant page of the OPCW’s full report states that no ‘relevant chemicals’ were found from a swab inside the opening of one cylinder: ‘In debris and on other items around the cylinder, chlorine compounds were found – but these are common compounds that would be unlikely to be formed simply by chlorine reacting with something on site.’ In similar vein, Alec Luhn, the Telegraph‘s Russia correspondent, tweeted: ‘The April chemical attack in Douma was caused by chlorine gas, the OPCW says. Or it was completely staged, if you still believe the Russian authorities’ Sharmine Narwani, a writer, commentator and analyst covering Middle East geopolitics, replied brusquely but accurately: ‘No, the OPCW didn’t say that. It found traces of chlorine on the scene, which it would find in your house or office or water supply too, if sampled. Try actual #journalism.’ Off-Guardian noted several headlines covering OPCW’s findings. Reuters reported: ‘Chemical weapons agency finds “chlorinated” chemicals in Syria’s Douma’ The Independent wrote: ‘Syrian conflict: Chlorine used in Douma attack that left dozens of civilians dead, chemical weapons watchdog finds’ As Off-Guardian noted, the headlines should have read: No nerve agents found. Remarkably, these rare mentions aside, the OPCW interim report has been ignored by most major newspapers and media, including the Guardian. DE * David Bond and Rebecca Collard, ‘Experts say gas attack proof will take weeks: Civil war. Douma Inspectors are struggling to access site of alleged atrocity as Assad’s troops move in,’ Financial Times, 12 April 2018. * Vanessa Allen, ‘Little girl left foaming at the mouth by horrific gas attack,’ Daily Mail, 16 April 2018. http://clubof.info/