#maybe put all that energy and drive to protesting and speaking out against your political leaders

[byers-bowlcut]

I'm only going to talk about this ONCE in this tag, and never again since people are demanding you make your stance clear:

My stance is— the sooner y'all learn to separate the actor from the character, the sooner you'll have inner PEACE.

Like I have never once said I agree with noah's views, but that has nothing to do with will byers as a fictional character, or byler as a fictional pairing. I am only here on ST tumblr for these fictional entities. Noah himself has said that besides both of them being gay, he's nothing like Will (and before he came out, he used to say he's 100% not like Will at all). So maybe that gives you all some solace.

But if you CAN'T separate the actor from the character, you're always free to leave the fandom. Just don't be out here harassing, attacking, bothering people who do continue to enjoy ST and byler as always.

[neraidaastrid]

Never ending moment

Fred Weasley x Reader

Fandom: Harry Potter

Prompt: Y/N running off of coffee to stay up to avoid sleeping as it makes them feel like sleeping is wasting time. He gets her to 😴

Word Count: 1562

Warnings: Intrusive thoughts. Worrying. Unhealthy sleeping habits.

The warm liquid squirmed down your throat, enlightening your body with heat. It was as though you were being hugged on the inside, heat spreading internally. You relished in it, high on your caffeine drive, holding your cute cat mug in your hands while in front of the fireplace. The roaring fiery flames cackled, blessing your ears and sending warming shivers throughout your body. A thick crocheted jumper hugged your torso loosely; Black leggings shaping your legs, revealing them of their form; Fuzzy socks cuddling your feet with fluff; Legs crossed on the floor of the Weasley’s burrow. You didn't want to waste a minute of this; You couldn't waste a minute of this. 

You inhaled a deep breath through you nose, letting in faint coffee scent. Your eyes began to feel heavy, the feeling of sleep wanting to force them shut. You tightly shut your eyes, trying to squeeze it away; The tiredness was trying to catch up with you but you would not let it. Never could you waste these moments with something as stupid as sleep. What if you were to miss something while unconscious? No, it won't happen. You can't miss anything. So, you reopened them, a slight blur on the corners of your vision.

You started gulping down the drink like it would just suddenly make this feeling go away. And with every chug, your eyes began to feel somewhat lighter; Less strained. You let a sigh escape your lips; It was boring to tell the truth, but sleep was out of the question. You focused on the clock above the fireplace, most hands pointing home; Charlie was in Romania, tending to his dragons; Bill in Egypt, working as a curse-breaker; Percy was home; Arthur was working a late night at the ministry; Molly was home; Ginny was home; Ron was home; George was home; Fred was home. Your dearest Fred. Your bestest friend since our first year and the guy you so stupidly fell for. If only he knew.

You sat in solitude as the sun rose from the sky, letting the moon take a break from its reign over the night. Shades of pure oranges and pinks seep into the room, shining through the window above the sink. Dishes began dancing in the sink bowl, a scrubbing brush swirling soap over the pottery. Clinks and clanks of the plates putting themselves in the cupboards were quiet compared to your thoughts. Tapping of knitting needles sang through the morning clatter, working on Mrs. Weasley’s new piece. Threading purple and blue wool together in a complicated weave. Your mug had gone cold, no more warmth radiating to your hands, but still you clutched onto it for some sort of stableness in the war in your head. 

Mr. Weasley’s clock hand had been moving slowly throughout the past hour or so and you hadn't even noticed. It dinged, alerting you and prompting your attention. His hand had reached home and he was going to find you sat on the floor of his home. Would he think you were crazy? You shook the thought away, but you stayed frozen; In the end, you didn't really care. Let him see you. You just didn't want to move; You couldn’t move. Though you did not care whether he found you here or not, your heart began to race and your body trembled. The ‘what ifs’ still danced about your head unwanted, no matter how much you wanted to get rid of them. Your eyes stayed glued to the clock, awaiting Arthur to come waltzing into his home.

A fierce engine grumbled loudly outside of the burrow, landing roughly onto the grass, bouncing along to its stop. The noise only grew, rumbling into your ears until it immediately faltered, meaning that the engine had been turned off. A low click was followed by a slam and footsteps trudging along the muddy field of morning dew. 

The little bell above the side door gave a soft ring as the door opened and the redhead stumbled in. The noise echoed through the room, but it was quite quiet, melodious even. His heavy steps creaked the floorboards, his coat grazing against everything at his sides. Briefcase in his left hand which he placed on the table, his eyes catching sight of you. His face showed confusion; Eyebrows knitted together; Lips in a thin line; Eyes squinted, trying to find an answer. He looked slightly startled by your presence, “Ah. Goodmorning Y/N. You’re up a bit early aren't you?” He was polite nether less, but you could barely speak out a word; Your body paralysed by thoughts. “Morning.” Did he hear it? You’re pretty sure your voice cracked and it was really quiet too. Hopefully he didn't think you were being rude for not answering the question, but that was all you could say. It was polite but was it rude to not answer the question? Your mind ran and ran, no matter what happened, you could never get a break from it. 

Arthur took that as the best answer he could possibly get and sighed. His footsteps dispersed from the dining room and he travelled up the long twisty staircase. He could move, so why couldn't you? This was lazy, you were lazy. This was why you had to be awake, nothing you did today was productive and now you just sit frozen. You couldn't miss anything else; You’ve already missed most of the day whisked away in one of the twin’s rooms and now you spent your nights caffiened up and paralysed. Useless. 

The movements of magic were merely heard, they just blurred into silent background noise. But a new pair of footsteps awakened you and as if on instinct, you knew it was Fred. You blinked and all of a sudden the feeling in your body was back. You jumped up, fixing your hair and patting down your clothing, fixing a gentle smile on your face. Your mug was being tightly held in your hands still, the cold pottery keeping your skin chilled. 

The ginger spotted you in front of the fireplace, a small smirk tugging at his lips but concern played in his eyes. His eyes moved about your figure, studying your appearance. Exhaustion quite easily spotted on you; Shoulders slouched; Frizzy hair; Bags hanging under your eyes. While a smile was framed on your face, your eyes looked lost, they were darting around the room, unable to focus on one thing. 

Fred took steps towards you, placing his hand on your cheek, cupping it. “You never showed up to the bedroom last night. I thought you were with George, but then dad told me you were down here, sat frozen on the floor.” His face fell and he towered over you. “What’s going on, sweetheart?” His voice was soothing, but your body only shook more. His eyes fell down to the mug, staring at the rubbish bit of coffee you left. He sighed and took the mug from your hands and placed it onto the dining table behind him. Your eyes teared up, the brim of them crystallising. Fred’s strong hands went back onto your cheeks, circling his thumbs over your bags. You couldn't speak, your words were being held back by something. What if you said something wrong? 

“When’s the last time you slept?” His voiced calmed your thoughts, letting you escape them for a moment. You bit your bottom lip, trying to think but your mind was puzzled. Nothing; You had no recollection whatsoever of when you last rested your head. Your shoulders shrugged to show Fred. “I don't know.” His big masculine hands instantly let go of your face and wrapped around your waist, pulling you into his chest. “Lets get you to bed.” He placed his hands under your body, lifting you bridal style. “Fred, I’m not tired, I don't want to sleep-” A yawn interrupted you last second, making your argument seem condescending and completely useless. You could feel his eye roll radiating off of him as he made his way to the staircase Mr. Weasley had gone up not too long before. “We’ll talk about this in the morning, but for now, you're going to bed.” His voice stern, as though he was scolding a child, but you stopped protesting. You were shaking still and the feeling wasn't so great, it was taking so much energy to keep your eyes open. Maybe you could just have another coffee- Nope, Fred wouldn't allow it. You huffed in defeat and Fred walked into his room, pushing open the already open door.

He softly lays you onto the mattress, transferring your weight onto the plush material. The redhead crawls in behind you, covering you and him with his covers. You kept blinking rapidly, unable to stay awake much longer. A pair of arms pull you into a body, your face nuzzling into his neck. His scent was euphoric and you couldn't quite think straight. “Sleep, I’ll be here when you wake up. I promise.” His chest vibrated when he spoke and he planted a kiss to your head, stroking your hair back. You closed your eyes, letting his scent fight away the intrusive thoughts and letting you drift off. Darkness took over your body while Fred just held onto you, hoping this moment would never have to end.

[composereggwrites]

Oh hold me close, there’s nothing here which Chokes

Fandom: The Magnus Archives Rating: T Characters/Ships: Alice “Daisy “Tonner & Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims Additional: Non-Sexual Intimacy, Shower Sharing, Hurt/Comfort, brief panic attack, Fluff, sharing a bed Author’s note: Written for a gift exchange! This is for @osirisjones!

Summary:

It starts after the coffin. After the nightmare of TooCloseICannotBreathe. Finding yourself pressed against another is far more comforting than the rough rock and stone, or grime of dirt.

Showers remind Jon a bit too much of what it's like to not be able to breathe.

Daisy understands. Martin has his own issues with the feeling of mist in his lungs.

Ao3 or Below!

It starts after the coffin. After the nightmare of TooCloseICannotBreathe. Finding yourself pressed against another is far more comforting than the rough rock and stone, or grime of dirt.

It starts with Daisy declaring that she's going home to shower now because it's been a week since she's done so, and the sensation building up on her skin is a bit too much like being buried. It starts when she looks at Jon and says, "You look like you could use a shower too."

He grimaces, looking at her from his seat at his desk. "Probably. Hard to take one at the institute, though, and I haven't gotten around to getting a new place. I got uh... Evicted, during the whole six-month coma thing," he says, sheepish smile on his face as an explanation.

An eyebrow raises, as she gives him a Look. Which is probably fair, considering she’s got her stuff and a place already, even though she was gone longer than he was. Jon never claimed to be functional. “Yeah, and what have you been doing all this time, then?”

“It’s remarkable how well you can keep clean, given some no-wash shampoo, body wipes, and time alone in a bathroom here. Plus, there’s a laundromat not too far away,” he says. It’s true, he can manage just fine like this. He has to, as his life spirals ever more out of control, less time and mental energy able to be dedicated toward tasks such as cleaning. Even if he prefers it that way.

A familiar hand joins his as Daisy rolls her eyes, and pulls him out of the chair. “Well, that won’t do. You’re coming back to my place and taking a proper shower, Jon.”

She doesn’t give him a choice. No chance to protest as she drags him out of the institute. In a way, that’s easier than having to confront the idea that he wants this.

Everything is fine. He keeps repeating that in his head with each step. Daisy’s warmth bleeds into him from their connected pinkies, a pinpoint prick of security as they walk to her apartment.

(Neither of them take the trains through the tunnels nowadays, if they have the choice to avoid it.)

It’s a silent walk. Jon keeps his eyes on Daisy, and she keeps hers on the path they follow. The hunter knows the way home, and the watcher knows better than to let his eyes stray to targets, to food, with her so close by.

“Order some food while I take my shower. You’re crashing here tonight, and don’t think about trying to argue your way out of that,” Daisy says, as she unlocks the door and bustles around. He diverts his eyes as she grabs fresh clothes and steps into the bathroom of her single-bedroom apartment.

It’s…

Not as utilitarian as he expected, in all honesty. Photos of her and Basira hang on the wall, blankets draped over the couch. It’s not warm or cozy, but neither is it barren of signs of life. He can hear sounds of the Archers coming from the bathroom, indistinct through the walls.

Jon sits on the couch, and orders pizza. Tries desperately to distract himself with mindless phone games. Tries to ignore the lure of the owner of a shop they passed on the way here, who has a statement fresh for the picking. Tries not to Know about anything in this apartment, what stories and fears might lie under the false comfort of a quilt. What the pictures might hide.

When Daisy emerges precisely ten minutes later, hair still damp and looking far more refreshed--though she still has bags under her eyes, like all those who work in the archives--she’s wearing casual sweatpants and an old t-shirt for the Archers.

“Got us pizza, since I know what you like on it. Half and half, because you refuse to accept pineapple on it.” A grin flickers on his face, and he gets one on return.

“What blasphemy, putting fruit on a pizza! I’ll stick to my pepperoni and extra cheese, thank you.” She rolls her eyes as she speaks, and steps into her room, door left open so they can continue speaking.

“It’s really quite good. You just can’t grasp the intricacies of it!” he shoots back. An argument they’ve had a hundred times before flowing freely from his lips. He knows all the lines, like they’ve rehearsed.

The fun in arguing dies on his lips.

She tosses some old clothes at him, and he knows (not Knows) that they’ll be slightly too big and baggy, because he’s stolen clothing from all his assistants at this point. The resident laundry thief’s work is never done.

(It’s grounding, having pieces of the others to carry with him. His favorite is Martin’s hoodie).

“Go shower, Jon.” Daisy slides down onto the couch as he stands. No doubt she’s tasted the shift in his mood in the air, bitter on her tongue.

He takes the clothes and walks into the bathroom. Small, yellow walls. There’s a fresh towel on the rack already, so he sets the clothes on the counter and slips in.

The spray of water is a blessed relief compared to the days of rubbing and scrubbing away at the dirt building against his skin. Heat seeps into his aching muscles and world-wracked soul. Washing away the damage wrought. The layers of soil walls crumbling down.

It’s humid. It’s hot. The room is small. The steam makes breathing hard.

Jon huffs, and focuses. He just. He needs to ignore the unsettling feeling growing in his stomach, the fear that lingers like mint, there no matter how hard you try to kill it. Invading where it is not meant to be.

The mist coils around his lungs. Damp skin sticks as he bumps against walls. The shower is so small, how does Daisy survive it all?

A knock at the door is what makes Jon realize he’s knocked over the bottles, crouched on the floor. Hands embedded in his half-shampooed hair.

“I think I might actually get in trouble if you die in my shower. You alright in there?” she calls, door opened a crack so he can hear, though the curtain is still solidly in place.

Daisy’s voice washes away the suffocating anxiety better than any water could, and he takes a breath. “Yeah, I-- Ah. It felt… small. Difficult to breathe. You know…”

And she does know. She must, because she slips into the bathroom, and he can hear the toilet lid being set down so she can sit. “It’s why I play sounds on my phone.”

He snorts, and manages to get his legs back under himself, standing again. “Harder to lose yourself to the fear of choking when there’s a soap opera to listen to?” he asks, tone wry.

“Oh hush. You ought to try it.” She’s laughing, and he can picture the roll of her eyes as he washes out the shampoo. It’s easier, with another presence here. The heat is less oppressive, not trying to pierce his skin. Instead, it simmers and soaks, driving out the icy cold.

“I--I think I’m good now.” It slips out of his mouth, even as he wishes to swallow the words, to beg for company until he’s done.

“Well, I think it’s rather fitting. Soap opera for when you’re all… soapy. So I’m going to start the next episode you were on, since you’re so woefully behind.”

It’s hard to not laugh when Daisy makes a bad pun, and he doesn’t try to hold it back. Doesn’t stop himself from listening to the absurdity, talking with her about the drama and plot as he works to scrub his body clean.

When he steps out of the shower, smelling of her lavender products, Daisy politely averts her eyes until he’s dressed. Then she links their fingers together once more, and they trot out in time to catch the pizza man.

Jon Knows later, as they sit and eat their pizza with dramatic flair, held loftily above their mouths sprawled out on the couch and each other, that the delivery person thought they were a couple. When he mentions it to Daisy, she cracks up, and he joins her, pausing the episode they were on.

“Us? A couple?” she repeats, for the tenth time. “Like, no offense Jon, but even if I were into guys, you’re not my type.”

“Some offense taken,” he replies, free hand held to his chest. “Oh how scorned I am by your rejection! You like Basira well enough, and she’s good at being a stuffy academic.” The air quotes are audible, dripping from his tongue as he takes another bite.

“She’s an academic who knows how to shoot a gun. Got more muscle than you could ever dream of, bone boy,” she shoots back, elbowing him in the side. Taking care to hit where there’s still ribs.

“Ah, I see. With my bountiful eyes.” She snorts, because if he actually had extra eyes, she’d be the first to know. “You like someone who you have a chance of losing to in an arm wrestle. No wonder I’m so woefully disqualified.”

“I’d let her do more to me than win an arm wrestle.” Daisy waggles her eyebrows.

When he processes what she means, Jon lets out a long, drawn out sigh. “Every day. Every single day I am bombarded by innuendo. When shall I be freed from this curse?”

“Whoa there, no need to bring the Sahara into my apartment with that dry tone, Mr. Sandman.”

“Wrong entity. How dare you accuse me of being aligned with the Dark?” He has to set his paper plate down, or risk dropping his food at this point, with the amount of laughter going on.

“Whatever, eye guy. Let me braid your hair once we’re done eating. Maybe now that you’re cleaned up, your prettyboy looks will lure your man out of the fog. I bet he’d love to win an arm wrestle against you. He totally could, too.” She gestures at him with the pizza slice, smirk across her lips.

Jon stammers, hiding the blush creeping up his cheeks behind his hand. “I--uh. Ah. Daisy-- Even if... Even if you’re right, I--”

She softens into a smile, and puts a hand on his arm. “I’m sure you can ace your way into his heart.”

Two seconds of silence.

Then giggles, as he covers his mouth with a hand. “That was-- That was awful. That’s the type of joke I’d be making in uni!”

“Unless my puns are bad enough to drive you out of my apartment, I stand by the offer. The only condition is that you’ve gotta braid mine, too.”

He takes another bite as he ponders it. Really, the answer he wants to give is on the tip of his tongue, but-- Denying himself what he wants is habit, ingrained in himself by now.

Still, it’d be nice.

“Sure, why not,” he says. “Hair braiding and listening to The Archers. Sounds like the perfect night.”

The couch is comfier than the Archives, that night. Daisy’s apartment warmed with the small spark of vanilla candle friendship.

In the coming months, it’s easy to make a habit out of this.

----

Collapsing into bed at the safehouse the night they arrive is one of the easiest things Jon has ever done, and that’s counting the amount of time it takes to get Martin to join him. They both still smell of sea salt and taste of fog, but he pulls Martin into bed with him despite the ever-constant protests.

“Martin, it’s fine,” he murmurs. “We’re both tired, we can share the bed. Hell, Daisy and I have shared a bed before, at her place.” It’s out of his mouth before he can think to stop it, and one hand goes up to the messy braid of his hair, from just two days before.

“O-oh. You and-- and Daisy?” Martin asks, paling a bit in the moonlight. Eyebrows scrunched together in the most adorable way that makes Jon want to reach out and run his fingers through Martin’s hair. “I didn’t know?”

“Because there’s nothing to know.” It dawns on him that he can do that. So he reaches up, and cards his fingers through the messy strands of reddish brown. “It was-- it was a friend thing, nothing more. A couple times a week she’d drag me to her place, and really, it was-- It was easier in the end, to just share the bed. Rather than have me sleep on the couch. Helps me deal with the nightmares, if I have someone there. I figure… If you have any, it might be the same.”

It’s enough for Martin to soften, and stop looking so jealous (which, now that Jon can recognize that, he finds it touching). He slides into bed without any more fuss, and soon enough Jon finds himself wrapped up in Martin’s arms. All pretenses of pretending to not want to cling immediately dropped.

Sharing a bed with Martin is different from sharing one with Daisy, he discovers that night.

With Daisy, they link hands, arms intertwined, and lay back to back. Neither of them were inclined to spoon, and he knows suggesting it would’ve gotten a joking threat with a knife (nothing like before, no real danger in her words, and she would’ve grumbled but wrapped him in her arms like she did when the nightmares got too bad, and they needed more contact).

But with Martin…

Martin is full of warmth, despite the wisps of fog that still want to encroach. At some point in the night, between becoming an octopus and clinging right back, Martin rolls over on top of him in his sleep, and Jon melts.

Martin is a solid, heavy weight against him. Grounding him to the mattress. Jon still catches bits and pieces of nightmares, but the pressure isn’t oppressive, not near as much as he feared. A spark of terror in his heart, at first, but all he has to do is open his eyes and see Martin there. Another person, not the dark-dirt pressing-walls of Choke. He thinks, perhaps, that the fear has receded, if he can handle this.

It’s only on his way to shower the next morning, that the terror comes roaring back. Gripping his heart and making him pause outside the bathroom door. He can hear Martin singing in the kitchen as he bustles around, cleaning up the breakfast mess.

But will it be enough?

He takes a breath, steels himself and turns the handle. Prepares to face this.

And then stops, turns his head, and calls, “Martin?”

Martin must hear the waver in his voice, sense the way Jon is a rubber band pulled taut, because he immediately drops what he’s doing and comes to Jon’s side. Sees the way he’s shaking, ever so slightly in his skin (skin that still doesn’t feel like his after what Nikola did), and places a hand on his shoulder. Soft, tentative, as he asks, “Are you alright?”

“I-- I’ll be fine, it’s just…” He could still turn back, say it’s nothing, though Martin would still worry. And…

He’s safe with Martin. Just like he was safe with Daisy.

Safe enough to ask for help.

“The uh-- The reason I went to Daisy’s so often was because I needed to shower, but the feeling. I hate cold showers, but the steam made it harder to breathe. And I needed-- It helped if someone was there, with me?”

He looks up at Martin, and confusion-fear bubbles in his stomach when Martin laughs a little, but it’s quickly abated by his words. “I was actually thinking of asking you for the same thing? It’s just, for me… Being alone in a room full of mist doesn’t seem like a good idea?”

Jon chuckles, though it’s quickly cut off when he slaps a hand over his mouth. “Sorry, sorry, that was-- You’re right. I’d be glad to be there for you, Martin,” he says, and it’s amazing how a few simple works make Martin light up. The blush against his cheeks is something Jon feels he can be proud to put there, now.

“Might be best to take one at the same time. I don’t know how much hot water this place has,” Martin says, before immediately backtracking. “If you don’t want to though, I understand!”

He shakes his head, and pulls Martin along with him into the bathroom. “It’s fine with me. It makes sense. Amazingly, this place has a bigger shower than Daisy’s apartment. And I’m thankful to find that there are no bloodstains on the tub here, either.”

Martin snorts, and Jon smiles. He takes out the shampoo, conditioner, and body wash from his bag of toiletries as Martin undresses, making sure that there’s a clean washcloth as well.

It’s a bit cramped, but they have enough space to navigate. The bump of their bodies against each other is reassuring too. Silent moments of I’m here and you’re not alone, you’re not going to choke on your own fear.

At some point, he finds himself helping Martin clean his back. Slow, methodical scrubbing. At another, Martin’s hands are in his hair, combing through the strands as the conditioner makes it silky. When Jon starts to sing a song, Martin grins, and sings along. As they sing loud and offkey--which is part of the fun--Jon thinks there’s no place he’d rather be.

 (Later, curled up in Martin’s lap, in front of the lit hearth, he’ll have that thought again, as he presses a kiss to Martin’s lips.)

[whogirl42]

Episode 8. Oh wowee, episode 8.

Warning: I have a lot of thoughts and feelings because Marisa and Asriel finally interacted onscreen and it was glorious.

Let’s begin.

We all know Marisa has a... let's say, complicated relationship with her daemon. At his point, it’s no surprise to see Marisa abusing him in one form or the other. But we’ve never seen it like this before. Earlier times it was as a warning to behave or a slap as a form of punishment. This? This is something new. Marisa is gripping her daemon’s skin to the point of pain, a point so painful that she is closing her eyes and wincing. There’s no pretending it doesn’t hurt her too. This is self ham at its most explicit. 

What has he done to deserve such treatment? What could have driven her to this? What did we see Marisa doing in the scene we saw her last?

Marisa is bracing herself for having to kill Asriel, one of the only two people in the world she cares about. Her entire self is rebelling at the very thought.

"What did he do to you?" Macphail asks, and it might have been her asking herself that question. "What power he still exerts. I knew you. An ambitious young woman with a good marriage well on her way to quite some position, and then that man came along and you melted."

That won’t happen again. Marisa is far from that stupid girl who made the worst mistake of her life over a crush. She steels herself for what she needs to do. She is sure in her convictions and no one, least not that man, will stop her.

Below, armoured bears are readying for an attack.

Lyra is probably still with the Gyptions. There's no reason to think Lyra would be down there below. Maybe the possibility of Lyra being there doesn't even cross her mind. Except Iofer is dead. After an armoured bear helped Lyra escape Bolvanger. And now there are armoured bears readying for an attack against the Magisterium. Lyra could be down there. 

"Open fire," Marisa says. It's chaos down there, it's hard to see anything. But maybe she spots one bear running away. Maybe she spots a familiar red hat on its rider and sighs in relief. Maybe she berates herself for almost hurting her daughter again.

Or maybe Lyra isn't even on her radar, too consumed with thoughts of Asriel.

Marisa knew Asriel was doing something was Dust. She understands from his work that it has something to do with an energy discharge. The penny drops, and fear takes hold of Marisa. 

He wouldn't. Would he? But the numbers all add up. Marisa isn't beyond hurting children and they're the same, Asriel and her, they always have been. He'd enjoy besting Marisa at something, succeeding where she couldn't. He couldn't. But who was to say how far his convictions went? Lyra shouldn't be anywhere near there. There's no reason for her to be there. 

Still, Marisa is on edge. She demands Thorold tell her what Asriel is planning, even as she seems to have grasped the basics. She tries frightening him, appealing to the faith I'm surprised he'd even have after years of working for Asriel. Thorold lowers the gun but still doesn't say anything. Marisa tries a different tactic. 

"Thorold, I should throw you to the wolves. But I won't. I’ll tell them that Father Macphail is staying here to analyse what we’ve found, and then I’ll take the troops to pursue Asriel and you will leave. He’s always been so reckless. He’s never treated any of us well, you included."

Did Thorold tell her anything off-screen? We don't know. There's nothing to suggest that they talk any more after this scene. Which means that Marisa - always in control - Coulter let her guard down, let herself seem vulnerable about Asriel, without any clear gain. This isn't a ploy to get something. This isn't her being emotional because Lyra's there. This is just her being emotional. For the first time in god knows how long, she's going to see Asriel again. And Thorold has been working with Asriel for years. He probably knew about the affair as it happened, one of the only people in the know. Both Thorold and Marisa know Asriel intimately, and there's a camaraderie to that.

I can't not mention Marisa's remarks about Asriel throughout the season.

"He's a failure of a man and a failure of a father." (1x02)

"He thought he could protect you. Another one of his ridiculous ideas. Couldn't protect a painting if it was drawn on the wall." (1x02)

"[About giving up Lyra] And Asriel had ideas on what was best." (1x06)

“And if there's one thing that man doesn't need, it's more toys to do damage with.” (1x06)

“He’s always been so reckless. He’s never treated any of us well.” (1x08) 

And that’s probably barely scracthig the surface. We have no way of knowing how long it’s been since they last saw each other? Marisa told Lyra that she sometimes bumps into Asriel in the Arctic Institute, but there’s nothing to suggest that actually happened. For all we know, this could be the first time they speak since Asriel’s trial 12 years ago.

Marisa approaches him. He's sprouting out heresy like he always did, but she can't ignore it or roll her eyes or find better uses for his mouth. He's shattering her world, promising the end of everything she's worked for, everything she believes in.

Damn him, he has the audacity to smile.

This is the end of the Magisterium, that's what he said. The sun of another world.  "Come,” he says.

She doesn't want to, but she can't help it. Whether it’s a miracle, an abomination; she is first and foremost a scholar, and this is extraordinary.

Something like peace settles between them, but Asriel is still saying things she does not want to hear. "Marisa, come with me," he says, like it's that easy.

Marisa's religious beliefs haven't been given much attention until now. She's played with the Magisterium, manipulating them to get what she wants and not giving a damn to what they say if when doesn't suit her. In the previous episode, she told Father Macphail the Magisterium has her devotion, but that didn't ring true. She cares about her experiments. That's her priority. Everything else is background noise.

Marisa fully believes that Dust in sin. She said it herself to Lyra in the Daemon Cages. 

“Dust is not a good thing. Grown-ups are infected so deeply that it's too late for them. Condemned to a life of sin, guilt and regret. This is for a better future, a better life. [...] At the age that we call puberty, an age you'll come into very soon, darling, daemons bring all sorts of troublesome thoughts and feelings.” 

She's trying to create a better world, one where humans aren't plagued with temptation and guilt. It's easy to blame this on the consequences of her affair with Asriel, and I do believe that fuels some of it. But to solely credit him for her motivations does her character a disservice. It took three-quarters of the season to touch on what drives her to these extremes, and I very much hope that they continue to delve into it in season 2.

Okay. This moment. This moment this moment this moment. This moment. Sorry, my brain loops and glitches whenever I see or think of this moment, because this moment.

This moment.

It's best with audio because then you can hear the way Ruth Wilson says Marisa’s faint protests. She's breathless, confused, torn, unsure. Everything she hasn't been up till now. Ruth Wilson is out queen our lord and saviour.

And Asriel, our favourite slut, is so thirsty for her, leaning in as she pulls away. It's been years and finally, he can kiss her again and he doesn't want to ever stop. His experiment just changed things forever, could change them forever. He and Marisa are the same, and he loved her years ago and he still loves her now, and if everything is changing then maybe finally they can get their happy ending.

Marisa was able to convince Macphail to let her come along because she knows Asriel better than anyone else. The same is true vice versa.

“Lie about whatever you want. Lie about the Oblation Board. The Magisterium. Lie about the girl. But do not lie about your ambition your work or who you truly are. You used to want to change the world. Then leave the Magisterium. Come with me, and we will change them all.”

He talks between small kisses, tempting her, teasing her, seducing her. Despite her snapping remark at Macphail, Marisa does in fact melt. This will work, they can be together again.

But there's the one thing Asriel didn't expect. The one thing that Marisa herself hadn't expected.

But I love Lyra. Where did this love come from? I don't know; it came to me like a thief in the night, and now I love her so much my heart is bursting with it. 

Rewatching the scene, you can see the moment she makes her decision. She leans her head back just enough so she can look at Asriel.

Then leans back in and closes her eyes. Lets herself bask in the moment, lets herself feel the love and safety and rightness of being with him envelop her. When she opens her eyes, when she pulls away and speaks the words that will put them on separate paths, her resolution is clear. She's resigned to her decision and its consequences.

And Asriel could have debated theology and politics until the end of time, if that's what it took to have her again. He can't argue this. 

And so she leaves. And he lets her. And the two of them are just so unexpectedly soft with each other my heart can't take it.

Where's the furious fight? The cutting remarks? The bitter resentment pushed down all these years finally showing its ugly face? Where's the dysfunctional madness?

"Ah, those two. In a fight they're lethal. Around each other, they melt." - Richelle Mead, The Golden Lily.

Part of me is disappointed we missed out on that beautiful angst, the kind we'd probably see if they spent longer together, but another part of me loves it. Because they cut through the bullshit. With others maybe they'd put on an act, but it's just them. And they know each other. They'd see through the other's presences in a heartbeat. The whole scene is so intimate, so honest, they almost convince me they could be healthy. And that's the tragedy of them, I think. They're so alike, two sides of the same coin. They understand each other on such a deep level no amount of time apart makes a difference. In another life, they would work. They should work. But this is the reality they live in.

Confession time.

I have not read the books. I have no intention of reading the books, at least not the parts I haven't seen onscreen yet. The reason is that after episode 3, I picked up the first book, caught up to where I was on the show, and realised I enjoyed the show better. I'd rather experience the twists and turns first on the platform that I prefer, without having them spoiled first on a platform that just doesn't evoke the same emotional response. Please don't pelt tomatoes at me!

I vaguely knew the plot of the Golden Compass from the movie I half saw years ago, and from general knowledge. Going forth, I'm mostly blind. I know bits and pieces from Tumblr that I can't quite escape, (I.e: the quote from the books I used above that I've seen in multiple gifsets), and unfortunately, I already know Masriel's fate. The journey getting there? No clue.

Which is exciting.

I've understood that the show is delving much more into Maria's psyche than the books, and that her revelation that she loves Lyra has come earlier. I don't know what it means going forth, if there will be changes from the books or if it will stay the same for the most part. What I do know, is that I can't wait to see what happens next.

Marisa refused Asriel because of Lyra, but Lyra left their world. Next season, I'm sure Marisa will be just as ruthless and determined to get her back, that will probably result with her aligning with the Magisterium once more. 

I'd love to see her find a way to once again place the blame on Asriel, but as we've seen, her bitterness and resentment tend to fade away when faced with the man himself. Maybe it'll be easier to cling onto now the novelty of seeing him again after so long has worn off. But I honestly don't know how it will go when they next see each other. The softness of this scene took me by surprise, just as each of them always does individually. One thing's for sure, their connection isn't going anywhere.

But neither is the reality they live in. The Magisterium. It'll be interesting to see just how deep her loyalties go because the show did a great job in showing me that she'll choose Lyra over practically anything, but like I said, it hasn't talked much about her religious convictions.

See, that isn't what I'd expect to hear from the truly devout. It's part of her power-play with Macphail, yes, but it doesn't scream religious fanatic. 

I want next season to explore that side of her. Ruth is a fantastic actress and would portray the inner turmoil perfectly. But I need to believe there's a chance she won't choose Lyra. I need to be convinced in her conviction, to honesty fear that she's gone off the ledge. I love that Lyra is her weak spot, I love that in her own twisted way she believes she's putting Lyra first. But she's not just a mother. She's not just a scorned lover. She is Marisa fucking Coulter, cesspit of moral filth, mother of all evil, and I need to see her go dark.

Yes, darker than smiling as she attacks the daughter she loves, darker than killing a boy with her bare hands, darker than kidnapping and experimenting on children even as they continue to die. I want her to repulse me with her actions. I want her to cross every line imaginable. I want her completely unredeemable. And then have her love for her child override all those convictions.

I have high demands. I have high expectations. I have full confidence Ruth Wilson can deliver. I'm really hoping the writers and producers do too. 

[captain--sif]

When you know, you know

Fandom: 9-1-1

Word count: 1.9k

Relationships: Buck/Eddie, minor Buck & Christopher, Bobby &Eddie and Bobby & Buck

This is my Secret Santa gift for ImDivingDeep

Summary: Buck learns random facts when he helps Christopher with school projects. The team is baffled. Eddie - not so much.

Find it on AO3 or read it here:

Later, none of the team would remember what the call was even about. What they would remember however was how Buck, in a (possibly misguided) attempt to distract the young and visibly uncomfortable sex worker they were rescuing, blurted out: “Did you know that one of the most popular songs in Germany in the 80s was a song about a prostitute?”

Bobby might have scolded the young firefighter for the tactless approach, had it not worked or had the woman shown some other emotion than just pure confusion. “It was?” He motioned their colleagues to keep working.

Buck continued explaining. “Well, you see, the phone wasn’t as well-established then as it is now and this prostitute they are singing about, she was the only one that had a number you could call.” “And they made a song about that?” “A really popular song, it seems”, Buck shrugged.

Hen and Chimney slid her into the back of the truck, the rest of the team following suit shortly after.

“How does he even know that?”, Bobby asked when he passed Eddie.

The other man laughed. “Buck helped Christopher with a school project last week. They are talking about different musical decades in class and Christopher got the 80s. Don’t ask me how they ended up at European hit charts though.” Bobby shook his head and followed his team into the truck.

---

On Friday, the team was deployed to help out on standby duty at a climate strike. So far, not much has happened to demand their attention, leading them to be able to observe the protesting teens.

“Do you think they are successful?”, Chimney asked Hen curiously.

“Hard to say”, the woman replied, “They are definitely getting the attention they want, that is for sure. I don’t know enough about it though. Denny is still too young to have an interest in it.” She shrugged.

“Chris has also yet to voice an interest”, Eddie chimed in, “how long do you think we still have until they start to lecture us on politics?” Hen laughed about it.

“I think they might be successful”, Buck voiced, “considering renewable energy sources already make up a third of the energy produced on earth, there is a good chance that with a push from these kids these numbers will increase.”

“A third?”, Chim pondered, “I would have thought it’d be less. Good for the planet though.” “Yeah, I thought so too”, Buck agreed with a  smile.

Expectedly, they did get some work to do, meaning right now, causing the paramedics to rush to help while Buck and Eddie stayed behind until they were needed.

“Did you learn that when researching with Christopher for that science project of his?”, Eddie asked the other man teasingly, bumping their shoulders softly.

“Maybe.” A cheeky grin accompanied Buck’s reply. Eddie shook his head fondly.

---

“A cat? In a tree?”, Eddie asked, “could it be more cliche?”

Buck only laughed and readied himself to climb the ladder.

Bobby approached the younger man to supervise the ordeal. “If he wasn’t so excited, I’m sure he’d tell you that the more cats get stuck in trees that we have to rescue, the more we get to cuddle with cute cats. Which”, he bobbed his head as if to think, all the while looking fondly up at the man reaching for the animal, “is not entirely untrue if you count holding a cat already as cuddling.”

“He’ll probably make the most of it on his way down”, Eddie jokingly replied the captain. Both men followed Buck with their eyes as he was descending, the cat clutched tight and, in fact, keeping it as close to cuddling as the descent allowed.

“You were right”, Bobby nodded in the brunet’s direction before stepping towards Buck.

He greeted them by holding the cat to their faces. “Look at the eyes.”

The two men exchanged a surprised look before doing as told.

“Did you know you can tell the time by looking into a cat’s eyes?” Realizing the raised eyebrows he met with when looking up, Buck added apologetically, “I helped Chris with a fact sheet about cats.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that fact listed on one of those before”, Bobby responded perplexed.

Buck shrugged. "I don't know when that would be useful anyway. It's still fun to know." He bobbed his nose against the cat's before carefully stroking its fur until its owners took it away from him, leaving him looking like a kicked puppy. Bobby patted him consolingly on the back.

"I think I wanna get a cat", Buck announced then, earning an amused look from Eddie.

"Does your apartment even allow pets?"

Buck sighed sadly, "I don't think so."

---

“Did you just put cinnamon into the hot chocolate?”, Eddie asked curiously, a smile tugging at his lips.

Buck turned around to where his friend leaned against the table. “I thought it might be good for Christopher. Seeing as cinnamon is supposed to be antispasmodic and supposed to stimulate the blood circulation which makes it perfect for gastrointestinal problems. He won’t even realize we’re giving him medicine.”

“And here I was, thinking you wanted to indulge him while he’s sick”, Eddie smirked, “Instead, you had ulterior motives.”

Buck started to fill the liquid into a mug he had just taken out of a cupboard. “I think when it comes to getting hot chocolate out of it, I think no one will dwell on my motives.” He grinned at his best friend. “Or would you like to dispute that?”

Eddie laughed fondly.

“How did you know that anyway?”, he asked then, “was that another one of Christopher’s school projects? Man, I really need to stop letting you help him or you will make everyone else feel inferior with all of the knowledge you amass.”

Buck bites his lip. “Does it bother you?”, he asked cautiously.

“What? That you help my son with his homework?”, Eddie asked, taken aback, “I would not know what to do without you.” Now it was his turn to bite his lip. He felt like he had said too much. “... helping my son with his homework”, he added quickly.

“No, I meant the me talking about all the random stuff I found out while researching with Christopher thing”, Buck clarified. With a playfully affronted look, he then added teasingly: “Also: is that all you keep me around for? To do homework with your son?”

“Hell no”, Eddie replied, “to both of those.” While he took his own mug of hot chocolate Buck was handing him, he debated internally if he should say more. Fuck it, he decided. “I like hearing you talk about these things. I can’t speak for anyone else but I enjoy listening to you, even if it’s rambling about German 80s songs or alternative time telling methods. And as to what I keep you around for...”, he stopped for a dramatic pause and sipped at his drink, “whatever reason I had in my mind before, it is now replaced by your hot chocolate.”

Buck stared at him, unamused. “Okay, give me your cup”, he ordered.

“Why?”, drawled Eddie and cocked an eyebrow, clutching his mug tight.

“You’re no longer allowed to drink my hot chocolate”, Buck stated and tried to get a grip on Eddie’s mug who recoiled and dodged him, every time Buck lunged forward to grab it.

“Stop it, you’re gonna spill the good chocolate”, Eddie shouted, laughing, taking a last step before realizing he was backed into a corner. Seizing the opportunity, he pushed his mug into the far corner behind him, shielding it with his body.

Buck would not be deterred from taking the hot chocolate away though, and wormed his arm around Eddie’s torso, pinning him against the counter in the process.

Shit, Eddie thought when his brain had processed their proximity.

“That’s dirty, man”, Buck mumbled when he resurged, “How could I anticipate that? You know your kitchen better than I do.” “Barely”, Eddie muttered distractedly. Buck halted and blinked at him.

Eddie forced himself to look up, fearful he’d blurt something else out. Something that would change their friendship. Make this easy banter impossible.

Buck reciprocated the eye contact, none of the men saying anything. After a few seconds, Eddie cleared his throat, desperate to distract from the fact that he got lost in his best friend’s eyes.

Said best friend surprisingly seemed just as shaken up, color surging into his face when his eyes wandered downwards and took in their closeness. When he looked back up, Eddie observed him curiously, averting his gaze as soon as their eyes met again.

Now it was Buck’s turn to clear his throat. “We should probably bring your son his hot chocolate.”

In a surge of confidence, Eddie made his smile turn into a smirk and said: “You’re not the one who can’t move because you’re being pinned against the kitchen counter.”

Buck blinked. “Right. Sorry.” He backed away and Eddie felt a pang of sadness at the sudden coldness where Buck’s body had touched his just a second ago.

In silence, they picked up the three mugs again and made their way to Christopher’s room, trading glances that were not as subtle as they thought.

Eddie stayed in the doorway while Buck handed Chris the chocolate, taking in the picture of the man interacting with his child. He’d like to keep it that way. Keep Buck in his house. In their little family.

Buck turned to smile at him, before sitting down on Christopher’s bed. All three of them sipped their drinks in silence, the sick child not having the energy to and both of the adults not knowing how to.

Christopher soon fell asleep again, as he’s been doing on and off for the whole day, making the men move back to the kitchen as to not wake him. Buck started to clean up, the silence continuing and starting to drive Eddie insane.

“This is awkward. Why is this awkward now?”, Buck finally interrupted. Turned to him. Eddie bit his lip, thinking about what to answer and how much to reveal of his own feelings. Bucks eyes flicked down to that movement which settled it for Eddie.

“I hope I didn’t misread this now.” He moved towards the other man whose eyes widened. “I think”, Eddie explained, as he got closer, “that it feels weird because we grazed a line both of us did not try to cross until now.”

“Yeah”, Buck drawled, his eyes not leaving the other man’s even for a second, “I didn’t mean to. Does that mean you want to cross it now?”

“If you want to cross it too, then yes.” Eddie stopped in front of his best friend, oh wait, is that term even right anymore, looking at him expectantly.

“I definitely do, yes”, Buck exhaled and closed the gap between their bodies. Their lips found each other, the two of them not hesitating to drape their arms around each other and melting into the kiss.

When they parted, Buck sighed. “As nice as this is, now I dread going to work tomorrow.”

“Mhm”, Eddie replied, going in for another kiss, “I don’t want to be the one to tell Bobby.”

“Oh”, Buck’s face scrunched up in thought, “I was thinking more about the teasing from Hen and Chimney that I’d have to endure.”

Eddie grinned fondly. “I promise I’ll make it worth it.”

Find it on AO3

[happymetalgirl]

Black Lives Matter (adapted from previous post)

I was finishing up my April albums post but I honestly couldn’t write about the albums I needed to without getting this out there first, and (as usual) it ended up being really long, so I separated it and made it its own post here.

I’m writing this part now at the beginning of June after an already tumultuous April and May, and now I’m just making myself sit down and do this because, well, honestly, it’s been pretty hard to justify spending my time writing about anything else with all all of what is going on right now. (I can’t wait to see what July throws at us.) But again, in all seriousness, I’m not looking for any pity or sympathy for my relatively mild circumstances at all because in all honesty, my assorted privileges have allowed my life to be pretty okay and proceed mostly uninterrupted in the midst of everything going on.

I’ll start by disseminating any ambiguity on what I’ll be talking about in these paragraphs. As I write this in the midst of a respiratory virus pandemic, another epidemic (possibly pandemic) of racist police brutality that has always existed in a culture of unhinged toxic masculinity in the United States has exploded to unbelievable and disgusting levels against Black people and peaceful protesters, ironically in wake of protests against fucking police violence, all of which is only emboldened and encouraged by local and federal leadership that is showcasing its oppressive, totalitarian ambitions in its unprecedented attempted revocations of its citizens constitutional and human rights.

I’ll make the necessary side note that this increasingly oligarchical government subservient to the will of military and prison industry has already shown its complete disregard for human rights for decades upon decades now through its violation of human rights through offensive wars and sanctions against other countries and its dehumanization of the refugees and immigrants who its actions create.

If you haven’t already checked out of this from all the political correctness breaching your conservative bubble (good job not being that person), but you’re upset because tHiS iS sUpPoSeD tO bE a MuSiC bLoG, uh, you’re on the wrong website buddy, and the potential tipping point of a long-awaited revolution in the midst of an economic depression, a viral pandemic, and a dual crisis of grotesque police violence and evolutionary transformation of proto-fascism into fascist dictatorship is no time to go about business as usual.

BUT OKAY, ENOUGH INTRODUCTION AND ENOUGH ABOUT ME! The point of this is to spotlight what to do in the wake of all of this. First of all, I don’t have all the answers and my perspective is as limited as any person’s, so if you’re an expert on any of these matters or if you have insight from having experiences that I as a white cis male have not had, if anything I’m bringing up here could be better in any way, feel absolutely free (but not obligated) to let me know.

Okay, so lots of problems at hand. The big, all-encompassing one facing all of humanity of course is the ecological disruption caused by industrially driven human-catalyzed climate change, and the rot of everything crystallizing at this current moment feeds into exacerbating that catastrophe, the next wide-reaching issue being capitalism, whose prioritization of profit and short-term gains is incredibly ill-equipped to handle a slow emergency like climate change or a more acute emergency like a global pandemic. Here in the U.S. we have a federal government so infested with corporate corruption to maximize capital profits for the country’s most wealthy that they couldn’t even choose the obvious solution of pausing the economy and providing for its people for the duration of the pandemic in the interest of public health over the appallingly quick choice of protecting the financial interests of the corporate “donors” that help them hold their positions of power, at the risk of maybe closing the gap a tiny bit between the truly despicably wealthy and the growing number of hopelessly impoverished. So while the wealthy get protection of their assets from the slow-down of business (you know, ‘cause the pandemic), the people in most need of help because of that slow-down and plunged into spiking unemployment get shit from the people meant to represent them. And that’s just the corporate rot that rears its head as a result of a pandemic!

Even in “normal” times, capitalism in this country has built its foundation on slave labor and justifying the use of slavery through racism (even after it became illegal to outright own people as slaves). That cornerstone of free/cheap labor that this country’s economy is built on whose role was served by slavery was filled by outsourcing to countries with an easily exploitable lower class (whose conditions are often exacerbated by U.S. meddling on behalf of business interests) and prison labor made possible by mass incarceration that has targeted similarly vulnerable people and communities of color through strategic, racially profiled over-policing of minority communities trapped in poverty through historic systemic racism.

The study of that global climate change I mentioned earlier is referred to as a crisis study because there isn’t an unlimited time to do something about it, and the ever-changing conditions and pivotal events of the world effect what needs to be done to combat it (and what it is too late to do). This current crisis of police brutality is one of those types of critical moments, for climate change and social justice. Police brutality didn’t become an issue when George Floyd was murdered on May 25th 2020; it’s been an ugly facet of this multifactedly ugly country for a long time now, but its being brought to light has instigated an uprising the likes of which has not been seen in a long while, and with it, an especially insidious aggression toward it by the increasingly fascist government and its authoritarian figurehead (to the point of threatening institution of martial law and suspending first amendment rights and habeas corpus) that at this point serves only to maintain complacency for the benefit of the ruling class and to the detriment of the disproportionately non-white lower working class (treated as a slave class). Consequently this is a pivotal time that obligates widespread action and ceasing of silence from privileged people like me who have been able to get away with writing about music largely apolitically for years. This is a time when we either plunge unfathomably further into the depths of fascism at the hands of the ruling class and the silence of the less-effected or we consolidate in this moment of broad energizing to both enact substantive change on the critical issue of police brutality and set a precedent and build momentum to achieve justice for LGBTQIA+ folk, other racial minorities and marginalized groups, and make the critical changes need to avoid civilizational dissolution in the face of the imperative to mitigate our impact on global warming.

Speaking of that change and the actions that this moment implores of us all to contribute our energy to: the most immediately critical issue at our feet, to both save human lives from being taken unjustly at the hands of police brutality and to galvanize this revolution to be able to demand further justice and critical social transformation, is ending police brutality. Being an institution born out of rounding up escaped slaves and given the state-supported monopoly on violence that attracts largely those seeking to satiate sadism with the license to that monopolized violence, police culture is inherently toxic and not worth even preserving for the sake of transforming structurally. While abolishing the police is obviously too ambitious of an immediate goal, there are a lot of proposed steps to defunding and largely dismantling the police as a whole. The project Campaign Zero outlines and pushes for ten tangible reforms that would (some of which have recently been proposed in Colorado) decrease police violence, especially in the majority-Black communities that suffer from it the most. The “8 Can’t Wait” proposal that has been making rounds lately is part of Campaign Zero, and donations to these projects are of course, quite helpful and a good start for this blossoming movement. Furthermore, donations to local bail funds is especially important at this time with police making wanton arrests of peaceful protests (and also just random Black people not making any disruption) to support the people going out and protesting. Because this money of course gets siphoned into the courts, and then partially to law enforcement, it’s important to also direct funds to organizations where that money will not later be used against us, but again, keeping people able to protest is of utmost importance, since that it what is driving positive change in this moment.

Also helpful is direct support of the people on the frontlines of these protests. It is a time for privileged people to take action in solidarity and support, but not one for privileged groups to take over or “lead” the movement. Right now, this is about who is hurting the most and who is being oppressed the most, and right now that is Black people, by police, hence BLACK LIVES MATTER. Now is not a time for even underprivileged white people to use these protests’ likelihood of escalating to indulge in venting frustrations against the system by inciting police violence that puts Black people disproportionately in more danger in such situations. Now is the time to use that privilege of being less prone to racism police violence to whatever extent possible to protect the people of color protesting. And again, this isn’t about being white saviors or martyrs, this is about supporting people in the way they wish, so don’t listen to my advice over the insight and requests of what Black people and the Black community have. And by all means, fucking listen to them! Read from them! Engage in good-faith conversation with them (though don’t expect any individual Black person to give you a seminar on racism when there are ample resources that don’t demand someone devoting their precious time to you)! Learn where the limits of your perspective fail you! And for fuck’s sake, don’t just cherry pick the word of one token Black friend that happens to have some class privilege to conveniently discount the testimonies of other Black people!

Lastly, on a personal note to the metalheads that read this blog, I think this is a particularly important time for the metal community, not to center itself, but to bring itself alongside social justice in a more complete way than it has in the past. Former Opeth and current Soen drummer Martín López said last year in an interview published in Blabbermouth that the metal community is very behind the curve on sociopolitical issues, and the response to his saying that from the metal community that floods Blabbermouth comment sections basically just made the case for the exact point he was making. And it’s a shame because I think such a huge part of metal is about standing up to injustice as part of or in support of the oppressed, or at least such a huge part of the metal I gravitate toward is. Without sounding too spiritual or cheesy because I’m not a really spiritual person, I feel like when I see the injustice going on, I feel that spirit of metal in all of it on the side of the oppressed. I feel like all the grindcore and deathcore and thrash and death metal I’ve been binging lately is in the spirit of the protesters standing up to and, when they have to, fighting back against the unjustified aggression of the police, and looking back at old, certified classic albums like …And Justice for All, Toxicity, and Chaos A.D. and more recent albums like Machine Head’s The Blackening, and Thy Art Is Murder’s Human Target, and Venom Prison’s Samsara, it’s always been about standing up to this kind of bullshit. So I think if there ever was a time since Sabbath birthed it for metal to prove that it’s as important as it makes itself out to be and as important as it is to everyone who listens to it in such a way that they read an obscure blog about it, now is that time to show that it’s not just about being an angry white guy. Now is the time to make Martín López happy by proving him wrong.

Well, in typical Happymetalboy fashion, I can’t seem to make anything brief.

[theclanscript]

the five keys to son hyunwoo

⋈ pairing: hyunwoo x reader ⋈ word count: 4,119 ⋈ genre: fluff ⋈ notes: starting things off right with our lovely leader ♥

1.      He is funnier than most people, although nobody ever sees it coming

You were sitting under an awning in a corner of campus, your sandwich on the bench next to you and a bottle of water in your hand. With mild interest, you were watching the students hurrying from building to building, door to door, gate to gate. Even though you weren’t a big fan of dressing up for Halloween – at least not at school – you appreciated the effort some of your peers had put into their outfit for October 31st. You had seen several Harry Potters, two minions, a landslide of Marvel characters, and one thing that looked like a six-foot-four Griffin.

You put down your phone after taking a few snapshots and reached for your sandwich. Lunch wasn’t long, but at least you had only two classes left. Just as you were about to bite into the bread, you noticed two people approaching you out of the corner of your eye. You looked up just to see Hoseok, one of your classmates, with his friend Hyunwoo staggering toward you. Hoseok was dressed up as a cowboy, his hat an offensive shade of red and his brown leather boots at least two sizes too big.

“Hey,” Hoseok greeted and his wide smile exposed a row of perfect teeth. “You’re not in the spirit?”

“Not quite yet,” you grinned and nodded at Hyunwoo. You had seen him around and he was in one or two of your classes, but you had never talked much. It wasn’t until three weeks ago that Hoseok had introduced you at lunch and you had learned – or cared to remember – his name.

“And what are you supposed to be?” you asked and looked him up and down. He was dressed in a white overall with black dots on it. The sleeveless garment revealed his tan, muscular arms, and a hairpiece with two plastic horns adorned his head.

“He’s a cow,” Hoseok said excitedly. “Get it? I’m a cowboy. He’s my cow.”

“Yes, I think I understand the concept.” You gave a lopsided grin. “And what’s your lovely cow’s name?”

Hyunwoo looked at you with appropriately big brown eyes, expression completely blank as he answered.

“Hyunmoo.”

2.      He is dependable, get used to it

This was not how you had imagined the second date would go.

The bright, fluorescent lights in the waiting room felt like they were burning your eyes, your breathing was shallow and strained. You were slumped in your chair, trying to focus on something, anything but the severe urge to empty your stomach contents all over the gray PVC coated floors – although by now there could be not much left, if you even still had a stomach. You squeezed your eyes shut and buried your face in your hands, but somehow that upset your insides even more. A low, desperate sound left your mouth, but fortunately nothing else. The chair next to yours shifted as someone sat down and you felt them looming over you.

“How are you holding up?” Hyunwoo’s voice was calm, normal even, as if he had not just driven the girl he had only gone out with once before to the hospital after she had gotten violently sick in the restaurant and all over his shoes.

All you could do was shake your head.

“Try to sit up straight.”

“The light,” you whispered, trying not to sound too pathetic. It was bad enough that you were completely at the mercy of mainstream AC currents.

“Ah. Come here.” Hyunwoo gently pushed against your shoulder to get you to sit up. Then he took off his sweater, folded it once, and carefully placed it over your face to block out the brightness. You inhaled deeply and let your head lull back a little bit and the new position brought immediate relief to your stomach. The sweater smelled faintly of expensive cologne and detergent and Hyunwoo. You smiled as you remembered when he had hugged you goodbye after your first date – on the doorstep of your apartment building, close enough to make sure you were safe, far enough to be considered polite – and how his smell had enveloped you in that moment. His arms had held you tightly, warmly, and his presence had clouded your mind and made you dizzy, until he had let go and a cool fall breeze had jerked you back into reality.

“Can you breathe?” he asked and you nodded slowly.

“Yes. Thank you, this is much better.”

“Good. Let me know if you need to go to the restroom.”

You cringed underneath the soft fabric. This was really not the best time for him to witness you in a gross and vulnerable state like this. Then again, was there ever a good time for that? You prided yourself on your relatively good health and the fact that you rarely got ill. Why did it have to happen today of all days? Why in a restaurant of all places?

Why with the guy you liked of all people?

You had talked to Hyunwoo a few times at school before he had asked you out. He was a friend of a friend and you hadn’t paid him much attention at first, but after a few lunches with some of your mutual classmates, you had been comfortable enough to accept his invitation. He had taken you to the planetarium in the afternoon, then to dinner, and afterwards, after dark, he had driven you into the mountains outside of the city. He had stopped the car in a parking lot, told you to take your jacket, and then presented a telescope from his trunk. You had spent half the night talking, laughing, and stargazing, until you had gotten cold and Hyunwoo had taken you home. You had fallen asleep in the passenger seat on the ride back, but you swore at one point he had gingerly brushed your long hair behind your shoulder and made a small sound – not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh, just a sound in the gentle embrace of affection and contentment.

He had been the perfect gentleman, just as he was now.

“I signed you in so they should call you soon,” Hyunwoo said and you suspected that he was only speaking to make sure you were still responsive.

“Thank you so much, Hyunwoo,” you mumbled, your weak voice muffled by his sweater. “I’m sorry I’m keeping you. I can probably take an Uber home if you don’t want to wait around.”

“Absolutely not.” His voice was firmer now. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

You wanted to protest, wanted to assure him that it was fine to leave, wanted to feel like there was at least the slightest chance that this evening would not shape your relationship forever – or rather, ruin any chance of one in the first place. But you were too weak. You felt powerless, boneless, hopeless.

When your name was called, Hyunwoo was on his feet in an instant, wrapping his sweater around your shoulders before reaching round your back to help you up. He held you close to his side as you walked toward the examination room, leaning into him with every feeble step. It didn’t take long for the doctor to figure out that you were suffering from a gastrointestinal infection. She prescribed you a few meds and sent you on your merry way. All the while, Hyunwoo was sitting on a chair next to the cot, holding your hand and asking questions. This allowed you to simply lie there and focus on listening and breathing, and you were exceedingly grateful to him for this. After leaving the room, he led you back to a chair before disappearing again to take care of all the paperwork and pick up your medication. By the time he came to collect you, you felt like all the strength had left your body and your head was pounding from dehydration. Hyunwoo crouched down in front of you, putting his forearms on either of the chair’s armrests.

“Can you walk?”

“Yes,” you lied. A smirk flashed across his face.

“Do you want me to give you a piggyback ride anyway?”

You stared at him for a moment, a moment you mostly needed to stop your heart from leaping out of your chest.

“Yes.”

“Good. Let’s go.” Hyunwoo turned around without getting up, and you clumsily climbed onto his back. Your arms wrapped around his neck, you pressed your face into his shoulder as he carried you to his car. The cotton of his T-shirt smelled lighter, cooler, but still like him.

You were almost disappointed when he let you down and opened the passenger door for you. He held his hand flat between your head and the roof of the car and made sure you were settled in before closing the door. You were still fumbling with the seatbelt buckle when he dropped into the driver’s seat. He looked at you and offered an empathetic smile.

“You okay there?”

“Yeah, I’m alright,” you said, more out of habit than anything else. You were, in fact, very much not alright. But what point was there in whining to him about it?

“Okay. Let’s stop at a store to get you lots of water and energy drinks and maybe some crackers. Then we’ll take you home and I’ll prepare some soup for you in case you feel like eating tomorrow. I can come by around noon if you need any help. Sound good?”

Slowly, your head rolled to the side to look at him, long and exploringly.

“You’d do that?”

“Of course.” Hyunwoo reached over to caress your cheek with the back of his fingers. Then he blushed and cleared his throat as if he suddenly realized what he had done. You smiled and this time it was your turn to reach across the middle console and wrap your fingers around his much bigger hand.

“Thank you, Hyunwoo. I don’t know what else to say, but I’m really very grateful for everything you’ve done. It’s nice not to have to go through this alone.”

He looked down at his hand in yours and then cleared his throat again before meeting your eyes.

“You know I’d do this even if I weren’t in love with you, right?”

“Oh, uh,” you stammered, your brain frantically trying to process what you had just heard. “Yeah, for sure. And I’d still appreciate it if I didn’t like you back.”

Hyunwoo chuckled and placed his other hand on yours, lightly rubbing his thumb over the inside of your wrist before letting go briefly to start the car. He put the gear into drive and then his right hand found your left one, his fingers intertwining with yours, his warmth spreading into your cold and tired body. You relaxed immediately, sinking into the seat and looking at Hyunwoo through hooded eyes, only to find him softly smiling to himself.

“This,” he said and squeezed your hand before setting the blinker, “is not how I imagined the second date would go.”

3.      He rarely swears, but when he does it usually is with good reason

“I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

You had lost count of how many times Hyunwoo had said those words tonight. And with every time they had made your blood boil more. You weren’t one to care about dates – birthdays, Valentine’s, anniversaries, all of those meant little to you. But the fact that he had promised he would go to your best friend’s wedding this weekend and was now blowing it off because a friend had asked him to help him move was unacceptable to you.

“You have known about this for months, Hyunwoo.”

“I’m sorry!” He flinched when you tsk-ed at him. “It slipped my mind.”

“I can’t believe this,” you hissed. After all, you were still in a restaurant. You had wondered why he had suggested to go out for a nice dinner on a Tuesday, but now it all made sense. Despite appearances, Hyunwoo was a big softie and not one for confrontations – especially not the kind he knew he would lose. “They’re your friends, too!”

“I already said I’d help him out!”

“Can’t you just help on Sunday?” you suggested, giving him one last chance to redeem himself and fix this. It boggled your mind that he would forego the wedding of two very important people in your lives for some dude moving from one gross studio apartment into the next.

“He doesn’t really have many people who can help him and-“ Hyunwoo stopped when you threw your napkin onto the table and pushed back your chair.

“Fine. But you call them and tell them that they have to make last minute changes to the seating arrangement, the food, basically everything that involves the guests. And you call them today.”

You got up and made for the bathroom, but Hyunwoo was hot on your heels.

“Where are you going?”

“To powder my nose and get a toilet seat to break on your thick skull,” you replied without turning around. You didn’t care what the people in the restaurant thought about your performance. All you cared about was that your poor friend would have to rearrange her wedding three days before the date because your boyfriend was too nice.

“You can’t just leave like that!” Hyunwoo insisted, half angry, half pleading.

“Watch me.” You pushed open the door to the ladies’ room and took a deep breath. Then you registered the footsteps behind you and turned to see Hyunwoo standing in front of you, his eyes narrow, his mouth opened to launch another verbal attack. You crossed your arms in front of your chest and looked up at him expectantly, an evil smirk forming on your lips. Hyunwoo stared back, confused. Then, slowly, it dawned on him where he had followed you without even thinking. His face and ears turned crimson red as the realization hit him and he slouched down slightly, as if it would do anything to help hide his 5’11” frame. You kept staring at him as he practically dove toward the door.

“Fuck,” he cussed and opened it slowly, peering outside to make sure the hallway was empty. You watched in amusement as he squeezed his giant body through the smallest possible opening and closed the door behind him. You heard him groan outside.

“Fuck!”

You giggled and went into one of the empty stalls.

Served him right.

4.      He is a man of few words, but they’re all the right ones

It took a really bad day to get you to admit that you were having a bad day.

You usually opted to look at the bright side, the positive, the silver lining. But today had defeated you, your conviction, and your principles. Every side you looked at was dark like charcoal, the negative had nested in your mind, instead of a silver lining you wished for a shot of silver tequila. You weren’t sure what exactly had tipped the scale over to unsalvageable, or if it was just the culmination of all the things that had gone wrong today. The commute had been hell, work had been worse. Your favorite sweater had been ruined when someone had pushed you down the last two steps of the stairs in the subway station and it had made contact with the filthy ground. Not to mention, your ankle hurt like a bitch. You had dragged yourself home and not made it further than the couch. There you were still lying now, one hour later, in your filthy pants and sweater, when the front door opened and you heard Hyunwoo’s steps in the hallway.

“I’m home,” he said. He never yelled, he simply projected his voice in a way that it could be heard throughout the apartment even though he was only talking slightly louder than usual.

“Hi,” you replied, more a grunt than a greeting. Hyunwoo appeared in the doorframe and studied your form on the couch. Your arm was covering your eyes, making it impossible for him to see your expression. Wordlessly, he left and you heard him rummaging around in the kitchen. A few minutes later, he entered the living room again and stopped next to the sofa.

“Baby?”

Reluctantly, you removed your arm and looked up at him. He tilted his head and sighed before setting down the two cups of tea in his hands on the coffee table next to the sofa. Once again, he disappeared into the kitchen and came back with two cups of fresh black sesame pudding he must have gotten on his way home. You wondered if he had guessed anything from the casual texts you had exchanged throughout the day. It wouldn’t have surprised you.

Slowly, you sat up and allowed him to sit down next to you. You both drank your tea in silence, but somehow even just his presence loosened the tension inside you, and you found yourself lean against his shoulder with a deflated sigh. Hyunwoo took your cup from your hand and put it down alongside his own. Then he wrapped his arms around you so tightly you thought you’d stop breathing, although all his hugs tended to have that effect on you. Your head was resting against his chest, his hands rubbing your back comfortingly as he peppered kisses on the top of your head. You snaked your arms around his waist and nuzzled your face into the crook of his neck. He smelled faintly like expensive cologne and the summer sun and Hyunwoo.

He smelled like home.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

“Nah,” you sighed, already forgetting all the trials and tribulations of the day. Just being in his arms made the world and its hardships seem far away, and even farther still when he pulled back, cupped your face with his large hands, and kissed you so gently it felt more like a tingle on your lips that left you wanting more. You looked up at him expectantly, but Hyunwoo just gazed into your eyes as if he could read all your stories on the canvas of your irises. Finally, he kissed you again, harder this time, longer, his lips trying to tell you all the answers to questions he knew you’d never ask.

You only opened your eyes again when he whispered your name and smiled warmly.

“You, my love, are everything good in my life.”

“And you, Son Hyunwoo, are the light of mine.”

You giggled when Hyunwoo let himself fall back into the backrest, pulling you with him. You threw your legs over his and cuddled into his chest. He held you close with one arm as the hand of the other caressed your thigh. You sighed again, a deep sigh of comfort and contentment. Hyunwoo’s rhythmic motions and the strain of the day were lulling you to sleep, when suddenly you felt his head lean down to kiss your forehead.

“So,” he said and you felt the vibration of his voice in his chest. “Wanna go shopping on Saturday?”

5.      You will have to learn to read his mind and it will be worth it

The laughter rang in your ears like church bells. The place was loud, loose, full of life. You were having a great time talking to your friends and catching up with old classmates. Hoseok had just opened his first ramen restaurant and had invited what felt like the audience of the Super Bowl. You had heard stories about weddings and honeymoons, children and careers, and provided your own – you and Hyunwoo had just bought your first house together with a big yard. Now you were shopping for puppies. Life was great, and you were happy to see most of the people you cared about were doing equally well.

“I’ll get another drink,” you announced to the group of people you had been talking to and peeled yourself away from them to make your way to the bar. A few people you vaguely recognized waved at you and you returned the gesture but kept your course.

As you waited for your drink, you caught a glimpse of the clock above the door and were surprised to find it was much later than you had anticipated. Your next instinct was to look around – you hadn’t seen your boyfriend in over an hour and you had a gut feeling that that was not a good sign. You thanked the bartender for the rum and coke and went to look for Hyunwoo. A very giddy but helpful Hoseok pointed you toward the outdoor area where you found Hyunwoo sitting in a corner sipping on what you hoped was a regular coke.

“Hey babe.” You sat down next to him and held up your glass. Hyunwoo clinked his to it and smiled.

“You look so beautiful,” he said. You nudged him playfully.

“Are you drunk? You have to drive us home, Hyunwoo.”

“I’m not drunk! You’re just gorgeous.” He leaned down to kiss your cheek and you sank against his shoulder.

“Why thank you.”

“Are you having fun, sweetheart?” he asked, his voice calm and deep. A comfortable warmth spread in your chest. Even after all these years, his voice, his touch, everything about him stirred something in you that felt exhilarating like a crush but transcended love.

“A lot,” you whispered and pressed your chin against his arm to look up at him. “And you?”

“Yeah.”

No.

“Why are you out here alone?”

“Just getting some air.”

I’m bored and there’s too many people. It’s too much.

“Hm.” You took a sip of your drink and yawned. “You know what, babe, on second thought I think I’m getting kinda tired. It’s much later than I thought and the fresh air is really clearing my head.”

“Are you sure? You’re not feeling unwell, are you?” Hyunwoo protectively wrapped an arm around your shoulder but you shook your head.

“I’m fine,” you said. “But can we leave soon? I need to get to bed.”

“Sure.”

Thank you.

“Okay. I’ll go say goodbye and meet you outside, okay?”

“Okay.”

You kissed him quickly and went back inside to find Hoseok and everyone else who mattered. You were met with general understanding – after all, most of your peers were in their 30s now, too – and headed to the entrance of the restaurant. Hyunwoo was waiting with your coat and helped you put it on before holding the door open for you.

“That was nice, though,” you said as you walked toward the car hand-in-hand. “Thank you for coming with me tonight.”

“Of course.”

I would go anywhere for you.

You enjoyed the comfortable silence on the way home. Hyunwoo had found a jazz channel you both liked a lot and the soft notes filled the air between you. His hand was resting heavy on your thigh and you alternated between playing with his fingers and bringing it up to kiss the rough skin of the back of his hand. It was the perfect moment of love and intimacy, and the result of years of learning, failing, and fighting for your relationship.

“Listen,” Hyunwoo said as you were both sitting in the kitchen with a cup of tea. “I was thinking a little today and there’s something I want to ask you.”

“Oh?” you said and took a cautious sip of the piping hot green tea.

“I-I haven’t really- I don’t have anything prepared or- uh-”

I am so nervous I could die.

“Prepared?” Your head perked up. “Did you find a puppy?”

“No.”

Please just let me talk.

“Okay. Sorry. Go ahead.”

“I’ll just make it quick.”

I cannot imagine my life without you. This is scary, not because I’m not sure of my feelings but because even after all this time I am still afraid that you might leave if I push too much. But seeing everyone tonight has made me realize the life I want for us, the life I want with you. All I’ve ever wanted is you.

You. And me. Forever.

You smiled. Hyunwoo reached across the table, taking both of your hands in his.

“Will you marry me?”

You nodded.

“Of course.”

I would do anything for you.

An incredulous laugh escaped Hyunwoo’s lips before he jumped to his feet, walked around the table, and scooped you out of your seat. He wrapped your legs around his waist and pressed you to his body, kissing you over and over until you were both breathless and giggling and holding onto each other for dear life.

Hyunwoo smiled.

I love you.

You kissed him.

Forever.

[uzumaki-rebellion]

Black Boys Bloom Thorns First: Volume 2, Chapter 18

"See she's telepathic Call it black girl magic Yeah she scares the gov'ment Deja Vu of Tubman

We go missing by the hundreds Ain't nobody checkin for us Ain't nobody checkin for us…"

"Blk Girl Soldier" – Jamila Woods

The morning is a whirlwind of activity and excitement.

Negra Lia and her entire family had a catered breakfast at her parent's house near the polling site where the family would cast their votes. N'Jobu watched Erik prance around in his new t-shirt and new black khakis. Califia untwisted his hair and let him rock a 'fro to match hers. Erik was a Mama's boy, and N'Jobu couldn't fault him for it. Especially when your mother was a badass.

A priest from the local church came by the house and gave Lia a blessing prior to everyone tucking into the gourmet breakfast. A TV played in the background and everyone caught the news coverage of polling stations having long lines. Lia had captured the imagination of the young, Black, disenfranchised, working poor, and the queer community. Although it was just the city council, N'Jobu sensed that the people in the community saw Lia as their champion, that perhaps with her unapologetic Blackness and her support for them and their needs, that real change was a possibility. She was a local girl who made good. City council was just the start. The energy pouring out in the streets and on TV was just the beginning of a new day in Sao Paulo politics. Axiel and other supporters were sponsoring carpools to help get people in the favelas to their polling places. Lia looked happy but also worried. When she stepped outside to get some air, N'Jobu followed her.

"How are you holding up?" he asked while sipping on orange juice.

Lia's eyes were coal black, the eyes of someone who could take the world by the throat and shift it on its axis. Her hair was wrapped in a yellow headwrap and the shade of raisin brown lipstick she wore complimented her glowing skin.

"I'm feeling the pressure," she said.

"You have this on lock," he said.

"I don't want to disappoint them if I don't win. They all have their hopes and dreams pinned to me, and I can't fail them again," she said. For the first time, her eyes looked vulnerable and unsure. He moved closer to her.

"No matter what, you have inspired the people around you to strive for more power to help themselves. All these young people…they are on fire."

"I hope they can carry on and stay invested in politics if this doesn't go the way they want."

"They will."

Lia gave a deep sigh and rubbed the back of her neck.

"The problem we have is waiting for some great savior to come down and fix everything. There can't be one leader. There have to be many, in all communities…when we put our hopes into one person we often get into trouble."

"What would you like to see happen?"

Lia glanced out at the street and clasped her hands in front of her thighs.

"Black strongholds all over the world. Many leaders…many women…. running communities and connecting together, sharing ideas on what works and doesn't work to help us move forward as a people. Less in-fighting and power grabbing or even clout chasing…."

She spoke in Portuguese for a second to find the right English word and then she stared at N'Jobu.

"I want heaven on earth for all of us right now. No more struggling just to survive. We need to thrive and flourish. All of us in the diaspora…on the continent from where we came from too. Free education, free healthcare, affordable housing for all…prison reform and then abolition. Transformative justice. That is my dream…no, those are my goals."

"Big goals."

She smiled and tapped her head.

"Ah, but if we put our mind to it, we can do it. I just have to play my part. Right now, city council…next time something bigger."

She shook her hands with nervous energy. "We should go to the polls now," she said.

N'Jobu took her hand and squeezed it. He spoke to her in Wakandan and her eyes glanced at his lips for a second when she heard him give a click with his tongue.

"What did you say?"

"I'll tell you after you win," he teased. She gave him a playful tap on his shoulder and he followed her back inside the house.

"Are we ready to leave?" She asked everyone inside. Her boyfriend Oscar grabbed his car keys and everyone divided up into the car groupings they would go in over to the polls. N'Jobu and his family were riding with Lia's parents in their minivan. Their small caravan pulled out and N'Jobu could feel Erik's excited energy as he sat next to him. Califia chatted with Lia's parents and N'Jobu watched the scenery out of the car window.

"Mom told me you have to leave early," Erik said. They were sitting in the back of the mini-van.

"I do."

"Why?"

"Some things came up at work and I have to solve some problems there."

Erik's eyes went to his beads.

"Mom looked sad when she told me. Are you guys okay?"

N'Jobu was taken aback by his question.

"What made you ask that?"

He shrugged.

"Mom looks happy most of the time, but this morning she kept looking at you and…I dunno…she looked kinda sad. Did you have a fight last night, Baba?"

N'Jobu glanced up toward the front of the minivan. Califia and Lia's parents were busy speaking loud Portuguese and ignoring the back of the car.

"No. We didn't have a fight. She is sad that I can't go to the museum with you on Friday. She likes us all being together and she doesn't want me to miss Aunt Lia winning."

Erik smiled.

"Auntie Lia is going to be a President one day."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Erik's nose scrunched up as he thought about the question. He looked like Califia at that moment.

"A computer designer and programmer with my own company. Or an architect."

"Hmmm, I thought maybe you might want to be an archeologist or a scientist—"

"Oh yeah, those too."

N'Jobu rubbed his son's head. His brilliant little boy.

"You can be whatever you want to be, my Son."

The minivan pulled into the parking lot of an elementary school. N'Jobu saw that the line to vote wrapped around the building. He slipped on his dark glasses and pulled a baseball cap on his head. There was a news crew waiting by the entrance. N'Jobu hung back behind the reporters and out of the way, blending in with the background. Two male news reporters thrust mics in front of Lia's face, cameras bright and close.

N'Jobu didn't know what they were saying, but he was sure it had to be about her casting her vote and her hopes for the outcome. Califia and Erik stood to the side with Marisol and Aunjanue.

Lia's parents, Soliel, and her friends stood in line to cast their support and Lia herself was filmed being escorted into the polling booth directly so she could vote. It didn't take her long to go inside the private booth and make her choices. When she came out, she flashed the peace sign on both hands and the crowd of people waiting in line clapped. Lia walked to the end of the line to join her family. Califia left Erik with Aunjanue and Marisol and sauntered over to the background where he was standing and watching. She clasped her hand in his.

"This is it," she said.

He nodded.

"Oscar said he can give you a ride to the airport tomorrow."

N'Jobu put his arm around her and pulled her in tight so that she was against his chest. He kissed her forehead.

"Lia is lucky to have you rooting in her corner. I saw all the work you put into helping her campaign. Organizing the young people, working on her social media and every little detail to make this a success. This is a win for you too."

She wrapped her arms around his waist.

"I wish I didn't have to go," he whispered to her.

"We'll be back in Oakland with you soon enough."

She tilted her head up and puckered her lips. He kissed her and felt her body relax against him.

They both turned to watch the voters make their way through the line.

N'Jobu thought of Califia's work in Oakland. He thought of her activism there and the need she had to change what was around her. It mirrored Lia in so many ways. Soliel was the same way, her activism focused on protecting the fragile same-sex rights that had been hard won since she had married Aunjanue and gave birth to Marisol. For N'Jobu, it felt like an unfair burden to carry. These women could not live comfortable lives or even live for themselves without external pressure encroaching on their right to life and liberty. They couldn't be happy unless all were happy.

He hated to admit that he wished Califia didn't use so much of her time worrying about others when they were first reunited. But it was the thing that made her who she was. If she weren't that way, how different would she be? Would he have fallen in love with her?

The first time he had ever saw her was in the middle of her bursting into a room bringing a righteous energy to a crowd and encouraging them to protest a racist writer. If she had been a typical university student talking to him about her classes and who made the best coffee for cramming sessions, he may have overlooked her. But she came in like the fire of Sekmet with her form-hugging biker clothes and daggers in her eyes. His old lover Andrea had caught his interest with a fat ass and compliant nature, but Califia's sharp tongue and call to the masses had won his heart. After that, she was always on his mind. Even when he was juggling women back in the day, getting his dick wet as much as he could because he could, it was Califia and her assertive drive to shape the world that forced him to turn her way. Her influence on him over the years changed him and his worldview. She was the catalyst for him finally admitting to himself that he wanted out of the palace. He wanted a life of his own, but to have that life, it meant looking out for the life of others in a more profound way.

He could freely admit that his woman gave him new eyes. And those new eyes turned to look at his own country and really allowed him to see how seclusion and secrecy was…what? Wrong? Selfish? Without her, would he be sitting in the palace now with Zinzi looking no further outside of Wakanda except for the occasional trips he would have to make to the U.N. and worrying about nothing so pressing as to what he would wear to a royal event? Would he have children that were nothing like Erik, who expected things to be handed to them because they had wealth and protection?

N'Jobu watched his son as he spoke to Lia and Marisol, and a chill ran through him. His little boy was so much more than what his own nephew T'Challa could ever be. His nephew lived in a bubble just as N'Jobu had lived. It was an extreme world of privilege, high-tech, and insular thinking. It was also a small world that had the capacity to make one not have empathy. This was the thing that Califia gave him. The tipping point that shifted his mind. He was sympathetic to the troubles of people outside of Wakanda when he first arrived in America, but honestly, beyond that, it wasn't his problem or concern. Califia taught him empathy. And this made him look outward.

It shook him to his core at that moment to know that she made him free. Made him want more for others. Especially for her and their son.

N'Jobu squeezed Califia's waist and let his chin rest in her hair.

Bast be a rock.

They were inside the local community center that Soliel created. It was a small building that served a vibrant neighborhood and it was packed with supporters.

Califia was drinking an overly sweet punch when the final vote was tallied and Lia received the phone call that she had won her seat on the city council. They all watched Lia cover her face with her hands after she burst into tears. Her boyfriend Oscar scooped her up and her family clamored for hugs. Marisol and Erik hugged Lia's waist as she stared around the room, her face full of shock.

N'Jobu stood next to Califia and his smile was so big and bright, she could only grab onto his arm and squeeze his bicep. Lia ran to her and Soliel and threw her arms around them both in a big hug.

"This couldn't be done without you two," Lia said. When she stood back, her face looked like it had really registered that her political career was beginning. All the talks over wine and food late into the night over years of strategic planning to win over minds and canvassing the neighborhood had paid off. Her foot was in the door. Now all she had to do was stick to her convictions and push reform. Within the hour of winning, Lia was outside the center giving a victory speech to reporters, her face back on tv again. The entire neighborhood felt like it had won. Califia and N'Jobu watched her speech from inside on the tv with Califia translating for him.

"She is talking about her critics hating her left-leaning politics and how her opponent, that asshole Nobrega, will no longer be allowed to hide his cover-up of extrajudicial killings by police officers in the favelas…"

They could hear the crowd of supporters outside cheering Lia's words about the police and city corruption. Nobrega was a former cop turned politician, and N'Jobu thought he had the face of a mindless weasel. He was racist, homophobic, and a champion of militias and right-wing extremism. Throughout the campaign, he kept referring to Lia as a troublesome black rat who would damage the city. An ugly little man in N'Jobu's eyes. He overheard Erik calling him "mancha de merda" to Marisol at the Catalina restaurant, and Califia looked shocked that he said that and reprimanded him at the table. When he asked Califia what Erik had said, she whispered in his ear, "Our son called him a shit stain." N'Jobu had laughed.

There was a small party at Lia's house that evening out on the patio, and part of the time was spent with Califia and Erik watching N'Jobu pack his things. They had finally put the mattress back on the box spring and Califia and Erik sat on the bed.

"Tomorrow we'll be at the swearing in and then the luncheon until one, and then we'll head back here for dinner. My Dad said to call him when you get into Atlanta and he'll be at the airport waiting for you," she said as she watched him pack away a few shirts and some souvenirs.

Erik kept watching her face and she wondered why he was so intent on being so hugged up near her. He was doing the same to N'Jobu.

"You okay, JaJa?" she asked him while rubbing her hand on his curls.

He nodded, but he gave furtive glances to his father.

"What is it, Son?" N'Jobu said sitting on the other side of Erik.

They both saw two tears run down both sides of Erik's face and then he was pressing his head against Califia's chest. She put a protective arm around him.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't want Baba to leave."

"I'm just going for work—"

Erik shook his head against Califia.

"Something's wrong," he wailed and Califia patted his back to try and calm him down.

N'Jobu pulled Erik away from Califia and held his chin with his hand forcing the boy to look his way.

"Speak," N'Jobu said.

"It doesn't feel good—"

"What doesn't feel good?" N'Jobu said wiping Erik's face.

"You guys. It feels different."

"What are you worried about?" Califia asked. Her eyes had glanced over at N'Jobu's and he looked as puzzled as she felt. But Erik was sensitive that way. He always had the ability to feel their tensions.

"Baba leaving us so early all of a sudden. And you were crying this morning when Baba took a shower. I saw you, Mom. Baba's phone was vibrating on the kitchen table and you looked at it and started crying…are you breaking up? Is Baba leaving us?"

Califia was horrified. Her baby saw her crying over her fears and thought his family was disintegrating. The look on N'Jobu's face hurt her also. When his eyes reached hers, he was now aware that she had been checking his phone. His locked phone. Califia couldn't even find the words to speak.

"No one is breaking up, JaJa. Dry your eyes. Your mother and I will always be together."

She stared at N'Jobu. There was no lie in his eyes.

"You've been worrying about that all this time today?" she asked.

He nodded, a small shudder of air leaving his lips as he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. She should've been more aware of how she was acting around her son. All of her focus had been on N'Jobu and that damn cell phone, and she had unintentionally telegraphed divorce to her baby. She held him close to her and kissed his forehead.

"We are fine—"

"But why were you crying?"

"I always miss your father whenever he leaves us. I'm just sadder now because I want him to be here to help us celebrate Aunt Lia. He's going to miss out on all the cool stuff we're going to do—"

"Yes," N'Jobu said jumping in to clean up her mess, "No museum. I can't go see the Gato waterfall with you and Marisol on Friday. Your Mom was looking forward to that, so now we'll have to do it the next time we come down-"

"And your father's phone is always ringing and disturbing him. I was upset that he will have to work early and not play with us."

Erik's chest stopped heaving and his face was now just puffy and not wet with tears.

"Feel better?" N'Jobu asked.

"Yeah," Erik said still leaning into Califia.

"Afonso said that his mom cried a lot before his Dad left them. He doesn't get to see his Dad anymore," Erik said.

Afonso was a neighborhood kid that played with Marisol.

"We are fine. You will see me back home. Give me a hug," N'Jobu said.

Erik practically leaped onto his father and Califia felt her chest heaving a bit. N'Jobu stroked the back of Erik's head, but when his eyes met hers this time, they were solemn.

"JaJa, come on!" Marisol yelled from the small livingroom.

"Your mother and I are going to talk, okay?" N'Jobu said.

Erik jumped up kissing N'Jobu's cheek and then quickly hugged Califia before he ran out to play with Marisol and Afonso. Lia had turned on music and the noise outside let them know there were more people around to give their congratulations.

Alone, Califia felt like a small gulf had sprung between her and N'Jobu.

"Checking my phone?"

She nodded, feeling her eyes well up.

N'Jobu stood up and locked the new bedroom door. He sat back down next to her.

"I do not want to see my son crying like that ever again," he said.

She couldn't tell by his voice if he was angry or upset, or even sad. His eyes were on hers and their intensity overshadowed anything else.

"I do not want you looking at my phone and wondering about my intentions or who is calling me."

He took off his shirt and slipped off his shoes and socks.

"I do not want to see you crying over me because of something you've imagined I've done to cause you harm…"

He slipped out of his pants and underwear. When he was completely naked, he widened his legs.

"Take off your clothes," he said. It was a command.

She stood up and pulled her blouse and bra off. He held her hand for balance when she kicked off her heels and pulled off her pants and bikini underwear.

Helping her straddle his lap, N'Jobu held the back of her neck with his hand.

"You have to trust me. I'm your man. Just yours. I have to take this fear out of you," he said. His voice changed.

"Califia Stevens, you belong to me. You are the mother of my son. Yours is the only bed I belong in. Understand?"

He moved his hips under her and she reached out to hold onto him. He lifted her up to adjust his penis under her so that it rested tucked between her folds, soft and warm, not even erect.

"Kiss me," he said.

She placed her lips on his and the heat from his mouth made her open hers wide to accept his thick wet tongue. His other hand held her waist and she could feel him growing underneath her. She bounced for him and his kisses became deeper.

"Our son can't cry like that anymore," he said.

His reached up and fondled her nipples, plucking them until they were stiff beneath the tips of his fingers. He looked down between her legs.

"Get that pussy ready for me," he whispered to her. He slipped his tongue around the outer shell of her ear and she could feel his warm breath hitch as her plumped up clit and ring dragged across his tip.

"Oh…girl…just like that…just like that…get that fat pussy ready for me…just me…"

She was getting wet so fast, his voice easing her pussy open…

"There it is…I see it…that look…you got Daddy's pussy together, huh?"

She groaned into his neck and he laughed at her. "Yes, you are ready for me. Dripping all on my lap…"

Laughter outside distracted her for a moment. The music was infectious and the smell of rich foods permeated the air. Lia was talking to someone over her cell phone.

His lips trapped hers again and his deep kisses engulfed any control she had over her mind and body. By the time he let her come up for air from his mouth, she was whimpering into his collar bone and her thighs were slickening his thighs with her wetness.

"You ready to sit on my dick?"

His grip was on her waist. She whispered yes into his neck but it came out like a long breathy sigh. He gripped his erection with his hand.

"Slide down this pipe, girl."

He lifted her up and she widened her thighs and slipped her fingers between her legs to guide him inside of her. She sat on him slowly and his breath became little puffs of warm air upon her neck. He kept still once her ass sat on his balls. The walls in the room vibrated with the sound of music and talking and laughter from outside. They heard Erik speaking to Andres and Soliel, and there were occasional shouts from down below on the street from people sending words of support and pride at Lia's win.

Califia shifted forward on his lap and started lifting up and down on him.

"I don't want you to worry about me being back home by myself," he grunted, his hands gripping her sides. His voice went deeper in tone as the sound of skin on skin slapping together drowned out the noise outside.

"When you come back, I'll bring you to my apartment. I'll let you get in my bed…"

Her eyes stayed on his, her lips puckered and wanting his mouth.

"I'm not fucking anyone else but you—"

She exhaled and kept her movement on his lap controlled so that the bed didn't move that much.

He lifted up from the bed with her still on his erection and moved to put her on her back on the edge of the mattress. He spread her legs and leaned over her, his thickness sliding in and out of her with a slow gentle rhythm.

"Is this what you're worried about?" he asked. His sack was like a plush gift slapping against her cheeks.

"You think someone else is getting this in my bed when I'm away from you?"

Her eyes rolled back and she turned her head to the side. She couldn't look him in the face as her pussy throbbed with just the thought of him with someone else. It was a perverse pleasure to imagine his dick hitting some other woman's spot the right way. Serah called him grade A dick and didn't mind sharing him. She could not, but it turned her on imagining the act.

"Ohhhh," he said trying to keep quiet in the room as he held her legs up.

He looked down at her and she knew he was not keeping his control with the way his face was getting tight, his jaw clenching and unclenching each time he entered her folds.

"Damn, I'm stretching this shit out," he gasped. He thrust forward and laid on top her, letting her take his full weight. The bed was groaning from their movement. She pushed up on his chest and he pulled out of her. He squeezed his balls as he watched her stand up and bend over for him, her hands pressed on the mattress.

He grabbed his cock and inserted himself back in her and soon enough he had her sucking on the sheets with her mouth trying to hide her yelps. He was having a difficult time keeping the sounds of his pleasure to himself.

"I have to fuck this good pussy… real well….I won't have it for a week…ohhhhhh…I feel you coming already…I feel you," he gritted out.

She screamed into the sheets, her hands gripping the cotton tight.

"Cum in me," she begged, her head turned to look back at him, "your dick feels amazing."

He made a sound that gave her shivers.

"I'm ready to bust—"

"Cum in your pussy—"

"Damn—"

"Nut in this pussy…"

His hand pressed down on her lower back. She rocked her ass cheeks on him.

"Bast!" he shouted and she felt him hold still as his cock spasmed in her walls. She sighed as his load kept pumping into her. Collapsing onto the bed, he pulled out from her easy, still dripping cum from his tip.

He plopped down next to her and reached above her head. He brought his cell to her face. She watched him unlock his phone.

It was always hard leaving them.

N'Jobu gave Erik and Califia tons of kisses and it was never enough. Lia's boyfriend waited patiently by his car as N'Jobu bid farewell to everyone. When he hugged Lia tight, her bright eyes made him feel blessed to know her.

"Now will you tell me what you said the other day?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.

He smiled.

"When sleeping women wake, mountains move. And do not forget, however long the night, the dawn will break," he said.

"Hmmm. I like that. Thank you for being here with your family and for supporting me. We will have a good time for their last week."

"When you get some time, come visit us," he said.

"I will."

He hugged her and planted a kiss on her cheek.

"JaJa," he said and Erik jumped up in his arms. He hugged and rocked his son in his arms.

"Look after your mother. Be a good boy and I'll see you soon."

He leaned over and kissed Califia.

"You better get going, you have to be there early for international flights," Califia said.

Her face looked peaceful. They were back on track.

"Me and you in my apartment. I'll get Dante to watch Erik," he whispered. He saw her eyes twinkle.

Waving to his family and friends, N'Jobu enjoyed the drive with Oscar as they moved away from the favela and he had the opportunity to watch the scenery. He found a flight that could get him into Atlanta at a decent time. If he had to, he would contact T'Chaka there and feed him the story he sent his parents via email about attending a bachelor party. He just needed to be on American soil as soon as possible.

Once he was back in his apartment, he would start getting background info on Ulysses Klaue. And if D'Beke found that N'Jobu had enough War Dogs converted to his side, he would start planning to subvert policies back home. It would take time.

The airport was busy and his flight was delayed.

He sat in a crowded section where his gate was and watched travelers come and go. He had a couple of hours to kill, so he read a book from his burner cell to pass the time. He was looking forward to sleeping on the plane and made plans in his mind to keep busy while he was separated from Erik and Califia.

The chatter of voices around him lulled him to close his eyes.

He didn't know how much time had passed, but he fell asleep and was jolted awake by the gasp of the Black woman sitting next to him.

His eyes shot open, and he couldn't make out what the woman was saying in Portuguese. Other travelers were stopping and watching the tv above them. It was a chaotic scene and a female reporter was pointing to a car in the distance behind her.

"What's happening?" N'Jobu asked a white man behind him who spoke English to his companion.

"I'm not sure," the man said.

The woman next to him covered her mouth with her hands.

Eyes back on the tv, Lia's picture appeared. It was a photo of her voting at the school. A clip played of her speaking outside of the community center after she won. N'Jobu walked swiftly to his flight gate and questioned the brown-skinned attendant who also had her eyes glued to the tv.

"Excuse, me. What is happening?"

The woman's eyes were wide and her lip trembled.

"That woman who was voted into office was…she was just killed—"

N'Jobu felt his gut lurch and he immediately dialed Califia's number. She wasn't picking up. Eyes bolted back to the tv, the news showed shocked faces of people wandering around in a daze. One young Black woman was shown sitting in the street wailing.

N'Jobu looked for any signs of Califia or Erik, or anyone he recognized because they were with Lia.

"Two people were killed," he heard the second gate attendant tell another traveler next to him.

Califia was still not picking up. All he knew was Erik and Califia rode with Lia and Soliel to the luncheon.

Two people dead.

Panic clutched his throat. He grabbed his carry-on bag and walked quickly toward the ground floor. His eyes were blurry and he was running by the time he made it outside of the airport.

Luck was with him and he snagged a cab right away. He gave directions to the cabbie to head for the community center. He couldn't remember the luncheon address because his mind was a rush of negative fear-bound thoughts.

The cabbie had the radio on and N'Jobu heard Lia's name mentioned.

"Do you speak English?" N'Jobu asked. His voice sounded high-pitched and frantic.

"Yes."

"Can you tell me what the radio is saying about what happened to the new Council Woman. Lia—"

"Oh, oh, she was shot and killed…"

N'Jobu's hands shot up to the top of his head. He still couldn't reach Califia and his body was shaking.

"Who shot her?"

The cabbie listened to the radio.

"What the fuck are they saying, man?!"

The cabbie was startled by his anger, his lips grew tight.

"She was leaving from somewhere and when she was in her car, someone pulled up and shot into the car…uh…she was killed…and…and they say her driver was killed too…many people seriously injured who were running away…"

He sent Califia a text, and then he tried calling Soliel. No one was picking up. He didn't have Lia's parent's number. That was in Califia's phone.

The soldier in him bucked up. He sat back in the seat. He couldn't fathom what was happening and he had no control on how to get to his family any faster. Califia could hold it down. She would protect Erik.

But who would protect her if he wasn't there?

He closed his eyes…and felt his kimoyo beads heat up on his wrist.

Chapter 19 HERE.

[relenafanel]

The Scarlet Pimpernel AU - a Patreon Reward Fic

for @ohsweetcrepes and based on the scarlet pimpernel tag (it was basically a given that I would write this for her)

[warning for recreational drug use whoops; established relationship; politics]

Steve adjusted the bandana covering his mouth and nose and squinted through the mass of people in front of him. The protection wouldn’t do much against teargas but it would help hide his identity. He’d arrived to the rally late after finishing up his article, and he observed the crowd carefully to judge the general mood. There was an energy thrumming, anger and discontent, and a hope of change. He could feel it on his skin, giving him goosebumps. It felt like revolution.

These things often did, but the feeling was starting to perforate the general population and each protest had more and more people attending. Things were happening, people were speaking up and noticing, and Steve couldn’t see any place for himself except in the middle of it.

It was the least he could do. Sometimes change started by just showing up.

Steve couldn’t understand how anyone could just sit back and wait instead of doing something about it. He didn’t understand complacency towards government corruption, not when the alternative was this. But then, he’d come to accept that radical action wasn’t for everyone.

The press of people moved forward, and Steve watched as the police started to push back. Pierce’s proposed policies against peaceful protests for the protection of the police and citizens made sense to too many people who didn’t question the implications it had against freedom for non-violent expression against the government.

Steve wasn’t close enough to see which side turned violent first, but he started to push his way through the crowd to get to the center of it, because that was why he did this. It wasn’t for the first-hand insight for an article – though that was a pleasant side-benefit – and it wasn’t for the glory. He didn’t want to see anyone getting hurt, but if and when things turned violent, well Steve threw a fantastic punch.

Someday he’d have a chance to use it on Pierce’s face. He didn’t care whether or not the man recognized him when he did. He did care whether or not it would lose him Bucky, but Steve was beginning to understand that Bucky might not blink an eye. His boyfriend might be the type to worry more about his manicure and outwardly express ‘let them eat cake’ when it came to political matters, but there was something beneath the surface when it came to his step-father that Steve couldn’t put his finger on.

Bucky was civil and polite, almost to the point of pontification.

It made Steve wonder.

And just when the tide of movement turned violent, the Winter Soldier was there with his performative muzzle and non-descript uniform, cutting through the crowd that parted for him like each footstep exuded a sense of get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way. Steve had seen people on Twitter call it a murder strut, and in the exposé Steve wrote he’d referred to it as a powerful statement of willpower.

The Winter Soldier stood between both sides, holding his hands out to stop the action. “There are two men in a black van a block from here with machine guns. They’ve been hired to make martyrs and villains of all of us to prove Pierce’s bill. Don’t let them get away with tyranny.” He said in a voice that carried through the entire park.

It was a tense moment, a stillness before action, before people reacted in fear.

The Winter Soldier moved to disappear in the chaos. Steve had learned a long time ago that following where he went was like playing a shell game of misdirection. He moved to his left, intent on questioning The Winter Soldier about whether what he said was true or a ruse.

He found himself getting swallowed by the fleeing crowd, and when he looked up he spotted Winter on a fire escape. The man seemed to see Steve at the same time Steve saw him, and he hesitated for a moment before climbing the rest of the way to the roof.

Steve swore and followed.

The roof was empty by the time he got to it. He stood there for a moment, wondering if he should take a chance by picking a direction to jump between buildings. Guesswork might not getting him anywhere but trapped on a roof with no access to the ground (or worse). Steve wasn’t a quitter, but he also knew that Winter would come find him eventually.

x.x.x.

Or immediately. Steve unlocked his car door to find Winter sitting in the passenger seat, feet up on the dash and mask still firmly in place. Steve had never seen him without it, not even while he was interviewing the man, and he respected Winter’s privacy and never asked.

“So was it true,” Steve asked as he pulled out of the parking lot. He’d parked an entire subway stop away. He didn’t know how Winter tracked him down, whether it was hacking skills, a bug on his car, or if Winter just knew him.

“I found out from someone close to the man himself.”

So it was true. It was the kind of reign of terror that Steve never expected to be a part of when he was taking his Political Science degree, but then he’d learned a lot about the reality of his country since then. There were people on American soil who’d always known.

“I could use someone closer,” Winter told him after Steve had been silently reflecting for a while. “Someone he’d never expect.”

“You’re not getting him,” Steve said in a rush, before his brain even realized Winter was talking about Bucky. “I tried feeling it out months ago. He doesn’t have the head for politics or intrigue. Maybe if you wanted to know what shoes all of Pierce’s staff members where wearing he could help you out.”

“I suppose he loves his father,” Winter sneered. “Would never want to see him lose power.”

Steve reflected on that for a moment. “I’m not sure love is the word.”

That seemed to surprise Winter as Steve pulled up to Bucky’s condo complex. He hadn’t meant to go to Bucky’s apartment, but all the talk of him had influenced Steve’s driving subconsciously.

“I don’t know why you stay,” the Winter Soldier finally said to Steve as Steve used his keyfob to gain entry to Bucky’s parking garage. It was opulent to the extreme, and so far removed from where they’d just been that it felt like a disconnect. Steve paused for a second because it wasn’t a question and didn’t really need an answer, but it felt like a small betrayal not to give one.

“Because we all need something normal that keeps us sane,” he finally said.  A few months ago he might have laughed at Bucky Barnes being normal, but Steve’s definition of the term had shifted the more he got to know Bucky.

“He’s Pierce’s son, and he just lets all this happen. You hate people who don’t do their part,” Winter scoffed, pulling his feet off the dash. “Look at all this wealth. Don’t you feel how oppressive it is? The man I met could barely afford his basement studio apartment, and here you are playing boytoy to the 1%. You’ve got to be getting some kind of intel from it – an exclusive inside look?”

“It’s not about getting information,” Steve replied, pulling into Bucky’s second parking spot. Bucky’s car was still there, but that didn’t mean much. Bucky was marginally responsible about not driving under the influence and usually took an Uber out at night. Steve could never be sure if he was home until he unlocked the door of Bucky’s apartment and went looking for him.

“Do you at least get good blowjobs for your sacrifice, or are you just rolling over like—”

“Don’t,” Steve said in a firm voice, gripping Winter’s shoulder. “I respect what you do, but if you continue speaking, I won’t respect you as a person. We’re not friends, and I don’t allow anyone to speak to me like that, or to talk shit about my boyfriend.”

It was hard to read Winter’s expressions behind the mask, and he always kept his body in rigid control. Despite that, Steve got the sense he’d managed to stun the man who put himself in the middle of two sides of a protest. “You’re better than this.”

“I guess not,” Steve told him. “Now get out of my car.”

x.x.x.

“Hi! You’re here!” Bucky said cheerfully as he slipped out of his shoes and then fought his way out of his leather jacket with great difficulty. He swayed a little in the entrance and then used the furniture to help him walk towards Steve. His shirt was ridiculously see-through, and his pants were so low-hung Steve wondered if the only thing keeping them up was his dick.

He looked great.

He practically fell on top of Steve on the couch, nuzzling his head up under Steve’s chin. “Glad I came home,” he said, tucking his hands between Steve’s back and the couch pillow. Then he hummed in contentment.

“Are you high?” Steve asked.

“A little,” Bucky admitted. “Only pot this time. Mostly drunk.”

“Let’s get you to bed,” Steve said in an indulgent tone, leaving his book on top of Bucky’s couch, and moving to lever himself up. Bucky clung to him in a way that hindered his movements.

“No. I want to just stay like this for a moment,” Bucky told him, and somehow held tighter. “My Uber driver was listening to the news on the radio.”

Steve’s hand settled into Bucky’s hair. He was reminded of how sweet Bucky was when they were children. Beneath all the pomp and the ridiculous outfits and the partying, that Bucky was still there.

“I went to your place first,” Bucky admitted. “You weren’t there.”

“I’m sorry.”

Bucky didn’t ask whether Steve had been at the protest. He didn’t need to. They might not have the type of relationship most people thought of when they met Steve, but the Steve who craved commitment and someone to talk to about his interests went out the window the moment Bucky gave him a coy smile and cocked his hip like he knew what Steve needed. Maybe, someday, Steve would worry about not finding those things with Bucky.

He felt at peace in Bucky’s arms, and a lot of Steve’s life wasn’t peaceful.

Bucky made him feel like a normal 20-something.

“I still have a little left if you want to relax,” Bucky offered, wriggling so he could reach into his pocket and pull out a joint. It looked a little sad from being crammed somewhere with absolutely no space. He looked at Steve’s face and seemed satisfied by whatever he saw there. “Get on my level,” he offered with a seductive grin, sitting up and reaching for a lighter. He was so dangerous because he was a temptation Steve wasn’t able to resist indulging in. “Then we can fuck. I haven’t in days,” he said with a roll of his hips and a small hitch of breath.

Steve grasped Bucky’s hip with one hand and took the offered joint with the other.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathed as Steve inhaled. “God, you’re beautiful.”

x.x.x.

Bucky didn’t mind Steve using his computer. He didn’t really have anything to hide, his life an open book, and his taste in porn not something he kept a secret anyway.  Steve never went snooping through his files, but Bucky wasn’t great about closing tabs, so he knew Bucky was considering joining a CycleYoga class and had ordered a new dildo. Not exactly things the FBI would monitor him for.

Steve, on the other hand, tended to write inciteful blog articles and would go down with freedom of the press as it kept getting squashed under what felt like a fascist dictatorship.

He was working for two hours before Bucky wandered into his kitchen completely naked, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and finished half of it. He had a bite mark on his shoulder from Steve’s mouth, and didn’t look nearly as hung over as Steve had seen him.

Steve just had enough time to hit save on his article before Bucky was sliding into his lap, showing off his flexibility a little by easily straddling Steve without pulling out the chair. “I love getting you stoned,” he said, scraping his teeth over the curve of Steve’s neck. “You get all lazy and selfish in bed.”

Steve made a face. “How can you love that?”

Bucky grinned, and Steve could feel it against his skin. “You just kind of lie there and let me use your dick and look at me like you can’t believe I exist and you can’t believe any of it is real. Like. You just stare at me in wonder. Usually you’re kind of a take-charge kind of lay, and I like that about you, but…”

“Sometimes you want to do the work?” Steve filled in.

“Yeah. Would you let me fuck you? I kind of wanted to last night, but we never discussed it so I wouldn’t presume.”

“Of course,” Steve replied, pushing Bucky’s laptop back on the table so he could lift Bucky on to it and lean into his space. “Now, if you want.”

Bucky smiled at him the way Steve expected Bucky to smile over getting permission for a new sex position – pleased, like someone who’d been given a fun present to open – but there was something else in his expression that Steve couldn’t put his finger on. Something predatory and intent, less like a fun present and more like the keys to a door that had been firmly locked. “Not now,” he answered, like that took effort. Then the expression was gone in a blink. “That can be something fun for later,” he promised with a nip at Steve’s lower lip. “Come back to bed. I need you.”

[anavoliselenu]

Claim chapter 13

“No, thanks. I’m fine.”

The bartender puts the martini in front of me. I take a sip, confused, and wonder what happens next.

The man moves to the stool next to me, then leans even closer into my personal space. I consider sliding one stool over myself, but decide to remain put, my posture rigid, my body language very, very clear.

Apparently, though, the guy is illiterate in the body language department.

“Here for the conference?” he asks, and I can smell the liquor on his breath.

“No,” I say. “I’m looking for some time alone.”

“Lucky you,” says the man who cannot take a hint. “Insurance regulations. Hours and hours of continuing education.”

“Hmm,” I say. I have my Coldly Polite face on, but he’s apparently blind as well.

He leans in closer still, and now he’s at such an angle that he has to grip the bar itself or risk sliding to the floor. I give in to temptation and lean in the opposite direction. “I can think of better ways to spend a late night,” he says, his voice low and his intent unmistakable. “And we are in a hotel. You do the math.”

“I was never particularly good at math,” I lie. I consider moving to a table, but Justin specifically told me to stay at the bar. And no matter what else, I am following his rules tonight.

“You look like you’d be good at a lot of things,” the man says, staring at my tits.

I turn back to the bar to find the bartender sliding a new martini in front of me. “From the gentleman,” he says, nodding toward Justin.

“How nice,” I say, then smile at Justin, which seems to irritate my companion.

Justin rises, says something to the men at his table, and strides to the bar. He stands right beside me, and as is always the case when Justin is near, I am suddenly hyperaware—of him, of my own body, of the rotation of the earth beneath us.

I smile at him. “Thank you for the drink. Sir.”

I see the muscle in his cheek tighten when I say the last word, and I have to smile. He wasn’t expecting that. “I hope you like dirty martinis.”

“The dirtier the better,” I say.

“Hey. You want to get lost? I was chatting with the lady.”

Justin turns to him. “No,” he says. “I don’t think so. I want her.”

The guy’s eyes go wide, but he recovers fast. “The lady wants to be alone.” Apparently, he’s now all about chivalry.

“Does she?” He looks at me, then speaks very slowly and very clearly. “Did you come here to be alone? Or to be fucked?”

“I—” I have no idea how I’m supposed to answer. Beside us, the guy is apparently shocked into silence. “I guess that depends on who’s doing the fucking,” I finally say.

“I like your answer,” Justin says. “What’s your name?”

“Louise,” I say, my middle name coming unbidden to my lips.

Justin grins. “Nice to meet you, Louise. I want you to come with me now.”

I gasp, embarrassed, but also incredibly, undeniably turned on. “I—”

“Now.” He holds out his hand and I hesitate only a moment before taking it.

Beside us, my companion stares with his mouth gaping open.

Justin helps me off the stool and aims a friendly nod at the insurance dude. “Maybe next time,” he says, as the guy looks at Justin as if he’s pulled off some kind of magic act. At least we’re leaving him impressed and not pissed.

I am giddy as I follow Justin. I want to laugh. I want to take his hand and twirl in the lobby. I want to slam him hard against the lobby wall and claim his mouth with my own. I want his hands on me. I want him inside me.

I want him to fuck me, just like he said. And I want it now.

Apparently, so does Justin. As soon as the doors close on the elevator, Justin backs me against the wall. His mouth is hard against mine, his hand under my skirt, two fingers inside me. I grind my hips against him, wanting him, craving more of him than I can get in an elevator.

“God, Louise,” he says, and we both laugh.

“I thought someone might recognize us. It’s my middle name.”

“I know,” he says. “And I think they were all too tipsy to care. And too out of town.”

“Could have been some paparazzi around.”

“Fuck the paparazzi,” Justin says, his words as harsh as sandpaper.

I ease my body against his. “I’d rather fuck you.”

He kisses me again. Hard.

“That man was very disappointed,” I say, when he breaks the kiss.

“Just claiming what’s mine. And adding in the public service of giving that man a fantasy to keep him occupied this evening.” He easily thrusts a third finger inside me, and I bite down on my lower lip to stifle a scream of pleasure. “Don’t tell me you didn’t like it.”

“I liked it,” I say as the elevator doors begin to slide open. “I liked it very much.”

He withdraws his fingers, then directs me out of the elevator, punctuating the movement with a light pat to my ass. Our room is at the end of the hall, and I am in awe when we step inside. The suite has a living area and a dining area and a separate bedroom.

The door closes with a thump behind us.

“For a woman who likes to be mine, you were certainly doing an excellent job of flirting with that man.”

I am still gawking at the room, but at these words, I turn, ready to defend myself, because I absolutely, positively did not flirt with Mr. Pushy.

My words die on my lips, however, when I see the humor in Justin’s eyes. But there’s something else, too, and I know where this is going.

I give a careless little toss of my head. “What was I supposed to do? You were ignoring me. I was just making conversation.”

“He wanted more than conversation.” He takes my hand and pulls me into the dining area so that we are standing by the large, round table. He turns me around so that he is behind me, then slides his hand up my leg under my skirt.

“You need to understand how completely you belong to me. Mine to pleasure,” he says as his featherlight touch on my clit sparks a flurry of shudders within me. “Or mine to torment.” He lands a hard spank on my rear, and I cry out, the sound wrenched from my throat on a wave of pleasure. “You like that?” he murmurs.

Dear God, yes. I lift my rear, giving him better access.

“Spread your legs.”

I comply eagerly, anticipating the feel of Justin inside me. I hear the metallic sound of his zipper, then the soft brush of material against skin as he takes off his slacks. He keeps his shirt on, and the starched cotton hem brushes against my skin when he leans over again in a way that is probably unintentional, but comes close to driving me crazy.

His hand returns between my legs, the other one going to cup my breast. I start to rise, but hear his sharp censure telling me to stay as I am, bent over and ready for him. “You want to be fucked, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I moan. It’s good that my hands are on the table. I don’t think my legs alone could hold me up. I am little more than sensation. I am need and longing and sexual energy, and if he doesn’t let me come soon, I fear that I will collapse from the pleasure of it all.

He slides two fingers in me, and I groan as my body tightens around him. I’m close—so very close—and I bite my lower lip in expectation of a soul-rocking explosion.

It doesn’t come.

For that matter, neither do I, and I whimper in protest as he withdraws his fingers, his hands going to a relatively chaste position on my hips.

“Turn around, baby,” he says. “I want to see your face.”

I turn, and his eyes say more than words ever could. I melt under the desire I see there. The need and the hunger. It rips through me until the only thing that I know in the world is Justin. “Kiss me,” I whisper.

He does, and it is a violent, hungry kiss that bruises my lips until I taste blood. He pushes me back onto the sturdy table, then grabs the dress at the bodice and rips it down, baring my breasts. I cry out, arching up to meet him, my hands going to his head to pull him down as his mouth closes over my nipple, his teeth biting just enough that I suck in air, cresting on a wave of intense pleasure that borders on pain.

“Now,” he says, and what remains of the dress is up around my waist. The table is hard against my back, but I don’t care, and I spread my legs wide for him then cry out as he thrusts deep inside me. I arch up, meeting his thrusts, feeling frenzied and wild and wicked and his.

Justin’s.

He explodes inside me, my name on his lips. And then, spent and soft, he slides his hand down to where I am slick with his semen. I gasp as he strokes me in small circles, faster and faster until I again cry out and my body bucks from the orgasm that rips through it, then finally calms as exhaustion and bliss take over.

“Wow,” I say, and curl up next to him.

“Indeed,” he says.

We stay like that for a moment, still in each other’s arms.

“This table is really uncomfortable,” I finally say.

Beside me, Justin laughs.

“I think we need to clean it up, too. I’m not sure the maids will understand.”

“I’m sure they’ve seen it all before,” he says.

I turn and meet his eyes, my brows raised.

“Right,” he says. “We’ll take care of it. But now, I’m taking you to bed.”

He holds out his hand, and I follow him into the spacious bedroom, with a bed that looks much more comfortable than the table. “A mattress,” I say. “How novel.”

“Come here.” He tugs me to the bed and we abandon what remains of our clothes before sliding under the covers. I curl up beside him and we lie like that for what feels like hours, talking and flipping channels and watching snippets of old movies.

This is yet another thing I love about Justin—that shift from frenzied passion to these soft moments when I feel safe and warm and cherished beside him. It’s as smooth and satisfying as a glass of port after a truly decadent meal.

“I’m not tired,” I say, when I notice that the clock reads four A.M. “I’d say that I’m going to regret this in the morning, but it already is morning.”

“Will you?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Not a minute of it,” I say.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For indulging my fantasies.”

I laugh. “Why, Mr. Stark. Haven’t you heard? I’m yours to command.”

He kisses me lightly. “And I’m very, very glad.”

For a moment, we just lie there quietly. Then Justin says, “That phone call you asked about earlier. It was bad news. From a friend.”

“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I remember what Charles Maynard said. “Is the friend in Germany?”

He gives me a sharp look. “Why would you say that?”

I shrug. “Charles’s voice carries.”

“So it does. No, Germany’s something different.”

“An indictment? One of your Stark International subsidiaries or something?”

The line of his mouth is hard as he answers. “Or something.”

“Are you worried?”

“No.” The word is firm. “Charles is handling it.”

I nod. Since I know nothing about the laws of international trade and finance, I can’t go far with this conversational thread. “Do you want to tell me about your friend’s bad news?”

For a second, I think that he’s going to say no. Then he speaks, his voice steady and even, as if he’s fighting for control. “It’s Sofia.”

It takes me a moment to place the name. “Your friend from childhood? The one Alaine mentioned?”

He nods. “She’s gotten herself into some trouble. It’s not the first time, but it’s frustrating. I keep hoping she’ll get her shit together, but she keeps screwing up.”

“I’m sorry. I hope it gets better for her.”

He kisses my forehead. “Me, too.”

I wait for him to tell me more, but he doesn’t. That’s okay, though, and I take his hand. “Thank you.”

He doesn’t need to ask what I mean. “I am trying,” he says.

“I know you are.” I spoon against him, feeling warm and safe. “And I appreciate it.”

I’m facing away from him, and as I close my eyes, he strokes his fingers over my bare skin. The minutes tick away, and when he speaks, I have already begun to drift off, so that his words have the quality of a dream. “I never used to sleep naked.”

“Why not?” I am only half awake, and I like that he is sending me to sleep with images of a naked Justin.

“Because when we traveled, Richter would come into my room. Somehow, I was always assigned a room of my own, even though the other boys had to share.”

My eyes are open now, but I don’t roll over. I’m afraid that if I look at him, he’ll stop talking. “What happened?”

“He would come in. And he would touch me.” His voice is strained. Hard and measured. “He would threaten me and swear that if I told anyone, that everything I had would be ripped away. And my father would have no money, and we’d starve on the street. But mostly, I would have the reputation of a little boy who told nasty, nasty lies.”

“Bastard.”

“Yes.”

I stay quiet, wondering if he will say more. But he remains silent. I don’t mind. He has told me two truths tonight, and I know that this is only one small part of something larger that is growing between us.

“I thought so,” I say after a moment. “But I guess I was wrong about your dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“I assumed he knew that your coach was abusing you. I realized in the limo that he didn’t.”

For a moment, there is only silence. When Justin speaks, his words are ice cold. “He knew.”

I roll over, shocked into motion. “What? But … but why on earth would he expect you to be at the tennis center dedication if he knows what that vile man did to you?”

“I don’t know,” Justin says. He hesitates, his face drawn into hard lines.

“No,” he amends. “I do know. The tennis center is owned by a sports conglomerate based out of Germany. Powerful company, powerful people on the board.”

“I don’t understand. Is your father involved with the conglomerate?”

“No. And my father couldn’t care less whether I endorse a tennis center or a pet store. It’s all about trading favors. I lend my name to the tennis center, and maybe those powerful people will pull a few strings in Germany.”

“The indictment I keep hearing about?”

“Right. Charles agrees with my dad, actually. He’s pissed as hell at me for making that statement outside Garreth Todd’s party, even though I reminded him that the longer the whole thing drags on, the more billable hours he earns.”

He smiles without humor. “To be honest, I should have kept my mouth shut. I’m not accustomed to acting rashly, and it was rash to make that statement.”

“Why did you?”

“Because it’s the truth. Because that center shouldn’t be named after him. And because I’m tired of the world thinking that I admired that son of a bitch.”

“Then you did the right thing.”

“Maybe. But sometimes even the right thing has unpleasant consequences.”

“It’s that bad?” Worry snakes through me. “One of your companies is in that much trouble?”

Justin hesitates. “It has the potential to be very bad,” he finally says. “But I don’t think it will get that far. I still have a few strings left to pull.”

I nod, somewhat appeased. If Justin isn’t worried, I won’t be, either.

“Come here,” he demands, and I comply eagerly. I slide into his arms, and let the strength of his embrace push out the remaining wisps of worry. All I want is Justin, and I drift off to sleep in the comfort of his arms.

17

The shrill buzz of a doorbell startles me awake. I sit up, confused. I didn’t even know that hotels had doorbells, but apparently the I’m-richer-than-Midas executive suites do, because that is definitely a bell—and it is definitely not being answered.

“Justin?” I expect to hear his reply from the bathroom, and when it doesn’t come, I slide out from under the downy spread and stand up, my body both languid and sore, as if it’s not entirely sure how it’s supposed to feel after last night’s adventure.

Another buzz makes me jump, this one followed by a brisk voice announcing, “Room service!”

The thought of coffee gets me moving. “Just a sec,” I call back, then cast about for something to wear. I spy a robe draped neatly over the back of a chair, which is good considering the state of my dress. Justin put it there for me, of course. But where the hell is he?

I hurry out of the bedroom and through the dining area to the door. Although the waiter must have been out there for at least five minutes, he’s not in the least bit ruffled. “Good morning,madam,” he says as he wheels the cart in and starts to distribute the food to the now clean-and-tidy dining table. Justin really has been busy this morning.

The waiter is uncovering each plate as he moves it from cart to table, and I realize that I am starving. There’s coffee, orange juice, eggs, toast, a waffle, fruit, and enough bacon to feed a small army. There’s not enough silverware or cups for an army, though. In fact there’s one coffee cup, one juice glass, and only one bundle of silverware wrapped in a black cloth napkin.

I may be slow this morning, but I’ve finally clued in on reality—Justin has skipped out on me.

“Will there be anything else?”

“No,” I say. “Thank you. Do I need to sign a check or something?”

“No, ma’am. But I do have this for you.” He reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket. He pulls out a small envelope and hands it to me. “Mr. Stark asked that this be delivered with your breakfast.”

“Oh.” I take the note, surprised but pleased. “Thank you.”

I hold on to the envelope until he’s gone. The paper is thick linen, and the name of the hotel is embossed on the back flap. It’s sealed, and I unroll the silverware and use the knife to loosen the flap. I pull out a small sheet of the same linen paper. It’s folded over, and when I unfold it I see Justin’s neat, precise printing.

My darling Ms. Fairchild,

Enjoy your breakfast. If there’s something you would prefer, simply call room service. I didn’t know what you were hungry for. Personally, I woke up hungry only for you, but as you looked so lovely, I thought I would let you sleep. I need to be in San Diego for a six o’clock breakfast meeting with a troublesome business partner, but I’ll be back in LA by eleven. Stay in the room. Shop in the gift store. Utilize the spa. Whatever you want.

I will see you in a few hours, and the rest of Sunday will be ours. I look forward to a delicious next encounter.

I must confess that I have never picked up a beautiful woman in a hotel bar before. Having now met you, I wonder what I’ve been missing all these years …

I will see you later. Until then, imagine me, touching you.

Yours,   Justin

P.S. I suggest you wear something other than the shredded blue dress. Check the closet.

I am smiling so wide it hurts, and I hug the letter to my chest and sigh, then collapse onto the bed and replay every decadent moment of last night. Then I spend the rest of the morning doing as Justin suggested. There’s a darling floral-print sundress for me in the closet, along with a cute pair of Yellow Box flip-flops. I wear those downstairs and have a mani/pedi at the spa. Once my nails are dry, I wander the lobby and buy both Justin and myself oversized Beverly Hills T-shirts and matching baseball caps.

After that, I sit by the pool with a magazine and drink two Bloody Marys while I read all about the latest celebrity antics in what will surely turn out to be a futile attempt to impress Jamie with my Hollywood knowledge. The magazine has only one small picture of Justin and me, and I immediately decide that this particular publication is a million times more responsible than its competitors.

At eleven, I still haven’t heard from Justin, so I go back to the room to wait. The vodka goes to my head and I must drift off, because the next thing I know the mattress is shifting, and I’m opening my eyes and seeing the most gorgeous sight ever.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi, yourself. What have you done so far today?”

“Very little,” I admit. “It’s been heaven.”

“Would you object to going out? I have someplace I’d like to take you.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“Rollerblading on Venice Beach,” he says, and I burst out laughing—at least until I realize he’s serious.

“Really?”

“It’s fun. Have you ever done it?”

I have to admit that I haven’t, and Justin tells me that it’s high time I tried.

“In that case, I have the perfect accessories.” I unwrap the shirts and caps, then pull my shirt on over the dress and shove my hair into a cap. “The more we look like tourists, the less anyone will recognize us.”

“Not to mention the fact that you look pretty damn cute.”

I look at myself in the full-length mirror and decide it could be worse. It’s not a fashion statement, but I look like a girl having a lazy, touristy Sunday afternoon.

Justin, of course, looks hot as sin in the gray T-shirt that hugs his body and the black baseball cap that accentuates his chiseled jaw and brilliant smile.

He has a leather backpack, and he offers to hold my wallet and phone. “Leave everything else,” he says.

“Don’t we have to check out?”

“It’s my room,” he says. “Well, the company’s. We keep this suite permanently leased for visiting clients and execs from out of town.”

Not a bad deal, I think, as we head down to the valet stand. Soon we’re in the Jaguar and heading west down Santa Monica Boulevard.

Justin knows the small streets of Venice well and soon he has the car settled in an attended garage and we’re sitting on a bench strapping on rented Rollerblades, kneepads, and helmets.

Twenty minutes later, we’re back on the bench, taking them off and returning them to the little rental stand.

“I told you I’d be horrible,” I say.

“You were pretty bad,” he acknowledges. “I’m not sure how someone so graceful can actually have no balance whatsoever.”

“I can balance,” I say. “Just not on tiny little lines of wheels. What about bicycles?”

He eyes me dubiously.

I cock my head and raise my brows. “Yes. I can ride a bike.”

We find a rental stand and then I spend the next two hours proving to him that I have in fact retained this childhood skill. Although, to be honest, it’s not a childhood skill at all. My mother was too worried about potential scrapes and bruises. So I didn’t learn to ride a bike until college.

“Another missing piece of your childhood,” Justin says, when I tell him as much.

“That’s okay. I’d rather one day biking with you on the beach than an entire summer as a kid.”

“For that, I’ll buy you an ice cream.”

We park the bikes by a bright-blue painted ice-cream stand and order single dip cones with sprinkles. Then we put our flip-flops in Justin’s backpack and walk down to the water’s edge. Since it’s the Pacific, the water is freezing even in the summer, and I am amazed that the people actually playing in the water haven’t turned blue.

We walk in the breaking waves, letting the sand slide out under our feet, holding hands and eating ice cream. A teenage girl is tossing a stick for a big yellow dog, and I tell Justin how I always wanted a puppy and how, surprise surprise, my mother repeatedly refused. He tells me how he brought a stray Lab home one night, but his father wouldn’t let him keep it.

“Considering how often I traveled, it was for the best,” Justin says. “The poor dog would have been kenneled all the time.”

“But wasn’t that the point? You were telling your dad you wanted the dog because you wanted off the circuit. You wanted home. You wanted the dog. And you didn’t want the traveling.”

Justin looks at me with a curious expression. “Yes,” he finally says. “That was it exactly.”

“Did you ever get a dog? Once you quit tennis and became Mr. Business Dude, I mean.”

“No,” he says, and his brow furrows. “No, I never have.” He nods playfully toward the girl. “Think she’ll sell me hers?”

“I’m gonna say no.”

We return to the bikes and head in the opposite direction, toward Santa Monica. We take it slow, watching the tourists and locals, talking, enjoying the day. When we reach the mall, we lock up the bikes and walk down the Promenade toward the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Armed with frozen mochas, we continue to stroll the shopping street until Justin says he’s starving for real food and it’s time he buys me dinner.

He suggests The Ivy, which even I know is a see-and-be-seen kind of place. “One, I don’t think they’d even let us in dressed like this,” I say. “And two, it’s not exactly the best place to avoid the paparazzi.”

“Pizza by the slice it is,” he says, and we end up eating foldable slices of pepperoni pizza at tiny metal tables.

“There’s no way The Ivy could be better than this,” I say, and right now, for this day, with this man, I absolutely mean it.

I glance at the sky once we finish our pizza. “It’s getting dark. Should we take the bikes back?”

“Soon,” Justin says. “I want to show you something.”

What he wants to show me is the Pier, though I tell him that I’ve been before. “But have you ridden the Ferris wheel?”

“No,” I admit. “Is that where we’re going?”

“Man of mystery, remember? I can’t share my secrets.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“That’s one of the things I most admire about you. Your cunning intellect.”

I grin as we walk the rest of the way, then get in line for the ride. It’s surprisingly short, and we only have to wait through two rounds of passengers before we’re shown into our own little basket. Then the attendant shuts the door and up we go.

I laugh, delighted. Not only have I never been in this Ferris wheel before, I’ve never been in any Ferris wheel. It moves slowly, but the basket sways, which would be unnerving except for the fact that it’s Justin beside me, Justin with his arm around me. And now—as the basket stops at the very top—Justin reaches for the backpack he set on the floor beneath his feet.

“What are you doing?” I cry. “Don’t let go!” I glance out at the world around us. The sun is down now, and the lights from the Pier glow. It’s like living inside a fairyland. A little too high up in a fairyland, actually. “Why aren’t we moving?” I ask.

“Passengers are loading and unloading below,” Justin says. He’s upright now and holding two wrapped presents. One about the size of a pack of index cards. The other slightly bigger. More like the size of an external DVD drive.

“You brought me gifts?”

“I did,” he says.

I am speechless. “I didn’t get you anything.”

He points to the hat and the shirt.

“I charged those to your room.”

“It’s the thought that counts. But if you don’t want the gifts …” He bends over, pretending to put them back.

“No, no,” I say. “It’s all good.”

We grin at each other. “The small one first,” he says, handing it to me. As he does, the Ferris wheel starts to move again. I carefully peel back the paper to reveal a small gold box. When I pull off the lid, there are four chocolate truffles inside. “You’ve had the fondue,” he says. “But the truffles are our specialty.”

“Your company?” I ask. “The one in Switzerland?”

“I told you I’d have Sylvia order some for you.”

I can’t help the wide grin that tugs at my mouth as I pull one out. “Want a bite?”

He shakes his head. “They’re all for you.”

I take a bite and moan with ecstasy. These are easily the chocolate equivalent of nirvana.

I finish the truffle and hand the box back to Justin to carry in his pack. “Thank you,” I say. “You really do amaze me.”

“Because I bought you chocolates?”

“Yes,” I say sincerely. “And so many other reasons as well.”

He kisses me sweetly, then passes me the larger package.

“Now this one.”

I unwrap it carefully, then gasp when I see what it is. An antique brass frame with a stunning picture of the two of us in evening wear. Justin had taken me to the opera, and the paparazzi had been buzzing all around. This picture ran in the paper—I have a digital copy in my scrapbook file. But this looks like the original.

“Oh, Justin. It’s amazing,” I whisper. My eyes are locked on the image of the two of us together. “How did you get the picture?”

“Called the paper and bought a print,” he says. “You look exceptionally lovely in that photo. I suppose that means the paparazzi are good for something.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “But this, this I will always cherish.” Emotion squeezes my heart. I’ve been at Justin’s side hundreds of times, and at least as many images have been splashed across magazines and websites. But this—a picture in a frame—it feels permanent and real. It feels like the future.

I blink, suddenly weepy, but very happy.

“I thought you could put it on your desk at work,” he says.

“I will,” I say. “Then I can look at us every day.”

The Ferris wheel stops up top again, but I don’t mind. I clutch the framed photo against my chest with one hand and lean in close to Justin.

“It’s the best gift ever,” I say, and I mean it. “And it’s been a great day, too.”

Monday morning at Innovative, Trish dumps about a pound of paperwork on me, and I write my address and sign my name until I’m certain my hand is going to cramp up and surgery will be required. After that, she walks me around the office and introduces me to everyone, and I smile and nod and pretend like I’m going to remember all the names she’s throwing at me. I’ve had the tour before, but it’s nice to see the place from the perspective of an employee. We end up at my office, a tiny space on the south corner with a view of a parking structure.

It is, however, all mine.

I am organizing my desk when Bruce enters. “Welcome to your second day. All settled in?”

“All I need now is access to the network and I’m good to go.” I glance at my phone to check the time. “Carla said she’d have me in the system by the end of the hour, so I guess I’ll be official soon.”

Bruce nods, then gives me the rundown of what I’ll find on my calendar today, which basically boils down to internal meetings and getting familiar with the various company products. By the end of the day, I’ll have met my team and have a handle on the products I’m managing. I’ve got a lot to learn—both product specs and staff names—but on the whole, I’m pleased with the plan for the day.

Bruce stands. “I know I promised you a first-day lunch, but it turns out I have to meet with my attorney. Would you mind if we postpone?”

“Don’t worry about it. To be honest, I’m pumped to get caught up with all this reading.”

He looks relieved, and I flash my best Cooperative Employee smile. A moment later, his expression shifts, and I fear that my smile has missed the mark. But his thoughts have moved past work. “I feel like I should apologize again for Saturday night.”

“No,” I say, because I really don’t want to go there again. “It’s not necessary. Truly.”

He peers at me, then nods slowly. “Well, I hope that’s not why you and Justin cut out early.”

I can’t help the heat that rises to my cheeks. “It’s not. And please tell Giselle that it’s okay. I promise I’m not upset.”

His expression hardens. “If I see her, I’ll tell her,” he says, and I’m left wondering how to shift the conversation, because I have clearly stepped into something unpleasant. As it turns out, though, it is Bruce who changes the topic. He tosses a copy of Tech World Today on my desk. “Have you seen this week’s issue?”

I haven’t, but I immediately recognize the image on the cover of the tabloid-style newspaper. It’s the logo of an Israeli company watermarked over a screenshot from some cutting-edge 3-D imaging software. I scan the article and then look up at Bruce. “This has been in the works for a while. Looks like they got it out of beta testing earlier than they anticipated.”

[oldguardaudio]

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Daily Digest

Tragedy in Charlottesville prompts criticism of President Trump

The Liberal Crackup

Green Weenie of the Week: Gilkisonism

(DHS) Magical mystery tour: Doing the work the Star Tribune won’t do (3)

The Week in Pictures: Googleplex Edition

Tragedy in Charlottesville prompts criticism of President Trump

Posted: 12 Aug 2017 04:08 PM PDT

(Paul Mirengoff)

I’ve been watching soccer all day (the first full match day of the 2017-18 Premier League season), so I’m just hearing the awful news about the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. As I’m sure nearly all of readers know, the violence erupted today when white nationalists trying to hold a rally clashed with protesters who objected to their rally.

The worst of the day’s injuries occurred after the rally dispersed, when a car plowed into counter-protesters, killing at least one person and injuring at least 19 others. As I write this, police officials haven’t determined that the driver acted with intent to kill or injure. However, there are indications from eye-witnesses that this may well have been the case. The driver has been taken into custody.

President Trump condemned the violence. Naturally, however, he’s being criticized by Democrats and their friends in the media. They say he didn’t tweet about the goings on in Charlottesville quickly enough. The New York Times sniffs that he “remained silent on the violence for most of the morning.” Maybe he was watching soccer.

On a more serious note, Trump has received criticism for not singling out the white nationalists for criticism. Instead of doing that, Trump said:

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. It’s not Donald Trump, it’s not Barack Obama.

Trump then called for the “swift restoration of law and order” and for unity among Americans of “all races, creeds, and colors.”

I don’t see a problem here. By condemning all sides, the president clearly condemned the white nationalists.

David Duke, the white nationalist who led the demonstration, understood this. He lashed out at Trump for his remarks, a fact the New York Times neglects to note in its article about the criticism of the president.

Should Trump have included a denunciation of leftist hatred, bigotry, and violence? Absolutely. The “antifas” have been rioting and attacking peaceful protesters across America. Reportedly, there were some in Charlottesville, and they engaged in fighting.

If the driver of the car that killed and injured counter-protesters acted intentionally, he deserves special condemnation. However, at the time Trump spoke, the driver’s intent had not been determined.

It would be interesting to know whether the Democrats — e.g., Chuck Schumer — who are attacking Trump for not singling out white nationalists had anything to say about the left-wing thugs who rampaged through Washington, D.C. on the day of Trump’s inauguration, or about any other instances of thuggery by these anti-Trump radicals.

In any event, there is no event, no matter how tragic or how remote from the control of Donald Trump, that Democratic politicians and media hacks can’t convert into an attack on President Trump almost instantaneously.

   The Liberal Crackup

Posted: 12 Aug 2017 11:45 AM PDT

(Steven Hayward)

The Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt from Mark Lilla’s new book, The Once and Future Liberal, coming out on Tuesday that we mentioned here yesterday. Here’s a link to the whole piece if you are a WSJ subscriber, but if not here are two of the better paragraphs in it:

As a teacher, I am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students. Contrary to the stereotype, the conservatives are far more likely to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas and principles. Young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in politics as an X, concerned about other Xs and those issues touching on X-ness. And they are less and less comfortable with debate.

Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: Speaking as an X…This is not an anodyne phrase. It sets up a wall against any questions that come from a non-X perspective. Classroom conversations that once might have begun, I think A, and here is my argument, now take the form, Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B. What replaces argument, then, are taboos against unfamiliar ideas and contrary opinions.

This phenomenon, I submit, is why conservatives have the advantage out in the real world, and why conservatives are more likely to win political battles in the long run, despite the left’s near monopolistic control of academic, the media, popular entertainment, and corporate human resources departments.

Two further notes: What Lilla describes as having burst the bounds of academia into the media mainstream now also applies to large parts of corporate America. See Google. I’d love to see a study some time of how many graduates with degrees in Gender Studies or related politicized fields end up in corporate human resources department jobs, or consulting companies that put on “diversity” training seminars for corporate America.

Second, I’ll wait to read the whole book to see Lilla’s complete judgment, but one question the early excerpts raise is whether “progressive” students are in fact not liberals at all (and not actually in favor of progress for that matter: I saw Harvard’s Steven Pinker give a great lecture in June on the question “Why are ‘Progressives’ against progress?” He has a book coming out in March that will explore this question.) If it is the case that today’s so-called “progressives” are in fact anti-liberals, does it not require then that liberals go into explicit opposition to “progressivism,” and—horrors—ally with conservatives?

   Green Weenie of the Week: Gilkisonism

Posted: 12 Aug 2017 09:18 AM PDT

(Steven Hayward)

Last week we noted in “Climate Shark Jumping” the musings of one John Gilkison at the website EV World, which is otherwise a site devoted to electricity technology innovations, but where Gilkison speculated on the death penalties to be handed out at the prospective climate criminal trials of 2029. The list of people to be executed included all of the usual suspects, including the Koch brothers naturally, even though Charles and David Koch will be over 100 years old in 2029.

What what do you know? Gilkison’s post seems to have been taken down at EV World. Wonder why? But not to worry: Gilkison has several other posts in a similar authoritarian mode still up at the site, and if Paul Ehrlich had to retire some day, Gilkison might as well take his place.

For example, take in Tikopia IV, which offers a schematic for a world government on a new planet after we have finished trashing this one. Here are some of the main features, with commentary:

1: This government would have to be declared to be a secular government run by science and data and not religion. In point of fact religious based views would have to be kept out of any law or rule making and all laws and rules would have to be peer reviewed.

2: The total population of the planet must be controlled and not be allowed to grow beyond a certain preset number (500 to 750 million people) assuming the new planet is much like Earth (similar land and ocean areas, and resources). All corporations are limited to 80 year terms and must behave or have their charters revoked.

Well, I can see some upside here. At least we could finally get rid of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc. But notice, as always, the authoritarian impulse to control the reproductive choices of individual human beings? And just how is that to be enforced? (See point 8 below for one problem with this.) And why the hostility toward individual conscience about things transcendent? Maybe Gilkison is just trying to make himself employable at Google or something.

5: Fractional reserve banking shall be closely controlled and the monetary system shall be based upon units of primary energy. The total money in the system shall be regulated to certain limits and not be allowed to grow beyond a point based upon per capita needs. Because of these limits the total amount of wealth accumulated by any one individual or entity shall be also regulated so that a basic guaranteed livable income is available to all regardless of their status.

6: High speed electric rail and maglev transportation shall be available to all around the planet. Personal transportation and trucking is to electric drive also. Airplane travel shall be reduced to the minimum necessary. Any liquid fuels shall be derived from biomass. ICE, turbines, and jet technology can only be used in limited application run with biomass fuels. Cars, trucks, bikes, motorcycles shall be electric drive in so far as practical. Some hybrid electric applications shall be allowed for range in certain situations.

I’m sure if we only put smart people like Gilkison in charge of all these variables everything will come out just fine. (Hayek, call your office.)

8: Everybody votes, in person, electronically, or otherwise. Fines shall be levied against anyone not voting without a valid reason (medical or other incapacity). Elections are funding from public sources and limited to a six week period.

But what if they vote for Donald Trump? Or vote against Gilkison’s policies? Suppose a majority vote that it wants to allow more people to have babies?

There’s more where this came from. A good representation of the apocalyptic authoritarian mind of environmentalism.

   (DHS) Magical mystery tour: Doing the work the Star Tribune won’t do (3)

Posted: 12 Aug 2017 06:30 AM PDT

(Scott Johnson)

I set forth the chain of events that sparked my interest in the 2016 MSP International Airport tour for Somalis only in the post “(DHS) Magical mystery tour (and why I need a lawyer).” Last year I sought information from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Civil Rights (OCR) under the Freedom of Information Act. OCR provided a few heavily redacted pages and rebuffed the administrative law judge when he requested an explanation of the redactions.

Theresa Bevilacqua of Dorsey & Whitney’s Minneapolis office answered my plea for help. Theresa has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security Office of Civil Rights (OCR) on my behalf in federal court in Minneapolis. Thank you, Theresa.

I thought at the time the lawsuit was filed that the Star Tribune might take an interest. If asked about it, I had planned to respond that we are only doing the work the Star Tribune won’t do. However, the Star Tribune hasn’t asked.

Because the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official to whom I spoke last year directed me to OCR, I neglected to file a separate FOIA request with CBP. On Ms. Bevilacqua’s advice, I have now done so and CBP has formally responded. CBP has produced 29 redacted pages (posted below via Scribd) with claimed FOIA exemptions stamped over the redactions. An extremely helpful guide to FOIA exemptions is posted online here. I don’t think the cited FOIA exemptions apply, but we shall see. The CBP is also withholding 31 pages in their entirety. I have administratively appealed the CBP’s response to my FOIA request.

I attempted to follow up on CBP’s response to my FOIA request by email. CBP spokesman Kris Grogan told me by email: “Every year CBP conducts numerous events and programs around the country in which civic, religious and community leaders, as well as interested residents, are afforded an inside look at how CBP secures the border at and between ports of entries. CBP is committed to fostering a positive relationship within the communities we live and serve.”

I asked these follow-up questions of Mr. Grogan: Can you tell me what other groups receive annual tours of the secure areas at MSP Airport such as this one? How can I get myself invited? Do you have any reason to think that invitees who don’t pass vetting (such as the disinvited imam) don’t get information from the vetted guests?

I also asked these questions in a separate email: When did these annual tours begin at MSP? Did one take place this year? Does CBP or DHS conduct other such tours at airports around the United States? If so, what airports?

I told Grogan that I was “working on articles based on the information provided to date and ask for your prompt response to these basic questions or some indication that you decline to respond.”

Grogan has failed to respond in any manner. Stone-cold silence. Something tells me that they really don’t want us to know much of anything about what’s happening here.

Among the redactions in the documents provided are the names of every OCR and CBP officer on the email messages, the names of every Somali guest on the tour and the draft invitation. The documents even redact the name of the CBP Area Port Director, a name that is otherwise easily available — for example, here and here and here. The Area Port Director is Jennifer De La O.

We do have this, however, in an email from someone to someone dated January 13, 2016: “I hope you are staying warm. After much some [some] anticipation, the cold front reached us today. For the airport tour, February 18 would be great from our end. Would between 6pm-8pm work? This would accommodate prayer times well.”

2017-068244 JUL 19 2017 by Scott Johnson on Scribd

   The Week in Pictures: Googleplex Edition

Posted: 12 Aug 2017 05:04 AM PDT

(Steven Hayward)

“Googleplex” used to mean a 10 followed by 100 zeros, but as of this week it is the new analog to “perplexed.” It will henceforth be used for liberal faceplants in the following way: “Man you must really be Googleplexed by that!” Meanwhile, although Google’s headquarters is also apparently known as the “Googleplex,” when rendered into numerical notation it will have to be 10-100.

Coming soon to a Google diversity seminar near you.

Barron Trump, Mike Pence, and their IT guy begin the attack on North Korea.

Headlines of the week:

What planet does the Puffington Host live on?

    Women are the same as men. Except when they’re different.

Women are the same as men. Except when they’re different.

What is this thing?

Greatest back-to-school sale ever.

And finally. . .

     PowerLine -> Tragedy in Charlottesville prompts criticism of President Trump and The Week in Pictures: Googleplex Edition PowerLine -> Tragedy in Charlottesville prompts criticism of President Trump and The Week in Pictures: Googleplex Edition…

[repwinpril9y0a1]

She's The Best Answer To Donald Trump You Never Heard Of

Heather Booth doesn’t look like a revolutionary. She sits demurely on a sofa, dressed simply in black, fingering a silver necklace. She speaks softly, selecting her words with care and enunciating cleanly. Dignity. Respect. Community.

But something comes over her when she begins to talk about helping people organize to make their world better. The sweet smile fades. She sits up straighter. Her voice tightens, the words come faster. Power. Together. Act. She strikes a gently curled fist into an open palm. IM-pact.

Booth, 71, is one of the nation’s most influential organizers for progressive causes. Inside almost every liberal drive over the past five decades ― for fair pay, equal justice, abortion rights, workers’ rights, voter rights, civil rights, immigration rights, child care ― you will find Booth. But you may have to look hard.

Because she’s not always at the head of the protest march. More often, she’s at a let’s-get-organized meeting in a suburban church basement or a late-night strategy session in a crumbling neighborhood’s community center. She’s helping people already roused to action figure out practical ways to move their cause forward. And always she’s advancing the credo she learned as a child: that you must not only treat people with dignity and respect, but you must shoulder your own responsibility to help build a society that reflects those values.

Heather is one of the people who makes this all work. Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Booth is the founder and president of the Midwest Academy, which for over four decades has trained grassroots activists to advance progressive causes across the country. The academy’s goal, according to its website, is both aspirational ― to “give people a sense of their own power to improve society” ― and enormously practical ― to teach a “strategic, rigorous, results-oriented approach to social action.”

To that end, Booth has worked with a range of liberal groups, from USAction, MoveOn, People’s Action, NAACP National Voter Fund, Alliance for Citizenship and the Voter Participation Center, to the National Organization for Women, the National Council of La Raza, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the Center for Community Change. (She’s also blogged for HuffPost.)

“Heather is one of the people who makes this all work,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), indicating a sweep of progressive issues ― including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Warren, then a Harvard law professor, had a vision of that federal consumer agency in 2007. But she confessed to a colleague that she had no idea how to make it happen, how to harness the political energy needed to push it past the opposition of powerful corporate financial interests.

Her colleague said simply, “Call Heather.”

So it was that, deep in the financial crisis of 2008, with Wall Street giants collapsing, mortgaged homes going under water and banks facing insolvency, throngs of activists appeared to demand real financial reform. They were drawn from labor unions, civil rights organizations, consumer and citizen action groups, and unaffiliated individuals who had never before been politically active but who were furious at the abuse of ordinary Americans.

Booth’s work wasn’t simply a matter of gathering people for protest marches, although those were important. She helped activists devise the tactics to pressure specific legislators. Together they faced off against the monied interests of big business and the political bosses.

And they succeeded. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into law. Politicians and other notable figures gathered on stage for a gala signing ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building. Booth was in the back of the auditorium.

But she felt vindicated. In the fight against Goliath, Booth later told Bill Moyers with a disarming smile, “Sometimes David wins.”

Warren said, “I’m in awe.’’

Today, opposition to the actions and conduct of President Donald Trump keeps rolling out in the street and on social media. The ugly firing of FBI Director James Comey has ignited new outrage. But the question is whether all that energy can be harnessed for action beyond protest marches ― or if it will dissipate like the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement.

That’s where Booth comes in.

The Trump era “is a perilous and inspiring time ― both are true,” she told HuffPost. “The peril can’t be overstated. I do think families will be ripped apart, people will unjustly be imprisoned, jobs will be destroyed. I think lives may be destroyed,” she said. “I fear for unjustified wars. I think the structure of democracy itself will be threatened, from simple protections of people’s health and safety to the ability to live a decent life. So ... a time of great peril.”

“But ...” She allowed herself a broad smile, offering a glimpse of the spirit that has powered uphill battles all these years. “I am incredibly heartened by the outpouring of people standing up to say, ‘You’re not going to do this. We are going to defend our lives, our families. Our democracy! And we are going to defend each other.’”

“If you stand together and organize,” Booth said, “you can change the world.”

This conviction goes way back. In the early 1950s, the sole African-American child in her first-grade class in Brooklyn, New York ― a boy named Benjamin ― was accused by a white student of having stolen her lunch money. The accuser and her friends crowded around Benjamin, pointing and taunting. Booth pushed her way into the circle, put her arm around Benjamin and just stood with him. (And, of course, the accuser then found her lunch money in her shoe.)

As an adolescent, Booth felt she didn’t fit in. She tried out for the cheerleading squad, but quit when she found out that more talented black girls had been turned away. She volunteered for the school chorus, but apparently had no aptitude for singing. At the Christmas pageant, she was asked to just silently mouth the words.

“I was insecure most of my life,” she said, “and in almost all situations felt I was not good enough, didn’t know enough.”

Even so, one day in her early teens, the would-be activist stood by herself in New York City’s Times Square handing out leaflets urging an end to the death penalty. It wasn’t pleasant. In the late 1950s, Times Square was a vile pit of hucksters, porn shops and addicts. One guy spit on her. Flustered, she kept dropping her leaflets. “I was really frightened,” she said.

The lesson she took from that experience, however, wasn’t that you had to stop protesting, but that you had to stop doing it alone. You had to draw others into the action. Get organized. Together you could achieve results even if you were scared and insecure.

Booth felt that power a few years later in Mississippi, where as a University of Chicago student, she spent the Freedom Summer of 1964 organizing for voter rights. That, too, was frightening and inspiring. “We were standing for something that mattered, that was bigger than ourselves, and if as an individual I didn’t know what I was doing, as a group we did know what we were doing,” she said. “And over time I could see that because of this, we were ending segregation.”

Some years later, as a young mother of toddlers on Chicago’s South Side, Booth gathered a group of working moms to form a neighborhood day care cooperative ― and found the idea blocked by the city’s byzantine licensing codes. So they began organizing other parents across the city, at church and synagogue meetings and other community forums.

“People flocked to us,” Booth recalled in a recent TEDx talk. “People gained confidence, found their voice, spoke about their love for their kids, the child care they needed, their vision for the future.”

They framed the conflict as loving mothers versus uncaring bureaucrats. The press noticed. Then Chicago’s politicians noticed. Within six months, she said the city had agreed to one-stop licensing, a licensing review board of parents and child care providers, and $1 million for new child care centers.

It starts where there is an injustice in the world. ... And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’ Heather Booth

The potency of targeted, strategic organizing is a key idea taught at the Midwest Academy, which Booth started in 1973. She chose the name not for the academy’s location, Chicago, but because it sounded wholesome, a clean break from the strident rhetoric of the student left. “We didn’t want to be mean,” she explained.

Three core ideas guide the 25,000 activists who have trained at the academy: The goal of organizing must be concrete improvement in people’s lives. The organizing must help ordinary people develop their own sense of power. And activists should seek change that is systemic ― not just fixing the water supply in Flint, but giving people in Flint some oversight of the water system.

Among the academy’s teaching materials is a strategic planning chart to help organizers link a specific and achievable goal with available resources (money, allies, media contacts), the names of decision-makers whose support or acquiescence is needed, the tactics required to win over opponents, and the messaging to mobilize others to join in.

“Rather than saying, ‘Oh, this is awful, they’re giving money to the wealthiest and taking away our fundamental services, so let’s do a hands-around-the-Capitol’ ― well, that may be a good thing to do,” Booth said. “But can we do it in a way that builds our organization’s resources, brings in more people, maybe raises funds? And afterwards, let’s look at what worked and what didn’t work. What do we do next?”

As valuable as organizing is, Booth understands that it’s a tool for social progress, not the driving force behind it.

“It doesn’t start with training, although the training helps people be more effective,” she said. “It starts where there is an injustice in the world ― people living in fear that some family member will be deported who’s been here 20 years. And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’”

After a police officer killed black teen Michael Brown, for instance, “there was an outpouring across the country. No one had to be told, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ Not just ‘I can’t,’ but ‘we can’t.’ So it starts with people’s anger, love, fear, hate, concern and standing up to say, ‘It can’t continue like this.’”

Today, at a time when many feel powerless and despairing, Booth draws inspiration and energy from the protests that have been erupting since Trump’s inauguration. “We are gaining strength,” she observed.

“The size, the numbers, the beauty of the effort, how representative it is of America ― all of America ― the number of places it’s happening. And how beautifully nonviolent, peaceful and intense they are simultaneously.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rcnSmM

[pat78701]

She's The Best Answer To Donald Trump You Never Heard Of

Heather Booth doesn’t look like a revolutionary. She sits demurely on a sofa, dressed simply in black, fingering a silver necklace. She speaks softly, selecting her words with care and enunciating cleanly. Dignity. Respect. Community.

But something comes over her when she begins to talk about helping people organize to make their world better. The sweet smile fades. She sits up straighter. Her voice tightens, the words come faster. Power. Together. Act. She strikes a gently curled fist into an open palm. IM-pact.

Booth, 71, is one of the nation’s most influential organizers for progressive causes. Inside almost every liberal drive over the past five decades ― for fair pay, equal justice, abortion rights, workers’ rights, voter rights, civil rights, immigration rights, child care ― you will find Booth. But you may have to look hard.

Because she’s not always at the head of the protest march. More often, she’s at a let’s-get-organized meeting in a suburban church basement or a late-night strategy session in a crumbling neighborhood’s community center. She’s helping people already roused to action figure out practical ways to move their cause forward. And always she’s advancing the credo she learned as a child: that you must not only treat people with dignity and respect, but you must shoulder your own responsibility to help build a society that reflects those values.

Heather is one of the people who makes this all work. Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Booth is the founder and president of the Midwest Academy, which for over four decades has trained grassroots activists to advance progressive causes across the country. The academy’s goal, according to its website, is both aspirational ― to “give people a sense of their own power to improve society” ― and enormously practical ― to teach a “strategic, rigorous, results-oriented approach to social action.”

To that end, Booth has worked with a range of liberal groups, from USAction, MoveOn, People’s Action, NAACP National Voter Fund, Alliance for Citizenship and the Voter Participation Center, to the National Organization for Women, the National Council of La Raza, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the Center for Community Change. (She’s also blogged for HuffPost.)

“Heather is one of the people who makes this all work,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), indicating a sweep of progressive issues ― including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Warren, then a Harvard law professor, had a vision of that federal consumer agency in 2007. But she confessed to a colleague that she had no idea how to make it happen, how to harness the political energy needed to push it past the opposition of powerful corporate financial interests.

Her colleague said simply, “Call Heather.”

So it was that, deep in the financial crisis of 2008, with Wall Street giants collapsing, mortgaged homes going under water and banks facing insolvency, throngs of activists appeared to demand real financial reform. They were drawn from labor unions, civil rights organizations, consumer and citizen action groups, and unaffiliated individuals who had never before been politically active but who were furious at the abuse of ordinary Americans.

Booth’s work wasn’t simply a matter of gathering people for protest marches, although those were important. She helped activists devise the tactics to pressure specific legislators. Together they faced off against the monied interests of big business and the political bosses.

And they succeeded. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into law. Politicians and other notable figures gathered on stage for a gala signing ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building. Booth was in the back of the auditorium.

But she felt vindicated. In the fight against Goliath, Booth later told Bill Moyers with a disarming smile, “Sometimes David wins.”

Warren said, “I’m in awe.’’

Today, opposition to the actions and conduct of President Donald Trump keeps rolling out in the street and on social media. The ugly firing of FBI Director James Comey has ignited new outrage. But the question is whether all that energy can be harnessed for action beyond protest marches ― or if it will dissipate like the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement.

That’s where Booth comes in.

The Trump era “is a perilous and inspiring time ― both are true,” she told HuffPost. “The peril can’t be overstated. I do think families will be ripped apart, people will unjustly be imprisoned, jobs will be destroyed. I think lives may be destroyed,” she said. “I fear for unjustified wars. I think the structure of democracy itself will be threatened, from simple protections of people’s health and safety to the ability to live a decent life. So ... a time of great peril.”

“But ...” She allowed herself a broad smile, offering a glimpse of the spirit that has powered uphill battles all these years. “I am incredibly heartened by the outpouring of people standing up to say, ‘You’re not going to do this. We are going to defend our lives, our families. Our democracy! And we are going to defend each other.’”

“If you stand together and organize,” Booth said, “you can change the world.”

This conviction goes way back. In the early 1950s, the sole African-American child in her first-grade class in Brooklyn, New York ― a boy named Benjamin ― was accused by a white student of having stolen her lunch money. The accuser and her friends crowded around Benjamin, pointing and taunting. Booth pushed her way into the circle, put her arm around Benjamin and just stood with him. (And, of course, the accuser then found her lunch money in her shoe.)

As an adolescent, Booth felt she didn’t fit in. She tried out for the cheerleading squad, but quit when she found out that more talented black girls had been turned away. She volunteered for the school chorus, but apparently had no aptitude for singing. At the Christmas pageant, she was asked to just silently mouth the words.

“I was insecure most of my life,” she said, “and in almost all situations felt I was not good enough, didn’t know enough.”

Even so, one day in her early teens, the would-be activist stood by herself in New York City’s Times Square handing out leaflets urging an end to the death penalty. It wasn’t pleasant. In the late 1950s, Times Square was a vile pit of hucksters, porn shops and addicts. One guy spit on her. Flustered, she kept dropping her leaflets. “I was really frightened,” she said.

The lesson she took from that experience, however, wasn’t that you had to stop protesting, but that you had to stop doing it alone. You had to draw others into the action. Get organized. Together you could achieve results even if you were scared and insecure.

Booth felt that power a few years later in Mississippi, where as a University of Chicago student, she spent the Freedom Summer of 1964 organizing for voter rights. That, too, was frightening and inspiring. “We were standing for something that mattered, that was bigger than ourselves, and if as an individual I didn’t know what I was doing, as a group we did know what we were doing,” she said. “And over time I could see that because of this, we were ending segregation.”

Some years later, as a young mother of toddlers on Chicago’s South Side, Booth gathered a group of working moms to form a neighborhood day care cooperative ― and found the idea blocked by the city’s byzantine licensing codes. So they began organizing other parents across the city, at church and synagogue meetings and other community forums.

“People flocked to us,” Booth recalled in a recent TEDx talk. “People gained confidence, found their voice, spoke about their love for their kids, the child care they needed, their vision for the future.”

They framed the conflict as loving mothers versus uncaring bureaucrats. The press noticed. Then Chicago’s politicians noticed. Within six months, she said the city had agreed to one-stop licensing, a licensing review board of parents and child care providers, and $1 million for new child care centers.

It starts where there is an injustice in the world. ... And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’ Heather Booth

The potency of targeted, strategic organizing is a key idea taught at the Midwest Academy, which Booth started in 1973. She chose the name not for the academy’s location, Chicago, but because it sounded wholesome, a clean break from the strident rhetoric of the student left. “We didn’t want to be mean,” she explained.

Three core ideas guide the 25,000 activists who have trained at the academy: The goal of organizing must be concrete improvement in people’s lives. The organizing must help ordinary people develop their own sense of power. And activists should seek change that is systemic ― not just fixing the water supply in Flint, but giving people in Flint some oversight of the water system.

Among the academy’s teaching materials is a strategic planning chart to help organizers link a specific and achievable goal with available resources (money, allies, media contacts), the names of decision-makers whose support or acquiescence is needed, the tactics required to win over opponents, and the messaging to mobilize others to join in.

“Rather than saying, ‘Oh, this is awful, they’re giving money to the wealthiest and taking away our fundamental services, so let’s do a hands-around-the-Capitol’ ― well, that may be a good thing to do,” Booth said. “But can we do it in a way that builds our organization’s resources, brings in more people, maybe raises funds? And afterwards, let’s look at what worked and what didn’t work. What do we do next?”

As valuable as organizing is, Booth understands that it’s a tool for social progress, not the driving force behind it.

“It doesn’t start with training, although the training helps people be more effective,” she said. “It starts where there is an injustice in the world ― people living in fear that some family member will be deported who’s been here 20 years. And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’”

After a police officer killed black teen Michael Brown, for instance, “there was an outpouring across the country. No one had to be told, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ Not just ‘I can’t,’ but ‘we can’t.’ So it starts with people’s anger, love, fear, hate, concern and standing up to say, ‘It can’t continue like this.’”

Today, at a time when many feel powerless and despairing, Booth draws inspiration and energy from the protests that have been erupting since Trump’s inauguration. “We are gaining strength,” she observed.

“The size, the numbers, the beauty of the effort, how representative it is of America ― all of America ― the number of places it’s happening. And how beautifully nonviolent, peaceful and intense they are simultaneously.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rcnSmM

[stormdoors78476]

She's The Best Answer To Donald Trump You Never Heard Of

Heather Booth doesn’t look like a revolutionary. She sits demurely on a sofa, dressed simply in black, fingering a silver necklace. She speaks softly, selecting her words with care and enunciating cleanly. Dignity. Respect. Community.

But something comes over her when she begins to talk about helping people organize to make their world better. The sweet smile fades. She sits up straighter. Her voice tightens, the words come faster. Power. Together. Act. She strikes a gently curled fist into an open palm. IM-pact.

Booth, 71, is one of the nation’s most influential organizers for progressive causes. Inside almost every liberal drive over the past five decades ― for fair pay, equal justice, abortion rights, workers’ rights, voter rights, civil rights, immigration rights, child care ― you will find Booth. But you may have to look hard.

Because she’s not always at the head of the protest march. More often, she’s at a let’s-get-organized meeting in a suburban church basement or a late-night strategy session in a crumbling neighborhood’s community center. She’s helping people already roused to action figure out practical ways to move their cause forward. And always she’s advancing the credo she learned as a child: that you must not only treat people with dignity and respect, but you must shoulder your own responsibility to help build a society that reflects those values.

Heather is one of the people who makes this all work. Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Booth is the founder and president of the Midwest Academy, which for over four decades has trained grassroots activists to advance progressive causes across the country. The academy’s goal, according to its website, is both aspirational ― to “give people a sense of their own power to improve society” ― and enormously practical ― to teach a “strategic, rigorous, results-oriented approach to social action.”

To that end, Booth has worked with a range of liberal groups, from USAction, MoveOn, People’s Action, NAACP National Voter Fund, Alliance for Citizenship and the Voter Participation Center, to the National Organization for Women, the National Council of La Raza, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the Center for Community Change. (She’s also blogged for HuffPost.)

“Heather is one of the people who makes this all work,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), indicating a sweep of progressive issues ― including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Warren, then a Harvard law professor, had a vision of that federal consumer agency in 2007. But she confessed to a colleague that she had no idea how to make it happen, how to harness the political energy needed to push it past the opposition of powerful corporate financial interests.

Her colleague said simply, “Call Heather.”

So it was that, deep in the financial crisis of 2008, with Wall Street giants collapsing, mortgaged homes going under water and banks facing insolvency, throngs of activists appeared to demand real financial reform. They were drawn from labor unions, civil rights organizations, consumer and citizen action groups, and unaffiliated individuals who had never before been politically active but who were furious at the abuse of ordinary Americans.

Booth’s work wasn’t simply a matter of gathering people for protest marches, although those were important. She helped activists devise the tactics to pressure specific legislators. Together they faced off against the monied interests of big business and the political bosses.

And they succeeded. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into law. Politicians and other notable figures gathered on stage for a gala signing ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building. Booth was in the back of the auditorium.

But she felt vindicated. In the fight against Goliath, Booth later told Bill Moyers with a disarming smile, “Sometimes David wins.”

Warren said, “I’m in awe.’’

Today, opposition to the actions and conduct of President Donald Trump keeps rolling out in the street and on social media. The ugly firing of FBI Director James Comey has ignited new outrage. But the question is whether all that energy can be harnessed for action beyond protest marches ― or if it will dissipate like the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement.

That’s where Booth comes in.

The Trump era “is a perilous and inspiring time ― both are true,” she told HuffPost. “The peril can’t be overstated. I do think families will be ripped apart, people will unjustly be imprisoned, jobs will be destroyed. I think lives may be destroyed,” she said. “I fear for unjustified wars. I think the structure of democracy itself will be threatened, from simple protections of people’s health and safety to the ability to live a decent life. So ... a time of great peril.”

“But ...” She allowed herself a broad smile, offering a glimpse of the spirit that has powered uphill battles all these years. “I am incredibly heartened by the outpouring of people standing up to say, ‘You’re not going to do this. We are going to defend our lives, our families. Our democracy! And we are going to defend each other.’”

“If you stand together and organize,” Booth said, “you can change the world.”

This conviction goes way back. In the early 1950s, the sole African-American child in her first-grade class in Brooklyn, New York ― a boy named Benjamin ― was accused by a white student of having stolen her lunch money. The accuser and her friends crowded around Benjamin, pointing and taunting. Booth pushed her way into the circle, put her arm around Benjamin and just stood with him. (And, of course, the accuser then found her lunch money in her shoe.)

As an adolescent, Booth felt she didn’t fit in. She tried out for the cheerleading squad, but quit when she found out that more talented black girls had been turned away. She volunteered for the school chorus, but apparently had no aptitude for singing. At the Christmas pageant, she was asked to just silently mouth the words.

“I was insecure most of my life,” she said, “and in almost all situations felt I was not good enough, didn’t know enough.”

Even so, one day in her early teens, the would-be activist stood by herself in New York City’s Times Square handing out leaflets urging an end to the death penalty. It wasn’t pleasant. In the late 1950s, Times Square was a vile pit of hucksters, porn shops and addicts. One guy spit on her. Flustered, she kept dropping her leaflets. “I was really frightened,” she said.

The lesson she took from that experience, however, wasn’t that you had to stop protesting, but that you had to stop doing it alone. You had to draw others into the action. Get organized. Together you could achieve results even if you were scared and insecure.

Booth felt that power a few years later in Mississippi, where as a University of Chicago student, she spent the Freedom Summer of 1964 organizing for voter rights. That, too, was frightening and inspiring. “We were standing for something that mattered, that was bigger than ourselves, and if as an individual I didn’t know what I was doing, as a group we did know what we were doing,” she said. “And over time I could see that because of this, we were ending segregation.”

Some years later, as a young mother of toddlers on Chicago’s South Side, Booth gathered a group of working moms to form a neighborhood day care cooperative ― and found the idea blocked by the city’s byzantine licensing codes. So they began organizing other parents across the city, at church and synagogue meetings and other community forums.

“People flocked to us,” Booth recalled in a recent TEDx talk. “People gained confidence, found their voice, spoke about their love for their kids, the child care they needed, their vision for the future.”

They framed the conflict as loving mothers versus uncaring bureaucrats. The press noticed. Then Chicago’s politicians noticed. Within six months, she said the city had agreed to one-stop licensing, a licensing review board of parents and child care providers, and $1 million for new child care centers.

It starts where there is an injustice in the world. ... And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’ Heather Booth

The potency of targeted, strategic organizing is a key idea taught at the Midwest Academy, which Booth started in 1973. She chose the name not for the academy’s location, Chicago, but because it sounded wholesome, a clean break from the strident rhetoric of the student left. “We didn’t want to be mean,” she explained.

Three core ideas guide the 25,000 activists who have trained at the academy: The goal of organizing must be concrete improvement in people’s lives. The organizing must help ordinary people develop their own sense of power. And activists should seek change that is systemic ― not just fixing the water supply in Flint, but giving people in Flint some oversight of the water system.

Among the academy’s teaching materials is a strategic planning chart to help organizers link a specific and achievable goal with available resources (money, allies, media contacts), the names of decision-makers whose support or acquiescence is needed, the tactics required to win over opponents, and the messaging to mobilize others to join in.

“Rather than saying, ‘Oh, this is awful, they’re giving money to the wealthiest and taking away our fundamental services, so let’s do a hands-around-the-Capitol’ ― well, that may be a good thing to do,” Booth said. “But can we do it in a way that builds our organization’s resources, brings in more people, maybe raises funds? And afterwards, let’s look at what worked and what didn’t work. What do we do next?”

As valuable as organizing is, Booth understands that it’s a tool for social progress, not the driving force behind it.

“It doesn’t start with training, although the training helps people be more effective,” she said. “It starts where there is an injustice in the world ― people living in fear that some family member will be deported who’s been here 20 years. And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’”

After a police officer killed black teen Michael Brown, for instance, “there was an outpouring across the country. No one had to be told, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ Not just ‘I can’t,’ but ‘we can’t.’ So it starts with people’s anger, love, fear, hate, concern and standing up to say, ‘It can’t continue like this.’”

Today, at a time when many feel powerless and despairing, Booth draws inspiration and energy from the protests that have been erupting since Trump’s inauguration. “We are gaining strength,” she observed.

“The size, the numbers, the beauty of the effort, how representative it is of America ― all of America ― the number of places it’s happening. And how beautifully nonviolent, peaceful and intense they are simultaneously.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rcnSmM

[happymetalgirl]

April 2020

WELL! I have been gone awhile, very busy, and look what happens when I slow down writing about metal: the world starts to fucking fall apart. But no, in all seriousness. I’m writing this part now at the beginning of June after an already tumultuous April and May, and now I’m just making myself sit down and do this because, well, honestly, it’s been pretty hard to justify spending my time writing about music with all the fuck shit going on right now. (I can’t wait to see what July throws at us.) But again, in all seriousness, I’m not looking for any pity or sympathy for my relatively mild circumstances at all because in all honesty, my white privilege has allowed my life to be pretty okay and proceed mostly uninterrupted in the midst of everything going on.

I’m probably going to repost this part in its own post, but I feel like I have to get this out of the way before I write any more about music. I’ll start by disseminating any ambiguity on what I’ll be talking about in these paragraphs that I am intentionally bolding.

As I write this in the midst of a fucking respiratory virus pandemic, another epidemic (possibly pandemic) of racist police brutality that has always existed in a culture of unhinged toxic masculinity in my increasingly embarrassing country has exploded to unbelievable and disgusting levels against Black people and peaceful protesters in the United States, ironically in wake of protests against fucking police violence, all of which is only emboldened and encouraged by local and federal leadership that is showcasing its oppressive, totalitarian ambitions in its unprecedented attempted revocations of its citizens constitutional and human rights.

I’ll make the necessary side note that this increasingly oligarchical government subservient to the will of military and prison industry has already shown its complete disregard for human rights for decades upon decades now through its violation of human rights through offensive wars and sanctions against other countries and its dehumanization of the refugees and immigrants who its actions create.

If you haven’t already checked out of this from all the political correctness breaching your conservative bubble (good job not being that person), but you’re upset because tHiS iS sUpPoSeD tO bE a MuSiC bLoG, uh, you’re on the wrong website buddy, and the potential tipping point of a long-awaited revolution in the midst of an economic depression, a viral pandemic, and a dual crisis of grotesque police violence and evolutionary transformation of proto-fascism into fascist dictatorship is no time to go about business as usual.

BUT HOLY SHIT, ENOUGH INTRODUCTION AND ENOUGH ABOUT ME! The point of this is to spotlight what to do in the wake of all of this. First of all, I don’t have all the answers and my perspective is as limited as any person’s, so if you’re an expert on any of these matters or if you have insight from having experiences that I as a white cis male have not had, if anything I’m bringing up here could be better in any way, feel absolutely free (but not obligated) to let me know.

Okay, so lots of problems at hand. The big, all-encompassing one facing all of humanity of course is the ecological disruption caused by industrially driven human-catalyzed climate change, and the rot of everything crystallizing at this current moment feeds into exacerbating that catastrophe, the next wide-reaching issue being capitalism, whose prioritization of profit and short-term gains is incredibly ill-equipped to handle a slow emergency like climate change or a more acute emergency like a global pandemic. Here in the U.S. we have a federal government so infested with corporate corruption to maximize capital profits for the country’s most wealthy that they couldn’t even choose the obvious solution of pausing the economy and providing for its people for the duration of the pandemic in the interest of public health over the appallingly quick choice of protecting the financial interests of the corporate “donors” that help them hold their positions of power, at the risk of maybe closing the gap a tiny bit between the truly despicably wealthy and the growing number of hopelessly impoverished. So while the wealthy get protection of their assets from the slow-down of business (you know, ‘cause the pandemic), the people in most need of help because of that slow-down and plunged into spiking unemployment get shit from the people meant to represent them. And that’s just the corporate rot that rears its head as a result of a pandemic!

Even in “normal” times, capitalism in this country has built its foundation on slave labor and justifying the use of slavery through racism (even after it became illegal to outright own people as slaves). That cornerstone of free/cheap labor that this country’s economy is built on whose role was served by slavery was filled by outsourcing to countries with an easily exploitable lower class (whose conditions are often exacerbated by U.S. meddling on behalf of business interests) and prison labor made possible by mass incarceration that has targeted similarly vulnerable people and communities of color through strategic, racially profiled over-policing of minority communities trapped in poverty through historic systemic racism.

The study of that global climate change I mentioned earlier is referred to as a crisis study because there isn’t an unlimited time to do something about it, and the ever-changing conditions and pivotal events of the world effect what needs to be done to combat it (and what it is too late to do). This current crisis of police brutality is one of those types of critical moments, for climate change and social justice. Police brutality didn’t become an issue when George Floyd was murdered on May 25th 2020; it’s been an ugly facet of this multifactedly ugly country for a long time now, but its being brought to light has instigated an uprising the likes of which has not been seen in a long while, and with it, an especially insidious aggression toward it by the increasingly fascist government and its authoritarian figurehead (to the point of threatening institution of martial law and suspending first amendment rights and habeas corpus) that at this point serves only to maintain complacency for the benefit of the ruling class and to the detriment of the disproportionately non-white lower working class (treated as a slave class). Consequently this is a pivotal time that obligates widespread action and ceasing of silence from privileged people like me who have been able to get away with writing about music largely apolitically for years. This is a time when we either plunge unfathomably further into the depths of fascism at the hands of the ruling class and the silence of the less-effected or we consolidate in this moment of broad energizing to both enact substantive change on the critical issue of police brutality and set a precedent and build momentum to achieve justice for LGBTQIA+ folk, other racial minorities and marginalized groups, and make the critical changes need to avoid civilizational dissolution in the face of the imperative to mitigate our impact on global warming.

Speaking of that change and the actions that this moment implores of us all to contribute our energy to: the most immediately critical issue at our feet, to both save human lives from being taken unjustly at the hands of police brutality and to galvanize this revolution to be able to demand further justice and critical social transformation, is ending police brutality. Being an institution born out of rounding up escaped slaves and given the state-supported monopoly on violence that attracts largely those seeking to satiate sadism with the license to that monopolized violence, police culture is inherently toxic and not worth even preserving for the sake of transforming structurally. While abolishing the police is obviously too ambitious of an immediate goal, there are a lot of proposed steps to defunding and largely dismantling the police as a whole. The project Campaign Zero outlines and pushes for ten tangible reforms that would (some of which have recently been proposed in Colorado) decrease police violence, especially in the majority-Black communities that suffer from it the most. The “8 Can’t Wait” proposal that has been making rounds lately is part of Campaign Zero, and donations to these projects are of course, quite helpful and a good start for this blossoming movement. Furthermore, donations to local bail funds is especially important at this time with police making wanton arrests of peaceful protests (and also just random Black people not making any disruption) to support the people going out and protesting. Because this money of course gets siphoned into the courts, and then partially to law enforcement, it’s important to also direct funds to organizations where that money will not later be used against us, but again, keeping people able to protest is of utmost importance, since that it what is driving positive change in this moment.

Also helpful is direct support of the people on the frontlines of these protests. It is a time for privileged people to take action in solidarity and support, but not one for privileged groups to take over or “lead” the movement. Right now, this is about who is hurting the most and who is being oppressed the most, and right now that is Black people, by police, hence BLACK LIVES MATTER. Now is not a time for even underprivileged white people to use these protests’ likelihood of escalating to indulge in venting frustrations against the system by inciting police violence that puts Black people disproportionately in more danger in such situations. Now is the time to use that privilege of being less prone to racism police violence to whatever extent possible to protect the people of color protesting. And again, this isn’t about being white saviors or martyrs, this is about supporting people in the way they wish, so don’t listen to my advice over the insight and requests of what Black people and the Black community have. And by all means, fucking listen to them! Read from them! Engage in good-faith conversation with them (though don’t expect any individual Black person to give you a seminar on racism, there are ample resources that don’t demand someone devoting their precious time to you)! Learn where the limits of your perspective fail you! And for fuck’s sake, don’t just cherry pick the word of one token Black friend that happens to have some class privilege to conveniently discount the testimonies of other Black people!

Lastly, on a personal note to the metalheads that read this blog, I think this is a particularly important time for the metal community, not to center itself, but to bring itself alongside social justice in a more complete way than it has in the past. Former Opeth and current Soen drummer Martín López said last year in an interview published in Blabbermouth that the metal community is very behind the curve on sociopolitical issues, and the response to his saying that from the metal community that floods Blabbermouth comment sections basically just made the case for the exact point he was making. And it’s a shame because I think such a huge part of metal is about standing up to injustice as part of or in support of the oppressed, or at least such a huge part of the metal I gravitate toward is. Without sounding too spiritual or cheesy because I’m not a really spiritual person, I feel like when I see the injustice going on, I feel that spirit of metal in all of it on the side of the oppressed. I feel like all the grindcore and deathcore and thrash and death metal I’ve been binging lately is in the spirit of the protesters standing up to and, when they have to, fighting back against the unjustified aggression of the police, and looking back at old, certified classic albums like ...And Justice for All, Toxicity, and Chaos A.D. and more recent albums like Machine Head’s The Blackening, and Thy Art Is Murder’s Human Target, and Venom Prison’s Samsara, it’s always been about standing up to this kind of bullshit. So I think if there ever was a time since Sabbath birthed it for metal to prove that it’s as important as it makes itself out to be and as important as it is to everyone who listens to it in such a way that they read an obscure blog about it, now is that time to show that it’s not just about being an angry white guy. Now is the time to make Martín López happy by proving him wrong.

Well, in typical Happymetalboy fashion, I can’t seem to make anything brief. So, with that said, let’s talk about the metal music that came out in the good ol’ days of April 2020. Wow. 

Well, April was a pretty big month. Lots of albums coming out, the whole music industry still the throes of the pandemic, it’s a damn shame we got what might be the best album I’ve ever reviewed on this blog in the midst of all this soul-crushing stagnance and financial despair in the music world. I mean, I’m certainly very glad to be getting such a great album among other great albums at a time when music is definitely helping me to keep going as well. It just sucks knowing these artists aren’t going to be able to tour in celebration of their great artistic achievements, and the first one on this list definitely deserves to celebrate.

Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin Kynsi

I already reviewed the Finnish band’s fifth full-length in great detail, which I highly suggest checking out because I wrote a lot about that album and I wrote it quite enthusiastically. It feels weird in a way to make the rest of the albums on this list follow my recount of an album that I already detailed in great length to be one of the best albums I have heard in years, quite possibly the best album I’ve reviewed in this blog’s existence, but I have to make sure that it doesn’t get lost at the end of this undoubtedly long-ass post. Anyway, Oranssi Pazuzu have fucking outdone themselves on this one and in many ways, black metal in general. The band have been building their synthy, psychedelic sound for over a decade now, but Mestarin Kynsi is the crystallization of everything the band has been working toward, which I think last year’s Waste of Space Orchestra collaboration played a big part in catalyzing. The album is so immersive and in so many ways feels like it has a soul of its own, made possible by the band’s absolute chemistry and dedication to ego-lessly channeling this album’s transcendent ethos as a team rather than elevating themselves individually, and what they conjure on here is such a leap up from their already heady psychedelic black metal and out of this fucking world. Mestarin Kynsi is the kind of terrifying, yet transfixing light that pulls you in even as you know of its malevolence, because it is just too goddamn beautiful and compelling to resist. The score should be such a big deal, but I know that any time this kind of score is thrown out there it prompts all sorts of distracting question regarding the flaws of the album, but I stand by my original score. I love this album, and I don’t see anything about it that makes me think it’s any less.

10/10

Okay, now on to the unfortunate rest of April’s releases that had to follow this up.

Testament - Titans of Creation

Testament rode a pretty vibrant comeback wave with Chuck Billy’s beating cancer on 2008’s The Formation of Damnation and 2012’s Dark Roots of the Earth, but that hot steak came to an end on the rather droll effort they put out in 2016, Brotherhood of the Snake. Back when concerts were a thing, I caught them when they opened up for the rest of the stacked lineup of Slayer’s farewell tour; they put on a great show, and I was reminded of what made them, still, such a prominent force in thrash, hopeful for a rejuvenation on whatever record came next. And as much as I wish I liked this new album of theirs more, I just can’t get into it all that much for so many of the same reasons I couldn’t get into its predecessor. I’d say it has much brighter moments, but it suffers from much of the same recycling of thrash compositional tropes (with not enough elaboration) that Brotherhood of the Snake did. It’s the kind of album that at first listen will seem flavorful and engaging, but it loses it pretty quickly like a snack that isn’t that filling or easy to keep eating due to it’s overwhelming taste, despite its empty calories.

5/10

Abysmal Dawn - Phylogenesis

After six years during which I had thought they might have disbanded or been dropped from Relapse Records, Abysmal Dawn return from the shadows on Season of Mist with the tight, concise brand of modestly technical modern death metal that made them such a sell in the first place on their fifth record, Phylogenesis. Not deviating at all from what they know they do well, Abysmal Dawn stick to a direct death metal attack with no bells and whistles, relying on their speed and agility to guide them, and their strengths serve them well as they manage to highlight what makes death metal so appealing at its core.

8/10

WVRM - Colony Collapse

While not listening to Oranssi Pazuzu or straight-up depressive shit, I have had a massive hankering for filthy grindcore that has been graciously satiated in part by WVRM’s Colony Collapse. Airing heavily on the hardcore side of the genre, incorporating some slower slamming grooves and deep, dirty gutteral vocals into their otherwise true-to-the-genre grindcore, WVRM do indeed put forth a more intense slab of grindcore than your usual twenty-something minute LP, which is made possible largely by the dynamic that they inject with their willingness to incorporate so much tasty, hardcore riffage and nasty sludge.

7/10

Red - Declaration

After what I’ve now come to see as their worst album, 2017′s Gone, Red immediately bounce back onto the positive trajectory that Of Beauty and Rage set them on and back to the symphonic 2000′s alternative metal that they built their early reputation on, with their shortest, possibly most direct album to date, comprised of just ten tight tracks that focus their cathartic brand of alternative metal into surprisingly dense packages that undoubtedly include some of the best of the band’s whole career, like “All for You”, “The Evening Hate”, and the especially cathartic “The War We Made”. I can only hope every band that has stumbled so hard lately can pick themselves back up as quickly and convincingly as Red has on their aptly named seventh LP here.

8/10

August Burns Red - Guardians

I have to say, despite being a pretty standard slab of melodic 2010’s metalcore, this album has kind of grown on me a bit in the past few weeks of listening to it. The album shows that the band are doing well to keep an eye on what’s going on in metalcore, stylistically spanning old and new pretty well. And while we sometimes get cheesy Hot Topic melodicism on songs like “Lighthouse”, other tracks encapsulate old and new in the space of a single song with respectable tact. The track “Defender” for example features two metalcore breakdowns, the first of which is generic as fuck from the 2000’s, but the second is distinctly more creative and forward-thinking, showing that the band are aware of the genre’s evolution and their trajectory alongside it. I also have to point out the highlight “Dismembered Memory” is in the track list with its emotive, Gothenburg-style guitar melody mixed with some distinct Architects-inspired vocal melodies. The closing track, “Three Fountains”, also ends the album on a strong note with its powerful melodic vocals in particular. Again, most of this project is pretty unsurprising metalcore, but the band at least shows some sense of awareness of how to progress their sound, and the strength of the highlights here makes the album worth at least checking out to find them.

6/10

Benighted - Obscene Repressed

While it is a well-performed, well-produced offering, Obscene Repressed is little more than a competent modern horror/brutal death metal album whose campiness in its shots for grotesqueness and creepiness can actually end up working against it. It’s a fun enough death metal album for while it’s on with some impressive flashes of percussion in particular, but it’s memorable mostly for its goofy moments and much less for its songwriting.

6/10

Aborted - La Grande Mascarade

Well, three more songs of relentless modern brutal death metal from Aborted is surely hard to get worked up about, and that goes in the positive and negative direction. On the EP’s three tracks, the band basically just goes through the motions in a way that makes me question what the point of putting these tracks out on this EP as opposed to keeping them for the next album (and potentially grooming them further) was. I mean, I can’t complain too much, the band are solid on these cuts in all the ways we come to expect them to be, but what makes these songs unfit for the next album or really demands they be released on this EP?

6/10

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts V: Together & Ghosts VI: Locusts

I don’t want to knock Nine Inch Nails’ more ambient works, as I do think Trent Reznor has proven he has the chops to thrive in dark ambiance, but I just couldn’t get too excited about this watered down three hours worth of dark ambiance that he put out this year. It certainly works on the baseline level that all dark ambient music operates on an generally seeks to achieve, but it really doesn’t go above and beyond anywhere and it just kind of settles for the passing grade. At the most charitable, both are the kinds of ambient albums that exist solely to provide an eerie, droning sonic background with a few notable shifts coming from song to song, but that’s not enough to get me excited for either of them.

5/10 & 6/10

The Black Dahlia Murder - Verminous

I have to say, I’ve kind of softened in my earlier perception The Black Dahlia Murder being overrated, and Verminous is an album that really helps their case. Its name is pretty apt for the band’s blackened style of melodeath in general, but the dynamic between their delicious melodic side and their muscularly heavy side on Verminous is quite possibly at its most comprehensively displayed. I know that the band’s fans don’t really see them as having any misses in their catalog, though there seems to be some consistent favoritism toward Nocturnal, but I would wager that Verminous has captured their composition at its most advanced and their sound its most savory.

8/10

MASTER BOOT RECORD - Floppy Disk Overdrive

I’ve not been keeping up too closely with the prolific MASTER BOOT RECORD project, but I do regret missing and not covering the dynamic Internet Protocol EP that was released last year. Floppy Disk Overdrive, aptly named, is a bit more of the usual overload of synthetically instrumental, chiptune-seasoned death metal that keeps me from getting too excited about new MASTER BOOT RECORD releases. Once again, the focus is on solid production of the instruments and minor tricks with the sonic aesthetic, but composition again seems to fall by the wayside, and there isn’t enough intriguing stylistic diversity to make up for it.

5/10

Caustic Wound - Death Posture

More delicious, nasty grindcore to ravage my ears with in between listens to Oranssi Pazuzu and Okkervil River. The debut album by the Seattle-based supergroup of sorts is as pummeling as I would expect given the pedigree of the members involved. Death Posture is nasty, gutteral, and relentless in all the ways anyone could want their grindcore to be. The monstrously bellowing growls in particular make me feel like I’m listening to Primitive Man playing grindcore (which is a good thing). While I have been in quite the grindcore binge lately, Death Posture is more than just your standard, straight-line-through grindcore record, taking an old-school death metal knack for dynamic accents, tasty isolated bass lines, bursts of speed, bursts of thickened walls of sound, and wailing solos. It sounds sort of like if Morbid Angel was directing Primitive Man’s deathgrind adventure, also a good thing. I definitely love this one, probably my favorite grindcore album so far this year.

8/10

Khemmis - Doomed Heavy Metal

While we (if not just I) eagerly await the Colorado act’s forthcoming Nuclear Blast debut (and follow-up to 2018′s perfect Desolation), the band offers a little compilation EP to hold us over until then. Of the six tracks, only the first is new material (and it’s a cover song), two are songs from previous non-album releases, and the other three are live tracks. The band’s cover of Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark” transposes the iconic keyboard part onto guitar in classic Khemmis fashion, and the vocal and guitar harmonies give the already inspiring song a new sense of melancholic triumph that I have come to love so much from Khemmis. It’s definitely worth checking out for the fresh take it offers to the Dio classic. As for the rest of the EP, the one-off single “Empty Throne” feels rather B-side-level by the band’s lofty standards, as does their odd, but enjoyable melodic doom rendition of the folk tune “A Conversation with Death”. The sampling of live cuts gets one great song from each of the band’s previous LPs, and the band sounds pretty true to their studio form for the most part, the vocals on “Bloodletting” being noticeably rough though.

Compilation in the Dark/10

Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1

The second album from Nergal’s folky satanic rock side project comes with a pretty star-studded line-up, and honestly it’s a pretty fun time and I don’t have many complaints about the concise, catchy tunes that Nergal and company are churning out. “Run with the Devil” is a brilliantly composed opener, “Burning Churches” is a catchy-as-fuck pub-type tune, and guests Ihsahn, Corey Taylor, and especially Matt Heafy showcase the versatility of their vocal styles on their respective features. It’s more a fun heresy-laden time explicitly not overthought than the usual heady blackened death metal that Behemoth pedals.

7/10

Medico Peste - ב :The Black Bile

Taking very apparent cues from black metal’s (and experimental metal��s) more esoteric figures like Deathspell Omega and even Tool, Medico Peste comes through with an at least very aesthetically intriguing listen, even if some of the compositions run kind of long without enough in the way of substantive musical ideas to last quite as long as they’re intended to. While the influences the band wears on their sleeve are at least quite respectably sonically pervasive, it can get occasionally uncanny. The main riff of “All Too Human” sounds like it could have come straight from the Ænema recording sessions, and “Numinous Catastrophe” even sounds like it pulls from Oranssi Pazuzu. But despite the influences on its sleeves, ב :The Black Bile is unique and diverse enough as a whole to sustain an exciting listen and one that I have enjoyed returning to.

7/10

Omega Infinity - Solar Spectre

I had not heard of Omega Infinity until this album, and out of the gate it really sounded like some cliché ambient black metal, but as the album unfolds, it really does reveal itself to be so much more than that. Hard to capture in a single word, the cosmos-themed album definitely captures the wide, chilling vastness of space through instrumental and compositional techniques that provide a fittingly alien, but not explicitly sci-fi, twist on the usual elements of ambient black metal, and it works wonderfully. 

8/10

Black Curse - Endless Wound

I heard a good bit of hype over this project, but I’m honestly having a hard time hearing what’s supposed to be such a big deal. We’ve got some solid performances and the occasional compositional flash of brilliance, but for the most part, Endless Wound is very standard blackened death metal with meek ambitions. Like don’t get me wrong, it’s not awful, and I don’t hate it. It just doesn’t depart nearly enough from the beaten, and crowded, path or really stand above the crowd on that path enough to get me excited. I kind of wish the band would delve more into the slower, sludgier, more savory sections of they dip their toes in, like that of “Enraptured by Decay” and the more eccentric takes on black metal dark ritualism on “Seared Eyes”. But until they really commit more to things they can do to get their head above the death metal crowd, it’s going to be hard to get excited about another Black Curse project in the near future.

5/10

Vermicide Violence - The Praxis of Prophylaxis

It was only a matter of time until the pandemic delivered unto us an at least partially coronavirus-themed medical deathcore album, which I am of course not complaining about the obnoxious, ridiculous prospect of. There is a lot of silly, gimmicky deathcore (and metal in general) out there that is pretty superficial, but also plenty that makes a lot of great use of whatever gimmick it’s applying. In this case, the natural grotesquery (if that’s a word) of medical practice does give Vermicide Violence just that little bit of extra tangibility and realness to the nasty deathcore they’re pedaling. From breakdown lines of “vaccinate your fucking kids” and “you only hear once so just buy fucking plugs” (a twist on Suicide Silence’s “You Only Live Once”) to songs about asthmatic asphyxiation, coronavirus infection, West Nile virus, and breast cancer, it’s at the very least somewhat lyrically fresh and fun for any medical metalheads to have a good time nerding out with.

6/10

Vatican Falling - WAR

So I found out about Vatican Falling through the deathcoredads meme page, don’t judge me, but I’m glad I did, because this album, WAR, is some deliciously disgusting deathcore with lots of different flavors. They’re not exactly pushing any boundaries for the genre, but WAR certainly does branch out into melodic territory more boldly and successfully than your average deathcore album, and with good results. It has its low points where some of the experimentation doesn’t work, like the annoyingly repetitive clean vocal sample on the title track, but for the most part, the band’s use of more tangible, cleaner melodies goes over well and supplements the music nicely with a sense of raised stakes. If anything, I wish they did more in that vein because the band’s deathcore grooves at the core aren’t as above average on their own. That being said, songs like “King of Vermin” and “Kill All Humans” show that the band can really raise their game at the base deathcore front and outcompete their contemporaries if they need to.

6/10

Ulcerate - Stare into Death and Be Still

Stare into Death and Be Still is the sixth album from sonically ambitious New Zealanders, Ulcerate. Continuing to push their brand of atmospheric, blackened technical death metal to further reaches of the unknown, guitarist Michael Hoggard’s fluid, multi-faceted melodic work continues to play a pivotal role in steering the atmospheric tone of the album, while Jamie Saint Merat’s impressive following of the music’s odd time signature shifts boosts the album’s energy with tasteful technicality while simultaneously not being too obnoxiously flashy and showcasing some flavorful technical drumming chops. The guitar work takes on so many different shapes and styles, but probably most often reminds me of the winding angularity of Portal with the primal humanness and ritual catharsis of later/current Behemoth, with some more ambient detours taken here and there that hearken to Isis and even more doom-oriented projects like Bell Witch. The swirling together of influences here is so seamless and immersive, and honestly some of Ulcerate’s best. This is not to discount Paul Kelland’s contributions of emotively harmonious bass lines and consistently bestial, yet also somehow soulful, death metal bellowing to the album’s sound; I think his contributions in particular are what help this album feel meaningful and human and not just like some soulless piece of experimental art with a little too much of its head up its ass. For an hour, this album feels like listening to the best aspects of several different styles of cutting-edge death metal, black metal, and doom metal rolled into one masterful super-album that still manages to strike a dreadful chord all its own. Yeah, this is a pretty damn great album.

9/10

Katatonia - City Burials

Honestly, the vast majority of this album feels like Katatonia going through the motions and just playing it safe, never really committing to any really bold performance or composition moves, just coasting off The Fall of Hearts. It certainly passes by the usual Katatonia rubric, but it certainly won’t be going down as one of the band’s most revered.

5/10

Trivium - What the Dead Men Say

I somehow missed out on the entire first half of this album being released as singles, but I sure caught all the hype surrounding the band’s ninth album leading up to its release and all the preemptive praise it was receiving, and I’m kind of glad I got to experience it as a whole without the experience of the singles because I feel like I can honestly soberly assess it and say that it’s definitely not the masterpiece it’s being hyped up to be. The band definitely have found their groove in the various melodic, proggy, thrashy alternative metal styles they play, but this album really just feels like the band are just feeling themselves, in the sense that they’re kind of playing it safe, but bold enough with what they know they do well to kind of mask that. The band’s ninth album is pretty noticeably a continuation of their eighth, The Sin and the Sentence, which had some of Trivium’s most potent alternative metalcore bangers to date, but also some of their most confusingly tepid compositions on the other side of their spectrum. What the Dead Men Say kind of just maintains the band’s trajectory on their previous album and narrows that range from high to low. The low points, like “Bleed into Me” and (to a lesser extent) “The Catastrophist”, aren’t as low, but the high points aren’t as high, and I don’t think I’ll be returning to the better parts of this album, like “The Defiant”, “Amongst the Shadows and the Stones”, and “Sickness Unto You” as much as I will the plethora of highlights from The Sin and the Sentence. Overall, it kind of just feels like Trivium coasting a bit, but the band is genuinely at that level of evolution in their sound where they have made a lot of gradual refinements over time to get here but haven’t just repeated themselves, so they can kind of get away with it. Even if it’s not my favorite Trivium album, it’s sure a hell of a lot better than anything Trapt has ever released.

7/10

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She's The Best Answer To Donald Trump You Never Heard Of

Heather Booth doesn’t look like a revolutionary. She sits demurely on a sofa, dressed simply in black, fingering a silver necklace. She speaks softly, selecting her words with care and enunciating cleanly. Dignity. Respect. Community.

But something comes over her when she begins to talk about helping people organize to make their world better. The sweet smile fades. She sits up straighter. Her voice tightens, the words come faster. Power. Together. Act. She strikes a gently curled fist into an open palm. IM-pact.

Booth, 71, is one of the nation’s most influential organizers for progressive causes. Inside almost every liberal drive over the past five decades ― for fair pay, equal justice, abortion rights, workers’ rights, voter rights, civil rights, immigration rights, child care ― you will find Booth. But you may have to look hard.

Because she’s not always at the head of the protest march. More often, she’s at a let’s-get-organized meeting in a suburban church basement or a late-night strategy session in a crumbling neighborhood’s community center. She’s helping people already roused to action figure out practical ways to move their cause forward. And always she’s advancing the credo she learned as a child: that you must not only treat people with dignity and respect, but you must shoulder your own responsibility to help build a society that reflects those values.

Heather is one of the people who makes this all work. Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Booth is the founder and president of the Midwest Academy, which for over four decades has trained grassroots activists to advance progressive causes across the country. The academy’s goal, according to its website, is both aspirational ― to “give people a sense of their own power to improve society” ― and enormously practical ― to teach a “strategic, rigorous, results-oriented approach to social action.”

To that end, Booth has worked with a range of liberal groups, from USAction, MoveOn, People’s Action, NAACP National Voter Fund, Alliance for Citizenship and the Voter Participation Center, to the National Organization for Women, the National Council of La Raza, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the Center for Community Change. (She’s also blogged for HuffPost.)

“Heather is one of the people who makes this all work,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), indicating a sweep of progressive issues ― including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Warren, then a Harvard law professor, had a vision of that federal consumer agency in 2007. But she confessed to a colleague that she had no idea how to make it happen, how to harness the political energy needed to push it past the opposition of powerful corporate financial interests.

Her colleague said simply, “Call Heather.”

So it was that, deep in the financial crisis of 2008, with Wall Street giants collapsing, mortgaged homes going under water and banks facing insolvency, throngs of activists appeared to demand real financial reform. They were drawn from labor unions, civil rights organizations, consumer and citizen action groups, and unaffiliated individuals who had never before been politically active but who were furious at the abuse of ordinary Americans.

Booth’s work wasn’t simply a matter of gathering people for protest marches, although those were important. She helped activists devise the tactics to pressure specific legislators. Together they faced off against the monied interests of big business and the political bosses.

And they succeeded. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into law. Politicians and other notable figures gathered on stage for a gala signing ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building. Booth was in the back of the auditorium.

But she felt vindicated. In the fight against Goliath, Booth later told Bill Moyers with a disarming smile, “Sometimes David wins.”

Warren said, “I’m in awe.’’

Today, opposition to the actions and conduct of President Donald Trump keeps rolling out in the street and on social media. The ugly firing of FBI Director James Comey has ignited new outrage. But the question is whether all that energy can be harnessed for action beyond protest marches ― or if it will dissipate like the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement.

That’s where Booth comes in.

The Trump era “is a perilous and inspiring time ― both are true,” she told HuffPost. “The peril can’t be overstated. I do think families will be ripped apart, people will unjustly be imprisoned, jobs will be destroyed. I think lives may be destroyed,” she said. “I fear for unjustified wars. I think the structure of democracy itself will be threatened, from simple protections of people’s health and safety to the ability to live a decent life. So ... a time of great peril.”

“But ...” She allowed herself a broad smile, offering a glimpse of the spirit that has powered uphill battles all these years. “I am incredibly heartened by the outpouring of people standing up to say, ‘You’re not going to do this. We are going to defend our lives, our families. Our democracy! And we are going to defend each other.’”

“If you stand together and organize,” Booth said, “you can change the world.”

This conviction goes way back. In the early 1950s, the sole African-American child in her first-grade class in Brooklyn, New York ― a boy named Benjamin ― was accused by a white student of having stolen her lunch money. The accuser and her friends crowded around Benjamin, pointing and taunting. Booth pushed her way into the circle, put her arm around Benjamin and just stood with him. (And, of course, the accuser then found her lunch money in her shoe.)

As an adolescent, Booth felt she didn’t fit in. She tried out for the cheerleading squad, but quit when she found out that more talented black girls had been turned away. She volunteered for the school chorus, but apparently had no aptitude for singing. At the Christmas pageant, she was asked to just silently mouth the words.

“I was insecure most of my life,” she said, “and in almost all situations felt I was not good enough, didn’t know enough.”

Even so, one day in her early teens, the would-be activist stood by herself in New York City’s Times Square handing out leaflets urging an end to the death penalty. It wasn’t pleasant. In the late 1950s, Times Square was a vile pit of hucksters, porn shops and addicts. One guy spit on her. Flustered, she kept dropping her leaflets. “I was really frightened,” she said.

The lesson she took from that experience, however, wasn’t that you had to stop protesting, but that you had to stop doing it alone. You had to draw others into the action. Get organized. Together you could achieve results even if you were scared and insecure.

Booth felt that power a few years later in Mississippi, where as a University of Chicago student, she spent the Freedom Summer of 1964 organizing for voter rights. That, too, was frightening and inspiring. “We were standing for something that mattered, that was bigger than ourselves, and if as an individual I didn’t know what I was doing, as a group we did know what we were doing,” she said. “And over time I could see that because of this, we were ending segregation.”

Some years later, as a young mother of toddlers on Chicago’s South Side, Booth gathered a group of working moms to form a neighborhood day care cooperative ― and found the idea blocked by the city’s byzantine licensing codes. So they began organizing other parents across the city, at church and synagogue meetings and other community forums.

“People flocked to us,” Booth recalled in a recent TEDx talk. “People gained confidence, found their voice, spoke about their love for their kids, the child care they needed, their vision for the future.”

They framed the conflict as loving mothers versus uncaring bureaucrats. The press noticed. Then Chicago’s politicians noticed. Within six months, she said the city had agreed to one-stop licensing, a licensing review board of parents and child care providers, and $1 million for new child care centers.

It starts where there is an injustice in the world. ... And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’ Heather Booth

The potency of targeted, strategic organizing is a key idea taught at the Midwest Academy, which Booth started in 1973. She chose the name not for the academy’s location, Chicago, but because it sounded wholesome, a clean break from the strident rhetoric of the student left. “We didn’t want to be mean,” she explained.

Three core ideas guide the 25,000 activists who have trained at the academy: The goal of organizing must be concrete improvement in people’s lives. The organizing must help ordinary people develop their own sense of power. And activists should seek change that is systemic ― not just fixing the water supply in Flint, but giving people in Flint some oversight of the water system.

Among the academy’s teaching materials is a strategic planning chart to help organizers link a specific and achievable goal with available resources (money, allies, media contacts), the names of decision-makers whose support or acquiescence is needed, the tactics required to win over opponents, and the messaging to mobilize others to join in.

“Rather than saying, ‘Oh, this is awful, they’re giving money to the wealthiest and taking away our fundamental services, so let’s do a hands-around-the-Capitol’ ― well, that may be a good thing to do,” Booth said. “But can we do it in a way that builds our organization’s resources, brings in more people, maybe raises funds? And afterwards, let’s look at what worked and what didn’t work. What do we do next?”

As valuable as organizing is, Booth understands that it’s a tool for social progress, not the driving force behind it.

“It doesn’t start with training, although the training helps people be more effective,” she said. “It starts where there is an injustice in the world ― people living in fear that some family member will be deported who’s been here 20 years. And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’”

After a police officer killed black teen Michael Brown, for instance, “there was an outpouring across the country. No one had to be told, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ Not just ‘I can’t,’ but ‘we can’t.’ So it starts with people’s anger, love, fear, hate, concern and standing up to say, ‘It can’t continue like this.’”

Today, at a time when many feel powerless and despairing, Booth draws inspiration and energy from the protests that have been erupting since Trump’s inauguration. “We are gaining strength,” she observed.

“The size, the numbers, the beauty of the effort, how representative it is of America ― all of America ― the number of places it’s happening. And how beautifully nonviolent, peaceful and intense they are simultaneously.”

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