#meanwhile I was advocating for how they should be punished and deserved what they got

[zoeyserpentluck]

I think one of the biggest things that caused me to be weird (other than being an only child to 40 year old parents) is that instead of getting Percy Jackson books at 4/5 I got ‘Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece’ by Schwab. So when I started reading myself at 6 instead of reading about Percy going on adventures I read about how each generation of humans is worse than the previous one, how Zeus punished Prometheus for helping people. The uncensored versions of myths that definitely changed the way I developed and thought. While kids around me were reading kids books for fun I was reading how Zeus chased around girls and how Hera punished them. How heroes got torn to shreds by their own dogs for an honest mistake. How kids killed their parents because they were bad for the earth and they couldn’t advance like that.

[whumping-every-day]

if you’re still taking request fr bthb, anger born from worry in the gabriel series??

Guys, training is killing me. Nonnie, it has been 19692598796 years, but here is Anger Born of Worry! A direct continuation from this drabble.

Content warnings: Discussion of self harm, conditioning, pet whump, fear, y’all know the deal by now about the blurry line between creepy caretaking and comfort. Also I would not advocate for dealing with issues of self harm this way irl. Softer than it sounds? 

Masterlist

– 

Gabriel has never seen his Masters angry before, and he is afraid.

With First Master, it had been easy. Do what he was told, and do it perfectly, or he would be hurt until his performance improved. He should always be grateful for punishment, and thank Master for every lesson. Second Master was harder to read; he had left Gabriel underground, in the damp and cold, long enough for Gabriel to outgrow his cuffs and start to hear voices in the darkness. Then the man had found a use for him, and Gabriel had rediscovered obedience and fear. Second Master’s anger had been a terrible thing, easy to stir up and violent in its course.

These are things that Gabriel always learns of his owners. And now, in this warm, golden paradise his Master and Mistress have offered him… now Gabriel gets to learn again.

He is limp like a rag doll while Mistress pulls the shirt off over his head. It’s too late to earn mercy, he can see it in the way her hands shake - with fury, perhaps? Master looms in his periphery, trapping them in the kitchen.

He needs to learn this lesson, but he is afraid.

“You could have sent yourself to the hospital, young man,” Mistress is muttering. “You could have been really hurt, you have slipped, you could have – this knife isn’t even clean -” She’s rambling, and once she ascertains that the boy doesn’t need stitches she sits back abruptly, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth.

The silence stretches, heavy and loaded. Mistress takes a slow breath, and then she’s snapping back into motion and dragging the first aid kit closer.

There’s footsteps, then that large, dark presence is crouching beside his sister. “Mari,” Stefan murmurs. He reaches out to put a hand on his sister’s shoulder, and Maria shrugs it off in a quick motion. Something glistens on her cheek, but she’s already turning away.

“ ‘m fine,” she mutters. “He’ll be fine. I just – I need to do this.” This, of course, being tend to their wayward pet.

Master’s eyes tick down at the thought, and Gabriel shrinks under his gaze. He can only meet the man’s eyes for a split second before he’s hiccuping apologies again. There’s anger there, but there’s also worry, and sadness, and disappointment, and somehow that’s just as bad.

“I’m s-sorry M-Master,” he stammers. “I’m sorry, I d-didn’t – please, I didn’t mean to-”

“You didn’t mean to stab yourself with a kitchen knife?”

The words aren’t angry, per se, but they’re harsh, and Gabriel cowers as his mouth snaps shut. He gives a tiny, frightened whine, and he can only shake his head helplessly. He hadn’t meant it, he hadn’t, and he was so sorry.

“Stefan,” Mistress murmurs. The antiseptic and gauze are out again, just like the night they’d brought him home, and Mistress is examining where the knife is still buried in Gabriel’s shoulder. It’s a small knife, thank god, and not in very deep - but she still has to pull it out. 

“You, deep breath.” It’s clear when she’s speaking to Gabriel as opposed to Stefan, and Gabriel winces and obeys. “Hold still.” There’s a quick, decisive motion and a quiet sshhk, and then an outpouring of blood. It feels worse coming out, and Gabriel can’t quite help the whimper of pain, curing in on himself just a little. 

The pain is familiar, and Gabriel grits his teeth and breathes through it, squeezing his eyes shut as his Mistress’s hand approaches again. 

This time he flinches at the contact, but Mistress is just dabbing something that stings onto the thin puncture mark. The pain is sharp but brief, and Gabriel keeps his eyes trained on his knees while Mistress expertly tapes a butterfly bandage onto his shoulder. She uses three consecutively, and then they are followed up with a thick wad of gauze and medical tape.

Meanwhile, Master is hovering, looking down at the two of them. “I’m not going to pretend he didn’t just scare the crap out of us,” he mutters to his sister. “And when you’re done patching him up, provided we don’t have to go to the hospital, I think we should sit down and have a chat about what just happened.”

Mistress sighs, but she just pulls out another wad of gauze and nods, and any hope Gabriel had of protection from Master’s wrath sputters and dies in his chest.

“Arm up, sweetheart.” Mistress has taped the last layer of gauze down, and Gabriel does as he’s told, terror and shame still prickling in his gut. There’s blood on the floor. He should have cleaned it up before they got home. Or he shouldn’t have spilled it in the first place, because it isn’t his to spill. He takes the smallest sliver of comfort in the fact that Mistress is calling him sweetheart again. He knows he is going to be punished, but perhaps afterwards, when he is lying bloody and broken at their feet… maybe they’ll forgive him for what he’s done.

He doesn’t try to talk again. He understands that punishment is imminent, and he tries to be as small and meek as he can as he waits. His injury is tended to with gentle and efficient hands, and it’s more mercy than he deserves. When Mistress is done, she sits back, snapping the first aid kit shut with an air of finality.

“You’re lucky you don’t need a tetanus shot.” She shakes her head again, and Gabriel chances a quick glance out of the corner of his eye. The lines around her eyes have eased a little, which he hopes is a good sign. But then she’s straightening again and jabbing a finger at his shoulder with enough feeling to have him flinching simply on principle. “If that starts to bleed through, you tell me immediately. Those bandages should be enough, but if not…”

Gabriel nods quickly. “I’ll – I’ll t-tell you, Mistress,” he whispers, fingers clasped in his lap.

A hand moves in the corner of his eye, and Gabriel’s heart misses a beat – but it is only Master, offering Mistress a hand up. She takes it, and there’s a moment where the two of them seem to be sharing some sort of silent communication. Her fingers dig into Master’s arm just a bit too tight, and Master responds by tugging her into a quick hug.

Gabriel quickly looks away. They are so soft with each other, these two, and the display of tenderness from one Master to the other is bizarre to him. This is something private, something he shouldn’t see.

Someone sniffs, and then the moment is over, and that same hand is being offered to him.

“Come on, bud.” Master is calmer now, it seems, and Mistress is wiping at her cheeks. They both seem shaken, and Gabriel still does not fully understand why.

He doesn’t want to take the hand. Those hands will bring pain, even after all the kindness they have dished out. But still it remains, and Gabriel gives a little whimper and pushes clumsily to his feet on his own.

“I suppose that works. Come.” The simple command is an immediate relief, flooding his system like a drug, and Gabriel immediately falls into step at Master’s heel. Even though he knows he’s about to be disciplined, there is an odd sort of comfort in something finally making sense. 

He expects to be led to the basement, where his cries will be muffled and his blood can be cleaned up. Instead they take him into the living room, and Gabriel’s anxiety racks up a notch at the sight of the pristine white carpets. If he bleeds here, it will stain, and then he will be in even more trouble.

He doesn’t want to be in more trouble.

The couch is a lovely beige, and the pillows have white and cream threading and gold tassels. Gabriel is fixated on that, for some reason, as if his mind is grasping for other details to latch onto. 

Master settles in the armchair like a king in his throne, and Mistress perches on the edge of the sofa like a jaguar surveying her territory. Separately they are intimidating, but together they are terrifying. Gabriel knows where to go without being told, and he sinks to his knees at their feet and waits.

They had tested him on the first day and invited him up onto the furniture… but Gabriel knows better than that. He knows the rules, he knows how to be good.

“Are you in any pain, sweetheart? Aside from the obvious?” Gabriel blinks at the question and dares a tiny glance up at Mistress’s face. Her brows are pinched, but she’s waiting for an answer.

“N-no, Mistress…”

“Okay. Good.” Mistress nods, almost as if to herself.

“We are both glad you’re alright, Gabriel.” The use of his name, as well as Master’s low baritone, have Gabriel flinching and immediately refastening his eyes on the carpet. He is reminded once again of just how much larger his Master is, and how easy it would be for the strength in those arms to be used in anger.

Gabriel doesn’t dare respond, not when his punishment has yet to be decided.  

“We do need to talk about what happened in the kitchen, but there are a few things we should clear up first.” His Master leans back in the chair, but the lines of his body aren’t threatening, even as he watches the boy. “When we got home and your mistress found you like that, we both reacted in a certain way… and I want to make sure we’re all on the same page about why.”  

Why? Gabriel stares at Master for a long moment as he replays the words in his head, trying to force them to make sense. There’s a trap here somewhere, surely, some sort of trick or test, but Gabriel can’t figure out where. Is he meant to guess exactly which aspect of his disobedience has angered them the most? 

“M-Master?” It’s not an answer, but Gabriel doesn’t know what to do, and the shame curls even hotter and brighter in his gut. This isn’t a question he knows the answer to. 

“You scared the shit out of us,” Mistress interjects flatly, and Gabriel flinches. She has her hands in her lap, and the tight lines around her eyes have eased a little… but they are not gone. Gabriel is already trying to make himself smaller, presenting a smaller target. “I don’t think I can pretend that I wasn’t angry,” she murmurs, and Gabriel whimpers softly. Mistress just shakes her head. “Anger is often a secondary emotion to fear or hurt,” she says simply. “I came home, and I found you bleeding on the kitchen floor with a knife in your hand, and I didn’t know what you’d done, or if–” Mistress’s voice wobbles, and it’s shocking enough that Gabriel looks up at her, eyes wide. She takes a moment, closes her eyes, then starts again. “I didn’t know how badly you’d hurt yourself, or if I’d be able to help you. I didn’t know if it was too late or not, or what you’d done.”

He’s never heard that kind of break in her voice before. His Mistress is always confident, always sure. Gabriel gives a quiet little whine, and there’s guilt swelling in his chest now now too. He was bad, but it wasn’t because he made them angry – it was because he’d frightened them.

Just the thought is ludicrous, preposterous. It sounds like a horrible joke, and he’s sure that there is a punchline coming soon.

“Your Mistress is right,” Master murmurs. The man shifts in his chair, and Gabriel trembles when the motion puts him within grabbing distance. “We promised to take care of you, and we will. But that’s hard if you’re hurting yourself.”

There’s silence for a long moment as they let the words sink in. Gabriel isn’t sure if he should speak, or try to apologize again, so he keeps quiet. 

“Can you-” Mistress again. “Can you tell us why you did what you did?”

It’s a simple question, but Gabriel finds his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“I’m - I’m s-sorry, Mistress,” is all he has to offer. “I didn’t – didn’t mean to be b-bad, I’m sorry -” Master lifts a hand to silence him, and Gabriel’s mouth snaps shut.

“This is not the time for apologies,” he says, and even though it’s soft, the reprimand makes him flinch again.

“We would just like to know why, if you can tell us,” Mistress murmurs. “There’s no wrong answer, sweetheart. I promise. We just want to understand.”

Absently, Gabriel notices that he’s wringing his fingers in his lap, and he can’t remember when he’d started. He bites his lip as the quiet stretches, unable to meet their eyes. Why had he done it? His reasons seem stupid in retrospect.

“I-” The first attempt at an explanation dies in his mouth, and Gabriel makes a pathetic sound and falls lower on his knees. “I – I d-don’t know, I’m sorry, I’m -” he clamps a hand over his mouth before he can devolve into apologies again, doubling over at the waist. His Masters want an answer, so Gabriel has to give it to them. He has to. “I w-w-wanted to be g-good,” he gets out, with some difficulty. His breathing has gone short and quick again, and Gabriel can feel it, but he can’t stop it. “I’m sorry, Master,” he gasps. “I – I w-wanted to be better…”

“And you thought that hurting yourself would make you better?” Master’s voice is not judgmental, not irate. Just considering, calm and cool as he questions Gabriel. The boy latches onto the easy show of control, desperate for something steady and familiar against the maelstrom of emotions. He manages a nod, and a wet sniffle.

“But why did you think you needed to?” It’s Mistress again, and her voice is worried still, not like Master’s. “Did we… have we made you feel like you aren’t good?”

It’s a distressed sound, this time, that bubbles out of his chest. “N-no! No, Mistress, please. I don’t, I don’t d-deserve it, you’ve been – so kind, and – and so merciful, thank you, Masters, thank you.” Gabriel slinks a little closer, cowering at their feet like a kicked dog. “I w-wanted to be good,” he whimpers. “I want to be g-good, and I have to – I have to be t-taught, y-you have to -” And that sentence gets cut off immediately, because Gabriel knows full well that Master and Mistress don’t have to do anything. “Please,” he gasps instead. “I have t-to – I have to learn how to be good. And, and the pain will t-teach me, it’ll m-make sure I st-stay good…” 

It’s probably the most words he’s ever spoken in one go, and Gabriel feels wrung-out after, bare and exposed. He can’t look at them from where he is, and he doesn’t try.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Mistress sounds pained. There’s movement, then, and Gabriel winces as he waits to be kicked onto his side, or for a foot to slam down on his fingers. Instead a soft presence crouches beside him, and then Mistress’s hands are on his shoulders, gently pulling him up.

Gabriel moves with the hands, and he only flinches a little when one of them cups his cheek.

“We haven’t really been helping with this, have we?” It sounds rhetorical, and sad, and Gabriel can only blink up at her. She’s still displeased, but she’s touching him so carefully, and that has to be good, right? 

“Thank you for helping us understand,” Master says. After a moment he also comes down to sit on the floor, and Gabriel shrinks away, biting down on a little whine. Sometimes the Masters will allow him to kneel for them, or let him sit at their feet. But other times it’s like this, when they insist on lowering themselves to his level, and it always makes him feel like he’s doing something wrong. 

The spot where Mistress had cupped his cheek is cold when her hand falls, and Gabriel winces and braces himself, waiting for the slap. Instead there is a gentle hand on his knee, coaxing his eyes open again. 

“You’re not in trouble, little one,” Master tells him. Mistress is nodding, sitting relaxed and cross-legged, even though it must be uncomfortable in her heels - and has she not even had the chance to take them off? 

Gabriel feels the shame burn even brighter at the sight. He’s disrupted their evening so completely, made a nuisance of himself… he can’t believe that he isn’t in trouble. Not after the mess he’s caused. 

“You’re not in trouble, but I think we do need to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” 

There is is, Gabriel thinks. The but that always follows reassurances. He’s not in trouble, they say, but there are contingencies. He only bows his head, ready to accept whatever measures they wish to put into place. 

“You were trying to punish yourself in our stead… that’s right, isn’t it? That’s what you were trying to do?”

It’s so much worse when she says it like that. Gabriel can hear the presumptuousness of it, now; thinking that he could take that choice out of his owner’s hands, thinking that he deserved to deliver his own pain. 

“Yes, Mistress,” he whispers hoarsely. That was exactly what he’d tried to do. 

Mistress nods again, decisively this time, and she glances over at his Master for a moment. Confirmation passes between the two of them, and Gabriel gives a shiver and a little sob at how easily they decide his punishment. 

“Breath, little one,” Mistress murmurs, and Gabriel drags in a heavy gulp of air and lets it out in a shudder. 

“We’re not going to hurt you, bud.” Master has mostly let Mistress do the talking, but he seems to understand the conclusion they’ve come to. Gabriel’s heart stutters at the words, but he can only whine and shake his head. No. No, he was bad, he was bad and he deserved to be disciplined. 

“I mean it,” his Mistress repeats, and there’s just a sliver of sharpness in her tone. Gabriel cowers under it, but she is firm, relentless. “ We mean it, little one. You aren’t in any trouble. However, I do think it’s time for a new rule.” 

A new rule? Gabriel looks up quickly, a misplaced surge of hope sweeping through him. He can follow rules - that will make it easier to be good. 

His Mistress nods and straightens her shoulders, and when she turns her attention back on Gabriel, he shivers under the command of it.  

“You are not allowed to hurt yourself.” Gabriel is trembling softly, and he can only shiver and nod as she continues. “You are not to intentionally injure or harm yourself in any way. And if -” she pauses just for a moment, then, and Gabriel’s heart pauses with her. “If you feel like you deserve to be punished. If you think you’ve done something so bad that you need to be hurt.” His Mistress’s eyes bore into him with single minded intensity, and Gabriel feels stripped bare and raw underneath it. “If that happens, you are to come to one of us. You are not to deal with it alone. Come us, and we will help you. Understood?” 

It’s a lot; there are a lot of words to sort through, but Gabriel tries, rewinding and replaying them in his head until he thinks he understands. They will not allow him to hurt himself, because the right to do so belongs to them. That makes sense, and finally understanding something feels like a weight coming off of his shoulders. 

He’s not in trouble this time. But the next time he is, or the next time he starts to feel that awful, insidious itch under his skin - next time, he can tell them, and they will help alleviate that pressure. He understands that helping him is only discipline under a different name. But he is still grateful. 

“I understand, Mistress,” he whispers. “Th-thank you, Mistress, for my rules.” There are tears starting to dry on his cheeks, and his Mistress reaches up and, with the utmost care, thumbs the salty stiffness away. 

“Promise me you won’t scare us like that again,” she says, and Gabriel’s throat feels tight. 

“I p-promise, Mistress.” He still can’t fathom why they aren’t angrier with him. He doesn’t know why he isn’t being punished, if his actions had displeased them so. But his Mistress looks relieved, and the last vestiges of tension are easing out of Master’s shoulders. 

“Good boy,” his Master murmurs, and Gabriel’s breath catches. Can it truly be this easy?

The man is careful when he extends an arm in offering, and Gabriel only hesitates for a moment before slinking closer. In the earlier days with his Master and Mistress, Gabriel had feared their touch - and he knew that it could still bring great pain, if he earned it. But he had also come to understand that they might offer comfort… 

And Gabriel likes the comfort. 

He is familiar with the cozy space between Master’s side and arm, and Gabriel nestles into it, timidly curling up into the warmth. He can still hardly believe that the oncoming pain has been averted. But Master is gentle when he curls his arm around the boy, even though the strength in just that one appendage is enough to lift Gabriel clear off the ground if he chose to. 

They’re still sitting on the ground, all three of them, and Mistress gets up only to sit down again on Gabriel’s other side, so he is sandwiched between them. 

She tugs her shoes off and tosses them a little distance away, before yawning and leaning back against the base of the couch. 

“Well then. If there are no objections… I think this is a perfect spot for movie night.” She reaches to tug the throw blanket and pillows off of the couch, and the next thing Gabriel knows, Master is gently guiding him forward so that Mistress can position a pillow behind his back. It’s so he has something to learn on, Gabriel realizes, and he lets it happen purely out of surprise. 

He opens his mouth to object, and Mistress holds up a hand. “Ah ah. One moment, sweetheart.” 

There are enough pillows for all of them, it seems, and by the time Mistress is done retrieving pillows (more pillows than had been on the couch to begin with, Gabriel is certain) they are cocooned in their own little nest. 

Master still has an arm draped across him, and Mistress settles with a satisfied sigh, pressed soft and comforting against his other side. 

“There we go. Doing okay, Gabe?” 

Gabriel just blinks up at her for a long moment, at a complete loss for words. His shoulder throbs dully, but that is a pain so familiar that is easy to ignore. She is waiting for an answer, kind and patient, and somehow Gabriel knows that she would accept it if his answer was no. 

He nods instead, and timidly leans into her fingers when she reaches up to stroke his hair. 

“Okay. What are we feeling like watching tonight, Stefan? Something light, I think…” 

His Master’s side rumbles with his response, and Gabriel eases into the familiar pattern slowly, nervously. He likes this part, when he can curl up warm and small and quiet, but it is hard to believe that it is real. He had been so afraid just moments before, but they are already moving on, as if his transgressions are something that can simply be forgotten about. As if his mistakes can be forgiven without penalty. 

For just a moment, Gabriel feels that same itch under his skin, and his heart stops. But this time time when it tries to push it down, it goes. If he is bad, Master or Mistress will tell him, and they will deal out his punishment accordingly. It is not his place to decide. For the moment, he is warm, and held, and he’s been forgiven for his wrongdoings. 

Gabriel has no idea which movie they end up putting on, but he is fast asleep within ten minutes, curled snugly into his Master’s side while his Mistress plays with his hair. 

--

[END]

Previous 

[vgckwb]

P5R: Rebel Girl (A FeMC Story/P5R Rework) Chapter 12: Hungry for Answers

The door flung open at the office of Doctor Takuto Maruki. The doctor was surprised. “Um, sorry sir, but I can’t allow anyone in here without an appointment.”

Shinichi grabbed him by the lapels. “What did you do to my daughter?!”

“P-pardon?” said Maruki.

“ANSWER ME!” Shinichi demanded.

“Um, you’re going to have to be more specific,” Maruki said. “I’ve seen a number of patients, and generally speaking about half of them are female.”

Shinichi flared his nostrils. “Sumire Yoshizawa. What did you do to Sumire Yoshizawa?”

“Oh, you’re Yoshizawa’s…” Maruki said. “First off, I’d like to offer my condolences about what happened to her sister.”

“If you thought that you wouldn’t have done what you did” Shinichi said.

Maruki remained calm. “I know it might seem hard for you to understand, but try thinking about it from her perspective. Her sister is gone, and she blames herself. She felt like if she could be Kasumi she’d feel better. So I allowed her to do just that.”

This did not calm down Shinichi. “THINK ABOUT HOW I FEEL?!” he yelled. He began to cry. “I’ve already lost one daughter. I don’t need to lose another.”

Maruki realized what he was saying. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess there’s still more I need to learn.”

Shinichi saw Maruki humble himself. He looked him over and saw that he was genuinely disappointed. He let go of Maruki. “You’re lucky she seems to be back to her old self.” He left.

Maruki pondered what had just happened. “I guess something must have snapped her out of it. I wonder what that could be. Still, he does have a point. If I want to create a world that eliminates suffering, I need to be able to understand the broader picture. A grief-stricken father like that doesn’t deserve to feel like he’s lost more. I should write this down.”

“Don’t bother” said a voice.  Maruki turned and saw a cloaked figure. “Your world will not exist anyway.”

Maruki just smiled. “Man, what is it with people barging into my office today? I’m sorry, but I’m not going to stop my work just because you told me so.”

“Very well,” said the cloaked figure. They drew their rapier and vanished. During their absence, the figure went over to the stadium, slipped into the Metaverse, and sliced the lab in two, causing it to crumble. They reappeared in front of Maruki.

Maruki looked hurt. “What did you do?”

The figure smirked. “I just chopped down your desires is all.” The figure walked out of the office.

Maruki collected himself after they left. He seemed to be struggling at first, but managed to get his strength back. “Whew. That was unusual. Hmmm. I wonder if I could ask her about that. Maybe when the time is right.”

Meanwhile, Ren was standing in front of the school gate. Morgana got a little restless. “Man, you’re dedicated,” he said. “You got here before anyone else.”

Ren smiled. “Well I just wanted to make sure Kasumi was OK,” she said. That, and that dream I had last night is still in my mind. It felt weird. She looked back at Morgana. “Hey Morgana, what do you think you’d look like as a human?”

Morgana was surprised. “Well… I’m not sure exactly. But I know I would be dashing, but not too dashing that I wouldn’t be approachable.”

“I see,” Ren said. She thought about how Morgana appeared in her dream. It sounded accurate to his description. She smirked.

Suddenly, someone hit Ren. She was confused. “Ah, I’m sorry,” said the man. Ren looked up and saw Shinichi. 

“It’s fine,” Ren said.

“The bump aside, what are you doing here?” Shinichi asked. “Waiting for a friend?”

Ren got a little nervous. “Um, yeah. Her name is Yoshizawa. She collapsed yesterday. I just wanted to make sure she was alright.”

Shinichi’s eyes widened. “Oh… I’m her father actually.” Ren was taken aback. “You must you Amamiya. The nurse told me about you. Thank you for helping my daughter. ...Unfortunately, her situation got worse this morning.” Ren was worried. Shinichi smiled. “She’ll be fine. However, she will have to stay home for a few days. I’m here to inform the school, among other things.”

“I see,” Ren said.

Shinichi placed his hands on her shoulders. Ren looked up. “She’ll be delighted to know that you’re concerned about her. I’m sure that information will help her get better faster.” He let go.

Ren smiled, bowed, and said “Thank you sir. I hope Kasumi gets better soon.”

Shinichi stood there for a few moments. “Thank you,” he said.

“Well, I guess I should get to class,” Ren said. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Seeya,” Shinichi said. Ren headed into the building. “I should let her tell her herself.” Shinichi made his way into the school.

Throughout the day, Ren’s mind occasionally wandered to thoughts of Kasumi. Sure, her dad said she would get better, but she couldn’t help but worry. She took a breath and tried to relax. During break, she was wandering the halls and heard some truly nasty things.

“Hey, that honor student’s missing classes again today huh.”

“Man, she’s so lucky.”

“Totally. I wish I could skip school without anything bad happening.”

“I know right? Talk about special treatment.”

“How awful!” Morgana said. “Don’t they know she’s sick? It makes me so mad, right Ren?” No answer. “...Ren?”

“Stop,” Ren said.

“Huh?” Morgana replied.

“Just stop” Ren repeated.

“Hey are you listening to me?” Morgana said.

“Stop talking about her like that!” Ren quietly screamed. It appeared that someone was listening, as the world around her stopped. Ren looked around, panicking.

“Well well” said the cloaked figure “How serendipitous.”

Ren immediately went on the defensive. “What do you want?” she asked.

The figure giggled. “The same as you. I want to protect her from all of this. So here.” She offered an apple to Ren. “Take it.”

“Thanks, but you know where I stand,” Ren said.

“Oh right” the figure said. “I guess that was before for you. Meanwhile, I was just born today. Ahahahahahaha!”

Ren was confused. He regained her composure. “Why are you doing this? Why are you so interested in me?”

The figure stopped laughing. They approached Ren. “I’m doing this to stand up to those in power. To show that they can’t control us and do whatever they want.”

Ren was shaken. “Well, I agree with that sentiment, murder and destruction is the wrong way to go about it.”

“And being calm and rational will get you somewhere?” the figure asked. “Please, the only way any of you would fight back without violence is by using the metaverse.”

Ren remained steadfast. “While we have been using it to punish Kamoshida and save Shiho, I believe that we are offering a beacon of hope to those who wouldn’t be able to stand up to anyone else otherwise!”

“That’s cute. But sooner or later, order returns to those in power” the figure said. “The only way for meaningful change to occur is with pure chaos.”

“I disagree,” Ren said. “While some chaos is necessary, what you’re advocating for is similar to what we have. It’s just another system where the powerful abuse the weak. What you’re doing is changing who’s in power.”

The figure giggled. “I can see what she likes about you. And to be honest, I think I’m starting to like you too.”

Ren was confused. “Who is this ‘she’ you keep mentioning?”

“Don’t worry about that for now,” the figure said. “For now, I want to make a deal.”

“We already have a deal,” Ren said.

“I know, but another deal” the figure responded. “I love seeing you stick to your convictions. So, if you manage to hold true to them by the time we reach our dual, I will surrender fully.” Ren was shocked. “However, if there’s even a one percent chance that throughout these trials I can convince you that I may be right in some way and I defeat you in battle, you will become a servant of chaos and work with me.”

Ren. wasn’t sure what this person was doing, but Ren wasn’t one to give up on her convictions. “Deal” she said.

“Ah! Excellent!” the figure said. “I’m going to enjoy breaking you.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Ren said.

“Oooooooo. Someone’s confident” the figure said. “But I like that about you.”

Just as they were about to leave, Ren called out “Wait! Who ARE you exactly?”

“Ah, yes,” the figure said. “We did strike a deal. I guess I owe you that much. Hm. My name is Eris. Goddess of discord and disharmony. One day, I hope to turn you into a soldier of chaos.”

I am thou... Thou art I… Thou hast acquired a new vow...

It shall become the wings of rebellion that breaketh thy chains of captivity.

With the birth of the Hunger Persona I have obtained the winds of blessing that shall lead to freedom and new power.

Hunger-Eris: Rank 1

“Well, seeya” Eris said, vanishing.

The world started to move again. Ren looked around, wondering what just happened. “Ren?” Morgana asked. “Are you OK?”

“Did you see that?” Ren said.

“See what?” Morgana replied.

Ren was shocked. “Don’t tell me you stopped with the rest of the world.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?” Morgana wondered.

Ren noticed she was getting some looks. “Sorry” she said. She rushed to someplace private. She explained what happened with Eris.

“Huh. That IS interesting”Morgana said. “So we have a name, and an upgraded deal.”

“Right,” Ren said.

“We need to tell the others about this,” Morgana said.

After school, they met up on the rooftop with Ann and Ryuji. “WHAT?!” Ryuji yelled.

“Calm down Ryuji!” Ann said.

“But didn’t you hear that?” Ryuji said.

“I did. And it’ll be the last thing I hear if you continue to be loud” Ann stated.

“S-sorry” Ryuji said. “It’s just… I don’t want Ren to submit to this fiend.”

“What do you take me for?” Ren said. “I have no intention of wavering on my convictions.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Ryuji said. “Ugh, sorry. You’re right.”

Ren smiled. “It’s OK. I get it.”

“Still, if she’s confident that you would, I’d be careful” Ann said.

“Lady Ann’s right!” Morgana said. “We can’t take this lying down. We have to prove ourselves now more than ever!”

Ann giggled. “You got it Lord Morgana!”

“L-Lord Morgana? Morgana said, shocked.

“Isn’t he right, Lord Ryuji? Lady Ren?” Ann asked

“Oh” Morgana said, disappointed.

“Uhh, I don’t get all of this Lord and Lady talk,” Ryuji said, “but I’m all for proving our convictions. So let’s send that calling card!”

“Actually,” Ren said. Everyone turned to her. “I kind of want to wait a bit.”

“Huh” Ryuji said. “Well it's your call. Just know we have a time limit to uphold.”

Ren nodded. “You’re right. I'll make sure we do it before then.”

“Well, I don’t blame you” Ann said.”After what happened, I don’t know if I would have had the strength to do something like that either. Let’s go get something to eat.”

“Well, actually…” Ryuji said. “I have to run errands for my mom today. So I guess not sending the calling card worked out. You two go on ahead.”

Ann smiled. “Thanks Ryuji.”

“No problem” Ryuji replied. The four thieves left the rooftop and headed out of school.

[lejacquelope]

Expose Feminists hypocrisy regarding rape culture

Updated April 19, 2019

The next time you see a feminist screaming about rape culture, cut and paste this to shut them up for good. This master post contains citations from neutral, feminist or otherwise NON MEN’S RIGHTS SOURCES, to show that feminists of today do not really care about rape culture. They only care about using rape to score political points against men, and their misandry actually hurts women. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not in favor of men getting away with rape, and I certainly don’t support the Conservative stance on rape. Harvey Weinstein got his just desserts and deserves even more punishment for what he did to those women, Bill Cosby is finally right where he belongs (in prison), Trump and Kavanaugh are both sexual predator scumbags, and quoth us Democrats… Never Moore. The world pretty much knows all about how steeped the right wing is in rape culture. The problem here is that feminists won’t own up to their contribution to rape culture, any more than the right wing will. And any feminist who takes this post and twists it into a war on sympathy for female rape victims or a defense of male rapists is intentionally twisting things for their own dishonest agendas.

THE FACTS:

Feminists defend women raping underaged boys and say it shouldn’t be punished with jail.

Feminists say that underaged boys can consent to sex with women so they should get punished with child support if she has a kid.

Woman Who Recorded Herself Raping 1-Year-Old Son (for laptop money) Will Not Go To Jail. Feminists never protested this, nor did they call it Rape Culture.

Male statutory rape victim of woman rapist forced to pay child support. Where were the feminist protests about this? 

Paedophile sisters who abused boy, 6, for over a decade dodge prison after judge says they would be ‘too isolated’ - Julie Fellows, 30, and her sister Jennifer, 32, targeted the youngster over a period spanning ten years. This happened in 2016. Where are the feminist protests about this lenient sentence for two women committing rape?

Hermesmann v. Seyer (State ex rel. Hermesmann v. Seyer 847 P.2d 1273 (Kan. 1993)) was a precedent-setting Kansas, United States case in which Colleen Hermesmann successfully argued that a woman is entitled to sue the father of her child for child support even if conception occurred as a result of a criminal act committed by the woman.[1][2] The case was brought in her name by the then Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. Where were the feminist protests about this?

Woman who rapes underage boy is deemed too pretty to go to prison. Where were the feminist protests about this?

In the most recent federal survey of detained juveniles, nearly 8 percent of respondents reported being sexually victimized by a staff member at least once in the previous 12 months. For those who reported being abused, two things proved overwhelmingly true, as they were in Woodland Hills: They were teenage boys, and their alleged assailants were female employees tasked with looking out for their well-being. Nine in 10 of those who reported being victimized were males reporting incidents with female staff. Women, meanwhile, typically make up less than half of a juvenile facility’s staff. Where are the feminist protests about women who rape boys in juvenile hall? 

College women rape college men but few men tell. Where are the feminist protests about this?

White women who rape boys habitually get light sentences. While feminists are (rightfully) protesting lenient sentences for monsters like Brock Turner, where is their outrage over this both sexist and racist disparity in the war against rape culture?

Feminists even ask why should we believe men who say they were raped. And they make excuses as for it. Yet feminists don’t consider this disbelief a part of rape culture. Can you imagine why? You guessed it – because it involves female rapists and male victims.

And the feminist propaganda that women are not a part of rape culture also hurts women.

There is a belief that women are the “gentle” sex. We are nurturing, kind, tolerant, compassionate, understanding, accepting, caring….and so, with that in mind, surely lesbian relationships are always founded on mutual love and respect for one another. Right? Wrong! Rape is reported in 30 percent of lesbian relationships. So where are the protests about this? There are none. This is called one of those dirty little secrets that mainstream feminism has buried in order to protect their narrative about rape culture being a male thing.

Of course, we then had to warn crisis line advocates who approve people for shelter to be extra cautious when screening. You see, some lesbian abusers have pretended to be victims of intimate partner violence so that they could gain entry into shelters and find their partner. So where are the protests about this? Of course there are none. This is another one of those dirty little secrets that mainstream feminism has buried in order to protect their narrative about rape culture being a male thing.

A woman who posed as a man to trick another woman into sex was convicted of three counts of sexual assault by deception - and then, due to her being a woman, had her conviction overturned on appeal. And feminists have nothing to say about this whatsoever, despite having pushed hard for “rape by deception” to be a crime when a man does it. Let’s not forget the victim here was a woman. The feminist doctrine of “only men rape”, once again hurting women.

“And not that you expect a guy to violate you, and I don’t walk down the street expecting to be raped by a man, but you really don’t expect it from a woman because they’re meant to be on your side.” Feminism has long taught that violence and rape is a male thing, and women are the better sex because, well, toxic masculinity. So women are raised to never see it coming when a woman rapes them. And as a result society finds it hard to believe. And even harder to convict.

Fleur Brown, aka porn star Betty Swallocks, tries to sell a 13 year old girl’s virginity. She gets zero jail time. The female victim of Betty Swallocks speaks out about being the target of a woman sex slaver. Do feminists care? Nope. This doesn’t fit into their rape culture narrative, even though this is a case of a child sex slavemonger getting away with this horrible crime.

Lesbian rape is a crime so unthinkable that its victims repeatedly encounter mockery and disbelief, both from the community and from law enforcement. Because of the prevalence of such responses, its perpetrators can strike again and again without fear of the repercussions. Why is lesbian rape so unthinkable? You guessed it, because feminists have said violence is a male thing, not a female thing. Feminists are good at keeping this part of rape culture low key. Which is alarming since so few lesbians who rape, ever get convicted for it. Kinda like what they scream about male rapists – except it’s okay when it’s women.

Even in prison, female inmates are victims of rape by other female inmates more often, proportionally, than male inmates are victims of other males. “Rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization among prison inmates were higher among females (4.7%) than males (1.9%)” (see link: chart on page 11). Where’s the “teach women not to rape” narrative then? The only narrative we get out of prison rape is, yet again, that only males are rapists, and there’s no talk of the women who rape.

This happens because society sees women as prey, not predators - and feminist culture has a strong hand in perpetuating this myth. Feminists perpetuate this myth by pushing the propaganda of Toxic Masculinity – the idea that “maleness” and “male culture”, particularly the Patriarchy, is responsible for rape culture. Make no mistake – the feminist theory of toxic masculinity precludes any talk of women being responsible for any wrongdoing. Take note of how feminists never talk about what women do wrong except in a way that blames men or “maleness”. Feminists never admit any responsibility for women’s behavior because they push the narrative that without any “Patriarchy” around, women would do no evil. This is why feminists never protest when women commit rape or when they get away with it. So thanks to feminism and its misguided “toxic masculinity” theory, women who rape simply thrive - even when they do it to other women. Even with no men around whatsoever, in a feminist world, women will still rape, and they will continue to get away with it. Because in the world of mainstream feminism, a woman cannot be blamed for her own actions. A man has got to somehow be responsible.

Now you know why feminists do not protest the systematic sexism of women getting lower sentences than men for the same crimes.

Feminists do not care about rape, except when they can use it to score political points.

[funeral-clown]

KYLO REN NEEDS TO CHILL AKA MY SHITTY STAR WARS AU CHAPTER FUCK OFF NO ONE KNOWS ESPECIALLY NOT ME

you know who this is for

also dedicated to: straight christian men and the way they always let u down despite ur parents fervent hopes ur gonna marry one

After the call from Rey, Poe wasn’t particularly surprised when Leia ordered him to bring her son to her.

“Please, Poe,” she said, laying her hand on his arm and gazing up at him with soft warm eyes. “He may be our only hope.”

Luke snorted in the corner and pulled a flask out of his robes, then proceeded to take a swig.

“Yeah, good luck kid. Feel free to taze him.”

Leia elbowed her twin in the gut and nodded her dismissal. Poe steadied himself and headed for Kylo’s cell. Carter was sitting guard outside, perusing a magazine with a bored expression.

“Constant vigilance?”

He turned the page, expression unchanging.

“Bite me.”

“Rude. And to a superior officer, too. I might have to report you for insubordination.”

“Go ahead. My life is already hell.”

Poe winced.

“That bad, huh?”

Carter finally looked up, expression turned dour. He snapped the magazine shut and let it drop to the floor between his feet before leaning forward.

“So far, just this morning, our esteemed guest has thrown 3 different temper tantrums, tried to compel me to get him booze using the Force, tried to compel me to let him go using the Force, tried to seduce me into letting him go, refused to eat his rations, thrown his rations against the wall like a petulant child, and worst of all, he started singing. Badly.”

“It can’t be that bad, Carter.”

“He butchered Love on the Midichlorian Scale.”

“Carter-”

“That song played at both of my weddings, Poe. And now it’s ruined, and I can never listen to it again.”

“Bud-”

“And that smug asshole KNOWS IT because he can READ MY MIND.”

“We’re letting him go.”

The guard froze mid-rant.

“What?”

“We’re letting him go. Open up the doors and get him cuffed so I can take him to the General.”

He flailed a bit, looking flustered.

“I’m sorry, are you kidding? Are you joking with me right now? That’s what’s happening, right?”

Poe grinned at him. 

“Nope.”

“Oh, okay. Okay, then. Well. Poe. Pal. Have you completely lost your kriffing mind?”

“I hope not,” he muttered, a crease of frustration gracing his brow.

“Then why the fuck would we ever even consider doing that?”

“Easy.”

“Easy?”

“Easy. He’s gonna help us destroy the First Order.”

Carter gaped at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish. Poe beamed at him before clapping both his shoulders and moving towards the door.

“You gonna let him out now?”

Carter shrugged.

“Sure.”

The door opened. Kylo Ren glared up at him from his huddled position on the floor, eyes glowering from beneath the dark tangle of hair that covered his face.

“‘Sup, Ben? Heard you didn’t like your accommodations.”

He remained balefully silent.

“I was real sorry to hear that, y’know? See, unlike the First Order, we here at the Resistance take pride in our hospitality. Three squares, a nice warm cot, not torturing people...it’s like the goddamn Four Seasons in here.”

“Your so-called food is a disgrace to the word.”

“Well, I’m real sorry to hear you say that, Ben. I suppose we can’t all be royalty.”

“I am not royalty,” Kylo snarled, baring his teeth in a futile attempt at intimidation. “That woman is not my mother.”

Poe frowned.

“I’m sure she’ll be real sorry to hear you say that. You certainly don’t deserve her. Carter. Cuff him.”

Sulking, the other man secured the prisoner’s hands behind his back.

“What’s going on, where are you taking me?” Kylo snapped, pulling at the restraints.

“To see the woman that isn’t your mother,” Poe replied lightly, grabbing his arm and beginning to march him out of the room and down the hall, “She wants a word.”

“She won’t get anything from me, and that’s more than she deserves,” he shot back.

Poe tazed him.

“What was that for!?”

“Your not-uncle is there, too. He sends his regards.”

Poe tazed him again.

“What the fuck, I thought you were the goddamn friendly one!”

“Oh trust me, Ben, I am. Most people on this base want you dead. I just tazed you. But, see, the thing is, you know Finn? Cutest guy in the galaxy? Arguably the perfect man?”

Kylo groaned. Whether from the description or being tazed twice was unclear. Most likely both.

“He has a pretty rough time sleeping, Ben. Some days I don’t think he even recognizes me. He’s got a bitchin’ scar down his back. Your handiwork. Last week he disappeared for 7 hours and showed up later smelling like whiskey. And Rey. You know Rey. You never shut up about Rey, it’s unhealthy and unsettling.”

“You’d never begin to understand the bond betwee-”

“Shut up, Ben, I’m not finished. I have had the undeniable pleasure of sharing a room with her. Finn, too, in fact. Did you know she wakes up screaming sometimes, Ben? She does. And I can’t even pretend not to know why.”

Kylo glared.

“Oh, we never talk about it, of course. Because we don’t have to. As close as we are, she never had to explain. Because all our nightmares, all our pain? Has one fucking common denominator. Can you guess what that is, Ben?”

“Me.”

Poe laughed.

“You wish you were that much of a threat. Pal, you’re barely a nuisance. No. Our common enemy is the First Order. And who runs the First Order, Ben?”

“Supreme Leader Snoke?”

“Well that’s one name for him, sure. Round these parts we just call him Snoke the Joke. Not important. Here’s what is important. We’re going to kill him. We’re going to destroy the First Order. We’re gonna save the galaxy. And you’re gonna help us.”

Kylo was taken aback.

“What? Why would I ever stoop so low as to aid you and your traitors?”

“Because,” Poe responded lightly, “It’s the only way Rey could ever look at you without hatred and disgust.”

He slumped, seemingly accepting of the fact.

“So here’s what’s gonna happen, Ben. I’m gonna take you in there to see your mother and your uncle. They’re going to try to convince you to help them take out Ol’ Snokester the Jokester. You’re going to agree. You’re going to beg your mother for forgiveness. And then you’re going to help us. Because if you don’t, the only person whose opinion you care about will hate you forever. Got it?”

He frowned consideringly at the floor before grumbling out an assent.

“Good.”

Poe tazed him again.

“WHAT WAS THAT FOR?”

“You tortured me and I’m feeling petty. We’re square. Let’s go.”

He dragged him up and frogmarched him towards the General’s quarters.

Leia frowned at their approach.

“Why is he limping?”

Poe raised an eyebrow at Kylo, who glanced at the pilot.

“My foot fell asleep.”

Luke snorted.

“That’s what you’re going with?”

“That’s what I’m going with.”

“Okay, then. I assume Poe filled you in on the mission?”

Kylo nodded.

“What? How would he even know?” Leia asked, shocked.

“You’re kidding, right? Rey must have told him. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, sister dear, but she’s borderline co-dependent with Finn and Poe. Inextricably close. If I gave half a shit about the Jedi Code I would be concerned about her forming ties.”

“Yes, Luke, I’m more than aware, but this mission was to be kept top secret! We can’t risk word getting out, and- Poe why do you look like you’re going to tell me something that will make me upset.”

Poe laughed sheepishly.

“I maaaaaay have let slip to Carter we were letting him go.”

Leia stared at him blankly.

“Carter?”

“Yes.”

“The guard Carter.”

“That would be the one.”

“The guard who was forced to guard my son as punishment for accidentally leaking resistance secrets while tipsy at an outpost because no one else wanted the job. That Carter.”

“I am so sorry.”

“Half the base knows by now. Why did I even try to keep it secret in the first place. Everyone in the resistance is a gossip. Kriff.”

“If it makes you feel better, he’s probably learned his lesson by now, sister. Any extended exposure to your son could be qualified as a form of torture.”

“Shut up, Luke.”

“Ha!”

“Shut up, Kylo.”

“Aww.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about Carter, Ma’am. It’s not like he’s going to post our confidential plans on social media.”

*meanwhile, in space*

“Sir.” 

Hux looked up from his (blessedly reduced since Ren’s capture) stack of paperwork to see Phasma standing before him, comm unit glowing in her hand.

“Yes, what is it Captain?”

“I think you should see this.”

She handed it to him, and he squinted at the screen.

“Captain, I can barely see anything. You’ve got the screen settings too bright.”

“Ah, apologies. I’ll adjust them. You can’t see anything through these helmets, so you have to-”

“Yes, I understand.”

“It makes some things difficult, sir.”

“I would imagine.”

“I don’t understand why the helmets have to be so dark. It seems like poor design. No wonder the storm troopers of old could barely hit the broad side of a barn.”

“Yes, I could see how-”

“It should be changed, General. I’m sure that would increase effectiveness and reduce fatalities exponentially.”

“I’ll consider it, Captain.”

“See that you do.”

Hux sighed.

“May I see the comm unit now, Captain?”

“Yes.”

He squinted at it again.

“Okay now it’s just. Way too dark.”

“Adjust it yourself, then. I can’t see shit out of this helmet.”

“Alright, alright! Enough about the bloody helmets!”

“I’m just saying. You can fit an aesthetic without compromising effectiveness.”

“I get it.”

“I don’t think regard for the troopers was put into these design at all.”

“Well, to be fair, they were designed at a time when stormtroopers were literal clones. They could be mass produced in the blink of an eye relatively cheaply. Casualties weren’t a very big concern.”

The temperature of the room notably dropped.

“General. Are you indicating you think of my troops as. Disposable.”

“No, certainly not! I myself advocated strongly to move away from clone labor!”

“I see.”

“Brainwashing is so much more effective.”

Phasma hummed noncommittally. 

“What’s that about.”

“What’s what about?”

“You hummed noncommittally.”

“Did I?”

“Captain-”

“I just think maybe brainwashing isn’t very effective after all.”

Hux groaned.

“This is about the rogue trooper, isn’t it. FN-2187.”

“Maybe.”

“Captain, please. He was an anomaly. No one else is having doubts about our mission, correct?”

She remained silent for a moment.

“...Correct, sir.”

He peered at her suspiciously before the comm caught his eye again.

“Ah, yes. What were you so eager to...show...me.....” His voice trailed off as he reread the short message on the screen.

CarterGoesHarder @ resistancegoesthedistance LOL FINALLY GOT OFF GUARD DUTY! GUESS WE’RE LETTING CRY-LO GO BC HE’S WORKING WITH US TO TAKE DOWN THE FIRST ORDER OR SOME SHIT #FINALLY#WHATTABITCHBABY#HOPENOBODYSEESTHISLOL #DRUNKPOSTING #PORGSARECUTE #SNOKETHEJOKE #HANYOLO #WAITISITTOOSOONFORTHAT

“Where did this come from?”

“A lower-ranked Resistance member’s social media account.”

“Why are you following a Resistance member’s social media?”

“...Collecting intelligence.”

“Bantha shit.”

“We both follow Luke and his livestreams are amusing.”

“Ah. Regardless. You know what must be done.”

“Indeed, sir.”

The intercom blared.

“ATTENTION ALL CREW MEMBERS. SUPREME LEADER SNOKE IS COMING SOON. IF ANY ATTEMPTS ON HIS LIFE OCCUR, JUST, LIKE. LOOK THE OTHER WAY. DO NOT INTERFERE. THE MAN IS A JOKE. HUX OUT.”

Hux cracked open a bottle of Corellian brandy.

“Captain?”

“Couldn’t possibly, General.”

“I insist.”

“Oh, very well.”

The bottle was gone in the matter of an hour.

[transrph]

                                       Writing a Trans Character                                As Experienced by a Trans Man

With more resources coming out for trans faceclaims, I wanted to make sure that there were also more guides on how to write a trans character. So I’m going to be sharing my personal experience with gender as a toolset for those that haven’t/aren’t questioning their identity. Please keep in mind that this is entirely based off of my personal experience and growth, and that every trans person has their own journey with their own experiences. None are invalid and all are equally as important. This also wound up turning into more of a gender study as well, so feel free to share and message about your thoughts. I’d love to have gender discussions!

Part one    |    Part Two    |     Part Three 

Part Four Coming Out

This is something that so many youth struggle with, even me at 24 had no idea how to come out and it wasn’t the best experience, however it wasn’t the worst. No matter what kind of experience it is, no one should take away the bravery or the strength it takes to tackle this obstacle. And everyone deserves to feel proud of themselves for it.

To start, I want to say that some people don’t come out to family for safety reasons. And because I am an advocate of keeping the community safe (especially mentally as many people use rp as a way to cope and escape from the world) I beg anyone reading this not to use coming out as a reason for some abuse thread. For a characters backstory sure, because the plot can then revolve around the recovery. However as a thread where it is being currently written is something that many people have already faced, and do not need to see, even if it is to a fictional character. Many times it is the description that causes trauma to resurface and I would hate for anyone to be forced to face that again. So please, keep any abuse stories left as backstories.

As far as the actual act, this is another thing entirely up to you as the writer. I won’t go into my experience as much because it was rather dull and unimportant. I will say though, that not all parents that claim to be accepting will actually show acceptance. There are not the only two extremes in someone accepting or not accepting. A parent could say they are fine with their child being trans, but then never use their proper pronouns (note they are not preferred, they are proper). Or they dead name them (the act of using someone’s birthname rather than the name they have chosen for themselves). There are various things a family member or friend can do that will cause mental harm to their child/pal. Just like there are various things they can do to help. I’ll be splitting this up into two to keep the two things separate. I am going to write this a bit differently, for the sake of those writing a trans character but also writing with a trans character because I feel it’s very important.

First the bad.

As I said before, deadnaming is a possibility. It can be a very invalidating thing to hear. For me, when I hear someone use my dead name I visibly cringe. It has never felt like my name, and so many people I have met have said I never looked like it fit me. Deadnaming is harmful in that it can make someone question themselves, but also make that voice in their head saying no one will accept them and they should give up all the louder, which can worsen depression and lead to possible suicide.

Improper pronoun use can be linked with the above for all the same reasons. It’s a constant reminder and a constant invalidation. It can make someone feel like you aren’t seeing them. Not the true them. And so they start to feel invisible. Proper pronoun use is important to show someone that you see the them that they see in themselves.

Claiming it is a phase. The person being told this knows better than anyone what they feel. But as mentioned in part two, there is the constant questioning of themselves. So when told this, it’s hard to quiet the voice that is saying we aren’t sure, or that we can’t be because our experience doesn’t match someone else’s.

Calling someone a special snowflake. We already think we’re just trying to get attention, and most times when people question this, it isn’t fake. When you question whether or not you’re doing something for the sake of attention, that shows an awareness and admittance. How many people do you know admit they are doing something for attention? So questioning it is a sure sign that you in fact are not looking for attention. However, when people claim this, it’s hard to prove them wrong. Especially if you’ve been struggling with your gender for only a short period of time.

Denying them as a friend/partner/family member. Making them feel like they aren’t good enough or worthy. The amount of courage this takes is something cis straight people will not get in their life, so to say that you can’t be friends with someone or date them right after they come out is very harmful. I’m not saying people that are dating are forced to stay together, it’s the immediate reaction that would be harmful. A calm talk afterwards is fine and all can be discussed. As far as friendships, if you write your character no longer being friends because of this, congrats, your character is transphobic. As far as family goes, rejecting a child or sibling breaks a level of trust that person could have for any if not all deep rooted relationships. It sets an example that even people that you’ve known since birth can betray you and hate you for being yourself. And that fear and resentment can bleed into other areas of their lives as well.

Using their past identity as punishment. I’ve already gone over the deadnaming, however I have experienced a parent using my dead name as a punishment. If they felt I was speaking out against them, or if I did something they didn’t like, they would use my dead name as a punishment. As a way to cause me pain because they could see how much it bothered me. This is in a way an emotionally violent attack as, for me, it triggered a great deal of dysphoria and trust issues.

I feel those are good key points though certainly not all of them. But for the sake of length I want to move on.

The good:

Unconditional support. When a character comes out, to see unconditional support is the biggest relief. In reality you can see people’s eyes light up. It is always a relief to say that you accomplished facing something truly terrifying and it turned out well.

Proper name and pronoun use. For the exact opposite reasons above. Incredible validation in hearing these used. It also helps to fight away questioning thoughts and anxiety/depression when someone else is using your name and pronouns.Even slip ups where someone corrects themselves is better than ignoring the mistake at all.

Correcting people for them. It’s another way of support, and also proving to us that you have our backs no matter what. Sometimes having to correct someone is embarrassing, and sometimes it can be a hassle, so to see someone else sort of take over for us without speaking over us or outing us on accident is incredible.

Going to the bathroom with them. An odd thing to think about but when you’re faced with the choice and not sure whether you pass enough or not, this can be very validating and helpful. It truly is a terrifying experience. For example, I had one time when using the restroom, I wpas followed in and a man stood outside the one stall waiting, then used the urinal, washed his hands, and got very close to the stall door. All fine and normal, until he washed his hands a second time, and then came close to the door. And then washed his hands a third and stood again. I can’t know for sure what his intent was, but he eventually left the restroom. Meanwhile I had my phone out ready to call my manager (because this was at my place of work) to escort me out of the bathroom.

Again for lengths sake I want to stop this here, but you can get a good idea of what support is and what it isn’t. I will add, for those writing with a trans character, that making their transition about your character is not how you should write out the plot. Their transition affects some people outside of themselves, yes. But it affects them the most.

The last list I want to make is how your character can come out, because there are many ways.

Writing a letter/email

Sitting people down

Recording a video

Hinting with talk of other trans people

Facebook statuses

Phone Calls

Text Messages

Cards

Get creative. If your character is afraid to face the people they are coming out to, think of how they would best want to go about it. Informatively? Creatively? Nervously? Boldly? This is entirely up to who they are as people and their personal values. Where you take their experience past that is entirely your own, but again I beg that you do so as a backstory and not write this out through a thread if it involves any sort of abuse.

Prompt Version

What fears did your character have before coming out? Who where they most afraid to come out to? Why? What did they question about themselves before coming out? How did they come out? What were their expectations of coming out? What was the reaction from family of them coming out? What was the reaction of friends?

[nancydhooper]

Due Process for Tsarnaev – Demanded by a Masshole

By Marc J. Randazza

I want a new trial for Tsarnaev – because FUCK Dzhokhar Tsarnaev!

I don’t personally know anyone who got hurt in the Tsarnaev bombing. I don’t even know anyone who was in the zone of danger. Nevertheless, when I heard about the Marathon bombing, I wanted to cry and crush something at the same time. These motherfuckers bombed my home. It is as if they burned Paul Revere’s house, or bombed Fenway Park, or sank the U.S.S. Constitution, or put tomatoes in my chowder. It wasn’t just a bomb in a crowded place. This was a “fuck you, Boston” of biblical proportions.

I got this far into writing this, and it came back to me – that quickened breath, that pounding heartbeat, that desire to put my hands around Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s throat and bash his head into his cell wall again and again and again so that the last thing that fucking prick hears is the sound of his own skull cracking mixed with my voice screaming at him.

That is what I, personally, want. And yet, I want him to get a new trial. I would never support a government that let me, or anyone else, enjoy my desired outcome.

I want him to receive the fairest trial, the greatest due process, and the kindest punishment that we can tolerate. If that happens to be death, so be it. Let even that death be without cruelty, violence, or anger.

If you are reading this, and at any point your reaction is “he does not deserve” whatever I may advocate for, well … keep reading, you might get smarter.

I don’t give a shit what Tsarnaev deserves. He deserves to be tortured. He deserves an agonizing death. He deserves to have watched his brother die. He deserves to be strapped to a table, with his ass up in the air, and then to be put right in the prison yard in the incorrigible rapist section of a maximum security prison, with everyone in that cell block informed that every time they violate him, they get a day off their sentence.

Yet, I care more about my Constitution than I care about my desire for hideous retribution. Justice is not just giving a bad guy what he deserves. Justice is also about limiting that desire for severe retribution. Justice is who stands in between the bad guy and the good people who want to do bad bad things to him. Because if we do not give Tsarnaev a fair trial and a righteous punishment, we can do it to anyone else. They can do it to you.

You see, I want to do worse things to Tsarnaev than Tsarnaev ever did to anyone else. I feel that if I did these things, if I let loose the savage instincts inside me, I would feel the bliss of no longer restraining that brutality and that hatred, and I would likely have the cover of it being seen, by many, as somehow justified. It may be justified – but it would not be justice.

Now imagine a jury pool made up of the kind of people who wanted to declare war on the Dominican Republic because a guy there shot David Ortiz. Literally every man in New England has given his wife or girlfriend a hall pass to have sex with Tom Brady. Even the most homophobic guy in Boston would suck Tom Brady’s dick while humming Danny Boy atop a float in the St. Patricks' Day Parade if Bill Belichick told him it was necessary to the Patriots’ being able to score in the red zone. If a defendant is a Yankees fan, that defendant probably should suppress that evidence because it would mean that at least one juror would immediately pronounce him guilty.

Yet, these bastards think that someone who blew up the Boston Fucking Marathon can get a fair trial in Boston?

Not only was he tried in the very place he fouled, but even the jurors were not clean. One of them tweeted out dozens of statements after the bombings, including “Congratulations to all of the law enforcement professionals who worked so hard and went through hell to bring in that piece of garbage.” If that’s how you start off as a juror, you’re not unbiased. Could we not find a juror who hadn’t openly expressed how he felt about the defendant? Maybe not in Boston, we couldn’t.

”Juror 138, meanwhile, posted about being called to jury duty on Facebook. Friends commented on his post, and hours after he’d been instructed not to, he continued to post about jury selection and the case. Posts included friends telling him to “play the part” and “get on the jury” to send Tsarnaev “to jail where he will be taken care of.” He replied with details about jury selection and being “ten feet” from Tsarnaev.

When asked by the court about talking or posting about the case, he said he hadn’t. (source)

They might as well have put a gag ball in Lady Liberty’s mouth and fucked her up the ass on the courthouse steps.

What makes it really offensive is that there was no reason to do it this way. The case was airtight. Tsarnaev wasn’t going to walk even if you tried him in the most Boston-hating jurisdiction in America. We moved Timothy McVeigh’s trial to Denver, despite the fact that he was never going to walk free no matter where they tried him. Why? Because when he got that needle put in his arm, we wanted it to be after he got every goddamned bit of due process that our system deserves. And, to this day, there is nobody who can seriously question whether McVeigh got a fair shake.

Tsarnaev’s execution will always be tainted if he does not get a new trial.

Justice is only served by due process. Without due process, without a fair trial, without removing even the appearance of impropriety, Justice is kept out of the room, and replaced with the remorseless goddess of revenge — Nemesis.

I love Boston not just because it is my home town, but because of what it stands for – it was the cradle of American liberty, if that means anything anymore. Tsarnaev attacked a symbol of that symbol. That left a wound that Nemesis can not heal. If we fail to keep Justice in the room, if we stain even the slightest bit of due process in seeking her divine guidance, then what the fuck is the point of these symbols? What the fuck is the point of the Revolution and the Constitution if we can't hold up due process right there, steps from where the whole damn conspiracy started?

Tsarnaev needs due process not because he deserves it, but because we deserve it.

Because when that piece of shit finally goes down, I want it perfect. I do not want Tsarnaev to go to his grave with one person able to credibly say that he deserves any second guessing or sympathy. I want him utterly and completely destroyed.

I want due process for him, not because I care about what happens to him. I want due process for him because that is the ultimate "fuck you" to him. And, as an added benefit, we keep Justice right where she belongs.

Copyright 2017 by the named Popehat author. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.popehat.com/2019/12/13/randazza-tsarnaev/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[theconservativebrief]

“I’m a victim of sexual assault,” Kellyanne Conway told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.

But, she said, “I don’t expect Judge Kavanaugh or Jake Tapper or Jeff Flake or anybody to be held responsible for that. You have to be responsible for your own conduct.”

Conway seemed to be arguing that survivors of sexual assault were unjustly taking their anger out on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by calling for senators to vote against his confirmation. Kavanaugh is now under investigation for allegations that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when they were in high school. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.

On CNN, Conway mentioned the survivors who confronted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) on Friday after he announced he would vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

“Those women who — who were sexually assaulted, the other day who were confronting Jeff Flake, God bless them,” she said. “But go blame the perpetrator.”

It wasn’t a new argument. Other supporters of Kavanaugh have claimed that women are opposing his confirmation because they’re angry about the way other men have treated them. Looking farther back, others on the right — and the left — have accused advocates of the #MeToo movement of scapegoating innocent men to satisfy their desire for revenge on the men who actually wronged them. Even former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) said, in his resignation speech, that his career was a casualty of the #MeToo era.

It’s certainly true that women in America are angry. But to argue that survivors are turning their rage on Kavanaugh without regard for the truth is to misunderstand their message. Despite fears to the contrary, most women don’t think it’s okay for innocent men to be punished as part of #MeToo. And the women who confronted Flake were very specific in their criticisms of Kavanaugh’s nomination. They weren’t talking about the people who had assaulted them. They were talking about the man who remains steps away from a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.

Women’s pent-up rage may be fueling the #MeToo movement. “The role of anger, to me, is really undeniable in that movement,” Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Politics of Women’s Anger, told Vox.

But just as women are capable of telling the difference between the allegations against Harvey Weinstein and those against Aziz Ansari, they know the difference between their personal stories and the choice facing the country now. Conway and others are claiming that survivors are blinded by their rage — if anything, it’s opened their eyes.

Sunday wasn’t the first time that Conway had argued that Kavanaugh was being scapegoated by #MeToo.

“I just don’t think one man’s shoulders should bear decades of the #MeToo movement,” she said in an interview last week on CBS This Morning.

Others made similar arguments. Writing at the Federalist, Nathanael Blake argued that opposition to Kavanaugh stemmed from a sexually immoral culture in which men routinely exploited women.

“There is now a reckoning with this immiseration of women, and Kavanaugh’s enemies are presenting him as representative of this wretched culture,” he wrote. “He has been made a scapegoat, a stand-in for every entitled prep boy or frat bro who got away with treating women badly.”

Versions of this thesis — in the #MeToo era, women are out for blood, and they don’t care who it comes from — have been cropping up for months.

“Companies are firing perverts and sexual harassers, which is great, but those who can’t find any bad behavior to punish are casting around angrily, looking for random things to attack,” Kyle Smith wrote at the New York Post in February.

In January, Caitlin Flanagan of the Atlantic criticized the Babe.net story in which a woman said Aziz Ansari had pressured her for sex, calling it “3,000 words of revenge porn.”

“We’re at warp speed now, and the revolution—in many ways so good and so important—is starting to sweep up all sorts of people into its conflagration: the monstrous, the cruel, and the simply unlucky,” she wrote. Young women, she continued, are “angry and temporarily powerful, and last night they destroyed a man who didn’t deserve it.”

And when Franken announced his resignation from the Senate in December, after multiple women said he had groped or otherwise harassed them, he seemed to cast himself as an unwitting victim of #MeToo.

“A couple months ago I felt we had entered an important moment in the history of this country,” he began. “We were finally beginning to listen to women about the ways in which men’s actions affect them.”

“Then,” he said, “the conversation turned to me.” In responding to the allegations against him, Franken said he “wanted to be respectful of that broader conversation because all women deserve to be heard and their experiences taken seriously.”

The implication of his words was that women were right to be angry about sexual misconduct by men — but that any anger at Franken himself was misplaced. He, in other words, was a man at the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s undoubtedly true that we are at a moment in history in which women’s anger — indeed, the anger of all people who are survivors of sexual harassment and assault — is coming to the fore with incredible power.

When women first began responding to the #MeToo hashtag, Chemaly noted, many of them posted messages like “I have so much rage” or “I’m shaking with anger.”

But it’s not the case that women are simply taking their anger out on all men indiscriminately. In a Vox/Morning Consult poll conducted in March, 69 percent of women said they supported the #MeToo movement. But only 9 percent thought it was acceptable for some men to be falsely accused as part of the movement, and just 17 percent thought it was okay if men lost their jobs over allegations of sexual misconduct that weren’t backed up by concrete evidence.

In focus groups conducted with the polling firm PerryUndem, Vox found that even women who supported #MeToo were concerned about men being falsely accused and about different kinds of sexual misconduct being treated the same way. One 33-year-old woman, for instance, said she believed the movement was “going to really help all the more women to rise at work and to become fully equal with men.” However, she said, “I felt the woman going public about Aziz Ansari was painting an unfair picture of him,” adding, “I feel like he was being lumped in with predators.”

Far from being full of indiscriminate rage, the women we talked to were cautiously optimistic — excited about the potential of the #MeToo movement, but wary of potential pitfalls. Many were angry about what had happened to them, their mothers, their daughters, and their friends, but many were also concerned that false allegations might touch the men in their lives. The stereotype of the woman so enraged by her past trauma that any male sacrifice will do was nowhere to be found.

The women who confronted Flake, meanwhile, weren’t screaming with inarticulate rage. They were making a clear argument on behalf of Americans like them. “You’re telling all women that they don’t matter, that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them, you’re going to ignore them,” one of the survivors said. “That’s what happened to me, and that’s what you’re telling all women in America — that they don’t matter.”

And in an op-ed in USA Today, Ana María Archila, one of the survivors who confronted Flake, made clear that telling her story was not an uncontrollable outpouring of bloodlust, but a considered political act.

She and others were speaking up, she wrote, “in the hopes that when the senators hear our stories, they will not only believe us but, most important, also will use their power to help heal our country, and not further reinforce the culture that condones sexual violence by ignoring survivors.”

“We still have this tendency to categorize women’s anger as private and personal and emotional,” Chemaly said. But at this moment in history, she argued, women’s anger is political.

Women aren’t thoughtlessly seeking a male victim for their rage, she said. Rather, they’re actually doing something constructive with their anger.

“We think of anger as something overwhelmingly negative, but it’s actually our management or mismanagement of anger that produces negative results,” she said. Some studies show that anger can help us think more clearly and creatively.

Anger isn’t just aggressive, Chemaly explained — it can also be compassionate and empathetic. And it can be powerful if we learn to “make meaning out of it,” she said. The trick is to “decide what I do well, and how am I going to take this energy and do that to make change.”

That’s exactly what the survivors were doing when they confronted Flake, Chemaly said — and what many of the hundreds of women running for office this year were doing when they decided to enter politics after the election of President Donald Trump, who has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual misconduct.

“All of the women who stepped up to run for office, they are substantively fueled by their feelings of rage,” Chemaly said. “You have to push women pretty far for them to work en masse at this scale.”

As for the idea that women were just using Kavanaugh as a scapegoat for their own assaults, Chemaly called it “bullshit.”

Conway, she argued, is “saying women have to control themselves, they don’t really know what they’re talking about.”

The idea that anger makes you confused really only applies to one expression of anger, she said — “the explosive, ‘let me break things’ anger” that our culture tends to associate with “rage-filled men.”

The anger, in other words, of men like Brett Kavanaugh.

Original Source -> What Brett Kavanaugh’s defenders get wrong about women’s anger

via The Conservative Brief

[clusterassets]

New world news from Time: Xi Jinping

More Person of the Year

Person of the Year

The Choice

The Silence Breakers

The Short List

Donald Trump

Xi Jinping

Robert Mueller

Kim Jong Un

Colin Kaepernick

Patty Jenkins

More

Behind the Photos

When Person of the Year is a Group

An Interview with Taylor Swift

Sometimes things just seem to go your way. In 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping strengthened his hold over the world’s most populous nation, was ­inducted into the pantheon of party leaders beside Mao Zedong and Deng ­Xiao­ping and—small detail—announced that China henceforth intends to lead the world. He mentioned this deep into an Oct. 18 speech that ran beyond three hours, which begins to account for why so audacious a declaration drew relatively little notice. But then it also came after the President of the United States had ­signaled time and again over the previous 10 months that America might be surrendering the top spot. Drama requires ­conflict. This felt more like process. Donald Trump posted an unexpected vacancy, and China readied its application for the slot.

But fortune, as Louis Pasteur noted, favors the prepared mind. China’s leaders spent decades priming the country—historically viewed by the outside world as so insular that its national icon is a wall—to stake a claim for how it has always seen itself: the Middle Kingdom, at the center of the world. And it was no coincidence that its new ambition was announced by a leader so firmly in control that the party congress authorizing what should be his final term declined to designate a successor.

Watch: Why the Silence Breakers Are the 2017 Person of the Year

This year, Xi cemented his place as the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng, the visionary who turned China toward a market economy in the mid-’80s. In Xi’s first five years in office, he has reasserted the primacy of the Communist Party, fought government corruption, launched a global strategy of economic outreach and stoked Chinese nationalism while casting himself as a world statesman. At home he has cultivated both a bourgeoisie and a cult of personality, and has brought an iron fist down on advocates of free speech, an uncensored Internet, civil society and human rights. In the process, he has dashed the hopes of the Western governments that believed China’s embrace of capitalism would lead to democracy.

All that was clear even before Trump took office and pushed Xi’s influence to new heights. Shedding the U.S. mission statement that had shaped the modern order—to spread democracy, free enterprise and universal rights—Trump instead enunciated a mercantilist worldview where self-interest is all. Then he went to Beijing and told Xi that China was better at it. China deserves “great credit,” he said in November, for being able to “take advantage of another country for the benefit of its citizens.”

[time-ad size=”large”]

“Everything’s going to plan,” says Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at London’s King’s College and the author of CEO, China: The Rise of Xi ­Jinping. “If you were to write a work of fiction on how to have a perfect presidency, you couldn’t do better: no opposition, a strong economy and an American President who seems to be a bigger fan of Xi Jinping than Xi Jinping is himself.”

The question now is whether his fortune holds.

Lintao Zhang—Getty ImagesXi addresses the Communist Party Congress on Oct. 18

At 64, Xi has lived more than 20 years longer than the age a Chinese male was expected to reach in 1953. Life expectancy in the year of his birth was 41; today it’s 76. But his life has already been memorialized by the party he heads.

Xi was born into privilege, the son of Xi Zhongxun, a commander turned propagandist who, because his wife often traveled for her job at the Marxism-­Leninism Institute, was unusually prominent in their family life. The third of four children, Xi was a princeling who was educated at elite schools in Beijing and thus insulated from privations like the famine that killed millions of people in Mao’s ill-named Great Leap Forward. But his father was purged from leadership positions, and in Mao’s Cultural Revolution the younger Xi was “sent down” at age 15 to live for seven years in the village of Liangjiahe. It’s now a pilgrimage site.

In the peak summer months, 5,000 visitors arrive at Liangjiahe daily, legions of them officials, or cadres, of the party. They listen carefully to the guides and note observations for reports they will write when they get home. Newspapers line the walls of the cave where Xi lived, and the bookshelves include not only Chinese classics but also ­Voltaire, ­Hemingway and Kissinger. “Everyone used to go to the Mao base,” says taxi driver Biang Sheng Li, referring to another pilgrimage site an hour away, where the Long March ended. “But since last year, even more people are going to Xi’s village.”

The intended message has taken root. “Xi knew people’s life and their hardships,” says Zhu Rong Xian, 40, a Hangzhou businesswoman who made the pilgrimage. “It made him a better leader.” In a green military cap with a red star, signaling political fealty to the party, and tasseled leather boots, Zhu had donned the clothes of the China that emerged, as Xi did, from the ashes of communalism.

[time-ad size=”large”]

The future President was an early supporter of Deng’s reform campaign, which embraced private business while maintaining a monopoly control of politics. Once rehabilitated, Xi’s father helped pioneer the special economic zones that tested the export-manufacturing economy that would drive China’s phenomenal growth for the next 40 years, fueled by cheap labor and U.S. investment. The son, after earning an engineering degree in Beijing and working briefly for the military, labored for a quarter-century in the provinces—the traditional proving ground for Chinese leaders. Terry Branstad, the current U.S. ambassador to China, remembers meeting him as governor of Iowa in 1985, when Xi was with a county-level delegation visiting the city of Muscatine. “What I found very different about him than other Chinese leaders I met with was that he’s much more outgoing and inquisitive,” Branstad tells TIME.

But Xi did not then stand out at home: when he ran for one of 150 openings on the Central Committee in 1997, he finished 151st (room was made). During most of his career, he has been overshadowed by his second wife, folk singer Peng Liyuan, whom he wed in 1987. By the time Xi did emerge in the senior echelon, the party was edging into crisis. Cadres had taken to capitalism a little too well, and the ruling legitimacy of the party was disappearing behind the tinted windows of the luxury Audis favored by even junior officials.

Xi emerged as the heir apparent in 2007 and oversaw the Beijing Olympics the following year—a lavish event that displayed unprecedented Chinese soft power to the watching world. His first act as General Secretary in 2012 was to set about cleaning up the party, ensuring that it made rules and not money. His anti­corruption drive transformed public life. At the same time Xi was reopening 7,000 party offices, thousands of officials faced investigation—including many rivals. Golf courses shut down as Xi punished guanxi, the clubby networking dynamic that was once how business got done. Li Hua, a foreign-affairs official in China’s Xinjiang region, remembers feeling conspicuous for shunning marathon banquets in favor of jogging and reading history. “Before, that made me a loner and a source of suspicion,” he says. “But now—after the anti­corruption campaign—it is quite normal.” Meanwhile, Xi made public visits to a humble Beijing dumpling shop, ordering steamed buns.

Corruption was not the only threat Xi perceived to party supremacy. Free expression, human rights, civil society and Internet freedom also became targets. After decades of carefully calibrating how much dissent to tolerate—an ambiguity that offered a measure of freedom for dissenters, and a stubborn hope for Western governments—China passed a series of comprehensive, harsh laws in the name of national security. “The main building blocks are now in place, so the idea of effecting change is more or less over,” says Peter Dahlin, a Swedish human-rights advocate. “For quite a long time, these developments have been cyclical in nature. But it is here to stay. It’s permanent, a new normal.”

Dahlin speaks from experience. In 2016, he was held for 23 days in what is blandly called a Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location, or a “black jail.” He was deprived of sleep but was not subjected to the torture that Chinese prisoners, beyond the reach of lawyers, endure. “For the first time,” he says now, at the midpoint in Xi’s tenure, “a major nation has legalized the systematic use of enforced disappearance.”

The founding myth of U.S. global leader­ship begins with the attack on Pearl Harbor, and a Japanese admiral fretting, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant.” Seven decades later, Trump revived the prewar slogan “America first,” suggesting that the giant was ready to lie down. Then he withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact intended to hold a rapacious China in check economically. When, in June, Trump announced the U.S.’s withdrawal from the international effort to slow climate change, the new President of France, Emmanuel Macron, privately declared in a summit: “Now China leads.”

And China was ready, finally. For decades, its leaders had heeded the advice of Deng: “Hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.” China had already shrugged off any lingering sense of inferiority in 2008, when it surveyed the wreckage of the global recession from a safe perch. But 2017 marked the coming out. Four days before Trump’s isolationist Inaugural Address, Xi made his first trip to the gathering of the globalist elite at Davos. “We should commit ourselves to growing an open global economy,” he said. “Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room. While wind and rain may be kept outside, that dark room will also block light and air.”

[time-ad size=”large”]

At every turn in the months ahead, Xi told the world that China was no longer thinking only about itself. In March, it banned the trade in ivory. In May, Xi convened a summit on the Belt and Road Initiative, a $900 billion infrastructure ­project intended to bind Asia and Africa to China physically and economically, part of a larger effort to girdle the globe—from a highway in Pakistan to a port in ­Colombia—­as the British Empire did a century ago. Like the British, what China has in mind is both profit and national glory. And it too has found an ally in the U.S.

“The U.S. was one of the countries that had done the most to help China modernize from the Maoist era, and there was an assumption that as China modernized and got wealthier, China would become more like the United States,” says Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London. “That was never really realistically on the agenda, and now we know it’s not going to happen. But what is so extraordinary about Trump compared to other American Presidents is that no other person in the world—including Xi—has done more to make China great again.”

Having told his supporters on the campaign trail that the Chinese “rape our country,” Trump changed his tune in office, declaring that he feels “incredibly warm” about its President. His flattery adds to the glorification of “Big Uncle Xi,” as Chinese are urged to think of the leader who, after his campaigns to create “the Chinese dream” and “national rejuvenation,” reached for the ultimate prize on Oct. 18. “It is time for us to take center stage in the world,” Xi told the cadres.

There are reasons to doubt that that’s possible. China is certainly preparing itself for the future; with massive government support, it is positioned to surpass the U.S. in the next world-changing technology: artificial intelligence. It also excels in covert operations, including the major hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and by cultivating agents of influence at Western universities and in local politics. But its primary appeal to the world remains economic, with lending institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. It faces the huge internal challenges of an aging population, an unworkable health care system, a halting transition to a service-based economy and a badly polluted environment. Trump may have abandoned the Paris Agreement, but U.S. carbon emissions are falling, while China’s continue to rise.

The military that Xi has given 30 years to become a global force is huge and newly assertive, but basically local: it opened its first overseas base, in Djibouti, only this year. State media refers to the disputed ­islets it expanded in the South China Sea—an aggressive assertion of regional hegemony—as “unsinkable aircraft carriers.” Of the floating kind, it has two.

Trump’s abandonment of core U.S. strengths—in his speech at the U.N. in September, he declined to take the side of democracy and universal freedoms—puts wind at the back of the nation’s totalitarian rival, whose rich but insular culture does not appear to travel well. “The bottom line,” says Brown, the Xi biographer, “is that China wants to have global reach, but it will be limited by its own nature.”

The West has not yet lost its luster. The U.S. gathers its power not just from its nearly 1,000 military bases but also from a magnetic, truly global popular culture, a premier higher-­education system (which Xi’s daughter, a Harvard graduate, enjoyed) and an inclusive identity as a nation of immigrants. Since the collapse of communism as a global system, China no longer carries a unifying idea beyond its borders. Xi’s mantra is exporting “socialism with special Chinese characteristics.” No one seems to know what that means.

“I have asked many people: What exactly are you talking about?” says Elizabeth Economy, a China specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Because as far as I can see, the Chinese model is a mixed market economy with significant state intervention, a repressive political system and corruption. Those to me are pretty much the three defining features of China over the past 40 years.”

Selling that in the world marketplace that Xi champions is the biggest challenge of all.

—With reporting by Zhang Chi/Liangjiahe

Lead photography by Krisztian Bocsi—Bloomberg/Getty Images

[time-ad size=”large”]

December 06, 2017 at 04:13PM ClusterAssets Inc.,