#separate and unequal

[ausetkmt]

ATHENS, Ala. — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was born about 40 miles from his great-great-grandfathers’ Alabama cotton farms, worked by slaves a 100 years before.

Like so many long-standing Southern white families, McConnell's forebearers built their wealth with free slave labor and cheap land. Two of his great-great-grandfathers owned more than a dozen slaves, census records reviewed by the USA TODAY Network show.

The Kentucky Republican has known of his family's slave-owning past since at least 1994, when he wrote a letter to a Limestone County judge requesting information about his great-great-grandfather James McConnell, a slave owner, and the settlement of his ancestor's estate.

But his 2016 memoir, “The Long Game,” contains no mention that the "colorful McConnells” he wrote about owned slaves, NBC reported. 

As a child during segregation, McConnell lived on the white side of Athens, where black residents were only allowed to visit for work and were typically paid very low wages.

While Kentucky's senior senator has consistently condemned slavery and racism throughout his long political career, his vocal opposition to slavery reparations in any form has fueled the growing national debate about whether African Americans deserve restitution for enduring centuries of economic exploitation.

"I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago when none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” McConnell said in June. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We’ve elected an African American president.”

Mitch McConnell:We paid for 'sin of slavery' by electing Obama

McConnell’s remarks, which made national headlines, came the day before a rare congressional hearing in which Democratic leaders and celebrities sought support for a bill that would establish a committee to “study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations.”

McConnell did not respond this week to a USA TODAY Network request for additional comment about why he opposes reparations despite the lasting economic damages African Americans suffered from slavery and segregation. 

Records about the McConnell family shed light on the history of the region that residents say is still shaped by the legacy of slavery.

The senator’s family history could be a case study in the way many whites built lasting wealth in part by exploiting the labor of enslaved African Americans.

The enduring legacy of that history lies in the balance sheets, supporters of reparations contend. On average, black Americans own roughly one-tenth of the amount of wealth that white families do, according to Federal Reserve statistics.

David Malone, whose family has roots as deep as the McConnell family in the Limestone County area of northern Alabama, believes reparations are a good idea.

Malone's great-grandparents were slaves, and he remembers his grandparents, who were sharecroppers, telling him how white farm owners kept them poor and in debt.

"I know it would be almost impossible to pay everybody related to slaves," Malone said. "When you think of how many people’s lives were lost working for nothing for 400 years, I would agree it should be done. But how it should be done I don’t know."

'Alabama Fever' drew McConnell's forebearers

In northern Alabama, the McConnell family’s slave-owning history is a common one among longtime white families.

His maternal and paternal great-great-grandparents, James McConnell and Richard H. Daley, moved from North Carolina and Virginia during the “Alabama Fever” years in the early and mid-1800s, census records show.

They were farmers and may have brought slaves with them when they moved, as many white families did.

It was a boom period for the cotton industry, fueled by the revolutionary invention of the cotton gin in 1793, and Alabama had plenty of cheap, fertile land.

In 1838, James McConnell, Mitch McConnell’s paternal great-great-grandfather, bought more than 600 acres, according to Limestone County property records.

The lush land was near the Tennessee River in the northwesternmost corner of Alabama, on the Tennessee state line.

"In that time, the Tennessee River was raging, and there was fertile land that you could pretty much buy for nothing,” said James Walker, a local historian and retired teacher whose ancestors were slaves and sharecroppers in the area. "Alabama became a state in 1819, and the Civil War started in 1861. So, for 40 years or so, slavery was big in Limestone County. Slaves outnumbered the whites."

In 1850, about 17,000 people lived in Limestone County, Alabama, and 8,500 were slaves, said county archivist Rebekah Davis.

"There were a few very wealthy planter families that came here from Virginia and the Carolinas who owned a very large number of slaves," Davis said. "There’s still a lot of black Malones in this county because there was a white Malone who owned lots and lots of slaves. It’s still the most common black name in Limestone County."

Davis, part of a group working to preserve the only black school in Limestone County for decades after the Civil War, said economic disparities persist, but she doesn’t support paying reparations for the decisions of people who lived more than 100 years ago.

In some cases, descendants of slaves have prospered, she noted. The Bridgeforth family of Limestone County is one of America’s most successful black farming families.

"They did have to start one foot behind, and the black section of town is economically depressed," Davis said. "But I don’t think you can equitably say: ‘Your ancestor was worth this much.'"

Opinion:McConnell is clueless when it comes to slavery and how it still affects us

The McConnell family slaves

After NBC News reported earlier this week that McConnell's great-great-grandfathers had owned 14 slaves, he responded by pointing out that President Barack Obama’s ancestors also were slave owners.

"You know, once again I find myself in the same position as President Obama," he said. "We both oppose reparations, and both are the descendants of slaveholders."

A USA TODAY Network review of census documents and local property and accounting records show that slave ownership was passed down through generations and persisted in the McConnell family through the Civil War.

Richard Daley, McConnell’s maternal great-great-grandfather, reported owning five young female slaves in the 1850 U.S. Census Slave Schedule.

But he said that four "mulatto," or mixed race, slaves — ages 20, 18, 4 and 2 — were escaped fugitives. One 22-year-old black woman remained at his farm, the document shows.

In the 1860 census, Daley reported owning another five slaves — a 30-year-old "mulatto" female, an 11-year-old "mulatto" female and two "mulatto" boys ages 7 and 10 or 12.

They also escaped, according to the document, but one 39-year-old black female slave remained.

The names of slaves and receipts of sale transactions are difficult to trace. Slaves either moved with families from other states into Alabama or were purchased at auctions in Montgomery.

Josiah and Jane Daley, the parents of Richard Daley, also owned slaves, according to Limestone County Chancery Court records from the mid-1800s. A property dispute mentions their two female slaves, 10-year-old Nancy and 20-year-old Eliza.

James McConnell, whose farm was next to Daley’s, had four female "mulatto" slaves ages 25, 4, 3 and 1 who all escaped, according to the 1860 census.

But, after the Civil War broke out, James McConnell had numerous slaves, according to his accounts the USA TODAY Network reviewed.

Read more:Sen. Mitch McConnell's family owned 14 slaves in Alabama

$4 for boots; $1,500 for slaves

Mitch McConnell requested some of those records in 1994, nine years after he was first elected to the U.S. Senate.

"I have been researching my family history and would appreciate your assistance,” he wrote in a letter to the Limestone County Archives. “I would like information relating to the settlement of the estate of James McConnell.”

The file the senator requested documented James McConnell’s purchases and sales, administered by his son, Andrew. It served as his will and included a list of heirs to receive payments upon his death.

In 1860, James McConnell paid $4 for boots, $1.40 for “lady shoes,” $3 for two bushels of wheat, 75 cents for a long-handle shovel, and $3 for “1 fine hat,” records show.

The accounts also included slave sales during and after the Civil War.

On April 15, 1863, the ledger noted: "To amount received on sale of slaves Confederate state money $1,500."

At the time, the area was occupied by Union Army troops, which included two local black infantry regiments.

After the war, in March 1867, James McConnell recorded: “To amount received of Elledge by way of compromise of the balance of the amount due on sale of slaves $235.”

Diverging fortunes for blacks and whites 

Mitch McConnell’s family’s prominence is still apparent in Athens, where he lived until the third grade when his family moved for better opportunities.

But there are clear indications that success and equality have come much more slowly for African Americans in Athens.

There is only one black-owned business downtown: The Sweetest Thing Tea Room. 

Black obituaries and funeral notices only recently began being added to the county archives, where white families have long had their loved ones' information recorded.

"Slavery still affects the fortunes of African Americans. On one side of town, there are immaculate lawns and houses with two-car garages," said Walker, the local historian. "On the other side of town, you’ve got rundown shacks and terrible lawns."

Walker remembers segregated water fountains, restrooms and movie theaters.

“It was terrible,” he said. “I never went in the white restroom, but, in the colored restroom, there was paper on the floor, and it was never clean.”

Walker’s great-grandfather escaped slavery and became a soldier before establishing his own farm. But the family struggled, and after graduating from Morehouse College, Walker faced a choice of farming cotton or going into the military.

He joined the Army in the Vietnam War and retired about two decades later as a lieutenant colonel. He went on to teach African American history.

"The Jewish people received reparations from the Holocaust, and Japanese people received money for their internment during World War II,” said Walker, who supports reparations. "This country is built primarily on the backs of African Americans. And the primary difference between African Americans and European Americans today is economics.”

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell’s former home with its large windows, porch and white picket fence stands on a tree-lined street near the town square.

A neighbor across the street remembered playing with water guns with McConnell as children, according to an Athens News Courier article.

Richard Martin, who is white and about the age as the 77-year-old Kentucky senator, remembers segregation differently. His family also has deep roots in Limestone County.

“When I was a little boy, we had a little club and initiation was you had to drink out of a black fountain,” Martin said. “We thought it was something, that we were tough.

"I was the little white boy who had everything. We had African American folks working for us. But segregation cheated me, too."

Martin said he didn’t make any black friends until he joined the Army, and he wishes it had happened earlier.

Martin opposes the idea of reparations. But he serves on the board working to preserve the former all-black Trinity High School, which was founded by a missionary in 1865 and provided the rare opportunity for black children to get an education. It’s now a community and event center.

‘Watch him, don’t trust him’

Nowadays, race relations are mostly cordial in Limestone County but for a few rare blowups.

Cotton is still a popular crop to farm in the area, but technology has replaced the need for most human labor.

In April, a brawl erupted at Athens High School after a parent started a "Black Lives Matter" chant on campus. When police responded, a fight broke out. A video showed officers hitting several students.

The incident prompted gossip around town for a few days, locals said. But they viewed it as an outlier.

Limestone County Probate Judge Charles Woodroof, who holds the title McConnell’s great-uncle once had, shares a similar family history. His family moved from Virginia to farm the cheap land in the 1800s, and they owned slaves.

But to Woodroof, reparations are an archaic idea.

"I vaguely remember a couple of situations where there might have been two water fountains," Woodroof said. "I know from being in this position and being an attorney here that a lot of people have been highly successful — both African Americans and whites.

"We’re so many generations beyond that. It was part of our history, and we learned it in school. But I don’t experience it.”

But for many descendants of slaves in the area, reparations would bring some long-overdue economic justice, they say.

“It would mean that somebody has finally agreed that we deserve something, and I would give it to my grandkids,” said Malone, whose relatives were slaves and sharecroppers.

"My grandmother never taught me to hate. But she was treated so bad by the white man. So, she told me: ‘Watch him. Don’t trust him, because if there’s something you’ve got that he wants, he will beat you out of it.'"

Opinion:This is how reparations could work, but we're not holding our breath

[reasoningdaily]

2023 KU KLUX COURT: White lawmakers want to create new court system for Jackson, MS |

https://www.sunherald.com/news/politics-government/article272284283.html

A white supermajority of the Mississippi House voted after an intense, four-plus hour debate to create a separate court system and an expanded police force within the city of Jackson — the Blackest city in America — that would be appointed completely by white state officials.

If House Bill 1020 becomes law later this session, the white chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court would appoint two judges to oversee a new district within the city — one that includes all of the city’s majority-white neighborhoods, among other areas. The white state attorney general would appoint four prosecutors, a court clerk, and four public defenders for the new district. The white state public safety commissioner would oversee an expanded Capitol Police force, run currently by a white chief.

The appointments by state officials would occur in lieu of judges and prosecutors being elected by the local residents of Jackson and Hinds County — as is the case in every other municipality and county in the state.

Mississippi’s capital city is 80% Black and home to a higher percentage of Black residents than any major American city. Mississippi’s Legislature is thoroughly controlled by white Republicans, who have redrawn districts over the past 30 years to ensure they can pass any bill without a single Democratic vote. Every legislative Republican is white, and most Democrats are Black.

After thorough and passionate dissent from Black members of the House, the bill passed 76-38 Tuesday primarily along party lines. Two Black member of the House — Rep. Cedric Burnett, a Democrat from Tunica, and Angela Cockerham, an independent from Magnolia — voted for the measure. All but one lawmaker representing the city of Jackson — Rep. Shanda Yates, a white independent — opposed the bill.

“Only in Mississippi would we have a bill like this … where we say solving the problem requires removing the vote from Black people,” Rep. Ed Blackmon, a Democrat from Canton, said while pleading with his colleagues to oppose the measure.

For most of the debate, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba — who has been publicly chided by the white Republicans who lead the Legislature — looked down on the House chamber from the gallery. Lumumba accused the Legislature earlier this year of practicing “plantation politics” in terms of its treatment of Jackson, and of the bill that passed Tuesday, he said: “It reminds me of apartheid.”

Hinds County Circuit Judge Adrienne Wooten, who served in the House before being elected judge and would be one of the existing judges to lose jurisdiction under this House proposal, also watched the debate.

Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell, who oversees the Capitol Police, watched a portion of the debate from the House gallery, chuckling at times when Democrats made impassioned points about the bill. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, the only statewide elected official who owns a house in Jackson, walked onto the House floor shortly before the final vote.

Rep. Blackmon, a civil rights leader who has a decades-long history of championing voting issues, equated the current legislation to the Jim Crow-era 1890 Constitution that was written to strip voting rights from Black Mississippians.

“This is just like the 1890 Constitution all over again,” Blackmon said from the floor. “We are doing exactly what they said they were doing back then: ‘Helping those people because they can’t govern themselves.’”

The bill was authored by Rep. Trey Lamar, a Republican whose hometown of Senatobia is 172 miles north of Jackson. It was sent to Lamar’s committee by Speaker Philip Gunn instead of a House Judiciary Committee, where similar legislation normally would be heard.

“This bill is designed to make our capital city of Jackson, Mississippi, a safer place,” Lamar said, citing numerous news sources who have covered Jackson’s high crime rates. Dwelling on a long backlog of Hinds County court cases, Lamar said the bill was designed to “help not hinder the (Hinds County) court system.”

Many House members who represent Jackson on Tuesday said they were never consulted by House leadership about the bill. Several times during the debate, they pointed out that Republican leaders have never proposed increasing the number of elected judges to address a backlog of cases or increasing state funding to assist an overloaded Jackson Police Department.

In earlier sessions, the Legislature created the Capitol Complex Improvement District, which covers much of the downtown, including the state government office complex and other areas of Jackson. The bill would extend the existing district south to Highway 80, north to County Line Road, west to State Street and east to the Pearl River. Between 40,000 and 50,000 people live within the area.

Opponents of the legislation, dozens of whom have protested at the Capitol several days this year, accused the authors of carving out mostly white, affluent areas of the city to be put in the new district.

The bill would double the funding for the district to $20 million in order to increase the size of the existing Capitol Police force, which has received broad criticism from Jacksonians for shooting several people in recent months with little accountability.

The new court system laid out in House Bill 1020 is estimated to cost $1.6 million annually.

Democratic members of the House said if they wanted to help with the crime problem, the Legislature could increase the number of elected judges in Hinds County. Blackmon said Hinds County was provided four judges in 1992 when a major redistricting occurred, and that number has not increased since then even as the caseload for the four judges has exploded.

In addition, Blackmon said the number of assistant prosecuting attorneys could be increased within Hinds County. In Lamar’s bill, the prosecuting of cases within the district would be conducted by attorneys in the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who is white.

Blackmon said the bill was “about a land grab,” not about fighting crime. He said other municipalities in the state had higher crime rates than Jackson. Blackmon asked why the bill would give the appointed judges the authority to hear civil cases that had nothing to do with crime.

“When Jackson becomes the No. 1 place for murder, we have a problem,” Lamar responded, highlighting the city’s long backlog of court cases. Several Democrats, during the debate, pointed out that the state of Mississippi’s crime lab has a lengthy backlog, as well, adding to the difficult in closing cases in Hinds County.

Lamar said the Mississippi Constitution gives the Legislature the authority to create “inferior courts,” as the Capitol Complex system would be. The decisions of the appointed judges can be appealed to Hinds County Circuit Court.

Democrats offered seven amendments, including one to make the judges elected. All were defeated primarily along partisan and racial lines.

“We are not incompetent,” said Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson. “Our judges are not incompetent.”

An amendment offered by Rep. Cheikh Taylor, D-Starkville, to require the Capitol Police to wear body cameras was approved. Lamar voiced support for the amendment.

Much of the debate centered around the issue of creating a court where the Black majority in Hinds County would not be allowed to vote on judges.

One amendment that was defeated would require the appointed judges to come from Hinds County. Lamar said by allowing the judges to come from areas other than Hinds County would ensure “the best and brightest” could serve. Black legislators said the comment implied that he judges and other court staff could not be found within the Black majority population of Hinds County.

When asked why he could not add more elected judges to Hinds County rather than appointing judges to the new district, Lamar said, “This is the bill that is before the body.”

[wnchester67]

S1E1

Q: What makes this episode so fuckin good?

Well, kind of everything.

As any good narrative should, this episode sets up (even if briefly) a normal, apple pie life, and then disrupts that normalcy in a big way. There’s this sense of dramatic irony as the viewer catches on to the foreboding feeling the show is doling out (flickering lights, the MUSIC, etc) and the characters remain unaware until it’s too late. Then, the best moment of the introductory scene, “Take your brother outside as fast as you can.” I really feel like this sets up the entire premise of the show, a thematic motif if you will, wherein Dean is his brother’s keeper (KIN).

The next segment of the episode sort of repeats the disruption of normalcy, settling the viewer into Sam’s life at school while creating this intrigue by setting him up as the estranged golden child. Then we get Dean’s introduction (which is the best fucking character intro possibly ever), aka the disruption of normalcy. I could talk about this for literally ever, but for now I wanna focus on one thing in particular: the dialogue. The writer's are presented with these complex characters and history and have like one scene to start revealing the important shit that sets up the rest of the episode, and they do that via clever, efficient dialogue between Sam and Dean. Most everything they say to one another either reveals plot or characterization, and does so in a way that feels really natural. My personal favorite thing about the dialogue is how it sets up this recurring theme of the struggle between wanting a normal, 'apple pie' life, and being unable to have it (and each brother's feelings on the subject, which makes me crazy). The dialogue for the rest of the episode is equally good at revealing who each of the brothers are, and how they were raised.

Now I'm gonna fast forward to the end of the episode, not because the rest of the episode isn't great (it's really great), but because the way the episode ends is a big part of what makes it stand out so much to me. Jess's death is the perfect example of a character death being necessary to move the plot forward. The show would not proceed the same way at all without her death happening when it does and the way it does, and the way it brings the episode full circle is just... as a writer I could actually piss my pants thinking about it.

In my opinion, while the middle bits of the episode are really good, its truly the beginning and end that make the episode such a stand out. It's the perfect introduction to the series, laying out enough information to let you know what's going on while still keeping a few cards close to the chest to keep you intrigued. I've already watched the whole series more than once, and every time I come back to this episode it's just really, really fucking good.

[howifeltabouthim]

'Good-bye, good-bye,' she repeated, her fingers fluttering on the table like a pianist's while her eyes told him how little he had ever meant to her.

L.P. Hartley, from The Harness Room

[agentravensong]

I'm super interested in seeing the results of the deltarune ending poll. It's been something I've been wanting to see Tumblrs opinion on. SPECIFICALLY because a different website with 24/7 deltarune discussion (4chan) seems 100% convinced the ending could not possibly be anything but the most maximum tragedy. Darkworld destroyed, multiple main character deaths, Rudy and Dess deaths ect ect. the whole works. I'm interested in seeing normal fans idea on how sad/happy the ending is likely to be.

Well, now that it's closed, let's see!

The main thing this tells me is that there isn't a strong consensus, at least here on tumblr. The three most negative options (time loop, all darkness banished, world ends) being the least voted for certainly contrasts with what you've said about the 4chan fandom, but it makes sense. People tend not to find such negative endings satisfying.

And, similarly, it makes sense that the option which basically keeps the status quo (darkners are confined to dw but lightners can visit) was barely voted for more than those. If the story is just going to return to the status quo by the end - especially one that keeps things unequal between lightners and darkners - what was the point?

I think the world being remade winning the poll is probably just because of my specific circle of mutuals / dr fans, lol. Among people who go harder on the "dark worlds are metaphors for fiction" angle, I figure that option would be less popular. Something about the importance of not eroding the barrier between fiction and reality to the point of confusing one for the other.

If you'd like to see more opinions on this, I'd recommend checking the notes of the original poll; here's the link :)

[kutputli]

God, I am annoyed at Nathan only being given a contractually obligated split second of screen time this episode.

I am diverting all my irritation into talking about how networking and nepotism intersects with race, using Ms Shandy Fine as my beauteous example. I need to to do a rewatch with subtitles on to make notes for that. Meanwhile quick reaction post for the rest of the stuff -

I have been so immersed in fanon for so long that I had to deliberately shift my gears down to remember that Colin wasn't known to be gay for the average het viewer. Or for us, really - one grindr comment does not a canonical queer make, not with picking up on twenty years of subtext that never makes it into text. So yay, I guess, for the first undeniably queer character on the show. I head 'sex after you get back' instead of 'text' and I thought this was a hookup situation, but it turns out he's a boyfriend? I have been looking through the internet trying to find the actor's name, but omg finally an East Asian character with speaking lines! And he's very very cute. I hate that he has to act like a wingman for Colin, and I just hope he doesn't get too hurt in the inevitable outing that the show is leading up to.

I see that the gentle, kind, Ted Lasso effect does not extend towards casual homophobia in the dressing room. This is where HR rules being strictly implemented brings about better DEI reform than one Nice White Saviour.

I enjoyed Zava a lot. I think he was very well written, and beautifully acted. A completely batshit diva who is genuinely as good as his press, and who isn't an asshole. Two pointed differences - him saying the kitman is the most important person in the room, and him not actively being mean towards any one individual. That's the difference between him and Jamie. Appropriative meditative techniques aside, this is a man who has a stable marriage which is loving enough for him to relocate for - which makes him better at adult relationships than most of the other characters we've seen on the show so far. Carry on chewing that scenery Maximilian, its very entertaining.

What is not entertaining is the white people trainwrecks going on with the women. I get Jane is an abusive shit, why must this point be belaboured? There is no entertainment nor pathos here, and I see no point to it, unless it is for the one Beard centric episode where Men Can Be Abused Also becomes the theme.

Rebecca side-eyeing the flirtation between Sam and his head chef is also wearying. The chef is very cute, and I'm so happy for Sam to have his restaurant, but also - same uneven power dynamics in a workplace! Aaaaa

The psychic storyline is just complete twaddle. Give that screentime to literally anyone else. It is the worst of all rom-com elements to introduce.

Speaking of unethical relationships - holy fucking hell what the fuck show writers having TWO female therapists dismiss as mildly unethical a marriage counsellor having a romantic relationship with his ex-client???!!!!! How, what why.... I am just. Gobsmacked. I was getting irritated with Ted still being hung up over Michelle, but of course the poor guy will have trust issues if the first therapist he opened up to is now shagging the mother of his child! And his current therapist doesn't act like its a massive violation of ethics he should be reported for. And his casual hookup therapist makes an extremely dark joke about paedophilia to brush it off. AAAAAAAAA

OK a rewatch then to post about Nate and Shandy and how I couldn't spot Mr Bhargava anywhere though I tried to keep an eye out!

(Trent Crimm remains as hairsome and louche as every, and he is my mary sue because I too, can never spell diahhreoa.)

[communistkenobi]

could you expand / share reading materials on "gender is a structure that mediates access to personhood"? i feel like that's an important point that i don't fully grasp. especially because it is my understanding that until relatively recently even white, bourgeois, cis-heterosexual, perisex etc women were also denied personhood, but were already gendered as women, right?

thanks in advance!

I’m so sorry you sent me this ask like three months ago and I’m only getting around to it now lol

This is going to be a long post. I will be talking a lot about citizenship and rights in this post. I’ll include citations, but two overarching texts I will be engaging with a lot are Unequal Freedom (2004) by Evelyn Nakano Glenn and The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1989) by Gøsta Esping-Andersen.

This is also not meant to be a comprehensive answer to your question. I am much less familiar with migration & refugee scholarship, which is obviously deeply engaged with the concept of citizenship as an apparatus for granting rights. I’m flagging this because my answer has a particular focus that is not generalisable. Everything I say is not “the answer” to your question, but an answer informed by specific domains of scholarship.

First, I think a good place to start is that when we talk about ‘personhood’ as a status that a human being can or cannot possess, we are often talking about a status that is realisable through citizenship. ‘Personhood’ is itself a legal term, and we can see this in how stateless people (i.e. people with no citizenship) are treated - because rights are granted by and administered through states, being without state citizenship means you are unable to realise any set of rights, and therefore, you are rendered as a non-person. The UN has two separate conventions on the rights of stateless people for example, as being stateless is necessarily an international issue. I think this approach helps makes sense of why “human rights” is a popular framing in discussions of how to remediate inequality (e.g. “trans rights are human rights”). The “human” part of that equation is only realised through the attainment of “rights,” i.e., through citizenship. Citizenship = personhood can also be seen when people invoke “second class citizens” as an articulation of legal, political, and societal discrimination - i.e., groups of people who have less/no access to rights compared to other groups within a state. Systems of classed citizenship often emerge from regimes of settler colonialism, slavery, and apartheid (Glenn discusses this in her book).

The basic Marxist intervention in this discussion is that this class system still exists even in places that have abolished slavery, abolished apartheid, and/or gone through formal decolonisation, because state law under capitalism is fundamentally unjust. Marx calls law the “mystification of power” (I believe he says this in The German Ideology? I'm rusty on my Marx readings lol) - he argues that law is a bourgeois system of justice that caters to the wealthy and powerful and disenfranchises the poor and marginal, but appears as neutral and fair through a liberal “theater” (Marx’s term from The 18th Brumaire) of equality and democracy, mystifying its actual effects and purpose (The Red Demiurge (2015) by Scott Newton is a book about Soviet legal history that goes into some of this. His focus is on the evolution of the Bolshevik relationship to law as the USSR developed and encountered quite literally new legal problems that emerged as a result of the formation of a socialist state). This is also part of the Marxist critique of nationalism - if state citizenship is what grants access to rights, and citizenship is classed (through your relationship to production, through white supremacy, through patriarchy, through colonial status, through religious status, through etc), then equality does not legally exist, that all equality is bourgeois equality, i.e., not universal, not equal.

Gøsta Esping-Andersen provides a really helpful theory of thinking about citizenship rights within a capitalist state (his book only focuses on Western imperial core states, so just flagging that lol). He begins by arguing that:

all markets are regulated by the state, there is no actual “free” or anarcho-capitalist market,

because of this necessary regulatory function provided by the state, the commodity of wage-labour (i.e., the process of selling your labour-power as a “good” or commodity on a market in exchange for money in the form of wages) is likewise always regulated to some degree, and so finally,

welfare should be understood as the regulatory system of the commodity of wage-labour.

This regulatory apparatus is what grants people “social citizenship rights” - sick leave, pensions, disability and unemployment insurance, welfare payments, food stamps, tax bracket placements, childcare, healthcare, education, housing, so on and so on. Within this framework, Esping-Andersen demonstrates that various welfare regimes produce different citizenship classes - Canada, Australia and the US, for example, explicitly reproduce an impoverished “welfare class” through a marginal, means-tested welfare regime that only provides benefits to the very poorest. Various European countries by contrast tend to have what he calls a “corporatist” welfare regime that often grants different social citizenship rights based on which occupation you have, which he argues emerged from feudal and pre-capitalist religious (esp. Catholic) social forms of organisation.

ANYWAY, the purpose of doing all that set-up is to contextualise how we arrive at the question of gender. Feminists make the basic point that citizenship is also classed by gender - in Unequal Freedom, Glenn talks about this in the US, where white women were legally treated as extensions of their husbands and had no access to property rights, voting rights, and so on. Black women, in contrast, were treated sexually as women by slaveholders (i.e., raped and abused) but denied any and all personhood on the basis of their slave status. Citizenship in the US was historically based first on your ability to hold property (reserved for white bourgeois men), and then on your ability to “freely sell” your labour-power on the market - white women were denied citizenship on this basis because they were consigned to managing what was defined as the “private realm,” i.e., the realm that houses free labourers (white men). This public/private distinction emerges through capitalist markets and the commodity of wage-labour, which produces a sharp distinction where productive labour takes place “out there” (paid for in wages by the capitalist class) and reproductive labour takes place “in here” (i.e., labour that is not paid for in wages* by the capitalist class and forms the social basis of reproducing the public labour pool). 

*for white women. see below

As Glenn argues, this public/private distinction in the US is fundamentally racialised. We can see this difference in the emergence of the suffragette movement, where white women appeal to their whiteness (i.e., free labour status) as the rationale for being granted the right to vote. Black women were disqualified from this movement, and did not benefit from white women’s demands for equal citizenship on the basis of them providing all this unpaid reproductive labour to their white husbands, as Black and other racialised women often provided domestic housekeeping labour for white women (unpaid during slavery and for indentured servants, for wages after its abolition). This leaves Black women without a private realm, subjecting them to a “purely public” arena that is uniquely difficult to organise for unionisation and/or improve working conditions (Deborah King talks about this further in Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness (1988)).

Trans-feminism explicates this further - coercive sex assignment at birth classes people on the basis of reproductive capacity. “Females” are impregnated, “males” do the impregnating. This particular system of sex assignment is deeply tied to colonial population management concerns, where measuring the labour capacity of colonised subjects was a matter of managing white wealth (as well as making sure “there weren’t too many of them” compared to white people in colonies - this was especially a major white anxiety after the Haitian Revolution at the turn of the 19th century, the largest slave revolt in history. See Settlers by J Sakai). You can read Maria Lugones’ papers The Coloniality of Gender (2016) and Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System (2007), Alex Adamson's (2022) paper Beyond the Coloniality of Gender, and Guirkinger & Villar's (2022) paper Pro-birth policies, missions, and fertility for some introductory reading.

(Note: patriarchal gender hierarchies predate and exist outside of European colonial domination - it is a popular white queer talking point that Europe invented gender, that indigenous peoples actually all had epic radically equal genderfuck systems that were destroyed by Europe, and this is a very patronising and racist historical generalisation that I want to avoid making. Third World/Global South feminism is a necessary corrective to this - an arena of scholarship I am sadly not well versed in. Sylvia Wynter is the only scholar I’ve engaged with on this topic, which again, is a very limited slice. I welcome reading recommendations in this area).

While sex assignment is coercive for everyone, it is a particular problem for trans people, who are accused of impersonation and ID fraud if our sex markets conflict with our gender presentation, or we don’t “look like” our sex marker to cis people. Because you need a government ID to do basically anything - getting a job, applying for an apartment, getting a driver’s license, going to school, buying a phone plan, being on unemployment, applying for disability, filing an insurance claim, doing your taxes, opening a bank account, getting married, going to the hospital, buying lottery tickets at the corner store, etc - and sex markers appear on basically all government ID in many countries, trans people are systematically denied a whole range of citizenship rights (and thus personhood) on the basis of this sex assignment. Trans people are not merely treated as the wrong gender, they are ungendered, and by this process, rendered ineligible for personhood. Like just as an example, gay marriage is a luxury to trans people, as gay marriage is based on the state recognising both you and your partner’s gender in the first place. (See Heath Fogg Davis’ paper Sex-Classification Policies as Transgender Discrimination (2014) for example. Butler also talks about this on a more fundamental level in Bodies That Matter (1993), and Stryker & Sullivan also discuss this in The Queen's Body, the King's Member (2009)).  

This is likewise the impetus behind anti-trans bathroom bills and sports bans - citizenship guarantees, among other things, a right to public space, and these bans are meant to deprive transgender people access to those spaces. These bans should be understood as a way of circumventing the much more difficult process of revoking the citizenship of trans people outright by using a component of citizenship (sex assignment at birth) to impoverish the quality of citizenship that trans people have access to. This is why bans on medical transition are not actually just about medical oppression, but the oppression of trans peoples’ abilities to live in society in general. An instructive parallel is abortion bans for pregnant people, who, in addition to facing medical oppression and violence by being denied healthcare, are likewise systemically marginalised through being forced into the role of “mother” (again we see how cissexualism reduces people to reproductive capacity), economically marginalising them by reducing their capacity to earn a wage, tying them to partners/spouses that now have greater economic and social leverage over them (and thus have greater capacity to assault, rape, and murder them), depriving them of the choice of alternative life paths, and so on.

It’s generally much more difficult to get the state to sign off on unilaterally oppressing a group of citizens by depriving them of citizenship completely, so attacking a group through more narrow and particular policies like healthcare or the use of public space (with the ultimate goal of depriving them of their rights in general) is often much easier and more productive. See Beauchamp's 2019 book Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and US Surveillance Practices, who talks about this in the context of anti-trans bathroom bills in chapter 3. This is also a common thread in disability scholarship, as disabled people are likewise denied much of the same citizenship rights through similar logics - the book Absent Citizens (2009) by Michal J Prince talks about this in the Canadian context. To give an example he uses in the book, in Canada, accessible voting stations were only federally mandated in I believe the 90s, meaning that disabled people were practically disenfranchised until about 30 years ago in Canada, even though there were no laws explicitly banning disabled people from voting.

As a result, any barriers put in place by the state to change your legal name and sex marker should be understood as a comprehensive denial of personhood, not only because we as trans people want our IDs to reflect who we are, but because those barriers make it difficult to do literally anything in civil society. This the basis behind the cry of “trans rights are human rights” - taking away our healthcare rights also fundamentally denies us equal citizenship (and thus personhood), because healthcare is where we get all those little permission slips from doctors and psychologists to change our name and gender marker in the first place. This is of course not remotely the same as being made stateless (trans refugees are placed in a particularly harrowing and violent legal black hole, for example) - I as a white trans person living in the imperial core still benefit from a massive range of material, political and social privileges not afforded to many others, but my transness positions me at a deficit relative to cis people who have the same state citizenship as I do. As I hope I've made clear, it's not a binary case of either having or not having citizenship, but that citizenship is classed, and the quality of your citizenship is heavily dependent on a whole range of social, political, legal, economic, and historical factors that are all largely out of your control.

So not only is gender a barrier to citizenship, it mediates access to realising the full range of personhood within a regime of state citizenship. Trans people are not the only group effected by this, as I described above, but trans people are a group that makes obvious the arbitrary, coercive, and unequal nature of sex assignment through its connection to state citizenship.

[nellasbookplanet]

The fandom god discussion is interesting, but I feel it’s sometimes hindered by an unwillingness to separate gods from mortal society, or even a sort of over-eagerness to project our own reality onto them, which simply doesn’t work. I've seen the gods referred to as rulers or tyrants demanding worship (which I kinda understand because it’s something Ludinus says in-game, though it’s funny to see fandom corners confidently repeat the inaccurate talking points of the antagonist) but more interestingly I've also seen them referred to as a higher/the highest social class, as colonizers imposing themselves on mortals, the raven queen specifically as new money. Overall these comparisons tend to talk about the gods and their actions regarding Aeor in the past and predathos/the Vanguard in the present less as if they're about saving their own lives and more as if they want to preserve their powerful position.

The gods, by their very nature, are above mortals. They cannot be compared to any mortal ruling class because they didn’t choose or strive for that power and cannot feasibly get rid of it/step down/redistribute it (nor do they actually in any sense rule; killing the raven queen, unlike killing an actual queen, will not end the 'tyranny' of death), they simply have it by virtue of being gods. Saying that’s unfair or unequal and that the gods should be killed because of it is akin to saying it’s unfair a mountain is bigger than you and demanding it be levelled, except the gods, unlike mountains, are living, feeling beings who shouldn’t have to die because some people can’t stand the idea of not always being top dog. Thing is, the gods themselves ultimately understood this power imballance and that they can't help but hurt Exandria the way humans can't help but step on bugs, and thus removed themselves from the equation by creating the divine gate. Saying this isn’t enough and that they're clinging to power is just demanding they line themselves up to be killed.

[emperornorton47]

I'd like to see a source on the bar exam.

White America can not tolerate black humanity on any level. Then, when you remind them, white America claim they are victim of racism.

[catwouthats]

Lokius vs Sylki season 2 episode 2 (cinematography wise)

Green background (in this show I’ve analyzed it’s usually used as a color for enchantment)

Bodies overlap from our angle

Completely facing each other

Nothing blocking them from each other

Equal playing field (both eating pie)

Orange/yellow tones (I’ve analyzed this color is usually used for lying and betrayal)

Bodies separated

Not entirely facing each other (though they do later)

BIG ASS CASH REGISTER AS A BARRIER BETWEEN THEM

Unequal playing field (employee vs customer)

[reasoningdaily]

REVOLT: White Mississippi officials vote for separate court system in majority-Black town

In an article published yesterday (Feb. 7), Mississippi Today revealed that a white supermajority member of the Mississippi House voted “to create a separate court system and an expanded police force” in Jackson. The city is known for having a large population of Black residents. The measure would reportedly see only white state officials governing that court.

The outlet said the proposal is called House Bill 1020, and if passed into law, the Mississippi Supreme Court would be run by a white chief justice, a white state attorney general and a white state public safety commissioner. They would be in charge of the Capitol Police force in the city with a majority-Black presence. According to the article, 80 percent of Jackson’s citizens are African American, which is higher than any major city in the United States. “Mississippi’s Legislature is thoroughly controlled by white Republicans, who have redrawn districts over the past 30 years to ensure they can pass any bill without a single Democratic vote,” the report added.

Rep. Edward Blackmon believes the vote is a setup. “This is just like the 1890 Constitution all over again. We are doing exactly what they said they were doing back then: ‘Helping those people because they can’t govern themselves,’” the politician said during the voting procedure. Republican Rep. Trey Lamar disagreed: “This bill is designed to make our capital city of Jackson, Mississippi, a safer place.” He added that House Bill 1020 was created to “help not hinder the [Hinds County] court system.”

Mississippi has a history of Black residents suffering disproportionately from the legal system in comparison to other races — so much so that for years, JAY-Z has been using his platform to sue and expose the Mississippi Department of Corrections. The mogul plans to spread light on the injustices within the prison system in an upcoming docuseries approved by A&E. “In 2020, Roc Nation and Team Roc launched a fight to put a stop to the literal death sentences imposed on inmates through the inhumane, violent and torturous conditions created by Parchman prison officials,” a statement released by the label last year read in part. His lawsuits against the Mississippi Department of Corrections and Parchman have since been dropped after conditions reportedly improved.

[mulloey]

ill-fated • yunho

in some kind of cruel trick, the universe has fated you to the person who hates you most.

an ateez werewolf au.

word count: 8.7k

tags: werewolf!au, soulmate!au, alpha!yunho, omega!reader, inaccurate depiction of omegaverse as i’m not familiar with the genre. warnings under the cut

warnings: dom!yunho, sub!reader, mentions of coercion, grooming and segregation, discrimination (none of those by yunho), unequal power dynamics, mentioned punishment. MASSIVE dick!yunho, slight corruption, BITING, pet names, titles (alpha/omega. sorry). rude yunho at first. not proof read

—————

You are fucking irritating.

Yunho doesn’t know much. As an alpha since birth he was raised separately from the omegas — fragile little bunnies who could so easily have been ripped apart if he’d been having a bad day — and given very limited access to the outside world. “The people out there,” his father had told him, “could do as much damage to you as you could to them.” As such, he’d been entirely sheltered and shielded, separate from everything he could threaten or be threatened by. So no, Yunho doesn’t know much. Not about omegas, anyway. But what he does know is that you are fucking irritating.

He’s never even met you, never been given the chance, yet he knows this. He sees you from across the grounds, through the fence neither of you have ever crossed; sees your annoying face, scrunched up in a pout or a huff whenever something doesn’t go your way. He hears your whines and pleads and that irritating giggle when a weaker wolf than he gives into your antics and gives you what you want. Even from across the grounds he hears it all and he wants nothing more than to shut you up. He stays up at night picturing it — finally putting you in your place, showing you how a stupid little omega is supposed to behave. Showing you that despite the alphas you’ve encountered who bend and cater to your every whim just because you’re cute, there are some out there with a stronger will than that. There are some who’d be all too happy to set you straight, to keep you in line and teach you to behave the way your teachers clearly failed to. God, he wants to be the one to do it.

He watches you today with a scowl. You’re giggling and jeering with your friends, skipping happily around the garden with some kind of kite. How juvenile, he thinks. His lip curls at the sight. You’re only a few years younger than him; you must be in your early twenties by now — you have no reason to be so childish, so immature and… cute. He hates that word. Hates using it on you. Fuck, he could just—

“Christ, Yunho.”

He looks up, thoughts interrupted by his best friend, sitting next to him with a half-amused, half-concerned expression. “What, Mingi?” He huffs.

“Are you still watching that little omega?”

He shrugs, muttering to himself and Mingi laughs. “You are. Jesus, dude, it’s been years. Why are you so obsessed with her?”

“I’m not obsessed,” Yunho snaps far too quickly. Mingi raises an eyebrow. “I’m not obsessed,” he repeats, more slowly. “She’s just annoying. She needs to grow up. She’s so childish.”

“They’re all childish, Yunho, they’re omegas. That’s what they’re like. And yet she bothers out of all of them. That seems like obsession to me.”

“Well it’s not,” Yunho says, irritated. His gaze still follows you, now sat with your friends in a circle and listening to one of the others tell some kind of story. You watch her intently, eyebrows scrunched in concentration. You look interested, thoughtful. He scoffs, shaking his head. He hates how every single emotion shows on your face, hates how he knows exactly what’s going on in your stupid little head just by watching the way your nose scrunches and your lips twitch. He hates it. At least you’re listening well, he thinks.

“You’re kidding,” Mingi says. “You’re literally watching her right now. Fuck man, you’re practically studying her and you’re not obsessed?”

“Who’s obsessed?”

They both turn to see their friend and the heir to the pack, Hongjoong, approaching with drinks in his hands. He sits down next to Mingi, handing each of them a drink which they accept. He stares at Yunho for a second, noticing the irritated expression on his face, and locks eyes with Mingi, looking confused.

“Yunho,” Mingi explains, “is staring at that little omega again. He fucking hates her, man. It’s not healthy”

Hongjoong snorts. “It’s not hate.”

The other two whip their heads to face him, Mingi looking confused and Yunho irate. “What?” They both ask.

Hongjoong chuckles, taking a sip before he speaks. “It’s not hate,” he repeats. “It’s been what, years, right?”

“His whole life more like,” Mingi mutters. Yunho elbows him and he yelps. Hongjoong shakes his head.

“Yeah, years he’s been obsessing over how much he hates her. Do you even know her name?”

Yunho shrugs, irritated and Hongjoong laughs. “Yeah. You will one day, though. Because you don’t hate her.”

“Of course I hate her, Hongjoong!” Yunho protests, trying to keep it down so the nearby alphas don’t intercept the conversation. “She’s fucking annoying, dude. Look at her. Can you really say you don’t hate her?”

Hongjoong shares a look, knowing and exasperated, with Mingi and places a hand on Yunho’s shoulder, squeezing it gently before walking off. Yunho turns back to Mingi, confused expression on his face and Mingi sighs before speaking.

“We can’t even see her from this far, Yunho.”

—————

You’ve been noticing it for a while. Your friend was the first one to point it out; a kind, temperate beta named Alexa. “Over there,” she’d said. “By the fence. There’s an alpha that’s been staring at you for a while.”

You’d followed her gaze to see two figures on the other side of the fence, one of them staring intently over at you. The other man, almost as tall as him, seemed to be attempting some kind of conversation, but to no avail; his friend’s entire attention was set on you, on staring you down with a scowl. He looked displeased, irritated as he glared at you and it was intimidating. You felt yourself shrink slightly under his gaze, feeling small and vulnerable and almost scolded.

Put out, you’d turned back to Alexa worriedly. “Why is he doing that?”

“I don’t know,” she’d sighed. “But don’t worry. Just stay away from the fence, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you breathed. “As always.”

So you did. You stayed away from the fence — though it wasn’t a big ask as that was what the rules bid you do anyway — and pretended not to see his eyes on you, to hear the whispers from the other omegas about that alpha that keeps staring at the girl over there. It wasn’t unusual to have an alpha stare over, of course; after all, the people on each side of the fence would of course one day be matched with each other. But it was weird for an alpha to be so fixated and so… angry at one omega in particular, especially one they haven’t made a single move to approach. And it worried you. You wondered if you were doing something wrong, if there was something wrong with you that made you so unappealing to this alpha and, God forbid, may turn the other alphas off you too, when it came to the day when you’d be matched with one. And you didn’t even know what it was!

But there was nothing you could do, of course, without actually approaching the fence which would risk your life, so you ignored it, trying to enjoy your days the way you normally did. But it lingered in the back of your mind, always hovering there, bothering and worrying you. Why did he hate you so much? And why you?

You find out a few weeks later. It’s the day of the mating ceremony — to the town, the most important day of the year, and to you the most important day of your life. Because this year, among the hundreds of alphas and omegas due to be matched is you.

The procedure is simple, and you’ve rehearsed it enough at school to know it like the back of your hand; in your nicest, whitest dress, you’ll walk gracefully down to the stage, a low wooden platform surrounded by towering rows of seats. The head of the pack, some man you’ve never met and yet have spent your entire life swearing loyalty to, will select for you a mate — one of the many alphas vying for an omega, under whose control you’ll spend the rest of your life. It’s a crucial, irreversible moment; the chief’s decision is final, because he has the experience and the instincts to know who ought to be paired with who, which pairings will further the pack’s prosperity. It’s an ancient, foolproof system, so you tell yourself. No matter how many times you say it it doesn’t quite resonate.

The walk to the town hall is nerve wracking; you cling to the hand of the omega beside you, an equally nervous boy named Zhou. Knowing you’re being watched on your journey by the hundreds, even thousands of people who line the streets each year to witness it, you keep your eyes fixed on the ground, trying to focus on each slow step, each tap of your white ballet shoes against the cobbled streets. It’s eerily silent; a funeral more than a celebration.

When the town hall comes into view you feel yourself shudder; like everything on this side of the fence, it’s large and imposing and much grander than you’re used to. You shrink into yourself slightly but don’t allow yourself to stop; you have to make a good impression.

You’re guided to your seat, just above the stage and sink into it with a sigh of relief. You’re in the clear until your name is called — and that could take hours. You close your eyes for a moment, breathing in the fresh air wafting through the open window near to your block of seats. It’s rich and earthy and strangely… homely. You’ve never smelled something quite like this before.

On the other side of the stage, Yunho and his friends sit slouched in the alphas section of the seats. They’re a little bored, to no one’s surprise — like many alphas they’ve been to several of these ceremonies; it’s common for an alpha to take several years to finally be matched, there’s no shame in it. Often it’s simply a matter of waiting for the right omega to come of age. And it’s not up to them, anyway — the chief is the one who knows who belongs with who.

He cranes his neck, turning to look over at Hongjoong, who stares straight ahead with a severe expression. No wonder he looks so serious, Yunho thinks; one day this ancient ceremony, and the sacred matching of everyone in this town, will be down to him. It must weigh on him. He wonders if those instincts — instincts that will make or break the future of the pack — have begun to show yet. He shrugs, slouching back. Not his problem. Craning his neck to try to get a glimpse of the blurry selection of omegas this year, he figures he has his own things to worry about.

The ceremony starts slowly and typically; an endless, droning speech by the pack leader, before the first, tense matches get underway. They seem decent this year, he has to admit; a few of the alphas he knows decently well are matched, each with their own beautiful, well-trained omega, who greets their new master with practised grace. He feels a twinge of jealousy. He’s by no means too old to be matched, and certainly isn’t the oldest alpha in the section, but he’s just a man. Just an alpha. He may not need, but he wants an omega of his own, a pretty, obedient little thing to spoil and care for and mould into the perfect life partner for him. He wants… well, he’s not sure what exactly. He can’t see past the annoying, ever-present image of you in his mind. Sneering at him, tormenting him.

When they read your name, he knows it’s you. It’s a name he’s never heard and yet when the syllables leave the announcer’s mouth, he knows who’s about to stand up before you do. He perks up, surprised to see you making your way down the stairs; he hadn’t known you were being matched this year. He should have, he supposes; from your looks and the people you hang around with he figured you’d be about 21 by now, but to actually see you, knowing you’re about to be given away, is an odd, conflicting feeling.

He watches as you bid your friends goodbye before walking slowly towards the centre of the hall. You take a brief look around at the audience, at the hundreds, even thousands of pairs of eyes on you, before your gaze reverts to the ground. You’re shy and more demure than he’s ever seen you. If only you were like this all the time, he thinks, he’d feel a little less sorry for the poor alpha who you’re about to be given to. He looks around at the other alphas, wondering who you’ll get. They all watch you intently, apparently quite enamoured by you and he scoffs. They have no idea what you’re like. They don’t know what it would take to tame you; he doubts any of them, even Hongjoong, would be up to the task. He wonders who is. He slumps back in his seat, waiting to find out.

“Omega,” the announcer says. “You are already soul-tied to an alpha in this pack.”

He sits up, more interested now, as do the rest of the audience. A soul-bond is quite rare, and he’s never seen one in person; far beyond even the pack leader’s control, it’s an ancient, mythical bonding ritual that until now, he wasn’t even entirely convinced was real. The others are surprised too; he hears whispers of who it will be, who it is that’s been destined for you from the beginning, and listens eagerly as the announcer opens a sheet of paper, bringing the microphone to her lips and reading out two short words.

“Jeong Yunho.”

He baulks. His jaw drops and he stands up indignantly, swearing he’d heard it wrong. Jeong Yunho. That’s his name. Theres no fucking way. He turns outraged to the men beside him who look entirely unsurprised. He growls, remembering what they’d told him weeks ago. Curse them. Curse them for being right.

The announcer repeats his name, waiting for him to go down to greet you and Mingi nudges him forward. “Well, Yunho,” he grins. “Looks like you’ll get to put her in her place after all.”

————

After the ceremony you’re led to another room, with a small table and couch. In it is a beta you faintly recognise, a kind and unassuming looking woman but for the fact that she’s holding a pair of handcuffs.

“Will you come willingly, omega?” She asks.

“Yes,” you say, “I will.”

Not that you have a choice — you know what happens to omegas who resist their matches; and though you knew straight away this Yunho was the man who’s been glaring at and bothering you so much, having seen him a little closer now, you figure you’re lucky to have at least gotten an attractive alpha. And you couldn’t stand the humiliation of being dragged across the grounds in handcuffs anyway.

“Good,” the woman smiles. She pockets the handcuffs, in case you change your mind, you assume, and takes your hand. “I’ll take you to your alpha, then.”

The walk to your alpha’s house is short; he lives right next to the town hall. He must be important, you think, and the size of his house certainly suggests that. You swallow thickly as you stare up at it and the woman squeezes your hand. “Nothing to worry about, omega,” she smiles. “Yunho’s a lovely young man. Just be good and obey him and you’ll have a wonderful life with him, okay?”

You nod shyly and she pinches your cheek. The skirt of the dress you’d been given for the ceremony catches on your shoes as you make your way up the stairs of his house and she reaches down to untangle it, keeping you steady and graceful as you wait by the door.

A few seconds after the doorbell rings, the large oak door creaks open, revealing the stern-looking man from earlier. As close as you’ve ever been, you grasp for the first time how tall and how handsome he really is. You blush, looking down. He bids the women goodbye, as do you, before beckoning you inside. The door slams shut behind you, making you jump a little. He studies your reaction, watching your carefully before he comes to stand in front of you.

“Omega.”

You shuffle in place, gazing intently at the ground — anywhere but at him. He shakes his head. “Look at me and greet me properly, omega,” he says, a little more sternly.

Shyly you lift your head, staring up at him with hooded eyes. They’re almost… doe-ish, he thinks. More like prey than another wolf. “Alpha,” you whisper.

He nods. “Introduce yourself.”

Shyly you start to whisper your name, but he stops you. “The surname is wrong,” he says. “It’ll be Jeong now. Omegas take the alpha’s name.”

You sigh nervously, nodding. You feel stupid to have forgotten that and he clearly already thinks that you are stupid; you want to kick yourself for proving him right so quickly. “Yes, alpha,” you whisper.

“Introduce yourself,” he repeats. “And this time get it right.”

You try it again, using his surname this name and he nods, satisfied but unsmiling. “Good,” he says. “Now, omega. I doubt you were expecting to be given in a soul-tie like that, and neither was I. But the fact remains that you are my omega now, and you will act like it. That means following the rules and standards I give. Got it?”

Unsure but hoping to please him, you agree. He stares at you as though he’s scrutinising you — which he probably is. “I understand, alpha.”

“I don’t expect you to meet my standards right away,” he continues. He speaks coolly, casually but you can tell this is serious. “You’re just an omega, after all. And I’ve been watching you for a while and I can see that even for an omega, you’re quite a brat.”

You don’t know if you’re supposed to reply — to protest or dispute him or agree with his insults, so you just stare at him, letting him continue. That seems to please him at least.

“I know you have the betas under your thumb,” he says with almost a sneer. “Even some of the alphas, too. But you won’t have me. I’ve been waiting a long time to put you in your place and by some miracle the Gods have dropped you right into my lap to do so.”

You gulp. You wonder what he’s going to do to you — you know as his God-given omega he has the right to do anything he likes, so long as you aren’t killed or ‘severely and permanently injured’. In this pack, at least, there are slightly higher standards for the conduct of alphas towards their omegas, but they’re still low. And now that you’ve been given to him, he has the right to control, care for and discipline you however he chooses.

“What are you going to do?” You whisper.

“Well, I assume you’re aware of what I can do,” he says. You nod. “But unlike some of the alphas here, I have a personal policy that I intend to stick to.”

“What’s that?”

“Other than your brand—” you gulp at the mention of the large, obvious mating mark he’s probably going to be giving you shortly “—I will never permanently mark you in any way. Not from sex, not from punishment, nothing. Understand?”

You nod, feeling relieved. You know the law and you know that, if he wanted to, he’d be perfectly entitled to cover your entire body in deep, lasting marks — so long as they don’t cause actual damage. But he doesn’t want to do that, for some reason. Maybe he’s not scary after all; although the mention of punishment, though expected, sends a small shiver down your spine.

“Thank you,” you whisper.

He hums. “As for your question…”

You tilt your head, looking confused. “About what?”

He lifts an eyebrow — surprised, apparently. “About what I’m going to do to you.”

“Oh.” You forgot you’d asked that. Stupid omega, you can almost hear him thinking.

“Yes, about that. The simple answer is, I’m going to treat you like an omega should be treated.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I’ll take care of you,” he says. “In all ways. By looking after you, guiding you, comforting you, and of course, disciplining you when I see fit.”

His words dizzy you slightly, affecting you in more ways than one. You find yourself picturing all the ways he’ll fulfil that promise; everything he might do to you. Everything he could do. You swallow, voice thick. “Discipline me how?”

He cocks an eyebrow, unimpressed but amused. “It shouldn’t be a mystery,” he says. “There aren’t as many ways to get through to omega like you as there are of getting through to, say, a beta. You’re wired to require a more…” He tuts, shaking his head, “…hands on approach.”

Oh. Visions of him towering over you, wielding a stick or a whip or any one of the multitudes of weapons you’ve heard are frequently used on omegas, fill your head. Your heart races again, fearful and you instinctively back off a bit. He seems to know exactly what you’re thinking because he sighs, shaking his head. “I’m not going to beat you, omega,” he says.

You blink, surprised and not quite believing. “You’re not?”

“No,” he says. “Why did you think I was? Is that the only way to get through to you?”

“No,” you whisper. “I just heard…”

“Well you heard wrong,” he says, tone final. You nod demurely, no more will to argue. “I’m not some feral wolf chasing lost omegas through the forest. I have more control than that.”

“I’m sorry,” you say. He nods, jaw tense.

“Listen to me,” he continues, voice firm. “I’m never going to beat you with a stick, or whip you, or any of that.” Your eyes widen slightly; that’s exactly what you were thinking. Can he actually read your mind? You stay silent, letting him continue. “I’ll never strike you in anger, either. Now that you’re mine, you are — whether I like it or not — precious to me. I intend to take good care to keep you safe and unsullied.”

“But you will… strike me,” you say softly. You can’t say you’re surprised — or even disappointed. You ignore the way your heart speeds up slightly at the thought of him hitting you — his wide palm clapping against your skin again and again.

“If I have to,” he says. “But we’ll talk about that later.” For the first time he offers what you could almost fool yourself into thinking is a reassuring smile. “For now we have the most important part.”

Your heart starts to race at his words. You know exactly what he’s referring to — you’ve been told of this moment since childhood, both through textbooks at school and scary stories told around the campfire just on the edge of the woods that is completely off limits for omegas. The mating, they call it, is the most important moment of an omega’s life; however long you’ve been with an alpha, you’re not truly their omega until they’ve left that deep, permanent mark on you — the branding. And as scared as you still are of Yunho you know there are far worse alphas to be paired with, so as terrifying at the words mating and branding sound to you, you’re eager to get it over with — to be bonded to Yunho for life, officially claimed. You can deal with Yunho, you think, not least because he’s apparently been literally created by the Gods to be yours. You do not want to deal with the other alphas you see prowling about. This will protect you from that if nothing else.

“Okay,” you say. “I’m ready.”

He looks almost surprised at your obedience and smiles, a little wider this time. “Good,” he says. “I’m glad. I’ll take good care of you.”

You look up, still surprised that a man who’d for so long looked at you with such…vitriol, who’d looked so horrified at being matched with you, would have a single ounce of desire to be nice to you. Certainly not during the first time he takes you. “Really?” You ask.

“Yes,” he says. “A soul bond is rare and if something happens to you, I won’t get another. Plus—” he pauses, sighing like he can’t believe what he’s about to say “—if the Gods put you with me themselves, they must have seen your potential to be the kind of omega I like. So deep down, there probably is some part of you that wants to obey me. I just have to drag it out of you, I think.”

You bite your lip, shivering slightly. For some reason you kind of like that idea; the image of being forced to obey. Physically compelled to listen and revere him. “Yes, alpha.”

“Well,” he says. For once he looks a little unsure. “I guess there’s no point delaying it any further, is there?”

You swallow, understanding immediately what it is. “No, alpha.”

He nods almost grimly, tapping his foot against the wooden floor. “Alright then. We’re going to go to my bedroom now.”

You blink. “We don’t share one?”

His eyes narrow slightly, lips pursing and you instinctively bow your head. “No,” he says. “Not yet. You’ll have your own room until you earn the privilege to sleep with me.”

You nod — you’d heard that before. It’s a common practice for new mates, particularly… unwilling ones, which you suppose he is at least, as admittedly crushing as that is to think.

It’s a crucial rule, your teacher had told you; an easy and blatant mark of who is above and who is beneath. Doesn’t make it very nice to hear though.

“Follow me,” he says.

He starts to walk and, lost in your thoughts, it takes you a second to realise. By the time you scurry after him he’s already noticed and regards you with a stern, but slightly amused expression. “You’re in a daze, omega,” he says. “Try to get out of your head now. Focus on my commands. Let’s go.”

He starts to walk again and this time there’s no delay in your obedience; you start to walk beside him, matching his pace until he stops you, looking irritated. You wonder what you’ve done wrong now — or if you could ever do anything right.

“Did no one teach you about walking with your alpha?” He asks, frowning.

You shrug, shaking your head. “I don’t think so, alpha.”

He sighs. “I will, then,” he says. “When I walk you are to walk half a step behind me. Even if we’re holding hands I will not be seen to allow an omega — my omega, at that — to walk in front of me. Got that?”

You nod, flushing — you’ve never heard that rule, though it’s not entirely foreign to you. Maybe you’d been zoned out when your teacher had gone over it. It wouldn’t be surprising; but in any case you’ve been taught it now so you may as well obey it — and if it makes Yunho like you a little bit more, that’s a bonus. You shuffle behind him, careful never to quite catch up with him and he keeps a close eye on your efforts. You see him nod in satisfaction and allow yourself a small smile. You can do this — you’ve been trained for this. You’re a born and bred omega, and a well-trained one at that. You can obey your alpha with your eyes closed.

Arriving outside the tall oak door, he pauses, turning to you. He lifts a strong, large hand to cup your cheek and you feel a slight jolt when he makes contact. Based on the look on his face, you know he felt it too. He stares at you, eyes narrowed before he exhales. “Soul-tied indeed,” he mutters. “There’s no escape now, then. For either of us.”

“I’ll be good,” you say; the words leave your mouth of their own accord, almost automatically. Yunho is silent for a moment, lips parted in surprise before he chuckles slightly.

“Perhaps training you up won’t be as monumental a task as I’d thought,” he says. “You just need a firm hand, I think.”

You say nothing, unsure how to reply and by now incredibly on-edge.

“Come in.”

He opens the door to reveal his room and you bite back a noise of surprise. You figured his room would be specious, well decorated; this is another level. The only way you could describe it is lavish. Thick, embroidered drapes hang from windows that reach from floor-to-ceiling; meeting the thick, warm carpets that cover the floors. A crackling fire burns on one side of the room, next to an open door leading to a bathroom; on the other side, a king-size bed, richly decorated and surrounded by four intricately carved posters holding up a canopy. After he enters you take a step inside, slightly dazed. Having spent the past few years of your life in the omega dormitories, you’ve never seen anything like this; you’re not sure if this is just the way alphas live or if Yunho is particularly important — either way, this is overwhelming. He watches your reaction with a slight smirk. “What do you think?” He asks.

You nod, swallowing thickly. “I— it’s wonderful, alpha. I’ve never seen something like this.”

“Ah yes,” he says, nodding like he’s just realised. “You’ll have been in the omega dormitories, won’t you? This must be quite the shock.”

“Yeah,” you breathe, still staring open-mouthed around the room.

He chuckles, taking your hand again. “You have plenty of time to admire it later. For now…” He looks you up and down again — he keeps doing that, you think. It’s a little unnerving.

You nod demurely, knowing and accepting the fate on the tip of his tongue. “I’m ready.”

The low sounds of the fire is all that’s audible for a few moments before Yunho nods; as he does, shoulders tensing and untensing slightly, a foreign look crosses his eyes — a darkness; a glint. You gulp, understanding it; not necessarily recognising it consciously, but feeling it in your bones, your veins, the deepest parts of your DNA — the parts that make you an omega. His omega.

“Take off your clothes,” he says, voice dropping. “Let me see you.”

You hurry to obey, pulling off your thin shawl and shimmying out of the sleeves of your dress. At the bodice you falter; hindered slightly by the tight and complex fastenings of your corset. You huff a little, slightly vindicated; you’d told your matron this was too difficult, warmed her it may prove a problem for the alpha you were matched with but she’d slapped you, as hard as someone is legally allowed to slap an omega that’s not theirs, before fastening it tighter as some kind of petty revenge. Trying to get it undone, you look up at Yunho with pleading eyes.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, confused.

“My corset, alpha,” you whisper.

He sighs, biting back a chuckle before rounding you to inspect the fastenings running down your back. “Oh dear,” he says. “They really packed you in there, didn’t they? I feel quite useless at this.”

“You just need to untie it,” you whisper.

He clears his throat, resting two large hands on your delicate hips — you’ve never felt as small as you do now. Even in that massive auditorium. “I can try,” he says quietly.

He sets to work and, to both of your surprise, seems to get the hang of it quickly; skilled fingers undo each fastening with careful efficiency and soon the dress falls off of you entirely, pooling at your feet and leaving you in your underwear. You feel his eyes on you, practically staring a hole through you with the intensity of his gaze. You flush, turning to face him. “Alpha…” you whisper, eyes cast downwards.

You hear him exhale — deep and relieved as if he’d been holding his breath. When you look up you see his eyes are wide, pupils dilated. “You look… exquisite, omega.”

In the dim light of his room, illuminated by the crackling fire, you see him in a way you haven’t before. He almost looks… golden. Your reservations about Yunho aside, you see now why your match with him was created by the Gods — it’s clear that when it comes to this man, everything was. There’s nothing secular about him; not a single hair or pore untouched by divinity. You gulp, stepping forward, heart pounding. “Will you kiss me, alpha?” You ask.

He doesn’t waste a second; he pounces on you quickly and without restraint, attacking your mouth with his, emanating sounds you can only describe as feral. He nips and bites at your lips, running his hands across your partially nude body with growing hunger. You moan into his mouth, breathing in and gasping slightly when his hand closes around your neck, stilling you. He backs up a bit, staring you down with eyes that are now entirely dark.

“Listen to me,” he growls. “You’re my omega and I’m going to make you a good one. You’re going to do everything I say, when I say it. Do you understand?”

You nod, dazed. “Yes, alpha.”

He releases you, sending you staggering backwards and he watches you with an amused smile. You stand still for a second, waiting for his command and he tilts his head. You try not to let your reaction show, but you know what he’s doing. He’s playing with his food.

“Come here.”

You take another hesitant step towards him. He stares deeply into your eyes for a second before a strong hand on your shoulder forces you to your knees. Your head bows instinctively and you rest your hands in your lap like you’ve been taught. From lowered eyes you look up and see him nod in satisfaction. “Very good, omega,” he smiles. “I’m pleased to see you’ve already mastered this position. It will be a familiar one for you.”

You nod, trying to sit a little more straight; with such a… distraction in front of you, staring you down, it could be easy to lose focus, so you make a conscious effort to keep the position — back straightened, head bowed and legs together. He walks a slow circle around you, inspecting your efforts. From his slight nod you guess he’s pleased with them. “Spread your legs a little,” he says softly.

“Yes, alpha.” You shift your knees ever so slightly, creating a slight gap between your legs. He watches you closely as he rounds back to face your front. Taking a step towards you he places his foot between your parted thighs — not kicking or shoving them apart any further, just sitting there, noting the gap between them.

“Good,” he says. “This is the position I want you to remember. The same one you’ve been taught but with your legs spread just enough for me to do this. Do you understand?”

You nod, swallowing thickly. He shakes his head. “Tell me you understand.”

“I understand,” you whisper. At his arched brow you add a hurried “alpha” and he smiles.

“When I tell you to get in position, I want you to do this,” he says. “When I come home from work each day, I want you waiting by the door like this. Alright?”

“Alright,” you whisper.

He stares at you for a moment, face blank but eyes focused, fixed. You’re not sure what he’s doing — examining you? Appreciating you? Planning, maybe? You shift a little, feeling awkward. “Be still,” he says. You whisper an apology and he smiles, holding out his hand.

You take it nervously, allowing him to pull you to your feet with ease. You seem to weigh nothing to him, you think. He leads you carefully to the bed, his grip strong on your hand, and pats the thick blanket folded neatly into each corner. “Come,” he commands softly.

Moving to obey, you find the bed is a little too high — makes sense, you suppose, considering it was built for an alpha. He chuckles, recognising your predicament and grabs you gently, lifting you up and carefully placing you atop the blankets. You blush. “Sorry,” you mutter.

He laughs, shaking his head. “No need to be sorry, sweetheart,” he smiles. He clicks his tongue, thoughtful. “Besides… it’s a pleasant surprise just how light you are.”

“Light?” You repeat.

He hums. “Delicate.”

You bite your lip — a little too hard, apparently, because you soon taste blood. His eyes widen slightly at the sight, flooded with hunger but you know he can control himself — you thank the Gods you’re wolves and not vampires. He clears his throat, looking a little dazed and you smile to yourself. You’re doing that.

“Lie back on the pillow,” he says. “It’s time, omega.”

Ignoring the speeding of your heart, you shuffle back, situating yourself in front of the pillow and slowly lying down. You feel yourself become a little lightheaded as you do; excited and terrified all at once. This is the moment you’ve waited for all your life. To be marked, to be claimed, to be mated. Bound forever. Closing your eyes, you try to steady your breathing — in, out, in, out, you chant to yourself over and over. As you do you feel a large, warm hand place itself gently on your shoulder. You don’t need to open his eyes to see, feel his presence inches from your face. “Keep breathing, omega,” he mutters. His voice is low, deep, alpha.

You lift a shaking hand to place it atop of his — even with your eyes closed you can tell he’s impossibly bigger than you. You nod. “I’m ready.”

It’s silent for a moment before a low, soft growl starts to fill the room. It’s barely audible — you wonder if anyone else would even hear it, or if it’s part of your connection with Yunho you’re just beginning to discover. You open your eyes, adjusting to the sight of him hovering above you. He looks unsure but focused, brimming with strength and desire he’s waiting to unleash. Waiting for what?

You reach a hand out, touching his face; it’s impossibly warm and drenched with sweat. Your voice almost gets caught in your throat but you push it out. “Take me,” you whisper. “Take me, alpha.”

It’s immediately clear that was all he needed; the moment you utter those last two fated syllables, a permission, command and plea at the same time, he pounces, diving into you to take you for his own. Your bra comes off easily, ripped off with his teeth. As they move towards your panties they graze against your skin, leaving a thin trail of blood and you can tell these are not his human teeth. No, Yunho isn’t human right now, but nor is he a wolf — he’s right in the sweet spot where he’s as dominant, controlled and calculated as he is when human, but at the same time sharp, sadistic and utterly feral. The perfect mix; the perfect place. You arch your body up off the bed, offering yourself to him, pulling yourself closer. He digs his teeth into the thin band of your panties, ripping them off and discarding them without a word before his hands grab your hips, shoving them back into the mattress. “Down,” he growls, and his voice is unlike you’ve ever heard it.

Wet, desperate kisses attack every inch of your now entirely bare skin, peppering the light, superficial bites he leaves; enough to hurt and enough to bleed but not enough to count. Not enough to brand you. No, that bite is special, anticipated, sacred — he can’t do it yet. You both know it and he holds himself back with the knowledge.

“Spread your legs,” he orders. “Nice and wide for me.”

Your breath hitches, catching in your throat. Slowly you start to part your legs, dragging them apart nervously. You’re nervous, hesitant; he still hasn’t seen your pussy yet, your most intimate and sacred area that he’s shortly going to claim in its entirety.

You’re terrified; terrified he won’t like it, he’ll think it’s ugly, he’ll think it’s not as good as the omegas he’s fucked before. You know that’s not true, realistically; mated by the gods, he’s wired to want you, need you in every way, every part of you. But no one’s ever seen you like that before — seen you there.

Yunho snarls, not fooled by your efforts to delay it. “Too slow,” he says. He grabs your legs, yanking them apart painfully and you yelp, slipping backwards again.

“Yunho…” you start — then stop. When you look up, Yunho is staring directly at your heat, eyes wide and ablaze, practically salivating. A low growl emanates from his throat, making your hairs stand on end. You shiver.

“Baby,” he says. “You’re perfect. I’m gonna fuck you so hard.”

A whine slips from your mouth, nervous and aroused and he shushes you. “You’ll be fine,” he whispers.

He sits back up, eyes growing dark by the minute as he hurriedly stands, allowing him to remove his pants and underwear. When he gets to the thin white dress shirt, fastened with what, in this daze of need, seems to be hundreds of buttons, he seems to grow impatient — with a low growl he easily rips it open, buttons flying everywhere. He hurriedly discards it, leaving him nude and allowing you to see him fully for the first time. You bite back a moan — he’s beautiful. Every inch of his torso is toned and perfected, skin glistening with sweat; strong, muscular thighs support his weight and as he walks back towards the bed, you see the thick muscles tensing and untensing in his arms. But that’s not where your eyes are drawn; it’s a beautiful sight, but you’re still an omega — a hungry, desperate omega at that, so your gaze is fixed a little lower. His dick is long and impossibly thick, pulsating with desire and already leaking slightly from the angry red tip. It looks painful. Delicious. You inhale sharply, willing it towards you. “Yunho…”

“I’m here,” he mutters, he clambers back onto the bed, hovering on top of you and this time wastes little time. Holding his shaft in his hand, he pumps it once, twice, getting it ready. His eyes are fixed on your entrance, entirely black and you know if this wasn’t your alpha, the one bound to protect and care for you, you’d be utterly terrified. He’s massive and powerful and dwarfs you in every way. He could rip you apart.

“I’m scared,” you whisper. It slips out without your permission but he doesn’t mind. He squeezes your thigh, comforting and possessive.

“I know.” He lines his dick up to your entrance, teasing it with the tip and you jump. You’ve never been touched there before. Not even by yourself. He chuckles, reaching to stroke your hair. “Keep breathing,” he says. “Focus on my voice.”

When he finally pushes in, you feel the true scale of his size for the first time. It forces and stretches you open and you feel like you’re going to burst, come undone at the seams or collapse into yourself entirely. But the same stretch, the same burning feeling is insanely, viscerally pleasurable. It’s unlike anything you’ve felt before, anything you’ve dreamed of — or feared. It’s new and divine and just feels… right. He really was made for you.

He’s taking it slow, you can tell; you feel the way he’s holding himself back, forcing himself to be gentle, and you know that’s probably as painful for him as for you. You see the way his limbs shake as he pushes in, struggling to hold themselves back from pinning you down and splitting you open me you bite your lip. “You can move now,” you say softly, invitingly.

He looks at you quizzically for a moment, brows furrowed, before his lips bloom into an amused, knowing smile. “Omega,” he chuckles. “I’m only halfway in.”

You can’t help it; your jaw drops, falling open in shock. That can’t be right. He can’t be— oh. You look down, seeing the truth of his words. He’s halfway inside and you already feel like this. What the fuck will it feel like when he’s actually, properly in?

You soft whine sounds from the bottom of your throat, a million emotions behind it; fear, desperation, a visceral arousal. “Keep going,” you urge, though half of your brain is screaming at you not to.

Something flashes across his eyes and he shakes his head, squeezing your thigh again a little more harshly. “I’ll decide, omega,” he says. You nod, muttering an apology and he groans. “Fuck, omega. I swear I’m gonna teach you some fuckin’ manners.”

“Alpha—”

“No, not now,” he chuckles, knowing what you were going to ask. “I have a long, long time to do that. But stop trying to tell me what to do. I can control myself but not if you provoke me.”

You gulp, nodding dizzily and lying back. You don’t want to provoke him — not now, anyway. There are other, less dangerous times to piss Yunho off than when he’s about to brand you. He chuckles, pressing a kiss to your lower stomach; it tickles, and you can’t help the giggle that slips out. “Cute,” he says. “I’m gonna get this all the way in now, baby. Hold my hand.”

You hear your heart pounding as he grabs your hand, lacing his fingers through yours. He gives it a comforting, immobilising squeeze before he finally pushes himself in fully. Having already been halfway in, you’d gotten used to the pain, but you can’t help the scream that comes out. Yunho is unreal. Without even moving he’s pressed up hard against your cervix, pushing the limits of what you can take, how far your walls can stretch before breaking. You know it’s close; a wrong or sloppy movement on either of your parts could seriously cut or damage you, and the adrenaline is dizzying. And yet like this — in Yunho’s hold, holding his hand, under his care — you’ve never felt so safe. So secure. So destined.

You’ve known you were an omega since you knew what an omega was — you’d presented as a baby, and spent every moment since then being told and reminded of what you are, what you were bound to be. But you admit there’s been times, moments where you’ve wondered; wondered if this is all you were meant for, wondered if you really had a mate out there — if you even wanted one.

Now though, as Yunho slowly starts to move, stretching and pushing you to the limit yet at the same time producing feelings and sensations you didn’t know were possible; as he moves in and out of you perfectly at ease, as if you were made and moulded for him, the doubt is gone. It’s real. It’s true. You’re the perfect omega, his omega, and you were made for Yunho as much as he was made for you.

Tears prickle at the corners of your eyes, pained by the stretch as much as pleasured. Yunho, now speeding up to almost a rut, coos at you, kissing your tears as they slide down your cheeks. “Good girl,” he breathes. “Fuck, you’re taking me so well. No one’s ever taken me like this.”

You groan, mouth wide open and he roughly presses his lips to yours, effectively silencing you; now each sound you make goes directly into him, each scream released against his lips, into his mouth. You can’t think of any way you could possibly be closer to him. Except…

“It’s almost time,” he grunts. By now his thrusts are hard and relentless, lifting your body from the bed and slamming it back down with ruthless proficiency. You’re on a high; impossibly stretched and unbelievably pleasured, and so is he. He lifts himself up, detaching his mouth from yours and you watch his eyes fix on your bare shoulder. Fear trickles into you, diluted by the mountain of emotions and sensations surrounding it. He’s going to do it now. He’s going to mark you and you’re going to be his. Forever.

“Tell me I can brand you, omega,” he says. “Tell me I can or I won’t be able to do it.”

“You can brand me,” you gasp. “Please, alpha. Make me yours. Mark me.”

He opens his mouth and you see his sharp canines more prominent than ever. He moves to take each of your hands in his, holding you down before he dives in, sinking his teeth into your supple, delicate flesh.

The pain is… unexpected. It hurts, undeniably so, but not in the way you’d expected. It doesn’t feel like you’re being bitten, not exactly; it’s a dull yet piercing pain that perforates and warms you at the same time. It’s not pleasurable or pleasant in any way; it’s just natural. Safe. It almost feels like home.

You close your eyes, riding it out; Yunho keeps fucking you through it, which certainly makes it easier, even as his grip on your delicate wrist turns almost bruising. You’re not sure how long he’s biting you for, how long you stay like this; seconds or minutes baby, but you know better than to interrupt him. This is a delicate, ancient process that he knows more about than you do. You just have to take it.

He comes up eventually, eyes wild with desire and blood coating his lips — your blood. You know he’s close to wolf now; he’s only refraining from transforming because he’s still inside you, still fucking you and mating you for the first time. He keeps going, strangled, feral sounds accompanying every rough movement until he comes with a yell, unloading in you, but you’re so dizzy from the bite, from the feeling of blood trickling down your shoulder, that you barely notice until he pulls out, gathering you into his arms. He runs a finger across the mark in your shoulder, inspecting the wound. It’s already healing slightly. The scar will be beautiful.

“My baby,” he mutters. “My mate. Thank you.”

“Yunho,” you whisper. Your voice is hoarse, throat scratchy and painful from the screams and cries you’d let out as he fuck you and he notices, shushing you softly.

“Don’t try to talk yet,” he says, chuckling slightly. “I have a loud one, don’t I?”

You flush, bowing your head. “Sorry.”

“Baby, no,” he laughs. “It’s a good thing. The best, actually. Makes me feel good.”

It’s silent for a moment; a warm and comfortable silence, before you speak. “I didn’t think we’d be bonded,” you admit. “I thought you hated me.”

He hums, thinking for a moment. His hand runs up and down your back in soothing motions as he holds you. “I thought so too,” he says. “But I can see now that I… could never have hated you. Soul ties are just misunderstood. They’re so rare that not much is known about them and they’re not taught, so I… I felt that powerful feeling for you and mistook it for hate.”

“So it wasn’t hate,” you say.

“Of course it wasn’t,” he chuckles. “You’re my omega. Not just because the pack leader said so or anything, but because the Gods said so. That’s everything. And as much as I might want to set you straight a bit—” he pauses, tapping a finger against your cheek lightly, “—and believe me, I will set you straight. The feeling I felt wasn’t love. It was need.”

You nod, humming in content. Your eyes close for a second, heavy with exhaustion from your exertions before they open again. “Shouldn’t I go back to my room now?”

He hesitates, thinking. He’d been the one to insist on that rule earlier, but now… “According to the rules you should,” he says. He pauses, pondering for a moment and sighs, shaking his head like he can’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. “But I want you to stay. Will you stay?”

You smile, nuzzling into his chest happily. He runs a hand through your hair, damp with sweat. You hear the steady beat of his heart and feel the rise and fall of his chest, lifting you up and setting you down with each breath.

“Yes, Yunho,” you whisper. “I’ll stay.”

—————

thank you for reading! again, this isn’t proof read so please forgive errors. i’ve also never written werewolf/omegaverse fics so forgive me if there’s inaccuracies. please reblog and comment if you enjoyed. requests are OPEN. love🖤🖤🖤

[howifeltabouthim]

After all, how is any girl really to know anything of a man's life?

Anthony Trollope, from Phineas Finn

[zinzabee]

Hi @birthday-cake-rockz! I hope its okay if I answer your questions here in a separate post. I definitely have some tips and thoughts for help with drawing Raph.

First of all, I recommend This free PDF of the book "Morpho - Fat and Skin Folds: Anatomy for Artist" for those who are interested in really getting familiar & comfortable with drawing larger/fat/thick body types. (Make sure you click the second link, the first one is broken)

Now for Raph specifically, I do have a one very important shape I use when I draw him that might be helpful:

A lot of people like to associate diamonds with Raph as much as squares, and I think that's accurate to his design, too! The boy has a lot of serious neck muscle going on, and so his trapezius muscles and those surround it are gonna be more visible. Which actually creates a diamond shape around his collarbone and upper body. If you follow along with the angles of his shell, you can create this shape to help give him that stronger upper body look!

As for his leg proportions, that's a bit tricky because unlike his brothers, Raph's lower limbs are disproportionate to his upper limbs. It's a case of "you have to understand the rules of anatomy in order to break them".

SO!! Real quick anatomy lesson that I learned in art school: the average adult body should be about 7 heads high. Because the boys are teenagers, theirs come up to be about 6 heads high, which I credit to their younger age. But as you can see by the red marked areas, everything is still in normal proportion.

Raph, on the other hand, is different.

Raph's arms are as long as his body is, and his legs are much shorter than his arms. Because of this, he's actually disproportionate to his brothers, since his height is only about 5 and a half heads tall, rather than 6 or 7. In particular, his thighs seem to be unequally shorter in length than the calves. I think its important to keep that in mind when draw him! Because even if you know he's made up of all these thick, blocky shapes, if you try to give him the normal proportions you would Leo or Donnie or Mikey, it might still not look right. He's a stocky lad, and his upper body strength is showcased by these design choices.

Hope all this was helpful for you guys. Now go be free and draw him to your hearts content! :)

Additionally, here are several other links to posts people have created that give references of Raph and the other turtles! I'm sure these will be a big help, too.

High Quality Reference Sheets of everyone, including April and Splinter

Turtle Side Profiles Specifically

Multi-Angle Ref Sheets

RAPH'S SHELL

MASTERPOSTS by @melancholic-rowen: RAPH | LEO | DONNIE | MIKEY | APRIL | CASEY | CASEY JUNIOR

[satanfemme]

The bill states that when it comes to transgender people, “The term ‘equal’ does not mean ‘same’ or ‘identical’,” which raises the question: what does “equal” even mean? The bill does not define the word, only declares that “equal” no longer means “same” or “identical” within the state of Iowa for transgender people. When the sponsor was asked directly what the word “equal” means in this bill, the representative Heather Hora answered: “Equal would mean … um … I would assume that equal would mean … I don’t know exactly in this context.”

[...]

The bill’s sponsor is not content with redefining the word equal, however; the bill goes on to proclaim that “separate” is “not inherently unequal”. One opponent to the bill pointed to the cruel history of the doctrine of “separate but equal” and the attempt to revive that history with a new, Republican-condoned target. Though the new definition of the word “equal” and the revival of the “separate but equal” doctrine only applies to transgender people, the precedents that make up the bedrock of equality for all are threatened. Is it so important for Republicans to get a political victory against transgender people in the state that they are willing to go this far?

another important article from Erin Reed, which not only highlights the current anti-trans movement in Iowa but also points out how current anti-trans legislation could put even more marginalized groups at risk

[22ayla19]

Hiii can I request a fluff scenario in which Kayden Break who, when asked what his sexual orientation is, simply responds "my woman". I read that somewhere and I forgot lol. Thanksssssss

Sometimes Kartein wondered what Kayden's sexuality was. Well, considering that he only fights, no one knew anything about his personal life. So he decided to ask and satisfy his curiosity.

- Listen, Kayden, what is your orientation? - Kartein did not lead the conversation around the bush, he took it and asked directly. Jiwoo was not at home anyway, so they could open up.

- My woman, - Kayden answered without hesitation while he was training his control of his powers, only after a couple of seconds it dawned on him that Kartein had asked, - Why did you even ask that?

- Do you have a girlfriend? - Kartein was already in shock. He didn’t believe that such a crazy person like Kayden had a girlfriend.

- Well, we're almost married. And yet, what was the question before? - Kayden clearly couldn’t understand what the question was about.

Kartein completely fell out of reality; he didn’t expect that this crazy man was almost married, and he himself was single.

Why he is “almost” married is a separate question. Because Kayden promised you that he would marry you as soon as he defeated someone from the TOP 10, and here he is wounded after an unequal fight with three from the ranking at once. It turned out ugly, but this is his goal at the moment, because he wants to marry you, the one to whom he entrusted his life.

- Who, anyway, is she? Human or awakened? - Kartein asked, recovering from shock.

- (Y/N) from the TOP 50 world ranking.

Kartein's shock could not be described in words. He knew you as a strong awakened one, but for you to be a girlfriend, almost a wife, Kayden Break was too much for him. Many men tried to get your attention, but out of all the men, you chose Kayden. Kartein doesn’t even want to ask how you met, this will already be a fierce combo-shock in a day.