#supply side

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 13, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 14, 2024

There are really two major Republican political stories dominating the news these days. The more obvious of the two is the attempt by former president Donald Trump and his followers to destroy American democracy. The other story is older, the one that led to Trump but that stands at least a bit apart from him. It is the story of a national shift away from the supply-side ideology of Reagan Republicans toward an embrace of the idea that the government should hold the playing field among all Americans level.

While these two stories are related, they are not the same.

For forty years, between 1981, when Republican Ronald Reagan took office, and 2021, when Democrat Joe Biden did, the Republicans operated under the theory that the best way to run the country was for the government to stay out of the way of market forces. The idea was that if individuals could accumulate as much money as possible, they would invest more efficiently in the economy than they could if the government regulated business or levied taxes to invest in public infrastructure and public education. The growing economy would result in higher tax revenues, enabling Americans to have both low taxes and government services, and prosperity would spread to everyone. 

But the system never worked as promised. Instead, during that 40-year period, Republicans passed massive tax cuts under Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump, and slashed regulations. A new interpretation of antitrust laws articulated by Robert Bork in the 1980s permitted dramatic consolidation of corporations, while membership in labor unions declined. The result was that as much as $50 trillion moved upward from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. 

To keep voters on board the program that was hollowing out the middle class, Republicans emphasized culture wars, hitting hard on racism and sexism by claiming that taxes were designed by Democrats to give undeserving minorities and women government handouts and promising their evangelical voters they would overturn the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion. Those looking for tax cuts and business deregulation depended on culture warriors and white evangelicals to provide the votes to keep them in power.

But the election of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 proved that Republican arguments were no longer effective enough to elect Republican presidents. So in 2010, with the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission decision, the Supreme Court freed corporations to pour unlimited money into U.S. elections. That year, under Operation REDMAP, Republicans worked to dominate state legislatures so they could control redistricting under the 2010 census, yielding extreme partisan gerrymanders that gave Republicans disproportionate control. In 2013 the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision greenlighted the voter suppression Republicans had been working on since 1986.  

Even so, by 2016 it was not at all clear that the cultural threats, gerrymandering, and voter suppression would be enough to elect a Republican president. People forget it now because of all that has come since, but in 2016, Trump offered not only the racism and sexism Republicans had served up for decades, but also a more moderate economic program than any other Republican running that year. He called for closing the loopholes that permitted wealthy Americans to evade taxes, cheaper and better healthcare than the Democrats had provided with the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., and addressing the long backlog of necessary repairs to our roads and bridges through an infrastructure bill. 

But once in office, Trump threw economic populism overboard and resurrected the Republican emphasis on tax cuts and deregulation. His signature law was the 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy at a cost of at least $1.9 trillion over ten years. At the same time, Trump continued to feed his base with racism and sexism, and after the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, he increasingly turned to his white nationalist base to shore up his power. On January 6, 2021, he used that base to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

Republican senators then declined to convict Trump of that attempt in his second impeachment trial, apparently hoping he would go away. Instead, their acquiescence in his behavior has enabled him to continue to push the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election. But to return to power, Trump has increasingly turned away from establishment Republicans and has instead turned the party over to its culture war and Christian nationalist foot soldiers. Now Trump has taken over the Republican National Committee itself, and his supporters threaten to turn the nation over to the culture warriors who care far more about their ideology than they do about tax cuts or deregulation.

The extremism of Trump’s base is hugely unpopular among general voters. Most significantly, Trump catered to his white evangelical base by appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and in 2022, when the court did so, the dog caught the car. Americans overwhelmingly support reproductive freedoms, and Republicans are getting hammered over the extreme abortion bans now operative in Republican-dominated states. Now Trump and a number of Republicans have tried to back away from their antiabortion positions, infuriating antiabortion activists. 

It is hard to see how the Republican Party can appeal to both Trump’s base and general voters at the same time. 

That split dramatically weakens Trump politically while he is in an increasingly precarious position personally. He will, of course, go on trial on Monday, April 15, for alleged crimes committed as he interfered in the 2016 election. At the same time, the $175 million appeals bond he posted to cover the judgment in his business fraud trial has been questioned and must be justified by April 14. The court has scheduled a hearing on the bond for April 22. And his performance at rallies and private events has been unstable. 

He seems a shaky reed on which to hang a political party, especially as his MAGA Republicans have proven unable to manage the House of Representatives and are increasingly being called out as Russian puppets for their attacks on Ukraine aid.  

Regardless of Trump’s future, though, the Reagan Era is over. 

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have quite deliberately rejected the economic ideology that concentrated wealth among the 1%. On their watch, the federal government has worked to put money into the hands of ordinary Americans rather than the very wealthy. With Democrats and on occasion a few Republicans, they have passed legislation to support families, dedicate resources to making sure people with student debt are receiving the correct terms of their loans (thus relieving significant numbers of Americans), and invested in manufacturing, infrastructure, and addressing climate change. They have also supported unions and returned to an older definition of antitrust law, suing Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple and allowing the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices.

Their system has worked. Under Biden and Harris the U.S. has had unemployment rates under 4% for 26 months, the longest streak since the 1960s. Wages for the bottom 80% of Americans have risen faster than inflation, chipping away at the huge disparity between the rich and the poor that the policies of the past 40 years have produced. 

Today, in an interview with Jamie Kitman of The Guardian, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain, who negotiated landmark new union contracts with the country’s Big Three automakers, explained that the world has changed: “Workers have realized they’ve been getting screwed for decades, and they’re fed up.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[hinamie]

I don't want to regret the way I lived

[commandertartarsmoocher]

The Watchtower

[tj-crochets]

I got a little punch needle kit! It was fun but I’m hoping there are punch needles that are more comfortable to use, the one that came with the kit fit my hands weirdly

[onefey]

i love acht's vibe. it's literally just, local nonbinary octopus enjoys standing around in elevator doing jack shit. ends up constantly third-wheeling. it's the best.

[cupiidzbow]

i forget there interests I don’t really talk about to other people or keep to a minimum bc I know they’re not the most conventional but I have a huge special interest in crayola art supplies/and collecting and I have almost every recent release of specialty crayon and I get so excited when they release new ones . I got so excited recently bc they just released swirl crayons ( I think they’re a revival from a 90s version) but I’m literally so fucking excited you don’t get it. you don’t even know. Sorry I wanted to ramble. Hark! to my completely unrelated tumblr blog I go!☝🏽

[clydimos]

I dapple in a few fandoms…

[vickyvicarious]

The Count's warning came into my mind, but I took a pleasure in disobeying it. The sense of sleep was upon me, and with it the obstinacy which sleep brings as outrider. The soft moonlight soothed, and the wide expanse without gave a sense of freedom which refreshed me. I determined not to return to-night to the gloom-haunted rooms, but to sleep here, where, of old, ladies had sat and sung and lived sweet lives whilst their gentle breasts were sad for their menfolk away in the midst of remorseless wars.

Jonathan's stubborn defiance of Dracula's edict here is followed very shortly afterwards by another passage aligning him with peaceful, loving, lonely ladies of old.

And then who should come upon him but vicious, 'loving', companionable ladies of old, intent on defying Dracula themselves? Women whose laughter is like music.

In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. [...] They whispered together, and then they all three laughed—such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of water-glasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on. One said:— "Go on! You are first, and we shall follow; yours is the right to begin." The other added:— "He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all."

Throughout this entire encounter, in fact, Jonathan and the ladies are aligned. Jonathan lays still, frozen in a state of hypnotic anticipation - and the vampire who is to bite him first is very deliberately slow in her approach. She pauses multiple times to savor both the experience of being able to defy Dracula by biting his guest (as Jonathan took pleasure in sleeping where he was told not to), and to linger in her own anticipation of the bite.

The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer—nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited—waited with beating heart.

When Dracula arrives, Jonathan's attention is focused on how his hand grabs her neck. It's the culmination of the snatch at his own neck that the crucifix warded off before. It's all the violence he feared being unleashed upon himself:

When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat. I drew away, and his hand touched the string of beads which held the crucifix. [May 8]

As my eyes opened involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant's power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires; the thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal. With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back; it was the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves. [May 16]

Dracula himself cements the connection between Jonathan and these women. He's already shown his dominance over the women and asserted his possession of Jonathan. Then he stares at Jonathan just before he speaks of his past with them. He even uses the same language he weaponized against Jonathan the other day, the 'is it not so?'

Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper:— "Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will."

So much about this scene tells us these women are Jonathan's future. Not just that they will be in his future, that he will be given to them when Dracula is done with him. No, first he spends all that time imagining himself in their place as they would have been in the past. And then all of these connections creep up to suggest he will be in their place in the future as well. Dracula 'loved' them once, just as he 'loves' Jonathan now. Dracula will be done with him eventually, just as he was done with these women.

And then Jonathan will be given to them, cast aside with the rest of them, left behind to laugh together like a terrible sweet song, as the man who 'loved' them all is away waging his remorseless war on England.

[yuttikkele]

i like how while the dsmp was going on we were all like “awww the brothers! ctommy and cwilbur the brothers!!!” and now we look back and all collectively say, “their relationship was incredibly toxic, actually.”

[flowerakatsuka]

here's the sapphics i promised for yuri day!! 😊💕

[introspectivememories]

one thing about me is that if im writing an avatar (2009) fic, the earth is not dying. im so sorry it's my least favorite plot point in the movies. why did cameron write that in????

[civilization-illstayrighthere]

Hey so I’ve mentioned this a lot of times on my main blog, but I wanted to put this out over here since it is Hallow’s Eve. I always give out little tchotchkes on Halloween along with candy. This year, I’ve completely switched over to 100% doohickeys and doodads— think mechanical pencils, shaped erasers, little notebooks, squishes, vampire teeth and spiders rings and all. It started years ago in college when I signed up for a dorm Halloween event where kids from an area that was too dangerous to really trick or treat through got bussed in to trick or treat at our dorm. I bought some candy and dollar store Halloween themed stuff with what i had. And you know what the kids went ape shit over?

Motherfucking. Mechanical. PENCILS!!

These kids could not get enough of them. They literally went “PENCILS??!” I had never seen kids get so hyped up for pencils lmao. They were the first things to go. Candy is fleeting; the little pencils you can bring to school to flex are eternal, until you inevitably lose one of the refill parts and then they aren’t but listen, in that one moment they are infinite. And its nice thinking that maybe some kids who don’t always have access to school supplies not only get them, but get them in fun shapes and designs.

Anyway. I recommend people to give out fun stuff like this not just because kids seem to genuinely enjoy them, but also because there’s this thing called the Teal Pumpkin Project here in America. You can put out a teal pumpkin to show that you are giving away non-candy items and sign your address up so parents of children with allergies know that there are houses their kids can safely and happily trick or treat at! It’s a win-win! Plus, if you accidentally bought too much, it’s not like candy— just pack it away, pencils and fidget spinners will be good next year, too! :)

[sysig]

Moomin. Moomin in Minecraft. please?

Day 16 - Are you new to the valley?

[thetomorrowshow]

Whumptober 7 - only for emergencies

title: in which gem is the only one with normal eyes

fandom: hermitcraft smp

cw: blood and injuries, mild gore, mild cannibalism (idk if it really counts as cannibalism tho...)

~

“Oh, we’ll be out of here pretty quick!” Scar declared confidently. “Xisuma won’t rest until he finds us.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Pearl questioned. Gem elbowed her.

Scar just waved her off. “If he doesn’t, then I have a back-up plan. But only for emergencies, I’m sure it’ll never come to that!”

They were stuck in here, in this concrete room, a sink and a bucket in the corner. The door was heavy and locked; the only comfort they had were three ragged blankets, which they had each dragged to separate spots in the room, marking their claim for somewhere to rest.

Gem had never been kidnapped before. Not officially, by someone who wasn’t a Hermit. But there was a first time for everything!

“I’m sorry, guys,” Pearl said after a long moment, the little feelers on her head twitching. “I shouldn’t have gone out in public with y’all.”

“Don’t say that,” Gem reprimanded, smacking Pearl on the arm.

“It wouldn’t have been the same without you!” insisted Scar.

“I just . . . if I hadn’t, then maybe—”

“Then we wouldn’t have gotten to go on this fun field trip!”

Scar grinned. “I love fun field trips. Don’t you, Pearl?”

Pearl rolled her eyes, but at least she was smiling. “Whatever.”

“My mom packed me cookies for this field trip,” Scar stage-whispered to Gem. “But I’m willing to trade.”

“My mom just gave me money to buy food.”

“Oh, that’s way better! Now my sandwich looks boring.”

“What kind of sandwich?”

“Classic peanut butter. But I’ve also—”

“I didn’t think I was kidnapped with children,” Pearl said drily. “Do you two mind?”

Scar grimaced. “I think we made the bus driver mad.”

“We? That was all—”

“I wish the torture would start, already.”

-

They came for Pearl a couple of hours later, by Gem’s watch.

They’d been out on the Hub for a game of lazer tag, of all things. It was supposed to be Gem, Pearl, and Impulse, but Impulse had dropped out last second, and Scar had happened to have a coupon to the lazer tag place, so the three of them went instead.

There was another group in the arena with them, college-age kids, and they all managed to have a good time together. They had seemed like nice kids.

Gem would never stop berating herself for not paying much attention to the way one of them kept staring at Pearl’s antennae. People noticed her—it wasn’t normal at all for an alien to be found on a public world. They usually kept to themselves, as far as Gem knew.

She’d never met one other than Pearl, at any rate, nor had she known anyone who had. In fact, many people didn’t believe they even existed. The Hermitcraft server was split on the issue, with certain people like Ren and Keralis sure of their existence, and others like Cleo and Mumbo fairly dubious.

Pearl had shown up near the beginning of Season 8, and that had put a definitive end to that casual debate.

Gem had honestly forgotten how uncommon aliens were. When you lived with one like Pearl for as long as she had, it became normal. When Pearl had asked about lazer tag, she hadn’t hesitated to find a place where they could go play. She hadn’t even thought about Pearl’s less common features.

“We should’ve seen this coming,” Gem said now, fiddling with the band of her watch. She’d noticed the way that kid was looking at Pearl, but she hadn’t thought anything of it. How could she have ignored it?

Scar shrugged. “Yeah. I forgot that aliens aren’t a thing.”

“Me too.”

“Are you keeping track of how long she’s gone?”

Gem nodded. “Forty minutes, now. How long do you think until Doc and Xisuma find us?”

“Well, they took us to another world,” Scar said contemplatively. “Last time someone got kidnapped, it was . . . Grian, I think? And that only lasted a couple of days, Xisuma tracked him down fast.”

“Do people get kidnapped a lot on Hermitcraft?”

“Usually one per season, at least! Didn’t you notice when I got kidnapped last season?”

“You—what?”

Scar waved nonchalantly. “Yes, yes, I missed a Boatem company meeting for it! I was gone for . . . a week? Maybe less.”

Now that he mentioned it, she did vaguely remember hearing that Scar spent an extended period of time off-world. She didn’t know that he’d been kidnapped, though.

“So it took Xisuma a week to find you?” she said, skipping over Scar’s kidnapping for now.

“Oh, no. Xisuma didn’t find me, I broke out. I mostly stuck around so long because I needed a vacation.”

“So . . . he might not find us within the week?”

“He will! He usually figures it out, at least.”

Gem groaned in frustration, buried her face in her knees. “I hope Pearl doesn't mind waiting.”

She was really trying not to think about Pearl, about what they might have been doing to her. Pearl was strong, that was for sure, but Gem had never seen her in a situation like this. Were they experimenting on her? Observing her?

There was surely some black market out there for aliens. Would it come to that? Were they just showing Pearl to potential buyers?

Were they hurting her?

She couldn’t let herself think about it. Hopefully, Pearl would be returned to them. It was silly to think she wouldn’t be—they were presumably using Gem and Scar as leverage to get Pearl to do what they wanted. As long as the two of them were still here and fine, Pearl was likely also still here somewhere, and not auctioned off to some highest bidder.

That was what was important. Pearl was here, and they were here, and Xisuma was going to get them out of there.

-

If Gem hadn’t been told, she probably wouldn’t have guessed that Pearl was an alien.

There were plenty of hybrids on Hermitcraft—avian, blaze, dog—, so Gem would have willingly believed that Pearl was some kind of bug hybrid. It wasn’t too far-fetched. She had antennae, and spines on her arms, she could crawl up walls.

The only thing that gave her pause was her eyes.

Pearl’s eyes reflected a galaxy. They spun with stars and planets and darkness, and Gem once spent all day comparing an image of their galaxy to the one in Pearl’s eyes and had found nothing similar in them. She wondered sometimes if the galaxy changed, if there was any way to map what her eyes displayed.

She wondered what Pearl saw.

Her eyes were the most beautiful things Gem had ever seen, and now, as she gently brushed Pearl’s hair back from her forehead, she wished she would open those eyes.

“Why are they keeping us around?” Scar murmured, tucking his blanket around Pearl. They only had the one thin blanket each, but Scar just buttoned up his shirt to protect against the cold.

“I don’t know, but I’m not complaining.”

Pearl groaned, shifted just slightly in Gem’s arms. “It’s because of me,” she said, not opening her eyes.

“Hm?”

“I get energy. From people. They want me to be . . . healthy.”

“Oh,” Scar said. “You’re an extrovert?”

Pearl snorted, finally opened her eyes. Yep, those stars still spun. “I draw energy from people,” she clarified. “It’s how I stay alive, being near others. They keep you here so that I can eat your delicious energy.”

“Yum,” Gem said.

“Yum yum,” Pearl confirmed. Her antennae wiggled. “I absorb it through my antennae.”

Pearl already looked a little healthier than she had when they first threw her back in the cell, and sure enough, Gem was feeling a bit sleepy.

She hadn’t looked too roughed-up, thankfully. A couple of bandages on her inner elbows and hands, a woozy look on her face. Just some tests run, probably. She’d been gone for about six hours.

But this was only the first day. What would happen tomorrow?

“Maybe we should break ourselves out,” Gem suggested. “It can’t be that hard, right? How many guards were there, Pearl?”

Pearl shrugged, her eyes slipping closed again.

Scar tugged on his sleeves. “We should wait,” he said. “I mean, Xisuma’s going to find us any day!”

Gem bit her tongue. She didn’t like to sit around and wait. She liked to get to the action, do things herself, make a push when others weren’t expecting it.

But Scar felt like they should wait, and they weren’t hurting Pearl too badly. It wouldn’t be the end of the world to wait.

Gem clenched her fist and just pulled Pearl closer.

-

“You know the drill, up against the wall.”

Every day, three people entered the room.

Scar and Gem would scoot to the back of the cell, sitting on the floor with their hands above their heads, pressed to the wall. One man would stand close to them, a stun gun trained on them. The other two would haul Pearl up by her arms and leave, the third backing up behind them. The third man always locked the door.

Gem could easily take out three men. No problem.

Every day, three people entered the room. Four went out.

This was the seventh day, and she was getting really sick of waiting.

“I’m gonna go for it tomorrow,” she told Scar. Scar shook his head rapidly, hiding a yawn.

“No—no, we should wait,” he insisted. “It’s only been a week, Xisuma’s—”

“You said to wait a week,” Gem countered. “I waited a week. Nobody’s found us.”

“We don’t have any weapons!”

“All of the guards have swords and stun guns. I’m GeminiSlay, I can take one down with my bare hands, then take his weapon!”

“I—look, I have a plan if it gets bad,” Scar said, wringing his hands. “But it isn’t bad, yet, and we just have to wait a little longer.”

Gem sighed. Sure, it wasn’t too bad so far, but Pearl was still suffering.

She now had dark bruises trailing up the insides of her arms, the evidence of many blood draws or IVs. Clinical stitched-up lines marked her arms and bare feet, and Gem was sure that she’d been cut open and stitched back up in more places than that, but she held her clothes closed (her shirt had been sliced down the back for easy removal) and shook her head whenever Gem asked if she wanted help with wounds.

She didn’t really talk much, not anymore. She just rested against their shoulders and slept. Gem and Scar usually fell asleep quickly, her drain on their energy pulling them down as well.

Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it could be, but it was still bad. They had spent days here, leaning on one another, their energy dwindling more and more as Pearl required more from them. They only got fed once a day, and the sink in the corner of the room provided water but there was nothing to drink with, and cupping their hands barely got anything.

Plus, Gem had a base to be building. She didn’t have weeks to spend locked up in here.

“I’m going to attack,” Gem decided. Scar grimaced, buried his face into his knees. “Tomorrow, when they come to get Pearl. If you want to help, you can.”

Scar didn’t respond.

So Gem just settled in with her singular blanket and started planning.

-

It went perfectly.

Until it didn’t.

Gem launched herself at the first guard through the door, wresting his stun gun from his grip. She turned it on him, holding down the trigger until he was writhing on the ground. Then she hit the following guard in the face with the hilt of the gun—and she aimed for the third one—

But it wasn’t right.

There wasn’t just a third guard.

A fourth guard followed in, then a fifth.

Coming straight for her.

Before Gem knew what was happening, she was down, electricity burning through her spasming body. She gasped—her vision went red, flashing, the only sound that echoed through her ears was a distant screaming—

Then it ended, and Gem took in a ragged breath, the world returning under layers of static.

“No more standing, for this one,” a too-loud voice growled. Gem wrenched open her eyes, looked up—

A blurry guard was holding a club over her leg—

He swung, landed with a deafening crack, and Gem screamed and screamed and screamed.

She couldn’t breathe past the pain for far too long. Long enough that black spots floated in front of her eyes, long enough that her chest strained with the lack of oxygen. She gritted her teeth hard enough that one of them gave under the strain, but after several swelling moments, she managed to draw in a breath.

“Okay, can you hear me? Gem, Gem, how many fingers am I holding up?”

She blinked several times, but couldn’t quite keep her eyes open. It hurt so much, sickening pulses spreading out from her left leg, and then it hurt even worse and fire flashed through her brain—

“It’s me, it’s okay, I’m just—I think it’s broken, and we should probably set it but I don’t know how to do that—can you look at me, Gem?”

“Hurts,” she managed, tears squeezing out of her closed eyes.

“I know, I know . . . oh, Gem, oh, this is bad—this is so bad—”

Gem swallowed, then finally forced her eyes open.

Scar was there, leaning over her, hands fluttering as he tried to decide what to do first. Eventually, he just kneeled beside her head, pulling her into his lap. Gem couldn’t restrain a small noise in the back of her throat as even that movement shifted her leg a tiny bit, but she leaned into Scar, desperate for any comfort that might help ease the pain. He wiped her forehead with his sleeve, brushing back strands of hair.

“Oh, geez. I’m sorry, Gem. This is pretty bad, huh? I’ve got you, don’t worry.”

“I’m worrying,” she choked out. Scar chuckled nervously.

“Yeah. Yeah, me too.”

-

Gem slept most of that day, but by the evening, she was more-or-less conscious and able to think through the pain. Her leg was definitely broken, but they didn’t dare set it, not without a doctor present.

She and Scar didn’t talk. Scar sat in the back corner and picked at his nails, glancing around anxiously every once in a while. Gem rested on the ground, trying not to so much as twitch her leg.

When Pearl was thrown back in, though, they were silent for a different reason.

One of her antennae was missing.

It was cut off, messy stitches closing the wound, and Gem could do nothing but gape as Pearl lay in a slumped heap on the floor, her singular antenna barely twitching.

“Oh, Pearl,” Scar said at long last, breaking the silence and diving to Pearl’s side. “Oh, Pearl. I’m so sorry.”

Pearl’s shoulders trembled in a move so foreign that Gem had never seen it before, couldn’t reconcile it with her Pearl—

She was crying. Gem saw it, briefly, as Scar lifted her into his lap—Pearl’s eyes leaked sparkling tears, each one like a miniature star rolling down her cheek.

Then Pearl’s face was hidden in Scar’s chest, and Gem almost believed that she had imagined it. Pearl didn’t cry—all the time that they’ve been here, she’d smiled and laughed almost like it was any other day (albeit more tired and with a few more winces).

If Pearl was crying, that meant things were really bad.

“They—” Pearl choked out, voice muffled by Scar’s shirt.

“Sh, sh,” he hushed. “We’ve got you.”

“They—they’re mapping my eyes,” she cried. “They can’t—they’ll find—they’ll find my home!”

Gem had never asked Pearl where she came from, how she found herself on Hermitcraft, and she never shared that information voluntarily.

Maybe it was to protect her past.

Maybe it was to protect her family.

“Scar,” Gem whispered. When he looked up, she tried to convey to him that this was serious, far too serious to wait any longer. She nodded her head toward Pearl, then toward her own leg.

Scar’s face fell. He bit his lip, glanced between Pearl and Gem.

After a moment, he nodded to himself, coming to some sort of decision.

“I’ll get us out of here,” Scar murmured, gently stroking Pearl’s hair. “I’ve got it, don’t you worry about a thing.”

-

When the guards came in the next morning, Scar didn’t move from his spot against the left wall of the room, swathed in the darkest shadows that the cell had.

“Against the back wall,” the one with the stun gun commanded, aiming it at him.

Scar smiled, just visible in the darkness. It was a smile that would be considered friendly, jovial, if the person didn’t know Scar.

Gem knew Scar. She recognized that smile from a million miles away. It was the smile he wore when he was about to close a shady deal, when someone played right into his hands, when he was in games of death.

It was hungry.

“Move!”

“No, thank you,” said Scar cordially. “I think you’ll move, actually. Right back out of here, if you want to live.”

Gem blinked, surprised at his level threats. She hugged Pearl a bit tighter, her friend limp in her arms.

The guard snorted. “Yeah, right. You have until the count of three to get against that wall.”

Scar sighed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said regretfully.

“One.”

“Y’know, it’s always count of three. Why not count of five? Or six?”

“Two.”

“Just wondering! Gem, you might want to close your eyes.”

“Three.”

The guard strode toward Scar, gun out, finger on the trigger.

Gem did not close her eyes. Pearl didn’t look, face still buried in Gem’s shoulder, but Gem watched. She wasn’t afraid of a little bloodshed, and she had no clue what Scar was planning.

Did he really think that he could take the guards on his own, when Gem had failed so definitively just the day before? What did he have that she didn’t?

Suddenly, Scar’s eyes shone from the shadows.

And they shone blue.

Scar leapt at the guard, fangs—since when did he have fangs?—bared in a snarl, and Gem barely had time to blink before Scar’s teeth were ripping into the guard’s throat, tearing it out entirely with frankly impressive jaw strength.

The other two men shouted—one guard got out his own stun gun and hit Scar with a bolt of electricity, but Scar took it in stride without so much as a flinch. His skin rippled, fading blue to match his eyes, and as Gem watched, leathery blue wings burst from his back, shredding his shirt.

The guards barely had a chance to scream before Scar was on top of them, slashing through their flesh with his sharp teeth and black claws (sprouting from his fingertips, still growing longer and longer). He destroyed them in a matter of seconds, blood and viscera flying everywhere, spraying across Gem’s face. She choked, wiped off her eyes, then noticed, with a sense of growing horror, that Scar had stopped to—to eat one of the bodies, digging a hole into his chest and pulling out fistfuls of flesh with reckless abandon.

She opened her mouth to call to him, but no sound came out. Her lips trembled, her breath caught in her throat.

Was this creature still Scar? Blue and terrifying, wings flapping and long claws stuffed into a body, his pointed teeth dripping with blood. His hair was the same, his features still Scar’s (but for the eyes, piercing and ice-blue), the scars on his face unchanged.

Would he recognize her if she spoke to him? Or would he attack them, too?

How had Scar become this—this monster?

Another guard ran up to the cell, but instead of entering, they slammed the door shut, locking it.

That didn’t seem to do more than mildly annoy Scar and distract him from his meal. He growled animalistically, then scampered (and he moved oddly, launching himself from all-fours to flight in a couple of steps, his hands and feet pushing him along even as his wings carried him) to the door. Without warning, he stabbed his claws into the metal of the door and tore through it like it was nothing more than a leaf of paper.

Then he turned, his glowing eyes lighting on Gem and Pearl.

Gem couldn’t help it—she flinched away, pulling Pearl closer to herself. She didn’t know if Scar was a danger to her or not, but after what she just saw, she wasn’t prepared to be seen as a friend.

Oddly enough, Scar’s face twisted in regret. He offered a shrug—rather downplayed by the blood coating him. “Sorry,” he said, and his voice was entirely Scar’s (if with a bit of a lisp from the longer teeth). “I didn’t want—I didn’t want it to come to this.”

Gem wasn’t a squeamish person, but she still avoided looking down at the mutilated bodies. She couldn’t stand to think of literally eating a person—what had Scar become?

“I—I’ll explain later,” Scar said, as if he had heard her thoughts. “I’ll go find a communicator. And destroy their stuff.”

He dashed off down the hall.

Pearl moved against her, tipping her head back. “I’m tired,” she mumbled.

“I know,” Gem said, trying not to gag at the scent of blood that had begun to permeate the room. She swallowed, pushing down her fear. “We’re going home. Scar’s getting us home.”

That was all Pearl needed to hear. She fully slumped against Gem, dead asleep. Gem gently rubbed her back, buried her nose in her hair (carefully avoiding the stump of her antenna).

She hoped they got out of there quickly.

-

Pearl spent a lot more time resting than she ever had. Gem figured it was something similar to chronic fatigue, now that she was missing half of her main source of energy.

When she asked if it would grow back, Pearl had just shrugged.

“Only if I go back home.”

“Are you going to do that?”

“Probably not. It’s far away.”

Pearl still managed to create massive builds practically overnight, though, so Gem assumed it didn’t bother her too much.

Gem’s leg was still recovering, a month out from their week in captivity. It had been broken severely enough that she’d needed pins to hold the bones together, which put her at six weeks minimum in the cast. It limited her sparring and building abilities, but she did what she could on crutches to keep her skills from getting rusty.

She couldn’t spend all her time practicing, though, in order to let her body recover, so she ended up filling a lot of her time with meditation. Her impatience is what got her leg broken, after all, and she’d been beating herself up about it ever since.

Scar joined her, sometimes, at various points of interest across her base where she could look out over the valley and Pearl across the way. He would sit beside her in silence, oddly contemplative as he, too, stared at Pearl’s builds.

Gem understood, now, why Scar hadn’t wanted to act except in case of emergency. She wouldn’t want anyone to see her like that, either.

He had fully transformed back into something human (she wasn’t sure that he was human, though) by the time rescue arrived, and Cub had taken one look at the gore and taken Scar straight to his base on Hermitcraft, ignoring Xisuma’s insistence that he get checked over for injuries.

Now, as they sat on a hill, a couple of feet between them, Gem wondered what Cub knew.

Scar sighed beside her.

She wasn’t scared of him. She wondered if that was what he thought, that he kept sitting with her and sending her terribly guilty and forlorn looks because he expected to be faced with fear and disgust.

She wasn’t scared. It had been—well, it had been a shock, and she still hadn’t quite gotten the image of Scar eating a human body out of her head, but she wasn’t scared.

She just felt . . . awkward, bringing it up. Scar clearly hadn’t wanted them to see that part of him. He probably felt vulnerable, rejected. Why he kept hanging around her, she didn’t know, but she had to get rid of the barrier between them.

“How’s Scarland coming along?” she asked one day, kicking her good leg a little.

As simple as it sounded, that did it. That broke the ice, and Scar started rambling about something or other, and the next morning when she settled down to meditate, Scar was already there with blueprints in hand.

She stared at his fingers as he pointed out different aspects of his design, her mind’s eye momentarily seeing a blackened claw glistening with blood.

Well. If she ever needed help to murder someone, she knew who she was calling.