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starcrossed-lov3rz · 5 months ago

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The Vow Spoken Through Time - Part 3

Daemon x Rhaenyra x Wife!Reader

Series: Series Masterlist

Warnings: MDNI, violence, minor character death, general filth, mild smut, dirty talk, oral (fem receiving), and Daemon Targaryen is his own warning

Tags: marriage, poly relationship, Daemon being hopelessly in love with his wives, Queen!Rhaenyra

Words: 2.2K

Description: Y/N is having a rough morning. She's fired. She's hungover. She's in a stranger's bed. She's waking up in a new world? She's married?!

Rhaenyra and Daemon's day started normal. Waking up next to their darling wife before tending to their duties. The difference? Their wife is speaking in riddles and has no memories of them.

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You gaze out across the stadium, shocked at the hundreds of people clamoring to see the violence and pageantry of the tournament. Your hands smooth down your dress anxiously. Rhaenyra picked a beautiful gown. The deep red of the gown is offset with gold embroidery along your shoulders and waist. The patterns resemble dragon scales, glistening as the light hits it.

Rhaenyra looks over, seeing your anxious movements and grabbing your hand to still the gesture. She brings it up to her mouth, kissing the back of your hand before she turns to address the crowd.

“Be welcome!” She shouts. “I know that many of you have traveled great distances to witness these games. I trust you will not be disappointed.”

The crowd’s cheers are deafening, but Rhaenyra continues once they die down to a dull roar. “Looking across the fine knights here today, I see a group without equal. May the luck of the seven shine on our combatants!”

She raises your joined hands in a cheer. You brace yourself for whatever disapproval might come from the crowd. If two women in modern days still got weird looks in public, you weren’t sure you were ready for whatever reaction this medieval world would have. The crowd continues to cheer, and you swear you can hear someone shouting “all hail the queens.”

Rhaenyra pulls you in for a chaste kiss before motioning for the tourney announcer to take over. Your cheeks are on fire from her very public display of affection. “I wasn’t expecting that reaction,” you admitted as you both took your seats.

“Whatever do you mean, darling?”

“I-” you pause for a moment. “You know? I just didn’t think people would be so accepting of our relationship?”

Rhaenyra laughs, “the smallfolk have always adored you. How could they not?”

“It’s just that people where I’m from-”

“You’re from here.” Rhaenyra interrupts, frowning. “Your place is with me, with us. Our people–your people–would fight wars in your name.”

You sigh in frustration. Rhaenyra, Daemon, and the maester were still convinced that you fell and all the memories of your past life were just an odd dream. It wasn’t a frequent argument, but one that never failed to begin at the most inconvenient times.

When you don’t respond, Nyra cups your face in her hands and forces you to look her in the eyes. “Do you know what the smallfolk see when they look at you?”

“Nyra-”

“They see the same thing that I see,” she says. “A queen.” Your hand comes up to cover hers as you lean into her palm.

Rhaenyra’s thumb gently strokes your cheek. “I love you. It doesn’t matter where you came from, you’re here now. You’re here, and you’re mine. Never forget that.”

Your breath catches in your throat. “It’s not fair,” you whisper. “You always know exactly what to say.”

Before Rhaenyra can respond, a yell from the arena draws your attention. “My queen! My lady!” Daemon’s voice reverberates through the stadium. Both you and Rhaenyra walk to the edge of the balcony, and the site nearly takes your breath away. Your husband is terrifying in his armor, and so, so, so attractive.

“Fuck,” you swear. The dark armor is covered in the Targaryen crest and adorned with dragon-reminiscent flairs throughout the pieces. Daemon removes his helmet, shaking our his hair and preening at the attention.

“My beautiful wives, I am certain that I will win this tournament.” Daemon boasts. “But with your favor, there will be no doubt.”

Rhaenyra laughs, “I don’t know. Should we offer our dear husband our favor?”

“Hmmm,” you pretend to think it over. “I fear there are many knights worthy of this honor. How am I to deci-”

“My love, must I get on my knees to beg your favor,” Daemon teases.

“It would certainly be a start,” you smirk. “I suppose I can give you our favor, on one condition.”

“Anything.”

“Win this tourney swiftly so we might celebrate your victory together.” You say, grabbing the favor.

Daemon winks at you, raising his fist as the crowd roars in approval. You watch your husband ride out to meet his first opponent.

“You know we are never going to hear the end of it if he wins,” Rhaenyra sighs. Daemon takes his place across from the other knight, placing his helmet back on and adjusting his grip on the jousting lance.

“Was there ever a doubt he would?” you ask as Daemon and his opponent charge at each other on horseback. The crash as the lance hit lands and breaks is unsettling. Daemon’s opponent flies from his saddle, landing hard on the ground.

“True,” Rhaenyra agrees. Daemon tosses the broken half of his lance, jumping to the ground and drawing his sword. “Next year I plan to find Daemon a real challenge.” Daemon stalks in a circle around his opponent, waiting for the knight to regain his footing and draw his weapon. The knight recovers, going on the offensive to swipe his sword at Daemon.

You snort in amusement. “Are the rest of the knights really that bad?” Daemon easily dances around blows, not even bothering to waste his energy by parrying them. He’s toying with the other knight. Letting him exhaust and embarrass himself in the arena before Daemon ends the fight. You see the ghost of a smirk play on Daemon’s lips as he tosses his helmet to the ground.

“No, they’re actually quite skilled,” Rhaenyra replies. The knight’s attacks become harder and more calculated. Daemon parries them with practiced ease. You see the knight lean in as he gets closer to say something to Daemon. They’re too soft for anyone else to hear, but Daemon clearly heard them. His smirk drops and his gaze darkens.

He’s ending this now. Daemon pushes the knight back, swinging a hard blow with his sword.

“Daemon is just….” The knight scrambles to parry the swing, but the blow is hard enough to dislodge his grip. Your eyes widen in shock, Daemon is ending more than this fight. You instantly snap your eyes shut, but you can still hear Rhaenyra’s words in time with Daemon’s strikes.

“That.”

“Much.”

“Better.”

The knight’s screams stop with the final blow. You open your eyes to peak at the scene in front of you. The knight is unmoving on the ground. His armor dented in. His sword hand on one side of the arena. His head at the other.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” you mutter.

“A Targaryen tourney without at least one death would be considered boring.”

Your eyes land on your husband. He’s looming over the headless body of the knight. Daemon spits on the corpse before walking away.

Even Rhaenyra is shocked, but regardless, the tournament continues on throughout the late afternoon. The other fights are nowhere near as violent as Daemon’s round. Daemon is eerily calm as he wins his rounds with brutal efficiency. He doesn’t kill another opponent, but he makes light work of each one.

After the stadium clears out, you walk with the maids back to your chambers as Rhaenyra left to greet some of the noble houses who haven’t visited Kings Landing since the last tournament. When you get back, you ask the maids to draw a bath and you gather up Daemon’s favorite soaps and oils. You didn’t realize just how serious a tournament was. After seeing that brutality, you were just relieved that Daemon was coming back safe.

The doors to your chambers shuts loudly,and you turn to see Daemon still in his armor. “Daemon-” He cuts you off with a kiss, sweeping you off your feet.

“I need you.” Daemon says, pulling at your gown as he struggles to unlace the back. Growling in frustration, he tears the fabric.

“Daemon! What’s gotten into you?” You yelp. “At least take off that damn armor first!”

“Fuck,” he swears, backing away from you as he begins slipping off his armor piece by piece. You reach forward to help him.

Once he’s rid himself of the armor, Daemon picks you up. You wrap your legs around his waist instinctively, and he grinds against you. He kisses and bites at your neck like a starved man. Whimpers and moans fall from your lips as you tug roughly at his hair. “Daemon, wait,” you say breathlessly.

“Hmm,” he rumbles as he pulls back.

“If you keep going, it’s going to ruin my plans,” you whine. “I wanted to spoil you. Please get in the bath before it gets cold.”

Daemon follows your gaze to the tub and sees your handiwork–candles meticulously placed around a steaming bath. The table next to the tub piled high with luxurious oils, wine, and fruits. “You did this for me?” He asks. You nod vigorously and he captures your lips in a heated kiss. “Gods above, you never fail to surprise me.”

You giggle as Daemon carries you to the tub and you both sink into the water. Daemon moans as the water eases over his sore muscles. You shift so that Daemon is leaning back against your chest and begin meticulously scrubbing his body. “You’re so perfect,” he groans as you massage at the knots in his shoulders.

You hum in response, focusing on the knots. You find yourself softly singing as you work, and you glance down to see Daemon nodding off. Moving to work on his hair, you gently detangle his braids and massage the soap into his scalp.

“Love,” you begin, “what happened in that first fight?” You feel Daemon’s body stiffen against yours.

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure? It didn’t seem like nothing.” You answer.

“It. Was. Nothing.” He’s definitely hiding something.

“No it wasn’t,” you insist. “He said something and you lost it. What did he say?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Daemon’s tone is short, but it’s clear he’s still upset over whatever that knight said.

“Yes it does, just te-”

“He called you a whore!” Daemon shouts, whipping around in the tub. “That spineless bastard called you a whore, and asked if he could take a turn after you finished eating Rhaenyra’s cunt on the balcony.”

You blink. Shocked. You assumed it was bad, but didn’t realize it would be quite that vulgar. “And you killed him for it?”

“If I could go back, I wouldn’t kill him,” Daemon bares his teeth as he hisses out the words.

You raise a brow in response.

“I would cut him apart piece by piece until he begged for death,” Daemon growls. “And when he’s on the brink of death, I would call for the maester to heal him so I could do it all over again.”

“Fuck,” you swear. Hearing your husband’s bloodthirst shouldn’t be this hot. Your breath quickens, and you shift.

Daemon notices your sudden shift in demeanor. “I see,” he grins. “I kill a man for disrespecting you, and all you can think about is my cock.”

You whine, desperate for Daemon to touch you. After he and Rhaenyra left you wanting this morning, you’ve been on edge all day. Daemon stands up, water sloshing from the tub as he climbs out and pours a glass of wine. He sips a mouthful before leaning down to kiss you. You moan as the wine hits your tongue. Daemon pulls back, popping a grape in your mouth before picking you from the tub and tossing you on the bed.

“I’ll just have to give my sweet girl exactly what she wants,” Daemon says. He drips wine across your body, lapping up the drops as he follows the trail with his tongue. Daemon knocks back the rest of his wine, placing the chalice on the dresser. He settles between your legs, wrapping his arms around your thighs as he dives into your cunt.

Daemon’s tongue swipes broad strokes across your cunt, lapping greedily. He suckles at your clit, and you cry out in pleasure as his hums vibrate against you.

“What is this?”

You try to shoot up to greet Rhaenyra, but Daemon’s arms have you locked in place. “Rha-Rhae-fuck-Rhaenyra” You struggle to speak as you feel your orgasm building. Your eyes roll back as Daemon moves an arm to slide two fingers into your weeping cunt. Moans fall from your lips as you buck into his mouth and hands.

Just before you climax, Daemon pulls back. “My queen,” he greets as Rhaenyra leans in for a kiss.

“I take it our girl couldn’t wait?”

Daemon grins. “She never does.”

NOTE: This was supposed to just be smut, but I got carried away. Anyway, hope you enjoyed bloodthirsty Daemon, I know I did. Next part coming Friday or Saturday night (and yes, it’s going to pick up RIGHT where we left off). I have two delicious requests in the works: 1) a Feyd Rautha request (featuring the iconic darlings), and 2) a Daemon request (featuring some angst and steamy make-up sex). ~ Lacie <3

Taglist: @syraxnyra @avalyaaa

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#house of the dragon #house of the dragon fanfic #hotd #hotd daemon #hotd rhaenyra #daemon targaryen #rheanyra targaryen #daemon x rhaenyra #daemon x reader #daemon x rhaenyra x reader #rhaenyra x reader #daemon smut #hotd smut #hotd fic

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mcmansionhell · 2 years ago

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this house may or may not be real

on grayness in real estate

Allegedly, somewhere in Wake Forest, North Carolina, a 4 bed, 5.5 bathroom house totaling more than 6,600 square feet is for sale at a price of 2.37 million dollars. The house, allegedly, was built in 2021. Allegedly, it looks like this:

A McMansion is, in effect, the same house over and over again - it's merely dressed up in different costumes. In the 90s, the costume was Colonial; in the 2000s, it was vague forms of European (Tuscan, Mediterranean), and in the 2010s it was Tudor, dovetailed by "the farmhouse" -- a kind of Yeti Cooler simulacra of rural America peddled to the populace by Toll Brothers and HGTV.

Now, we're fully in the era of whatever this is. Whitewashed, quasi-modern, vaguely farmhouse-esque, definitely McMansion. We have reached, in a way, peak color and formal neutrality to the point where even the concept of style has no teeth. At a certain moment in its life cycle, styles in vernacular architecture reach their apex, after which they seem excessively oversaturated and ubiquitous. Soon, it's time to move on. After all, no one builds houses that look like this anymore:

(This is almost a shame because at least this house is mildly interesting.)

If we return to the basic form of both houses, they are essentially the same: a central foyer, a disguised oversized garage, and an overly complex assemblage of masses, windows, and rooflines. No one can rightfully claim that we no longer live in the age of the McMansion. The McMansion has instead simply become more charmless and dull.

When HGTV and the Gaineses premiered Fixer Upper in 2013, it seemed almost harmless. Attractive couple flips houses. Classic show form. However, Fixer Upper has since (in)famously ballooned into its own media network, a product line I'm confronted with every time I go to Target, and a general 2010s cultural hallmark not unlike the 1976 American Bicentennial - both events after which every house and its furnishings were somehow created in its image. (The patriotism, aesthetic and cultural conservatism of both are not lost on me.)

But there's one catch: Fixer Upper is over, and after the Gaineses, HGTV hasn't quite figured out where to go stylistically. With all those advertisers, partners, and eyeballs, the pressure to keep one foot stuck in the rural tweeness that sold extremely well was great. At the same time, the network (and the rest of the vernacular design media) couldn't risk wearing out its welcome. The answer came in a mix of rehashed, overly neutral modernism -- with a few pops of color, yet this part often seems omitted from its imitators -- with the prevailing "farmhouse modern" of Magnolia™ stock. The unfortunate result: mega-ultra-greige.

Aside from war-mongering, rarely does the media manufacture consent like it does in terms of interior design. People often ask me: Why is everything so gray? How did we get here? The answer is because it is profitable. Why is it profitable? I'd like to hypothesize several reasons. The first is as I mentioned: today's total neutrality is an organic outgrowth of a previous but slightly different style, "farmhouse modern," that mixed the starkness of the vernacular farmhouse with the soft-pastel Pinterest-era rural signifiers that have for the last ten years become ubiquitous.

Second, neutrals have always been common and popular. It's the default choice if you don't have a vision for what you want to do in a space. In the 2000s, the neutrals du jour were "earth tones" - beige, sage green, brown. Before that, it was white walls with oak trim in the 80s and 90s. In the 70s, neutrals were textural: brick and wood paneling. We have remarkably short memories when it comes to stylistic evolution because in real time it feels incremental. Such is the case with neutrals.

Finally, the all-gray palette is the end logic of HGTV et al's gamified methodology of designing houses with commodification in mind: if you blow out this wall, use this color, this flooring, this cabinetry, the asking price of your house goes up. You never want to personalize too much because it's off-putting to potential buyers. After twenty years of such rhetoric, doesn't it make all the sense in the world that we've ended up with houses that are empty, soulless, and gray?

A common realtor adage is to stage the house so that potential buyers can picture their own lives in it. In other words, create a tabula rasa one can project a fantasy of consumption onto. Implied in that logic is that the buyer will then impose their will on the house. But when the staged-realtor-vision and general-mass-market aesthetic of the time merge into a single dull slurry, we get a form of ultra-neutral that seems unwelcoming if not inescapable.

To impose one's style on the perfect starkness is almost intimidating, as though one is fouling up something untouchable and superior. If neutrality makes a house sell, then personality - at all - can only be seen as a detriment. Where does such an anti-social practice lead us? Back to the house that may or may not exist.

In my travels as McMansion Hell, I've increasingly been confronted with houses full of furniture that isn't real. This is known as virtual staging and it is to house staging as ChatGPT is to press release writing or DALL-E is to illustration. As this technology improves, fake sofa tables are becoming more and more difficult to discern from the real thing. I'm still not entirely sure which of the things in these photos are genuine or rendered. To walk through this house is to question reality.

Staging ultimately pretends (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) that someone is living in this house, that you, too could live in it. Once discovered, virtual staging erases all pretensions: the house is inhabited by no one. It is generally acknowledged (though I'm not sure on the actual statistics) that a house with furniture - that is, with the pretense of living -- sells easier than a house with nothing in it, especially if that house (like this one) has almost no internal walls. Hence the goal is to make the virtual staging undiscoverable.

If you want to talk about the realtor's tabula rasa, this is its final form. Houses without people, without human involvement whatsoever.

But what makes this particular house so uncanny is that all of these things I've mentioned before: real estate listing photography, completely dull interiors and bland colors all make it easy for the virtual furniture to work so well. This is because the softness of overlit white and gray walls enables the fuzzy edges of the renderings to look natural when mixed with an overstylized reality. Even if you notice something's off in the reflections, that's enough to cause one to wonder if anything in the house is real: the floors, the fixtures, the moulding, the windows and doors.

This is where things are heading: artifice on top of artifice on top of artifice. It's cheap, it's easy. But something about it feels like a violation. When one endeavors to buy a house, one assumes what one is viewing is real. It's one thing if a realtor photoshops a goofy sunset, it's another to wonder if anything in a room can be touched with human hands. I won't know what, if any, part of this estate costing over 2 million dollars actually exists until I visit it myself. Perhaps that's the whole point - to entice potential buyers out to see for themselves. When they enter, they'll find the truth: a vast, empty space with nothing in it.

The better this rendering technology gets, the more it will rely on these totally neutral spaces because everything matches and nothing is difficult. You are picking from a catalog of greige furniture to decorate greige rooms. If you look at virtual staging in a non-neutral house it looks immediately plastic and out of place, which is why many realtors opt to either still stage using furniture or leave the place empty.

Due to the aforementioned photography reasons, I would even argue that the greigepocalypse or whatever you want to call it and virtual staging have evolved simultaneously and mutualistically. The more virtual staging becomes an industry standard, the more conditions for making it seamless and successful will become standardized as well.

After all, real staging is expensive and depends on paid labor - selecting furniture, getting workers to deliver and stage it, only to pack it back up again once the property is sold. This is a classic example of technology being used to erase entire industries. Is this a bad thing? For freelance and contract workers, yeah. For realtors? no. For real estate listings, it remains to be seen. For this blog? Absolutely. (Thankfully there is an endless supply of previously existing McMansions.)

The thing is, real estate listings no longer reflect reality. (Did they ever to begin with?) The reason we're all exasperated with greige is because none of us actually live that way and don't want to. I've never been to anyone's house that looks like the house that may or may not exist. Even my parents who have followed the trends after becoming empty nesters have plenty of color in their house. Humans like color. Most of us have lots of warmth and creativity in our houses. Compare media intended for renters and younger consumers such as Apartment Therapy with HGTV and you will find a stark difference in palate and tone.

But when it comes to actually existing houses - look at Zillow and it's greige greige greige. So who's doing this? The answer is real estate itself aided by their allies in mass media who in turn are aided by the home renovation industry. In other words, it's the people who sell home as a commodity. That desire to sell has for some time overpowered all other elements that make up a home or an apartment's interiority to the point where we've ended up in a colorless slurry of real and unreal.

Fortunately, after ten years or so, things begin to become dated. We're hitting the ten year mark of farmhouse modernism and its derivatives now. If you're getting sick of it, it's normal. The whole style is hopefully on its last leg. But unlike styles of the past, there's a real, trenchant material reason why this one is sticking around longer than usual.

Hence, maybe if we want the end of greige, we're going to have to take color back by force.

If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including extra posts and livestreams.

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#architecture #design #2010s #mcmansion #mcmansion hell #nc #2021 #essay

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flowerandblood · 4 months ago

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The Lost Haven (9/16)

[ modern mafia • Aemond x niece • female ]

[ warnings: incest obviously, sex scene with Alys from the past, smut, the angst, description of a drug overdose, murder by shot in the head, violence, uncomfortable conversations, bad, bad things ]

[ description: The vacation from eight years ago still haunts his memories and doesn't let him forget what happened between him and his niece, the daughter of his sister and Harwin Strong. Their paths separate and he immerses himself in his father's mafia world until the day she calls him for the first time since those events. Sexual tension, dark, dangerous, withdrawn, thirsty Aemond. ]

Author’s note: As promised, this is another, this time official modern version of The Fall from the Heavens. In this version, Daemon is not related to the family, but is simply Rhaenyra's husband and the leader of the second gang, Alys and Larys are also not related to each other, but Larys is Harwin's brother. I will partly refer to the original series, hiding some easter eggs, and some will be a completely new, fresh plot. As in every universe, only Aemond calls her Rhaenys and this is not her real name (she is unnamed character and the others also do not know that he calls her that). There will be a lot more brutality and angst in this version, so watch out. You can read this as a standalone story.

Series & Characters Moodboard Aemond & Rhaenys Moodboard

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

Next chapters: Masterlist

_____

After everything that had happened, according to his suspicions, all hell broke loose: Daemon's anger over the fact that they had dared to kidnap and imprison his daughter was great. Helaena, Daeron and his mother stayed in the house almost all the time under the supervision of their bodyguards, so that the unpleasant consequences of what was happening would not reach them.

Daemon's gangsters tried to forcibly take over what was rightfully theirs: brothels, clubs, restaurants, however, they were met with resistance, as they had no intention of moving from their place and giving them anything.

The comical thing was that, although the law was on his side, Daemon could not use the help of the police: their discovery of how widespread the money laundering and drug smuggling was would have given them all life imprisonment, and the premises would have been seized by the State for as long as the prosecution considered it good for the case.

For the first time in years there were real shootings and on several occasions, had it not been for his reflexes, a bullet would have pierced his arm or leg when he was just walking to the car park or leaving the club.

Despite what common sense would dictate, he didn't feel terrified: on the contrary, some part of him wanted a challenge, a release, anything that would make him stop thinking about what he had done to her.

He couldn't forgive himself for showing her weakness, for crying in her presence like a small child, for begging her forgiveness only to find after a while that he missed her, that he had suffered through their separation and the fact that he had lost her.

One part of him wanted to forget her but the other ached to prove to her that in some fucked up way he could change.

To become a different kind of monster, one that wouldn't devour her, but protect her.

He planned what he wanted to do with meticulous care, as if he were going off to war. He knew that Larys Strong was preoccupied with what was going on, thinking they were focused on Daemon, he meanwhile was lavelling between them, trying to pick up customers from both sides.

He was like a disgusting snake whose head he wanted to trample on, but mostly because he dared to threaten her.

He wanted to make sure that this piece of shit would disappear from the face of the earth.

He initiated the only person in his industry he trusted, namely Alys, into his plan.

"Why?" She asked, smoking a cigarette with him by the wide-open window in her flat, sitting in her smart black shirt and trousers, her luscious green irises staring at him anxiously, letting out a mouthful of smoke.

He took a drag, looking blankly out of the window, at the townhouse across the street, seeing her face then as she lay numb in the toilet, and then as she lay in his bed, after he gave her the sleeping drug himself.

He pressed his lips together at the thought, feeling an unpleasant constriction in his chest indicating that he was remorseful.

"He was the one who gave my niece the rape pill." He sighed, tilting his head back, spreading himself more comfortably in the chair with a loud creak of wood.

Alys stared at him in silence for a long time, her cigarette slowly burning out between her fingers.

"I met her. Your niece. A few weeks ago in the Red Sun pub." She hummed, taking another drag, not taking her eyes off him.

He knew she had noticed that something flashed across his face at the mention of her – involuntarily he turned his head away and swallowed hard, clenching his free hand into a fist.

Alys chuckled under her breath, blowing smoke out of her mouth straight at him as she spoke her next words.

"Daemon showed her what you did to Robert."

He stared ahead, fiddling with the packet of cigarettes lying on the table in front of him, feeling his heart in his throat.

So that's how she found out, he thought with regret.

"How did she react?" He asked involuntarily.

"The poor girl was in shock. Her uncle turned out to be less understanding than she might have thought." She muttered, leaning forward, resting her body weight on her elbows.

He couldn't look at her, afraid she would see what he so desperately wanted to hide from her.

"Was that her name that you accidentally blurted out then?" She asked, making him feel an unpleasant squeeze in his throat and a burning wetness under his eyelids.

The prove that she was right.

The nights with Alys had been simple: they'd taken care of business and then fucked. They knew they were both broken: what they were doing had warped and deformed them as individuals, and by giving each other intimacy they were simultaneously comforting each other in their misery.

"– fuck –" He breathed out, tilting his head back, his hands clenched in her hair so tightly that he heard her hiss from between his thighs. Her nails dug warningly into his hip, signalling him not to overdo it.

He couldn't believe how good she was at sucking cock, with what ease her tongue rolled around it's delicate, pink head while clamping her lips so that she squeezed it with each of his thrusts deep into her warm throat.

He was aroused by her directness, by the fact that she only wanted to satisfy and be satisfied, exactly as he did.

"– stop – 'm close –" He exhaled as he felt his erection begin to throb vigorously and twitch deep inside her mouth, causing her to let him out with a loud, perverted click of her saliva.

His manhood was all red and pulsing, glistening from his precum and her wetness, pleasant warmth in his belly.

Alys wasted no time in pulling her black lace panties off her legs, allowing him to turn her onto her stomach as usual. He positioned himself between her thighs, spreading her soft, full buttocks like a fruit, sinking into her warmth with a loud sigh of relief.

Only then, when he couldn't see her face, he was able to close his eyes and sink into his most sickening, dark fantasy.

As he slid slowly into her, in his imagination he could see the terrified, hot look in her eyes, her sweet lips wide open, her soft, fleshy cunt clenched around his swollen erection, throbbing with longing, making him run out of breath, her hands simultaneously pushing him away and holding him close.

"– Aemond – no, no, we can't – we can't –" His niece mewled in his mind, whimpering softly and innocently, afraid that someone would hear them, that her brothers would find out what he was doing to her, how greedily he was opening her slick walls on his fat cock again and again, unable to stop.

"– oh baby –" He mumbled.

He heard another sound too, a lower one – Alys moaned feeling him involuntarily quicken his pace, thrusting deep between her leaking, convulsing folds. Frustrated, he clamped his hand in her hair, pressing her face harder against the duvet, not wanting to hear her now.

He had never kissed Alys or any other woman. When they tried to do this, he felt only disgust and turned his head away – the act seemed to him too tender, too intimate, and on top of that, it reminded him of her, the taste of her lips, her warm breath on his face, her sweet scent.

For this reason, too, he never stayed up all night or went to sleep with the women he fucked: their arms, their embrace was not the one he longed for, their words, their skin, their fingers, their faces, their hair, everything was different, different, different, foreign, distant, repulsive.

Alys knew.

She felt it subconsciously.

"– are you thinking about her now? – " She breathed out, making him involuntarily bite his lower lip and groan throatily, his hips began to slam against her ass faster and faster, bringing him closer with each thrust to fulfilment deep inside her.

She didn't know her identity, but she knew she existed and that he wasn't able to forget about her.

"– would you like her to be so fucking wet for you? – to take you in so easily? – for her little pussy to clench around your cock? – to come inside her? –" She exhaled, and he groaned, imagining that she wanted it, that she craved his cum deep inside her pretty, innocent body, slamming between his niece's thighs like a mad.

"– u-uncle – uncle, uncle, uncle, oh God, oh my fucking God, please –" He heard her vulnerable whines, feeling a squeeze in his testicles, hot wave of pleasure ran through his lower abdomen and stomach.

"– f-fuck, Rhaenys –" He mumbled and came with a loud gasp, feeling her spasming cunt begin to clench against his twitching erection, along with him going through the wonderful relief that shook his body.

He froze, panting loudly and opened his eyes only to see that Alys was grinning wildly.

She was proud of herself.

She loved to torment him.

"– Rhaenys –" She said after him, intrigued, without shadow of regret or pain on her face. "– what a pretty name –"

"– 'm sorry – forget about it –" He mouthed, completely panicked, sliding out of her with a loud click of their moisture, feeling his heart pounding like a mad in fear.

He thanked God that it wasn't her real name.

"– why? – tell me more about her – it's touching in some way that you are so deeply in love with her –" She hummed, turning onto her back.

He quickly zipped up his trousers, for some reason unable to look at her bare body now, furious at her remark.

"Fuck no." He growled.

Alys twisted in her place, surprised.

"Aemond."

"I don't want to talk about it. That's not why I came here." He said in frustration, grabbing his Tshirt, putting it aggressively over his head.

She sighed heavily, leaning her back against the bed frame, looking at him intently.

"You are adorable when you are mad."

He looked at her, seeing in her eyes that she knew she'd hit the nail on the head and ran his hand over his face.

"Have you fulfilled your fantasies with her? Then, during your father's birthday. After all, he invited your whole family." She sneered, cocking her head.

He shuddered, looking at her shocked and horrified, feeling like a little boy caught in the act.

"Don't be ridiculous. If you don't want to help me with what I came to you with, just say so." He hissed too quickly, too angrily and too helplessly, and the corner of Alys' mouth twitched in a grin.

"Did you stop talking to her when her mother married Daemon through a conflict of interest or because you knew that as an uncle you shouldn't moan your niece's name during your climax?" She asked, and he felt his lips part in a shuddering, uneven breath.

"You betrayed that poor little girl even though she gave you everything you wanted."

Her cold, mocking words stayed with him all night: she didn't give him a clear answer as to whether she would help him, but she let him know that she didn't intend to interrupt him.

She had no love for Larys Strong and would benefit from his disappearance herself.

Although the plan was different, more complicated and sublime, he drove straight to Heavenly Beach.

You betrayed that poor little girl even though she gave you everything you wanted.

When it was all over, he decided that his success had been determined by the effect of the surprise: when he walked into Larys's office, he greeted him with a smile, standing up, apparently wanting to offer him something to drink and ask what he was coming to him with.

The bodyguard didn't even think to take his gun away from him.

He was just his grandfather's faithful dog, nothing more.

And yet, when he pointed it at his head and simply fired, shooting him right in the forehead, Larys seemed surprised and staggered backwards, falling numbly like a heavy wooden puppet to the floor.

He fled through the back exit, the door by which the bar staff were leaving for a cigarette, and although he hoped that one of the shots he heard behind him among the screams would reach him, it did not.

Apart from the shattered rear window of the car and the wrath of his grandfather, no other consequences of his act reached him.

"Do you know what you did? Larys was filling our pockets with money."

"And also emptied them." He hissed, watching as Otto paced around the room while he sat in his chair, pleased with himself as never before.

For some reason he felt a sense of pride.

"You are a fool. You did it out of a private desire for revenge. You acted rashly and thoughtlessly. You have failed me for the last time." He said in a manner from which he pressed his lips into a thin line.

"Aegon will take over the whole business, not you."

When he finally returned to his flat he felt rage and relief, disappointment and euphoria at the same time, feeling like he had completely lost his mind.

Vhagar watched him from across the room, seeing him throw things off tables and cupboards, afraid to approach him, her tail tucked under her belly.

He had killed him for her.

He sacrificed himself for her.

He lost his inheritance for her.

And she was not with him.

He felt in that moment that he loved her and hated her at the same time.

The dreams in which he killed Larys again and again came back to him every night, making him wake up drenched in cold sweat: he saw in them how he gouged out his eyes, how he cut off his limbs before her eyes, listening to her screams and her cries, her pleas for him to stop.

By having his grandfather reduce his role to the bare minimum of collecting money and handing over goods, he could finally concentrate on his studies during the day. To his surprise, sinking into the thick textbooks she had brought him was liberating, as if a new, previously unknown part of the world had opened up to him.

He was going to attend the exam.

He hoped to see her there.

He filed the documents in person and, as he was leaving the University, he spotted one of Daemon's bodyguards smoking a cigarette in the car park from a distance.

They had been watching her the whole time.

Good, he thought.

He knew that if anyone saw him there Daemon would take her out immediately and that was why he had to be more careful.

On the day of the exam, he felt like a small child: even though he knew what he had to prepare for and had gone through specific chapters many times, standing with a group of young people peering at his face and scar he felt alien, even though he hoped it would be different.

Even when he tried, he couldn't fit in, blend in with the crowd.

To his surprise, he found the exam itself trivial: too simple for his taste. He recognised that he had surely made some mistake when reading the questions, that there was something tricky about them, that he would make a fool of himself.

However, reading what he had written again and again he thought he had given the correct answers and just gave up, walking out of the room, dismayed and disappointed.

He felt like he had been pierced by lightning when he saw her standing in the corridor, looking at him with her mouth wide open. He felt a pleasant heat in his chest at the thought that she had come, for him, just for him, and then he looked to the side and saw who was standing next to her.

His hands clenched into a fist as her ex-boyfriend reached out to him, fumbling some sort of goof about how nice it was to meet him, pretending to be open and welcoming.

His niece saw immediately the danger that lurked behind his furious expression.

"Thank you, Robb. Will you leave us alone?" She asked him in a trembling voice.

He thought she had only taken him with her for safety, as she was afraid to come to him alone, and affectionately concluded that she was a wise girl.

"Are you sure?" Her ex asked her, making him feel his jaw clench in rage.

"Didn't you hear what she said?" He sneered harshly, throwing him a look full of boredom and disapproval, wanting to show him that he was losing patience.

He had done his part and there was certainly nothing more between them, so he could fuck off.

Robb clearly didn't like the tone of his voice.

"I'm not talking to you, mate." He said in a way he didn't like, but all it took was a movement in his direction for his niece to stand in front of him, looking straight into his face with her big eyes, her cheeks rosy with emotion.

"That's enough." She said. "Aemond is having a hard time. Forgive him. Sometimes he doesn't know how to behave. He won't hurt me. Am I wrong?"

He swallowed hard, looking away with his heart beating fast, feeling the hot shame spread across his lower abdomen.

He won't hurt me.

When Robb finally left them alone she shook her head with an expression on her face as if she regretted coming to see him at all and turned, startling him by going the other way.

"It was a mistake."

"– no – no, wait –" He moved behind her, immediately grabbing her arm, pulling her closer, as close as possible, smelling her body and her hair again, the scent of vanilla filling his lungs.

He let his hand embraced her waist, pressing his forehead into her temple, wanting to take refuge in her, feeling thirsty for her presence, her words, her warm gaze full of understanding.

"– are you two together again? –" He whispered involuntarily, wanting to be sure that this bastard was no longer a threat to her, that he didn't have to worry about him hurting her again.

He swallowed hard when he heard her cold laughter full of frustration, feeling a stinging discomfort in his stomach.

"– do you want to tell me how you know who I'm dating and when? –" She asked drily.

Why did she avoid answering?

Why did she speak in this way?

"– do you love him? –" He muttered, and she shook her head, furious, trying to push him away.

"– I hope you'll pass – let me go – let me go, I said –" She growled, but he clamped his hands on her back and snuggled her body into his, sinking his nose into her wonderfully soft, warm cheek, feeling how his erection reacted with an aggressive, joyful pulsing to her closeness.

How was he ever going to let anyone else have her?

How would he ever get over it?

There was no way back now.

"– I killed him for you –" He whispered and felt her stop resisting him, her whole body frozen in stillness.

He sighed quietly, leaning in, his lips swollen with desire as he began to place wet, hot, lingering kisses on her face, her jaw, her neck with every word he spoke.

"– I killed him because he threatened you – because he wanted to hurt you – I want you to be safe –"

He felt her hands tighten on the material of his shirt as a quiet cry left her lips, and he, feeling an involuntary desire to protect her from this suffering, cuddled her face into his neck, wanting to hide her, to bury her deep within himself, to be her stone fortress in which she could hide.

"– I'm not pregnant –" She whispered in a way from which he froze.

There was no satisfaction or relief in her words.

She was sad.

This revelation, the thought that some part of her wanted this child as much as he did, caused his full lips to place a tender, drawn-out kiss on her temple.

"– I know – the doctor told me – we just have to try again –"

We just have to try again.

He couldn't believe how easy it had been for him to say that, to accept that he was sick, that he had just told his own niece that they should fuck again, because that way they would perhaps have the baby they so wanted.

His life had reached such a level of absurdity that it no longer seemed impossible to him.

He heard her draw in a loud breath, shocked by what had left his mouth.

"– do you hear yourself? – after what you did to me? – after how –" She mouthed, choking on her own tears, however, instead of pushing him away she snuggled into him tighter, clasping her hands on his back.

She sought her comfort in him, in her tormentor, because he was the only one who understood what she was going through.

There was something simultaneously beautiful and tragic about this, he thought.

He had destroyed her.

"– shhh – I'm here, baby –" He hushed her, stroking her hair and her back as if she were a small child, pressing his face against her temple, wanting to show her that he was there for her and that this would never change.

His words written on a piece of paper then, in the hospital.

I will always watch over you.

They both flinched and moved away from each other when her phone began to ring and it appeared that her father's bodyguard who had been waiting for her had begun to grow impatient.

"– n-no – no, I'm on my way, I was talking to the professor – I'm sorry –" She muttered with difficulty, terrified, making him feel like locking her in his embrace and never letting her go.

She was so sad, so tired, so vulnerable.

He knew, he felt, that they would both experience true relief, true rest only in each other's arms, in the tight union of their hot, sweaty, naked bodies.

"– wait a few minutes before I go so they don't see you –" She said, leaving him alone, not bestowing a single glance on him.

And then her ex-boyfriend humiliated her in front other students, saying some bullshit about her lack of self-respect as he watched them from afar.

As soon as she was out of his sight he walked up to him – Robb looked at him horrified and took a step back, wanting to run away.

"I feel like smashing your skull for what you dared to say, but I won't do it for her sake. You will never speak to her that way again. What's more, you won't speak to her at all, or I'll make your face no longer beautiful. Do you understand?" He asked, and Robb nodded quickly, looking at him with big eyes.

"One ill-considered word from you. One look from her colleagues that I don't like and that reveals to me that you told someone about it, and your life will become very, very difficult. Mate." He sneered and sidestepped him, heading for his car, seeing that his niece and her father's bodyguard had driven off.

When he got back to his flat he thought he felt strangely calm: the thought that she had come to see him, that she still cared about what would happen to him, who he would be filled him with contentment and satisfaction.

He was not indifferent to her.

She could not hate him.

Vhagar, though uneasy in his presence for days, that evening approached him of her own accord wagging her tail. Though he did not usually do so, he allowed her to jump onto his bed, his broad hand stroking her large head. She licked his fingers, sniffing them beforehand with curiosity and he thought with a smile that she had smelt her scent.

"I saw her today, Vhagar. I saw my little girl." He hummed, scratching her behind the ear, letting her big furry body lie beside him on the bedding.

And then she called to him, furious and indignant, demanding an explanation.

Something about the way she spoke made him think she was charming when she was angry, surprising him with her directness.

However, this made him the one who wrote to her every day from then on, sending her pictures of Vhagar, and although she did not write back to him, he was happy.

He knew that she read his messages and thus he was able to convey his feelings to her, making her realise that there was not a moment that he did not think or miss her.

And then he found an envelope in his letter box with the University's logo on it, and for the first time in years he felt an almost childlike excitement as he ran up the stairs to his flat, thinking that maybe things were finally going to change in his life.

He felt his hands all trembling with emotion as he pulled a piece of paper from the inside and began to read, his heart in his throat when it became clear that his dream had come true.

He had passed.

He got into University.

He didn't know why he called her right away, walking back and forth across his room, smiling like a fool because he had made it, made it, made it.

"Aemond, you can't call me. Is something wrong?"

"I got in. I passed the exam." He said immediately, feeling euphoria, feeling joy, feeling satisfaction.

He wanted to experience it only with her, because only she could understand him, only her words, her appreciation, her joy could give him what he wanted.

"I'm proud of you. I really am." She confessed finally making him feel like bursting into tears, feeling for a moment he ran out of words, his heart pounding like crazy.

"Let's meet to celebrate. Please."

"No."

"Just for a moment. In a public place, in a restaurant, in a café. Wherever you want, wherever you feel safe." He begged, needing her now, her warm gaze, her hand clasped over his, her closeness, her, her, her.

"I can't, Aemond. You know I can't. I will always support you, including about your studies, but after what has happened I can't trust you." She confessed in a trembling voice.

He swallowed hard, feeling with shame that he had turned all red with emotion, and nodded his head, thinking with despair that he understood what she meant, feeling empty.

"– forgive me – I had no right to ask you to do this – it was a mistake resulting from my selfishness – thank you for everything –" He said.

"– Aemond –" She mumbled out in pain, but he hung up, or she would have heard his uneven, heavy breath, the effect of the tears that ran down his face and of which he was so ashamed.

How could he have been so naive to think that she would forgive him?

Would he forgive her if she did the same to him?

He tore up the card the University had sent him, thinking with regret that the sight of him in that building every day would bring back memories she wanted to forget.

He decided that there was no point in her seeing him, that he should respect her request, even though she did not at all want him to give up his dreams for her.

She was more understanding than he deserved.

Although he had never, ever done so, that evening he pulled out from his cupboard a syringe with the drug liquid he had given her that day when she had come to him at his request, wanting to help him.

He only used this narcotic in small amounts when he needed to fall asleep quickly, but this time he wasn't sure he wanted to wake up at all.

He squeezed his forearm with a special rubber band to make it easier to find the right vein under his skin and jabbed the needle into it, letting more of the drug into his system than ever before.

He thought he wanted to know how she felt then.

He imagined her terror, the one when, feeling him still deep inside her, she realised that he had tricked her, betrayed her, that he would do what he wanted with her and her body.

He felt like crying when everything around him blurred, when Vhagar began to bark, nudging him with her wet nose, licking his face. He, however, was only able to breathe, thinking that he was so monstrously tired, his body numb and heavy, as if it weighed hundreds of tons.

It seemed to him that it might have been months or even years before his mind began to awaken: the indistinct light of the lamps around him blinded him and irritated him at the same time, the loud beeping at his ear drove him mad, the stinging discomfort in his wrist seemed unnatural to him. He muttered in displeasure, twisting around, unable to fully open his eyes or rise, feeling dulled and frazzled.

"– no – lie down –" He heard his mother's voice, who had apparently risen from her chair, her familiar hand touching his arm. "– it's okay –"

"– what's going on? –" He choked out, feeling unpleasant anxiety and discomfort, everything around him seemed to be spinning.

"– you overdosed, Aemond –"

He spent the next few days in hospital, trying to recover under the watchful care of his mother and his sister.

He didn't know why he felt disappointment at the news that neither his grandfather nor his older brother planned to visit him, thinking he had acted like a small child merely seeking attention, why he thought they would care about his condition.

He didn't think much of it though, because as soon as he unlocked his phone, he saw three messages from her.

He had no idea what he was supposed to do, what to reply to her words, proof that she still cared about him, even though he didn't deserve it.

That same evening, when his mother was long gone from his side, she called him, making him feel euphoric and terrified at the same time. When he answered and put the phone to his ear he was silent, his heart deep in his throat.

"How are you feeling?" She asked softly, her voice full of uncertainty.

He swallowed hard, feeling somehow touched by her behaviour, by the fact that she wanted to talk to him despite what he had done to her.

"Exactly as I deserve." He confessed with shame.

"Did you… really want to do this?" She muttered in a trembling voice. He shook his head and laughed under his breath.

"No. I wanted to see how you felt that day."

Something in his words, in the way he said them made her draw in a loud breath.

"Your suffering is not my desire, Aemond. You hurt me, but I don't want revenge. I just want… to stop feeling this unbearable pain in my heart that I have felt in my chest for eight years."

So many unspoken words and feelings slipped through their fingers.

"I regret it so much. I told my grandfather that I didn't want him to involve you, but he said that if we didn't, someone else would want to take advantage of Daemon's weakness for you. And I believed him. I thought that Larys will actually try to do something to you again, but only now do I understand that it was a simple lie that I easily accepted to justify myself. Fuck, I'm so ashamed, baby, I really am."

He mouthed with difficulty, burying his face in his hand, feeling warm tears of shame run down his cheeks, trying to calm his heavy, ragged breath.

"My father took everything from me. I did these fucked-up things to other people for nothing. I mutilated them for nothing. The only thing he left me is the property by the sea, the same one where I lost my eye, as if he had made a mockery of me. I was so lost. I still am."

She was silent for a moment, as if wondering what to respond to his words.

"What do you want, Aemond? Truly. Be honest."

He swallowed hard, feeling that this was one of the most important moments of his life and he couldn't fuck it up.

"I want to study and see you once in a while. In a public place, so that you feel safe."

"And that's it? What about your family? About your business?"

"My grandfather limited my influence and responsibilities after I shot Larys without his knowledge. He no longer trusts me and doesn't assign me important tasks."

She fell silent again, making him feel like he was going mad with the uncertainty, his heart in his throat.

"The University Library." She said finally, and he grunted quietly, trying to calm himself down.

"I don't understand."

"We can meet in the University Library."

"Really?" He asked hopefully, feeling his heart beat harder, hot with excitement.

"Only there and for a short time. Once in a while. If I find out you did something to hurt me or my family, you'll never see me again."

The next day she agreed with him that they would meet in a side area of the library: it was nearing the holidays and most people were either outside or in the main reading room, so she decided that no one should notice or bother them there.

Fifteen minutes in which she was going to help him prepare for his first class, nothing more.

Nevertheless, in his mind it was his chance to prove himself and get things right.

To regain her trust.

He wanted to buy her a bouquet of flowers, however, standing in front of them he had no idea which ones to choose.

What if she doesn't like cut flowers, only ones in a pot?

Should he even hand it to her in the library?

He ran his hand over his face thinking that his deliberations were idiotic and only showed how desperate he was.

Then, however, he decided that instead of a flower he would buy her a strawberry lollipop: since she used strawberry gloss she must have liked the taste and could at least eat it, and he could hide it in the pocket of his trousers.

With this little gift, he turned up at the agreed time, feeling like an excited little boy, all hot and frisky with emotion. Indeed, he spotted her in the back of one of the rooms, sitting on the floor on special large pillows, leaning against the wall with a volume in her hand, bookcases all around her.

She had chosen a place where they would not be seen.

She flinched at the sight of him, her shoulders raised in a defensive gesture, as if frightened by his presence.

"Hi." He mouthed, not knowing what more he could say, his heart pounding like mad.

She blinked and sighed loudly, as if trying to calm herself, her gaze at once warm and watchful.

"Hi."

He walked slowly over to her and pulled off his jacket, laying it on the windowsill, sitting down next to her on one of the cushions, into which he literally sank because of how soft it was.

"I brought you my notes from first year. Read them, if you can't decipher something, I'll try to guess what I wrote. They'll come in handy for you before semester exams." She said immediately, as if afraid of silence or what more he might say, handing him some of her notebooks.

He nodded and took them from her, pressing his lips together, seeing that she had gone back to reading her lecture without looking at him.

"Thank you." He said, unable to do anything other than stare at her, at her shiny dark hair, at her gentle face, at her long eyelashes, at her floral dress fastened at the front with big white buttons.

They were both quiet, but despite the silence, broken only by her flipping the pages, he could feel the tension between them, her figure focused and prepared to flee.

He didn't know why he did it, but he slid a little lower and laid his head on her shoulder, just as she had done back then, during that holiday, reading the book about the Mighty Vhagar with him.

He heard her swallow hard and take a deep breath as his arms tentatively embraced her at the waist, cuddling into her like a small child.

He felt her twitch, her chest began to quiver as if she felt like crying. Feeling this, he stroked the side of her waist, his lips placing a gentle, reassuring kiss on her soft, fragrant skin.

"– please –" She muttered.

"– I have a gift for you –" He said, dreading what she was about to say. She involuntarily glanced at his arm as he slipped his hand into the pocket of his trousers and took out a rose-shaped lollipop.

"– I didn't know what kind of flowers you like, so I bought one like this – the sales lady said it has a strawberry flavour –" He explained and she swallowed hard, out of the corner of his eye he noticed a wide, sad smile on her face.

This sight broke his heart.

He pressed his forehead to her temple as she took it shyly from his hand, spinning it between her fingers, staring at it as if he had given her something precious, a ring or a necklace.

"I'll eat it later. I don't want to get the books dirty now. Thank you, that's very kind of you." She said softly and he nodded, his hand involuntarily from her waist rising to her face, letting his fingers run over the warm structure of her skin.

He felt her body relax slightly and they both let their bodies lean back a little, spreading out more comfortably on the large, soft pillows. He swallowed hard as she pressed her head against the hollow of his neck, as her hand lay uncertainly on the spot where his heart was beating.

He locked her in his embrace, kissing lazily the top of her head, feeling that he was completely hard, that he wanted her more than ever, knowing that he couldn't have her now, that he might never feel her like this again, but it didn't matter anymore.

She was with him, in his arms.

"Several of my father's men are dead. They were shot on your grandfather's orders." She whispered, and he swallowed hard, looking up at the ceiling, playing involuntarily with the curls of her hair between his fingers.

"I know."

"Did you have anything to do with it?"

"No. My grandfather restricted my field of action after we called the emergency services when you…"

He didn't finish and closed his eyes, seeing her again in the bathtub filled with blood.

They were both silent for a moment, taking comfort from their closeness – her hand ran over his sternum, making a pleasant shiver pass through his body.

"If your grandfather tells you to kill Daemon or my brother. What will you do then?" She asked quietly in a trembling voice.

"I will tell him to do it himself. The times when I was his dog are over and he knows it. He has no idea what to do with me. I'm out of his control." He sneered, sighing heavily, feeling suddenly tired and weary. His niece twisted and raised herself up on her elbow, looking at him with concern.

"What's your plan?" She asked, and he hummed under his breath, sliding his fingers from her neck between her breasts, playing with the buttons of her dress.

"I want to start acting on my own." He said cautiously, watching her reaction carefully. He saw that she tensed all over, looking at him warily.

"What do you mean?"

"If you think there's a way I could escape this world, you're wrong. Even Daemon didn't escaped it, he simply gathered his most trusted people and expanded his influence. I want to do the same, and I will start by taking over Heavenly Beach. Since Larys is dead, chaos has reigned there, and I intend to take advantage of it. Many of my grandfather's people don't like the vision of them having to work for Aegon in the future. They neither respect nor fear him." He said lightly with some kind of pride and mockery, running his fingers up and down her sternum with a smirk.

She had a penknife under her bra.

She shuddered and swallowed hard as he tapped his finger on the spot where his watchful gaze had spotted its shape, pretending he hadn't meant to keep his hand on her breast at all.

"– wise girl –"

"What do you intend to do with my step-father?" She asked in a trembling voice.

He hummed under his breath, looking curiously at her chest, slowly cupping her plump breast in his fingers, thinking how wonderfully it fit the shape of his hand.

"Nothing. I won't attack him first. For you. He has nothing to do with Heavenly Beach." He said softly, spreading himself out more comfortably on the cushion, feeling a pleasant warmth in his belly at the sight of her hand clamping down on his wrist, as if she wanted to simultaneously push him away and draw him to her at the same time.

"– stop – someone will see –" She muttered, looking around quickly to make sure they were still alone in the room.

"I want it back." He whispered. "I want what we had during that summer."

He heard her swallow hard, shocked by his confession.

"I…God, after all, you know it won't work. We can't. No one will accept it, no one will understand. We'll be miserable again." She mumbled pleadingly, feeling his hand move from her breast to her neck, burying itself in her warm, bare skin, her cheeks pink with emotion, her gaze hot and hazy.

"If you don't want it, I'll understand it. What I desire is fucked up, like my whole person. But I want you to know that what happened between us… then, when my father died. It was real. I've never felt more alive and fulfilled than then, being deep inside you. You were so warm." He said, brushing her soft face with his thumb, looking at her beautiful, puffy lips, the taste of which he longed to feel again so much.

"Aemond." She mumbled in embarrassment.

"I don't care how wrong it is. I don't care about morality. I've done far less moral things to other people. Making love to my niece seems to me the smallest of my sins." He confessed, burying his fingers in her smooth, dark hair, the tips of their noses touched as he made her lean towards him.

"Someone might say it's disgusting and wrong, but I only care about what you want. I don't give a shit about others. What they will think of me, whether I live by their rules or not. What can they do to me? Mock me? Fear me? They are already do. It's not about me, it's about you. I don't want to ruin your life." He said, shaking his head, watching her reaction, her eyes grew wide with shock, her lips parted in heavy, deep breaths.

The sight of her bursting into silent, helpless sobs broke his heart: his mouth began to place quick, lingering, loud kisses on her beautiful, rosy face, all swollen with tears.

"– please – please, I don't want you to cry because of me –" He muttered in pain, feeling his voice tremble with emotion, stroking affectionately her head and neck.

He pulled her body closer to him, wanting to embrace her, protect her, hide her from the pain that tormented her so much.

"This is just too much. I wish I could be a child again. To go back to that sea. To fall asleep next to you in that room. I wish I could feel again the peace I felt then. Your presence next to me. But I can't have it." She mouthed, choking on her own tears, making him press his lips together in pain.

"You have it. You have me. You always had."

She froze, looking at him with a hot, hazy look that made him want to take her in the middle of the library.

However, he decided that he wanted and should do something completely different.

"Do you like me?" He asked as one of his hands ran up and down her bare thigh, while the other was slowly stroking her head. She looked at him in silence for a moment and nodded uncertainly, trying to calm herself down.

He thought she looked like a small, terrified child.

"Very much?" He continued and she nodded again, breathing loudly through her mouth.

He smiled involuntarily, cupping her cheek, hot with emotion, in his hand.

"Will you be my girlfriend?"

Her eyes got big, her eyebrows raised high as she gasped loudly, shocked by his question.

"This time I'm aware of what I'm asking for. What I want. And although I should, I'm not ashamed of it. I have wasted eight years that I could have spent with you, no matter how much we would both have suffered during that time. I want to suffer with you by my side now." He whispered, tucking an unruly strand of her hair behind her ear, looking affectionately at her beautiful, gentle face, all pink with emotion and tears.

"I wish I could trust you, but I don't know if I can." She muttered, making him feel a squeeze in his stomach.

"I know. I'll wait as long as it takes." He said, brushing her cheek with his fingers, wanting to comfort himself and her.

She nodded, sighing heavily, as if she had given up and stopped fighting.

"You can only embrace me and hold my hand. No kisses on the lips and don't try to take me." She muttered.

He chuckled under his breath, feeling as happy as a small boy, cuddling her whole body into his at last, feeling her pleasant warmth, her scent, her closeness.

"Very well." He hummed, placing a warm, gentle kiss on the tip of her nose.

He saw her frown and grinned widely, cocking his head.

"Your nose is not your lips, is it? Just as your cheeks. Your jaw. Your neck. Your shoulders." He whispered, brushing his full lips over each of the places he mentioned, leaving wet, hot marks on her bare skin. He sighed as he felt her fingers clench on his back, her soft breasts pressing into his chest.

He got his girlfriend back.

______

Author's note: When we started dating, my husband brought me bouquets of lollipops because I don't like cut flowers and I could at least eat this. I think it's such a sweet idea!!!

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rise-my-angel · 1 year ago

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Heart of the Great Wolf

Masterlist

Jon Snow x F!Baratheon!Reader (Slow Burn)

Robb Stark x F!Baratheon!Reader

Pre Series Content and Extras:

Scattered Memories of the Starks

Shadows of their Hatred

The Lost Chapters of Jon Snow

A New Life's Darkened Lust

Interlude of Jealous Desires

The Trials of Resurrection

The Injured and the Perverse

NSFW Alphabet (contains spoilers for part 3 and 4)

Woes of a Modern Day Love (a modern!au)

Fresh Heals of Old Pain (a modern!au part 2)

The Aftermath of Envy (a modern!au part 3)

Stoking the Flames (a modern!au part 4)

Then Came the Explosion (a modern!au part 5)

A Family Conflicted (a modern!au part 6)

Part 1:

Wolves of the Lone Stag

Mouth of the Lion's Den

An Intrigue Drenched in Blood

Standing Behind a Betrayal

A War of Tragic Beginning

Part 2:

King and Queen in the North

Shadow of a Fiery Stag

Reunion of New Enemies

Pleasure of Conflicted Desire

The Sanctity of Children

What Lies Beyond The Veil

Part 3:

The Cost of Our Sins

Dragged Through the Violence

Only the Cold

Fire for the King's Blood

Part 4:

Ashes of Various Grey

Plans of Pain and Horror

Afraid of a Ravens Flight

Trust in the Gentle Rasps

Visions in Eyes and Flames

A Bastard or The White Wolf

Part 5:

Home of Bloodsoaked Stone

Blazing Fire of Storming Ice

Ghostly Dreams of Old

Sailing Through the Glow

The Last Dragon

The Winter Rose

Part 6:

The Clash of Three Kings

Shrouded Truth in Sickness

Winged Shadow in the Sky

Light in the Darkest Storms

Peeking the Realms Woes

Blood, Roses and All Lies

Broken Love of the Dead

The Souls Tethered in Death

Wolves of the Past and Back

The Crows and The Sight

Part 7:

A Brewing of New Mystery

Great Wolves of White Mists

Darkness Heavy in a World

Past Becomes the Present

The Thing in the Night

Waving Tides of Turmoil

Greenish White Boodraven

Dark Blood of Blinding Light

And Wait for the Snows

Part 8:

Into the Haunted Forest

Fist of the First Men

Through the Frost Fangs

News From the South

Lies Within the Sunlight

Night of Two Distances

Screams of Cracking Ice

The Final Marching Trek

Fear Overtakes a Night

Wolves Teeth and Claws

Part 9:

Forcing Past Our Safety

One Whirlwind to the Next

Court of the North

Glimpse into the Rains

Scattered Pieces of Truth

Reunions and Realizations

Laws of Gods and Men

A Mockingbirds End

The Cold and the Rats

#jon snow x reader #jon snow x you #robb stark x reader #robb stark x you #game of thrones #asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #jon snow #robb stark #game of thrones imagine

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bad-tf-fic-ideas · 3 months ago

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(331) In another 17 million years, the war has faded from much of living memory, replaced by more recent wars about which the present day cybertronians feel more bitter. During this era, internal factions are more or less at peace.

The forums of Cybertron now simply facilitate bickering online about real mechanism fiction (RMF) and what counts as "in character" for the ever-popular characters of bygone eras. Today's fic idea is to use unsanctioned and dangerous time travel to launch beloved historical figures (Autobot and Decepticon high commands) into this future world and expose them to the mythologised versions of themselves inhabiting the RMF forums.

Options include:

As much as it's great that their biggest problem is the reputational despair of being beloved historical figures on the internet, Optimus is also aghast to encounter some lube-nosed buggy with nostalgia goggles talking down to him about how Optimus Prime was a real prime's prime and would never have lowered himself to friendship with someone so far below him as Megatron — they didn't do that kind of thing in those days, don't you know?

Starscream proves so frustrating to the locals that he starts an incendiary argument on a web forum about the technical capabilities of now-ancient war machines and gets the whole platform temporarily shut down when his interlocutors leak confidential military technology. It takes him less than two days and, incidentally, gives him access to modern military specs.

Jazz discovers that he is 50% of the most popular all time RMF ship. He willingly falls down a labyrinthine rabbit hole of JazzProwl fanfiction. He tries very, very hard to drag Prowl (less willingly) with him.

Megatron has refused to make an account because he knows himself well enough to know that he is not going to be able to hold back from telling people they're wrong on the internet. But ever since Soundwave sent him this link, he's been reading and digesting the history buffs' fan theories. The MegOp narrative is... shockingly compelling. :/

#tf fic ideas #maccadam #megatron #starscream #optimus prime #jazz #prowl

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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'We buy ugly houses' is code for 'we steal vulnerable peoples' homes'

Tonight (May 11) at 7PM, I’m in CALGARY for Wordfest, with my novel Red Team Blues; I’ll be hosted by Peter Hemminger at the Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor.

Home ownership is the American dream: not only do you get a place to live, free from the high-handed dictates of a landlord, but you also get an asset that appreciates, building intergenerational wealth while you sleep — literally.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/#homevestor

Of course, you can’t have it both ways. If your house is an asset you use to cover falling wages, rising health care costs, spiraling college tuition and paper-thin support for eldercare, then it can’t be a place you live. It’s gonna be an asset you sell — or at the very least, borrow so heavily against that you are in constant risk of losing it.

This is the contradiction at the heart of the American dream: when America turned its back on organized labor as an engine for creating prosperity and embraced property speculation, it set itself on the road to serfdom — a world where the roof over your head is also your piggy bank, destined to be smashed open to cover the rising costs that an organized labor movement would have fought:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Today, we’re hit the end of the road for the post-war (unevenly, racially segregated) shared prosperity that made it seem, briefly, that everyone could get rich by owning a house, living in it, then selling it to everybody else. Now that the game is ending, the winners are cashing in their chips:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

The big con of home ownership is proceeding smartly on schedulee. First, you let the mark win a little, so they go all in on the scam. Then you take it all back. Obama’s tolerance of bank sleze after the Great Financial Crisis kicked off the modern era of corporations and grifters stealing Americans’ out from under them, forging deeds in robosigning mills:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-breaks-down-93-bln-robo-signing-settlement-2013-02-28

The thefts never stopped. Today on Propublica, by Anjeanette Damon, Byard Duncan and Mollie Simon bring a horrifying, brilliantly reported account of the rampant, bottomless scams of Homevestors, AKA We Buy Ugly Houses, AKA “the #1 homebuyer in the USA”:

https://www.propublica.org/article/ugly-truth-behind-we-buy-ugly-houses

Homevestors — an army of the hedge fund Bayview Asset Management — claims a public mission: to bail out homeowners sitting on unsellable houses with all-cash deals. The company’s franchisees — 1,150 of them in 48 states — then sprinkle pixie dust and secret sauce on these “ugly houses” and sell them at a profit.

But Propublica’s investigation — which relied on whistleblowers, company veterans, court records and interviews with victims — tells a very different story. The Homevestor they discovered is a predator that steals houses out from under elderly people, disabled people, people struggling with mental illness and other vulnerable people. It’s a company whose agents have a powerful, well-polished playbook that stops family members from halting the transfers the company’s high-pressure salespeople set in motion.

Propublica reveals homeowners with advanced dementia who signed their shaky signatures to transfers that same their homes sold out from under them for a fraction of their market value. They show how Homevestor targets neighborhoods struck by hurricanes, or whose owners are recently divorced, or sick. One whistleblower tells of how the company uses the surveillance advertising industry to locate elderly people who’ve broken a hip: “a 60-day countdown to death — and, possibly, a deal.” The company’s mobile ads are geofenced to target people near hospitals and rehab hospitals, in hopes of finding desperate sellers who need to liquidate homes so that Medicaid will cover their medical expenses.

The sales pitches are relentless. One of Homevestor’s targets was a Texas woman whose father had recently been murdered. As she grieved, they blanketed her in pitches to sell her father’s house until “checking her mail became a traumatic experience.”

Real-estate brokers are bound by strict regulations, but not house flippers like Homevestors. Likewise, salespeople who pitch other high-ticket items, from securities to plane tickets — are required to offer buyers a cooling-off period during which they can reconsider their purchases. By contrast, Homevestors’ franchisees are well-versed in “muddying the title” to houses after the contract is signed, filing paperwork that makes it all but impossible for sellers to withdraw from the sale.

This produces a litany of ghastly horror-stories: homeowners who end up living in their trucks after they were pressured into a lowball sales; sellers who end up dying in hospital beds haunted by the trick that cost them their homes. One woman who struggled with hoarding was tricked into selling her house by false claims that the city would evict her because of her hoarding. A widow was tricked into signing away the deed to her late husband’s house by the lie that she could do so despite not being on the deed. One seller was tricked into signing a document he believed to be a home equity loan application, only to discover he had sold his house at a huge discount on its market value. An Arizona woman was tricked into selling her dead mother’s house through the lie that the house would have to be torn down and the lot redeveloped; the Homevestor franchisee then flipped the house for 5,500% of the sale-price.

The company vigorously denies these claims. They say that most people who do business with Homevestors are happy with the outcome; in support of this claim, they cite internal surveys of their own customers that produce a 96% approval rating.

When confronted with the specifics, the company blamed rogue franchisees. But Propublica obtained training materials and other internal documents that show that the problem is widespread and endemic to Homevestors’ business. Propublica discovered that at least eight franchisees who engaged in conduct the company said it “didn’t tolerate” had been awarded prizes by the company for their business acumen.

Franchisees are on the hook for massive recurring fees and face constant pressure from corporate auditors to close sales. To make those sales, franchisees turn to Homevana’s training materials, which are rife with predatory tactics. One document counsels franchisees that “pain is always a form of motivation.” What kind of pain? Lost jobs, looming foreclosure or a child in need of surgery.

A former franchisee explained how this is put into practice in the field: he encountered a seller who needed to sell quickly so he could join his dying mother who had just entered a hospice 1,400 miles away. The seller didn’t want to sell the house; they wanted to “get to Colorado to see their dying mother.”

These same training materials warn franchisees that they must not deal with sellers who are “subject to a guardianship or has a mental capacity that is diminished to the point that the person does not understand the value of the property,” but Propublica’s investigation discovered “a pattern of disregard” for this rule. For example, there was the 2020 incident in which a 78-year-old Atlanta man sold his house to a Homevestors franchisee for half its sale price. The seller was later shown to be “unable to write a sentence or name the year, season, date or month.”

The company tried to pin the blame for all this on bad eggs among its franchisees. But Propublica found that some of the company’s most egregious offenders were celebrated and tolerated before and after they were convicted of felonies related to their conduct on behalf of the company. For example, Hi-Land Properties is a five-time winner of Homevestors’ National Franchise of the Year prize. The owner was praised by the CEO as “loyal, hardworking franchisee who has well represented our national brand, best practices and values.”

This same franchisee had “filed two dozen breach of contract lawsuits since 2016 and clouded titles on more than 300 properties by recording notices of a sales contract.” Hi-Land “sued an elderly man so incapacitated by illness he couldn’t leave his house.”

Another franchisee, Patriot Holdings, uses the courts aggressively to stop families of vulnerable people from canceling deals their relatives signed. Patriot Holdings’ co-owner, Cory Evans, eventually pleaded guilty to to two felonies, attempted grand theft of real property. He had to drop his lawsuits against buyers, and make restitution.

According to Homevestors’ internal policies, Patriot’s franchise should have been canceled. But Homevestors allowed Patriot to stay in business after Cory Evans took his name off the business, leaving his brothers and other partners to run it. Nominally, Cory Evans was out of the picture, but well after that date, internal Homevestors included Evans in an award it gave to Patriot, commemorating its sales (Homevestors claims this was an error).

Propublica’s reporters sought comment from Homevestors and its franchisees about this story. The company hired “a former FBI spokesperson who specializes in ‘crisis and special situations’ and ‘reputation management’ and funnelled future questions through him.”

Internally, company leadership scrambled to control the news. The company convened a webinar in April with all 1,150 franchisees to lay out its strategy. Company CEO David Hicks explained the company’s plan to “bury” the Propublica article with “‘strategic ad buys on social and web pages’ and ‘SEO content to minimize visibility.’”

https://www.propublica.org/article/homevestors-aims-to-bury-propublica-reporting

Franchisees were warned not to click links to the story because they “might improve its internet search ranking.”

Even as the company sought to “bury” the story and stonewalled Propublica, they cleaned house, instituting new procedures and taking action against franchisees identified in Propublica’s article. “Clouding titles” is now prohibited. Suing sellers for breach of contract is “discouraged.” Deals with seniors “should always involve family, attorneys or other guardians.”

During the webinar, franchisees “pushed back on the changes, claiming they could hurt business.”

If you’ve had experience with hard-sell house-flippers, Propublica wants to know: “If you’ve had experience with a company or buyer promising fast cash for homes, our reporting team wants to hear about it.”

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: A Depression-era photo of a dour widow standing in front of a dilapidated cabin. Next to her is Ug, the caveman mascot for Homevestors, smiling and pointing at her. Behind her is a 'We buy ugly houses' sign.

Image: Homevestors https://www.homevestors.com/

Fair use: https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property

#pluralistic #the rents too damned high #house flipping #llc brain #scams #elder abuse #ripoffs #weaponized shelter #predators #homevestors #we buy ugly houses #ugly houses #real estate #propublica

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calabria-mediterranea · 9 months ago

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Locri, Calabria, Italy

Locri Epizefiri (Greek Λοκροί Ἐπιζεφύριοι; from the plural of Λοκρός, Lokros, "a Locrian" and ἐπί epi, "on", Ζέφυρος (Zephyros), West Wind, thus "The Western Locrians") was founded about 680 BC on the Italian shore of the Ionian Sea, near modern Capo Zefirio, in Southern Italy's Calabria, by the Locrians, apparently by Opuntii (East Locrians) from the city of Opus, but including Ozolae (West Locrians) and Lacedaemonians.

Due to fierce winds at an original settlement, the settlers moved to the present site. After a century, a defensive wall was built. Outside the city there are several necropoleis, some of which are very large.

Locris was the site of two great sanctuaries, that of Persephone and of Aphrodite. Perhaps uniquely, Persephone was worshiped as protector of marriage and childbirth, a role usually assumed by Hera, and Diodorus Siculus knew the temple there as the most illustrious in Italy.

In the early centuries Locris was allied with Sparta, and later with Syracuse. It founded two colonies of its own, Hipponion and Medma.

During the 5th century BC, votive pinakes in terracotta were often dedicated as offerings to the goddess, made in series and painted with bright colors, animated by scenes connected to the myth of Persephone. Many of these pinakes are now on display in the National Museum of Magna Græcia in Reggio Calabria. Locrian pinakes represent one of the most significant categories of objects from Magna Graecia, both as documents of religious practice and as works of art. In the iconography of votive plaques at Locri, her abduction and marriage to Hades served as an emblem of the marital state, children at Locri were dedicated to Persephone, and maidens about to be wed brought their peplos to be blessed.

During the Pyrrhic Wars (280-275 BC) fought between Pyrrhus of Epirus and Rome, Locris accepted a Roman garrison and fought against the Epirote king. However, the city changed sides numerous times during the war. Bronze tablets from the treasury of its Olympeum, a temple to Zeus, record payments to a 'king', generally thought to be Pyrrhus. Despite this, Pyrrhus plundered the temple of Persephone at Locris before his return to Epirus, an event which would live on in the memory of the Greeks of Italy. At the end of the war, perhaps to allay fears about its loyalty, Locris minted coins depicting a seated Rome being crowned by 'Pistis', a goddess personifying good faith and loyalty, and returned to the Roman fold.

The city was abandoned in the 5th century AD. The town was finally destroyed by the Saracens in 915. The survivors fled inland about 10 kilometres (6 mi) to the town Gerace on the slopes of the Aspromonte.

Today, the modern town of Locri boasts a National Museum and an Archaeological Park, etirely dedicated to the ancient Greek city. The museum preserves the most important findings of the time, such as vases, pinakes, tools used in everyday life, architectural remains from the various excavation area.

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northlt03 · 6 months ago

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Rick is known to mirror myths a lot (Silena-Clarisse and Patroclus-Achilles, Polyphemus' cave, Hercules' labors, etc) He could and SHOULD have mirrored the Trojan war in HOO.

Let me set the scene. Gaea doesn't pop up until the last couple books. It's easy to be scared of something that is mentioned but not seen, which in my opinion, is why Gaea in the HOO books just wasn't scary enough.

So the antagonists in the first few books are the Giants working under Gaea's orders. Percy is kidnapped by them and given to the Romans in the hope that the Greeks and the Romans will go batshit crazy in a fight and forget all about the prophecy of the seven and destroying Gaea or whatever.

Camp Halfblood is fully ready for war. As soon as they find out (through an oracle or smth idk) that the Romans exist and they have Percy, not even Chiron can stop them. Percy is the hero of the Battle of Manhattan, of course, and the hero mentioned in the last great prophecy. He's like their modern Aristos Achaion.

Meanwhile, the Romans have no clue what's going on. There's this guy he's funny, he has no memories, he just shows up at their wolf goddess and trains and gets sent to them. Cool.

Juno can't stand to see New Rome be attacked. Whether or not they would win is a whole different story. So she plucks Jason from CJ and brings them to the Greeks just for some sort of a balance.

This mirrors the Trojan war in the sense that Troy was a fortified city, so is New Rome with tons of forts and walls. Aeneas' lineage went on to be Remus and Romulus, the founders of Rome. And Helen of Troy was stolen from the Greeks.

Anyway so there's that conflict, but at the same time Camp Halfblood is getting ready to attack, Jason, Piper and Leo get sent on a quest to rescue Hera who has been captured by Porphyrion and Enceladus.

On the way, Jason starts to regain his memory a little bit, though he doesn't know everything yet. He's still super conflicted with everything. A pretty girl thinks they were dating, Leo says they were best friends, Annabeth says the Romans are enemies. But whom should he really believe?

Piper's whole arc through the first book could be about how she's the daughter of the goddess of beauty, she wrongly assumes her fake crush on Jason was her mom's fault. And she's learned so much bad stuff about her mom from myths, she outright rejects feminity and anything remotely girly at first but then slowly she gets to know Aphrodite isn't as bad as some myths make her out to be. Bonding and shit bc why should Poseidon be the only present godly parent?

Leo, meanwhile, has no idea he can essentially fire bend in the first book. His arc could be about discovering his mother's death was his fault, slightly and coming to terms with it with the help of his friends.

Reyna on the Roman's side is freaking out bc Octavian wants to go to war with the Greeks who are close to attacking them, there's a strange dude who keeps trying to pick fights with gods, a horse girl and not to mention monsters won't fucking DIE.

SON trio go on their quest to Alaska to kill Alcyoneus/ release Thanatos and things are getting clearer to them as well. Just when the Greeks are about to attack on CJ, Polybotes and the monsters attack as well. Somehow, both sides end up fighting the monsters together.

They're not friends, but they're not enemies either, bc Percy is reunited with his gf and Jason is returned to his home.

The Roman senate and the Greeks somehow come to the same conclusions- that a quest needs to go to their ancient lands. Over the next few months the work of the Argo II commences.

Things seem smooth for a while. But Gaea grows restless. She poisons Octavian and manipulates him through dreams and stuff like Kronos did to Luke. As is the nature of most Roman emperors, Octavian overthrows Reyna and declares himself the leader of New Rome like his namesake Octavius Caesar. (HAHA! HISTORY PARALLEL BITCHES)

This puts the actual quest on hold bc the seven now need to find the Athena Parthenos to bring together the Greeks and the Romans and to stop Octavian's plan of trying to fuck as much shit up as possible.

Reyna, Nico and say idk, Grover, are the ones to deviate from the quest and bring the statue to USA again. But the Seven are still very much in Europe after rescuing Nico.

Percy and Annabeth fall into Tartarus which helps close the Doors of Death, except this time since Nico isn't there, Hazel has to take on control over ghosts and the dead in the House of Hades and leading up to it. The powers of mist, in my opinion, should have gone to Piper since charmspeaking is a lot like bending the mist verbally.

Piper's arc through the third and fourth book is starting to discover herself and with the help of her mother, figuring out she doesn't like Jason romantically like she thought she did.

Hazel's arc is gaining control over what she once was (dead). She's jealous her dad was there more for Nico than her, but she pushes past it and never lets her anger and grudges get the better of her which is like breaking boundaries for children of Hades/Pluto.

Frank's arc in HOH was really cool, I like that. So no change to that.

Jason, poor guy is still very much confused about everything really. He's used to being the leader, he feels lost in the large group. He has his moments to shine ofc (please take away his excess amounts of head injuries), but he starts to feel inferior, which is where Leo helps him bc the guy knows what that's like.

Anyway, in the absence of Percy and Annabeth, Jason has to take charge. He discovers he doesn't really like it. That's not what he was meant for even though he had greatness thrust upon him at a very young age.

His BOO arc is earlier this time and takes place throughout HOH and BOO. He's content with himself, even if he isn't with anyone. HE'S THE ONE THAT GETS SENT TO OGYGIA!!!

And Calypso eventually does fall for him bc he's smart, nice, and just an overall swell guy. But he helps her to realize that she can be content in herself as well. And he promises her that he'll help her.

Show me Leo, Jason and Percy trying to think of ways of helping the goddess.

In any case. BOO could have been like Iliad pt 2 also known as the Odyssey. It takes them the whole book just to get to Athens. Meanwhile, they've understood that Gaea is the main main villain. She's even raised some of the other primordials against them.

Percy and Annabeth already saw Tartarus, and then there's Oceanus who makes their travel much harder than necessary. Something something about how they get tossed all over the place and somehow manage to gather all the correct ingredients for the potion (i forgot the name lol) on their small adventures in the different places. In the end they finally make it to Athens. Except this time, there's only a few giants there bc they killed the rest before.

Annabeth and Percy are taken hostage, like it happens in the books, but PERCY WILLINGLY GIVES UP HIS BLOOD TO RAISE GAEA RATHER THAN LETTING ANNABETH GET HURT BC OF HIS FATAL FLAW LIKE ATHENA TOLD HIM WOULD HAPPEN EVENTUALLY!!

The Gods DON'T SHOW UP PLEASE!! That was so lameee. Why even do the whole quest if their mommies and daddies were going to show up to help them????

So while Percy and Annabeth are battling the remaining few Giants, Leo, Piper, Hazel and Frank go up against Gaia herself. In the old myths four titans held Ouranos down while Kronos chopped his essence up. In the same way, they battle Gaia away from her turf in the air, keeping her distracted enough. All these demigods are needed because she's a primordial dammit!

Jason, my guy, comes in a clutch, chops her to pieces and sends her essence to Tartarus!!

The world is saved, the end!

#percy jackson pjo #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #hoo #heroes of olympus rewrite #heroes of olympus #jason grace #nico di angelo

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antifainternational · 1 year ago

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Since youre antifascist, how about you give us a definition of fascism? What exactly makes someone a fascist? (and in case you use terms such as left-wing or right-wing be sure to define them too)

Guess it's been a while since a clever Anon challenged us to define fascism, huh? Right, let's get into it: Via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

Yale professor Jason Stanley:

“Fascism is a creation of race hatred and its politically organized expression.” - Willhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933).

“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.” - Upton Sinclair

“Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect — better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall…that its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one’s own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone. ” - Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition (1927).

“Spent most of the day reading fascisti leaflets. They certainly have turned the whole country into an army. From cradle to grave one is cast in the mould of fascismo and there can be no escape … It is certainly a socialist experiment in that it destroys individuality. It destroys liberty.” - Harold Nicolson, The Harold Nicolson Diaries : 1919-1964 (2004).

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

“A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends….If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.” - Henry A. Wallace

“Fascism is the cult of organised murder, invented by the arch-enemies of society. It tends to destroy civilization and revert man to his most barbarous state. Mussolini and Hitler might well be called the devils of an age, for they are playing hell with civilization.” - Marcus Garvey, Authors take Sides on the Spanish War, 1937 Philosophy Tube's breakdown of the elements of fascism is very thorough and recommended if you're not the reading type. But do you read books? We hope so if you're looking to engage in political discussion about anything. Here are some books that tackle the definition of fascism, in whole or in part, that we would recommend to you (check/order from your local library!) Mark Bray's highly-accessible Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook is a great starting point for this topic.

Columbia history professor Robert O. Paxton's excellent book The Anatomy of Fascism goes into this in great detail.

There's also Umberto Eco's The Eternal Fascist

or his "practical list for identifying fascists" as well as Hannah Arendt's seminal The Origins of Totalitarianism

We hope you weren't looking for a simple answer to the complex question of "what is fascism?" Anon, just as we hope you're up to taking our challenge of checking out all of the above so you're curiosity is satisfied and you're well-versed on the topic.

#antifa #fascism #defining fascism

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wangxianficfinder · 4 months ago

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In the mood for...

July 10th

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1. thanks in advance :) i hope you don't mind a nsfw itmf req. can you/the community recommend any good fics with bimboification vibes? specifically with wwx as the one undergoing it. i've read several fics like this, but i'm hoping there are more i haven't found

Baby, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet by TriviasFolly (E, 177k, WangXian, Modern AU, A/B/O Dynamics, Alpha LWJ, Omega WWX, Omega LSZ, Mafia, Crime, Sects are Clans, Feral WWX, Feral Omegas, Nurse WWX, Dark LWJ, Dark WWX, Possessive LWJ, feminine WWX, wwx’s cannon desire to be a sugar baby/trophy wife, Breeding Kink, Mpreg) A/B/O dynamics, long fic, modern AU mafia setting, really great

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2. Hi for the next itmf I was wondering if anyone had some time travel gone wrong? Like, maybe wwx tries to go to the past but instead he only sends resentment and it ends up haunting the wwx of the past or sometimes. Thanks!

Grief and Blame, Interwoven by donutsweeper (T, 2k, LXC & LWJ, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Character Death, Dark, discipline whip, Time Travel) LXC uses time travel and changes something to fix things but it doesn't work remotely as he'd thought it would

🔒❤️ the thing with feathers by RoseThorne (G, 43k,wangxian, Transmigration, Time Travel Fix-It, Illnesses, Family, Scars, Memory Loss, Angst, Fear, Recovery, Sharing a Bed, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Good Parent YZY, Referenced Sexual Slavery, Blood and Gore, Sexual Tension, Arranged Marriage, Grief, Adoption, POV Third Person, POV Alternating, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Good Parent LQR, Clairvoyance, Butterfly Effect) link in #12

❤️ A Future Family In A Broken Past by Hauntcats (T, 121k, wangxian, time travel, not Jiang friendly, Not Cultivation World Friendly, WWX Needs a Hug, Family Dynamics, What is a good family?, Fear of emotions does not excuse abuse, happy ending of sorts, Not Jiang Clan Friendly, Angst with a Happy Ending, fix-it, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon Divergence, LXC needs a hug, Everyone Needs A Hug, except JC, He can suffer, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, not YZY friendly) has time travel that was fueled by resentful energy so more monsters are encountered in the new timeline.

Lan Yuan's War by BurningTea (G, 196k, LSZ & LWJ, LWJ & LXC, WangXian, LWJ & WQ, WIP, Time Travel, Dad LWJ, Sunshot Campaign, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Rumours, Lots of rumours about LWJ, several people worry about LWJ, CQL Verse, Mental Health Issues, LWJ is very much not okay, Time travel has consequences, Sick LWJ) has time travel that affects the golden cores and health of those who traveled through time.

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3. Hi, for the next itmf, can you suggest some fics where A-yuan and Lan Jingyi are twins

🔒❤️ kick at the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight by AlfAlfAlfAlfAlf, tardigradeschool (T, 75k, WangXian, Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eventual Happy Ending, Getting Together, Burial Mounds Settlement Days, Inspired by The Parent Trap (1998), Kid Fic, teen shenanigans, two a-yuans, Fluff and Angst)

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4. thank you for your work !! itmf any fic where either yl!wwx gets transported to the future, or he comes back to life after his death, and his name has been cleared/he’s been missed/basically he isn’t met with hatred and killing intent. thanks again!

🧡 The Shade of Old Trees by Kryal (T, 363k, WangXian, Ridiculously Long Notes, History, Canon Divergence, Modern AU, Slow Burn, Worldbuilding, Slow Life, Action/Adventure, Magic Returns, BAMF WWX)

Until The End by abCEE (M, 365k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, war changes people, resulting to OOC, no pinning, Established Relationship, Mpreg, Good Uncle LQR, a little grey LWJ, a bit of JC bashing from LWJ, BAMF JYL, 16 years of yearning, mainly CQL verse but has scenes from the novel as well, LSZ is WangXian’s Child, WWX Has a New Golden Core, Canon Rewrite, Happy Ending, Fix-It of Sorts) might work. It isn’t time travel, rather a canon rewrite, but circumstances happen and in the years WWX is absent his name is cleared.

🔒 不忘 | Don't Forget by dragongirlG (E, 50k, WangXian, LSZ & LWJ, JL & LSZ & LJY & OYZZ, Canon Divergence, Time Travel, Reincarnation, Fix-It of Sorts, Identity Porn, Social Media, Devotion, Reunions, Feelings, Family, Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Bondage, Names, References to Canon, Modern Era, Artist WWX, Sexual Content, Pining, POV Multiple, Additional Warnings In Author's Note)

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5. Hi! This is for ITMF where WWX works as medical examiner or a coroner or he works in lab like in "i really want to know (who are you)" by Stratisphyre

Thank you! @idontknowwhattowriteforusername

Slaughter House by Duochanfan (M, 24k, future WangXian, LXC/NMJ, NHS/JC, Light Angst, Drama, Crime Scenes, Crime Drama, Psychometric WWX, Coroner WWX, detective LWJ, Detective JC, slight romance, Amnesia, Past Kidnapping, Murder Mystery, Reference to Autopsies, dead bodies, Single Parent WWX, Modern)

Post Mortem by Cataclysmic_Calamity (E, 178k, WangXian, Psychological Horror, Modern, friends with benefits, they’re both fucked up but they love each other so much, Slow Burn Mystery, Unnegotiated Kink, Dom/sub, Anal Sex, Consensual Non-Consent, Stalking, Drug Addiction, Serial Killers, in WWX’s desire to critique the ‘final girl’ trope he accidentally becomes one, Angst with a Happy Ending, meta commentary on the horror and true crime genres) medical examiner WWX, thriller/horror, stalking but not between Wangxian, extremely good writing, very worth the read

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6. sorry if this has been asked before but for im ITMF a fic where lan wangji is very overprotective of wei wuxian. preferably because wwx's death traumatized him, but id also take any other overprotective fics. thank you!!!! @stgroversfire

So Full Of Love (Wouldn’t Know Where to Start) by witchupbitch (M, 63k, WIP, WangXian, Best Friends, Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Eventual Romance, Eventual Sex, Possessive LWJ, Protective LWJ, Blood and Violence, Idiots in Love, Humor, Mafia AU, Modern AU, Flirting, shameless WWX, Confident WWX, Explicit Language, Mutual Sexual Tension, dark LWJ, Dark WWX, Exhibitionism Sex, Possessive Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings) modern AU mafia, dark Wangxian, like they're both really fucked up

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7. hello hardworking mods! i can see that you're working on a backlog, so no rush, and thanks for your hard work!! i would love to see a fic where any member of the cast is trans, and learning how to deal with second puberty - preferably ftm, and not treated like a crack fic. bonus points if its wwx and he gets totally railed, bonus bonus points if there are lovely family dynamics centred around someone being lovingly accepted.

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8. Hello good! This fandom is so big that I was wondering if fanfics were written with Lan Wangji condemned to live the same fate as his mother. Mama Lan was always a compelling mystery to me, canon LWJ was more in line with making her father's mistake, but then I thought about Mama Lan and went wild thinking "What if?" It would be a delicious avalanche of mixed feelings and strange curveballs for Wangxian to end up like this, considering their dynamic and how they are as people. I don't know what tag to use to find something like this (if it exists), so I would really appreciate your help! Thanks for your time in advance @makolashida

I haven't read any fanfics of that type but maybe dark!Wei Wuxian + bottom Lan Wangji could give some results? Maybe just bottom Lan Wangji + gusu lan sect bashing

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9. I m new to this... I don't really know how this works but... Are there any fics where Wei Ying goes to therapy and just processes his trauma? @ishipwenqingwithmyself

Better By Change by NebulusCharlie (Not Rated, 8k, WangXian, Therapy, Not JC Friendly, gaslighting JYL, Happy Wangxian, Fluffy wangxian, Boundaries, healthy mindspace) it's a modern AU, involves JC + JYL bashing, doesn't deal with canon WWX trauma like losing his core/various family deaths/war trauma

redemption lies plainly in truth by kaseyskat (T, 5k, WangXian, JC & WWX, JL & WWX, WQ & WWX, WWX & JYL, Post-Canon, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, Character Study, WWX is allowed to mourn, that's it that's the fic, Reconciliation, mentions of WWXs past) set in canon so no therapy in the modern sense but WWX gets time to process some of his grief

Come Around and Stay by trippednfell (M, 160k, WangXian, NieLan, Slow Burn, Kid Fic, Found Family, Modern AU, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, PTSD, Blood and Injury, Dissociation, Angst with a Happy Ending, Musicals, POV Alternating, Baking, Yunmeng reconciliation (eventually), Friend Zoning, Literal Sleeping Together, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks) modern AU, WWX gets a therapist in this one, no canon trauma processing but deals with modern trauma

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10. Are there any fics, where wangxian end up talking about LXC calling WWX LWJ's one mistake? Or where LWJ finds out his brother said that. Thank you for all your amazing work. I adore this blog. @winxhelina

🔒💖 When has silence saved anyone?by Vrishchika (T, 6k, wangxian, LSZ & WWX & LWJ, post-canon, LXC critical, family feels, angry LWJ & LSZ, LXC gets scolded) really wonderful writing, takes a critical look at LXC

Wei Ying Was Not A “MISTAKE” by Jeeny271196 (Not rated, 6k, wangxian, LXC & LWJ, BAMF LWJ, confrontation, hurt/comfort, protective LWJ, not LXC friendly) LWJ snaps back at LXC

Enough! by Jeeny271196 (Not Rated, 12k, WangXian, WIP, Gusu Lan Sect Bashing, Jiang Family Bashing, JC Bashing, LXC Bashing, BAMF WWX, Cultivation Sect Politics) WWX is the one who snaps back at LXC

break by justdoityoufucker (T, 3k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, LXC Critical, JC Critical, Canonical Character Death, Guānyīn Temple Scene, BAMF WN, Protective WN) Wen Ning is the one who snaps back at LXC

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11. ITMF fics (non modern au) that explore WWX’s time on the street and the consequences of it please and thank you @dynmo13

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12. for itmf any fics about wei wuxians childhood in yunmeng jiang sect mostly canon but they save yunmeng jiang sect/not everyone dies and madame yu is not written as an antagonist or she has redemption arc something like that

tysm @r3n-vy

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13. Itmf wwx having a daughter

Jiang Xiaolian's Guide to Motherhood and Gardening by bumbledees (T, 14k, WangXian, JC/WQ, JYL/JZX, Crack Taken Mostly Seriously, like many of WWX's best ideas it starts as a joke!, and then i write it, canon is sad bitch let's get you some fun, purposeful baby aquisition, john mulaney voice: you know those days when you're like 'this might as well happen', that's this fic, WWX when will you learn that there are consequences to your actions, have a melon baby) sort of but not really mpreg? there's no actual pregnancy, just some WWX-typical cultivation shenanigans

sweet lotus petals, unfolding in the sun by stiltonbasket (G, 33k, WangXian, LXC & LWJ, LXC & WWX, JC & WWX, Unplanned Pregnancy, Married WangXian, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Curtain Fic, wangxian are dads and it hurts so good, Medical Inaccuracies, heaps of them, Mpreg, lxc is best bro, someone save JC, wangxian dual cultivation baby, except not how you think, the radish method gets an upgrade, Reincarnation) mpreg WWX

❤️ Attempting the Impossible by Ariaste for williedustice (T, 36k, WangXian, JC & WWX, Post-Canon, Yunmeng Bros Reconciliation, Adoption, Family Fluff, Kid fic, Family drama, Fluff, 🔒[PODFIC] Attempting the Impossible by Ariaste by lunatique)

Never Again by Hauntcats (T, 67k, WWX & WN & WQ, JC & WWX, wangxian, graphic depictions of violence, major character death, Canon Divergence, Angst, Golden Core Transfer Fix-It, Time Travel Fix-It, Not JC Friendly, Dark, BAMF WWX, mentions of abuse, Not Everyone Dies au, XY doesn’t have a happy ending)

🔒 Little Stars by Aki_no_hikari (G, 4k, WangXian, Family Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Canon Divergence, Yílíng Wèi Sect)

The Trouble with Talismans: a Treatise on Time-Travel by Young Master Lan Xiaohui (Age 6) by stiltonbasket (G, 26k, WangXian, LSZ & WWX & LWJ, LXC & LWJ, LXC/NMJ, Time Travel, wangxian get smacked in the face with their future children, Parenthood, Developing Relationship, Getting Together, a-yuan is the best big brother, xiao-yu has a, Very bad day, baby just wants his a-niang, and for his parents to GET IT TOGETHER already, Happy Ending, Confused WWX, Accidental Baby Acquisition, lwj is panicking)

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14. Hi! I'm in the mood for any good recommendations for fanfics that aren't on AO3. Any favorite Tumblr posts, or anything on other sites. Smut or Fluff very welcome! But anything goes. @hikato-chan

Shattered Mirrors Master Post by @besanii

rebuttable presumption masterpost by @sarah-yyy

The requester for 14 should be sure to check out the non-AO3 fic compilations: Non-AO3 Part 1 (Twitter) | Pt.2

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15. Hey! Not sure if my prev. ask got sent so if this is a duplicate please delete. For ITMF - do you know of any fics that challenge the practice of seclusion? It's just the more I think about it the more it seems like the in-universe version of celebrities going to "rehab" at upscale resorts to avoid taking responsibility for their behavior. So I'd like to see a character (possibly lxc?) dragged back out again to clean up their own mess.

Scattered ashes and dispersed smoke series by AshayaTReldai (E, 50k, Past LXC/WWX, WangXian, SL/XXC, Past Mpreg, LXC in Seclusion, Post-LXC in Seclusion, Angst, Family systems theory and differentiation, Broken LXC, but we're going to give him the opportunity to heal, Daoism, PTSD, Abuse, Mental Coercion, Mental Abuse, JGY has a lot to answer for, Dark WWX, Dark LXC, WWX's Birthday, Angry rant, the raw truth) This is a 2 part series, canon divergence AU. Changes are big but don't actually shift the overall plot. (Changes are WWX and LXC have an arranged marriage at first, golden core goes to LXC, WWX and LXC are A-Yuan's birth parents.) That stuff isn't really important and is kind of just mentioned, the focus is on LXC facing his mistakes and actually growing as a person. Wangxian happy ending.

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16. Is there wangxian fics where the gusu classroom sees wangxian's future and shamelessness? what led to deaths framing wwx? Whodunnit and why? @tjrc18

💖 From the Future for the Past by friedchickenlord (G, 27k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Time Travel Fix-It, First Love, Love Confessions, Fluff and Humor, accidental time travel due to one husband malfunctioning array, teen wangxian meet adult wangxian, Happy Ending, adding extra chapter, in this household we hate JGS, in which WWX love library pavilion, (in a way) Yiling Laozu x Hanguang Jun, Denial, Mutual Pining)

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17. fics where wwx has wings. or a fic where wwx only has a (raven?) wing and lwj saw it and fell in love if I'm not mistaken @quwieiidkd

you'll love me at once (the way you did once upon a dream) by sweetlolixo (T, 18k, WangXian, Dark Fairytale, Inspired by Maleficent (2014), Wingfic, Sleeping Beauty with a twist, Maleficent WWX, Prince LWJ, Older WWX, Younger LWJ, young prince lwj flirts with MILF wwx that's it that's the fic, just kidding there is also, Angst with a Happy Ending, True Love's Kiss, Three Chaotic Fairies NHS NMJ and JGY, A Fairytale Iteration of "Lan Zhan you like Mian Mian?!") maleficent AU WWX

the sleeper's gift by iliacquer (T, 6k, WangXian, Implied/Referenced Torture, Disability, A curse within a curse within a curse, Wingfic, Sleeping Beauty Retelling, Maleficent WWX, Reincarnation, Sometimes love lasts multiple lifetimes I guess, True Love's Kiss) another maleficent AU but more intricate, cursed LWJ and WWX

Two is a Pair, Three is a Murder by cosmicworry14 (E, 6k, WangXian, Wingfic, winged!wwx, demonic bird wwx, Bird/Human Hybrids, Protective LWJ, Possessive LWJ, Possessive WWX, Animal Instincts, Courting Rituals, Blood and Gore, Dark) winged WWX due to burial mounds

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If you didn’t get an answer to your ask here, don’t forget to make use of @mdzs-kinkmeme and MDZS KINK MEME on Dreamwidth. Authors actually do use them for ideas. You may get what you order!***Your prompt doesn’t have to be kink! Fluff, crack, whatever - it’s all good!***

#wangxian #mdzs #wangxian fic recs #i'm in the mood for a fic #the untamed #wangxian fic search #wangxianficfinder #long post

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mornington-the-crescent · 2 years ago

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The Poll

So, for those who don’t know, I put up a poll of, “Who was the worst American President?” The list was FDR, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon. It got up to about 13k notes before I deleted it, because I was tired of the notes clogging up my feed. And the results were... telling.

About 75-80% of all the notes were, “Where is Reagan/Andrew Jackson?!?” Many of the rest, though, can be seen below:

What this tells me is that more than ten thousand people didn’t have an education; they had an indoctrination.

You want to hear it? All right, buckle up, because it’s time for a stroll down memory lane.

Why was FDR a bad president?

It is almost hard to know where to begin with this. Let’s start with one of the most basic ones: The belief that FDR got us out of the Depression.

Point of fact, No the fuck he did not.

Making American Depressed

If you ask almost any historian or economist, they will tell you flat-out that not only did the New Deal not end the Great Depression, but that it made it significantly longer and worse than it would have been otherwise. Hoover bears some of the blame for this, but the pseudo-socialist dogshit that was the New Deal bears the brunt of the blame for this one.

The stock market crashed in late October, 1929. Two months later, unemployment peaked at 9%. Over the next several months, unemployment started to fall, down to 5-6% by the spring of the next year. Half a year after the crash, unemployment had not hit double digits. Hoover’s intervention, though, did cause unemployment to reach double digits. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and took office in 1933, and unemployment did not fall out of double digits for the remainder of the 1930′s. The thing that actually pulled the US out of the Depression was the second World War; turns out that removing roughly 12 million people from the labor force to go and fight does wonders for unemployment numbers. FDR even said that Doctor New Deal was replaced by Doctor Win-The-War.

This was hardly the first economic downturn in American history. For the first 150 years of this country, there were downturns all the time. And what the government did was nothing, and the economy recovered on its own. But Roosevelt represents the first massive large-scale intervention in the economy. And government intervention in the economy slows economic recovery; when you have no idea what the government is going to do tomorrow in regards to the economy, it’s hard to make smart financial decisions, so you just don’t bother. After all, why do anything if tomorrow, the rules of the game are going to change?

Separation of Powers Who?

FDR issued more executive orders than any other President of the 20th century. He may, in fact, have issued more than all the other Presidents of the 20th century combined. Rather than letting Congress, the legislative branch of government, you know, legislate, he preferred to try to do everything himself.

The President is supposed to be the weakest branch of the government, but Roosevelt did everything he could to try to establish its supremacy over the other branches. When Congress didn’t give him his way, he used executive orders. When the Supreme Court challenged some of his acts as unconstitutional, his response was to threaten to have them replaced, or to simply pack the court with judges more sympathetic to his aims. This is a man who was openly contemptuous of the concept of the rule of law.

Here’s a fun entry from the notes:

Hey, you want to talk about fascists? Actual, honest-to-goodness Fascists, not just the modern definition (i.e. anyone a nanometer to the right of Noam Chomsky)? Let’s talk about the originals. Let’s talk about the inventor of Fascism, Benito motherfucking Mussolini. And how FDR openly admired him, and was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished”, calling Fascism the “cleanest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery [he had] ever seen”, and that it made him “envious”. And Mussolini, for his part, said of Roosevelt that, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices … Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.”

When the guy who fucking invented Fascism is saying that he thinks that you are also doing Fascism, then maybe you’re not a good person.

Concentration- I Mean, Internment Camps

And just like his buddies on the other side of the Atlantic, right when World War 2 kicked off, Roosevelt thought it would be a good idea to take “undesirables” and throw them into prison camps. Roughly 20 thousand Italian- and German-Americans, American citizens, were thrown into camps, simply for the crime of having ancestors from countries we were at war with. And then, of course, there’s the 120 thousand Japanese-Americans who were likewise rounded up and put into prison camps, two thirds of whom were natural-born American citizens.

Almost 150 thousand American citizens, thrown into literal concentration camps, without the bother and expense of due process, stripped of their constitutional rights simply on the basis of race.

As for the concentration camps set up in Europe by the Nazis, however? Despite being told of their existence by people who had escaped, as well as journalists and lawyers from Germany, once American planes gained the ability to attack those camps, to shut them down? FDR refused to grant them permission to do so.

Commander in Thief

Executive Order 6102 outlawed the private ownership of gold, allowing the government to confiscate all of it. Once that was accomplished, the Gold Reserve Act allowed him to change the value of gold, debasing America’s currency (which was on a gold standard at the time), which permitted him to steal literally billions of dollars from American citizens, without any compensation.

World War, Too

There is evidence to suggest that Roosevelt knew about the imminent attack on America by Japan in December of 1941. He discussed with several high-ranking people in the War Department, and in his own cabinet, how to get Japan to fire the first shot in the war, so that he could get America involved. It would make sense: His oil embargo was designed to provoke a Japanese response, so as to draw America into the war. And once America was in the war, ordered the Philippines to be abandoned, outright lying that there was an army waiting to retake it once it had been conquered by Japan.

And as the war dragged on, he got quite cozy with Uncle Joe, Stalin himself. He helped to repatriate two million people to Russia, who very much did not want to go back, many of them ending up either in the gulags, or simply killed outright. And his constant concessions to Stalin helped the Soviet Union hold on to eastern Europe, setting the stage for the Cold War. Even when he was informed of Soviet spies within the American government, and provided evidence of their disloyalty and subversion, he simply let them keep at it.

Racism, Racism, and more Racism

Remember how you cheered when lynching was made a federal crime a few months ago, and asked why it hadn’t been done before now? Well, the main reason was good ol’ FDR himself. A bill was proposed in the Congress which would have made lynching a federal crime, and Roosevelt refused to pass it.

Or what about during the Olympic games in Berlin, when black athletes from America took home multiple gold medals? Roosevelt invited the white athletes to the White House, but not a single black one. Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, said, “Hitler didn’t snub me --- it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”

And then there was his nomination of a KKK member to the Supreme Court; Hugo Black, who had zero judicial experience, was nominated simply because he supported the New Deal.

He also was of the opinion that America was, and ought to remain, a white and Protestant country, and that too many Jews was inherently a bad thing, because of how distasteful he found them. He boasted that there was no Jewish blood in his veins, as a mark of pride. He even went so far as to turn away ships of Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazi tyranny in Europe.

In conclusion

FDR was a massive piece of shit. He massively overstepped his constitutionally-appointed bounds at every available opportunity, massively expanding the power of the Presidency at the expense of all other parts of government, and at the expense of individual liberty. He was openly racist and anti-Semitic. His economic policies brought ruin upon the American economy. He openly praised fascism right up until the moment that it was no longer politically expedient to do so, and switched to deferring to authoritarian communism instead. Almost everything that you hate about the modern United States can be traced directly back to this one man.

The fact that he is remembered as not just a good President, but one of the best Presidents, shows how utterly broken American education is.

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