#those who DO study history are condemned to watch others make the same mistakes over and over

[clio-muse-of-history]

January 10

In 1920, the Treaty of Versailles went into effect, finally ending the Great War.  And everyone learned their lessons about how stupidly destructive industrial-age warfare was, and nobody ever entertained delusions of oh goddammit I can't even finish that

[1949coupe]

Freelance journalist and entrepreneur Tucker Benedict just wrote an open letter to Trump to remind him what it means to be American. Benedict’s message has officially set the internet on fire! Read it below:

Donald Trump,

My family immigrated to the United States of America on the third boat after the Mayflower. Our heritage precedes any records of Trumps, or Drumpfs, in America. Members of my family have served in every major conflict in US history with the exception of Iraq; your family cannot say the same. Yet, you continue to act as if you’ve sacrificed for the betterment of our country when the reality is: we don’t even know you’ve paid taxes half the time. Instead of acknowledging your past though, and honorably promising to change from a position of great entitlement, you accost service members you don’t care for, threaten democracy with attacks on the media, and worsen divides that threaten to tear America apart. Moreover, there’s a part of me that’s angry from a personal standpoint, my father founded the criminal divison of the EPA, and was the senior environmental prosecutor in the country until 2014, and whose storied career began with work on Watergate. You’ve destroyed his life’s work in under 7 months, but I’m not writing this from a position of anger or even from a personal standpoint, I’m trying to speak for a great many Americans who are understandably frightened for the future; who feel they’re watching the degradation of our way of life. This letter isn’t about me, or my feelings, but it is intended for you, Mr. President.

There’s a storm coming and as our enemies around the world lick their chops watching the division within America, we continue to charge towards a future in which we tear ourselves apart. Many of us, yourself included, seem to have forgotten what it means to be American. If our memory continues to fail and we forget entirely what being American truly means, we’ll not only lose our status as the world’s leader, we won’t deserve it anymore. This is not a world I can imagine nor that I have any desire to. Without America to serve as an eternal source of light within the darkness the world will be cast into chaos. In order to preserve what so many gave so much to obtain, we must first remember what it means to be American. While we seem hopelessly intertwined in a national, and very partisan, identity crisis we can only hope to pull out of it by remembering the lessons our founding father’s taught us all those years ago when they first defined, through their actions, what it means to be American.

Currently, there are a few misconceptions on what makes someone American; there seems to be a great deal of entitlement when considering the term. I was born a white male and a citizen of The United States of America but I don’t think that makes me an American. There seems to be a lot of controversy swirling around this notion but the reality is being born a certain way entitles me to nothing. The circumstances of birth don’t make you American, they never have, but actions do.

We earn our status as American through our actions day to day, month to month, and year to year. In doing the right thing by our loved ones, our countrymen, and ourselves we become American. There’s not flashy gesture or fancy piece of paper that can make you truly American but living the right way can; waking up and doing the right thing everyday, no matter how big or small the action, is what makes us American. It isn’t a static definition either, it’s a dynamic one just like we are as people; always changing, growing, and working towards the betterment of not only ourselves but our society as a whole. When considering how we define being American it’s worth noting those criteria.

When I voted it was in a densely populated, urban sector of Philadelphia. There were four booths for hundreds of people; many of whom were elderly and couldn’t stand for hours. It was a very telling few hours. Some of those elderly individuals struggling the most sported Make America Great Again hats. Instead of being happy at your supporter’s misfortune though I spent my day making trips to a conference room located at the back of the line hundreds of people long in order to ferry chairs to those who couldn’t stand. It wasn’t a big gesture or one that required a tremendous effort, it certainly DID NOT deserve any praise, because I knew it was merely the right thing to do for my fellow American. This attitude seems to be dying though, as we forget more and more what being American means. As I walked back and forth with chairs under each arm I watched many of my young peers barely look up from their phones; some even seemed noticeably annoyed that a fellow millennial would go out of his way to help your supporters. Make no mistake, those watching seemed to have forgotten what being American means just as much as anyone. When nobody joined in to help I was only made more aware of the change I’ve seen in my lifetime; the gradual shift many of us have noticed in our culture. It might seem subtle to some, but many have forgotten to do the right thing for no other reason than it helps another American. If this lack of support for each other continues to proliferate we’ll witness the decay of American values and worth This is something I attribute to the win at all cost/look out for yourself mentality that’s taken over politics and permeated into our culture; winning has become more important than standing up for each other. Americans used to do the right thing automatically, while many still do, others have stopped if there’s no reward or personal incentive. Americans used to help each other no matter who was President and that’s truly what made America great; our uniquely American loyalty. That loyalty, love, and solidarity saved us from the greatest threat the world has ever known, liberated Europe, and won two world wars. There’s been a change though. It’s apparent everywhere. We saw it when 23 of 24 Texas congressmen voted to deny aid when Hurricane Sandy hit, now faced with Harvey, Texans find themselves in an unfortunate position. This is merely one example of a larger problem within our society though and if this cancerous divisionist mentality continues to spread we’ll witness our downfall.

Hope is not lost though because it isn’t too late to start putting America, and each other, first again; all that’s required is remembering what made us Americans in the first place.

In school, when I was young and studying our history, I learned a great lesson; one I think is important enough to share. I learned that being an American isn’t something you obtain from being born here, or even from keeping other people out; being American is something you become through your actions and character. Defining what it meant to be an American was something our founding father’s sacrificed all that they had for.

Today, with all the modern luxuries we have it’s hard to understand being so passionate about something you’d die for it but our founders had that passion for the characteristics which would later define our nation. By fighting so fervently amongst ourselves that we forget the value of other Americans we put into jeopardy all that we have. It’s all of our duty to honor that which our founding father’s felt defined America. Honoring those traditions can mean different things to different people but all of us must find a way to honor them, every day if we are ever to truly Make America Great Again. This isn’t hard to do, it only takes remembering to do the right thing. I’m not perfect, in fact, I would consider myself the last person for anyone to take their cues from, but for me, I honor those traditions by trying to do the right thing every day to the best of my ability, whether it’s big or small, seen or unseen, noted or unnoticed. You see, if you remember to do the right thing, to treat others how you’d like to be treated, and do everything to the best of your ability, I promise everything else, all the nonsense in the media, won’t matter a single bit, because we’ll once again have a country of people who look out for one another. The alternative is unacceptable.

So Mr. President with this in mind I wanted to give you some advice for salvaging your presidency:

Tell the truth. In times of doubt, the truth is always the right answer. If lies are allowed to be believed as fact America will continue to forget that the real enemy isn’t each other, it’s those who seek to end democracy, freedom, and our way of life.

Stop defining what it means to be American from a partisan stance. You have no right. None of us do. Being American is defined by those who came before, and it’s defined by those whose examples will survive the test of time. If someone is willing to come here, work hard, abide by our laws, and protect our way of life, then you, Donald Trump, have no right to tell them they cannot be Americans. Being born to millions in New York, dodging your country’s call in its time of need, and verbally accosting service members does not make you the one to decide what it means to be an American.

Stop attacking the media. You bear a great responsibility; millions of Americans look to you for guidance and comfort during hardship. If you continue to point their anger at the media we may lose an integral pillar of democracy. If you do not you will cement your legacy as the enemy of democracy. History will condemn you.

Stop using radical Islam and immigrants as scapegoats to bring people together. We’ve seen in history scapegoats unite the masses but at great cost. Instead of pandering to the fears of your base you could teach them to accept. You’ve uniquely been able to reach the individuals that make up your base unlike any before you; you have the opportunity to take advantage of their love for you and to teach them that being American really means doing the right thing above all else. In doing this you could not only save your legacy but America as a whole.

There is a storm coming and it cannot be defeated by a divided nation; a storm that doesn’t care if you’re liberal or conservative, a storm that seeks to upend democracy, freedom, and our way of life. As Americans, we have to do the right thing even when it isn’t easy, even when there’s no reward because that’s truly what makes us Americans and if we forget that, we’ll truly be lost.

Respectfully,

Tucker Benedict.

[such-fun]

Fic: You Should See Me In A Crown (Michael Langdon x Reader) Part One.

I think this should be about five or six parts. Hopefully it doesn’t suck.

You Should See Me In A Crown

Fandom: American Horror Story

Pairing: Michael Langdon x Reader

Summary: You can see the future, but you didn’t see this coming.

Notes: In this story, Queenie never got trapped in the Cortez.

 1: 

You struggled to concentrate as Zoe presided over the day’s lesson. Changing the color of flower petals wasn’t particularly tricky but the white of your rose was slow to blossom into a deep red as your focus waned.

Hearing your name, your head jerked up to see Cordelia looking at you with concern.

“Come with me for a moment, please,” the Supreme entreated. You licked your lips nervously and stood, ignoring the curious eyes of your fellow witches.

Cordelia tried to smile reassuringly but it appeared strained.

You followed her silently to her study upstairs.

“Take a seat,” Cordelia gestured kindly before sitting almost primly across from you. Your hands twisted anxiously in your lap. “You look tired,” she frowned.

“I—didn’t sleep well. Again,” you admitted, glancing away from the blonde woman’s worried gaze.

“The same dreams?” she failed to hide the deep unease she felt.

“Yes,” you sighed.

You never thought you’d say this, but you were beginning to feel envious of Coco and her powers. While gluten detection and calorie counting might not be all that impressive, it was infinitely better than having the Sight.

Girls always told you they were covetous of your ability, but only Cordelia knew the true misery unique to those who see the future.

Far too often your visions were incomplete and confusing. And when they were more coherent, they weren’t always comforting. There was little pleasure in seeing the future, watching the people you cared for suffer, knowing there was no way to change it.

You and Cordelia always tried to fix things. Make plans to thwart the fate you saw so unwillingly. But you always failed. One day you would accept that things were meant to happen, whether you liked it or not.

That day had yet to come.

The dreams started a year before. It was unusual for you to have visions as you slept. Normally the Sight manifested itself when you touched things, or saw something that triggered your power. But whatever these visions were, they were more than the usual glimpse into the future.

They felt like a warning. And like destiny.

It started with fire.

You remembered the feeling of being surrounded by flames. The suffocating stench of smoke. Not being able to see past your outstretched hand for all the haze and darkness.

In time came the bodies.

First was Queenie, then Zoe. Then you saw Cordelia, the most powerful woman you knew, being torn apart by men. But they weren’t men anymore. They had become twisted and mutated. And all the while he stood watch, laughing at their pain.

The white-faced demon.

You tried to keep your dreams to yourself, even as they grew more disturbing. But they were so overwhelming. It didn’t take a vision for Cordelia to see something was wrong.

When you finally admitted what was keeping you up at night, Cordelia’s face had drained of its color.

You recalled heading downstairs for dinner that night and seeing Cordelia in the background amongst all the girls, conversing in hushed whispers with Myrtle Snow.

And then the visions began to change once more.

The raging fire was replaced by candlelight. The smoke-heavy air became stale but clean. And there was a man.

His golden hair shone in the dancing flames. His hands stood out in your mind, fingers long and elegant, bedecked with large jewels. And his eyes, such a piercing blue.

His presence dominated your senses. You could practically smell the malevolence that surrounded him. But all you could focus on was the emotions coursing through you at the sight of him.

You felt powerful, invincible. And at the feel of his hands skimming your body, undeniable lust.

You didn’t know how the disparate images came together. But the overall picture was extremely worrying.

“Was he there?” Cordelia’s voice brought you out of your thoughts.

“He wasn’t alone,” you confided. “There was a woman. Short, black hair. She felt—wrong. A person, but not.”

“Could she be possessed?” Cordelia wondered, already thinking of ways to save this strange woman from such an awful fate. But there was no need.

“She’s not possessed,” you shook your head. “She looks like a person but she’s just…missing something. She feels empty.”

That stopped your mentor short. Without a soul, a body was nothing. Just meat and bone. There was no life without that spark.

Whatever thought she had was interrupted by a gentle knock on the door.

Zoe stepped inside after Cordelia’s soft, “Come in.”

Cordelia crooked her head at Zoe’s almost sheepish posture. “What is it?” she asked curiously.

“The Hawthorne School for Exceptional Young Men,” Zoe announces awkwardly. “They called an emergency council.”

You were both taken aback. It was a rare day indeed when warlocks thought to order witches around.

“We’re obliged to get on a plane immediately,” Myrtle announced as she breezed into the study. “Airline food for lunch when I made reservations at Galatoires,” she, “it’s just too cruel.”

You shared a troubled glance with your Supreme, but ultimately the decision was made for you. Tradition must be upheld.

Cordelia stood, pasting on a patently false smile. “Well then I suppose we should all pack.”

Zoe and Myrtle nodded, the redhead huffing in defeat as they strode to their bedrooms. You made to leave Cordelia to her packing but she stopped you with a gentle hand on your elbow.

“You will be joining us,” she announced, much to your surprise. You opened your mouth to question her, but she squeezed your arm understandingly.

“Something is coming,” she professed. “And you might be our best hope of discovering what it is.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for what’s going to happen,” you confessed. Cordelia gave you a shaky smile and pulled you into a long hug.

“No one is ever ready,” she said resignedly. “But the future waits for no one. And it won’t take us unaware. We will confront it head on. As a coven.”

She stepped back, taking your face in her hands. “You are never alone.”

Her reassurance brought the beginnings of tears to your eyes.

“Now,” Cordelia straightened, “Come on. We have a plane to catch.”  

 “Illustrious members, I want to thank you for coming and giving us the opportunity to share with you what we've discovered,” the head of the Hawthorne School offered his obviously practiced greeting. 

Myrtle was entirely unimpressed.

None of the men in front you looked happy to be in the company of their Supreme. It was no secret that the warlocks hated having to take their orders from women more powerful than they would ever be.

You wondered why they bothered to summon you if they detested your very existence like this.

“We recently took in a boy here at the school,” he continued, aware his audience was merely humoring him. It didn’t take a mind reader to tell he resented the presence of witches in his school.

“At first, we thought he was simply one of us, a warlock who needed our help and training. But the things he did were extraordinary, and after conducting the requisite test of his powers, we came to the conclusion that his abilities are so impressive that they rise to the level of Supreme.”

There was a deathly quiet silence at his proclamation. Cordelia was unamused. Myrtle, on the other hand, was highly amused.

“Did you say this was a boy,” she scoffed. “As in male?”

You could see Zoe out of the corner your eye looking to you in disbelief but you found yourself ignoring her unintentionally.

This place felt…familiar.

The light was dim, the décor distinctly masculine yet ostentatious. The air was charged, but you couldn’t tell if it was from the tension in the room or some unknown force.

Cordelia however was not distracted, and she didn’t take kindly to the implication that a mere boy was about to take her place.

“Ariel, you actually believe this?” she cautioned him.

“We wouldn't have summoned the council otherwise,” he argued defiantly. The men at his side presenting a united front.

“In all recorded history, no man has ever approached the level of Supreme,” she reminded them with a hint of condescension.

“Men are simply not equal to women when it comes to magical ability.”

“Not to mention everything else,” Myrtle muttered as Cordelia smothered a tiny grin.

“Testosterone is a known inhibitor,” Cordelia recited as if she was teaching a small child. “It impedes access to the ethereal realm. Frankly, I question your judgment by calling us here for this.”

“You're not even hearing us out,” Ariel shouted in frustration, but Cordelia cut him off swiftly.

“There's nothing to hear. There will never be a male Supreme,” she stated resolutely. “It will simply never happen.”

“Listen to yourselves,” Ariel spat. “You say that something hasn't happened, so therefore it can never happen!”

He took a second to compose himself.

“We want you to administer the test of the Seven Wonders,” Ariel announced boldly, and you were brought back to the moment at Cordelia’s sharp denial.

“That is out of the question.”

“Why?” He demanded to know, and you could see the pain in the Supreme’s eyes.

“Because I'd be condemning this boy to his death,” she said solemnly. “I lost some of my most promising witches by sanctioning tests before their time.”

You knew her thoughts were drifting to Misty, even Madison, and the regret that she felt for her part in their deaths. “I won't make that mistake again.”

“Why do you get to decide that?” One of the others sneered.

“Because I'm the fucking Supreme.” Even you were surprised by the vehemence in her voice. Ariel wasn’t content to remain silent though.

“No, you're just a scared bigot,” he accused with a condescending rake of his eyes.

“Scared of what?” Myrtle chuckled in derision.

“Of the Alpha,” Ariel puffed out his chest proudly. “Of a man rising to the level of Supreme. Of an end to ages of female dominance. I'm telling you,” he warned ominously, “that time has come.”

“And your time is up,” Cordelia declared with finality. “This council is closed.”

There was a raucous noise coming from the men in the room but you all took your cue from Cordelia who had turned wordlessly on her heel, striding out of the meeting room.

None of you spoke as you entered the elevator. You and Zoe did your best to ignore the hateful glares of the men who gathered to watch you leave. Myrtle was too incensed at their presumption and Cordelia too caught up in her dark thoughts to prepare for what happened next.

For as you all stepped from the elevator and back into the world, your steps faltered as you spotted the unexpected form of Madison Montgomery.

Cordelia fell into a dead faint.

Myrtle and Zoe crowded around her, but you remained glued to the spot.

Because standing next to Madison, cape blowing in the breeze, was a handsome young man you didn’t immediately recognize.

His lips were turned up in a smug smirk as he turned and met your gaze. Your heart raced as he took notice and began to study you intently.

In your peripheral vision you could see Madison hesitantly picking up her pace as she approached Cordelia.

You should have joined the reunion but couldn’t turn away from the picture he made. He stood tall, gaze piercing, his very aura giving off a sense of immense power.

But none of that mattered to you at the moment. You couldn’t comprehend anything past his angelic golden curls and a pair of hauntingly familiar blue eyes. 

[berniesrevolution]

In today’s Washington Post, Elizabeth Bruenig has an article arguing that socialism should no longer be considered a dirty word. Socialists believe that “working Americans deserve a say in how the country’s vast wealth will be used,” and that “more than policy tweaks will be needed to empower everyday people to participate meaningfully in society and democracy.” Since these are sensible positions, she says, socialism is at the very least a reasonable political tendency. She is, of course, completely correct, and all of the common criticisms of contemporary democratic socialism are misleading, unfair, or outright false.

In explaining why it can be difficult to figure out what socialism means, Bruenig notes that “the United States doesn’t have a familiar, established socialist history to look to for guidance on what socialism might mean in this country.” It’s certainly true that the U.S. doesn’t have a “familiar” socialist history, since students generally aren’t taught much about American socialists in school. (Eugene Debs is usually mentioned, mostly as a curiosity.) And it’s true that in the U.S., unlike many European countries, there was never a socialist movement that had mass popular support. In England, for instance, the Labour Party founded by socialist Keir Hardie would become a dominant force in British politics for the entire 20th century and establish the modern social welfare state. In France, socialists took over Paris! (A few things also happened in Russia.) Nothing comparable occurred in America, hence the title question of Werner Sombart’s 1906 book Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?, a question followed up nearly a century later in the book It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed In The United States.

But I also think it’s worth remembering that even though socialism “failed” here, insofar as it never became the kind of political force it was in many European, Latin American, Asian, and African countries, we do have a socialist history, and a rather inspiring one! Delving into that history is a great way to find lessons for contemporary democratic socialists. And in some ways, the successes of American socialists have been underappreciated. As I’ve written before, the list of socialist mayors in the United States in the early 20th century is impressively long, and one reason the Socialist Party fizzled after about 1908 is that the other major political parties actually began co-opting the Socialist agenda. I recommend reading Ira Kipnis’ The American Socialist Movement 1897-1912, which talks a lot about where the socialists succeeded and where they didn’t. Many of the intra-socialist debates were the same ones we are having today: What does socialism really mean? Are particular reforms “socialist”? To what extent should socialists work within the existing political system? Unfortunately, they did not resolve those debates then, and the first thing to learn is that we need to do better this time around.

The history of the American Socialist Party and the IWW are fascinating in their own right. (As well as the histories of socialist publications like The Masses and the Appeal to Reason.) But I’d like to single out a few historic American socialists who I find exemplary. We do have a grand left tradition in the United States, one carried forth from generation to generation by humane and committed activists. We should never forget their lives, struggles, and ideas.

Hubert Harrison

Hubert Harrison is one of my favorite forgotten Americans, period. Known as the “Black Socrates,” he was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, renowned for his dazzling streetcorner oratory and the seriousness of his intellect. Jeffrey B. Perry’s excellent biography of Harrison calls him the “voice of Harlem radicalism” and the book summary gives you a flavor of Harrison’s extraordinary life:

The foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician of the Socialist Party of New York, Harrison was also the founder of the “New Negro” movement, the editor of Negro World, and the principal radical influence on the Garvey movement. He was a highly praised journalist and critic (reportedly the first regular Black book reviewer), a freethinker and early proponent of birth control, a supporter of Black writers and artists, a leading public intellectual, and a bibliophile who helped transform the 135th Street Public Library into an international center for research in Black culture.

Harrison is particularly notable for the way he combined “race consciousness” with “class consciousness,” And while considered a “Harlem Renaissance” figure, he was critical of the entire concept, because he felt it diminished previous black achievements. As a brilliant atheist, socialist, anti-racist intellectual, Harrison is a standout figure in the history of the left who deserves to be given his due.

Helen Keller

Keller herself is, of course, well-remembered. But her radical socialist politics are still too frequently neglected. She was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and a supporter of Debs, an anti-militarist feminist trade unionist who was staunchly committed to the rights of working people. If you read her socialist writings, it can actually be a little surprising to realize just how firm her conviction was. Here she is describing the IWW and why she supports it:

The creators of wealth are entitled to all they create. Thus they find themselves pitted against the whole profit-making system. They declare that there can be no compromise so long as the majority of the working class lives in want while the master class lives in luxury. They insist that there can be no peace until the workers organize as a class, take possession of the resources of the earth and the machinery of production and distribution and abolish the wage system.

I don’t remember hearing that when we watched The Miracle Worker in middle school! In her essay “How I Became A Socialist,” Keller says she is pleased that people seem so interested in her inspiring life story, particularly because it will help get the word “socialism” into more newspapers! (Ah, how she underestimated the power of the whitewashing machine!) She also amusingly recounted how the New York Times asked her to write an article, before immediately printing an editorial condemning the “contemptible red flag.” This would not do, Keller said:

I love the red flag and what it symbolizes to me and other Socialists. I have a red flag hanging in my study, and if I could I should gladly march with it past the office of the Times and let all the reporters and photographers make the most of the spectacle. According to the inclusive condemnation of the Times I have forfeited all right to respect and sympathy, and I am to be regarded with suspicion. Yet the editor of the Times wants me to write him an article!

Nor did Keller think much of the Brooklyn Eagle when they suggested that her left-wing politics were a product of her physical disabilities. Keller’s reply is so deliciously scathing that it’s worth quoting at length:

The Brooklyn Eagle says, apropos of me, and socialism, that Helen Keller’s “mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development.” Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. It was after a meeting that we had in New York in behalf of the blind. At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. Surely it is his turn to blush… Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! What an ungallant bird it is! … The Eagle is willing to help us prevent misery provided, always provided, that we do not attack the industrial tyranny which supports it and stops its ears and clouds its vision. The Eagle and I are at war. I hate the system which it represents, apologizes for and upholds. When it fights back, let it fight fair. Let it attack my ideas and oppose the aims and arguments of Socialism. It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear. I can read. I can read all the socialist books I have time for in English, German and French. If the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle should read some of them, he might be a wiser man and make a better newspaper. If I ever contribute to the Socialist movement the book that I sometimes dream of, I know what I shall name it: Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness.

Mother Jones

I think if there is one thing we can say for certain about Mother Jones, it’s that she wouldn’t think much of the magazine that publishes under her name. She was certainly no liberal. (“I’m not a humanitarian, I’m a hell-raiser!”) She traveled across the country organizing strike after strike and motivating workers to resist the strike-breakers. She led a march of hundreds of child laborers, which ended up outside Teddy Roosevelt’s summer home, where she demanded to see the president to protest child labor. (She was refused.) She went to prison, was released, raised more hell, went to prison again, and then went to meet John D. Rockefeller, spending two hours telling him personally about the conditions in his mines and demanding he improve them. She was generous toward Rockefeller though: “Him raised in luxury, how could he know anything about real things? It isn’t his fault, though—the raising he got is the cause of it.” The woman who reminded laborers “You ain’t got a damn thing if you ain’t got a union!” was one of the most fearless, frank, uncompromising champions of working people in American history.

“I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.”  — Mother Jones

Peter Clark

Peter Clark is known as the first African American socialist. He was an active abolitionist in the decades leading up to the Civil War, and then afterwards became the first black school principal in the state of Ohio. He ran for office, ran a newspaper, taught black students, supported striking workers. He was once fired by the school he worked at after he taught students about the radical “atheist” thinking of Thomas Paine. Clark’s life is documented in Nikki Taylor’s America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark. Here is an excerpt from a talk he gave on socialism in 1877:

Many wise men, learned in political economy, assure us that their doctrines, faithfully followed, will result in a greater production of wealth and a more equal division of the same. But as I have said before, there is but one efficacious remedy proposed, and that is found in Socialism. The present industrial organization of society has been faithfully tried and has proven a failure. We get rid of the king, we get rid of the aristocracy, but the capitalist comes in their place, and in the industrial organization and guidance of society his little finger is heavier than their loins. Whatever Socialism may bring about, it can present nothing more anarchical than is found in Grafton, Baltimore and Pittsburgh today.

(Continue Reading)

[dalishious]

(Replying to this post)

@gangsterofoz I’m... not really sure... where to begin... I suppose by just saying I’m kind of stunned you wrote all this in response to me point out Cassandra was wrong about something and the writers’ reasons are ridiculously transparent?

Well it makes sense that Cass would try really hard to convince herself of the Chantry’s justified actions - it’s not that she’s purposely trying to condemn the elves, she just does not want to see the evils and mistakes of an institution she has pretty much built her adult life on. A life that allowed her to follow a path she felt was befitting of her skills and soul. And like many people with religion, they cannot seperate the institutional failures and serious misconducts from the faith.

I absolutely agree it is in character for Cassandra to be ignorant about this, given other things she has said expressing refusal to acknowledge elven point of views. But it’s not a good quality for her to have. And as @faerunner already said, the big problem isn’t that Cassandra has this point of view, it’s that this is the only point of view we hear. Dorian shares it too. But here is no argument. We’re just supposed to accept this comment, despite as I pointed out in that post, it is inaccurate.

Religions by their nature need to be deontological - meaning it can’t have flaws and inconsistencies. It needs to be by its nature always ‘true’ to its core messages and therefore exists philosophically in the realm of black in white. When in reality, it’s in the moral grey area as much as everything else. The people within it can be flawed, as Cass we know really prefers focusing on, but she manages to largely not see (at least historical actions not really the more recent ones) as the failures of people - individuals - not her faith, not the group. Which is fundamentally just inaccurate as no one can commit genocide or invasion without the willing consent and support of the group as a majority. Im so glad you pointed this out - it’s just more credit to brilliant character construction and intimate understanding of how people justify religious evils.

Hey maybe don’t paint every single belief system with the same Christian/Catholic brush because that’s not true?

I would argue that Cassandra is almost equally bad at recognizing the failures of people in recent times as well. 

It’s really like they researched the morality, psychology of Crusaders or Renaissance religious figures who maintained justification of the Crusades. I love Cass but she like everyone in the games (and like all brilliant series that study the flaws of politics and religions like Game of Thrones) is seriously flawed. Cass is not evil, she’s just reacting to an inherited childhood situation, she’s doing what she needs to to feel safe and valid.

LOL I think you are giving BioWare way to much credit, but yes, a comparison between Exalted Marches and the Crusades can definitely be made. It’s just a shame that, as the whole point of that post, they didn’t spend just as much time on how the victims felt.

Like Dorian and Varric opposing consistently undermine the traditionalism and omnipotence of institutions in an attempt to be independent from them and therefore safe because hierarchies and institutions have so consistently not only failed but seriously harmed them on such an intimate level (the Dwarven caste system/way of life and Tevinter as a society). Varric and Dorian still find admiration or use for aspects of their childhood societies but it’s their flaws that have made them view those institutions the way they do in the time of Inquisition.

You are comparing Dorian opposing tyranny to Cassandra defending it?

It’s so clever - because we don’t judge these figures as historical persons through a lens of fact but we get to know them so intimately. They become real persons for whom we see our actions make consequences directly. It puts us in the position of leaders of Catholicism during the Crusades - it perhaps says, “It is more difficult to condemn people you’ve come to know because they are real and thus it makes taking moral action much more difficult.”

HOLY FUCK.

No. No, I absolutely judge through facts, and you know, general morality. No, it absolutely does not make it more difficult to condemn a character saying something wrong when they are in fact, 100% wrong. 

It’s like when Tyrion kills Tywin - he basically plunges the entire political system of a really powerful nation/continent into chaos - like fuck you now everything’s going to go to shit and the White Walkers are going to so easily come and kill everybody ! But man who didn’t want Tyrion to kill to Tywin? We were all on his side when that happened. But through a historical lens, the boy did some serious damage to the citizens of the country. Not that Tywin was a brilliant moral leader but one could argue at least the country wasn’t plunged into political factionalism and thus unable to successfully defend itself against the ice boys.

I have no idea what you’re talking about because I stopped watching Game of Thrones after dragging myself through the second season; I found the story interesting enough, but the copious amount of gratuitous sex and also general shitty treatment of the few characters of colour and female characters was too much to continue. But I’m gonna go on a limb and guess this has nothing to do with anything in the post I made.

So yes Cass is super wrong but it also is 100% how she would manipulate herself to see that slice of history. I mean - how scary is that that a leader has that view sitting on the Sunburst Throne (if you pop her there)? You say, “well she’s got all these great qualities etc.” but then what are the ramifications of putting someone with some form of internalised racism in a position of power?

Oh gee, what a high-fantasy thought-provoking question that is. A person who gives zero shits about the people who’s land they settled on and now rule over. I wonder what the ramifications would be. It is so hard to wonder. I just don’t know. //Sarcasm

What if she in some years starts another Exalted March? Historically, we’d look at the Inquisitor and go, “What were you thinking!?”

Yeah I sure fucking would especially because my Inquisitor would never do that to her people.

But history doesn’t happen historically. People are biased and function through personal relationships, moving through the world within the framework of those dynamics. The moral of this section of the games is, you’re going to need to make decisions that will shape the world but you will struggle to make them unbiasedly. And the consequences of that can be cataclysmic. Anyway lol unintentional essay

This might be news to you, but sometimes making decisions using bias can be a good thing. It’s called having a moral conscious. So yes, as I have said a few times now, I will absolutely judge Cassandra for lacking one in this scene. And general history knowledge.

Anyway, this whole unintentional essay was almost entirely irrelevant to the point of my post, but whatever. Glad we could clear up that what Cassandra said here is a bad thing and bad things should be recognized as bad things, not unquestioned qualities.

[lsds-blog]

The System (updated 05-08)

Day 1

I felt an awful panic rising. Why did I ever agree to get mixed up with these people in the first place? I had my doubts from the start but I'd been slowly sucked in. I was a fool to think my exit would be so easy. I needed to try to come up with a plan, something to placate Adele, but I was too flustered. The room was unbearably hot and I stood to remove my jacket.

“What are you doing?” the receptionist snapped.

“I'm just taking off my jacket. It's so warm.”

Her colleague now joined in. “No! That's disrespectful. You'll be properly dressed to see Adele. She's done so much for you. Sit down!”

I wanted to ask permission to remove it until I was admitted, but I was sufficiently intimidated to be silenced. I sat down and resolved to suffer without further complaint.

I'd been introduced to Adele almost two years previously when she was the guest speaker at an event at the university where I was studying. A girl from my course, who'd previously hardly spoken to me, approached me to recommend it, telling me that lots of professionals were attending her courses. “She's great at building confidence. A lot of CEOs have been on her courses. Apart from anything else it's a good networking opportunity.”

At first I was impressed. The meetings were exclusively female, and promoted a positive feminism alongside meditation and therapy that seemed to resemble NLP. The people were friendly and encouraging and I soon committed to regular attendance. It was only after a few months that I became aware of negative news stories, describing Adele as a cult leader.

By then I'd become too enmeshed in the System to believe the negative things, although I should have realised that all was not well. Gradually I'd been pressured into spending more of my time with others who were participants, and then I was given targets to recruit more. Failures resulted in sessions of personal evaluation, where a circle of women sat around the person to be judged and shouted abuse. And, I'm ashamed to say, I fully participated in evaluations of others, screaming my condemnations as vehemently as anyone else. I completely identified with the group and seemed powerless not to go along. Only once the victim had been broken completely did a coordinator calm the group and begin to extract promises so that she could redeem herself.

My first session of personal evaluation came as a result of failing to persuade anyone to come along to a meeting. It wouldn't be a mistake I'd be eager to repeat. Now I understood why a girl I didn't know had convinced me to attend. I became skilled at charming acquaintances, recognising those who would be more likely to come under Adele's spell. My joy when someone acceded to my encouragements was purely self interested.

And now as I approached the end of my course I'd started to feel I had to move away from the System. I'd applied for jobs as far away as possible, without telling anyone. Now I'd been called to see Adele and I knew that my plans had been discovered. Being called to see the leader was worse than personal evaluation. Before I'd even been admitted it was clear that they intended me to suffer. It was a hot summer day and the room was stifling: no ventilation and I was sat by a window where the afternoon sun shone in. I could feel the sweat running down my back. I waited for over an hour before I was told to enter Adele's huge office.

She was sat behind her desk, two of her officers also present; I recognised them but didn't know them by name. They ignored me as I entered and I stood awkwardly waiting for some indication to sit. It didn't come. After more than five minutes one of the strangers called to me. “Bethany. Why did you ask to come here?”

“I didn't, I was asked to come,” I said. She raised her hand to her ear to indicate I couldn't be heard. I repeated my response more loudly. There was another long silence while my interlocutors appeared to be busy with something on the desk.

“Bethany. Why did you ask to come here?”

It was the other officer who asked now. “I applied for some jobs,” I said. My voice was a croak and again I was prompted to repeat my response more loudly. “I applied for some jobs.”

“Didn't you think you should have asked for our help? What's the most important rule?”

“We help each other,” I yelled.

“Are you too proud to ask for help?” I said I wasn't. “So... Explain your thinking.”

As soon as I started to speak I was interrupted. “How many?” I looked confused. “How many jobs?” She was becoming angry.

“I think it was five.”

“You think?”

“Five. No, six.”

“I think she's lying,” one of the interrogators said to Adele.

There was another pause. I was close to tears. Finally Adele beckoned me. She looked at me sympathetically. “No one is here who doesn't want to be. Did you want to leave us?”

“I don't know. I've been having doubts.”

“If you have doubts you ask for help. You don't try to sneak away.” Her sympathy was gone now. “Do you want to leave or will you ask for help?”

“I want help, Adele,” I sobbed.

“She's disloyal. Unworthy. She needs to be punished.”

Adele listened quietly. Again a pause extending for minutes. The only sound was my crying.

“Bethany, do you agree? You have been underhand and gone against all of your teaching. Do you think you should be punished?” I nodded. “Speak up, Bethany!” she yelled with unexpected violence.

“Yes, I've let you down. I should be treated harshly to learn my lesson.”

Now the officer on the right leaned forward to tap some keys on the computed on Adele's desk. “Perhaps we should share your internet history with some of your friends. And prospective employers. You watch some quite nasty porn, don't you, Bethany?”

“How did you...” I felt my anger flare, but was immediately shouted down.

“You were asked a question! Answer it!”

Now I felt humiliated. “Yes, I watch some horrible things. How did you see?”

“Are you accusing us of something? You authorised us to place software on your computer. Didn't you read the texts of the emails you were sent?” I shook my head. “Do you agree to us posting your browser history on your social media?”

“Please don't,” I said desperately. “My family would see.”

“Do it,” Adele said coldly. A few clicks and her lieutenant confirmed that it was done. “Now you've told everybody that you're not ashamed of who you are and what makes you happy,” Adele said gloatingly.

I felt sick. I had to swallow hard as I felt acid rising in my gullet. “You really did it?” I was incredulous. “Check for yourself,” Adele said. “Look on your phone.”

I did and saw that a list of favourite sites were posted, seemingly by me. I swore at Adele. “OK, you've had your revenge, now I'm leaving!”

She gave a derisive laugh. “You think that was our revenge? No, Bethany, we have to make an example of you to those who think they can walk away. Did you hear about Doctor Young?” I nodded. He was a lecturer in the psychology department who'd been an outspoken critic of the System and had tried (so far unsuccessfully) to deny all access of its members to university facilities. “You're going to take it on yourself to deal with him. Poison him. Get rid of him completely and never have him interfere again.”

One of the officers spoke. “Of course, it's all your idea, nothing we ever did to encourage it.”

I shook my head. “No, this is crazy. I'm not a murderer. I'd never do anything like that.”

Adele passed me a copy of the local newspaper. On the front page was a story about the death of Doctor Young, with investigations ongoing to confirm that he'd been poisoned. “This is awful,” I said as I scanned the article. I looked up at Adele, terrified that she'd now been involved in the murder of an opponent.

“If it's so awful then why did you do it?”

I looked at her confused. “You only just mentioned it. I knew nothing about it till now.”

The laptop on the desk was turned toward me and some grainy CCTV footage played. I saw a university building foyer, which appeared to be the psychology department. The time code indicated that it was hours before the discovery of Doctor Young's body. A girl entered the building and walked across the frame. She looked just like me. Even the clothes appeared to be identical to some that I owned.

“It's not me!” I cried. “I wasn't there.”

Now more footage, a few minutes earlier according to the time code. This time a university car park. The same girl getting out of a car. My car. I gasped. “It's not me! You're framing me.”

Adele said nothing. The three of them stared at me in silence. “I was at a System event at that time. I have an alibi.”

Adele clicked the mouse. An attendance list was displayed for the event. My name wasn't there.

I started to speak but now all three began to scream at me. They accused me of the murder, told me how stupid I was, told me to shut up. The assault went on for at least ten minutes. It was unendurable.

Finally they stopped. They were silent but I sobbed. “We should call the police and cooperate fully,” one of the lieutenants said. “We can show how we were trying to support her, but she'd been difficult to engage. Nothing indicated that she'd become so unstable.”

“Perhaps you're right,” Adele said. “She refused our help. If someone doesn't accept help there's nothing we can do.”

“Please, I didn't do it,” I said.

Now the screaming began again. It was minutes before it subsided. Finally Adele spoke to me calmly. “We can't help you if you don't ask for it. And if you want our help you have to be honest. You poisoned Doctor Young, didn't you? Unless you confess we've got no choice but to pass this information to the police.”

I endured hours of their inquisition. Each time I denied my involvement the screaming started again. Eventually they convinced me. I believed I'd done it. I tried to explain why. Each time my story wasn't what they wanted to hear they began to scream and accuse once more. I'd have to start over and try to guess what it was that they wanted to hear. Eventually I'd described how I'd taken some medication from another student who lived in the my building and put it into a bottle of soft drink on Doctor Young's desk when he went to the toilet. He'd had a heart condition, which I claimed I knew about and the medication had caused a cardiac arrest.

The three women now discussed a judgement. The two officers both favoured turning me in to the police. When I begged them to spare me I was vehemently told to be silent. Adele finally looked at me. “You asked for our help, didn't you? And we help each other.”

I nodded. “Please help me. I'm begging you. Don't hand me over to the police. I did this because I thought I was helping. I know I was misguided, but I wanted to help.” This was the motivation I'd been forced to believe.

“We do want to help, but it's very dangerous. If it was found that we'd conspired to keep your secret we'd all be in trouble too. Maybe you could help us most by confessing and explaining that we'd done nothing to encourage your actions.”

“But please, Adele. I'd go to prison for... for decades. I couldn't endure that.”

“But what could you do to help us if we took such a risk on your behalf?”

“I'd do anything.”

“Would you degrade yourself, like one of the women in the porn you watch?” It was the taller officer who asked the question.

I must have looked stunned. I couldn't say anything until she yelled at me, demanding an answer. “You said you'd do anything, would you do this?”

“Yes Miss,” I mumbled.

“A lot of those videos show women being dominated. Do you identify with the dominant women or the submissive ones?”

I felt myself grow embarrassed. It was painful that they knew my secrets.

“Get undressed! Immediately. You don't deserve to have clothes. You're a filthy, disgusting person and you want to be humiliated, don't you?”

I begged to be spared but the shouting began again. “You said you'd do anything but already you try to wheedle out of your responsibilities. Get undressed, Bethany.”

“Definitely submissive,” someone said as I undressed. “She wants to be humiliated. You can see it in her eyes. I'm right, aren't I? Aren't I?

I mumbled my agreement. I'd learned not to disagree.

“So here's our choice, Bethany,” Adele said softly. “You serve us. You serve the higher ranks of officers in the System. Sexual slavery. It's that or it's jail. For a long time. Your choice. Decide now.”

“But look at her! She's not even attractive. Who would want her to serve them?” I couldn't even tell who was talking any more.

“Obviously we'd have to fix her up. Invest a bit of time and money in her appearance. I think it would be worth it. She'll be very loyal now. After all, she's motivated to want to help.”

“Do you want this, Bethany?” I nodded. “I mean really want it? Not just accept it because otherwise you go to prison. You have to want this.”

“I do. I want this.”

“What is it you want?” Adele asked.

“I want to serve you.” I glanced up and saw them staring at me hungrily, wanting me to say more. One of the officers made me kneel and bow my head.

“What is it you want,” she repeated.

“I want to serve you... I want to serve sexually... Slavery... Humiliation.” I felt like I was in a nightmare. How could I say these things? I was innocent. But they'd trapped me. Had I really murdered someone? I no longer knew what to believe. Had they hypnotised me and made me do it? Had I gone crazy? The girl on the videos looked like me. Now I was left begging to be allowed to partake in something that hours ago would have seemed unbearable.

Day 2

I sat in the back of a van, alone for the first time in hours. I was more exhausted than I'd ever been and my head ached so much that I thought I was going to be sick. I'd now signed a bundle of papers (what I was signing remained unclear) and recorded a video to say that I was delighted to enter the lifestyle I'd always dreamed of, as a sex worker and porn actor. I'd been cleaned up and repeated my statement numerous times until I looked genuinely relaxed and happy. I felt anything but.

Despite my anxiety I fell asleep in the van, lying across the bench seat. I awoke much later feeling hot, dehydrated and confused. I started to cry immediately as I realised that my waking had done nothing to dispel the bad dream. I'd begged Adele to let me become a submissive sex slave, eager for humiliation, and now she would make my request my reality. Perhaps I should have agreed to jail. At least my prison sentence would have been finite, and in ten or fifteen years I would have been free, and free of the System. Now I could see no end to my situation. I would remain within Adele's thrall forever.

My journey continued and now I couldn't get back to sleep. Eventually the movement of the van changed, slower now, frequent stops and turns. We'd turned off the motorway and I presumed my destination was approaching.

I got out of the van and saw that it was light. I'd assumed it was night time, but the compartment in the back of the van admitted no light. A young woman was standing in the garage to greet me. “I'm Celeste. I'm going to be in charge of your training. You must be exhausted. You want to sleep.”

I nodded my agreement, barely able to speak now. I'd not had a drink of food since I'd gone to see Adele but I was so exhausted that just to be allowed sleep was my priority.

“Very well. If you comply with your treatment for two hours you'll be allowed to rest.”

I was unresisting. “I haven't eaten or drunk anything for hours. Please may I have something?” She smiled at me as if there was some joke I didn't understand.

“If you begin your treatment without complaint you'll be allowed something, yes. Now follow me to the treatment room.”

I walked after her. We appeared to be in a large building that was more akin to office space than residential. We travelled up in a lift and I followed her along a windowless corridor. We entered a room, about ten metres square with frosted glass windows. It was equipped like a surgery. “Hop onto the bed. Now what was you name?”

“Bethany.”

“That's right. Was your name. Now you're slave. And I'm Mistress. You'll address all the trainers as Mistress and stop thinking of yourself as Bethany. slave is lower case and Mistress is capitalised, for when you're writing. If you complete your training you'll be given a new slave name. Understand?”

“Yes Mistress,” I said.

“Now tell me why you asked to come here.”

“I did something. Something bad...”

“Stop talking, slave!” Celeste screamed. “You're never to talk about that again. Understand? Now tell me why you asked to come here. Your desires.”

I swallowed as I tried to put together the words I'd been programmed to say. “I want to serve. Sexual slavery and humiliation are my desires.” I couldn't look at her. The humiliation I felt was in no way desirable.

“We'll start with some tattoos. It's felt best that you'll have a lot of tattoos. How does that sound?”

“Please no, Mistress!” I begged tearfully. “I couldn't bear that. I'm afraid of needles too.”

I glanced at her. She was staring at me but said nothing. I looked down but couldn't withdraw my request. I didn't want to be tattooed.

“Very well,” she said after minutes of silence. “Get up. You can come with me.”

We went back to the lift and got out on a different floor. Now I was taken to a small room and told to enter. The entire floor was covered with sharp metal spines, except for a path approximately ten inches wide that reached to the middle of the floor. “Walk in as far as you can without injuring yourself.” I did as asked, afraid that refusal would bring further punishment. Once I'd reached the middle of the room Celeste slid a board, covered with spines identical to those on the floor, to cover the path. It clicked into place and I was left standing on a ten inch square, the only safe area of floor.

“You were told that if you didn't comply with your treatment you'd not be allowed rest. Now you'll stay in here until tomorrow morning. That's... twenty hours.”

I started to protest but she stepped back and the door closed. It was a heavy door, and, I was sure, soundproof. Despite the futility I continued to beg her to spare me.

I felt like I was going crazy. I wasn't able to move except to shuffle a little within the square. How could I possibly stand for twenty hours?

Day 3

I felt broken when the door finally opened. I had cuts on my hands and feet from when I'd lost control and tried to steady myself or broaden my stance. My tears had stopped long ago though my sadness hadn't abated at all. Perhaps it was simple dehydration that had ceased their flow. I wailed at the sight of Celeste but only a hoarse croak came from my mouth. She removed the board and walked into the room to assist me out. I fell to the floor in the corridor and drank the bottle of water she offered in a single draught.

“Now slave, I hope we don't have to return you to that room today. You said you wanted to serve yet you failed the first test. I don't just expect you to reluctantly agree to our treatments, I want you to accept them with enthusiasm. How do you feel about spending two hours being tattooed now?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I said. My first words in so long felt strange in my mouth.

“Or...” she prompted. I looked at her longingly, wishing for her approval, but not taking her meaning. “You could have two hours. Or maybe...”

“Three hours?” I said uncertainly. She nodded and smiled encouragingly.

“No complaints at the treatment, slave. If you behave suitably you'll be allowed food and drink and a good night's rest.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” I felt ashamed that I was craving her approval, despite her cruelty.

I returned to the room I'd briefly visited the previous day. “You should drink more,” Celeste said. “I don't suppose being so dehydrated is healthy. We want your tattoos to heal quickly. You have a duty to keep yourself well. You won't disgrace yourself again, will you? It distresses me when I have to punish you.”

“I'm sorry I let you down, Mistress,” I said obsequiously. She dressed my wounds, which fortunately were superficial.

“If you even think about betraying your desire to be humiliated again you'll be spending another day in the sharps room. How does that make you feel?”

“Please Mistress, it's unbearable. Don't ever make me suffer that again.” Even the threat made me feel a despairing panic. I knew I'd lose control if I ever entered that place again.

“I won't make you suffer in there again, but you might. You have a choice in your actions, don't you? Obedience is all you need to avoid being given another time out.”

Now we were joined by a woman who was introduced as Mistress Danielle. She was tall and heavy, and looked like a tattooist in that she was multiply pierced and covered in ink. “So this is her?” she said, her face seeming to indicate a disappointment with me. “Where are we starting, slave?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“How about her face?” Celeste said. “That might remind her to address you properly.”

“I'm sorry, Mistress,” I said eagerly.

“Maybe I will start with your face. Would you like that, slave?”

I looked at Celeste who was staring at me like a bird of prey waiting ravenously. “Yes, Mistress,” I said. I felt sick. Yet I knew that I would permit it to happen in preference to being taken back to that awful room. At least here I was permitted to lie in comfort. I felt like lack of sleep was making me go crazy, and my immobility had left my body aching in every muscle.

“She doesn't mean it,” Danielle said to Celeste, clearly trying to provoke a punishment.

“She doesn't,” Celeste laughed. “But at least she said it. And she'd take it too, I think.” She turned to me. “Danielle works quickly. In three hours she could cover your entire face with patterns. Imagine seeing that every time you looked in the mirror!”

“It would be very humiliating, Mistress,” I said.

“Yet you have no enthusiasm. Soon you will, and then we'll make it a reality."

"I'll start on her arm for today," Danielle said, and I thanked her.

She shaved my entire right arm. I made a show of being cooperative, and the fear I had of being permanently changed was outweighed by my fatigue. I was lying on a comfortable bed and that seemed a luxury. I felt a sting as the needle buzzed across my upper arm. I saw a blue line in my skin, but it seemed like a dream. I was distanced from what I saw, unable to believe fully that what I was seeing was something that would be part of me forever.

My tiredness seemed to make me more sensitive and soon every touch of the needle made me want to cry out, but I knew I had to endure this suffering with good grace. I tried to think of something pleasant to distract myself, but there was nothing in my situation from which I could draw happiness. Instead I tried to think and feel nothing. Pain was something that had been ever present since my fall had begun and I tried to focus on the relatively minor pain the tattooing caused. It was certainly not comparable with the unendurable agony after countless hours in the sharp room, where I'd squatted until my legs cramped, then lost balance and fallen forward onto my hands, pierced by dozens of sharp spines. I imagined living constantly with pain, and thought of the insistent touch of the needle as a baseline for my suffering. I counted as I breathed in and out, finding a purpose in the rhythm, and soon the pain was bearable.

So much so that I fell asleep. Nor did my tormentors see fit to prevent this. I woke feeling dull and confused. I felt like I'd been asleep for a long time, yet still felt heavy eyed and no less tired. I glanced about the room and saw that I was alone with Danielle. I looked at my arm and saw that a wide, irregular ribbon of blue now zigzagged from shoulder to wrist. It appeared almost like calligraphy, as though it was some unknown form of writing. Danielle had seemingly improvised the form without any underdrawing. Now the blue strip was being shaded. It varied in thickness from half an inch to perhaps two inches. She was shading it with scribbly lines, a few different shades of blue, all relatively close in tone. No skin was visible through the shading where it was complete.

Danielle continued to needle the ink into my arm for several minutes before she paused briefly and glanced up, observing that I was awake. "You're back with us!" she laughed. "You must be very comfortable with the tattooing to sleep for so long." I agreed, though the burning I felt was anything but comfortable. She looked at me seriously. “I know what sort of thoughts will occur to you. That this is too much. That you'd sooner die. You mustn't allow yourself that type of indulgence. If you try to kill yourself you'll fail. You're always being watched. If you try you'll fail and they'll blind you. Do you want too be blind?”

“No Mistress,” I said fearfully. Her words had unsettled me deeply.

“You need to accept your changes. When you're told what to feel don't make some pretence to avoid punishment. Make yourself believe that what they say is true. Your thoughts are mutable. Start by thinking that the sensation of tattooing is pleasurable and sexy. And that seeing tattoos on your body makes you feel beautiful. You like watching porn with tattooed women, now you are one. That makes you happy, doesn't it?”

I breathed slowly and deeply as I stared at my new tattoo. I imagined seeing a stranger marked like this and felt desire, while at the same time trying to force away from consciousness the repulsion that it was my skin that was being permanently coloured. “You associate tattoos with sluttishness, don't you. You have to now accept that you are a slut, and welcome this change.” She pulled off her vinyl glove and began to move her fingers over my clitoris, then instructed me to tell her what I now was.

“I'm a slut, Mistress,” I gasped. Her fingers moved roughly but the effect was stirring. She told me to keep describing myself. “I'm a tattooed slut. A sex slave.” I felt my arousal grow, and focussed on that, pushing away the shame I ought to feel.

“I'm so proud of you, slave,” she whispered, “and if you cum for me I'll tell Mistress Celeste what a good girl you are. You'd like her to reward you, wouldn't you?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I agreed.

“She's very beautiful, and I think you have a crush on her. You need to please her, to be obedient to everything she says, not just in your actions, but in your thoughts too. Will you do that?”

My agreement was rewarded by her fingers moving ever more enticingly. I was astonished to feel an orgasm overtake me so quickly, and I felt a glow of happiness and pride as Danielle soothed me with caresses and compliments. “Now hold on to those feelings of pleasure while I continue to tattoo you.”

There was a brief delay as she washed her hands and put on a new set of surgical gloves. Then I felt the sting of the needle discolouring my flesh. I closed my eyes and let myself concentrate on it as a stimulating buzz, separating this sensation from the painful burning. “It feels lovely, Mistress,” I cooed.

“You're tattooed now, slave,” Danielle said as I stood before the mirror and saw the bold streak that she'd given me. It started as a loop on the back of my hand and slalomed up to my shoulder.

“Thank you Mistress Danielle,” I said, smiling to show Celeste that I accepted my tattoo.

“Would you like Danielle to tattoo you more tomorrow?” Celeste asked.

“Very much,” I said.

“And how long a session would you like? You had three and a half hours today.”

“I'd like six hours,” I said. “Maybe more but I don't want to demand too much of her.”

Danielle looked pleased. “I can give you six hours. Tomorrow I'll ask two friends to work on you. Imagine how much work we can do on you, three of us working for six hours. You'll look very different.”

I tried to calculate the effect that eighteen hours of tattooing could have on me. Six times as much ink as Danielle had placed on my arm. I would be transformed. My boldness wavered.

I felt a stinging slap on my buttock. “Don't give in to fear!” Danielle barked. “You need this.”

“Yes Mistress, I need it.”

I'd imagined that now that I'd endured the tattooing I'd be allowed to feed and rest, but I was mistaken. I made the mistake of voicing my assumption to Celeste and she appeared angry with me. “It's still morning, slave. You'll sleep at ten o'clock if you comply with your treatments. Do you think your valuable time here should be spent sleeping?”

“No Mistress, I'm sorry. I'm just so tired I'm not thinking straight.”

I was now in another treatment room, this one much more surgical looking than Danielle's studio. I climbed onto a dentist's chair and allowed Celeste to immobilise me with Velcro straps. “Silence now, slave. You must accept your treatment well. Just remember it's necessary. Will you do that for me?”

I nodded, but I felt scared, and my fear only grew as she left me alone. After a few minutes I saw two women enter, both wearing surgical gowns and masks. Their eyes were concealed behind tinted protective spectacles and there was something dehumanising about their dress. I said nothing as the dentist sat beside me and pushed a gloved finger into my lips to prompt me to open my mouth. She probed at my teeth in turn, describing the condition to her assistant who noted everything on a chart. I'd always taken care of my teeth and had only two fillings.

Once the examination was completed I felt a device being inserted at the rear of my jaws. The dentist pushed at my mandible and the spreader ratcheted open, forcing my mouth wide open, causing an immediate discomfort at the hinge of my jaws. I couldn't suppress a groan, but there was no acknowledgement of my suffering. Neither the dentist nor her assistant had made any gesture of recognition toward me; I was a mere object to them.

I felt panic as I saw a syringe being prepared. I was phobic of needles and felt myself grow cold and sweaty immediately. I couldn't remain silent and started to beg to be spared, not that my voice was intelligible.

I felt the sting of the needle in the back of my jaw, delving into the soft flesh, inducing an ache, which was actually not too severe, but my distress was still unbearable, largely as a result of my fear of the needle. A second injection was then made on the other side.

I felt my face begin to tingle and soon my tongue began swelling. Soon my entire mouth was numb. I closed my eyes as I heard the jangle of medical tools being arrayed on a tray at my side. I felt something clamping onto an upper tooth, a premolar immediately behind my right canine. My sensation was almost absent, yet I thought I could imagine the pressure tightening on the tooth. Now there was a pulling, so hard that I could feel my head being drawn down. I moaned as the pressure increased, and now there was a dull ache too. The forceps pulled and twisted, more and more pressure exerted until I felt the tooth give and come free.

I realised I was crying now as the dentist probed at the socket, forcing something into it to staunch the flow of the blood which I could taste, despite the work of the assistant to suction it away. As I tried to comprehend the loss of my tooth I felt the forceps clamp onto the premolar on the left, in the mirror image position to the lost tooth. I groaned as I realised that the extraction was not to be a singular event. The pain as the tooth was pulled free was more intense now, the anaesthesia seemingly less effective on the left side.

It wasn't until I'd heard four teeth clink into a steel bowl that my ordeal was ended. I nervously probed with my tongue and felt the gaps in my previously unbroken rows of teeth, the sockets now packed to stem bleeding. The pain was severe enough to make my head ache in sympathy. I felt only anxiety and distress at the loss of my teeth.

The gag was now closed and eased from my mouth. I moaned as my jaws were finally allowed some respite, though the pain in the muscles was intense as I the stress was removed. The assistant wiped at my lips, which were presumably bloody. I expected to be released but gradually saw that some new treatment was to be enacted. I felt the panic return and started to breathe to a counted rhythm once more to control my terror.

I saw a long fine tube being lifted toward me and with disbelief felt the tip being inserted into my left nostril. Its presence seemed to induce a need to sneeze, but without the prospect of the unpleasant sensation being dispelled. I could feel it slide in, irritating my nasal passages until they stung. Now I could feel the tube at the back of my throat and swallowed to help guide it into my oesophagus. The length of tubing I could see appeared impossibly long to be fitted into my nose.

And yet within minutes the tube was entirely swallowed up inside me. The tube ended in a valve and as this was adjacent to my nostril it was coated with a blob of a thick transparent gel. Now it was pushed inside and I felt that the gel was as hot as I could bear. The dentist pushed at the outside of my nose to mould the gel and I soon realised that it was hardening and assuming the form of the void inside my nose. Once it was firm a needle was produced; I felt the outside of my nose being scrubbed, then the needle was firmly pressed through my skin, until it had pierced into the hardening gel. The pain made me wail.

Now a tiny bar was forced through the hole and the head was gripped by a tool. There was a whine as the bar was drilled into the hardened gel. As the dentist pushed at the piercing I could feel it was firmly attached to the tip of the tube now.

Celeste came to free me and examine the work after the dentist and assistant had left (still without addressing my once). “Very nice,” she said. She pushed at my nose, which remained tender, checking the tube.

“What's it for, Mistress?” I asked.

“You'll be getting more dental work. It's more decorative than functional and this tube will allow you to be fed without risking damage to your teeth. We can just attach a tube and let the nutrients flow in. It also has the advantage that you can be fed while you sleep. I know how much you like fat girls and it will be nice to help you to get a lot bigger.”

“I'm going to be fat?” I couldn't hide my astonishment. I was fine boned and delicate. I couldn't imagine being heavy.

Celeste looked at me angrily. “Didn't I tell you how to address me?” she said at last, obviously disappointed that I'd failed to see my error.

“I'm sorry, Mistress.”

“Maybe I should starve you for today. Then you may appreciate your food all the more.”

“Please, Mistress, I need food. I feel weak from eating so little.”

“Do you want to be fat, slave?”

I remembered what Danielle had told me, about forcing myself to want what was expected of me. Still, this was difficult.

Celeste laughed. “I've seen everything that you watched. I know you watched a lot of porn of huge girls. You must think they're sexy, don't you?”

I blushed to know that she knew my secrets. “I do, Mistress,” I admitted. “But there's something shameful about it.”

“Within a month you'll be chubby. Initially you'll gain fast, around ten pounds a week. It's realistic to say you'll be three stone heavier a month from now. Adele has personally requested this of you. She thinks it'll make you so much sexier. Don't you agree?”

I nodded. I was reeling. Surely she was exaggerating. I couldn't gain so rapidly. “Shall we start you gaining right now, slave?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I said

“The great advantage of this feeding system is that you can take in a lot of calories wherever you are. Tomorrow you're going to have a lot of tattooing and you can be fed continuously while they work on you. And sleeping and feeding simultaneously is a boon.”

I lay back in a chair as Celeste attached a tube to the valve in my nose. It was connected to a large bag filled with beige liquid. Now a pump began to move the liquid along the line and into my stomach.

“The piercing means it's impossible for you to remove the tube yourself. You'd be surprised at how many people try to pull out the tube. You'll never want that, will you? You want to be fat and sexy.”

“Yes Mistress, fat and sexy.” I was trying to accept this, but I knew that acceptance, let alone enthusiasm, was a long way off.

“We'll finish your treatments today with removal of body hair. You'll then receive an implant. It's only a minor procedure, nothing to concern you.”

My therapist for this latest work was to be Evelyn, a pale, slim woman with sharp, severe features and a blunt black bob. She stared at me in a way that I found intimidating, and her face was coldly beautiful, and suggested a cruelty in her demeanour.

“This is the slave who's going to be fat?” she said. “You're such a skinny thing. I can't imagine how you'll look.” She rubbed her hands over my body. “This will all be covered in stretch marks I suppose. It'll look like the marbling in beef.”

Celeste laughed. “The tattoos will disguise that. She'll be fully tattooed within the week. If the gaining interferes she'll have some touch ups. I'm sure the stretch marks won't be too visible.”

“What weight do you want to be?” Evelyn asked. I hesitated. “What's your current weight in pounds?”

“We just weighed her,” Celeste said. “One twenty-two.”

“We should convert that number to kilograms. At least. That's almost twenty stone. I'd like to see you at that weight. Properly fat, not just chubby.”

“Are you going to make Mistress Evelyn happy?” Celeste asked.

“Yes Mistress,” I said.

“When will you top twenty stone?” Evelyn asked. “Come on, give me a date.”

“Six months from now, Mistress,” I said, still sure that it would be impossible for me to gain rapidly, and not able to compute how much that would mean gaining each month.

“More than twenty a month. That's a lot. I'll help to motivate you. My speciality is hair removal. If you fail to reach twenty stone by then I'll make you completely bald.”

Celeste began to laugh. “Well slave, thank Mistress for giving you such a good motivator. You don't want to be bald, do you?”

“I don't Mistress,” I said sourly. “Thank you, Mistress Evelyn.”

“Let's give you a little taste of what I can do,” Evelyn said. I was now made to recline with my feet elevated in stirrups. “You like to go au naturel? This overgrown lawn look isn't appealing in the least. Although I think you did look at some very hairy women, didn't you? Is that one of your fetishes, slave?”

“Not really, Mistress. It was something I was exploring.”

“So would you prefer to be nicely trimmed or should we treat you with hormones to increase your body hair?”

“Trimmed, Mistress,” I said.

I heard a loud crack and then a buzzing as she turned on a set of clippers. They were pressed over my mound and I glanced down to see my light brown curls fall free. There was a small attachment on the blades and my bush was rapidly reduced to a short velvet. “Much better already,” Evelyn said happily. “But I prefer to see smooth skin. Would you like me to indulge myself?”

“Please do, Mistress,” I said. In light of what I'd suffered being shaved seemed the least of my concerns.

Of course, Evelyn wasn't content to merely see me shaved. I soon suffered the stinging of her electrolysis needle. She sat between my legs, wearing a pair of magnifying goggles with lights attached at each side. “You'll grow some fine fur still,” Evelyn informed me. “Hair grows in cycles so it's impossible to remove everything at once. In a few months I'll do a second treatment, and a third after that. Usually that's sufficient, but an extra treatment is sometimes necessary. Does the pain please you?”

“It's quite sharp, Mistress,” I said. It wasn't like the relentless burning of the tattoo, each touch of the needle giving a sting. “I can bear it though.”

“I don't want you to bear it, you should enjoy it,” Celeste said. “As well as the thought that you're being permanently changed a little more. It's a big day for you.”

“Yes, Mistress. I'll try harder to enjoy the feeling.”

Once more my exhaustion got the better of me and despite my pain I fell asleep. I was woken to feel Celeste stroking my mound which was now entirely hairless and alien. “It looks so little and delicate,” Evelyn said. “I'm sure it'll be different by the time you get fat. We'll have to alter it quite grossly. Would you like that? Big and stretched, lots of piercings, perhaps? I know you like the idea of sluttishness. We've all heard about what you told Danielle.”

I felt my cheeks redden. “Yes, Mistress, I'd like that,” I whispered, though it was hard to let myself think that I should desire all of her suggested changes.

“I've enjoyed working on you, slave. I think I should give you an extra treat. Would that please you?”

“Yes Mistress. I'm glad I've pleased you.”

I grimaced as Evelyn took her pen to my eyebrows, feeling the harsh stings as she took away the hairs at the follicle. “Are you thinning them or removing them completely, Mistress?” I dared ask after some minutes, but received no answer. I could look up to see Celeste smirking at me. I smiled back at her. She was very pretty and I liked to see her pleased with me.

I rose from the bed and stared down at my alien, hairless pussy, stroking it nervously. “It feels good, thank you Mistress,” I said. There was no mirror available to see my brows.

“And now you can have your little surgery. Once that's done you can go and rest.”

Day 4

I woke in a strange bed, not just strange because I hadn't slept there before, but bizarre in its design. I lay on my back, and the mattress, of soft foam, was recessed in roughly the form of a human body. My legs were slightly parted and my arms out from body. Loose straps were attached to ankles and wrists so that I was obliged to stay in this position, though without causing any discomfort, other than the discomfort of holding any posture for an extended time. Above me was a large mirror and I could see my naked body in its entirety.

I had no recollection of the previous day after receiving a general anaesthetic and now I stared up at my reflection to seek signs of what had been done to me. A small wound was present a few inches below my navel, held together by a few sutures, but I couldn't guess what had been done. I felt dreadfully tired still but was unable to get back to sleep. My head was aching, in addition to the dull pain I felt through my body. The worst pain was in my mouth, where the upper extractions in particular were painful. I could see that my face was swollen, and the total loss of my eyebrows had made me look odd. A tube was attached to my nostril and my belly felt uncomfortably full. I realised that I didn't like being on my own; my thoughts soon became morbid and negative, in a way that had seemed to be dispelled yesterday when I'd been in the company of one or more of the Mistresses almost all the time. The changes to my body had seemed almost natural with their encouragement, but looking at the results now terrified me. I had utterly lost control and as a result had a large tattoo, permanently removed pubic hair and eyebrows, and several lost teeth. And today my transformation would only accelerate.

And now I started to recall the threat against me from Adele. I couldn't shake the images of girl on the CCTV footage and tried to recall any detail that might exonerate me. Should I try to escape and go to the police to tell my story?

But how would I escape? I could maybe overpower some of the Mistresses, Celeste being probably the least imposing physically, but then what? I knew nothing of the layout or location of the building. And I sensed that everywhere I went was under discreet but efficient surveillance so that to attempt escape would be sure to fail and result in appalling punishment.

The other escape that occurred to me was suicide, but each time I thought about it I recalled Danielle's warning. The ruthlessness of the Mistresses was apparent in their treatment of me and I knew her words were no empty threat; the idea of being blinded terrified me, so much that I didn't even dare contemplate taking my own life.

Eventually I fell into a light sleep, and was woken by the entry of Celeste. It was a small room, brightly lit but windowless, empty of furniture other than the bed, which occupied half of the floorspace. Celeste and I exchanged greetings and she freed me from the bindings and removed the feeding tube while asking if I'd slept well.

“Yes Mistress. I am quite sore though and I have a headache. I wondered if I might have something for the pain.”

“Of course, slave,” she said warmly, and pushed me to turn. She delivered a series of slaps across my buttock and thigh, swift enough to make me gasp. “Is that enough pain for now?” she laughed. “My poor little slave, you need to learn to savour your suffering. You'll be anaesthetised for some procedures but otherwise you'll live with your pain and learn to love it. Is that a clear enough explanation?” I gave my embarrassed assent.

I was allowed to relieve myself and shower in a nearby room, under the constant watch of Celeste. Once I'd washed I was told that I needed to be fitted with a plug today. “You'll be subjected to anal stretching, and will wear a plug permanently now, slave,” she informed me. “And you'll love it, won't you?”

I tried to accept her encouragements, and willingly allowed the insertion, pleased to feel Celeste's intimate touch. I allowed myself to feel love toward her, so pretty and so devoted to helping me. She smoothed my anus with lubricant, pushing a finger inside me. “You're very tight. We need to change that.” She inserted a speculum now, which was less comfortable, but as it opened inside me I started to sob and groan.

“Please Mistress, it hurts. It's too much for me.”

My weakness made her angry and she berated me in the most base language, which only added to my sadness. She seemed now to force my opening wider than was safe and I fought against the desire to scream. I was relieved when she finally forced a metal plug inside me. It was painfully large and so heavy that I couldn't fail to be constantly aware of its presence, but it wasn't painful in the same way as the jaws of the speculum.

Celeste looked at me now, staring into my eyes, only speaking to insist that I shouldn't break eye contact. “You were appallingly childish. Tomorrow you'll be gagged when I plug you to spare me the feelings of embarrassment you make me feel.”

I began to make an apology but was hushed and thought it best to remain silent while I was taken to a treatment room. I saw Danielle was already present and remembered that I'd requested a long session of tattooing.

“It disgraced itself while being plugged,” Celeste said by way of greeting her colleague. “No talking for this slave until it completes a task. You hear me? If Danielle gives a good report to me of your conduct then your speaking privileges are returned. Nod to show you understand.”

I was made to lie on a padded bench where Danielle took her position to work on my left arm. As she shaved me I saw another woman enter, who Celeste greeted as Finley. She was tall and androgynous (her buzzed purple hair adding to this impression), heavy and heavily tattooed. Celeste took her aside and gave her some advice out of my hearing. Soon she came to me, setting herself to work on my right arm. She made light conversation with Danielle, with whom she appeared to be a close friend, but did nothing to acknowledge me. Soon she'd scrubbed my arm and began to tattoo me.

The feeling of being tattooed by two women simultaneously was difficult to bear. My arms were constantly forced into uncomfortable postures which I would have to hold for a long time. My left arm was being marked in a similar manner to my right by Danielle, except that the sweeping line now spiralled around my arm rather than zigzagging. Finley was working with black ink, placing thick black lines along my arm, which were truncated each time the trajectory butted against the blue of Danielle's tattoo. The tip of the device was now fitted with a row of needles to produce the broad lines she desired, and the touch was correspondingly more painful. She worked very quickly, the lines growing to divide my skin into sections.

Celeste had now absented herself, but a third Mistress now entered. Danielle and Finley paused to greet her, and I heard her name was Gigi. She was as tall as Finley, but slim and feminine. She had long red hair, pulled back in a ponytail. Like the others, she was covered in tattoos and had a lot of piercings.

I soon realised that Gigi's role was to tattoo my throat. I tipped my head back to allow her full access. I was unhappy that my neck would be marked. It would be more prominent than the tattoos on my arms, always visible. But I fought against this feeling; I wanted to show Celeste that I could be brave and welcome my transformation. Gigi was particularly beautiful, I thought, her tattoos adding to her beauty. There was no reason to imagine I couldn't be beautiful too with my tattoos.

My tattooists seemed tireless and worked without cease. I had no way to measure the passage of time and my tattooing seemed to become eternal. While my throat was being inked I was forced to maintain a posture with my head tilted back, so was unable to see anything of the work though I could feel that Danielle had shifted to work on my torso now and at some later point Finley moved around me to work on my left arm.

Hours had certainly passed when I was told to rise. I felt a great relief that my ordeal was complete, but soon realised that I was mistaken, and I was only shifting position to allow further work. As I rose I saw that the inner part of my right arm had been filled in with a dense, oily black pigment from wrist to armpit, only relieved where the snaking blue line crossed it, the intensity of the blue now enhanced by the marked contrast. To say it was a bold look was something of an understatement. Now my left arm was being treated in the same way, though Danielle had yet to fill the looping blue line around my arm; at present it was there only in outline, but that gave sufficient form for Finley to work to.

Danielle had now begun to add gestural marks across my abdomen and chest, though these were bolder than those on my arms, fully four inches wide, stripes and chevrons with uneven contours, still retaining a rough calligraphic character. Now I was instructed to sit backwards on a chair, my chest propped against the back. As Danielle added more designs across the right side of my ribcage, Finley continued to work on my left arm (now supported by a rest attached to the chair) and Gigi, after tightly pinning up my hair, inked the side of my neck.

In contrast to her colleagues, Gigi worked painstakingly, marking my skin with a pen before committing anything permanent. I was intrigued to see what she was doing, but so far it was impossible to see anything of her work.

Despite my discomfort, I'd managed to get some sleep while lying on the bench, but in this upright posture such luxury was denied me. I was constantly adjusting the position of my head now to allow Gigi to work. I soon felt that what was being done was unbearable and longed to hear someone tell me I was done for the day, yet there seemed to be no end in sight. I thought about my left arm, on which Danielle had produced only outlines. The previous day in three hours she'd filled in the line completely, with the outline produced in perhaps the first hour. If she'd worked at the same pace today then I estimated it was possible that only two hours had passed, a third of the time allocated for my treatments. I felt like I'd never be able to survive another four hours. I started to imagine snapping and assaulting these women who were ruining me, fantasising about defeating them and running free from the building.

By the time the buzzing of the needles did finally stop I felt broken. For the last period I'd lay on my belly while all three women worked on my back and buttocks. Celeste had attached the feeding tube and I could feel my belly becoming bloated. I'd become so exhausted by holding unnatural postures that I slept almost as soon as I was allowed to lie down.

I was helped to rise and looked at myself with curiosity. Large areas of my arms and torso were densely filled out with black ink: my arms were mirror images in terms of the areas of black, though overlaid with the blue lines that seemed to be Danielle's speciality. My body was similarly divided into areas of black underlying the blue marks, but the borders of the black areas on my chest, abdomen and back were entirely asymmetrical.

The areas that Danielle and Finley had left untouched were where Gigi had begun to work. She'd marked me with kaleidoscope-like patterning, mandalas composed of tiny shading dots that fragmented into tiles across me.

Because her work was so painstaking she'd not covered nearly as large an area. She'd tattooed a matrix of dots across the outside of both arms but had only completed the complex patterning on an area of my right arm. Most of her work had been around my neck and I was unable to see that.

“Did she disgrace herself?” Celeste asked Danielle.

“Not at all. She took a lot of work with good grace.”

“She looks so different,” Celeste said dreamily. “slave, how do you feel?”

“I'm so privileged, Mistress,” I said, forcing a smile. “I'm exhausted, so I can only imagine how much work it was for my Mistresses. They're very talented.”

“Yes they are. Same again tomorrow, ladies?” Celeste asked. “I'd like her tattooing to be done in two days. Is that an achievable target?”

Danielle nodded. “We'll have to limit the areas Gigi works on to arms and legs though. I'd be happy to do the patterning on her torso. Then we can confidently complete within two days.”

Celeste hugged and kissed each of the tattooists in turn and they left.

“Your feed should be complete in about twenty minutes. Then you can have a little outing. Would you like that?”

“Where are we going, Mistress?” I asked.

“Not we. Just you.”

I couldn't hide my surprise. “You trust me to go out alone, Mistress?”

She laughed. “Of course I do! You're here through choice, aren't you? You're here to be helped and to help. None of the principles you learnt have changed. You weren't going to run away, were you? I mean, where would you go? Prison, I suppose, without our help.”

“No, Mistress. Of course I'd return.”

“Everyone here is very pleased with you, slave. You're adjusting well. And you look so beautiful with all your tattoos. You love sitting for the ladies, don't you?”

“Yes Mistress,” I agreed, pulled along by her compliments.

“I suppose you'll miss being tattooed when they finish in a couple of days. Still, I'm sure there will be opportunities for little touch ups in the future, so you won't become strangers.”

I thanked her. She said I should look pretty for my first outing and applied a lot of make-up as I sat obediently. She looked pleased as she completed her work and I asked to see the result, but she shook her head.

“No, slave. You'll be sure to find a mirror when you're out so you can see yourself then. It'll be a nice surprise for you. Now let's go.”

I was dressed in strappy heels, black shorts and a white vest top that showed off my tattooed arms and midriff, my skin gleaming with the ointment applied to the fresh ink. I kept glancing at my tattoos, unable to believe that my skin was so changed, and would be forever. I felt myself shrinking as I thought of going out in public alone and being stared at, imagining how I'd feel if I'd seen a girl with similar tattoos. I'd hardly have been able to ignore such dramatic work. I didn't like the idea that I'd draw so much attention, but didn't dare voice my anxieties to Celeste. We got into a car in the underground garage and drove out of the compound. The sun was high in the sky, and I estimated that it was not long after noon. I realised that I must have risen very early, and had assumed it was much later in the day.

I noticed that the car was left hand drive and as soon as we were on the road observed that Celeste was driving on the right. We'd left Britain during my journey! I felt a weird sense of dislocation, as though my perceptions had been completely off for the last few days. And then I had to worry about language when I arrived at my destination. I had forgotten most of the French I'd learned at school, and didn't speak any other language. I'd perceived from Celeste that I shouldn't ask questions unbidden and restrained myself from asking where we were, instead trying to work out how far I could have travelled into Europe. I guessed the journey had been long enough to get me to France, Belgium, the Netherlands or Germany.

We drove for around fifteen minutes on small roads through farmland before we approached a large village. It was neatly maintained with a preponderance of red brick buildings, austerely ornamented. The names on the shops were mostly what appeared to me to be Dutch but a few were French, and I guessed we were in Belgium. Celeste parked in a cobbled square in the centre and addressed me. “I'm going to give you a phone. Once your appointment is finished you can call me and I'll meet you here. You're going to get your nails done,” she smiled. “That'll be nice, won't it?” I agreed enthusiastically. “The salon is down that street,” she pointed to a corner of the square. It's on the left, the only beauty salon so you cant miss it. And, slave, be aware that this town has a lot of friends of the System. You should always behave well, because any transgressions might be observed and reported. There'll be an accounting once we're back home.”

I assured her that I'd be good and she waved me out of the car. “But Mistress, what should I ask for?”

“You're expected. They've been given instructions. Just be a good girl and do as you're told.” She passed me a phone. “Call me when you're done. It only has one number so you can't go wrong.”

I gripped the phone and made my way toward the street. The heels made walking on cobbles a challenge. I turned to glance back at Celeste and saw that she was driving away. I felt lost, utterly unsure of myself. I felt an urge to seek help, to decry my abduction, but I had to fight such thoughts. I'd agreed to come here, and I knew that if I resisted that my apparent crime would be revealed. I had to stop letting myself think that I could return to my old life. I knew that such thoughts were harmful, and that I could only find happiness by welcoming my new status. As I walked across the square I felt the gazes of the local people taking in the bizarre appearance of this stranger in their midst. I had to force myself to feel pleasure at the attention and not let shyness overtake me.

I made the short walk into the narrow street of colonnaded shops and searched for the salon. I entered and looked around. There were half a dozen chairs, but only two customers. A receptionist greeted me in a language I assumed was Flemish. “Hi, do you speak English?” I replied.

She shook her head and came to take me by the arm, speaking in a reassuring tone, but not a word was intelligible to me. She led me to a stylist, the oldest of those present, who looked to be in her late thirties. She laughed as she met me and exchanged jokes with the receptionist, then gestured for me to take a seat.

I did as requested, and found myself staring uncomfortably at my reflection; my neck was covered in black mandalas, divided into hexagonal tiles. I tilted my head back and saw that the tattoos covered my skin up to my jawline. My make-up shocked me too, deep red lipstick drawn outside the lip line, harsh black eyeliner, thin black lines for brows. I was no longer the girl I had been a few days ago, I was slave, and my appearance made my new personality concrete.

My stylist draped a cape around my neck, the tight collar irritating the newly tattooed skin. I shook my head. “No, no, nails, nails!” I extended my hand and pointed to the nails to show her that she was mistaken, but she was insistent. She seemed to be telling me that my nails would be seen to later but first I'd have a hair appointment.

I felt powerless now, frustrated by my inability to communicate and sure there'd been an error. I held up my hand to indicate that she should wait and lifted my phone to call Celeste. I was confident that she'd be able to resolve the mix up. My stylist looked impatient now and shook her head. She took the phone from my hand and placed it on the counter, while seemingly telling me off. She began to brush through my hair.

My hair was cut to my shoulders, light brown with a reddish hint, a colour that I liked, and brought me compliments. It was wavy, forming loose ringlets. I'd had long hair till about two years previously when I'd decided that this shorter length would be more mature and easier to look after. I'd never come to terms with the shorter length, always believing that long hair was more attractive. Now I was about to get a makeover without any control. I started to feel upset and had to fight against the urge to cry. Celeste's words of warning came back to me, and I felt that I was most likely being observed by someone from the System even now. Perhaps my stylist was someone who worked at the compound, and I realised that I should be as deferential to her as to any of my Mistresses. I want a new haircut, I told myself. I want to look different and sexy. This style is no good for who I am now. Accept the change, welcome it.

My determination to accept a new style was tested as I saw the stylist lift a set of clippers from a hook on the counter. My nervousness was out of control now, sliding rapidly toward panic. I tried to focus on my breathing, and realised that I was pressing at my sex in an attempt to comfort myself. I reached for the waistband of the shorts (my full belly bulging against the cloth), and for the first time felt the wound that my surgery had left. Slightly under the incision I could feel a round object, perhaps an inch and a half across, was present under the skin, but the area was too tender for me to examine it more thoroughly. I dared to slide my fingers into my shorts, having opened the button, trying to move stealthily so as to avoid disturbing the cape which covered me to my knees. As I touched my now hairless sex I felt that it too was very tender. I pressed at my slit and felt a soreness which worried me, but which needed to be explored. I pushed the tip of my little finger inside and felt stiff bristles which I recognised as sutures, no different to those binding together the wound in my abdomen. I was repelled to think that some procedure had been performed on me and wondered what it's purpose was. I carefully re-buttoned my shorts and slid my hands to my sides, afraid to touch myself for fear of ripping the stitches.

I was bidden to tip my head to the side now, exposing the left side to the clippers. The stylist had clipped my hair up, baring my ear. Now she turned on the clippers and set them to my cheek. She laughed as she pressed them upward, shaving away my sideburn. I swallowed as I saw that there was no hair left where the blades had touched. It looked strange and ugly. Nor was she finished; she buzzed away more curls, shaving up to a line on my temple. The shaved area passed about an inch over my ear, curving gently down the side of my nape.

My stylist ran her fingers across the shaved stubble and made a comment that seemed to be a joke. I forced a smile and told her I liked the cut, but I'm sure my face told her a different story. Now she moved to my right side and pulled out the clips. As she combed through my hair a lot of strands came free, gathering in my lap or spilling to the floor. I held my breath as she turned on the clippers again. She combed back my hair at the front and placed the blades at the right side of my forehead.

I swore in disbelief as she drove the blades into my hair, slowly shaving a pale stripe across my scalp. The inside of the path started at the middle of my forehead, but moved back at an angle, so that it connected to the right hand whorl of my double crown. I'd told myself the undercut on the left side was quite pretty, edgy but not excessive. Now more hair was being sheared away and I saw that the entire right side would be bald, extending onto the top of my head. I gulped as I realised this couldn't be hidden. There was nothing subtle about this, no slight edginess. My haircut was extreme.

I was suddenly hit by the thought that there had been a mistake. Celeste had told me I was here for my nails, and what if I'd been mistaken for someone else? Would I be punished for getting a haircut without authorisation? As if the haircut itself weren't punishment enough.

Now I was made to bow my head as the back was shaved into the desired form. A lot of my curls were being shaved, not just a narrow strip on the side of the nape like on the left side. I could feel that most of the back was being bared. I couldn't bear it, I was sure. It was humiliating to be shorn like this. I lifted my head and saw my remaining hair being wound into a knot on the top, my hair looking like a mohawk that had slipped to one side.

It seemed that the clippers didn't shave close enough. I watched passively as the stylist lathered the sides of my head and nape. She used an old fashioned safety razor to shave me, fitting it with a fresh razor blade before setting it to my scalp. There was a soft rasping sensation as she pulled it in firm strokes down my scalp. The slight greyishness the stubble had caused was now gone and my scalp looked almost white where the razor passed.

I felt sick at the destruction of my hair, all the more so because my stomach was filled with the beige liquid which was now my sole diet. The stylist rubbed a towel over my tingling scalp to rid it of the vestiges of the white lather. She said something to me then gestured. I realised she was telling me to feel my scalp. I gasped as I touched it, so soft and smooth. When my fingers moved down it felt silky, but there was a stickiness when I moved against the growth, which made it feel rubbery. I couldn't feel any granularity of stubble. I blushed as I realised the feeling was so overwhelming; I couldn't decide whether it was repulsive or enticing, but my training with Adele and her followers had taught me that our feelings are conditioned and that we can take control of them. I knew that in this case I had to choose delight as my response to my shaved scalp.

I watched as my light brown hair was covered in dark liquid. I was allowed to sit in the waiting area by the reception while the dye matured, and as I did I felt myself slipping toward sleep. When I was rinsed I saw I had black hair.

Now the stylist equipped herself with long, brightly coloured strands of artificial hair, blue and yellow. She carefully divided my hair into small sections and glued a thick section of the fake hair to the roots. Then the resulting lock, natural and artificial, was tightly braided. I suppose I was relieved that no more of my hair was being cut and showed my delight as the heavy braids began to proliferate. The strands were long, reaching to my waist, and I saw a certain irony in having the longest hair I'd ever had, since half of my head was now shaved bald. The ends of the braids were heat sealed, fusing the tip so that it would be impossible for it to come undone.

My stylist now called over a colleague to assist her. She was a tall, muscular young woman with dark hair, worn very short: the back and sides were barbered close to her scalp, with the top standing straight up in stiff spikes. She was tasked with braiding each of the sections once the senior stylist had anchored the extensions. “You're English?” she said.

“Yes, I am Miss.” I blushed as I wondered if I shouldn't address her as Mistress. I waited for her reaction. She shared a joke with her friend.

“She says you look like... porn with these tattoos and this hair.” Her accent was strong and I wondered if I'd misunderstood.

“Porn?” I asked. “Like... porn star?”

“Yes!” she said happily. “Porn star. That's what you like?”

I felt myself cringing. Was that how I appeared now? I nodded, aware that I was likely being observed. “Yes, I like that. I like looking like a porn star.”

“And now you get tattoo here, yes?” She rubbed my scalp. “That's why you shave?”

I closed my eyes as I thought that in all likelihood she was right. “Maybe,” I said.

“You coming back here to show us, hey? I keep you shaving. See tattoo clear?”

I nodded. “I'd like that but not sure how long I stay here.” She looked puzzled, but nodded. I wasn't sure how much she'd understood.

The braiding became wearying for all three of us and soon conversation, mercifully, came to a halt. I could see the younger woman stretching her fingers after completing each braid to ward off the cramping in her fingers. My scalp ached from the constant tension of the process. I felt enormous relief when I was finally deemed finished. The heavy braids were arranged to fall to the left side and the larger shaved area on the right was fully exposed. I reached up to feel them, so tight and hard, nothing of the softness of my familiar hair.

I'd been in the chair so long that I had difficulty getting up, and when I did I gasped as the oversized plug triggered a painful spasm that made me groan. I walked toward the door but the younger stylist took me by the arm and led me to the stairs at the back of the shop, talking incessantly in Flemish. I went up and saw a nail bar and tanning beds. I was ushered to sit to have my nails attended to.

I was fitted with long acrylic claws, glued to my more modest nails, extending for almost two centimetres beyond the tips of my fingers and ending in a chisel tip. They were now lavishly painted by the young stylist, who had an impressively steady hand. She used two colours on each nail, blood red and shocking pink, divided diagonally with the pink at the tip. An array of fake jewels was added to four of my nails. I thanked her lavishly for her work and she accompanied me down the stairs.

I walked awkwardly with the stylist to the receptionist and she indicated that I should pay. I looked at her helplessly; I had no means to pay. I took the phone and made to call Celeste. The receptionist jabbed a finger at the screen, exclaiming something. It took me a few moments to realise that on the almost bare screen was a payment app. I tapped on it and managed to make a payment.

I walked out into the square now, feeling more out of place than ever. It was now late afternoon and a few of the townspeople were taking a stroll, walking their dogs or just enjoying a promenade. I sensed their disapproval of a girl who, according to the one person in the town I'd spoken with, looked like a porn star. I called the only number on the phone and heard Celeste agree to pick me up from the square.

It was about an hour before my lift arrived. I was relieved to see Celeste; being alone in the town made me feel out of place and vulnerable, and any thoughts of escape had now receded. In a few days I'd come too far to return to my old life, and I found I couldn't bear to think of the threat of prison from what I'd done. It was easier to block all thoughts of my crime and start afresh.

Celeste laughed when she saw me. She stroked my head which made me feel the stirrings of pleasure. “She shaved you well, didn't she? It's so smooth. We should make sure it stays nice and clean while you keep this style. I think twice daily shaves should do the job.”

“I have some shaved here too, Mistress.” I lifted the braids to show the smaller undershave on the left.

“Did you like being shaved, slave?”

“Yes Mistress. It was a little scary when she clippered off my hair but it feels so nice.”

“Don't forget your promise to Evelyn. If you're not twenty stone in six months what will happen?”

“I'll be permanently bald, Mistress.”

She laughed. “That might be the right look for a slave. You like your shave so I suppose being totally hairless would be delightful for you.”

“To be honest, Mistress, it scares me. I'm not without vanity and the idea of being bald worries me.”

“Bald and fat. I think they both scare you.” I agreed. “We're working hard to make you beautiful so I think it's fine that you should retain your vanity. I want you to take pride in your appearance, slave, and always look your best. You'll learn to shave yourself and apply your make-up. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes, Mistress. I'm happy that you're giving me more trust. I want to make you happy.”

“Did you get any comments on your makeover?”

“The stylist didn't speak any English so I couldn't understand a word she said, Mistress, but there was a younger stylist who spoke a bit. They thought I looked like a porn star.”

Celeste laughed. “You liked that, I bet. Would you like to show off your new look on camera?” I hesitated for too long. “Your treatments are very expensive, slave. You need to start earning some money to pay back what you owe. I mean the tattooing alone costs thousands. And do you think private dental treatment is cheap?”

“No, Mistress,” I said defensively. I hadn't imagined I'd have to pay for the transformation I hadn't asked for.

“Tonight you can spend a few hours in our studio. You can be a cam girl. I think it might be nice to let you have an account with a gaining site. The prospect of a pretty girl like you doubling her weight rapidly should make some people dip in their pockets. For tonight you can go without your feeding tube and gorge on camera. You can indulge your greediness. We'll lay on a feast for you. Make it sexy and you should make a good amount of money.” I felt worried at the thought of displaying myself. “Oh, just imagine if someone you know logs in! Won't they be surprised to see pretty little... whatever your name was, and how she's changed. All those tattoos, that wild hair. And acting so depraved.”

Day 5

My overindulgence had left me feeling ill. I'd eaten a huge feast on camera: a large bag of crisps to begin, a huge pizza as main course and a full chocolate gateau to finish. I'd been astonished that I'd managed to eat everything, washed down with two litres of cola. I'd never felt so full, but egged on by the voyeurs of the website I'd managed to stuff every last morsel into my distended belly. I felt disgusted with myself for being so greedy, all the more so because I'd orgasmed on camera, using a huge dildo, after completing the meal.

Celeste woke me and freed me from my bed in the morning (to add to my shame I'd had to endure being fitted with a catheter, since I couldn't rise from my bed and I'd drank a lot of fluids). Despite my overeating I'd still been attached to the feeding tube, and my stomach was still full when I woke.

My morning routine was completed in silence, as Celeste made good on her promise to gag me. A ball was forced into my mouth, behind my teeth and strapped in place. It was uncomfortable and made me retch, as well as causing me to drool uncontrollably. The plug was slid out, making me feel faint, but after sitting on the toilet and then being cleaned up I had to endure the far worse ordeal of more stretching with the speculum. Once the gag was removed Celeste seemed to once more treat me more humanely.

“You did OK last night,” she said coolly. “But you do need to improve. You need to indulge the fantasies of your fans, make them believe that you share them.”

“But some of them are just weird, Mistress,” I complained.

“This isn't about choosing friends. This is a commercial transaction. You want them to spend their money. If you don't make enough this way we can opt for tougher means of employment. Stop being fussy, slave.”

“I'm sorry, Mistress. I'll try harder.”

The discussion came to an end as I was taken to a treatment room. I froze as I realised it was the dental surgery where I'd lost four teeth. “Please Mistress, I won't lose more teeth will I?”

She nodded. “Yes you will, slave. Get in the chair.”

I was terrified and started to beg her to be spared. “You said I was here voluntarily. I don't want this!”

She was silent, and despite her efforts to conceal it, angry. There was a long pause as she brought her emotions under control. “Very well, if you're not going to agree to treatment we'll have to abandon our very expensive plans for the day. You can come with me.”

I followed her in shamed silence. We took the lift and arrived at another room. As the door opened I wailed. “Please Mistress, no! I can't endure it in there.”

“You will endure it. Every time you're wilful you'll spend a full day in here. Don't think of resisting now or you'll be punished very firmly. Now enter!”

I walked the narrow path into the room, the room with the floor covered with spikes. “Please Mistress, I'll see the dentist. I'm sorry. You don't need to do this.”

She was silent as she fitted the board to cover the path, leaving me only a ten inch square to stand in. Then the door closed and I was alone.

Day 6

I was inconsolable when I was finally brought out of the room. I felt like I'd been left in there for days though I was aware that within minutes my perception of time seemed to break down entirely. I called out to be released, promising obedience, until my throat was raw, then sobbed until I had no more tears. Standing still soon becomes exhausting, but squatting is worse because very soon the leg muscles begin to cramp. After some hours in there I would have given anything, and I mean anything, to have a wall to lean against. I tried bending over, supporting some of my weight on one hand but I nearly fell when I closed my eyes and that shook me.

I'd completely lost my mind by the time Celeste came for me. I couldn't stop talking, desperately assuring her that I'd be a good girl and she'd never need to put me in the room again.

She brought me to my senses by shouting in my face. “Shut up! Most people have to endure three times in the room, and I don't think you're any different. In fact I think it might be necessary for you to have five sessions. If you don't compose yourself now you can go back in for another twenty-four hours. Control yourself!”

I started to say something, then realised I had to be silent. I was so tired that I could hardly stand up straight and had to fight my urge to plead to be allowed sleep. The panic I felt at the prospect of being taken back into the room was physically unbearable.

“Now just nod to show your agreement, slave. You'll receive all of the treatments I planned for you yesterday, and you'll take them without complaint.” I nodded. “Any infringement of propriety will result in another day in the room. You'll take your treatments with enthusiasm and gratitude. You'll feel affection toward your Mistresses for their generosity toward you.” I nodded again. “You may speak now. What treatment do you want to begin, slave?”

“I'd like some dental treatment now, please Mistress.”

I was granted the opportunity to relieve myself and shower before I was taken to see the dentist. Again I was securely bound in the chair and left alone before the dental Mistresses entered. They never spoke to me, and their facelessness seemed to make them inhuman and terrifying. I opened my mouth and felt a gag of thick wire being inserted. It fitted into the gaps where I'd had the extractions and I gasped as it was levered open; the wire pressed against the wounds which remained tender and the pressure caused intense pain. As she began her examination I realised that the pain would not diminish until the gag was removed, and I had no reason to assume that that would happen before the treatment was complete.

Despite my fear of needles, I longed to see the syringes being pushed into my mouth, numbing all sensation. I didn't care what was done to me any more, just wanted not to suffer, and I knew that if the pain was taken from me I would be able to get some sleep while I was modified. I was so distressed that I'd have willingly accepted the removal of every tooth in exchange for a long sleep.

I wasn't to be granted such rewards. I felt my tongue being gripped by forceps and willingly extended it to allow examination, except that now it was pulled so far from my mouth that it was a strain and the muscles started to spasm, involuntarily twitching so that it must have appeared that I was resisting. As I did so the pressure on the forceps increased until it began to hurt and I groaned, more distressed by the discomfort than the pain, which was relatively mild.

But then it wasn't; I felt a scratching sensation beneath my tongue which rapidly escalated into agony as I felt a blade penetrate the surface, and I began to taste blood. There was a loud slurping as the assistant suctioned away the excess saliva and blood. The pain continued to grow in intensity and I struggled against the straps, unable to remain calm, though it was futile since the straps didn't allow any significant movement.

At last I felt the tool (it was surely too thick to be a needle) pass through my tongue entirely and felt blood running back into my throat. There was more pressure on the wound, which was so raw that I wailed at the slightest pressure. I was finally permitted to relax my tongue but even as I did became aware that it now bore a heavy piercing which threatened to induce a gag reflex. I realised how distressed I'd been and fought to control my breathing to restore some decorum, fearing the consequences of my unrestrained response, even though my vocalisations had brought no obvious response from the Mistresses.

I sighed as the injections were made into the hinges of my jaw, not from suffering but from relief. Only moments passed before I felt the welcome numbness spread across my face, even my tongue relieved of its throbbing. I closed my eyes and tried to distance myself from my treatment, to stoically accept whatever would be done to me, and to get some sleep while it happened. Almost immediately I began to doze, but my rest, and my resolve, was soon interrupted as I felt a growing pressure on an upper incisor, the right one beside the canine. I felt tears begin to come as I recognised that it would be torn out. I imagined my smile with an absent front tooth, how awful and ugly it would look. I couldn't suppress a distressed sob as my fear was realised, the tooth being twisted and wrenched from the socket, then to feel the forceps close on the absent tooth's mirror on the left and feel it too being ripped from me.

I probed with my tongue as the Mistresses prepared for my next torture, and felt that my upper canines were now isolated, gaps present on either side. I imagined how absurd I must now look, the two front teeth jutting from the gums, making me appear rodent like. I felt like I'd never smile again.

Nothing of quite such violence as the extraction of my teeth was visited upon me now and I existed in a constant state of semi wakefulness, almost unable to process what was being done to me. There was a lot of drilling, which was so loud that it made relaxation difficult, yet I seemed at the time to resent it largely because it was interfering with my rest.

A lot of time seemed to have passed when Celeste freed me from the chair and allowed me to sit up for a few minutes before standing.

I was more tired than ever, my uneasy rest seeming to only deepen my need to sleep and I was confused and slow of thought. My tongue was tingling as sensation slowly returned, and I was sure that the loss of more teeth was only a nightmare as my tongue felt the presence of an uninterrupted row of teeth between the gaps where I'd lost teeth days before. However, I could tell, even in my numbed state, that my teeth were different in form now, and when I closed my jaws my teeth met in an unfamiliar occlusion.

“Can you speak?” Celeste asked. She looked amused as she stared at me.

“Yes Mistress,” I said, but my speech was unclear. The piercing in my tongue seemed to make it unwilling to move as I willed, and my lips seemed equally unable to articulate my speech.

“Say 'slave needs elocution lessons to learn to articulate incisively'.”

I repeated the sentence with difficulty, making Celeste laugh. “I think it's just the anaesthetic, Mistress,” I added.

“It's not,” she said. “But I'm sure once the wounds settle you'll speak more clearly. It might be nice if you had some difficulty with speech anyway. It's not as if you have anything important to say, is it? You just have to say 'Yes Mistress' to everything that's asked of you.”

“Yes Mistress,” I said.

“You see, I can understand that. Just about. What more do we need?”

I walked to another room now, my legs weak and unsteady. “You've not eaten for so long,” Celeste said sadly. “You'll be losing all the pounds you've gained. We need to get you hooked up to a big bag of feed post haste. You've got a little saggy belly now so I think your stomach can start to accept a bigger feed.”

I was glad to feel the tube connect to my nose and gradually become aware that my hunger was abating. Celeste massaged my belly. “Every day you spend in the room you go without food and that puts you further away from your target. If you're a naughty girl you'll lose all your hair. Do you want that?”

“No, Mistress. I want to be pretty for you.”

She rubbed the side of my head. “All stubbly. You were supposed to shave twice a day but look at you. Your disobedience has so many unfortunate consequences.”

“I'm sorry Mistress. I'll try harder now.”

“Do you want another long session of tattooing?” I agreed that I did. “Very well, I'll call the three ladies. You owe them an apology. They were planning to tattoo you yesterday.”

She tapped the screen of her phone and almost immediately Gigi, Danielle and Finley entered. Danielle came to me and tugged at my braids. “Look at you! You shaved a lot, didn't you?”

“Yes Mistress. The stylists told me I looked like a porn star.” I blushed but I couldn't resist humiliating myself.

“Oh wow, smile for me,” she insisted. I bared my teeth, though I'm sure it was more grimace than smile. I became aware that something was in my lower lip and guessed it had been pierced. “Those teeth!” Danielle said. “I think you'd only see something like that on someone who did some pretty hardcore porn. Do you like them?”

“How can she answer that?” Celeste said. “She hasn't seen them yet. She can see herself tonight when she goes to bed, if she's a good girl today. If you do anything disappointing I'll put in eye drops that will make you unable to see for a full day.”

“I'll be good Mistress,” I slurred. “And I want to apologise to my Mistresses for my conduct yesterday and ruining your schedule.”

“You'll still be billed,” Danielle said. “It's easy money for us. But make sure you start earning. I hear your debut as a cam girl was a bit of a damp squib. You hardly made enough to cover the rental of the studio.”

“I'm sure a little word of mouth will help,” Celeste said. “Once you get more confident with your performances you'll have some very devoted followers. You need to milk them for every penny you can wring out of them.”

I promised to work hard to make money. I tried to calculate how much I owed now. If my tattooists charged £100 per hour (and I couldn't imagine it was less) a six hour session with three of them would cost £1800. My dental work was almost certainly more expensive and I realised that I was racking up costs of thousands each day. It would take me years to pay back what I owed.

I lay face down on a table to allow my tattooing to commence. I was alarmed when Gigi turned my head to the side and began to shave the stubble from the right side of my head. Would I leave the room with a scalp tattoo? Within minutes I knew I would. The pain as she marked my skull was more insistent than the needling on my back, where Danielle and Finley worked from either side. I forced myself to relax and concentrated on my breathing, slow deep breaths, counting each inspiration and expiration. I achieved a calmness and a tolerance for the pain. I soon slept.

Despite the sleep I managed to get, the tattooing was arduous, and I was frequently roused from my uneasy slumber by changes of position to allow access to different areas of skin. Some of the postures were uncomfortable and holding them for long periods of time added to my exhaustion. By the end of the session I felt like a zombie; I could no longer understand instruction, at least not consciously. I found myself changing position automatically in response to words that seemed to come from a distance and were no more intelligible than the incessant chatter of my Flemish hairdresser.

I rose slowly and saw that my tattooing was far more extensive now. My legs were the most obvious addition, now decorated with extensive blue and black patterning, with huge areas of skin solidly blocked in black. My hands were now tattooed, patterns and symbols extending along my fingers to the nail beds. Even my palms had designs inked deeply into the flesh. I had hardly been aware of the entire process occurring, and was strangely calm to see the results. My earlier hunger seemed almost unbelievable, since now my stomach was bloated to discomfort, which for most of the time I'd spent in the compound was the norm.

I followed Celeste slowly. She looked at me unhappily. “You're hardly going to make a positive impression on a chat site looking like this, are you? You look sick. I think you're going to have to be put to bed early. I suppose it might be best to let you rest then make an early start tomorrow and put in some hours in the studio. The early hours of the morning here are night time in the US, so there are usually plenty of customers. Maybe it will work out for the best, but we do need to put you on a regular schedule to make sure your followers know when they can see you.”

It appeared I would be allowed to sleep after my implant had been tested and calibrated. I was taken to a small room where I sat in a comfortable chair as Celeste attached sensors to my body. One of the sensors appeared to be magnetic and gripped onto the device which had been inserted near my navel. My arms were strapped loosely to the chair and I was told to relax. I was facing a large mirror, through which I was certain that I was being observed.

Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my groin and cried out. “How does that feel, slave?” a voice called from a speaker behind me.

“It hurts. A lot.”

“And now?”

“Worse!” I gasped as another shock took my breath away.

Now I gasped again, but this time the pain was mixed with pleasure. I felt a surge of energy similar to what I felt when I achieved the most intense stimulation of my clitoris.

“How does that feel?”

My voice was a high squeak. “It very powerful and intense.”

“Pleasurable?”

“Yes!”

“And pain?”

“Yes, it hurts, but not as bad.”

There was a delay as the feeling subsided. “And now?”

I felt pleasure, though not as intensely. “It's nice, but not as much. There's no pain though.”

The next was the most pure sensation of pleasure I'd ever experienced and tipped me into an orgasm within moments. I was unable to respond to the question for some time even after the stimulation ended, since my body was still climaxing intensely. “Is there any pain?” I was asked. I confirmed there was none.

I was subjected to perhaps a dozen more tests, one of which almost made me sick, so intense was the pain. “Very good, slave,” Celeste's voice called out. “The implant is very successful. Now we have a system to aid your conditioning. We have a very marked response to both reward and punishment.”

I was taken to my bed and fell asleep taking in my latest transformations. I was surprised to see that the bald side of my head was now darkly marked with spiralling patterns of the sort which Gigi excelled in. I was barely able to recall anything that had happened during my tattooing, so exhausted that my memory seemed to have failed. The patterns spilled out across my temple and down my cheek, a looping spiral now permanently marking the skin in front of my ear. I knew that even if I grew my hair some of the tattoos would remain visible.

I was hardly able to process the details of the tattoos on my legs and torso, only aware that I had a lot more than last time I'd seen my reflection. It was my mouth that marked the most dramatic, and upsetting changes. My lower lip was pierced by a large plug, which appeared to be made of ivory. It was oval in section and at least a centimetre wide. And my teeth were a worse surprise. As I pulled back my lips I saw an alien mouth. My upper canines and central incisors were filed to sharp points, decorated with finely carved ribbed lines running from gum to tip. The canines were impossibly long and fang like, whereas the incisors were much smaller than their previous dimensions. Between them I had more normally shaped teeth but they were not of any natural material; rather they were a shiny, dark blue metallic substance.

If my upper teeth were shocking in their variousness, the lower teeth were no less shameful as they were now identical in form. The incisors and canines had been truncated at the same level, and filed down so that all were separated by narrow gaps. To add to the strangeness of the fine, peg-like teeth the gums had been excised at the base, so that the teeth looked absurdly long. The ugliness was increased by the margin of the gums, which had been subjected to diathermy, leaving them looking pale and wounded. I was sure my appearance would induce nightmares.

Day 7

I was taken through my morning routine by Celeste who seemed more irritable that usual. I finally found the courage to ask her about her mood. “Mistress, have I upset you? You seem angry with me.”

She smiled. “I suppose I'm aggrieved that I had to get up at three in the morning to deal with you. Once you're installed in the studio I'll go back to bed. Your performance will be recorded and I'll review it later. If you disappoint me I'll make sure you get some retraining and it will be unpleasant for you. But you'll work hard to satisfy your followers and make some money, won't you?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I promised, intimidated by the threats. I couldn't shake off the memory of the pain I'd experienced from the implant the previous day and was sure it would now be used to punish me should I fall short of my expected behaviour.

I was made to go without a shower now, since the tattoos were starting to form scabs. Until they healed I would keep them dry. “It's unfortunate,” Celeste said. “You'll stink, I'm sure, but we need to make sure your tattoos heal well. We can't even shave your head for now.”

I'd hoped to enjoy a hot shower since my skin had become very itchy. Celeste seemed pleased that I was suffering. “It'll only get worse in the next few days. And you have more tattooing today, though I hope the ladies can complete the bulk of the work today You'll be more or less fully tattooed when you see your bed again.”

Surprisingly, I began to realise that my stomach was empty. I was used to being fed each night, and waking with a feeling of bloating. Now instead I was excessively hungry. As I was taken to the studio I realised that once more I was expected to gorge on camera.

I'd come to understand that I should court my followers popularity by encouraging them in their fetishes. The feasting would be viewed only by paying customers, with each course paid for separately. I would only begin my feeding once a certain number of people had committed to pay, and that number rose incrementally for each successive course.

Soon I was getting messages from people I recognised from my previous experience in the studio. The changes in my appearance were a source of fascination and I found myself listing my new mods. My scalp tattoo seemed to be a source of special fascination, though my teeth seemed to polarise opinion. As I showed them off I felt a tremor of excitement, which was a total surprise, since all I felt emotionally was embarrassment at the destruction of my teeth. I realised that the feeling was induced by the implant, which surprised me since I'd assumed it could only be triggered by attaching the sensor. The realisation that it could be used remotely was frightening, yet the sensation (for now only at a low level) was so alluring that I found myself displaying myself in the most shameful way, and being rewarded constantly for my exhibitionism.

Because of my dental work I would only be able to eat soft food that required little biting or chewing and my diet had been adapted accordingly. The first course was a huge bowl of pasta, and I had no difficulty reaching my target of subscribers. As soon as I ate the first forkful I felt the trembling of stimulation under my clitoris and moaned with pleasure. I felt ashamed as I turned to the camera to say that feeding so greedily made me horny. It did nothing of the sort under normal circumstances, but someone was monitoring everything I did and manipulating my level of arousal. Would there come a time when I was conditioned to associate food with erotic urges?

The camera was attached to a laptop and instructions would sometimes appear. “Eat your food as quickly as you can,” I was ordered. “Stuff your mouth and swallow quickly. Taking your time will mean you feel full more quickly. If you start to feel bloated take a big swig of coke and wait to burp. Do it as coarsely as you can.”

My embarrassment at my vulgarity seemed not to put off my audience, in fact the opposite was clearly true; they adored me getting messy, sauce around my mouth, and dribbles down my belly, and a few were especially enchanted by my belching. I was glad that the food was soft, since my teeth felt odd in my mouth and my tongue piercing had swollen, making it hard to move food about in my mouth. Still, I could feel my arousal growing as I neared the end of the meal. The last mouthful was rewarded with a dramatic increase in the level of stimulation and I couldn't resist orgasming. I was aware that it would certainly look fake so desperately pawed at my clitoris as the climax took over me, groaning and moaning noisily. My performance seemed to delight my followers, many of whom pledged their commitment to pay to watch me feast every time I was online. I showered them with compliments.

I succeeded in getting the requisite numbers for the succeeding courses, which were both sweet: a large trifle, followed by a litre of ice cream. I felt sick by the time I spooned in the last of my excessive meal, yet was powerless to resist cumming very noisily. Now the highest level of stimulation was maintained for a full minute, during which time I writhed helplessly, insensible to all but my overwhelming pleasure. I felt drunk when I was finally allowed to escape the intense stimulation. I stood to display my bulging stomach, which looked absurdly out of proportion on my still slight frame. “I promise you guys that I'll double my weight within six months. But you all have to make it worth my while. If I do this for you you have to show me some love. It's not cheap buying so much food. You'll all buy me gifts, won't you? It makes me so wet when you show you love me with your donations. I love you all!” I blew a kiss into the camera and ended my session.

I sat in the studio waiting for someone to give me my next instructions, and I was overwhelmed by loneliness, as I acknowledged how debased I'd become. A week earlier I could never have imagined performing so indecently, let alone before a webcam broadcasting my shameful antics to anyone who wished to see. I felt so unhappy, and what was most unbearable was having to listen to my own thoughts. I craved something to block out my shame, anything, just as long as it filled my consciousness. A void was unbearable.

I was close to tears when I saw a message flash up that I should proceed to a room along the corridor, and there I saw Celeste, who was staring at the screen of a tablet, her face not registering my presence, but her focus entirely on the screen. She finally looked up after a pause of a few minutes. “I see you've made some improvements in your behaviour. You were still felt to look self conscious a lot of the time though. Are you ashamed of what you do?”

“A little, Mistress,” I admitted. “I'm new to all this. A few days ago I could never have imagined doing this.”

“You're a liar, slave,” she said vindictively. “I know what you watched. I know how you dreamed of living like the girls you watched. Our psychological studies show that you wanted this more than anything. That's why you asked to come here. Now you pretend that this is shocking to you. You're lying to justify your poor performance.”

I apologised and tried to explain that if I did fantasise then I'd not expected those fantasies to become reality. She appeared to be more angry still.

“If? If? You're still trying to deny what obsessed you? Your problem is your unwillingness to accept your desires. It's called repression. Do you think it's healthy?”

“No, Mistress. Of course not.”

“Maybe I've been mollycoddling you. You should have to try things that push you. After that you'll be far more comfortable with eating a little food on camera and showing that it makes you feel horny.” I was incredulous; did she really think that what had been done to me wasn't sufficiently bold? “You look afraid. I'm trying to help you, slave. Will yourself to be happy with what I'm offering.”

“I'll do anything for you, Mistress,” I said, trying to smile as warmly as I could.

“Your will isn't strong enough,” she said derisively. “You're too attached to your faulty programming. We need to change that.”

I was sent back to the tattoo studio, in the knowledge that this would be my last session. By the end my body was, it was fair to say, completely covered in ink. There were areas where dense patterns had been drawn where my natural skin contrasted with the black or blue ink (and blue remained the only colour used) but there were now larger areas of entirely black skin. My face had been left free of tattoos, and above my jawline the only tattoo was the large scalp tattoo on the right side of my head.

I was made to stand and display myself to the three Mistresses who'd worked so intensively on me. They photographed me, telling me the poses to adopt, and instructing me that I should memorise these postures to use whenever I was being photographed.

“She still looks awkward and embarrassed,” Celeste sighed. “I'm not sure she's any use for use as a sex worker. Perhaps we should return her to her old life. Make her get a job to repay what she owes us.”

Danielle started to laugh. “Would you like that, slave? Go back to your family and friends? I'm sure you miss them.”

I felt a horror at the idea of being seen as I was now by people I'd once knew, but I also felt a deep guilt. There were people who cared about me and they must be worried about my disappearance but I'd hardly thought about anyone from my old life since my arrival here, which seemed unbearably selfish and callous.

“No Mistress,” I said. “I want to make a success of myself here.”

“Then you need to have a stronger desire,” Danielle said. “Your failures are a result of your desire not being strong enough. You need to stop telling yourself what you want and actually believe it.”

“Exactly,” Celeste added. “She's repressing. She's ashamed of herself.”

“She probably couldn't even admit which one of us she wants to fuck right now. Could you slave?” Danielle asked.

“I like you all.”

“So pick one of us and make your dream come true.”

I felt myself blushing, and yes, I couldn't help but feel embarrassed at the prospect of having sex with one of these women, presumably with the others looking on.

“Gigi,” I said, the first name to come to my head. She was very attractive and also the least intimidating. She smiled as she heard her name and came over to put her arm around me.

“Let's go somewhere more comfortable, slave.”

We went to a large room which was equipped with a bed, but also more uncomfortable furniture, seeming designed to immobilise its victims in the most vulnerable postures. Danielle, Finley and Celeste buckled thick leather cuffs to my ankles and wrists, then attached a thick, stiff collar tightly about my neck. All were equipped with rings that could be used to pinion me to the various stands and frames. While I was being equipped Gigi relaxed on the bed and lit a cigarette.

“What's wrong, slave, don't you like me smoking?” she asked. I'd hoped I was hiding my dislike of cigarettes but I was learning that my Mistresses seemed attuned to every nuance of my expression as a communication of my thoughts.

“I don't mind,” I said, but I knew I was lying, and I knew my lie would cause problems.

“She clearly does mind,” Celeste said. “Maybe you should give up, Gigi.” There was laughter from everyone but me. “One of her fans in the cam room was asking her to smoke but she kept making excuses. Isn't that right, slave.”

“I don't smoke, Mistress. I was trying to be as polite as possible.”

“If you'd been truly polite you would have met with his wishes and smoked for him. He offered you money and you turned it down. Don't you want to repay your debts to us?”

“Celeste, I think,” Gigi said, “it's time our little slave was put on a smoking program. I think she's too prudish. I sense she thinks her not smoking makes her superior to me.”

I was afraid to speak. What Gigi said was true, and I was disappointed to see her smoking. I knew my thoughts were intolerable and the only cure was for me to become a smoker.

“Would you like that, slave?” Celeste asked mischievously.

“I think it's necessary,” I said. I couldn't hide my upset at being forced to start smoking.

Gigi came to me and kissed me, her mouth still tasting of bitter smoke. She then inhaled at her cigarette and slowly blew the smoke around my face. “In two days your will is going to be broken and you'll adore smoking. It'll make you feel sexy and you'll be turned on whenever you see women smoking. You and I will have another session where you can show me how you adore smoking.”

Now I was made to stand over a wooden box, my feet spread wide, fixed to lugs in the floor, and my body bent forward at right angles, with the collar now clipped to a short chain on the box. My wrists were pulled upward behind my back by a line which dangled from the ceiling, a posture which was excruciating.

“Now we can see how successful those stretching exercises have been,” Celeste said. “Would you like Gigi to enter you with a big strap-on? It's going to be much bigger than your plug.”

I was left in no doubt as to its dimensions, since Gigi now stood before me, letting the dildo rest in my face. I started to beg to be spared, but as soon as I did I felt a growing ache in my pelvis. I knew it was the implant being used in its punitive, pain inducing mode.

“You need to overcome your repression. As soon as you believe you want this you'll feel pleasure. And very intense pleasure will reward you when you submit fully.

I was silent as I tried to compose myself. “Yes, Mistress Gigi, please fuck me. I want this. I want it. I want it.” I tried to will myself to believe that I could enjoy it. At least it brought an end to the pain.

“Would you like me to smoke? Do you think that makes me look sexy?”

“Yes Mistress, I'd like that. Please do.”

As she lit her cigarette I felt a warm glow emanating from my groin and gave a long sigh. She had beautiful lips and I tried to accept that there was something sexy about the long white cigarette dangling from them. As white smoke slowly trailed out I felt an intensification of the pleasure, no longer sure whether it was a result of my growing excitement or externally produced by a change in the amplitude of stimulation from the implant.

I no longer cared what was the source of my pleasure as the plug was eased from me. Now the sensations were overwhelming, and all I could consciously acknowledge. And as the huge phallus was pressed to my anus I felt a surge, so intense that I could barely contain myself from a climax. The slippery dildo entered me only through the application of considerable force, which caused me terrible pain, and worse, a sensation of being stretched so much that I was sure permanent harm would result, yet even as I cried out in pain the pleasure reached a maximum and soon my cry of pain was transformed into ecstasy. I begged for my joy to go on forever, so intense that I knew I was addicted and would do anything to experience this high.

Celeste granted Gigi a free session with me as an acknowledgement of her “taking my anal virginity” as it was put. Gigi stated her desire to see me pierced a lot more, since my few piercings were rather out of equilibrium with my now very extensive tattoos. I was happy to spend more time with Gigi, despite the pain she'd inflicted. I liked her and remained very attracted to her, and wondered how I could feel such affection to these women who were transforming me. I was perhaps changed more psychologically than externally.

I admitted to her that I was nervous about the experience of being pierced, since I still feared needles, and found pain hard to bear. She reassured me that I had nothing to worry about, and that she was sure I'd soon start to enjoy the process. I took her words to mean that I'd be allowed to feel the thrill of my implant when I was pierced and happily asked her to begin.

She began with my ears, adding a handful of rings and bars into the cartilage. I'd had my lobes pierced twice, which I remembered as being hardly painful at all, but the cartilage piercings were much more harrowing. But each time I felt the needle push through my flesh I was rewarded with a subtle stimulation that was teasing and only seemed to increase my craving for a more full-blown wave of ecstasy to be unleashed, and voiced my desire to Gigi.

“If you want that you need to feel me scalpel your ears to make big holes in your lobes. That would be very painful without anaesthetic but it's your choice.”

The idea of incisions being made through the full thickness of my lobes should have repelled me, but I accepted without hesitation, and lay my head on the side to allow Gigi to perform the procedure.

“Once these are healed we'll start to stretch the holes. Same with your labret. I want a nice big jewel in that lip before long. I like the idea that most of your piercings will be stretched. Nice bold, heavy jewellery is right for you now.”

I promised my agreement, then wondered at the wisdom as I felt the blade scratching into my lobe. Another stroke cut deeper, making the pain far more intense, and leavened not in the slightest by any pleasure. “It doesn't make me feel sexy, Mistress,” I complained.

“That's your fault!” she scolded playfully. “You need to think how pretty you'll look and make yourself feel good. Maybe I should just keeping adding more holes until you force yourself to cum.”

Now the motion of the blade made me feel sick and faint as it sliced deeper into my flesh and my repulsion was only intensified by feeling blood running down my neck. I groaned as Gigi pressed a pad to the wound to dab away the blood. “It hurts, Mistress,” I complained.

“Tell me you like pain. And mean it. I want to know your will is getting stronger. You're going to keep begging me to hurt you, aren't you, slave?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I said, forcing a smile. “I love that you've pierced me.”

Now she pressed at the wound again and I felt a sharp sting as she began to suture the edges of the slit. The pain from the needle was no less intense than that inflicted by the scalpel. “Oh God, thank you Mistress,” I sighed as I felt the implant begin to induce a more intense pleasure in me.

By the time both lobes had been opened up and then stitched I was in tears, yet paradoxically moaning with pleasure. I could no longer separate the pain and pleasure, though I was suffering so much it took me all my strength to resist begging to be spared more suffering. I knew that if I did I would be denied further stimulation and probably earn a punishment too. I sat up now and felt Gigi carefully push metal tunnels into the new holes in my lobes. They were heavy and made the wounds sting, but I felt some satisfaction from the sensation.

“Do you think you've had enough piercings for today?” Gigi asked.

“Not at all, Mistress,” I said. I knew it was expected of me, despite my exhaustion, due in no small part to the pain I'd endured. And I was motivated by my desire to keep feeling the delicious reward my implant could give me.

I felt like I was in a dream as she continued to push needles through my flesh, each burst of pain then rewarded by a swelling of joy from my pussy. She pierced my upper lip in the centre, adding a heavy stud to it. “Those sexy lips need a cigarette in them, don't they, slave?” Gigi demanded.

“Mmm, yes Mistress,” I said, feeding her desires, and trying to accept them as my own.

“You're not ready yet, though. Celeste will put you on a programme to allow you to build your tolerance. Within a week you should be hooked. You'll soon be smoking a couple of packs a day.”

There was a voice deep inside me that wanted to protest, the voice that told me smoking was ugly and harmful, especially for someone who was gaining weight and would soon be obese, but as Gigi purred her ideas in my ear I felt the pleasure growing and I was too tired to resist associating this pleasure with my instructions from Gigi.

Now that my ears and lips had been sufficiently decorated, at least for now, I was made to lie back with my legs parted. “Your implant means I can't pierce that little clit, at least for the time being,” Gigi said, “but those meaty lips are begging for some rings, aren't they?”

“Yes, Mistress. Four in each would look nice.”

She laughed. “You're such a slut, aren't you? I bet you can't wait to show off your new mods on camera. We should get you making some films so you can have a bigger audience. And some live shows too.”

I was lost in joy as she pierced me. Then my waves of ecstasy were suddenly gone and I was left only with pain. “Oh, Mistress, what happened?” I asked. “Did I do something wrong?”

She laughed. “No, you just used up all the power in the battery of your implant. Now you'll have to wait till tomorrow for it to work again.”

I felt devastated. “Oh Mistress, that's terrible. I love my implant.”

“I know, but there's only a little battery.” She pressed her fingers over the block that sat under the skin beneath my navel. “If you use it too much it'll run out, and we only recharge it while you sleep.” She smiled at me encouragingly. “I'll ask Celeste if you can be fitted with a larger battery, but we don't want it to be too obvious. You'll need to gain and have a chubby belly before you can get it. It could be a month before you're big enough.”

“I wish I could gain faster,” I said, greedy to have my implant teasing me all the time. “Do you think Mistress Celeste would allow me to have extra feeds to speed it up?”

“Yes I do, but you'd have to show her that you were making good progress with your obedience. We can all see you're only pretending to accept yourself. You have to want what's best for you.” I willingly pledged to bend my will to comply.

My piercings were now complete (fortunately, since without the stimulation the pain became intolerable) but Gigi wasn't content to leave me alone, and informed me that if I were to have big piercings in my nipples and clitoris then I'd have to work at enlarging them. She pressed glass tubes over each of them, which were linked by plastic tubing to a vacuum pump. As it was deployed the air whooshed out and I felt the sensitive tissue being drawn up the columns. It was mildly painful, but teasingly so, and I enjoyed the sensation, all the more so because Gigi was happy with me. When she pulled the tubes free I saw my nipples were comically distended, twice their normal length and conforming to the cylindrical shape determined by their moulds.

Gigi now made me suffer some more by injecting the base of each nipple with saline from a large syringe. The fluid made the tissue bloat up, losing its shape, and as the glass tubes which were now fitted were twice the size of the previous ones. As the pump sucked the tissue upwards the pain was now so intense that I couldn't remain silent. Now she repeated the treatment with my clitoris, and the pain I'd experienced was magnified greatly. Yet I felt a satisfaction of sorts from the sensation of the pump reshaping me.

Day 8

I woke feeling claustrophobic. I immediately saw that a mask was clamped to my face, simultaneously realising that my throat was sore and my mouth felt dirty. There was a taste that seemed to coat my tongue and palate and I soon  realised that it was the taste of smoke. I'd fallen asleep without the mask and wondered how I could possibly have slept through its fitting: there were tight straps about my head and I could only imagine that some form of sedative had been administered through my feeding tube. Had I been drugged since my arrival here? It would certainly explain my lack of anxiety at the drastic changes to the course of my life.

I pondered that I must have been breathing smoke throughout the night, and it had left me feeling hung over, a headache and nausea affecting me. I knew that soon I'd be smoking a lot and felt powerless to resist. I knew how hard it was to quit once the addiction took hold and wondered if I'd soon crave cigarettes. I knew it was wrong to think badly of this latest change, and reflected on how much I'd liked seeing Gigi smoking, and knowing that she'd find it very attractive when I started.

I allowed myself to take in the newest changes to my body: the tattooing was so extensive now, and the fresh piercings gleamed against my darkened skin; my nipples and clitoris had shrunk back from the treatment yesterday, but remained far larger than their familiar dimensions. I saw for the first time now that my body had started to grow. Although my belly had very obviously become swollen (the constant distension had reduced the muscle tone and it had become soft and flabby) I'd failed to notice much impact on the rest of me. Now I saw that my arms had thickened, and my thighs more markedly so, though I found it hard to gauge just how much, since the patterning of the tattoos affected how I perceived the form of my body.

I tried to sleep more, since I felt exhausted all of the time, but I couldn't still my thoughts. It must have been an hour before Celeste appeared to release me. I greeted her and thanked her as she took me through my hygiene routine. “I noticed I'm getting bigger this morning, Mistress,” I said. “I'd only really been able to see my belly growing till this morning.”

“Are you pleased to see it?”

“Yes Mistress. Mistress Gigi depleted my battery when she was treating me yesterday and said that it might be possible to have a larger battery implanted in my belly. Would you allow that for me, please Mistress?”

She looked dubious. “I'm not sure it's so important that you should have a bigger battery. Gigi is too soft and rewarded you excessively. It's dangerous for you to do that. It's addictive and you could be manipulated so easily. Do you really want that?”

I felt she was teasing me. I knew that I'd been manipulated in everything that had happened to me in the last week. “I know my Mistresses only want what's best for me.”

“And you want them to reward you all the time,” she laughed. “I think you have to show a new eagerness if we're going to consider what you want, slave. Lose your superior attitude.”

“I will, Mistress,” I promised. “I'd love to spend more time in the studio and learn to be more relaxed and do as I'm asked.”

She seemed amused by my request. “I want more than that. Let's look at your gaining. Perhaps if you begged for a more intense programme, that might make me more inclined to agree.”

“Yes, Mistress, please let me do it. Gigi did say I'd need a bigger belly to hide the battery.”

“She did, did she? I think she was teasing. How big a battery did you think you'd be fitted with? You are a silly girl, slave.” I blushed at her reprimand. “How about we move your target forward for reaching twenty stone?”

I felt nervous. It was going to be impossible to achieve as it was, I was sure. “How much forward, Mistress?”

“See, this is just the sort of attitude I dislike in you. You need to embrace your change, and be prepared to take risks.”

“Yes, Mistress, I'm sorry. I agree.”

“Great. Twenty stone in three months is the new target. Now that will be a challenge.” She laughed. “You look scared, slave. If you fail you'll still have your bigger battery. Although if you fail I might turn off your implant. What was the other motivator to succeed?”

“Mistress Evelyn said she'd make me permanently bald,” I said glumly.

“And you don't think you'd like that?”

“I like my hair, Mistress.”

She stroked my head. “It's getting scabby and stubbly. It's much nicer smooth, isn't it?” I nodded. “In a few weeks, when the tattoo is all healed I might have you shaved bald. I think it'll suit you and you'll like it. It might help take some of the fear away from the thought of losing your hair forever. Of course, it would be nice that you had the chance to grow your hair and experiment with different styles. I don't want you to think this wouldn't be something regrettable; it is supposed to motivate you.”

“Have you ever had someone gain so fast, Mistress? I have to more that double my weight in three months.”

She shook her head. “I'll be honest, slave, I never have. But when we work on people here we're always doing new things, finding new ways. Just because we haven't done something before doesn't make it impossible. Don't you worry, slave, in a few months you'll be genuinely fat.”

I was taken to a treatment room I hadn't seen before. I was strapped into a reclining chair (pleased that it was comfortable) by Celeste, then left alone. I relaxed, and was soon half napping. I opened my eyes and saw a young woman moving about the room. I greeted her, sure that the delay in my recognising her would cause me trouble, but she turned to smile at me and seemed unperturbed.

“Hello, slave, I'm Hana. I'm a beauty therapist and today I'll be making you pretty. Well, you're already pretty, aren't you? Prettier.” She had a light, girlish voice with a marked accent, which I guessed was eastern European. I felt attracted to her immediately.

She sat next to me and looked into my face, scrutinising it intensely. “I've heard you're squeamish about needles. I'm afraid that today you'll have to be very brave for me. Can you do that?”

“Yes, Mistress. I am nervous, but I've had so many treatments with needles since I got here that I'm hoping I'm overcoming my fears.”

“That's good, but I need to work on your eyes. That's a little harder for some people, isn't it? I'll do your eyes first though, so we can get it out of the way. Unlike some of my colleagues, I don't take any pleasure in your suffering. But unfortunately sometimes we need to go through some unpleasantness to achieve our aims. Can you forgive me, slave?”

I laughed. “Mistress, you're very kind. I know everyone here is helping me and your help is welcomed, and is certainly nothing that needs forgiveness.”

Moments later my mood had changed as I felt myself becoming more fearful than I had perhaps since my arrival. She inserted a clamp that hooked onto my eyelids and held my left eye open. It was uncomfortable, though not actually painful. I remembered the film A Clockwork Orange, where the protagonist, Alex, I made to watch awful imagery, his eyes clamped open so that he couldn't avert his gaze. “Poor little slave,” Hana said sympathetically, and as she did I felt the glow of stimulation from my implant. I welcomed it, though it didn't dispel my anxiety. As I saw a syringe being lifted I felt panic. It took all of my strength to quell the urge to scream and shout and beg to be spared. I knew that such behaviour wouldn't be tolerated. The idea of being taken back to the room for another day of punishment was unbearable. I had to endure this test with a strong will.

“The eye doesn't feel pain,” Hana said. “There's nothing to worry about. All you need to do is to relax. Just look to the right and fix your eye. Don't move it at all.”

I did as asked, but felt terrified, sure that I couldn't comply. I imagined developing a twitch, or a compulsion to suddenly redirect my gaze. I felt something touch the white of my eye, a slight pressure, but no pain. “Very still,” Hana said, her voice soft and slow, her concentration obvious. My eye began to feel a little gritty, but the discomfort was mild. The fear I felt was anything but. I wanted this torture to finish, but it seemed to last for an eternity. I felt enormous relief as she told me I could relax, and eased the clamp out of my eye. I blinked, then screwed up my eye. It was watery and when I opened it my vision was a little blurry.

“It's to be expected,” Hana said. “It'll settle in a few hours, most likely. You shouldn't have any problems after a day, at least. Now let's do your right eye and then you can relax. It's not as bad as you thought, is it?”

“It doesn't hurt, Mistress,” I said, “but I'm still very nervous.”

“You mustn't be weak, slave,” Hana said, her reproach unmistakeable. “This is necessary for you so you should welcome it. Do you think your lack of will is endearing?”

“No Mistress. I'm sorry. I'll try harder.”

As my right eye was clamped open I tried to make myself more amenable, tried to believe that I was not merely enduring my treatment but enjoying it. It wasn't easy. I focussed on the pleasant feelings that my implant was emitting at a low level (mercifully, since a higher amplitude may have made it impossible for me to maintain my stillness). I remained relieved when the treatment was finished, though I told Hana that I'd enjoyed it. I'm sure neither of us believed I was truthful, but Hana gave me a warm smile.

“You do look cute now,” she said. “How do your eyes feel?”

“Just slightly gritty, nothing serious. It's like they feel when I'm very tired.”

She put some ointment in my eyes. “I think you should keep them closed for a day. You can have an easy day and get some rest, slave. Would you like that?”

“Very much, Mistress. You're very kind to me.”

She pressed pads of gauze over my eyes and taped them in place. “You should value your senses,” Hana said. “Have you been warned about what happens to women who attempt suicide?”

“Yes Mistress,” I said. I'd not let myself think about such things in days. She told me to put the warning into words. “If someone tries to kill herself she will fail and her punishment is blindness, Mistress.”

“That's right, slave. Your head is held in a brace and eyes clamped open, like you just experienced. Then a tool is heated in a flame, a little U-shaped copper arch with balls on each end. When it's red hot it's moved until it's just in front of the eyes. The heat makes the cornea burn and turn opaque.”

“Have you done this, Mistress?” I felt close to tears, and promised myself I'd never be punished like this.

“I have. Only once. It was very upsetting. No Mistress wants to ever have to do that again. You'd never be so silly and cruel, would you, slave?”

“No Mistress, I'll never trouble you like that.”

“I'm pleased to hear it. You have so much to live for, don't you?”

“Yes Mistress, I do.”

“Now you have to be silent for me. I want to make your mouth pretty and you need to keep it still while I work.”

I let myself relax. It felt good to be passive, to not have to worry about saying something wrong. Even not being able to see was pleasant, at least temporarily. I felt that life without my sight would be unbearable. I felt Hana press something to my lips and scrub at them. There was a slightly odd taste to my mouth now and I could smell alcohol. I held my breath as a needle touched my upper lip, then began to make me hurt as it was pressed into my flesh.

“Celeste thinks your lips are unbecoming. They should be slut lips and I'm making that come true right now, slave.”

I uttered a low moan, trying to avoid any movement; I was powerless to avoid this vocalisation as my implant suddenly made me feel a deep joy. I could feel my lip begin to swell as the injection was made and thought about girls with bulging lips, overstuffed with filler. I couldn't believe my treatment would be subtle, even without Hana's statement, and my sense that such oversized lips were coarse and unattractive was now worn away by my ecstasy as I was made into a slut. As Hana eased the needle from me I could feel a heaviness on one side of my lip. “Mistress, I feel so horny,” I gasped, eager not just to show my willingness to be transformed but to humiliate myself. “I just wish you would touch me.”

She laughed. “You are slutty, aren't you, slave? I can't imagine what your friends will make of the new you when you go back home.”

“Mistress, this is my home now. I've left my old life behind.”

She chuckled. “No, slave, this is just an academy to train you. You'll be going back home soon. You'll still behave like a slut when you see your old friends, won't you?” I was stunned, and wondered if she wasn't just teasing me. “You're not answering me, slave! It'll make you very happy to show off your new self and shock your old friends, won't it?”

The intensity of my stimulation grew even more insistent and I agreed that it would, although I knew it would be the most humiliating thing I could imagine. How could I explain my tattoos, piercings, outlandish hair to the friends I'd had just a week ago? Yet even as I thought about their disapproval I felt an uncontrollable joy. I was no longer able to discern what were my feelings and what was conditioned by the reward of my implant. I was moving toward a situation where all I cared about was feeling this intense pleasure and would do anything to achieve it.

For now all that I had to do was to accept the injections that were reshaping my lips. They swelled rapidly, pressing hard against the piercings that were still tender and fresh. Hana giggled as she applied some ointment. “So big! So slutty! All the guys will want a blow job from you. Until they see those teeth, that is. I think only someone with a castration fantasy would put anything in that mouth.”

I was taken back to my bedroom where I was attached to a feed and soon fell asleep. I woke much later, but still feeling sleepy and confused, more convinced than ever that my feed contained a sedative. My mouth was masked now and I could taste smoke again, but the hangover I'd experienced previously was now absent. I wasn't sure how the smoke was being administered, speculating that it was constantly present at a low level so that I could barely discern it. Now, however, as I breathed in it was like someone had blown smoke into my face, and as I took it into my lungs I felt a tremble of stimulation in my sex. The harshness of the taste no longer seemed unpleasant; if the joy continued, I welcomed the smoke.

I gradually became aware that there was an ache in my nipples and clitoris and recognised the feeling of the vacuum tubes pulling at my flesh. I remembered the effect that the pumping had had and wondered if I wouldn't soon have absurdly distended nubs. I let myself accept that once the large piercings were fitted it would look more acceptable. I was too sleepy to feel much concern at another small change to my appearance. Soon I was asleep again.

Day 9

I heard Celeste's voice rousing me. I felt stiff, as though I'd slept for too long, and I was uneasy at not being able to see. “Hana is so cruel making me wait to see what she did,” Celeste said, “although I can hardly miss what she did to your lips: they're huge!” She tugged away the dressings, making my skin burn as the tape was sharply tugged away. “Oh shit, that looks so odd,” she said as she looked into my eyes. Her obvious shock made me anxious and I pleaded to see a mirror. “Just look up,” she instructed, since we were still in my bedroom with its mirrored ceiling.

I sank to my knees as I saw my eyes. The blue irises looked pale and icy since they were now surrounded not by white sclera but by darkness; the entire white of my eye was discoloured, and was especially black in the area encircling the iris. And my lips! They were heavy and bloated, not some seductive pout but so distended that they seemed to indicate some deep injury. I started to cry as I saw my face was ruined.

Of course, Celeste was displeased with my reaction. I knew immediately that I'd let her down, yet this only added to my sadness. “You've been here a week now, slave, and I'd expected that you'd learned to control your will more effectively,” she shrieked. I felt my implant start to stimulate me, but it was not pleasure it was inducing, but pain. I felt pulses of agony every few seconds, so severe that I couldn't straighten my body. “Stand up and tell me you're pleased with your pretty new face. And control your emotions. Otherwise you can spend the day in the sharp room.”

I struggled to my feet. I quashed the urge to beg to be spared the punishment I knew I couldn't accept, since I was expected to show mastery of my emotions, and forced myself to stand upright, though at each flash of pain a spasm passed through me. I rubbed at my tears. “I like Mistress Hana's work. She's made me look unique and sexy, Mistress,” I said coldly.

“You're still fighting against our work,” Celeste said angrily. “I don't imagine you've seen the last of the room, slave.”

I could feel my breathing quicken at this threat, unable to control the fear it inspired. “If Mistress sees that as necessary then I'm sure it will help me,” I said, hardly able to comprehend how I could say such a thing.

She was amused by my submission and as a result the pain ended. “Maybe for now you'll be spared another day of isolation. But you have to work harder. Your old, faulty programming is still not broken completely. These tantrums are unacceptable. I've tried to help you grow through rewards but I think more punishment is necessary to shape you.” She tugged at my nipples, which were surprisingly hard, as well as being absurdly stretched. “These are being reshaped nicely though! Maybe we need something similar for your mind; a mould to suck it into to make it anew. You've been here for a week now. Do you think you've managed to change for the better?”

“Yes Mistress,” I said happily. “I've changed in every way imaginable. I'm sure I'm hardly recognisable from the girl who arrived here. It feels like so much longer than a week.”

“You get weighed every week now, slave. Lets see how you've progressed.”

I stood on the scale as Celeste asked me what weight I was on my arrival. “A hundred and twenty-two pounds.”

“And now?”

I looked at the display. “A hundred and thirty-seven.” I felt my face redden as I realised I'd gained more than a stone in a week.

“You have eleven weeks to make twenty stone. That's two eighty. So essentially you have to gain as much every week as you did this. But your gaining is likely to slow as you get bigger: the extra weight means you burn more energy. Even things like breathing become more energetic, as there's more weight to lift when your ribs rise. That means that you have to make sure you start to increase your gaining in the early weeks. Otherwise..?”

“I'll lose all my hair, Mistress,” I said glumly.

She ran her hands over my buttocks and down my thighs. “You're mostly gaining here. It's nice. In a few weeks you'll be really chubby. Then I might send you for a head shave and you can see that you'll still be sexy when you're fat and bald.” As she ran her hand over the shaved side of my head I began to feel a reassuring tingle in my sex. “It's still scabby and stubbly,” Celeste complained. “I can's wait till the tattoo heals and I can shave you smooth again. At least your braids are holding nicely.”

I was lead into the studio where I turned on the cam and waited for some of my followers to arrive. I was nervous about how they would respond to my latest mods, my eyes and lips in particular. There were always some negative comments about my appearance, and I knew this was likely to provoke more extreme reactions. I saw an instruction appear on the laptop to put on make-up and realised that there was a box of cosmetics available and began to apply it. I was able to use the laptop to display the image from the cam in place of a mirror. It wasn't easy to look at myself any more: my tattoos, lips, hair, piercings repulsed me, though I fought hard to like what I saw. As I picked up a lipstick a message flashed up instructing me to choose a dark colour. There was a black lipstick, something I'd never worn in my life and I began to cover my tender, swollen lips. The dark pigment made them dominate my features even more, though my reward was to feel a pleasing buzz from my implant. I knew that I'd have to prove myself more receptive to my fans today, and please them in ways that took no account of my dignity. “Oh god, I feel so horny,” I slurred into the camera, and tried to blow a kiss, realising that my lips were so dulled as to be virtually immobile.

It didn't take long before some names I recognised appeared in the list of people viewing my room. One of the most voluble visitors immediately told me I'd gone much too far now, but that he loved it. “I love desperate girls,” he added.

My session followed the usual course, recruiting paying subscribers to watch my stuffing sessions. Today I promised five courses, following a script that appeared on screen. “And don't think I'll be just eating smaller portions. I'm going to eat more food in each course than I ever did before. I've gained fifteen pounds in a week and I want to gain more next week. I'm not sure I can do that without your help. And if you don't make nice gifts to me I can't afford all this lovely food and I'll start to lose again.”

I was now being forced to recruit more people to my shows before I was allowed to commence them, and I realised that this was making it more difficult. The first feast almost had to be cancelled, with the required total only being achieved at the last minute. I didn't dare to think about what would have happened if I'd failed. I tucked into a huge bowl of soup which was thickened by chunks of soft buttered bread. It was very bland and I struggled to finish it, though I tried my hardest to make it appear I was enjoying the experience.

It was after this meal that I received requests from one of the few women who regularly appeared in my room to smoke. “I've never smoked because it's so bad for you,” I said, affecting the silly, girlish voice which had become part of my persona. “It does look sexy though, and I even bought some cigarettes.” (A prompt on the screen ordered me to disclose this). “I think if you want me to start you should make me a very generous gift. I saw an immediate payment from her, followed by more parsimonious gifts from some other smoking devotees.

I took a pack from a drawer and slowly peeled away the cellophane wrapper. “I'm so nervous. I hope I like it,” I said. My long nails made it hard for me to pick a cigarette out but I soon had it in my lips. A vintage lighter had been provided and I lit it, then held the flame to the tip.

I'd imagined my experience with the mask had made me aware of what it was like to smoke, but the experience of drawing on a cigarette was so much more intense. Still, I'd been conditioned sufficiently to be able to tolerate the smoke without coughing. “Oh gosh, that's strong,” I gasped as I let the smoke escape. I began to finger myself deeply at the request of my generous patron, despite the presence of the stitches: they felt tight and made me sting but I felt reckless and didn't hold back at all.

In truth I didn't need her goading to pleasure myself. The stimulator worked at a far higher level than I'd experienced on the day, surging at each inspiration, more so when I took the smoke deep into my lungs. I disliked the taste, but felt myself becoming light-headed, and liked that feeling. “I can't believe that's really your first cigarette,” one of my followers typed. “You look like you've been smoking all your life.”

“It really is my first ever,” I said. “But I can't imagine I'll stop now.” It seems I had a few smoking fetishists watching and they encouraged me to develop my habit. I'd soon promised to continue as long as they kept making donations to help me fund my newest addiction.

Soon I was stuffing again, dining on a spicy stew. I already felt bloated by my previous meal and after the first few mouthfuls began to struggle. The cigarette had left me feeling sick which added to my difficulties. When I thought of needing to complete two more courses I felt a despair that threatened my mood, and I knew I had to prevent myself from looking ahead. I had to make those watching happy, to look happy and aroused.

By the time my session ended I was more bloated than I'd ever been, my stomach distended and firm. I was suffering greatly, my abdomen cramping painfully and I was sure I was going to be sick. Celeste came to see me and looked unhappy with me. “You looked so unhappy when you were eating the ice cream,” she said. “Do you think it helps people with their fantasy if you look like you hate every mouthful?”

“No Mistress,” I said. “But I feel terrible. I need to be sick.”

She looked at me witheringly. “If you vomit back all that food you'll be punished.”

“I can't help it Mistress,” I said, tears welling. “I ate more than I can take and the smoking added to the nausea. Please, Mistress, I can't stop it happening. Can I go to the toilet?”

My request wasn't permitted, but I was provided with a bucket. Within seconds I'd vomited. As if that didn't make me feel bad enough I felt an awful guilt at letting down Celeste.

“You've wasted so much food, slave,” she said, disappointed rather than angry. “If you keep doing this you'll lose weight. And what will that mean for your hair?”

“Permanent baldness, Mistress,” I said.

“You must really want to lose your hair,” she said. “You'll never hit your target now you're trying to push yourself into bulimia.”

I begged her to forgive me, and to use my feeding tube to replenish the lost food. I was desperate at the thought of falling behind my gaining schedule. I couldn't bear to think that I could be bald.

“I told you there'd be consequences if you were sick, but your will was weak, or else this is what you secretly wanted.”

I was taken out of the studio and felt my fear growing as I saw that I was being taken to the isolation room. “You can spend a bit of time in here, strengthening your will and obedience,” Celeste told me. “And stop looking so sad. I'm not going to take pity on you. If you weren't failing so badly you'd be happy to enter the room, since it will improve you. Your pleading looks make me more sure than ever that you need to spend more time here. Now go in and smile for me.”

I walked into the room and watched was the exit was blocked with the spiny board. “Thank you, Mistress,” I said and forced myself to believe that this was necessary for me, that when I left the room I would be a better person.

Day 10

I woke in my bed, and felt joy that my time in isolation had been more limited than my previous experiences. I'd been allowed to rest rather than being left in there through the night and having to perform my tasks the next day without the benefit of sleep. I felt grateful to Celeste for being merciful and wanted never to disappoint her again.

I was now able to spend some time analysing my new appearance. My blackened eyes were still a little shocking, but I decided that I liked how the pigment made my irises appear so intensely blue. If I could take some pleasure in how this looked I knew that eventually I could come to love the change. My lips still seemed absurdly bloated, but I took comfort from the comments I'd got in from my cam followers, many of whom praised my new lips. I wanted to wear dark lipstick all the time to accentuate their size, and was sure that Celeste would approve my idea.

I'd felt awfully empty when I was in the isolation room, deprived of food for all of my stay in their. Now I could feel my stomach was restored to its customary bloated feeling, which reassured me. I'd resolved myself to taking control of my body more completely, and told myself that I'd never vomit again as a result of copious eating. I would meet my gaining target, challenging though it was, and keep my hair (or at least the option of letting it grow, since Celeste was keen to have my head shaved and I was trying to adapt to the idea that I should welcome being bald).

When Celeste came to release me from my bed I greeted her enthusiastically and thanked her for helping me despite my failures. I promised I'd be stronger from now on.

She looked surprised by my happy and energetic mood, but was evidently pleased. “Let's get you all cleaned up. We have a big day today. If you're a good girl today then the next few days will be very easy for you. I'll allow you to do nothing but rest. How does that sound?”

“Wonderful, Mistress,” I said happily.

I was taken into a fully equipped operating theatre, where I was instructed by Celeste to lay on the bed. A masked figure entered and fitted a needle into a vein on my hand. I felt pride in my progress, since I felt nothing but a mild anxiety as the valve was fitted; before I'd arrived here I would have felt panic at the sight of a needle.

Now I saw a syringe being fitted to a line attached to the valve. As the plunger was depressed I started to feel sleepy. Within seconds I was unconscious.

Day 14

I felt dizzy and confused as I woke. I immediately sensed something was wrong, but couldn't recall much about what had happened to me. I didn't want to open my eyes, and wished to go back to sleep immediately. I ached everywhere. I tried to turn onto my side and curl into a ball but I remembered that I was fixed to the bed and lying on my back was the only permitted posture. My back and chest ached deeply, so much so that soon after waking I was moaning with discomfort. It was only then that I actually found the strength to open my eyes. I think I'd forgotten where I was and everything that had happened to me. I'd expected to see a girl I'd been once, Bethany. Now I saw that I didn't look at all like the girl that that name made me remember. I was slave now, and the latest change to my appearance was that my breasts were no longer the moderately sized swellings I'd been used to, but huge, rounded balls the size of small melons that stretched against my tattooed skin.

I was sure I'd asleep for more than just a day, since I could see a noticeable difference in my body, a filling out of my torso and limbs, more than could have occurred in a day.

[bpcparents]

INTEGRITY: The imperfect path toward a more perfect union starts at home

In January of 2020, students at Darien High School entered faculty offices on a Saturday and took photos of answers to two sophomore exams, one in English and one in Social Studies. The information was then widely distributed over social media, implicating about 300 students.

In December of 2020, 73 cadets at West Point were accused of cheating on a calculus exam at the US Military Academy, where an honor code requires students to pledge that they “will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” The majority of the students involved (55 of them) had actually been enrolled in a program designed to be an “honor code boot camp” as a second chance.

Debates unfolded in both learning communities in the wake of their respective scandals, revealing divided opinion about both the causes and effects of academic dishonesty. While a student in Darien complained that those who had cheated at her school were “not really experiencing any consequences that are substantial enough for their actions," the parents of one of the teenagers involved actually hired an attorney to contest the school district’s handling of the penalties for his client.

Even officials within West Point were at odds over the matter there. Lt. Col. Christopher Ophardt, the academy’s public affairs director, said that the rehabilitation program was designed to increase the likelihood that people would report violations, since the penalty could be less severe than expulsion. Despite the 2020 lapse, he defended the Military Academy’s response, arguing that West Point “has slowly transitioned to a developmental model that relies on a combination of punishment and additional development to restore a cadet to good standing after a violation.” Tim Bakken, a West Point law professor took a less rosy view, charging that failure to handle a cheating scandal aggressively and transparently — and to encourage a culture of honesty — could infect the thinking of generals and their approach to informing the public. “The United States has not been successful in its last four wars,” Professor Bakken said. “The failure of the military to tell us the truth is a big part of the reason.”

As a parent and an educator who has taught for more than twenty years at both the secondary and university levels, I can testify that the battle for academic integrity is not a new one. That said, it has been surfacing with unprecedented intensity in the last year. In reaching for reasons, it’s easy to blame online learning, since the pandemic has forced so many students of all ages to connect to their classes from home. As a high school teacher conducting courses remotely since last March, however, I can testify that the online argument is a red herring. The internet has been accessible for decades now, and the exams stolen in the cases detailed above were both in hard copy. The problem isn’t the medium; it’s the context of our current political culture.

After more than 200 years of peaceful transitions of power in the United States, rioters stormed the nation’s Capitol in a violent insurrection that culminated in the death of five Americans, including a US Capitol police officer. The attack was incited by baseless claims of voter fraud from the highest office in the land and intended to interfere with certification of electoral college ballots. But the events of January 6th, 2021 were not isolated incidents; they followed years of falsehoods and misinformation perpetuated by an administration that vilified the free press and perpetuated conspiracy theories by trafficking in “alternative facts.” From climate change to COVID-19, science was denied within policies that saw the US withdraw from international agreements on the environment and has already resulted in the nearly 450,000 American lives lost so far to a virus for which no national defense was undertaken.

What do these developments in the government have to do with dishonesty in the classroom? Everything.

Accountability is learned, and when discourse at the national level takes place within a context that relativizes rather than reveres the truth, we model to the younger generation that integrity has no meaning.

The weeks ahead are critical: the former president has been impeached again and his Senate trial this time puts the entire country on the witness stand. Neither partisan squabbling nor legal loopholes will redeem the damages already done. Whether or not convictions are delivered, there is an opportunity that this country cannot afford to miss: we must categorically condemn acts of violence and stand firmly against forces that erode our very democracy. As a Resolution recently adopted by the Town of Bedford reminds us, “the insurgents carried Confederate flags, displayed antisemitic symbols and slogans, and erected a gallows on Capitol grounds, manifesting bigotry, hatred, and utter disregard for the rule of law.” True justice can only be achieved when leaders commit to political processes that uphold the safety and welfare of all.

Holding people accountable for their actions matters, from high school students to politicians. And there is far too much at stake at this juncture for anybody to give in to self-righteousness. I’ve encountered the most constructive conversations through Civics education courses. More than just grounding people in the basics of governing structures, Civics done well critically begins by backing up well beyond 1776 to reckon with our country’s history before it declared itself an independent republic. The three branches of government after all are rooted not just in political philosophy but in lands stolen from Indigenous populations and labored over by enslaved human beings. The inconsonance of stated values with enacted policies strikes even the youngest students. These foundational hypocrisies require more than polite classroom debate; they merit real and often uncomfortable engagement in the facts in pursuit of truth. Winning a trial or even being “right” can’t alone achieve true justice; that takes genuine understanding forged in brave spaces.

In a recent community event online focused on the documentary True Justice, panelist Dr. Alexander Smith with the New York organization Rehabilitation Through the Arts was asked how he holds people accountable in working for racial justice. He answered by imparting the term “Critical Humility,” which he defined as “the practice of remaining open to the fact that our knowledge is always partial and evolving -- while at the same time remaining committed to speaking up and taking action in a world based on our current knowledge, however imperfect.” The concept has the potential to make confrontations truly transformative. As Dr. Smith exhorted the audience of young people and adults alike, “We need to expose our vulnerabilities; we need to be there and live in that and help others expose their vulnerabilities... that’s how we have change.”

Parents can begin to cultivate critical humility at home by exercising accountability that starts with themselves. Think hatching an excuse to avoid an awkward social situation is just a harmless “little white lie”? There’s no such thing, and the children are watching. Rather than duck a difficulty, we can face it candidly, without manipulation. We can apologize to our kids when we make mistakes. We can trade out “blame and shame” routines of punishment for a growth mindset that builds responsibility and mutual respect instead. Doing so anchors accountability as a shared practice and social standard by which young people can then measure the wider world and their place in it.

This also means letting go of the ego-bound aspirations for our children that are more self-serving as status-boosters for parents. Recent SAT scandals involving celebrities Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman brought to light much larger college admissions schemes that pointed to corruption at all levels, including coaches, administrators, test proctors, tutors, and others in pay-to-play agreements that involved millions of dollars.

Is there an antidote to this rampant dishonesty? If so, it may lie in exhortations from Julie Lythcott-Haims, the best-selling author whose books highlight how ego-based parenting stunts the development of children and society at large. Adulting, she argues, is a process of “becoming more comfortable with uncertainty and gaining the knowhow to keep going.” Just as parents need to halt freighting their kids with expectations and micromanaging their lives, we need to embrace the imperfections inherent in any project -- whether childrearing or democracy -- that aspires to self-sufficiency, resilience, and integrity.

Elizabeth Messinger is a former journalist with NPR and The Economist of London. Through her educational consultancy, Mind in Motion, she guides children of all ages to think for themselves, and she teaches Humanities at an independent school in Stamford, CT. She raised her son in Bedford, where together they ran the Toddler Room at the Presbyterian Church for nearly a decade. She continues to parent from NY as he attends college in California.

[pkgam]

Oh look at that, we’re going back to the past, lol! This is like a 4-for-1 topic here.

That Movies cause violence.

That Video Games cause violence.

Taxation as a deterrent for mature stuff.

The ol’ gun control debate.

The first two were brought up at the same time and they are similar: The belief that watching something fictional that is violent will cause you to be violent. :P I know I talked about this before, but since it’s brought up again in a more recent time period with some different aspects, I might as well reiterate with some new counter points. I can attest that I have played some of the most over the top video games in history, even as a kid/teen, and I am the biggest pacifists you’ll probably ever meet, lol! Conker’s Bad Fur Day was one of them when I grew up. It came out in 2001 and I was 12, but I still was allowed to get and play it. My family knew that I understood fantasy from reality. The same with any other game really. Though the argument is that some are more influenced by it. You know, like if someone has a mental health issue. But I don’t know why violent video games and movies always get the blame. Maybe they find they are easier targets since rap and rock music has since been understood and accepted and the “dangers” of video games and movies are still being debated.

So what about taxing the games and movies? “Supposedly” they would allocate the money to mental health in schools. But if you know anything about taxes and government programs involving gathering more money, you know that what they say money is going into isn’t usually what is happening. XD Money tends to get “moved", so to speak. See, there was always a program for mental health in schools, so what would happen is that they would use the tax money for said mental health like they said, but move the money that was already in said programs to something else. They do it with stuff like the lottery too. What they said when they made the lottery is that lottery profits goes into schools, so you’d think that the schools would be funded more than what they had before. Nope, their original money got moved to other things. So they often disguise a supposed benefit to something so people go for it so they can move funds around to something else they want. Bills being “called” one thing rarely have any relation to what’s actually “in” them. There could be a bill that is called the “national paper cleanup project” marketed as litter cleaning but it’s actual intent may be to move funds to the environmental-destroying oil industry. Politics in the U.S. 101.

Next is of course when a shooting happens, gun control is brought up. Obviously people with violent tendencies and/or have mental health issues that may cause them to be violent should not be able to get their hands on any gun. But I have to wonder what could be done to stop it. You can close the loopholes like gun show sales without licenses or whatnot, but it’s not like someone couldn’t acquire a gun by some other means. Theft, making it themselves, the black market... So many options for them. People cite Australia as being a good example of gun control, but shootings were already at a downward trend before they even took the guns from people, plus the U.S. has something Australia doesn’t on guns: The right to bear arms. Right in the constitution. People then argue that the guns they had when that was written was like... a musket that took 5 minutes to reload and that gun tech has far advanced. Which no one could argue that gun firing rates vastly improved. But trying to eliminate that from the constitution in a society that is very gun-loving could potentially start a civil war which would cause a LOT more deaths. There’s also the whole “AR-15/assault rifle ban” thing which is strange because knives actually are used to kill more people than rifles. XD Plus the term “assault rifle” is basically a made-up political term to try and put guns into a category that have no sporting purpose, even if they are used in stuff like the Olympics for sport shooting. The same with “semi-automatic” as that’s a term used for anything that reloads itself with cartridges. So... even pistols could be classified as that. :P

Oh... but it gets better! The White House actually released a video of all sorts of video game violence in a compilation of sorts. XD Yes, the ACTUAL White House Youtube channel. You can watch the embed using the link near the bottom of the article, but it of course contains fantasy graphic violence and all that, so you can choose whether or not to do so.

If you watch that, you can see that there is a lot of missing context to things, lol! At 0:37 for instance the game itself will tell you before playing it that you can skip the mission if you want (like I said about the video above.) as they warn it may be "disturbing or offensive". If you do play it however, the character you are will be a part of a Russian group to frame Americans. But for that part the player doesn't have to be made to do a single thing. That was the idea by the developers: To get the player to hesitate "because" it was such a bad scenario to be in. It worked too as it got many such reactions. There’s also another thing about the video: A lot of it wasn’t really gun violence. The very first clip was even a guy being interrogated, an interrogator flipping out and then bludgeoning the interrogated. Needless to say the video got downvoted and debunked to oblivion, then The White House set the video to unlisted. :P Why they didn’t outright delete it I don’t know, though maybe they don’t know how to use Youtube. Technology obviously doesn’t seem to be their top subject, lol!

But ok, so they show a bunch of violence in games as a supposed example of it influencing others to be violent. How true is it? Well, this has been debated for quite a long time. In fact, games like the original Mortal Combat and Doom were basically the reason the ESRB was formed. Someone figured it would be a good idea to categorize games based on violence, sex, language, etc... and age-separate them as recommendations to parents and whatnot. Incredibly Trump had no idea the ESRB even existed as he said games and movies should have a rating system. Though on another hand, He also said that violent games are ok for his son, but not for other’s. o_o There’s obviously a tremendous amount of conflicts just in those two sentences, lol! Let’s see... since he doesn’t think movies have a rating system, how do the workers know not let kids into movies with sex/nudity without parental supervision? How does he know if a game is violent without looking at the rating? Online reviews or playing it himself? How is it that he understands his kid is ok with violent games but would still want to restrict them for other kids? It’s like he doesn’t think parents are parenting, lol! That may be the case with some... but you’ve really gotta wonder how many shooters actually are gamers.

Turns out 80% of shooters had no interest in video games. XD Numerous studies through the years on whether or not violent video games cause violence have come to the same conclusion: There is no correlation between the two. What IS a common thing with mass shooters though is that they tend to have some sort of mental health issue, (That is probably why/how they came up with the “allocate funds to mental health in schools” thing.) which makes the most sense because even the angriest of people know not to resort to violence:

XD

So since this has been debunked over and over for many years now, all of this begs the question: Why is it that politicians keep targeting video games? Well... it’s quite possible that they are using it as a scapegoat. Trump for instance has been speculated to have been bribed by the National Rifle Association’s lobbying so he instead focused his attention elsewhere however illogical as it is. Not that I think that an age restriction would do anything considering the aforementioned black market, gun shows, theft, etc.., but lobbying does have a very strong influence here even if it’s not supposed to. Some even call it an Oligarchy. I don’t think it’s gotten “that” bad here yet, but no doubt money has a very strong influence on politicians. The game industry even fights back with it’s own lobbying. So money leads to stuff, just like throughout history. :P Not’ saying that is the case here, but that is a part of the speculation and may be a possibility.

Speaking of history... Violence was around FAR before video games even existed. Video games, movies, TV shows, etc... are merely made in response to something that already happened by depicting it as itself or as a fantasy scenario. Call Of Duty is often set in World War 2, but World War 2 and all it’s atrocities came LONG before the CoD games set in that time period. So to try and remove instances of violence from media is like to try and forget any kind of violence ever happened to begin with. I am not sure that removing instances of violence would really help to prevent violence in all honesty as it may actually increase it. As the saying by George Santayana goes: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”. Basically it’s a way of saying to learn from the past’s mistakes. So how about focusing on some education in their public speeches and/or meetings rather than “ban this or that”? They don’t omit World War 2 from real History books, so why omit it from fantasy video games? Seems backwards.

Your thoughts? Thanks for reading and have a good one!

[phemonoi]

Ranting about the issue between spirituality vs science

Currently I've been having this sudden need for scientific approval. I was the other day researching on youtube, and stopped to watch an interview with this swiss theoretical physicist who claims having solved the problems with the unified field quantum theories. I was very excited while watching his interview, specially because his research is closely linked to spiritual basis. However, while looking for more information on google about him, I found he's apparently a fraud (in opinion of classical theorists). As with any prominent scientific discovery that defies traditional/orthodox standards, atheists and “rationalists” come to diminish any evidence, or inclusion of spirituality, in any scientific circle. I began researching more, because I know that some of the most important scientists in modern history happened to be spiritual people, or at least give these philosophies the benefit of the doubt. I don't know why, but it is drastically conflicting for me to not find a middle ground between these thoughts.

I am certain about my beliefs. I know I've been going through a mental awakening, and perhaps this sudden need for intellectual approval is part of that, or the necessity to have an intellectual background in order for me to understand this. Yesterday I couldn't shake off the over-intellectualization of this matters, I kept on asking and researching, and the more I read the more I stumbled upon scientists and scholars that are not just incredibly closed minded reductionists, but they're also dogmatic and extremely biased.

I have no science —I'm a poet. I feel. I value the abstraction of thoughts and the realm of dreams more than anything else, I've noticed. The moment I was starting to get tempted into the ideas of radical questioning and uncertainty, I felt myself going back into sadness. I can't risk my light like that. I'm young and confused, but I won't risk my beliefs and my experiences and dreams because an arrogant jerk is insulting me while throwing at me his memorization of Newton's laws and other unbreakable facts. As I said, mainstream science becomes incredibly dogmatic and that goes against the Godsʼ value for freedom of thought, philosophy and open mindedness, I remembered. “Judge and discern. Be skeptic. Question everythig, little one. But do not condemn, ever. Remain open”. By the way, I asked Apollo for help on this. If I ever get into the study of the physical plane I will need to have both Apollo and Athena by my side in order to not break myself. I'm sensitive, people.

These things tend to not conflict any other spiritual person I know. And I want to become like them —unshakable, stoic. I suppose that I'm just too curious. It's very dangerous to dive into the ocean of the internet with the intention of cultivating oneself. That was a really bad idea. I know this is obvious, but I had come to rely too much on online sources. I won't anymore. I will study these things myself.

Another thing I noticed is that mainstream critics of religion and spirituality tend not just to be western biased and european white males, but they also talk about every other religious school as if it was the same as Christianism and its branches. It's common to hear them quote Ancient Greece and state that these people believed in their myths as facts, and now they're obsolete to us. This assumption alone is enough to discard any religion scholar that thinks that way. It's greatly diminishing. It's ridiculizing. Not just for Ancient Greece but for any other culture that didn't fit into a Christian dogma. To not distinguish between the mythos of a religion, the actual cult of that religion, and it's independent philosophical doctrine is a big mistake. Specially when it comes to polytheistic religions, because the ortopraxis would greatly depend on the deity that was being worshipped. And with this basis, they go on assuming that modern spirituality is just as stupid and obsolete as the ancient stories. You see them label phenomena and different schools as “paranormal” or “supernatural” without stopping to study the actual implications of those labels. You see them quoting the ancient philosophers wrongly, only the words that serve them, with fallacies, and disregarding the spiritual and religious inspiration behind these philosopher's discoveries and schools of thought. They make fun of witchcraft and magick by demeaning the instruments we use, our rituals, our theory, our understanding of energy. While I do agree we need to reform our lexis for us to have a clearer differentiation between the physical, exclusively scientific, definition of energy and the energy we refer to, and perhaps develop a more ordered theory, the need of rational reductionists to completely discard and discriminate other ideas under the label of “superstition” is an abuse.

Modern scientific research is dominated by toxic political propaganda. You can't even look for information up in Wikipedia and other online mainstream enciclopedias without your beliefs being labeled as absurd and childish, discriminating minorities and idolizing european/american scholars.

And I'm fucking done, people, because anyone that isn't a self-proclaimed atheist is automatically thrown under the bus and ignored. I once had this discussion with a chemestry teacher, about Einstein and stuff, and while he was pointing at his beliefs on quantum mechanics, I also quoted him on pantheism and spirituality and my teacher automatically went “what Einstein thought about God isn't important”. I've also gotten into arguments with other professors that claim “science has succeeded over philosophy” like, man, there's no such thing! science is philosophy!

But whatever, I think I'm just too much of a libra mercury with a third house virgo.

[reviewape-blog]

Politics in the Church of God Prevents Progress

https://www.reviewape.com/?p=15841 Politics in the Church of God Prevents Progress - Many Sabbath-keeping Church of God members (various groups and organizations associated to one degree or another with Herbert W. Armstrong) are sincerely opposed to offering any Church of God literature or religious material for sale, since Herbert Armstrong taught us to “buy the truth and sell it not.” However, such Church of God members should remember that Mr. Armstrong later permitted his books to be made available for sale in bookstores, informing the brethren and co-workers in a letter dated September 12, 1985: “There is a very large audience which would never request this book [Mystery of the Ages] if offered free – who would never send their name and address to us – but would gladly buy a copy in the bookstore. By putting it in the bookstores we will reach a very great audience that we can reach in no other way. We will not sell the book ourselves, but it cannot be made available to this large audience of book buyers unless the bookstores do put a price on it.” (Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong, Volume 2, page 638). Some have been upset that Beyond Babylon: Europe’s Rise and Fall is sold. I remind them of Herbert Armstrong’s words above and Paul’s rhetorical response to some in his day over this principle that we’re commanded to not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain and that a worker is worthy of his hire. Besides, Beyond Babylon is available to for FREE or read online for FREE. God knows I am certainly not in this for the money, but gladly share the plain truth of the Bible and history as I am able, knowing it is truly priceless information. I am also an individual, not a Church organization receiving regular tithes and offerings who therefore have no need to sell anything, as they’re equipped to offer it all, ideally, for free. I don’t believe any Church of God organization should sell Church of God literature. However, those out in the field, not part of the administration or headquarters, have a God-given right to do as necessary. Yeshua didn’t condemn selling sacrificial animals but was righteously indignant that such commercial activities were taking place in the Temple courtyards and at exorbitant prices. Many were making a killing rather than offering a service. A member of the Philadelphia Church of God recently corresponded with me on this and other Church of God issues. Didn’t you try and impose your book on God’s ministers and church? Not at all. Gerald Flurry refused to go forward with Beyond Babylon and fell backwards, treading old ground and is now going in circles, business as usual, as Europe rises and Judah and Israel have yet to be warned. Maybe you should have waited until the time came. Don’t you believe God goes first to His Church and then His Nation? It was time to bring Beyond Babylon before Flurry, whom I consider to be the leader of this Laodicean era of God’s Church. Do you think you are one of the 2 witnesses? God knows, but what I do know is that we ought to at least prepare the way for them with Judah and NONE of the Church of God groups reach the cities of Judah. That would be a honor to be one. I’ve often prayed about them and in my silliness wished I could be one of them. It would be an honor and a grave responsibility and the most hated job in the world since rejection would be by many in the Church, initially, and nearly all in the world, with a bloody ending until the resurrection to physical life just before the return of the King, Yeshua the Messiah. No nice dinners or fancy invitations for the Two Witnesses but plenty of murderous misunderstanding and hateful grief. But I’m just a lay member….. No such thing as “just” a lay member. Everybody has their God-given place in the Church of God and are equally important for whatever God has called them to do. Seems to me you focus too much on the physical Jews. Not at all. Herbert Armstrong always told us to “WATCH JERUSALEM!” Who’s in Jerusalem? JEWS! The gospel began and will return there. God’s true church is not there now although “Elijah” went there. This must change. Mr. Armstrong, near the time of his death, said on one of his sermons or Bible studies that they are not so important as he once thought since they don’t even believe in Jesus Christ. I don’t believe that at all and don’t believe he ever said it. I quote what we know for sure Herbert Armstrong said about the importance of reaching the cities of Judah. It’s documented. Shamefully, it’s something that hasn’t been done yet but the foundation has been laid, even though the Work in Israel is temporarily suspended by government decree as it was in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. Mr. Flurry never read your book right? I don’t know. Wayne Turgeon [Gerald Flurry’s son-in-law] handed him a print out of it years ago and he returned it to him saying, “He’s always sending us stuff.” Mr. Flurry even responded to me several times on various issues including his confusion of Mount Carmel with Mount Hermon which I brought to his attention (having been blessed to live next to both of them), and my disagreement with him when he said the pope was the only religious leader to sit on a throne and I mentioned the Queen of England is also head of the Anglican Church (although agreeing with the point he was making against the Roman Catholic Cult). I would love to find those letters, however during my many moves overseas to Israel I thought I kept them stored at my sister’s home but she can’t find them. Such letters also include correspondence from Dr. Herman Hoeh years ago about the Jews and their variations in color and why. I met Dr. Hoeh at the Toronto Singles’ Weekend (Church of God singles from all over were in attendance) where he spoke and invited us to write him, which of course I did. Later I sent an autographed copy of a self-published BB (Beyond Babylon) to Flurry’s home for him and his wife who said to me (during the Feast of Tabernacles in Louisville) about my name, “What a strong Judah name!” Dennis Leap said he read parts of it and that it wasn’t necessary for him or Flurry to read it, unlike Mr. Armstrong wanting Sardis (Church of God, Seventh Day) to read his manuscript – The United States and Britain in Prophecy – which they DID. Well, I hear you loud and clear. I do not agree with some of headquarter’s decisions but they are just as human as we are and liable to make mistakes, including Mr. Flurry. Sometimes we just have to suffer the wrong and go on. I readily accept and acknowledge that fact, but if it’s a mistake or a sin we learn from it, acknowledge it and go forward all the wiser. Flurry has done none of those humble things. Regardless, I go on without him as he goes backwards trying to play HWA and God in the Temple, grieved to say. David, I hope and pray for your return to PCG… Mr. Flurry has engaged in personal appearance campaigns and he plans to go to Joseph and Judah this coming year I think. The Key of David will no longer air on TV and we are now focusing on personal warnings. Remember we are baptized into the Body of Jesus Christ – not into any sect or denomination of men. I remain a member of the spiritual Church of God that isn’t bound by membership lists at the mercy of men. Remember Diotrephes? (3 John vs. 9-11). What do you mean they’ve scrapped the TV programs (even though I always constructively criticized them -through Wayne Turgeon who used to write me very frequently – that nobody but a very limited religious audience would watch the programs at the hours they were shown). As Turgeon can testify, I also said they needed a toll free number (which years later they obtained); I said they needed a website with Church literature (which years later they have); they need to publish Beyond Babylon freely (which they still don’t) and to take out major newspaper ads like HWA to reach EVERYBODY and get EVERYBODY talking about our God-given controversial message. We do really need better advertisement. Yes, because I’ve conducted my own tests and surveys on many internet forums to see that the general public doesn’t have a clue who Flurry is, never heard of the PCG and doesn’t know the warning message at all. All that money for what? A private club? Too bad you only see what you think is bad but God has to get his family ready first to marry his Son before He can deal properly with the world. And how does God do that? Have us stare at our Church navel – Church headquarters as the center of our attention? – or by the way of give, outflowing concern for the good and welfare of OTHERS – like the cities of Judah. Otherwise folks will never feel ready to reach out and will have proven themselves deceived by Satan who doesn’t want the Work to GO FORWARD. As we reach out, so help us God, He will work in and through and for us at the same time. I know everything that is good about the PCG and continue to direct folks to its literature and The Philadelphia Trumpet magazine despite their refusal to send it to me. They even know I’ve given them contacts in the Middle East, in Jerusalem, Jewish leaders, and that it was me whom God used to contact the mayor of Jerusalem to get the HWA monument repaired (in the Liberty Bell Park in Jerusalem), and then I forwarded the information to Flurry (who didn’t even say thank you and wasn’t even aware of its woeful neglect that I knew about from being over there so many times). I’ll bet you didn’t know that, did you? I had written an open letter to the mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, that was published in The Jerusalem Post. His office contacted me to inquire about what groups or organizations I was referring to that would be interested in undertaking the financial responsibility for the monument’s restoration and the rest is history. Politics - ReviewApe - https://www.reviewape.com/?p=15841

[thisisatester]

Common Application (Personal Statement):

The common app I wrote for Stanford was very personal so I’m choosing not to share it… BUT, I’m going to include the common app I sent to a bunch of ivies and other schools –

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Every Sunday morning, I pull up last week’s This American Life podcast on my phone, lace up my running shoes, and begin my trek up Lone Mountain – a heap of dirt, gravel, and rock, sitting isolated amidst suburban wasteland. Reaching the top, I stare out at a lackluster view of Las Vegas’ silhouette, barely distinguishable through the dust and smog shifting with the desert breeze. I look down at the 600ft drop briefly, turn around, and begin my trip back home – only to repeat the same journey next Sunday.

There is no breathtaking view or unique wildlife to draw me to my hike: it is the piercing cold air and aggressive terrain that instead excites my core. My Sunday morning hike is a series of struggles: my lungs clambering for oxygen, heart tirelessly pumping blood, and muscles straining to keep up with my pace, but I embrace the struggle. I find my own form of truth and contentment along the uphill journey.

It’s my belief that just barely finding the will to take the next step, and then suddenly discovering yourself unable to resist taking another, is among the most unique and surreal experiences a person can have. While my body teeters at the edge of complete collapse, I feel the most alive. The feeling must be akin to what drove Amelia Earhart to new skies aboard the Friendship, or Philippe Petit to the top of the twin towers. It is the challenges – the pain, sweat, and long nights – that inspire those who push the envelope to never slow down. This love for challenges accompanied Earhart to her death, led Petit to bullfighting and carpentry in lieu of fading in his old age, and I to early morning hikes instead of sleeping in.

“Each atom of that stone,

each mineral flake of that night filled mountain,

in itself forms a world.

The struggle itself toward heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

~Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Like Albert Camus, I imagine Sisyphus – condemned to roll a rock up a mountain, only to have it roll back down every time he reaches the top – happy. It is the challenges, struggles, and tribulations that energize Sisyphus and my spirit, not the prospects of reaching the top of the hill.

Sisyphus found happiness and the meaning of life in pushing that rock. The meaning of life is simply living it. I live through my hikes, experiencing what life has to offer through getting up each morning and seeking out new challenges. It is where I am happiest, listening to Ira Glass tell me new stories of people I’ve never met, and their own quests for happiness, while I venture out on my own. My hikes remind me that the simple opportunity to take small steps, to look adversity in the eye and to conquer it little by little, is what I value.

I believe that life is a perpetual climb, but that does not make me feel hopeless. I am content in knowing that I am like Sisyphus, constantly climbing. In this intrinsically meaningless desert I will create and learn, continue to push this boulder of existence, of life, not because I will reach the top and be done, but because it is in living and understanding suffering in the hardest of times, in my daily struggle to comprehend just how absurd everything is, that I experience the most full and beautiful of life that our human condition can offer. The absurdity of our condition inspires me to make my own meaning of it all – to study life, history, and our place in it.

That is why I trudge on – learning, growing, and creating, focusing on the next step and never the last.

Short Takes:

Favorite books, authors, films, and/or artists

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (Book) – objective beauty, a love letter to the English Language 2. Bossypants by Tina Fey (Book) – my woman crush

Seven Psychopaths (Film) – what a trip!

Quentin Tarantino (Filmmaker) – artist, genius, mastermind…

Aaron Draplin (Graphic Designer) – a passionate eccentric

Newspapers, magazines, websites

Smashing Magazine – just great

PBS Idea Channel – is it how fast he talks or …?

reddit.com – lol

Most significant challenge society faces

I’ve seen my parents crash at the end of the week from being overworked. Society encourages this. America is overwhelmingly prone to depression and exhaustion, and that’s because we’ve put work over family, friends, and happiness, which is extremely unhealthy. We need to go back to finding a balance.

Last two summers

– burnt at the beach

– learned how to skate

– experienced summer!

Historical moment or event

The time Teddy Roosevelt got shot in the chest. The whole story sounds ridiculous – almost to the point that I don’t believe it. I’d want to experience it all – the shock, panic, and confusion – and when he still delivered his speech despite the bullet hole in his suit.

What five words best describe you?

Stressed and messy but fun

Intellectual Vitality (Idea or experience important to intellectual development):

My closet could be its own exhibit, boasting pieces dating back decades even centuries. Each new addition is evidence of a vibrant past, history substantialized through WWII patriotism in utilitarian-chic padded shoulders or 70’s liberation in soft cascading fringe.

When I started to make my own clothes, I saw how fashion also bridged the gap between my analytical and creative sides. Designs in my journal played with elements of geometry. I documented the way natural-fibers fared better than synthetic-fibers in heat and used chemistry to explain why organza curled at the mercy of a flame. Despite my analytical approach I let my imagination wander, embracing spontaneity and gripping my pencil loosely as ideas flowed onto paper. Like the corpus callosum I studied in biology, fashion connected both sides of me. It���s movement, design, and architecture all in one. It shows the world who I am and what inspires me.

My family thinks I’m shallow for loving clothing, but actually, my clothes have sparked my curiosity in history, culture, and design. Fashion is what holds everything together, with its ability to communicate ideas and movements, and to carry history in its threads. Learning the meaning behind each fabric, shape, or button, is exciting to me. More importantly, creating my own clothes has given me a love for combining all of what I know to create something exciting and brand new, energizing my love for learning and showing me that my education culminates in all of my pursuits.

Roommate Essay (Note to future roommate):

I’d text but I misplaced my phone… yes, again.

I left you a breakfast sandwich straight from The CoHo – for dealing with my mom’s insistence on taking a bajillion photos with her daughter’s “roomie” when she visited. Still getting to know you so I guessed your order, but who doesn’t love breakfast sandwiches? It might still be hot!

Anyways, have you heard of Cath in College? When I first watched her videos showing all the fun she has with friends at Stanford, I fell in love, promising I’d do the same. I love making videos – and as my roommate you just landed a lead role! Before you run to Ms. Nunan’s office for a roommate change – hear me out. Everyone knows Stanford is a great school and blahblahblah, but they never see what makes it so special. They don’t hear our conversations, hike the dish, or bike across campus at midnight. They see our team on the field but don’t stand in a crowd cheering alongside us. I know our room will be the room for pizza and video games, hangouts, or movie nights – let’s share our Stanford with the world.

It’s only been a few weeks but I can tell the next year with you will be a lot of fun (I say we seek out whatever upperclassmen paired us together, personally thanking them with my homemade cookies.)

I hope you love the idea as much as I do.  (Also, if you see my phone, let me know.)

– Ty

What matters to you, and why?

It hurt that she didn’t remember me.

I could tell you every detail about my grandmother – from the peculiar way she dices mangoes to the smell of jasmine on her clothes. As her memory of me faded, my feeble attempts to reconnect fell flat. I shut her out completely: silence prevented the wound from festering.

As a young girl, my grandma turned to art when she first came to America. When I could first hold a pencil, she bought me a journal with a note on the back.

“When I couldn’t find the words, I’d draw”

Sitting in front of her, silent, I couldn’t find the words. Every page in my journal became a vessel for my most precious memories with my grandma: us walking the boardwalk or her chasing me down a park slide. When I showed her the drawings, I saw her brows furrow in recollection as she traced the graphite lines. For a moment, she was mine again. Art communicated what words couldn’t.

The choice between acrylic and oil highlights versatility, stippling graphite teaches me patience, and splashing watercolor pigment across paper makes me embrace my mistakes, but that is not why art matters to me. It matters because when I draw for my grandma, I am reminded that art can break barriers. When she whispers my name and shakes my arm, I prove that art is a language we can all speak.

[clio-muse-of-history]

March 2

In 1877, two days before inauguration, the US Congress declared Rutherford B. Hayes the winner of the 1876 election.  Hayes had lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden the previous November.

Whew.  Thank American Jesus nothing like THAT ever happened again!

[sarahburness]

How Feeling Shame Freed Me from Suffering

“Be gentle first with yourself if you wish to be gentle with others.” ~Lama Yeshe

It was October, 2012. The U.S. Presidential Election was around the corner. I was paying an unaccustomed amount of attention to political news on TV and to political discussion sites online. At one site in particular, I was eager to become part of the community, to make a good impression, to build a reputation.

To put it mildly, that didn’t work out well.

One evening I was watching an interview with a politician whose name I recognized, but I didn’t know much about him. I thought he was making some cogent points about the topic at hand. I went to the online discussion site to see whether anyone had mentioned this interview yet, and when I found no one had, I hastily composed a post praising the politician and suggesting that others should watch the interview.

The reaction was fast and fierce. How could I have anything nice to say about this nincompoop, who was renowned far and wide as a hypocrite? Where was my sense? Where were my ideals? Where was my head? What did I think I was doing there in the first place?

I was mortified. I, who had always prided myself on intellectual acumen, had totally failed to do my homework. I hadn’t done even the most cursory research to learn anything about the politician’s history.

I felt I’d made an ass of myself. I was so ashamed that I didn’t even visit the site for weeks. I was genuinely in pain.

Now I’m going to have to briefly flash back in time so the next part of the story will make sense.

At that time, in 2012, it had been almost ten years since a beloved spiritual teacher had died. I had shut down my spiritual life to a great extent after his death. You might say it was a long freeze. Or maybe “fallow period” would be a better description. Later events would make that seem like a good way to look at it.

While I was ashamed and hurting in the aftermath of my online blunder, I recalled something I’d heard my teacher say more than once, something like this: “When you see a tack on your chair, sit on it.”

That may sound enigmatic, but I think the metaphor is straightforward. What it meant to me, anyway, was that we should not flee from fully allowing an experience that might impart an important point. We should sit on the point, not avoid it.

I made a vow then. I promised myself I wouldn’t avoid my intense sense of shame. I wouldn’t brush it under the rug. I wouldn’t cover it or deflect it with distractions, entertainments, excuses, or rationalizations. I would experience it fully, let it do its work, and see what happened.

I’m not pretending that I had any specific practice beyond that. I’ve since learned some that I’ll mention a little later. But at the time, I simply stuck to my vow. Whenever the feeling of shame came to visit, I didn’t shoo it away or distract myself. I allowed myself to experience it.

It’s not even that I was inclined to turn toward TV or eating or any other concrete distraction. What I mean by “distract myself” is subtler. It’s a small mental move of avoidance, of turning the attention away from something uncomfortable. Its opposite is mindful awareness, facing experience head-on come what may.

Everything began to change within a few weeks. There was no one moment when the painful sense of shame evaporated, leaving nothing but clarity and peace. No, it happened gradually over a period of weeks. Each time I welcomed shame as a visitor, it lost some of its sting.

What finally became of it? All I can say is it was transmuted. It dissolved, and in its place arose a sense of peace and a new, calm engagement with the truth of being.

I recognized that whatever arises in experience is always already present by the time we can react. Whether it’s comfort or discomfort, joy or distress, calm or chaos, it can be witnessed with equanimity.

I began to notice old friends posting on Facebook about spiritual teachers and teachings they liked. I looked into some of them and found I liked them too. The long freeze had given way to a thaw. The fallow period was coming to an end. I felt a sense of regeneration, of reawakening.

How does this work? If it seems counterintuitive to you that diving into pain is a good idea, that amplifying discomfort can be helpful, consider this simple question: What are we doing when we feel that we’re suffering? In other words, what mental activity are we engaging?

It seems to me that above all else, the answer is we’re actively refusing ourselves compassion. When faced with discomfort or pain, we try to resist it or deny it. We’re judging ourselves, chastising ourselves for the feelings that arise spontaneously. Most of us wouldn’t do it to another, certainly not to a loved one, yet we do it to ourselves. That’s the suffering right there.

In this instance, the active mechanism was a kind of a thought loop. It went something like this:

That was really stupid, what I did.

How could I be so dumb? I’m smart, not dumb!

I humiliated myself in public.

I can never show my face there again.

(Repeat forever.)

Each of those thoughts reinforces a sense of emotional pain, of suffering. They whirl around and seem to amplify each other. It feels as if there’s no way out. I kept beating myself up.

That’s exactly what it was. I was beating myself up. I was pummeling myself with those ideas. I was treating myself entirely without compassion and empathy, as if I hated myself, and I didn’t seem to know how to stop.

Notice that by this point the nature of the original mistake didn’t matter. It could have been as trivial as cursing out loud or as serious as committing a felony. The thought loop of suffering was running obsessively on its own momentum. It was no longer about the original offense. It was self-sustaining.

It reminds me of an experience years ago. When I was a teenager, I was admitted to the hospital for an appendectomy. In the recovery room, as I slowly emerged from the anesthetic fog, the room seemed filled with loud screams. I barely had time to wonder what they were about when I noticed that I was the one who was screaming! I stopped immediately. There was pain, yes, but no need to make it worse by screaming.

It’s an imperfect analogy, but I see a significant parallel: I had to notice the self-defeating action before I could stop it. In the instance of my shame it happened that by keeping my promise, by sitting on the tack, by diving into the pain, somehow I created a space where I had an opportunity to notice what I was doing and to stop it, gradually. I began to see an opportunity to embrace myself with kindness and compassion, and I took it.

Practices

As I mentioned, I’ve learned some specific practices to take advantage of the opportunity, to enhance and deepen the process.

Metta (lovingkindess) meditation

I find that this traditional meditation opens the heart and helps to cultivate compassion towards oneself and others. My version begins with visualizing the warmth and love I feel when seeing or meeting a loved one. It could be a spouse, child, parent, dear friend, or even a beloved pet. Then I say to myself:

May they be safe from harm.

May they be truly happy.

May they be free from suffering.

May they be loved.

Then I picture myself at my most open and vulnerable, when I’m hurting and in need of that same love and compassion. And I say to myself:

May I be safe from harm.

May I be truly happy.

May I be free from suffering.

May I be loved.

I can then extend that to my circle of friends, to the planet, and to all sentient beings everywhere. Practicing this regularly deeply affects the feeling nature.

Ho’oponopono

Based on a traditional Hawaiian practice for community healing, the modernized version I use resembles a variation I heard from Scott Kiloby. Here’s how I engage it:

When I notice a feeling that seems distressful, first I simply sit quietly with it, acknowledging it and allowing myself to feel it.

I ask for the stories surrounding the feeling to reveal themselves, and I allow hearing the stories to intensify the feeling. The thought loop I mentioned is a perfect example of those stories.

I dive into the feeling with naive curiosity, looking to sense all its aspects. I’m not trying to soften it or push it away, but at this stage it may begin to soften.

I say to the feeling: “I love you. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.” The important thing is that I have to mean it. I have to be prepared to live with it indefinitely, to welcome it indefinitely. After all, it’s part of me. It is me.

In retrospect, what I did by sitting on the tack of shame was closest to practicing Ho’oponopono.

For me, the whole experience emphasizes how important it is to include the heart in our practice, in our lives. When we find ourselves relying on mental analysis, it’s often judgmental and hurtful, especially to ourselves.

Both aspects can be useful, but the heart never judges, never condemns, never excludes. It knows how to heal us and make us whole.

About Steve Diamond

Founder of More Than Mindful, in Tucson, Arizona, Steve has meditated and studied nonduality for more than forty years. A former information technology executive, Steve now offers mindfulness classes in Tucson as well as individual coaching to clients worldwide. His inclusive, holistic, compassionate style is evident in the guided meditation audios that can be streamed and downloaded from his website.

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The post How Feeling Shame Freed Me from Suffering appeared first on Tiny Buddha.

from Tiny Buddha https://tinybuddha.com/blog/shame-freed-me-from-suffering/

[medicalmarijuana-news]

Onward Christian Stoners

In the words of the late, great comic Bill Hicks: “To make marijuana against the law is like saying God made a mistake.” These days, legalization and the Internet are bringing Christians and cannabis together.

On a Wednesday evening in a quiet Denver suburb, a small group of Christians are beginning their weekly Bible study. Prayers are spoken with heads bowed, songs of praise are sung to the heavens, followed by a heavy discussion about the Book of Job.

At first glance, it looks just like any of the other countless Bible studies happening in suburban homes all over the country. The one anomaly is that every God-fearing soul who showed up tonight is getting thoroughly stoned.

Relaxing on the back patio of this upscale home, the participants pass joints and bongs around the circle, along with Bibles for people who forgot to bring theirs. A summer breeze blows through the dozen half-grown cannabis plants that surround us, bolstering the overwhelming funk of ganja emanating from the circle. The red-eyed pastor guides everyone through the Book of Job, which sparks a conversation about how marijuana can serve as a conduit for spiritual experiences.

“In Job’s time, he could speak directly with God, but we can’t do that today,” says Deb Button, whose home is serving as the gathering place for tonight’s Stoner Jesus Bible Study. “I believe that consuming cannabis brings me closer to Jesus. It gives me that sense of awe, the spiritual experience I was always looking for in church.”

A middle-aged mother of two who curses more than any evangelical Christian alive, Button has transformed her home into a social space for Christian potheads (as well as a Bud & Breakfast), despite having tried marijuana for the first time only 18 months ago.

Since she began advertising the group on Craigslist and MeetUp, Button has been inundated with daily messages from Christians all over the world and from many different backgrounds, excited to find other followers of both Kush and Christ.

“There’s a lot of people out there who feel isolated as Christian pot smokers,” says Button, who sees no conflict in identifying as both an evangelical conservative and a pot smoker. “There are a lot of conservatives out there who smoke pot.”

Button believes that the traditional 420 stoner stereotype doesn’t begin to capture the variety of people who consume cannabis, a notion that’s reflected in the diverse makeup of the people attending her Bible study. There are so many ages, races, classes, cultures and genders in this group, it looks like an ACLU ad for diversity. Many of these people have been consuming cannabis and reading the Bible their entire adult lives, but had never met others who did likewise.

An elderly white woman passes her vape pen to a college-age black girl as they discuss how much they appreciate God’s creation of the trees, mountains and sky. Before legalization—and the Internet— it would have been difficult to imagine these two even crossing paths, let alone engaging in passionate conversation about a shared interest.

“Last year, it was hard for me, as a Christian, to come out as a pot smoker,” Button says. “But I think it’s becoming less taboo.”

Marijuana: Sin or Spiritual Tool?

From a certain perspective, it might appear that Christians are beginning to warm up to marijuana. In 2012, iconic televangelist (and two-time presidential candidate) Pat Robertson said: “I believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol.” Around the same time, so-called “cannabis churches” began popping up all over the country. And in the last year, the Sisters of the Valley have become media darlings for their nuns-who-smoke-pot activism.

But look a little more closely, and this picture is not what it seems. Robertson would go on to retract his endorsement of pot; most cannabis churches have nothing to do with Christianity; and the Sisters of the Valley are not Catholics but Wiccan priestesses.

In fact, studies show that while a majority of Americans (58 percent) are increasingly in favor of marijuana legalization, the demographic pulling that number down is evangelical Christians, only 29 percent of whom, according to a Public Religion Research Institute study, support legalization. Other Christian groups hover in the 40s—far below the national average.

This wasn’t always the case, says Dr. Carl Raschke, professor of religious studies at the University of Denver. He doesn’t believe there’s a scriptural precedent for banning marijuana. Unlike booze or certain sexual practices, the Bible doesn’t mention pot, in part because it wasn’t very common in that time and place, but also because, as Raschke explains: “In ancient Judea and Christianity, the focus wasn’t on the substance itself, but how it was used. This legalistic approach of forbidding some substances was a late development. It’s not an ethical issue but a legal one. In America, we’ve decided marijuana should be a Schedule I drug for whatever reason, but we didn’t have those reasons before the 1930s.”

In the past, inquisitive young Christians who asked their parents why God forbids marijuana use were typically pointed toward its illegality, along with several Bible verses instructing them to obey the laws of man. But once marijuana laws began changing in 2012, additional arguments were needed to condemn pot.

Since then, several tech-savvy young pastors have written blog posts with some variation of the headline “Is Marijuana Use a Sin?” (Presumably because this was a popular Google search among their followers.) The vast majority of these Christian bloggers are anti-pot, and they typically cite Bible verses condemning intoxication and the defilement of our bodies, basically revamping the antiquated arguments that Christians made during the anti-alcohol temperance movement of the early 20th century.

But what if you believe that marijuana isn’t an intoxicant, but a spiritual tool?

For nearly a century, Rastafarians have used marijuana as a ritualistic sacrament. And they have their own Bible verses to cite when defending cannabis as holy, such as Revelation 22:2, which refers to the Tree of Life bearing leaves “for the healing of all nations.”

Similarly, David Simpson, a Texas state representative and evangelical Republican, made headlines last year when he offered a Christian argument for legalization by citing 1 Timothy 4:4 (“Everything God created is good”) in an interview with the Daily Beast.

There are also Christians who believe that the holy anointing oil mentioned in the Bible was made from cannabis, and even that Jesus used the herb to perform his healing miracles, though these are far from mainstream beliefs.

For the most part, marijuana has been so taboo among modern Christians that those who use it have, until recently, done so in secret, alone and often with no small amount of shame. And as with gays and lesbians, we’re now finding out that tokers have existed in churches around the country this whole time.

Bible Beatniks and Cannabigotry

It’s an often-overlooked piece of pop-culture history, but throughout the 1970s, many burned-out hippies in California were converting to Christianity in what became known as the Jesus Movement. Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan and Barry McGuire were all devoted converts. Even John Lennon toyed with the idea.

This culture kept the hippie clothes and music, but rejected hard drugs in favor of clean living. Grass fell into an unspoken gray area.

Did people in the Jesus Movement smoke dope?

“Definitely,” says Professor Raschke, who was a student at UC Berkeley at the time. “It was illegal, so people didn’t talk about it, but most people had a benign attitude about it.”

This movement of Bible beatniks soon spread across the nation, ironically laying the groundwork for what would become the Christian right of the 1980s, a political force that wholeheartedly embraced Ronald Reagan’s escalation of the War on Drugs. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, any Charlie Churchgoer who required cannabis for medicinal reasons (or simply liked to get high and watch The Cosby Show) was forced into the closet with a towel under the door. For anyone who’s experienced a moment of paranoia while high under awkward circumstances, life was like that all the time for Christian stoners in the late 20th century (not to mention the difficulties of finding a reliable dealer when your entire social circle comes from the church).

“I was constantly worried about smelling like pot or having red eyes,” remembers Greg Giesbrecht, the red-eyed pastor from Stoner Jesus.

A decidedly normal-looking, silver-haired white dude clad in a polo shirt and jeans, Giesbrecht seems like he’d fit in better at an insurance convention than a 420 rally. But he’s an old-school, born-again bong-ripper who knows what it takes to keep his medication a secret.

Growing up in Fountain Valley, California, Giesbrecht was exposed to marijuana from a young age, smoking a joint with his older brother for the first time in 1975. It didn’t become a regular part of his life until he moved to Denver in the 1980s, when he fell down the steps of the Capitol building while delivering a copier. The injury got him hooked on opiates, before friends recommended that he try switching to cannabis.

It has since become an essential component of his life, though before he met Deb Button and the Stoner Jesus group, Giesbrecht rarely let anyone in on his little secret—especially not anyone who knew him from church. “I was honest with my family—my children always knew it as my medicine,” he says. “But I had to be careful who I let into that circle. Almost none of my friends knew.”

Until earlier this year, Giesbrecht was volunteering and playing guitar for a large church in Colorado (which he doesn’t wish to name). By this time, marijuana was legal in the state, and he was beginning to be somewhat more open about his medication. This led him to join the Stoner Jesus Bible Study, where, for the first time, he discovered that he wasn’t the only one who saw no conflict between God and ganja.

Still, a local news outlet filmed a story about Stoner Jesus featuring Giesbrecht and others sharing a large joint while praising God, and he was quickly reminded that mainstream Christians still weren’t ready to accept a cannabis congregation. “After the story aired, I got a call from one of the pastors, and he said, ‘You’re not the type of people we want in leadership here,’” Giesbrecht recalls. “And then everyone turned their backs on us.”

Button also knows something about cannabigotry on the part of Christians. The avalanche of support she received from Christian tokers online after forming Stoner Jesus was equaled by the amount of hate she received from mainstream believers, who harassed her via blogs, social media, e-mails and phone calls.

“There were some disturbing comments on my Facebook page—people calling me a heretic, saying that I’m going to hell, very vitriolic,” she recalls. “One was a very graphic death threat putting a $10,000 bounty on my head. After that, I shut down the website and tried to scrub my phone number and address from the Internet.”

Button has since relaunched the website, but she’s careful about whom she provides with her home address. While her online haters are now confined to a computer screen, she still has to contend with the disapproving eyes of her fellow suburbanites.

“My neighbors told me how fearful they are now that they can’t keep their doors unlocked anymore,” she says. “And I’m like, ‘It’s a freakin’ Bible study!’ I think they don’t like the look of the people who come here—it’s a very diverse crowd. They take pictures of everyone who comes and goes.”

Button is very protective of the community she’s created with Stoner Jesus. Like Giesbrecht, she was forced to abandon the social network she’d formed at church when she decided to go public about her marijuana use—though, unlike him, she’d never even tried marijuana before 2015.

Before that, Button fit the profile of the red-blooded, all-American, strongly conservative soccer mom. Despite being a lifelong Christian who raised her two sons in an evangelical church, Button says she’d lived her whole life without ever experiencing the emotional stir of God’s presence that her peers seemed to have every Sunday. “I was very lonely in my faith,” she confides.

Feeling increasingly disconnected from the people at her church, Button longed for a spiritual community she could relate to. Around the same time that she began drifting away from the church, Button and her husband divorced, sending her into a spiral of depression and migraines. To help with her headaches, Button’s friend recommended that she try a cannabis edible. In the past, Button might have declined, but with her life turned upside down, she was willing to try anything.

“It was like a reawakening,” Button recalls of her first cannabis experience. “It focused me in the moment, and my worry started to disappear. All that mattered was the love I was feeling right then. It gave me a sense of awe and wonder for God’s creation—the feeling that everyone said I should feel in church. Suddenly, I felt betrayed by the church.”

Button was amazed at the spiritual power of cannabis, and she soon began centering her life around the experience. If she hadn’t been living in the banner state of legalization in the age of the Internet, Deb Button might have been damned to the life of isolation that befalls most Christian stoners. But all it really took was a couple of posts on MeetUp and Craigslist, and suddenly she had the community of spiritual seekers she’d always wanted—right in her own living room!

It’s important to Button that Stoner Jesus never takes on the trappings of a church service. Instead, it remains an informal social hour where Christians can discuss the Bible while enjoying the lift of a good toke.

“There’s nothing about church in the Bible,” Button says. “I think, for a lot of people, it’s outlived its purpose. I never felt anything praying in church. But praying with a friend in the backyard—that’s personal.”

Button adds that if politics enters the conversation, she has an easier time talking things through with a group of stoners than she would have with anyone in church. When she told the group of her plans to vote for Donald Trump, a few of them rolled their eyes (the racial and gender makeup of the group certainly doesn’t match that of a Trump rally), but that’s about as vitriolic as things get.

The two intersecting circles that make up the Stoner Jesus Venn diagram—religion and weed—can splinter off into many opposing views. Catholics, Mormons, Baptists and folks from several other denominations are often in attendance, and not all of them consume marijuana with the same intent. Many are recreational users, but Geisbrecht only uses pot medicinally. He says that he doesn’t experience the same supernatural high that Button does. But Button explains that her recreational and spiritual highs are very different experiences, like the difference between sacramental wine and a shot of tequila.

Whether or not their cannabis use is integral to their spirituality, the fact that the members of Stoner Jesus can discuss these different approaches and experiences in public, with people who might be strangers, in a place of scripture and prayer, represents an opportunity to unearth what many Christian stoners have been doing in private for decades. And this can only lead others like them, living in more repressive, non-legalized Christian communities, to reject the shame and isolation handed to them by church leaders, and begin to proudly identify as tokers for Christ.

For all of HIGH TIMES’ culture coverage, click here!

from Medical Marijuana News http://ift.tt/2iY3pA5 via https://www.potbox.com/

[clio-muse-of-history]

January 3

In 1925, Benito Mussolini took complete dictatorial powers in Italy, and for some reason, talking about the history of fascism seems kind of important.

[clio-muse-of-history]

October 4

In 1936, the British Union of Fascists held a march through London’s East End to intimidate the large number of Jews who lived there.  The fascists were opposed by various anti-fascist organizations, but the police were there to make sure that the fascists could exercise their right to assembly; the proto-Nazis and police clashed with the anti-fascists in what came to be known as the Battle of Cable Street, resulting in hundreds of injuries and arrests and Jesus Fucking Christ if we’re going to completely re-live the 1930s can we at least get some kick-ass public works out of this shit as well?