#undocumented destinations

[portalwalker]

Sometimes it was good to listen to music. It brought back nostalgic memories of more innocent times. Sure, they were tainted into a bittersweetness now, but there was something nice about thinking back.

Which is why Maria's smile is almost sad and mostly wistful as she is nodding her head along to an unheard tune, humming something under her breath. She doesn't have earbuds or headphones, but she's keeping the beat to what sounds like a route or location theme from a Pokemon game.

Was she aware enough beyond the song to react if a passerby came up and talked to her? Or was she lost in her own little world?

[portalwalker]

Maria snorted at the comparison, not the least bit hurt. "Well, it's good advice. It takes some people centuries to figure that kind of thing out, you know? Better to give you a head start."

She inclined her head at the question about games, then put her hands on her hips and frowned in thought. "Hm. I can't say I've actually played any games in a long time. Not the kind that you play outside, anyway...." Maria doubted she could get these kids a video game or computer console that could have consistent power. Not unless she broke into her supply of gadgets, which was a dangerous thought.

"There are some I know from when I was younger, though. Lesse..." Maria scratched the back of her head as she attempted to draw some faint memories to the surface. "Well, there's the usual suspects of kickball, or marco-polo if we had a pool...my dad ran a game at a kid's camp I attended once. Basically there was one person who was 'it' in the middle of a wide stretch of land -- like a field or a big room -- and everyone would line up on one side and try to run to the other side as fast as they could. The person who was 'it' would run around tagging people, and then they'd have to stay in the middle of the field while everyone else made it across. Then the crowd would have to run in the other direction, while everyone in the middle would be tagging more people. Last person not tagged wins."

Maria put a hand to her chin. "I think Dad called it 'Pom Pom Pull Away' or something like that. I'm sure the game's got other names, though." She shook her head and refocused on the present. "What about you, Eva? You got any favorites?"

Eva couldn’t help but grin at that. "You know you kinda sound like those videos guidance counselors showed at my old school?” She teased. “But yeah, I think I can do that.”

Eva had a thought but wasn’t sure if Maria would be up for it.

“You know I think something that friends also do is play games with one another. So are there any games that you really like to play?”

[i-eat-mold]

just here to say that gertrude robinson is the single funniest character. she is THE character. she dies before the show even starts. shes an old lady that adopted an edgy teen and traveled the world. She is the avatar of one of the fourteen elditch horrors that feed on primordial fears, she had basically infite knowledge of everything and her plan to stop one of the rituals of a cult of another one of said list of eldrich horrors was to blow it up with a bunch of c4. we only find out about this because she stored all of the explosives in a random storage unit and the aforementioned edgy teen with mommy issues (who by the way, is dead, but when he died she sneaked into the morgue to put him inside a book) speaks through the book to the woman's succesor who, by the way, has no idea what the fuck is going on because neither she nor anyone else has bothered to explain shit to him, and tells him that she kept something important in the unit. we only find out about this after 100 episodes of the show. She feeds her subordinates to an all consuming monster/god, but its ok i guess. Later on (earlier on? at the same time? in a different timeline? after?) the literal end of the world and the end of the end of the world shes back and still has to deal with this stupid teenager who at least doesnt spend half his life focused on dyeing his hair and the other half about finding murder books (not as books about murder but as in, books who actively murder). She is a well experienced arsonist despite having no affiliation with the actual official arsonists club that is yet another cult to yet another one of the previously mentioned eldritch horrors. She is, however, metaphysically tied to the Chosen One, the Messiah of said cult, or some shit. She is absolutely terrible at her actual office job (on purpose). She dismembered a guy (who was her assistant) and probably commited several undocumented crimes against humanity. Once again, she has all seeing abilities and barely noticed her favorite assistant was torturing a coworker. She dares her murderous boss to kill her and gets surprised when he does so. When asked what to do about a literal Monster Pig, her advice is to encase it in cement. She was such a bitch. Her plan B was always to set things on fire. Her plan A was often to set things on fire. One of these instances was approved by her boss (the one who killed her). It is canon that the reason she started all this shit in her life was because the fire cult killer her cat. She sacrified another one of her assistants who became an avatar of the literal concept of Insanity but it was just a other thursday for her. She knows on a first name basis pretty much every person and monster affiliated with the eldritch horrors that she tries to keep at bay on the daily. She stopped a ritual for The Lonely by making the place a tourist destination. She has an ebay account. Instead of performing a ritual for the God that she was affiliated with, she wanted to destroy it and planned to 1. blind herself, and 2. set fire (yet again) to her workplace. It didnt work, because and her boss, who was also the one who was going to perform the ritual, finds her right before and kills her after she says he has no balls to do so. Also she is voiced by the mother of the main character's voice actor (who he named with his own, full, legal name) and the series' writer, which are the same person. Shes the worst, shes the best, i love her, we will never get anyone like her again, we need more characters like her.

[globalnewscollective]

Jailed for Being a Tourist: How the U.S. Is Becoming a Nightmare Destination

What’s at Stake?

Traveling to the United States is supposed to be an exciting experience, but for some tourists, it’s turning into a nightmare. Recently, a group of German travelers found themselves in a terrifying situation: instead of enjoying their trip, they were thrown into solitary confinement, treated like criminals, and subjected to inhumane conditions—all because of an alleged visa issue.

According to reports, the tourists were detained by U.S. authorities, placed in a high-security prison, and locked up in solitary cells. They described the experience as "like something out of a horror film." Their crime? Entering the country with the wrong type of visa—an issue that could have been resolved with a fine or a warning in most other democratic nations. Instead, they were subjected to a level of punishment that would make any traveler think twice before visiting the U.S.

And this isn’t an isolated incident. Another recent case involves Becky Burke, a 28-year-old British woman who found herself in U.S. immigration detention after attempting to re-enter the country from Canada. When her visa was deemed invalid, she was immediately arrested, placed in deportation custody, and subjected to harsh conditions. Her father, Paul Burke, expressed his disbelief: “I don’t understand why they have to imprison my daughter and put her in an orange jumpsuit while checking her papers.”

Becky’s ordeal only worsened. Forced to share a cell, she survived on cold rice, potatoes, and beans while being denied basic comforts. Her only communication with the outside world was through restricted phone access and monitored conversations through a glass barrier. Her possessions were confiscated, and despite filing for voluntary departure, her fate remained in legal limbo. “She feels isolated and just wants to come home,” her father reported.

Why This Should Terrify You

The treatment of these German and British tourists isn’t just an unfortunate mistake—it’s a reflection of how dangerously aggressive U.S. border enforcement has become. If a simple visa issue can land someone in solitary confinement or deportation custody, what does that say about the state of travelers’ rights in the U.S.?

Here’s why this should alarm you:

Tourists are being treated like criminals. These were not drug smugglers or human traffickers—just visitors who may have misunderstood visa regulations. Yet, they were handcuffed, imprisoned, and treated as if they were dangerous felons.

Solitary confinement is psychological torture. Imagine being locked in a small, windowless cell, alone for hours, deprived of normal human contact. This form of detention is considered inhumane even for convicted criminals—yet it’s being used on tourists.

Mistakes can cost you your freedom. Visa errors are common, especially with the confusing U.S. immigration system. If this can happen to German and British travelers, it can happen to anyone.

There is no guarantee of fair treatment. These tourists were given no real opportunity to explain themselves or seek assistance before being locked up. Their stories only came to light because they spoke out after their release—how many others have suffered in silence?

Why This Matters to You

If you’re planning to visit the U.S., you need to be aware that even minor travel document mistakes can have devastating consequences. Tourists from Europe, Canada, and other allied nations are not immune to the harsh treatment that many assume is reserved for undocumented immigrants.

For young travelers, the risks are even more concerning:

Do you know your rights? U.S. authorities are under no obligation to be lenient with tourists, and you could be detained before you even have the chance to contact help.

Can you handle being imprisoned abroad? If you end up in a U.S. detention facility, you may be completely alone, with no clear timeline for release.

Do you trust the system to protect you? This case shows that travelers can be punished harshly, even when no crime was committed.

The Bigger Picture

The U.S. has long promoted itself as a top travel destination, but these incidents reveal a darker reality: its increasingly authoritarian approach to law enforcement extends beyond its own citizens and now threatens innocent tourists. If friendly visitors from Germany and the UK can be treated this way, what does that mean for the future of global travel?

This also raises important questions about human rights:

Why is solitary confinement being used on people who have committed no violent crimes?

Should border authorities have unchecked power to imprison tourists over minor paperwork issues?

Will more travelers begin avoiding the U.S. altogether out of fear for their safety?

What Can You Do?

Be Extremely Careful with Travel Documents – Double-check visa requirements before you travel. The U.S. does not take mistakes lightly.

Know Your Rights – Learn what to do if detained at the border. Demand access to your embassy.

Warn Others – Share these stories so that fellow travelers understand the risks.

Pressure Governments to Act – European nations should demand better treatment for their citizens abroad.

Consider Whether It’s Worth the Risk – With so many other travel destinations available, is a trip to the U.S. worth the possibility of being imprisoned over a paperwork mistake?

The United States is making one thing clear: visitors are not welcome unless they navigate its strict and unforgiving system perfectly. One mistake, and you could find yourself behind bars. The question is—do you really want to take that risk?

[lebowskismoney]

yuu is EXTREMELY undocumented immigrant coded

For starters, they’re not just similar to undocumented immigrants. They’re best comparable to undocumented immigrant children. When their parents bring them across the border, there’s usually an unknown possibility of returning. They don’t have a say in whether they come along, that decision is made for them without their knowledge. All they know is “this is for their greater good”.

Now compare that to Yuu’s entry to twst. They literally don’t remember anything other than entering the world via horse-drawn hearse. They wake up in a coffin, symbolizing the death of their previous life and the start of a new one in TWST. They weren’t even aware of their transmigration until the deed was done. Upon transmigrating, they were told to make a choice and stick to it for everyone’s sake, not being given an out.

They’ve been transmigrated with literally nothing of use. They don’t have a valid ID nor currency. Their world is inaccessible. They are told “it is up to you to find a way back.” And the job they’re given to support themselves while they search for a way home? Custodian, one of the occupations most often associated with immigrant workers.

People are anchored to their new countries in different ways. That tends to be via each other. If someone marries a citizen, they have a pathway to obtaining citizenship, and someone has an anchor if they have a child during their stay. In Yuu’s situation, they’re anchored by Grim. Grim and Yuu both attend NRC as one student. They don’t have the means to attend individually, and Yuu has the risk of being cast out onto the streets if they don’t cooperate.

Speaking of cooperating, Yuu has more obligations than “attend NRC” and “find your way back” (supposed to be Crowley’s task but yk what he does). They are often tasked with things that are not their responsibility. Things like investigating/dismantling attempts at sport event sabotage, blackmail, overblots, that’s not supposed to be their priority. But if they don’t do that, they risk going without room and board, literal homelessness and no chance of finding a way back.

This is similar to another experience migrant children go through: having to support their families in order to remain afloat. Often times this includes translating documents with elementary levels of the language they're learning or working alongside their parents to bring food to the table. They have no other choice, these are things that must be done in order to survive.

Imma go into another tangent that is a bit of theory crafting but honestly really worth delving into:

There’s also the problem of whether they can even go back home. Asylum-seeking immigrants and those with similar situations don’t always have a place to go back to in their home country. Their countries are not safe anymore; they wouldn’t have left if they had the ability to form a safe and stable life in their homeland. However, children aren’t always aware of that. They are taken to the destination country without the possibility of return. How does Yuu know they’ll be able to go back to their world? They’re in the same situation: they made the journey, but their return is unknown. It could’ve been a one-way ticket to TWST, leaving them stranded and with a new objective: establish an actual identity or find a way to become a citizen from square one.

On a final note, this is another reason why I love their friendship with Ace and Deuce, especially after book four. Those two received ONE ping from their friend indicating they were in danger and dropped EVERYTHING to help them. They know better than everyone how hard Yuu has it and went out of their way to make sure they were safe and sound. They look after Yuu time after time just as Yuu gets them out of dicey situations.

[portalwalker]

Maria hummed. "That sounds reasonable."

The android didn't doubt that Ichisada had not only seen the effects of alcohol in others, but also in herself, whenever she indulged.

"I know it can affect memory and overall mood the following morning -- plenty of fiction talks about being unable to remember the previous night, and there are all kinds of 'hangover cures' that are...debatable, in whether or not they work. Some of them, anyway."

Of course your body's gonna get you back for drinking something it doesn't want or need. That didn't surprise Maria in the least. It was what happened during the drinking she was a little less certain of.

@portalwalker || x

"Yeah, not being able to turn off that feeling sounds like hell. You probably made the right choice." Ichisada nods. "You want me to describe it to you? I won't use words that make it sound way better than it actually is. I promise."

Ichisada wasn't going to pressure Maria into trying anything she didn't want too, or hear what she didn't want too. Her honor as a bartender and brewer would be revoked if she pressured someone into drinking something they didn't want too.

[probablyasocialecologist]

In Almería lies the world's largest concentration of commercial greenhouses, often referred to as ‘the sea of plastic’. This vast expanse of polytunnels, housing millions of kilos of fruits and vegetables mainly destined for export, stretches for hundreds of kilometers, a white panorama until the horizon. Also within this sea of plastic dwell the migrant workers who work to ensure Europe's supermarkets are stocked year-round. While they perform the vital task of ensuring Europe's all-season access to fresh produce, these workers often live in a state of physical and institutional vulnerability. This state of affairs remained largely hidden, until recent shocks like the Covid-19 pandemic and armed conflicts exposed the fragility of our food supply chains. Spain issues approximately 150,000 permits annually for seasonal laborers (European Parliament 2021). However, within just the province of Almería, there are more than 100,000 migrants working in greenhouses, 80% of them holding undocumented status in the country. This lack of legal recognition leaves the workers off official records, denying them universal rights such as labour rights and access to formal rental contracts. It is a dire situation that forces many to call the shanty towns surrounding the greenhouses their homes. During my research, I often heard how some workers pay up to 6,000 euros annually to greenhouse managers for the working contracts necessary to seek legal status in the country, turning the quest for legalization into a profitable business.  Almería serves as a primary entry point for migrants traveling from West and North African countries to Europe. For those who cross the Mediterranean without visas - the majority of greenhouse laborers - this work is virtually the only option for income generation on arrival. While informal greenhouse jobs provide financial support to workers and their families back in their home countries, they also perpetuate vulnerability in livelihoods and employment, highlighting and embedding a stark contrast between EU citizens enjoying affordable food and the undocumented migrant workers compelled to work in precarious conditions to provide it.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Paul Blumenthal at HuffPost:

Former President Donald Trump’s most significant policy plank in his third presidential campaign is to implement a system of mass deportation to remove up to 20 million noncitizens from the United States, a plan that apparently aims to not only remove people living here illegally but also to chase away ― or accidentally round up ― U.S. citizens as well.

He is promising to deploy the military and deputize local police officers to round up millions of people, detain them in makeshift camps and then ship them off to other countries ― whether or not the destination is the person’s country of origin. This plan is billed as targeting only those who have come to the country or reside in it illegally, with a special emphasis on supposed migrant gang members. It offers a story of those who deserve to be here and those who don’t. Those who are part of the national community and those who exist outside its bounds and, perhaps, its laws. But 79% of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. have been living and participating in American communities for more than 15 years. They have married U.S. citizens, hold jobs that prop up their local and national economies and have children and grandchildren who are citizens. Ripping these people out of the country and away from their families will ripple through every community in the country.

“Communities are like a fabric ― the way that the threads are interwoven,” said Heidi Altman, federal advocacy director for the National Immigration Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Fund, an immigrant rights nonprofit. “If you snip at one, eventually the whole of the fabric comes loose.” This plan to tear communities apart will also ensnare U.S. citizens, green card holders and others here legally, either by accident or with intent. Trump and his advisers are already saying that’s what they’ll do. Tom Homan, Trump’s former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was asked in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday whether there is a way that Trump’s mass deportation plan could remove undocumented people without separating them from their families. “Of course there is,” Homan said. “Families can be deported together.” What Homan is saying, without saying it directly, is that mixed-status families, with some family members who are U.S. citizens and others who lack legal status, can choose to self-deport if they wish to remain together.

There are currently 4.7 million mixed-status households in the U.S., according to the Center for Migration Studies. Among those households are 5.5 million U.S.-born children living with one undocumented household member and 1.8 million U.S.-born children living with two undocumented adults. In total, there are 9.7 million Americans who live in households with at least one undocumented resident. Trump and Homan propose an impossible choice: your citizenship and your home or your family. Similar mass deportations and detentions in the country’s history have done the same. The incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans during and after World War II ensnared citizens and noncitizens alike. So, too, did the imprisonment of Germans, Italians and people born under the Austro-Hungarian Empire during both world wars. Trump’s inspiration for his mass deportation program, President Dwight Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback, similarly resulted in the deportation of significant numbers of U.S. citizens to Mexico.

But none of those programs was of the scale or scope that Trump imagines. There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., according to the 2022 American Community Survey. Other surveys and estimates have found similar numbers. But Trump and his allies talk about deporting 20 million to 30 million people. There is no source for such a number. That would invariably mean targeting people with some kind of legal status, whether temporary or permanent. “They seem to be gleefully suggesting that they would include people here with some legal status in these roundups,” said Matthew Lisieki, a senior research and policy analyst at the Center for Migration Studies, a think tank that focuses on global migration. A deportation program that removes 11 million people or even more than 20 million would affect every single community in the country, invariably sweeping up even larger numbers of U.S. citizens and legal residents, taking them away from their families and putting them into jails, incarceration camps and, potentially, off to another country. As Homan’s answer on “60 Minutes” indicates, that’s a feature, not a bug. Trump has already proposed invoking laws that could be used to sweep up unnaturalized U.S. residents who have legal status.

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which Trump says he will use, allows the president to effectively suspend due process for anyone of a particular nationality or national origin when the U.S. is at war or is invaded by that nation. Invoking this law may prove challenging since the U.S. is not currently in a declared war, much less one against any of the Latin American countries that represent the point of origin for most undocumented immigrants in the U.S. And though Trump claims that the migration of people into the country amounts to an “invasion,” federal courts since the 1990s have largely rejected efforts by states claiming that the word “invasion” in the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted to include the voluntary migration of people across borders.

Still, it is possible that the courts today would take a different approach and declare that the president’s invocation of an invasion by immigrants is a “political question” that the judicial branch will not interfere with. That could give Trump a free hand to implement a brutal and sweeping deportation program. “There are no explicit limitations on what kinds of regulations the president can promulgate under the law,” said Katherine Yon Ebright, a counsel at the progressive Brennan Center for Justice and author of a paper on the Alien Enemies Act. The law has been invoked three times during conflicts with actual foreign nations: during the War of 1812 and both world wars. In each conflict, the president has not only directed deportations and detentions but also promulgated restrictions on noncitizens who had come from the foreign belligerents.

[...]

When Trump was in office, immigration officials ramped up the use of these inaccurate gang databases to identify and deport undocumented residents. Considering Trump has falsely claimed in his campaign speeches that “migrant gangs” have “conquered” entire cities, such an effort would likely be radically scaled up. This could lead to removal of people with legal status as well as those who don’t. Residents who have legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program ― so-called Dreamers who were brought across the border by their parents as children ― have been incorrectly identified as gang members by local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would be one way to strip them of their legal status.

Trump’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, has promised to “turbocharge” efforts at denaturalizing U.S. citizens. When in office, Trump ramped up denaturalization efforts with one Homeland Security budget document proposing up to 700,000 investigations into naturalized U.S. citizens. Civil denaturalization can be done to people who obtained their legal status illegally or are the child of someone who did so, who deliberately lied about a fact in their application for citizenship, obtained citizenship through military service but was then dishonorably discharged or by becoming a member of a subversive group. This last reason could implicate U.S. citizens incorrectly placed on gang databases or otherwise identified as gang-affiliated by law enforcement. Databases can only be used to identify the legal status of residents who have had interactions with law enforcement or certain government agencies. If Trump intends to ramp up deportations to the level he claims, his efforts would need to target workplaces and neighborhoods. This would, invariably, involve racial profiling by placing checkpoints or performing sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods or worksites. Such sweeps would undoubtedly ensnare U.S. citizens and inflict fear in everyone ― citizens and noncitizens alike ― within these communities.

Donald Trump’s diabolically fascistic plan of mass deportations is eerily reminiscent of the interning of Japanese-Americans in World II: a moral and economic calamity that would undo America.

Read the full story at HuffPost.

[gatheringbones]

[“You might be thinking that we seem to be talking about people smuggling rather than people trafficking, and that those two things are different. People smuggling is when someone pays a smuggler to get them over a border: in UK law, human trafficking is when someone is transported for the purposes of forced labour or exploitation using force, fraud, or coercion. It’s tempting to think of these as separate things, but there is no bright line between them: they are two iterations of the same system.

Let’s break it down. It is common for people to take on huge debts to smugglers to cross a border. So far, so good: clearly smuggling. But once the journey begins, the person seeking to migrate finds that the debt has grown, or that the work they are expected to undertake upon arrival in order to pay off the debt is different from what was agreed. Suddenly, the situation has spiralled out of control and they find themselves trying to work off the debt, with little hope of ever earning enough to leave. Smuggling becomes trafficking. The discourse of trafficking largely fails to help people in this situation, because it paints them as kidnapped and enchained rather than as trying to migrate. It therefore seeks to ‘rescue’ them by blocking irregular migration routes and sending undocumented people home— often the very last thing trafficked people want. Although they might hate their exploitative workplace, their ideal option would be to stay in their destination country in a different job or with better workplace conditions; an acceptable option would be to stay in the country under the current, shit working conditions, but the very worst option would be to be sent home with their debt still unpaid.

By viewing trafficking as conceptually akin to kidnap, anti-trafficking activists, NGOs, and governments can sidestep broader questions of safe migration. If the trafficked person is brought across borders unwillingly, there is no need to think about the people who will attempt this migration regardless of its illegality or conclude that the way to make people safer is to offer them legal migration routes. People smuggling tends to happen to less vulnerable migrants: those who have the cash to pay a smuggler upfront or have a family or community already settled in the destination country. People trafficking tends to happen to more vulnerable migrants: those who must take on a debt to the smuggler to travel and who have no community connections in their destination country. Both want to travel, however, and this is what anti-trafficking conversations largely obscure with their talk about kidnap and chains.

Our position is that no human being is ‘illegal’. People should have the right to travel and to cross borders, and to live and work where they wish. As we wrote in the introduction, border controls are a relatively new invention – they emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century as part of colonial logics of racial domination and exclusion. (ICE, the brutal American immigration enforcement police, was only created in its modern form in 2003; the previous iteration of it is as recent as the 1930s, an agency called Immigration and Naturalization Services.) The mass migrations of the twenty-first century are driven by human-made catastrophes – climate change, poverty, war – and reproduce the glaring inequalities from which they emerge. Countries in the global north bear hugely disproportionate responsibility for climate change, yet disproportionately close their doors to people fleeing the effects of climate choas, leaving desperate families to sleep under canvas amid snow at the edges of Fortress Europe. As migrant-rights organiser Harsha Walia writes, ‘While history is marked by the hybridity of human societies and the desire for movement, the reality of most of migration today reveals the unequal relations between rich and poor, between North and South, between whiteness and its others.’

A system where everybody could migrate, live, and work legally and in safety would not be a huge, radical departure; it would simply take seriously the reality that people are already migrating and working, and that as a society we should prioritise their safety and rights. Some journalists and policymakers argue that migration brings down wages. However, the current system, wherein undocumented people cannot assert their labour rights and as a result are hugely vulnerable to workplace exploitation, brings down wages by ensuring that there is a group of workers who bosses can underpay or otherwise exploit with impunity. Low wages and workplace exploitation are tackled through worker organising and labour law – not through attempting to limit migration, which produces undocumented workers who have no labour rights.

However, instead of starting from the premise of valuing human life, the countries of the global north enact harsh immigration laws that make it hard for people from global south countries to migrate. You don’t stop people wanting or needing to migrate by making it illegal for them to do so, you just make it more dangerous and difficult, and leave them more vulnerable to exploitation. Punitive laws may dissuade some from making the journey, but they guarantee that everyone who does travel is doing so in the worst possible conditions. Spending billions of dollars on policing borders actively makes this worse, without addressing the reasons people might want to migrate – notably, gross inequality between nations, which in large part is a legacy of colonial – and contemporary – plunder and imperialist violence.”]

molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018

[charlotte-of-wales]

a summary of the Monaco Tea, creds to the lovely anon who sent me the article <3

btw most of the information on the family was in article one, the latter were more just info on real estate + off shore accounts

again, this info is all coming from the former accountant of the family:

Prince Rainier III was seriously considering changing succession laws so Caroline would be the head of the family and Monaco as he found Albert to be weak. Albert is said to be the "despised member of the clan" who would stutter while speaking to his father. Rainier even looked into what this would mean to the Grimaldi name since Andrea - at the time 17 - obviously carries his father's name (Casiraghi) and not his mother's (Grimaldi). Rainier told the ones carrying the investigation that this was done in case Albert died.

the funds from Albert's state endowment and his private funds would be mixed all the time.

Albert would say yes to essentially everything his family asked for, including a $30 million apartment for Stephanie

Palmero (the accountant) would frequently buy things for the family to keep "their privacy". He bought Charlene's engagement ring and multiple properties for the Grimaldi's in France. He would pay property taxes for those properties and have the family pay him back.

Caroline and Stephanie would frequently make use of and sell family property (Rainier's cars, family jewelry and art, etc) without letting him know, even though they technically belonged to Albert.

Caroline is in charge of the family's castle in Marchais, which he had an issue with as she would always go off budget.

he makes a note to pay attention to Pierre Casiraghi as he is very ambitious and his dealings in real estate could create problems (spoiler alert: it did)

Caroline is said to hate Charlene

the allowance that Charlene, Caroline and Stephanie receive increases constantly, which worried Palmero. As of late, they were: 1,5 million euros for Charlene, 900.000 for Caroline and 800.000 for Stephanie yearly. This follows the family hierarchy.

 Jazmin Grace receives 86,000 dollars per quarter. In February 2010, Palmero had to spend $5,000 “extra for her birthday”. Albert also bought her a $3 million apartment in New York City.

Albert spends almost a million a year funding Nicole Coste's (the mother of Albert's second illegimate child) fashion business. It's all in Alexandre Coste's name as Nicole fears that Charlene might create issues when Albert dies.

loots about Charlene. She frequently demands high sums in cash, her personal chef is $300 a day, she has multiple undocumented people from the Philippines working in her staff, the celebrations for the birth and baptism of the twins was well over half a million euros, in eight years Charlene spent around 15 million euros when she received 7.5 million euros in endowment (the Palace didn't deny this and said that the accountant was simply told to pay the difference with the family's personal funds), she spent 965,000 on a villa in two and a half months, her office decoration cost a million euros, she requested 3 x 300,000 for her brother's house.

Palmero made sure to change Monaco's regency laws so in case something happens to Albert while Jacques is underage Charlene won't be regent. Instead, the principality will be ruled by a regency council.

Albert has a secret apartment in Monaco, bought by one of Palmero's secret companies. He also got rid of problematic photographs of Albert (hinted at blackmail).

there was a whole system for hiding sums used on "special missions". They were labeled DS (for special destinations) and with time were used to pay for an informal intelligence unit that operated within the police force of the principality. They'd collect information on those close to the family and even on politians of the principality. He would also pay journalists to paint a good picture of Monaco while Hollande was president in France and was constantly criticizing tax-havens.

the DS accounts would be used to hide over-budget situations, including budget for the children's nannies and the budget for the wedding.

they were terrified of the Panama papers, as a lot of money laundering funds go through Monaco and the family had accounts on Panamanian banks.

a link between a Russian billionaire and the Monegasque Minister of Justice was revealed in 2017 and the Minister was forced to resign. An investigation was launched by a French judge and there was fears that the palace would be involved: jurisdictional immunity was granted to members of the sovereign family by order. There was rumours that the French judge wanted to hear the Prince as a witness......he was told to leave the principality. He was accused of having, through his “behavior perceived as authoritarian and vexatious”, “endangered the proper functioning of the criminal justice system”.

the real estate market is a big point of collision here and a big focus of article 3. Nothing too interesting to report - Palmero says he tried mingling in the market to break down the monopoly of real estate owners in Monaco (centered around a bestie of the Casiraghi brothers) while Albert claims Palmero had close ties with some of the developers and tried mingling with things that were of interest of the government in order to make money. The real estate issue was what eventually led Palmero to be fired. Palmero and a former laywer of Albert who was his childhood bestfriend and is also now a persona non grata claims that Albert is now fully under the influence of the bestie of the Casiraghi brothers who now controls the real estate in Monaco.

Palmaro is STILL paying property tax on properties he bought for the family!! crazy!!

Palmero detailed a number of off-shore accounts that hold about 250 million euros of the family's fortune including a company created specifically for Charlotte Casiraghi. He passed on the information from that account to Albert's new accountant at a monitored meeting.

Albert's explanation is lowkey....pathetic. He claims he told Palmero to move all of his family's assets from off-shore accounts to Monaco but Palmero never did it and that was that. He claims he was never able to obtain a precise statement on the family assets due to Palmero's secrecy and Albert just trusted him. He claims Palmero would act in his name and refuse to delay his decisions.

[mariacallous]

The Laken Riley Act, which requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain undocumented immigrants charged with even nonviolent crimes, was the first bill that President Donald Trump signed into law in his second term. Every Republican senator voted for the bill. A dozen Democrats, mostly from swing states, joined them, including the new Arizona senator, Ruben Gallego, who was a co-sponsor. Progressives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York; Alex Padilla, of California; and Chuy García, of Illinois, opposed the Laken Riley Act because it requires the detention of people who’ve only been accused of crimes. Additionally, as Ocasio-Cortez argued in Congress, the bill will bring profits to private-prison corporations. But, for Gallego, his support for the act was one of the reasons that Arizonans sent him to Washington. He made immigration and border security a centerpiece of his campaign, and he was simply doing the job his constituents expected him to do.

I first met Gallego late last year in Washington, D.C., not long after his election as Arizona’s first Latino senator. He was also one of only four Democrats to win Senate races in states carried by Trump. He told me then that his positions on the border came from “listening to the nonpolitical Latinos” around him. Many had opposed previous restrictions on immigration but were now saying, “No, I don’t like what’s going on at the border. That’s chaos.” When Gallego and I talked again, in late February, I asked him about the progressives who were mad at him for supporting the act. He said, “I mean, look, these people are good-natured. They’re not trying to be harmful or anything like that. But I think they are very much out of touch with people’s understanding of the border situation.” Gallego also believes they are wrong to assume that there will be widespread racial profiling or other abuses of the law, such as wanton arrests. “There’s a certain level of misinformation that’s going both ways on this issue,” he told me. Progressives are “spreading fear saying that kids are going to be arrested and detained for shoplifting candy bars.” In practice, he said, “that’s just not how the law works. And, instead of rationally talking about this, I think a lot of people just decided to do a knee-jerk ‘Let’s just stand up against Trump’s first thing.’ ”

Gallego is of the opinion that Democrats do not have much to gain from simply opposing Trump. He brought up the example of Trump and Elon Musk’s attack on U.S.A.I.D. In Arizona, he said, voters would care about mass layoffs of National Park Service employees because of the Grand Canyon, firefighters because of the threat of forest fires, and U.S.D.A. workers who are trying to stop the spread of avian flu. But “no one’s talking about the firings at U.S.A.I.D.,” he told me, because they “think we spend too much money on foreign aid.” Instead, they’re asking, “ ‘How does this actually relate to me?’ ” He added, “The best way you can save U.S.A.I.D. and programs like that is to make the Republican position and Donald Trump’s position unpopular by other means.”

Gallego noted that, after Trump’s first month in office, public-opinion surveys found that people were “happy with what the President was doing but wished he would focus more on the cost of living.” That’s where Gallego is concentrating his criticism. “For me,” he said, “resistance is making sure that people understand this Administration isn’t doing anything to bring down the cost of living. Instead, they’re doing basically everything to cut services to everyday Americans, gutting the poor so they can give tax cuts to the rich. That’s the resistance I’m doing right now. And the more I do that, the more messages I can get out there, the weaker I can make this Administration, and the easier it is for us to protect a lot of these core services.” Gallego has been arguing that the Administration’s economic plans will result in cuts to Medicaid, Social Security, and veterans’ benefits. His pragmatic approach to the Trump Administration is the one most Democrats seem to be taking, at least for now: collaborate when possible, and resist when necessary, if at all.

For most of his political career—three years in the Arizona state legislature, followed by a decade in the House of Representatives—Gallego was known as a progressive. The son of immigrants, his mother from Colombia, and his father from Mexico, Gallego graduated from Harvard, and then deployed to Iraq. He won his first election, in 2010, as part of a groundswell of opposition to Arizona’s S.B. 1070, which required police to verify the immigration status of anyone they suspected of being in the country illegally. (It was signed into law but was partially struck down by the Supreme Court, in 2012.) “Gallego was an important part of that movement. He got elected because of that movement,” Héctor Sánchez Barba, the president and C.E.O. of Mi Familia Vota, a national Latino advocacy organization with headquarters in Arizona, told me. But in recent years, as Gallego performed on bigger stages, he began to critique certain positions held by progressive Democrats.

The day after the 2020 Presidential election, when many were surprised by Trump’s relative strength among Latinos, Gallego railed on Twitter about the term “Latinx,” saying it should be abandoned. He caught heat from progressives but still repeated the argument in many different venues. On “Real Time with Bill Maher,” he explained that it offended him as a native Spanish speaker to be told that “my thinking about my language is wrong.” To great applause, he added, “I don’t need to hear that. I love my culture. My language is part of my culture, and I’m not gonna have someone change that.” For Gallego, this episode still contains an important lesson. “I hate to harp on this,” he told me, “but years ago when I tried to take down ‘Latinx,’ everyone was like, ‘What?’ I’m, like, ‘Why aren’t you guys listening to people?’ ”

In January, 2023, after Senator Kyrsten Sinema left the Democratic Party and registered as an Independent, Gallego announced that he would run against her. Then, earlier than many other Democrats, he began calling the situation at the border a “crisis.” In May, 2023, he supported President Joe Biden’s decision to deploy more troops to the border and criticized the Biden Administration for being unprepared to manage the surge of border crossings that was expected after the end of Title 42, which had restricted the flow of migrants. That October, following a sharp rise in the number of apprehensions, he chastised the Administration for not taking the needs of his constituents seriously enough. “Arizona’s border communities have been on the front line of this border crisis,” he told Fox News. “We’ve worked, again and again, to get the Administration to listen to their concerns.”

By the time Sinema dropped out of the race, in March, 2024, Gallego had left the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Publicly, he said that he let his membership lapse because dues had gone up significantly. But he also stopped calling himself progressive. When NBC News asked him if he still embraced the label, he said, “I consider myself an Arizona member of Congress who works across the aisle with everybody.” Last summer, he was the only Democrat who co-sponsored a bill intended to expedite the hiring of Customs and Border Protection officers.

In Gallego’s view, he defeated his Republican opponent, the right-wing former television anchor Kari Lake, by talking about immigration as Arizonans do, not as Fox News hosts do. In one of her campaign ads, she said, “We’re not safe because of our open borders. We must finish the wall and stop the invasion.” Gallego told me that, in reality, “Arizonans are, like, ‘We want border security, we want immigration reform, we want border trade.’ ” He spoke about the Arizonans who “go to Los Algodones to fix their teeth.” (The town, a short drive from Yuma, Arizona, is home to hundreds of dental clinics.) He also asked, “How many parents send their teen-age kids driving alone to Rocky Point?” That’s the small Sonoran beach city known in Mexico as Puerto Peñasco, about a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Yuma, Phoenix, and Tucson. Gallego mentioned how Arizona border cities benefit from the constant flow of Mexican shoppers buying food, clothing, and electronics. Thousands of Mexican nationals cross the San Luis port of entry near Yuma every day, to tend to Arizona’s winter vegetables, and many students cross from Sonora to Arizona to attend school.

The mayors of several border communities endorsed Gallego rather than Lake. What he’s hearing most from those mayors now, he said, is panic about the prospect of tariffs on goods from Mexico. “If the President continues to say, ‘I’m going to raise tariffs, I’m not going to raise tariffs,’ what’s going to happen is Mexican businesses are just going to cut up their contracts with American businesses,” he said. (Since I spoke with Gallego, Trump announced that the tariffs were on again, then, two days later, said they were off again—sort of. About half of all goods entering the United States from Mexico—those that comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement—will be exempt from tariffs until early April, when the issue will be revisited.)

For decades, Democrats have relied on moral arguments—the human right to mobility, the political turmoil that causes migrants to flee their home countries, and the many contributions that undocumented immigrants make to the United States—to defend the rights of immigrants. Gallego has also made them, and he still supports comprehensive immigration reform and permanent legal status for DACA recipients and noncitizen veterans. But Democrats have become more reluctant to articulate a positive case for immigrants, and quicker to call out progressives for what sounds like unconditional support for all immigrants, all the time. In January, Trump suspended the asylum system at the southern border. Long before that, Gallego had argued that the asylum system was “being abused”: that asylum seekers had learned how to exploit the system’s loopholes and knew what to say in order to meet its criteria for admission. He told me, “To deny that it’s being abused, first of all, you’re setting up the whole asylum system to fall, but also you’re losing trust with anybody who can think of you as an even arbiter.”

For Sánchez Barba, of Mi Familia Vota, the real problem isn’t blind support for immigrants by progressives but that “MAGA extremism kidnapped the issue of immigration.” He continued, “The reality is that this is a nation that is addicted to cheap, exploitable, and disposable labor. That’s it. Democrats keep falling into the trap that Republicans laid on immigration and need to take a stronger stand to be the party of a rational approach to immigration. It’s unacceptable that we haven’t had a real conversation about legalization, even for the Dreamers.” Gallego is “going to be in the Senate for the next six years,” Sánchez Barba told me, “and this is a great opportunity for him to be the kind of leader our nation needs, to oppose an anti-immigrant agenda that doesn’t make sense.”

Representative Delia Ramirez, from Illinois, also wants Democrats to be more assertive against Trump. “Our constituents have asked Democrats to stand up and do more—to stop being the minority party and become the opposition party. Right now, we have to use EVERY tool at our disposal—from withholding votes to supporting organizations litigating in courts,” she told me over e-mail. “Waiting for the Trump Administration to continue harming our communities before we act fails our constituents and erodes trust in their elected officials.”

When Gallego and I spoke last year about Trump’s mass-deportation plans, he told me that, in his view, “targeting criminals” will be “universally popular.” Yet, he added, “if the net gets cast very wide, I think that’s when you get problems. You start deporting Dreamers, you start separating kids from families—there’s not a humanitarian approach to this. I think there’s not going to be as much popular sentiment for that as they think.” When we talked recently, he predicted that the Trump Administration would soon exceed its mandate on deportations: “I think, at some point, the President is so obsessed with quotas and numbers and not actual effectiveness, they’re going to end up going after some real mass-deportation numbers.” In that case, he said, “I think you’re going to see the popularity of his immigration policies really slide.”

Gallego also believes that the popularity of Trump’s immigration policies will wane once Americans realize how much they cost. “ICE is running out of money,” he told me. “They just borrowed another five hundred million dollars from appropriations—so they’re actually literally doing catch and release now of people they have caught.” As of last month, the agency’s detention centers were nearly ten per cent over capacity, and it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to open enough facilities to meet the Administration's goals. And the military flights to Panama, or Guantánamo, or perhaps to El Salvador—President Nayib Bukele offered up his country’s biggest prison to house deportees from the United States—are much more expensive than the charter flights used during the Biden Administration. Trump has said that there will be “no price tag” on his deportation efforts; in practice, the endeavor could over time prove to be less popular than he believes.

Gallego said that he will resist Trump if his policies harm Arizona. He returned to the case of Yuma, which has a four-billion-dollar-per-year agricultural industry. So far, Trump has not impeded the flow of Mexican workers to the area, but, if he does, Gallego told me that he will blame the President and the Administration for costing Arizona jobs, hampering the state’s ability to recruit companies to import their goods through Arizona, and creating such a choke point at the border that growers “lose a lot of product in the summer, because it’s so damn hot.” He also argued that closing the border entirely would undermine Trump’s America First agenda, because “we as a government had said, ‘Stop doing shit in Asia. Come back to the United States, or come near shore.’ ” Tariffs could have a similar effect as border closings, if they decrease the flow of goods crossing the border in both directions.

Gallego’s vision for the Democratic Party is more pragmatic than progressive. He would hold Trump accountable when his policies do not improve the lives of working-class voters, but also stand back and watch him implement them, at which point, he predicts, there will be backlash and political consequences. “With birthright citizenship, he did it right away and has been quiet about it since,” Gallego told me. “He knows that it’s not a very popular position.” He sees similar consequences for foreign policy. “They absolutely have destroyed our relationship with our North Atlantic partners, our European allies,” he said. And, unlike Bill Clinton, who, Gallego said, reduced the size of the federal government in a “very orderly manner,” the Trump Administration is “taking a meat cleaver to the federal workforce without actually looking at programs. They wanted to move so fast, but they moved in a dumb, dumb way—and ended up hurting a lot of their base, by the way.” It could get to the point, Gallego argues, that it becomes “politically unsustainable, going into an election year next year, to be supportive of policies that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are doing.” The risk, of course, is that it doesn’t—and that Democrats’ passivity harms their credibility, too. Defining Democratic success as Republican failure isn’t the same thing as charting a positive path forward for the country. 

[portalwalker]

Out in the Oregon woods, in a clearing just outside a small town, sat a larger-than-it-should-be wood cabin with a cursed sign on the roof -- no matter how many times it was fixed, "Mystery Shack" always turned into "Mystery Hack," which mostly amused the tourists who drove through every summer on road trips up and down the coast.

The tourist season was coming to an end as autumn approached, though, which meant that the people who lived in the large cabin could get to other business.

One of these inhabitants was sitting on the back porch with a brick of a laptop in her lap, one hand on her chin as she scrolled through something on the screen with her other hand. If it wasn't for the shift of energy that accompanied a portal opening, she might not have noticed the arrival of a familiar guest.

(( @white-fire-the-dragon ))

[reimeichan]

I'm really starting to enjoy the stage of DID recovery I'm at. It's got a funkiness to it that I don't see others talk about all that much, where it's like... kinda hard to pinpoint what state my system is in at any point in time, but not distressingly so? And also not in a dissociative way like before. It's like, I'm able to feel all these bits of me flowing in and out of my consciousness and sense of identity and I lack any sort of solid definition of what this version of me wants to be or what my destination is. I'm just kinda going with the flow now instead of trying to steer us in any particular direction.

It's definitely a lot less stressful than it used to be and it feels like my brain has calmed down pretty significantly. It's less noisy in my head and I'm now realizing some of that was because there were parts of me who felt like they couldn't be heard before now don't feel the need to scream and bang on the walls to be noticed. And because we're less dissociated from each other, we can more immediately share thoughts and feelings instead of having to manually pass those things around to each other.

I've still got that ADHD buzz, but I'm now realizing the way I described it as being "50 trains of thoughts all at once" or "having 50 tabs open and all of them are playing different audio" no longer feels like it properly describes my experiences anymore. It's more like... I have a game running and that's the main thing I'm focusing on, but I also have a youtube video guide for something I'm trying to do in the game, while I'm also got notepad open to take notes, and another window open to crosscheck information. And maybe a couple random tabs open that are completely unrelated. Still got a lot of tabs and windows up, but they're more aligned to the same or similar purpose.

I do still have the different parts and alters and we still have new (as in unknown or undocumented) parts showing up pretty much daily, but they tend to get caught up to speed fairly quickly and even the ones who are very split off from the rest of the system don't feel as scary to handle (and feel less scared themselves) since we have such a strong support network and various other tools and resources at our disposal. I still feel like we're generally different and separate parts, but we also blend and fuse and influence each other in ways that feel a lot more fluid. Instead of having to purposefully communicate things with each other every time it's now a lot more instant and the hard barriers between each of us feel more and more arbitrary as the days go on. Kinda like looking at a map? Where you see the borders on the map, but at the end of the day you remove all of that and the landscape tells a different story and shows how all those "countries" are actually connected and one giant landmass. And those borders are still important to understand how they're there and why they exist, but it's not the whole story and can actually distract you from the bigger picture.

I dunno, I know I'm definitely in a transitional period of my healing and that's why things feel so vague and nebulous but I'm not complaining. If anything I'm pretty excited for what's to come.

[portalwalker]

"...can't say I've ever wanted to? Considering how my parents always talked about magnets messing with tech growing up, I didn't want to find out how that'd mess with me. I might be more advanced than those old TVs, but it doesn't hurt to be cautious."

Maria's expression scrunched into something annoyed. "Although, there was one time where an energy burst made my ability to see color become inverted for a while. That happened in the middle of a fight a long time ago, so I can't say I enjoyed it. I needed to get a mechanic to reverse it."

"You think that's bad?" Maria rests her head in a hand, pretending to look forlorn. There's a spark of amusement in her eyes that says otherwise. "Some of us can't get drunk. Don't have the organic parts to mess with. At least I don't have a liver to kill." (portalwalker)

@portalwalker

"You ever try to get drunk? Like, putting a magnet on your head or spinning around a whole lot until you can't stand upright anymore? Y'know, for the experience of it all?"

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Inside a Chaotic U.S. Deportation Flight to Brazil

The Trump administration’s first flight deporting Brazilians involved aborted takeoffs, sweltering heat, emergency exits and shackled deportees on a wing.

Temperatures were rising inside the plane. Eighty-eight Brazilian deportees, most of them handcuffed and shackled, were getting restless on Friday under the watch of U.S. immigration agents. The passenger jet, dealing with repeated technical problems, was stuck on the tarmac in a sweltering city in the Amazon rainforest.

Then the air conditioning broke — again.

There were demands to stay seated, shoving, shouting, children crying, passengers fainting and agents blocking exits, according to interviews with six of the deportees aboard the flight. Finally, passengers pulled the levers to release two emergency exits, and shackled men poured out onto the plane’s wing, shouting for help.

Brazil’s federal police quickly arrived and, after a brief standoff, told the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to release the deportees, though they had not yet reached their scheduled destination.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ordered a Brazilian Air Force aircraft to pick up the deportees and take them the rest of the way. His government’s ministers then publicly slammed the Trump administration’s handling of the deportees as “unacceptable” and “degrading.”

It was those complaints about the Brazilian flight that President Gustavo Petro of Colombia was replying to on social media when he announced Sunday that his government had turned away two deportation flights from the United States. That set off dueling threats of tariffs between the United States and Colombia that ultimately ended in Mr. Petro backing down.

The diplomatic dust-up over the deportation flights to Brazil and Colombia marked a turbulent first weekend for President Trump’s hard-line policy to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

Continue reading.

[psychic-refugee]

Xavier Thorpe had always been interested in art. It had been his passion since he was young.

He dreamt of galaxies and spaceships, of a man with flowers and tall aliens who graciously accepted them.

His art was world renowned in the sci-fi world. He was commissioned to do cover art for novels and made a tidy living from concept art for blockbuster films.

He had his own art studio in SoHo that was a popular destination when the Star Trek convention and other like events were in town.

Lately, he had dreamt of a woman with dark hair and agate eyes. He painted her over and over again, unlike anything he had ever done before. Those paintings were in his private collection, and none had ever seen them.

Unbeknownst to him, his studio got repeat visitors from a pair that always wore crisp black suits. The studio manager always politely asked them if they were interested in purchasing a piece, but they always said no.

It didn’t occur to the manager that it was odd that he never remembered them, even when they visited nearly every day for the past several weeks. They were always so discreet and nothing about them had ever stuck in his mind.

“Well, that’s definitely a Betazoid,” Agent A commented as he studied the painting.

“It’s not just a Betazoid, it’s Reittan Grax,” Agent W specified quietly, “And it’s a far more flattering portrait than he deserves.”

Agent A simply laughed, he knew his partner was one to hold grudges and the biennial Betazoid Trade Agreement Conference being held on Earth was a headache for the Organization globally.

As they studied all the art on display, they also took note of Bolians, Mizarians, and Zakdorns.

They had all the public and non-public records of Xavier Thorpe. From all their research, he was as human as they came.

The question was, how was he painting aliens that were not known to humans? At first their boss, Agent L had suspected an undocumented alien merely capitalizing on actual alien likenesses in order to make Earth money and a life for themselves. But Xavier Thorpe had all the proper records and history, even their most prolific forger would have a hard time mimicking a human life so well.

They were sent to investigate and had lucked out that day as Xavier needed to consult with his manager about his next showing.

Xavier was left speechless when he literally met the woman of his dreams.

Agent W and Agent A were suspicious when it looked like Xavier recognized Agent W, which should have been impossible.

They did their usual protocol when they introduced themselves by implying they were government agents, their badges held no actual seal of any U.S. government agency, but most of the human population was never that observant.

Xavier had been nervous, but he answered their questions honestly. His answers all matched up to his paperwork and they each discreetly performed tests with their advanced technology.

Xavier Thorpe was human and of Earth, there was no denying that.

“Thank you for answering our questions,” Agent W started to wrap it up, they would need to head back to HQ to debrief Agent L and get guidance of what to do next. She took out a silver cylindrical tube, ignoring Xavier’s confused look.

She set the time and date for him to forget, and with a quick flash, she started to do her normal spiel,

“You never saw…” her words died on her lips when Xavier simply looked confused rather than dazed.

“What did you just flash me with?” the flash wasn’t painful, nor did he have any idea why she did it, but he could have been epileptic for all she knew. It was just rude and dangerous.

Agent A frowned at the neuralyzer, wondering if it was broken. It had never happened before to his knowledge, but he wasn’t sure what else to think.

She flashed him again, and again Xavier was not affected by the device. In fact, he got annoyed and smacked it out of her hand.

She frowned at him and he frowned right back at her,

“You’re gonna give me a seizure or something,” he griped.

Xavier also wasn’t entrenched in the sci-fi fandom for nothing, so he put together the two nameless agents in sunglasses while indoors and the weird doohickey they flashed in his face.

“Is it safe to say that you guys are part of some shadow government?”

Both agents sighed deeply, and Agent A rolled his eyes.

The Men in Black were a known secret amongst the sci-fi nerds, and they wondered if others were immune to the neuralyzer and that’s how they ended up on Reddit all the time.

Xavier brought them back to his apartment and showed them the paintings of Agent W.

They were beautiful and well done, and Agent W almost shed a tear for they were snapshots of her past life, before she became an Agent.

When she had a family and a dream to become a writer.

They took him to MiB headquarters and Xavier was amazed that so much was hidden under their very noses. He had passed the HQ building several times and never would have thought it held a secret government agency.

They ran some tests and Agent L explained,

“Xavier, you are the rare human that has psychic ability. It’s why you dream of aliens that have visited our planet and why the neuralyzer does not work on you. Normally we would make you disappear, put you in a sort of exile to preserve the secret of alien life and protect Earth. However, with your abilities, I believe you would be ideal for our special unit.”

“Special unit?” Xavier took it all in stride, he thinks he always believed there might be some truth to his dreams.

“Yes, it’s not just extra-terrestrials we deal with. It’s a secret even to most of our most senior agents. Most of the time, it’s more than enough to know aliens exist. If they also knew the supernatural existed as well…well some have had to retire early,” was all she would say.

Xavier considered his options. He certainly didn’t want to go into exile, and he wasn’t particularly close with anyone. He hadn’t even spoken to his father in years, and he didn’t have any close friends.

He could only think of Agent W, and the dreams of them together. He felt he was where he was meant to be.

So, he accepted Agent L’s offer. He traded in his paintbrushes for his own neuralyzer, and his paint splattered camo pants for a bespoke black suit.

You will not stand out in any way. Your entire image is crafted to leave no lasting memory with anyone you encounter. You’re a rumor, recognizable only as deja vu, and dismissed just as quickly. You don’t exist. You were never even born. Anonymity is your name. Silence, your native tongue. You are no longer part of the system. You are above the system. Over it. Beyond it. We’re “them.” We’re “they.” In the absence of light, darkness prevails. We stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers.

The words of Agent L echo in his mind as he puts on the suit.

There are things that go bump in the night…we are what bump back.

He developed his psychic abilities under the guidance of Agent L. He was glad to see that Agent W and Agent A were given promotions and assigned to his unit.

“Welcome,” Agent L began, “Our unit is a secret within a secret. We are the Outcasts. This is our newest agent, Agent X.”

Agent W nodded respectfully, but from the heated way she eyed him up and down, rather liking him in a black suit, Xavier, now Agent X, knew his dreams would be coming true sooner rather than later.