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svltaf · 1 year

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ms appleton was nowhere close to having total control over soy sauce: perspectives on food and postwar japan

there's a popular post going around this month by @inneskeeper about how a single person changed japanese soy sauce forever. i've made my own post showing why this the story is incomplete and based on some factual inaccuracies, but i will be honest in saying that i would not be so engaged in responding to this post if it were not wrapped in a shockingly reductive narrative. i'll use this quote from op as a summary of the general idea they're trying to convey:

[...] I think that it is incredibly important that more people in the world are aware that leading into the Cold War, Japan was forcibly coerced into giving total power over a significant cultural touchstone/ingredient/way of life to a single foreigner who had a complete lack of respect for what shoyu is, even going so far as to say "I want to change Japan's taste preferences". I cannot imagine a more direct and blunt parallel to settler-colonialism mindset. I truly cannot. [link]

i will attempt give a larger view of that era and convey why this singular view is at best oversimplifying and at worst an incorrect projection of other trends upon what is an almost unique event in history.

note: i am not an academic historian; i will do my best to provide sources, but they will mostly be secondary.

i will use the three i's presented by prof. ian shapiro of yale, interests, institutions, and ideals, as lenses through which i will provide a more holistic view of the events at hand:

tl;dr:

the united states did not have uniform interests entering the cold war and the occupiers had a varying set of visions for japanese society and economy.

both the japanese public, the american occupation, and the japanese civil government had a more important goal: preventing hunger. japan was not coerced into handing over a tradition; it was suffering the consequences of its own colonial empire-building.

both countries were interested in building a healthy consumer economy, and ultimately the tastes of the public held most sway.

the idea of "a guy" being in charge of things has been a common theme in american foreign policy, but the idea that "the guy" was singularly responsible for massive change belies american perspectives and biases that often misrepresent the truth abroad.

i - ideals

i think this lens is maybe the most sympathetic to @inneskeeper's narrative: it makes sense that a settler-colonial nation with a deep root of anglo-protestant self-righteousness and evangelical tendencies would want to impose its vision of society upon a defeated foe. that said, it is not the only ideology at play in this situation, from both japan and the usa.

let's talk about main value the united states likes to impose upon foreign societies: democracy capitalism. i think what is interesting here is that this single word can have multiple interpretations in practice, and we can use this soy sauce story to look at the diversity in opinion of what capitalism means.

first, a capitalism tied to liberal ideals: a free and open market without monopolies as a promoter of egalitarianism. this concept was brought to japan by many of the administrators in the american occupation that have previously observed or enacted roosevelt's new deal in the aftermath of the great depression. [1, p.57-58; 2, p.98] we see a focus on trust-busting and a strong aversion to any significantly concentrated capital. pre-war japan was dominated by structures known as 財閥 zaibatsu, vertically integrated groups that are helmed by a family-controlled holding company owning a set of subsidiaries in banking and industry with interlocking stock ownership and directorship. the zaibatsu structures, emerging since the late edo and early meiji periods, have become inextricably linked to building the japanese imperial war machine (though somewhat forcibly). [3] on the american side, as a result, certain american elements viewed trust-busting as a way to democratize japan through the economy. [2, p.34; 4, p.19; 5, IV-2b] this included maj. gen. marquat, ms. appleton's boss at the ghq/scap economic and scientific section (ess). [4, p.31] japan's first postwar prime minister, shigeru yoshida, and his ministry of foreign affairs, seemed to agree with the deconcentration of capital. [4, p.20] this is not to say that the americans were particularly sympathetic, as gen. macarthur and others were quite convinced of the japanese population's inability to shed its feudal tendencies; rather, the americans found an opportunity to build a new liberal, democratic society to their liking. and yes, there was some punitive intent; the united states and allies did just finish fighting an 8-year-long war against an expanding empire. [4, p.30]

opposite the liberal view is the conservative, if not pragmatic, ideal of capitalism: as a bulwark against communism. japan was an industrialized nation with a developed economy, and as far as the looming cold war is involved, the united states wants both a healthy consumer economy and one that is integrated in the new world economy (i.e. one with american interests as stakeholders). [4, p.31-32, 44] if "deconcentration" of capital, as it was called by the occupiers, were to run its course, some americans (and lobbyists linked to japanese industry) feared that japanese society would be thrown into chaos, or worse, the rapprochement with the soviets under a socialist economy. [4, p.22, 32] the victors did initially break up many of the tightly-woven zaibatsu, but the overall health of the economy was eventually prioritized as a bulwark against communism, thus the number of zaibatsu slated for dismantling was reduced, and the main deconcentration proposal (FEC-230) was disavowed. [4, p. 32]

all this debate within the american occupation, plus some interjections from the japanese business community, about the nature of the rebuilding japanese market and economy was held from 1946 to 1948. this culminated in the "reverse course," in which cold war objectives won out in occupation policy, though the free market as a liberalizing principle was not discarded. [4, p.44-46] in the same space, there existed both a punitive drive to disperse the old japanese economic engine and a desire to build a new, genuinely local, consumer society as a protection against communism.

“Nothing will serve better to win the Japanese people over to a peaceful, democratic way of life than the discovery that it brings rewards in the way of better living and increasing economic security.” - col. r.m. cheseldine, u.s. war department [4, p.44]

it is important to distinguish this from the colonialist drive, which is to capture markets and resources for the sole benefit of the homeland.

in the context of soy sauce, the release by ghq/scap of american soybeans to japan was announced in 1948, after the reverse course has taken hold. [6, p.157] in addition, kikkoman was not even a zaibatsu, it was a company with roots in family ownership, vertically-integrated structures, and eventually found to engage in monopolistic practices, but was not of a large enough scale or diversification to qualify. [7, ch.3] the list of zaibatsu is actually quite limited. [wiki] all this meant that the anti-trust case brought against noda shōyu k.k. (kikkoman's predecessor) in 1954 in the tokyo high court is an entirely domestic affair (scap handed over power in 1949 and the position was abolished in 1952). [8, p.53] that said, the 1957 ruling against noda in noda shōyu k.k. v. japan fair trade commission (jftc) was the result of an aberrant and unfavourable reading of the act on prohibition of private monopolization and maintenance of fair trade, article 3; the act was passed in 1947, when scap was in power. [8, p.53] since article 3 is quite short ("an enterprise must not effect private monopolization or unreasonable restraint of trade."), it was open to wide interpretation, leading to the argument by the jftc that price-fixing as a leading player in an industry constituted monopolistic behaviour. [9] in that sense, we can see echoes of the debate around monopolies from the occupation era.

through the lens of ideals, we can see that in the periphery of this story, there is a friction between competing visions of capitalism in practice. in that sense, while it agrees that the usa had some desire to reshape a foreign country to its own ideals, it also shows how @inneskeeper's narrative unduly reduces the american occupation to a singular actor with singular motives, and one that is akin to colonial empires in other parts of history.

research questions:

did american attitudes towards monopolies affect the free distribution of semichemical fermentation methods? [6, p.160]

what direct links can we make between occupation-era attitudes towards monopolization and japanese governance regarding the food industry?

ii - institutions

from the point of view of institutions (i use the term loosely), it's a lot more apparent how the situation has a lot more factors flowing in many directions. i will largely focus on three structures: the japanese food industry, the allied victors, and the japanese civil government.

when discussing the food industry, it's important to note that this is what sustains the inhabitants of a place; while condiments are a trivial part of sustenance, the way it is made and its ebbs and flows and shed a lot of light onto the needs of people. japan, since the early 20th century, had been a country that could not sustain itself off the resources of its home islands. as a colonial empire, it relied on food imports from korea and taiwan, and in the 20s and 30s pursued the low-lying plains of manchuria (northeastern china). this reflects in its soybean consumption as well: japan consumed about 1 million tons of soy each year in the 1930s, and at least two-thirds of it was imported from the colonies or manchukuo (the puppet régime ruling machuria). [10] within what we now call the "home islands" of japan, hokkaido, the one remaining settler-colony of japan to this day, produces the most out of all regions. [11, p.4]

(time for some math: [10] states that about 949 000 tons of soy sauce was consumed in japan per year in the mid-1930s. a quick look at soy sauce recipes reveals that 1kg of soy produces about 4 litres (and assuming about 4kg due to density of water) of sauce. with the 4:1 ratio, we can therefore estimate that about 237 000 tons of soy was used per year to make sauce immediately before the war.)

the end of the japanese empire meant losing direct access to those production areas: manchuria was returned to china, and korea and taiwan were placed under various allied (usa, china, ussr) administrations. with japan needing to supply its troops over an ever-growing front line, caloric intake by the average japanese already dropped well below necessary levels for an adult by 1944. [12] by 1946, the defeated nation was at the brink of starvation. american analysis towards the end of wwii determined that soybean production in the home islands could not rise beyond its pre-war levels without sacrificing other land use. [11, p.5] in order to survive, the soy industry needed to replace about 70% of its sources in short order without encroaching upon other agricultural sectors necessary to sustain life. there was immense pressure.

regarding the allies: the japanese empire was largely carved up by three victors, china, the ussr, and the usa. the ussr, having been the least active in the defeat of japan, with its most important contribution being the verbal threat of invasion, was not actively threatening aside from the spectre of spreading communism (as mentioned in part i). china, on the other hand, regained the lands that produced much of the food japan was consuming. while the republic of china (ruled by the kmt) was still in power, it was able to continue supplying food to neighbouring nations. [14] however, civil war broke out between the kmt government and the communists almost immediately after the end of wwii. [13] 1948 saw active fighting in northern china, thus hampering any exports of food; the kmt régime collapsed and fled to taiwan in 1949, and the communist government stopped all trade with the western bloc at the outbreak of the korean war in 1950. [14] with china being unable to supply japan, there is only one remaining option for food imports: the usa. soybean imports in the usa was generally coordinated by the garioa program and through private trade. american exports of soybean to japan skyrocketed from 6000 tons in 1946 and 34600 tons in 1947 to 119500 tons (about 12% of pre-war consumption) in 1948, 152500 tons in 1949 (almost all imports to japan that year), and 305000 tons in 1950. [15, p.67, 69] japan itself likely produced between 300 000 and 450 000 tons of soybeans each year, which meant that in 1947-48 japan was consuming definitively less than two-thirds of its pre-war consumption. the soy industry as a whole, and certainly the soy sauce industry, was in a desperate state.

unlike the collapsed german and italian régimes, the japanese government retained a functioning structure after the rapid end to hostilities in the pacific theatre. [16, p.194] this meant that instead of being tasked with the groundwork of running a country, the allied powers had an existing civil government to administer directives and policies; the u.s. eighth army served as an enforcement and reporting arm of scap. [16, p.195-197] during the war, from 1939 to 1942, the imperial government instituted various food control laws that collected and distributed food from producers under a quota system. [17, p.221] such quotas, as as well as rationing, persisted in the immediate months after allied victory. however, with the surrender of japan, public confidence in the government plummeted, significantly hampering its ability to administer food. the average caloric value of rations in tokyo could only fulfill about a third of an adult's needs; hungry city-dwellers increasingly opted to buy on the black market (which had poached imperial military stock) or physically go to the countryside to acquire food directly from farmers outside of government rationing. [18, p.30-31; 19, p.835, 843] scap policy directed the japanese government to "reinstate" agricultural quotas, and in 1946, it issued the emergency imperial food ordinance which empowered government expropriation of food for the production quota and enforcement of such policies; the u.s. eighth army participated in enforcing the policy within the civil administration. [17; 18] the yoshida government,the first democratically elected administration in the new state of japan, was keenly aware of the necessity of food in rehabilitating japan, as well as the importance of competing against the black market in order to once again establish the rule of law. [18] as such, the tight government control of domestic food production lasted much longer than in other industries, causing pressure for "non-essential" segments like the seasoning industry.

(as an aside, in line with certain ideas discussed in part i, scap directed land reform which redistributed much of the arable land in japan, increasing productivity of land and eliminating the interest of large landowners thought to be threatening to democracy. [18])

as discussed in my previous post, chemical alternatives to fermented soy sauce have been developed since the early 20th century. [6] during the war, substitute methods (especially amino acid-based ones, e.g. hvp or mixed hvp-honjozo) replaced fermented honjozo* methods as resources became more scarce. [20]

*honjōzō (本醸造) means "genuinely fermented".

in early 1948, it was announced that 20 000 tons of soybean meal would be made available by the eroa fund for the purpose of making seasonings, to be allocated by ms appleton at ghq/scap. [14; 6, p.159] this amount is only about 10% of the soybean consumption of soy sauce manufacturers before the war. on the surface, for an industry marginalized by the need to stave off starvation and maintain social stability, securing the imported soybean meal can be seen as a life-or-death situation. however, given the wartime state of sauce production, the struggle to acquire the soybean meal is more akin to an attempt to return to fully soy-based fermentation methods. the invention of the semichemical #2 method which increased soy usage productivity and secured most of the soybean meal for the soy sauce industry can be seen as a faster intermediate step to return to traditional fermented methods used before the war. it's also important to note that over 80% of soy sauce in japan has returned to traditional honjozo production, and that large companies such as kikkoman and yamasa have attempted to return to honjozo methods as early as the late 1950s. [20]

from this point of view, it does not seem particularly apparent that a single administrator had the power to change an industry, but rather her decisions were the impetus for developments to happen within the domestic industry. ultimately, japan's soy sauce industry was suffering the consequences of its industrialization and the failure of its colonial experiment. in a wider view, we can see this as a detail in the friction between two imperial projects. (consider this: out of the major parties involved, japan, china, usa, ussr, and other minor players in the pacific war, gb, netherlands, france, all of them entered the 20th century with imperial projects.)

research questions:

are there japanese sources that can verify production and imports during the 1940s?

there was a soy sauce control corporation formed by the imperial government in 1942 (全国醤油統制株式会社) that dictated resource allocation and quotas for the soy sauce industry. it seemed to have only been dissolved in 1948. what was its role after the war and what relationship did it have with scap?

iii - interests

as for interests, i will limit its scope to answering "who materially benefits." the groups at play are generally the same as the previous part, so i will be brief in elaboration.

the most obvious interest is that of the japanese public: their main material benefit in the late 1940s is to be nourished enough to stay alive (see part ii). while soy sauce is an important part of japanese cuisine, as a condiment, it is a nutritionally trivial part of its diet. it is then understandable, that japanese society and scap would be willing to temporarily sacrifice an immediate return to traditional production in favour of methods that would leave more food for direct consumption.

the next interest to discuss is that of the soy sauce industry, and its desire to return to honjozo (traditionally fermented) production after a period of scarcity during and after the war. it is important to note that regarding the 20 000 tons of soybean meal to be allocated by scap in 1948, the competitor to the soy sauce industry for those resources is the amino acid industry (msg, etc.). [6, p.159] with soybeans hard to come by, the soy sauce industry would have been under immense pressure to aquire the soybean meal distributed as aid. with kikkoman's development of semichemical #2 method, the scap decisionmakers reconsidered an earlier uneven distribution of soybean meal in favour of the amino acid producers. [6, p.160] what resulted next was talk between representatives of the two competing industries, facilitated by the americans. [6, p.160] it is important that taste trials were conducted, with wide support for the new semi-chemical method by the polled public. [6, p.160] at every step of the decision-making process, japanese interests were consulted by scap.

it is also important to mention the "japan lobby" in washington a set of interest groups and lobbyists representing japanese business as to illustrate the bidirectionality of influence in postwar japan. [21] this group arose from the aftermath of the first zaibatsu dissolutions. some key achievements of their advocacy activities include the disavowal of the fec-230 policy proposal from the allied powers (against gen. macarthur's wishes!), and adding revisions to scap's economic deconcentration program. it is plausible that this lobbying set had influence with scap and washington regarding soy sauce, given the tight-knit nature of the japanese business class. that said, the direct link between the japan lobby and soy sauce, should it exist, necessitates further research.

i think it is necessary to analyze from the lens of interests @inneskeeper's claim of the united states occupation forcibly seizing and making changes to a traditional food industry. it is known that the united states seeks to build a strong consumer economy that is open to american investment and imports of american products. [18, p.40] given that the soybean meal managed by scap in 1948 was aid, it would've been in the american interest to support either industry, since they would both eventually rely on american imports once the period of scarcity ends (china would soon cease ot be a reliable exporter of food). there is nothing related to soy sauce that would've been against american interests, business or political, whereas food scarcity has been a real problem facing the japanese and allied administration. in this case, the chief american interest is to stabilize japan as a society against two perceived social enemies: communism on the left and a renewed militarism borne of resentment on the right. with the task of placating a hungry and defeated populace, producing large amounts of soy sauce that is palatable to the public using minimal aid material would be an interest in and of itself for the americans. i think it could be argued whether comments made by americans about how easily japanese tastes can be swayed are insensitive and out of line, but it is also true that the public had much more pressing needs than condiment purity.

@inneskeeper also mentioned the yakuza in some of their posts as a possible interest group involved. the informal economy grew to encompass all strata near the end of the war and immediately afterwards; most urbanites were forced to use the black market to stave off hunger. [19] the yakuza, mafia-like organizations that would operate somewhat openly in the decades before the war, entered the fray as groups that managed informal vendors. [22, p.632] racketeering became rampant in the years immediately after japanese surrender due to shortages and irregular flows of necessities such as food, but as the economy recovered entering the 1950s, the yakuza moved to more conventional underworld enterprises such as as gambling, prostitution, and nightlife. [22, 23] it also moved towards the underbelly of political life, becoming an actor in anti-left politics. [22] we know that the changes to soy sauce production happened in the small window between the end of the war and the earnest start of economic recovery, so it is possible that parties involved would have to deal with the yakuza as a necessary source of material. however, since their sights are set on the industries traditionally associated with the underworld, it would be a stretch to say that they had any real say in the proceedings of this development beyond being one additional obstacle to the soy sauce industry in acquiring ingredients. that said, using a singular product can be very useful as a window into how the yakuza may have coerced informal food distribution channels.

research questions:

what specific outcomes were agreed upon at the "shoda-ouchi conference" between the soy sauce and amino acid manufacturing industries? [6, p.160]

how did the japan lobby affect or facilitate changes in the soy sauce industry?

how did the yakuza affect the informal food economy?

iv - individuals

one thing that made the original story by @inneskeeper so appealing to the tumblr public is the proposition that a single person may have changed japanese soy sauce forever.

it bears repeating that major industrial changes (and i would challenge the categorization of this soy sauce happening as "major" in comparison to the general state of japan in the 1940s) are often the culmination of many small decisions from a wide set of actors. what is interesting about the idea of a singular "manipulator" is that it mirrors a common trope in american foreign policy: the idea of "our guy" (e.g. "our guy in afghanistan" [24, p.277], "our guy in panama" [25], etc.), that is, a singular handler for american interests in a foreign theatre of operations. in this case, since the country at hand is managed by an american occupation, "our guy" in the japanese soy sauce industry is an american, ms. blanche appleton. while american policy sometimes prefers to use this paradigm, it does not necessarily mean it works, not is the wishful american imagination correct when it comes to situations on the ground (see citations above). this trope may also possibly be borne of the oft-cited concept of "american individualism," a value that is as much a contradiction (how can a single person be free to change the world as they see fit, while also live in a world free from the will of others?) as it is a real part of american culture.

in the faulty narrative of ms. appleton, we also see a similar contradiction: how can a foreign woman who is allegedly willingly unfamiliar (as it turns out, probably not true [6, p.160]) with the native culture be in total control of an entire element of its cuisine? what is the meaning of "total power": did she personally decide taste profile of the condiment to her tastes, coerce various native parties to the will of the americans (what will?), or facilitate the solution to a complex resource distribution problem? in any case (except the fancifully implausible first case), what is the singular role of ms appleton? did power flow from her, or through her? perhaps a more interesting way to look at this problem is to ask what would have happened if someone else were in ms. appleton's place. would their personal influence be significant enough as to change the outcome? if so, what would have been the extent of the changes? (we can maybe look at the facilitation of the "shoda-ouchi conference" as one point. [6, p.160]) conversely, what would have remained the same as the various parties involved influenced the situation?

a more helpful view is to see the balance between the ideas, institutions, and interests behind each decision that would paint a more complete picture of this historical era. perhaps it is not as flashy to break down a chapter in culinary history as the convergence of multiple influences, but it is the one that does history most justice.

discussion questions

this is for the test

how significant was the dearth of food in late 1940s japan to this situation, and what similar adaptations of food cultures occurred in other post-wwii nations?

what factors from imperial japan, whether before the sino-japanese war or during the war, influenced this situation?

is there any part of this development that forshadows the economic rehabilitation and subsequent growth of japan in the latter half of the 20th century? if so, how?

what american attitudes were at play in this situation, and what japanese attitudes (if you're familiar) were involved as well?

what influence did china, as the originator of soy sauce, a major source of food in east asia, and a significant allied power, have on postwar japan and how did it influence the development of the japanese variants of soy sauce?

what was the influence of the japanese public's tastes?

bibliography:

apologies for the weird mix of ieee inline and mla bibliography formats, ieee works best with hypertext but doesnt make much sense for non-stem subjects.

Allinson, G. D. Japan's postwar history, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. [link]

Moore, R. A., & D. L. Robinson. Partners for Democracy : Crafting the New Japanese State under MacArthur, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2002. [avail. at libraries]

Okazaki, T. “The Japanese Firm Under the Wartime Planned Economy,” in The Japanese Firm: Sources of Competitive Strength, edited by M. Aoki and R. Dore, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1994. [link, requires academic access]

Sugita, Y. Pitfall or panacea : the irony of US power in occupied Japan 1945-1952, New York: Routledge, 2003. [avail. at libraries]

State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee. United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan (SWNCC150/4), 1945. [link]

Oguri, T. "醤油製造技術の系統化調査 Development of Soy sauce Manufacturing Technologies" in 国立科学博物館技術の系統化調査報告, Tokyo: National Museum of Nature and Science, 2008. [link; translation of excerpts in an earlier post]

Fruin, W. M. The Japanese Enterprise System: Competitive Strategies and Cooperative Structures, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1994. [link]

Haley, J. O. "Marketing and Antitrust in Japan" in Hastings Int'l & Comp.L. Rev. 51 Vol. 2 No. 1, San Francisco: UC Hastings Law, 1979. [link]

Japan, National Diet. Act on Prohibition of Private Monopolization and Maintenance of Fair Trade (Act No. 54 of April 14, 1947), Tokyo: National Diet, 14 Apr. 1947 [link]

Nakamura, H. "The Japanese Soybean Market" in Illinois Agricultural Economics Vol. 1, No. 2, Milwaukee, WI: Agricultural & Applied Economics Association, 1961. [link]

United States of America, Tariff Commission. Japanese trade studies : special industry analysis no. 13, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1944-45. [link]

United States of America, Strategic Bombing Survey. Summary Report (Pacific War), Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946. [link]

Crisis, Time, 1944. [link]

Hirano, M. "Using American Soybeans in the Japanese Economy" in The Soybean Digest Vol. 12 Iss. 11, Cleveland, OH: Penton, 1952. [link]

United States of America, Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service. United States Farm Products In Foreign Trade, Statistical Bulletin No. 112, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1953. [link]

General Staff of Gen. D. MacArthur. Reports of General MacArthur - MacArthur in Japan: The Occupation: Military Phase Volume I Supplement, Washington, DC: Center for Military History, 1966, reprinted 1994. [link]

Smith, H.F. (Chief, Food Branch, Price and Distribution Division, ESS, SCAP) "Food Controls in Occupied Japan" in Agricultural History Vol. 23, No. 3, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1949 [link]

Fuchs, S. J. "Feeding the Japanese: Food policy, land reform, and Japan’s economic recovery" in Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society, edited by M. E. Caprio and Y. Sugita, New York: Routledge, 2007. [link]

Griffiths, O. "Need, Greed, and Protest in Japan's Black Market, 1938-1949" in Journal of Social History Vol. 35, No. 4, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2002. [link]

Oya, Y. "みそ製造業の構造変化とその要因" in 食品経済研究第30号 (Bulletin of the Department of Food Economics, Nihon University), Tokyo: Nihon University, 2002. [link]

Schonberger, H. "The Japan Lobby in American Diplomacy, 1947-1952" in Pacific Historical Review Vol. 46, No. 3, Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1977. [link]

Siniawer, E. M. "Befitting Bedfellows: Yakuza and the State in Modern Japan" in Journal of Social History Vol. 45, No. 3, The Hidden History of Crime, Corruption, and States, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2012. [link]

Hill, P. B. E. The Japanese Mafia: Yakuza, Law, and the State, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2003. [link]

Blaxland, J., M. Fielding, and T. Gellerfy, Niche Wars: Australia in Afghanistan and Iraq, 2001–2014, Canberra: ANU Press, 2020. [link]

Kornheiser, T. "Noriega Our Bountiful Nation" The Washington Post, Dec. 22, 1989. [link]

#svlt speaks #the mysterious appearance of miss appleton

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goldenavenger02 · 4 months

Text

the snaps from the same little breaks in your soul

"Cole, what-"

"Nya told me."

"She…" Jay swallowed back the bile that wanted to come out of his throat because 'she told Cole, she told Cole EVERYTHING'. He wasn't surprised when his fear came out in the form of a squeak.

Nya rested her thumbnail against her lips as she waited for the results to come in from the computer, her heart beating anxiously against her chest.

Jay trusted in the sealing power of his wish but she couldn't find it in her to do the same, no matter how much she wanted to.

Not when the yellowish-green scar on her chest still ached, not when she felt so cold at night that not even her brother's elemental fire could warm her, not when she was right back in that lighthouse every time she shut her eyes.

"No search terms for that object appear in the database." The Bounty's text displayed across the screen.

"Scan for the Teapot of Tyrahn below the surface of Ninjago." She commanded, watching as the text box disappeared only to be replaced with a thick, red line slowly making its way up through the tiny Ninjago on the screen.

She knew that the scans were excessive, that if she didn't stop then there was a slim chance that she could undo Jay's wish, that everything they had done would be ruined and that she didn't even know what she was going to do if she found it.

'Touching it will free him, destroying it will free him and locking it in a vault that gets broken into despite the high levels of security Cyrus Borg has installed will end up with him being freed.'

And yet, something in her needed to know where it was, even if it was just so she could ensure that it never ended up in anyone's hands ever again.

"No objects matching the description of "Teapot of Tyrahn" found." The text displayed.

'Then why can't I shake this?'

"Scan for the Teapot of-"

"Nya?"

Nya looked away from the screen despite the "error due to incomplete search term" display covering the screen to see Zane in the doorway of the bridge, only to be filled with relief when he was titanium rather than rusty.

"Hey, Zane," she greeted as she cleared the incomplete search request error and started to clear out her scans, "I was just doing some research on-"

"The Teapot of Tyrahn?" Zane supplied, looking up at the screen as she clicked the button to clear the scan history, making her blood go cold.

"How do you know what that is?"

"It's a historical artifact that hasn't been seen in two hundred years. It would be more strange if I was unaware of its existence," Zane explained before raising an eyebrow at her, "although, it would also be odd if I didn't ask what caused your sudden interest in finding it."

'So I can prevent it from ending up in the wrong hands, so I don't have to feel like my ribs are being crushed by the weight of poison seeping into my body ever again.'

"Just some research," she tried to shrug off his inquiry while walking away from the computer to make her escape, "we should probably go train-"

She was stopped by Zane's cold, titanium hand gently grasping her wrist.

"I am missing a period of time in my logs," he told her before she could pull away or protest at him holding her back from the doorway, "PIXAL thinks that it is a period of about a month and she is unable to restore it no matter how hard she tries."

'Because the timeline was erased to keep everyone, to keep me, from dying at Nadhakhan's hands.'

"I don't suppose you, as well as Jay, know what that is about," Zane continued, only stopping to release his grip on her wrist, "but I do not want to force you to confide in me."

"It's not that, it's…" she pulled in a shuddery breath that only made her realize just how terrified she was.

And not just of what would happen if Jay's wish was somehow undone, but the fear of losing her life had encompassed her in a tight chokehold that refused to release her.

Nya couldn't be sure why she made the following decision, whether it was because it was either to show Zane rather than tell him or just the impulse control that had skipped over her and Kai's entire bloodline.

"I'm…If you're okay with it, that is," she stopped to pull out the wire that was used for Zane's maintenance checks, "It's easier to upload the data, then to talk about it."

"I trust you."

"Okay, but if you could keep this between me and you-"

"Of course, but PIXAL will also have to know. She's in my head, after all."

Zane's smile and joking tone filled Nya with a humorous relief that made her giggle while she plugged the wire into the port on the side of Zane's head before walking over to the computer, this time manually accessing it.

Once she had access to his memory bank, she clicked "add new memory" which she and Zane had created after they returned from Chen's Island so she could fill in the gaps that his new memory bank had lost before she started typing.

She typed every detail she remembered; becoming public enemies, escaping prison, getting stranded, Jay getting taken hostage and hers and Jay's eventual escape; she debated internally for a moment about if she should add details about his father's lighthouse and about Echo, more importantly, if Echo even existed in the new timeline Jay had created.

But with how that event related to herself getting taken hostage and the new scar on her chest, she knew she had to, even if it hurt Zane or worse, hurt their friendship that she hadn't told him until now.

She hit the enter key and turned to see the scanning reflected in Zane's glowing blue eyes for a few moments before he finally met her gaze, the blank stare quickly morphing into deep sadness.

"I think you know why I didn't tell you now." Nya tried to smile while she removed the wire, even though she knew that it wasn't convincing.

She didn't realize just how unconvincing it was until she was pulled into a tight hug by the nindroid who only said one thing but that one thing still filled her with an immeasurable amount of relief.

"I do not blame you for keeping it from me."

…

Jay bit back a curse as he continued to fiddle with the long-abandoned ray gun in the dark, the object in question throwing sparks at his face.

"You stupid, piece of junk, just work." He muttered, waiting until the last ember fizzled out to stick his hands back into the mess of wires and machinery.

The lamp strapped to his forehead wasn't strong enough to illuminate the white scars on the back of his hands, let alone the inside of the weapon that he hadn't tinkered with since before Zane's sacrifice.

But even though his left eye refused to adjust to the darkness, he didn't dare turn the light on; the last thing he wanted was a lecture from anyone about why he was awake when he couldn't tell them why or worse, to wake up Nya, whose sleep schedule had become just as bad as his if not worse.

He would just wait until it was an acceptable hour to be awake and make himself an extra-strong espresso; being jittery throughout training was better than closing his eyes only to be shoved down deep into the nightmare that had been his reality just two weeks before.

Jay lifted the pliers away from the tangled mess and clamped his teeth around the bright red handles before grabbing the wire cutters and snipping right through the blue wire which protested in another round of quick sparks.

"Is that a gu-"

"Ahhh!" Jay screamed before the voice could finish its sentence, launching himself onto his feet and allowing his fists to fill with lightning that illuminated the room, only to light up his best friend's ghostly face.

"Sorry!" Cole shouted, covering his face in defense even though the lightning would easily pass right through him.

"Why are you sneaking up on people?!" Jay shouted as the blue fizzled out, "why aren't you asleep?!"

"I could ask you the same question since it's," Cole paused to look over at the clock on the wall, "three in the morning."

"Really?" Jay asked as he stood up, pulled the headlamp off and stretched his arms with what he hoped was a convincing yawn, "I must've lost track of time. I'll just head to bed-"

He was stopped by Cole's cold hand around his wrist, effectively stopping him in his attempt at a quick getaway.

"What is going on with you?" Jay tried to answer but was cut off by Cole adding onto his question, "What is going on with Nya? Everyone can see you two drifting away from us, and don't think you can lie to me, I know you too well."

"You saved up for this place? Bologna. Whenever money comes your way, you waste it on junk food and video games. What's really up, and don't think you can lie to me, I know you too well."

"Cole, I'm not…" Jay swallowed in order to try and find the words, to find the strength in him to tell him everything, but the only words that came out were, "I'm not ready."

"Jay-"

"The little canary can't find his voice."

"I can't tell you," Jay continued, wiping his arm over his eyes filling with tears while trying to block the mocking tone out of his mind, "I can't tell anyone."

"Why not?"

'Because I'm the reason all of you got hurt.' Jay wanted so desperately to just tell the truth, to let his best friend in, but his lips felt as if the sheet of metal that had been forced over his face in an effort to keep his last wish from being spoken was once again covering them.

"Fine, you don't have to tell me," Cole finally spoke up after pinching the bridge of his nose, his other hand still grasped around Jay's wrist, "but you do need to go to sleep, not just lay down, close your eyes and fake snore until you can keep fiddling with this gun thing."

'That might be the worst idea Cole has ever had, and this is the same guy who tried to make lava with Kai.'

"If you must know, it is a replica copy of Fritz Donnegan's ray gun, the one from Starfarer issue thirty-nine where he goes up against the Kryptamights-"

"Oh, First Master! Just go to bed!"

"Fine, fine!" Jay raised his hands in surrender which finally got Cole to let go of his wrist, "I'm going, I'm going," he let his hands drop only to put the prototype away in case it tried to spark in defiance again, "but you better do something outside of pummeling Kai's Sitar Legend high score into the ground."

"Goodnight, blue bell."

"Same to you, twinkle toes."

Even though he couldn't help himself from smiling when he heard Cole's echoey laugh, it quickly faded when he was hit with the realization that he actually had to go to sleep, in his bed, where the memories of losing everyone to the Djinn blade hovered over his head.

'It's just a couple of hours till sunrise exercise. You can last for a couple of hours.' Jay told himself as he climbed up the ladder and laid down on his pillow, allowing himself to take comfort in the sound of Kai's deep breathing, Zane's loud snoring and Lloyd's occasional shifting in his bed.

Sure, Cole was making rounds through The Bounty and Nya was sound asleep in her room, but this was as close to normal as Jay was going to get until the dreaded training in the morning so he grabbed Mr. Cuddleywhomp from the end of his bed and pulled himself onto his right side.

It wasn't long until his eyes fluttered closed and shut out the world around him, but the sleep he received was anything but the peace that he had hoped for.

"You only have one wish, Jay. What a dilemma," Nya was already growing cold in his grasp, too cold, cold only meant bad things, cold meant dea- "wish me mortal and she dies. Wish her well, and there is no stopping me!"

"You have to make your last wish. You're the only one who can stop him."

His heart was pounding by the time the alarm clock started ringing throughout the room.

Luckily for Jay, the topic remained untouched as he stood in front of all of them with the newly reconstructed battle bot standing behind him at the ready.

"This is the master remote, it controls every single aspect of the bot's infrastructure which means that this stays with me," he stopped to pull out the smaller yet just as advanced secondary remote, "this is the training remote, so you can change difficulty, weapons and speed. Who wants to test it first?"

Jay wasn't surprised to see Lloyd walk forward and slip the helmet over his head without even being asked; he had been assisting with the major improvements after he had been cautioned against diving headfirst back into his usual routine while recovering from Morro.

"Do you know what level-"

"Give me a challenge."

'Maybe I'm not the only one who couldn't sleep last night.' Jay thought to himself while taking in Lloyd's clenched jaw and strained voice.

But, he knew better than to press when that was the last thing he wanted for himself right now, so he grabbed the remote, hit the number seven and backed away to give Lloyd all the space he needed.

Jay knew he was supposed to be paying attention to both Lloyd's technique and the bot's adaptation but he was unable to focus when the ghostly palm pulled him away from the others.

"Cole, what-"

"Nya told me."

"She…" Jay swallowed back the bile that wanted to come out of his throat because 'she told Cole, she told Cole EVERYTHING'. He wasn't surprised when his fear came out in the form of a squeak, "she told you about-"

He couldn't finish his sentence before he was pulled into a bone-crushing hug which made the skin on his arms tingle in retaliation, but he ignored it and returned the hug as his tears made a light 'hiss' against the deepstone armor.

…

Nya hated how damp the storage building was.

She knew better to complain about it when it was keeping them hidden from Harumi, even if all of the clothes, first aid supplies and the perishables had been soaked through and the dampness only made the metal building colder than it was in the harsh fall wind.

It didn't help that it felt all too familiar to Misfortune's Keep.

It had been nearly two years since the timeline reversal and even though confiding in Cole and Zane had been beneficial for her to be able to begin to move on from those events, there were still things that would remind her on how tight that white dress had been despite the extra arms and how tight her throat had been as she tried to get her final words out.

Nya shook away the thoughts and bent down to pick up the drying first aid kit before making her way over to Lloyd.

Lloyd, who was sitting in the corner with his vision not fixated on any one thing as he rested his head against the wall and was more than likely thinking about the others.

Lloyd, who looked so much more like the nine year old in a black hoodie and less like the leader of the resistance.

She couldn't help but wonder if the ache in her chest was how Jay felt right after she had been taken, if he also knew the exact stab of pain from losing everyone he loved all too well.

"You're getting better at hand to hand." Nya tried to break through his silence as she gently pushed back a section of his hair to reveal the graze from the fight in Kryptarium Prison that still hadn't healed.

"My mom told you to tell me that?"

"No one told me to tell you that, and if you remember from my samurai days," she stopped to brush an alcohol wipe over the graze, swallowing back her guilt from the instant hiss of pain, "when it comes to talking to you, I am a shit liar."

Lloyd nodded but stayed quiet as she applied a new gauze pad over the graze and didn't fight back when she started to run her fingers over his collarbones, shoulders, and arms.

"How are your legs?" She asked after confirming that he had come out of the training with zero hairline fractures.

"Fine, you didn't snap any of my limbs," Lloyd insisted, still resting his head against the wall, "can I ask you a question?"

"I don't see why not," she insisted as she grabbed the fabric bandages before gesturing for him to take off his shirt so she could see if the broken ribs were still healing, "good distraction, right?"

"How'd you get that scar on your chest?"

Nya became rigid as her blood went cold.

"I don't wanna pry but I saw it earlier and I just…you don't have to answer if you don't want to."

"What, um…" She stopped to tear off the strip from the roll, making a mental note that she should tell Dareth to check the abandoned clinic again for supplies when he returned, "Is there a reason that you're asking?"

"Because you're all I have left of them and…" Lloyd stopped to swallow but Nya was unable to tell if that was from the pain of her taking off the old bandages that Jay had wrapped neatly around Lloyd's torso just a few days before or from what he said next, "I wanted to make sure it wasn't because of her."

Nya gently ran her hand over the purple and blue splotches that covered his left side, relief only hitting her when she saw that the least severe of the bruising was slowly but surely changing from blue to yellowish-green.

"No, it happened about two years ago, long before Harumi."

"Good," Lloyd nodded, his face visibly relaxing, "so, what fight did I miss then?"

"You didn't miss much. Sky pirates, Dijin wedding and a timeline reversal," she said quickly to avoid dwelling on it longer than she had to, "just another day in Ninjago."

"Would you believe me if I said that I was too tired to ask more questions?" Lloyd asked, wincing as she pulled the bandages firmly in order to make sure they were tight before securing them with a few strips of medical tape.

"Regardless, we should probably go again."

"But-" Lloyd started as he pulled his shirt back on, but Nya cut him off as she offered him her hand for support.

"Ninja never quit, right?"

"Unfortunately."

He put his hand in hers and let her pull him to his feet.

She tried not to remember the many times she had pulled Jay to his feet as they trained and he let her beat him, even if he insisted that he wasn't. It made the scar on her chest twinge with pain when she thought about him for too long.

So she pushed it down and held her fists up while speaking, "Then let's go again."

…

It was quiet in the monastery as Nya brushed the electric blue nail polish over Jay's fingernails.

It had taken quite a bit of filing for them to be the right shape after being in the First Realm, but sitting on her bedroom floor while the faint smell of nail polish hit his nose was comforting.

It meant he wasn't stuck in a foreign realm away and not knowing if she was okay and it also meant he wasn't trapped on Misfortune's Keep and fearing what would happen to her if he gave in to Nadhakhan's demands.

It made the Yin-Yang medallion weigh heavy in his pocket and his internal voice pressured him to "ask her now" but he ignored it; he knew that he could find a better time than while his nail polish was still wet.

"Did Master Wu tell you about the mural?" Nya spoke as she finished painting the nails on his right hand and gestured for him to put his left hand in hers.

He had missed dinner to pick up the medallion in the city and he wasn't that surprised that an announcement had been made in his absence. He shook his head "no".

"He said that he's hiring some monks to paint the "history of Ninjago" on the west side, individual murals of us stopping all those people over the years."

"Oh, that's cool." Jay nodded but he couldn't help but wonder if Nya had told Master Wu about the djinn.

"Lloyd's already calling it "the trauma wall", but Kai lectured him on it and now Cole's talking about finding him a therapist which I'm not totally against-"

"Did you tell Master Wu? About the…you know." Jay trailed off, knowing that part of him was still worried about saying the name aloud as if it would summon the dijin right to him.

"I don't think it's exactly an age appropriate story for a baby."

"Fair point."

"Do you…do you want him to know?"

"You told Lloyd, you told Zane and PIXAL and you had to tell Cole for me," Jay expressed as she let go of his left hand, "I just…if anyone should know, it should be Master Wu, just in case."

He didn't want to go into the "what ifs" right now, the two of them were both painfully aware of any bad possibility that could come from the events of the timeline reversal and this was their first date night inside the new monastery of spinjitzu. The last thing he wanted to do was taint it.

"He's probably still awake, if you want to tell him now," Nya sat back while putting away the dark blue nail polish and pulling out a dark red for herself, "it'll be easier if you don't wait until he's putting paint on the wall, but if you scuff your nails before I put the top coat on, Jay Walker, I swear to the first spinjitzu master himself-"

"I won't walk into the walls, promise."

"We both know you don't even believe that." she smiled before shooing him out the door with a wave of her hand.

It was only when he shut the sliding door, without denting the fresh polish, that he realized his mistake.

'Just tell Master Wu about everything that happened when you're too scared to even say names, like that isn't nearly impossible.'

"Baby steps, Jay. Baby steps," He whispered to himself as he started to walk through the dark halls of the monastery, "you can figure out what to say after you find him."

If anyone had heard him, they would know that he was trying to avoid thinking about his words as much as possible. Even he knew that he was avoiding thinking about it as he poked his head in the common areas that were completely dark for the night.

He grabbed his jacket that was hanging by the door and pushed his arms through the sleeves before walking into the courtyard that was only illuminated by the glow of the moon.

And sure enough, the figure of Master Wu that was shrouded in shadow due to the darkness was standing and staring at the west wall that would soon immortalize everything they had been through in the last few years.

"Master Wu?" Jay asked softly as to not startle him.

"Nya told you about the mural?"

"Yes, yes she did," Jay agreed as he moved forward to stand by Master Wu's side, "we were talking and…well, she said…I have something to tell you."

"Oh?"

"Do you remember when you sent us to investigate what Clouse was doing in Stixx? After he escaped the Cursed Realm?" Jay questioned, figuring that he should start with something he had no problems talking about, "but we missed him because we drew attention of the NInjago City news team and when we got back on The Bounty, Lloyd said that he was experiencing some really intense deja vu?"

"I seem to recall the news footage of you and Nya settling your differences and her using airjitzu, yes."

"I know why, Nya and I both do and we've told a few of the others, but we were talking and I told her that if anyone needed to know, it was you because if somehow it didn't work, you'd be able to help us figure it out. Wish magic is tricky and-"

"Jay," Master Wu's hand on his shoulder stopped his nervous ramble, "I know that you two reversed the timeline where Clouse released an evil djinn."

"Who told you?"

"I became very familiar with time travel long before Acronix hit me with the "time punch", and even before the four of you went back in time and destroyed my brother's megaweapon. When I saw that news footage, I felt the same feeling as Lloyd did, that I had seen this before."

"That doesn't explain how you know about…about him." Jay still couldn't say the name, it made his stomach turn and his tongue feel heavy.

"When my brother returned to help the elemental alliance, he told me very little about what he had seen and heard with Chen as his sensei. But he did tell me that Clouse had a very strong interest in dark magic which included the Teapot of Tyrahn, the same teapot that Captain Soto had famously trapped a djinn by the name of Nadhakhan inside of before marooning the rest of his crew in different realms."

Jay tried not to shudder at the name being said aloud, "so the First Spinjitzu Master used the realm crystal to help Soto?"

"Precisely. I was a teenager back then, so while my father didn't tell Garmadon or I much, I was very good at listening in on his private conversations," Wu's brief smile of fondness from the memory helped relax some of Jay's nervous energy, "would you and Nya like for the defeat of Nadakhan to be a part of the mural?"

"I don't know," Jay admitted, kicking at a loose pebble by his feet, "if no one remembers it, how is it as important as something like Zane's sacrifice, or the Iron Doom?"

"Regardless of whether or not the others remember it, it is still a part of our history. And given the nail polish on your hands, the fact you came out here to tell me at eleven at night and the yin-yang medallion in your pocket, I have a feeling that you and Nya are still finding significance in it."

The medallion weighed heavy in his pocket again, "how did you-"

"My nephew is very happy for you two, and terrible at keeping secrets from people who are not the subject of surprise."

Jay couldn't help but smile at the mental image of Lloyd excitedly telling Master Wu about what he had asked both Kai and Lloyd after returning from asking Nya' parents and telling his own, knowing that the green ninja was just as much Nya's brother as Kai was.

'If it wasn't for that stupid teapot, I wouldn't even be asking Nya to be my yang.'

"Yeah," Jay nodded in response to Wu's question, "It should be part of the mural."

"Very well. You should get back to your date night," Wu nodded, but when Jay started to make his way back inside, he added "and Jay?"

"Yes, Master Wu?"

"Congratulations."

…

Nya ran her fingers over the curves in the medallion, making notes of every little scratch in it; she had taken the gold half while the Oni were trying to break down the doors of the monastery and it had shined despite the lack of light in the sky.

Jay's words had been quick, but heartfelt and when Cole and Kai had yelled about his sense of timing, all he had responded with was "there may not be another time"; even though she had initially been confused, she knew that she was going to say yes as soon as he got down on one knee.

Just being pinned to her chest during the tornado of creation had scuffed it quite a bit, but Kai had taught her years ago how to get scratches out of metal with a scouring pad and once she made note of all of the marks, she was going to fix it.

'Two nights ago, I was telling Jay not to dent his nail polish,' Nya thought to herself when she caught sight of her chipped nails, 'now I'm working out the scratches in the medallion he bought for me.'

Nya knew it could have been way worse than a scratched-up medallion. Cole could have died, Lloyd did die even if it was only for a few seconds, her plan about the golden weapons and Lloyd's plan about the tornado of creation could have failed.

It was not lost on Nya that the biggest repercussions that she was feeling was having to smooth out the medallion and the monastery being slightly more drafty then usual.

It wasn't surprising to her that the others had all turned in early, leaving her alone in the dim lighting of the kitchen to repair her medallion; it was actually nice in a strange way, to be able to just focus on the repairs she was making.

She hadn't experienced that since she had been Samurai X.

She was brought out of her focus of running the scratches over the scouring pad to one of the bedroom doors opening and closing with a couple of creaks that indicated that the new hinges already needed oiling.

'That's tomorrow's project.' She told herself as she heard the footsteps approach her, looking up to see her brother heading towards the cups.

"How's Lloyd?" She asked, making sure she lined up the grooves correctly so she didn't scratch it more.

"He's not in too much pain, all things considered," Kai shrugged as he filled the cup with the filtered water in the fridge, "had to give him the "parents don't define us" talk again."

"So not great." Nya sighed as she put the medallion down to switch to a softer pad to finish polishing the sides.

Every single one of them with the exception of Jay, and she knew that he wouldn't be so lucky if Kai knew about his biological parents, had been on the receiving end of Kai's spiel about being separate from your parents.

Cole during their undercover work for the Ninjago Talent show, Zane when he questioned why his father hadn't removed his memory switch, Lloyd so many times whether it pertained to Misako or Garmadon and even her when she was so frustrated with her mom that it made her want to ignore every single text message and phone call that she received.

Kai had always been at the ready with his rare but wise words and a tight, comforting hug every single time.

"Yeah, but he's asleep now," Kai sat down beside her on the barstool with his glass of water, "can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Were you ever going to tell me?"

"I'm not following." Nya raised her eyebrow as she reexamined the medallion to see that her work had been a success before pinning it back onto her gi, all while a small part of her brain hoped that her brother was referring to something that didn't involve sky pirates.

"About the mural."

"What about it?"

"Oh my-First Master. The one of you and Jay and that four armed genie thing with the lamp! Were you ever going to tell me, Nya?"

'No getting out of it now.'

"Fine, fine," Nya sighed as she rested her elbow on the counter so she was looking directly at her brother's amber colored eyes, the Smith family anger bubbling in her chest, "what do you want me to tell you? About the sky pirates? About being public enemies and being put in Kryptarium? About me dying in Jay's arms? Or just about the evil djinn who tried to kill Jay and tried to force me into being his wife?"

Kai went deathly silent as he looked down at the tiled floor but as soon as she finished speaking, she couldn't help but instantly regret the tone that she had used against her brother.

She hadn't gone into details since she had first typed everything out into Zane's database, she had never recounted the details out loud since they had happened. It made the scar on her chest ache when she found it in herself to look back at Kai's tear filled eyes.

"I-I'm sorry," tears started involuntarily running down her cheeks as well, "everyone else knows and-"

She was cut off by the tightest hug Kai had ever given her, one hand in her hair and the other resting on her upper back, she instantly returned the pressure with her hands wrapped tightly around his torso.

"I shouldn't have acted like that." Nya spoke after a few moments, still engulfed in the hug.

"I shouldn't have pushed. You went to the others in your own time, right?"

"Kind of," Nya nodded against Kai's shoulder, "Cole came to me, but that was because he was worried about Jay and Lloyd asked, but I was trying to distract him and we thought you guys were dead-omph." She was cut off again by Kai squeezing her tighter.

"I love you, Nya."

"I don't think you've told me that in a long time."

Kai finally let go and wiped his face on his sleeve, "me either, I didn't think I needed to say it. But after today I just…I feel like I should let everyone know that, especially you."

Nya nodded, her brother's shout of "we have to go back" as a reaction to Cole's fall and his desperate plea of "buddy, wake up" after they had pulled Lloyd out from under the rubble would forever live in her mind, just like the scarring memories of what she and Jay had experienced.

"I love you too, Kai."

"I know you do," Kai grinned with a hint of cockiness in his voice which made Nya roll her eyes, "I just wanted to make sure that if you wanted to talk to me about it, you knew that you could."

"I know."

"Good, also that if that fucker ever tries to mess with you or Jay again, I'll fist fight him."

Nya chuckled as she hugged him again, tucking her chin against his shoulder as she whispered in his ear, "get in line, Jay and I call first dibs."

#lego ninjago #ninjago #whump #angst #my writing #fic #lloyd garmadon #jay walker #jaya #ninjago nya #ninjago kai #ninjago cole #master wu #ninjago zane #ninjago pixal #trauma #post skybound #the others find out about skybound

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asnowfern · 11 months

Text

Weightless

A/N: A little drabble for @elucienweekofficial, day seven prompt AU!

Inspiration: Weightless by Layla

"You're expected at the reception in thirty minutes, Lady Nolan," the unassuming housekeeper informed Elain.

Elain bit her tongue to resist the urge to lash out. Don't call me that, I'm not Lady Nolan. The words beckoned to her, mewled at her cloyingly.

No, she would not be Elain Nolan for another hour. So no matter how trivial or childish it seemed, she was still Elain Archeron.

Glancing back at her reflection, the stone in her stomach already weighing her down sank to the bottom of the ocean. Dressed in this stuffy white gown here, waiting to walk down the aisle with anyone but him was wrong. It was all wrong.

Not that it mattered to Mrs Archeron who was so pleased with the match that all protests from Elain fell to deaf ears. Afterall, her daughter was marrying a Lord. Everything was going according to plan.

In a spurt of rebellion and frustration, Elain yanked on the chain of diamond circling her neck and broke the cache. She watched with petty satisfaction as the Archeron jewels clanked uselessly against the ground.

"Pity, we could have pawned that."

The words traversed through the space and headed straight for the organ in her chest, popping it like a balloon.

Elain whipped her head around, a lump forming in her throat. He hung from the tree branch right outside her window with casual confidence. Still wearing his military uniform, his auburn hair was pulled back neatly into a tight bun which further accentuated his sharp jawline. His bronze skin had darkened under the hot sun of Central Asia while his left eye was covered under white wrappings edged with deep lacerations.

"Lucien," she whispered, still hardly believing her eyes. She snapped out of the shock when he swung from the tree branch, launching herself into his arms the instant his feet landed on the hardwood floors'. Breathing in the familiar woodsy scent of cinnamon and honey, Elain felt the weight that had been dragging her down the moment Greysen proposed lifted.

"You made it," she sobbed into his chest, fisting the rough and stiff material of his military dress shirt, "Y-you were almost too late."

Lucien's arms tightened around her. Despite the two years separation, her soft form still melted into every muscular plane. They still fit like puzzle pieces.

"I'm sorry, my last tour got… delayed." The apology rumbled through the air.

Elain looked up, her warm brown eyes round with worry and concern. She raised a hand, hovering over his eye, "Your eye…"

Warmth enveloped her hand and lightly pressed it against the chiselled face she missed so dearly. "Got caught by a stray shrapnel. Do you like the one-eyed pirate look?"

Nerves tinged the playful words. Staring deep into russet eyes, she heard his true question - do you still want me broken and incomplete?

Elain stood on tiptoes, her feet strained to bring her lips to the injury, brushing them across the white bandages.

"You came back to me, that's all that matters."

Lucien lets out a shuddering breath as his lips curved into a devastating smile.

"I have the car ready. If we're truly doing this," his eyes dotted down to her dress. A laced vintage piece, passed down through generations by the Nolan's. An objectively beautiful dress that ensnared her like a viper with its cutting corset and heavy history.

"Get me out of here, Lucien." She pleaded.

They made quick work of the dress, unlaced and tossed aside on the bed. She shrugged on her simple yellow gingham dress and scribbled a note to her family.

Lucien deftly climbed back out to stand on the thick tree branch and held one arm out to her. With a lightened heart, she took it and stepped out into her freedom.

They sped down the highway, hair blown back messily by the wind which whistled in their ears. Elain turned to look at her true fiance, her true love match, her heart pounding appreciatively at how the golden sunlight illuminated his skin and cast gentle shadows on the sculpted contours. A quirk of the edge of his mouth told her that he'd spotted her staring.

Unable to resist, she twisted over and kissed the edge of his mouth. A large calloused hand covered hers, his thumb running sensual circles in promise for more to come.

"We will have the rest of our lives for this," he promised.

Her hand closed around his, squeezing it in response.

"Together," she swore.

"Together," he agreed.

Because together, they're weightless. Together, they're invincible.

#elucienweek2023 #elucien #elucien drabble

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onelonelystory · 1 month

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I love fashion and fashion history so much and every year I get so frustrated with the bullshit argument that a day dedicated to the craft and observing its most intricate and evolving works is nothing more than a display of opulence and is somehow more worthy of shame than any other art gallery or showcase but right now more than like ever before I feel like screaming look outside!! look outside!!!!! the protesters have had to reroute for event security!!!! there are police outside right now arresting protesters trying to rally outside the gala! look outside! the met’s relationship with the war has been heinous. why aren’t we talking about it, why haven’t we been talking about it, in the lead up to tonight. how has it escaped the narrative. we cannot consume art divorced from the context it exists within look outside. the death toll in rafah from the assault tonight is starting to be reported. in pieces, incomplete, because there are not enough ways to follow these people through the atrocities they endure, unless someone survives or someone finds them. there are protestors at the doors of the met gala tonight please look outside.

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myreia · 4 months

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DIVERGENCE OF THE HEART

CHAPTER NINE: NASCENCY

Chapter Rating: Explicit Characters: Aureia Malathar (WoL), Aymeric de Borel, Thancred Waters, Hilda Ware Pairings: Aureia/Aymeric, Aureia/Thancred, Thancred/Hilda Chapter Words: 6,520 Notes: Set during the Heavensward patches. This chapter contains explicit sexual content. Summary: Aureia Malathar may have made a name for herself in Ishgard, but her deeds come with a hefty personal toll. Despite her victories at the Grand Melee she has never felt more unsure of herself. Her relationship with Thancred—the person she thought knew her the best—is strained, yet she cannot abandon him. Aymeric is falling for her harder with each passing day, yet she cannot bring herself to accept it. All may be fair in love and war, but at least war is predictable. Love on the other hand… Chapters: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 Read on AO3

Aymeric’s chambers are dark, the lights long extinguished. Shafts of blue-grey light filter in from the windows, freezing rain lashing against the panes. The storm is persistent. Perhaps it will break in the morning, once it has worn itself out.

Aureia kisses him, too distracted to think much of the prickle of cold air against her bare skin. She grips his shoulders, gripping him tight, jostled by his steady pace. Giddiness bubbles in her heart and she can’t quite keep herself from laughing. With anyone else she would protest being carried, but with him it feels right. She is vulnerable in his arms in a way she has never been with anyone.

The feeling is intoxicating.

“A moment, if you would,” he murmurs against her lips.

She smiles. “I suppose I can allow that.”

A low, husky sound rumbles in his throat. He sets her down gently, her feet touching down on cool floor. She clutches the blanket to her chest and patters across it, passing from polished wood to thick carpet as her eyes adjust to the dim light. His chambers are large, comfortable yet organized. Judging from the neatness, either he doesn’t spend much time here or he is insistent on keeping things tidy.

Pop.

Aureia flinches, her heart leaping into her throat, and glances over her shoulder. Aymeric’s face glows in the dark, illuminated by the soft glow of a struck match. He lights the candelabra on the bureau and blows the match out, waving away the trail of smoke. Picking it up, he calmly crosses the room and attends to the remaining candles, flooding the chambers with light one by one.

She turns, taking in her surroundings. A large bed below arching windows. A couch and a couple of large armchairs by the hearth. A worn writing desk stained with ink and scratched with marks from years of use. Bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes, some as thin as a broadsheet, others as thick as a Sharlayan tome. Their spines are not stamped with titles and their pages are marked with pieces of paper. If she had to guess, these aren’t books but rather journals—a whole history of thoughts and observations, recorded over the years.

Her heart pounds. Has he written about her?

“There,” he says, kneeling by the hearth. A fire roars to life, crackling pleasantly. “As I said, only a moment.”

He looks up, staring her with a thoroughly smitten look. She arches an eyebrow and return his gaze, her fingers toying with the blanket as they rest against her collarbone. It clings to her body, the soft blue fabric pooling at her feet like the train of a gown. She shivers, her exposed back prickling with goosepimples.

“Are you cold?” he asks, rising to his feet. He looks strangely incomplete, standing before her in his trousers and boots and nothing else. “Forgive me that I did not think to light it sooner. This manor’s chambers are too drafty for their own good—”

She shakes her head, a smile on her lips. “I’m not bothered,” she says.

He hangs his head and laughs, grinning sheepishly. Scratching the back of his neck, he runs a hand through his dark hair and brushes it off his forehead. “Another moment, if you would, Aureia,” he asks. “Please.”

Her heart thrums and a warm, affectionate blush rushes across her cheeks. She has never seen him so unsure of himself. He projects such confidence in his daily life that she never imagined he could be self-conscious. And, of course, there was their moment just now. The way he kissed her on the floor of his study. That certainly was not the act of a self-conscious man.

Perhaps this is a reminder that people—everyone—are more complex and contradictory than most give them credit. There is an ebb and flow. And if she has learned anything tonight, it is that there is a difference between Aymeric the Lord Commander and Aymeric the man.

She nods. “Take all the time you need,” she says gently.

He smiles, grateful. She wraps the blanket around herself, tucking it securely beneath her armpits, watching as he paces across the room. Returning to the bureau, he turns his back on her and undresses methodically, removing his boots and trousers with disciplined movements.

Aureia stiffens, a fist pressed to her chest. Two very different nations, two very different wars. But she knows what it is like to strip bare in the army barracks, your naked body just another among hundreds. There is no time for personal boundaries when efficacy is in need.

Aymeric pauses, silent, and rests his hands against the top of the bureau. Firelight glows against his pale skin, dancing across the taught muscles of his lower back. She can sense his hesitance, as if he is fighting with himself. She does not know why for certain, but thinking on it now, she can hazard a guess. He told her he has shared himself with only one other. A boy, long ago. She knows too well how relationships between comrades-in-arms play out. How they so often end.

Perhaps this is as new to him as it is to her.

She swallows a lump in her throat. It was because of him that she could admit to her own personal anxieties tonight. But she never stopped to wonder whether he would have his own.

“Aymeric?” she asks softly. “Are you—”

“Well,” he interrupts. “I am… well. Simply lost in thought.” He inhales a deep breath and pulls the top drawer open. He withdraws a small bottle and pauses, staring at it with a strange look on his face. He sets it aside and continues rummaging, slipping something small into his hand, clasping it tight. “Aureia, I must ask… May I be frank?”

She takes a step towards him, the blanket rustling around her. “You don’t have to ask permission.”

“I am… It is a question of courtesy. I would never wish for you to think otherwise.”

“Aymeric, you are the politest person I know. Frankly, I don’t think you have an impolite bone in your body and I wonder whether it would do you some good.”

He chuckles and hangs his head. “You are right, of course. Nevertheless…” Trailing off, he glances over his shoulder and meets her eyes. “I wish to make love to you tonight. Fully and ardently, have no doubt of that. Would that I could allow us to be swept away in the passion of the night, but there is a matter I must needs address. It would not sit well to leave it undiscussed.”

She tilts her head, confused. “What is it?”

“You are a mage. Have you much experience in the art of healing? The astrologians have methods, I have heard, to protect against such things—”

“I’m not an astrologian. Aymeric, what are you talking about?”

He pauses. “I am a bastard. This you know. I may love you, Aureia, but I will not risk fathering a bastard of my own.”

“Oh…” The sound escapes her lips, shaky and uncertain. It is strange to hear this now, confirmation of what she has suspected intertwined with a grave subject. He loves her. Of course he does. But there are very real concerns that come with it.

She hadn’t considered this would be a fear of his. She hadn’t considered it at all. Naïve, perhaps, but she hadn’t though she would need them anytime soon. Foolish. She has no desire to be pregnant, to have children. She should have thought of this sooner.

“I… I know of certain spells, but I have never cast them. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

The slightest bow of his head and he looks away. The distance between them stretches out before her, feeling far farther than it should be. She wonders whether she should go to him, whether seeing him face to face would ease the awkward rawness of this conversation. Or would he prefer she keep her distance all together?

She waits for him to speak, but there is nothing but silence. From this angle she can see nothing but his bare back; he leans against the bureau, contemplative and lost in thought, the passionate urgency that overtook him before all but vanished. Biting her lower lip, she tugs the loosening blanket and pulls it up, thinking through her next words carefully. “But I can learn,” she continues. “We can wait for this. We don’t have to do anything tonight. Being with you now is more than enough for me—”

“I wish to wholeheartedly. Painfully so. Do you?”

Her heart flutters, her stomach in knots. What she mistook for a loss of passion is clearly more than that. The memory of his mouth on her lingers—not simply the sensation of it, but the joy that overcame him as he brought her to rapture. He wants to make love to her. She wants to see him happy.

“Yes,” she breathes. “You have no idea how much.”

He exhales a long breath, collecting himself, and turns his head to look at her. “By the Fury…” Relief spreads across his face. “I worried that my words may have pushed you away.”

“I’m glad you told me. Thank you.”

“I have my means.” He opens his palm, showing her the small flask within. “Alchemy may not be as reliable as magicks, but I am certain it will prevent that which I fear. Or so Artoirel has assured me.”

Somehow it comes as no surprise that he has had this discussion with the Fortemps heir. One a bastard, the other whose incomparable brother was illegitimate. Illegitimacy has shaped both their lives, albeit in different ways. Of course they would have voiced their concerns. “I would trust his word,” she says. “And the word of your alchemist.”

He smiles, grateful for her reassurance, and downs a dose of the tonic. Returning the flask to the drawer, he pushes it shut and glances over his shoulder, his gaze lingering on her. “I have not said it yet tonight,” he says. “But by the Fury are you beautiful.”

Aureia raises an eyebrow and paces across the floor, the blanket rippling behind her. “Oh?” she asks lightly, raising her head.

He smiles and turns around, back leant against the bureau, elbows resting against its undecorated surface. He glows in the firelight, the flickering flames bringing a flush to his skin, the scars dulled by the warmth. He looks so lanky and unassuming, unfurled that way. Far too delicate for Ishgardian standards, but beautiful in his own right.

Her gaze wanders over his nakedness, taking him in. All of him.

“If you do not believe me, I will proclaim it again—”

She laughs and steps into him, pressing herself to him as she rises up on her tiptoes.

“—and again and again—”

She throws her arms around his neck and pulls him down, kissing him deeply. He seizes her face in his hands and leans into it, swaying slightly as she grips him tight. The blanket slips loose and falls from her body, pooling at their feet. Neither of them pay it any heed.

Aymeric cradles her, a hand on her lower back, the other at her breast. His hips roll against hers and she gasps at the pressure, hooking one leg around him. Desperate not to break the kiss, he seizes her by the waist, his hands digging into her ass, and lifts her up. She shifts her weight, balancing carefully, and grips him tight. Her fingers brush his collarbone, nails digging into his shoulders as she grinds rhythmically against his hardening cock.

The feel of her bare flesh against his makes her heart race. This is different from before, when there was clothing—however minimal—between them. He groans softly, the sound muffled in their kiss, and the rigid pressure rocking pleasurably against her. Heat pools between her legs as she imagines him moving inside her, excitement and nervous anticipation fluttering in her chest.

For something she once held in trivial regard, something—perhaps in a desperate attempt to comfort herself—she herself mocked, the sudden importance of the moment hits her like a thunderbolt. A shock to the system, an understanding of herself she once would have denied. The physical desire for him is strong, exciting yet foreign, aching like a fresh bruise she cannot keep herself from prodding.

And it terrifies her. Perhaps it is the fear that it will not last, that this feeling is fleeting and will be gone come morning. Perhaps it is the fear that it is simply fabricated, a bogus emotion that she has tricked herself into believing. Perhaps it is the fear that she fed herself a lie for too many years, that she was never as broken as she believed herself to be.

Aymeric gives her a deep, lasting kiss, his lips tugging at hers as he draws away. He is breathless, panting from the fervor of kissing her and the effort of carrying her. His nose brushes her cheek and nuzzles her gently, trailing open kisses across her jaw and neck. When he sucks at the tender flesh at the base of her throat, her breath catches and she swallows a moan, trembling with sensation. Her hips buck, moving rapidly now as she grinds against his cock. She is caught with indecision, torn between the desire to feel him inside her and the desire to put her hands on him and discover all the secret spots that drive him wild.

It is the first that she wants, she realizes with surprise—and badly. The second will come with time. But the first… She doesn’t know why it is important to her, but she knows that it is. He has already made her come tonight. Her own experiments—conducted out of boredom or curiosity or during the sporadic times when she felt like indulging her fantasies—cannot compare. She can satisfy herself, sure, but with him… Someone she trusts. Someone who is keen to know her better than she knows herself…

It is different than doing it alone.

Only moments ago in the study, she would have been happily content with their entanglement on the floor. But now she knows what she wants. He gave her something precious. She would give it back. She must return the favour tonight.

It’s the natural progression for a pair like them, isn’t it? The culmination of sex. Or maybe she’s had the idea planted in her head from years of listening to friends’ escapades, reinforced by those damn romance chapbooks. Two people joined together, moving as one.

Aureia trembles, her dark hair falling around her ears, brushing her collarbone. She puts her hands to either side of his face and pulls him to her, capturing his mouth with hers. He groans as her tongue slips inside his mouth, her breasts pressing against his chest. Her hands rake through his hair, tugging roughly.

“Put me down,” she murmurs urgently. “Bed, now—”

“Aye, bed—” The words are barely recognizable through his breathless gasps. He cannot stop kissing her. “‘Tis here—”

His arm slips across her back and he lets go, dropping her to the mattress. The height is greater than she expects and her stomach drops. She whoops in surprise and throws her head back, startled laughter bubbling out of her in a rush. He chuckles and grins, following up quickly with an open kiss. Her legs spread, a foot rubbing idly against the edge of the bed, making room as he lays on top of her. His weight presses into her and he runs his fingers through her hair, brushing it back from her forehead. He kisses her lips, her cheek, her throat, her breasts, eager to explore. His tongue runs across her nipple, circling it, and tugs it into his mouth. Her neck arches and she moans, wriggling beneath him from the sensation. Her hips rock, thrusting upwards, and her cunt brushes against his erect cock.

His tongue lavishes her breast, spurned on by the sounds escaping her lips. He runs a hand across her thigh, his touch feather-light, stroking the inside. She shakes, heat coursing in her veins, anticipation coiling deep inside her. He dips a hand between her thighs, rumbling at the heated slickness he finds there—and stiffens. She can sense his hesitation, wondering how best to touch her. She reaches between them and takes his hand, pressing his fingers to the sensitive nub, and murmurs her wish.

He strokes, unpracticed, but confident from her direction, and lavishes her breast with his tongue. Pleasure blooms and she falls back, eyes closed, sinking into the soft covers. She indulges herself for a few moments of bliss, gripping the covers in her fists and twisting them between her. His fingers draw a rougher kind of desire than his tongue, slow and steady—but indulge too long and he may very well push her over the brink.

Her stomach tenses, core muscles tightening as she dances along the edge. Opening her eyes, she shoves her hands into the mattress and pushes herself up. He raises his head and she kisses him roughly, her lips crashing against his, and rakes her hands down his back. The scars are rough beneath her finger pads.

He leans into her, chasing her kiss. His cock nudges her cunt. She shakes at the touch, the anticipation driving her mad.

“I want you inside me now,” she says, throat raw and breath ragged.

“Now?”

“Now.”

He pauses, drawing back. His weight on her vanishes, cold air rushing over her body, and she tilts her head in confusion. He reaches behind him, fingers scrabbling for the small bottle on the bureau, and opens it. He pours the contents into his palm, silky oil shining on his skin, and returns to her. He kisses her, lightly, chastely, his hand fumbling between them. She gasps, lips moving against his, as he massages the oil into her. She is impossibly slick now, pleasure coiling tight.

She murmurs his name, the syllables lost in their kiss. He takes his cock and guides the tip to her entrance, pushing carefully.

The pressure sears. Her stomach tightens, her breath caught in her throat. Pain. A kind she has never felt, one she cannot comprehend. One she does not want to acknowledge.

It is not supposed to hurt, is it?

Is it?

She knows what others have said in passing, a collection of mismatched tales from friends about embarrassing first times and awkward first nights, recounted after there has been too much to drink. Pain if you don’t relax, pleasure if you do. A pinch here, nothing bothersome. Use oils to ease into it. The first time is the worst.

Hilda never had an issue, or so she said. She shrugged indifferently when she mentioned it and downed another pint.

Aureia exhales a breath. This isn’t pain she feels. This is… discomfort. Expected. It will pass soon.

He pushes further. She sucks in a breath, biting the inside of her lip, desperate to control her expression. The sear worsens, a bright, burning pain that can only remind her of her flesh on fire. The night in the Praetorium. Lahabrea in Thancred’s body, the sheer incensed power of his magicks melting her clothing into her back, branding her skin—

She closes her mind. Don’t think of that, don’t think of that.

The stretch is unbearable. Burning, cutting, ripping, as if she is being torn open. She cries out and wraps her arms around Aymeric’s neck, pressing her forehead into his shoulder. “I can’t,” she whimpers. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”

At once the stretch is gone and the fire vanishes, though an echo of it remains. Throbbing. Stinging. She scrunches her face, tears panging in her eyes, and clutches desperately at him. Any sense of pleasure is long gone.

“Aureia,” he says gently, confused and concerned. “What is it? What is wrong?”

“I can’t, I can’t, I fucking can’t—”

The bedframe creaks and the mattress sinks, dipping with his weight. Aymeric climbs onto the bed and pulls her into his arms, laying down on the cushions. She curls into him, head buries into the crook of his neck, a hand thrown across his chest, fingernails digging into his shoulder. She trembles, shaking, her throat an awful twisted mess. It would be easier if she could cry—she can live with the embarrassment—but the tears refuse to fall.

He rests a hand on her back, his touch warm. Gentle. Patient. “Did I hurt you?” he asks. “I did not think… I did not know—”

“It wasn’t you.”

He pauses. “Aureia—”

“It’s me. Just another bloody thing about me that can’t be normal.”

Broken. Still. What a great joke from the gods—if it wasn’t her understanding of attraction that was fucked up, then something else had to be.

She exhales a trembling breath and raises her head, wiping useless tears from her eyes. The pain has faded to frustration. To anger. Perhaps it’s her own damn fault, building this moment up in her mind. Of course nothing would come of it. Who was she to expect a moment of blissful happiness?

He falls silent. It is the first time she has seen him truly speechless.

Just say something, Aymeric. Please.

But he does not. Her gut twists, the heat of shame coursing through her. Abruptly, she sits up and swings her legs over the edge of the bed, determined to save herself from her embarrassment.

He catches her arm, his fingers resting gently on her wrist. Her heart leaps into her throat. Shaking, she turns her head and meets his gaze.

Aymeric returns it, steady and resolved. “I said I wished for nothing other than you in my bed tonight,” he says. “Do not go. Please. Stay with me tonight.”

“But…” Her words fail her. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“For… oh gods, fuck.” She sinks back on the bed. The grand four posters stretch high above her, a canopy of blue and gold dark in the candlelight. “I want this. I want this with you. And I can’t do it. I don’t know why.”

He pauses, drawing his knees up into his chest, his back to the headboard. “I wish for it, too,” he says finally. “But that it did not happen is not some great failure on either of our parts. And certainly not on yours. I would not be such a fool as to place so much importance on a single intimate act, though assuredly I have heard otherwise from certain… members of aristocratic society. Those who would pale at the mere mention of alchemical tonics and astrologic magicks in the same breath they mock the serving maid taken advantage of by her lord.”

She rolls onto her side and stares up at him. “I’m sorry.”

“And again I would ask—what for? I am in love with you. There are countless ways to make that love known, ones that would not see you hurt. I would rather lavish you with my fingers and tongue a hundred times than cause you pain. I have heard the braggarts in the barracks, the dastards in the halls, Temple Knights and dragoons both. I have known too many uncharitable men who would put their pleasure above all else and I deem it abhorrent. I will not strive to be one of them.”

She pauses. “But you…”

Aymeric smiles and holds out a hand. She sits up and takes it cautiously, allowing him to pull her into an embrace. She settles next to him, head on his shoulder, her legs curled beneath her. Though she is sore and aching and still sensitive from her near climax, she feels content. Happy. There is a warmth in her belly like a hearth’s fire, burning slow and strong.

He wraps an arm protectively around her. “This is but one night,” he says softly, planting a kiss to her forehead. “The first of many. If this is important to you we shall pursue it, but I do not wish to do so in haste. There is nothing but time ahead of us.”

She threads her fingers with his and leans into him. He is firm and soft and solid, an unwavering presence that she so desperately needs. Sitting here with him, in his chambers, on his bed… It’s such a far cry from the cold alley and its lantern light, pressed roughly between Thancred and a stone hewn wall. A reminder that she is safe with him. That she is better with him. With Aymeric.

She doesn’t know if she could open herself to anyone else.

Aureia sighs and curls up against him, listening the steady rhythm of his heart, the gentle rise of their breath. Outside, rain beats against the windows, drowning out the musical plink of hail hitting the rooftops. Inside, the hearth crackles merrily, chasing away the cold. She stares into the flames, watching the fire dance across the coals in an array of gold and oranges and reds.

“Not the night you were expecting, was it?” she asks after a moment.

A fond chuckle rumbles in the back of his throat. “I expected to spend a full night drafting missives,” he replies. “I imagined it would go like so: at a bell past midnight, Marcel would enter with a fresh pot of tea and depart, doing his best to hold his tongue. At three bells past, my hand would ache and seize. At dawn, Lucia would find me bent over my desk half-asleep and gently scold me for neglecting my well-being. Perhaps even remind me that I am and continue to be sorely dreadful at delegation.”

“Does that happen often?” Her fingers toy with his hand, brushing his palm and wrist.

“More oft than it should.” His kisses the top of her head. “To be perfectly frank, the missives can wait for tomorrow morn. I much prefer this evening to the one I had planned.”

She smiles. “Well, I am very glad that Marcel didn’t try to deliver you that pot of tea. Or he may have witnessed something he would rather not.”

He laughs. “He may be stubborn and set in his ways, but he is keenly observant and respectful in his own way. I suspect he will have words with the staff to stamp out any rumours before they begin.”

Her heart sinks. This is the last thing she wants to think about. “I suppose there will be talk,” she says wearily. “I wish there wouldn’t be—”

“I trust my staff to keep our confidence. The Borel name has not been above scandal and they have some practice keeping their lord’s secrets. Their lips will be sealed.”

She nods, though it does nothing to ease her doubts. He speaks with such certainty that she does not want to argue with him. “Is it selfish of me?” she asks after a moment. She rests a hand against his chest and traces idle circles across his skin. “I don’t want anyone to know about this. About us. Not yet.”

“To want for privacy is not a selfish act.”

“I know, but still—”

“Believe me, Aureia, if there is one thing I have learned from all my years in the public eye, it is that you do not owe anyone the secrets you keep behind doors. That part of you is precious. The public can and will think what they want of you, but you are not obligated to share every last part of yourself.”

She raises her head and meets his eyes, affection blooming in her heart. How does he understand her so well? No matter how deeply she cares for her fellow Scions, none of them could properly conceive the crushing weight on her shoulders as her notoriety grew. The expectations, the assumptions, the rumours. Far less important than hunting primals and Ascian plots.

And so she kisses him. Softly, gently, compelled to show him how much he means to her. He sighs huskily as she deepens the kiss, entranced and enchanted by her touch. Her hands wander across the planes of his chest, mindful of the scars, and an idea takes hold.

“Aymeric,” she murmurs. “There’s still something I want to do. If you’re willing.”

He nuzzles her cheek, his hands stroking her hair. “What is it that you wish?”

“I want to touch you. I want to give you what you gave me tonight.”

He pauses. He knows what she has asked. “There is no need. Giving you pleasure was more than enough to satisfy me, there is no favour to return—”

“I want to.”

Aymeric meets her eyes. He gazes at her softly for a moment, the depths of his affection laid bare, and brushes a lock of hair behind her ear. His fingers brush the delicate point. “Then yes,” he says.

A burst of happiness bubbles in her chest. She grins and kisses him, trailing a hand down his chest. Breath hitches in his throat as she slips her hand between his thighs and along the length of his cock. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says with a laugh, still entangled in the kiss. She feels no shame nor embarrassment in admitting it. Not with him. She has imagined such things before, but touching another person cannot compare.

His arm wraps around her, holding her tight. “I… I can show you,” he says, breathless already. He closes his eyes, swallowing a grunt of pleasure. “But this is… ‘tis good… ‘tis…”

She strokes him, coaxing a moan from his lips. She can feel him shaking. His hand slides across her back, fingers scraping inadvertently against her scars, but the sensation hardly bothers her. She is too captivated by him to think now. The small trembles as his pleasure builds, the stuttering gasps, the way her name falls voicelessly from his lips… To see him undone by her touch makes her heart flutter.

He groans, dark hair falling damply across his forehead, and catches her hand, pulling it away. She pauses, watching as he spreads the damp wetness from his tip across his shaft and strokes himself.

“Like so,” he murmurs, his voice raw as he tugs and pulls. “‘Tis good… The oil… if you can…”

She has never heard him explain anything in so few words. Determined to follow through, she gives him an aching kiss and pulls away. Seizing the open bottle from the bureau, she coats her fingers and palms in it and returns to the bed, the mattress creaking beneath her weight as she carefully straddles him. He lets go as she takes his cock and drags her hand across it, following his example. He groans, gasping for breath, and leans into her, burying his head in her shoulder. She grins with delight.

She strokes faster now. His hips move, his cock throbbing in her hand. He locks eyes with her and she cannot look away. The way he stares at her—captivated and enraptured, wholly hypnotized by their shared rhythm. For as long as she has known him, he has kept himself tightly controlled, every expression he makes, every word he speaks precise and exact. She can count on one hand the number of times he has let the façade slip, choosing passion over reason.

This moment cannot compare. This moment is beyond. His love for her is ardent, infectious, burning bright. There is nothing in the world now save for her and him. Time slows and they are hanging in the balance together, all worries and concerns and pressures bled away.

A guttural moan rips from his throat.

He seizes her face in his hands, crushing his lips to hers. She kisses him back with delirious yearning and her hand does not stop moving. He cries out, the sound muffled in their kiss, and she pulls him through his climax, letting him spend himself in her hand.

He collapses against her shoulder, trembling and shaking, his breath coming in uneven gasps. She holds him close, stroking her fingers through his hair, and extends her slick hand away from them, careful not to touch the covers. They made more of a mess than she expected.

Aymeric exhales a sigh, stirring against her shoulder. “My thanks,” he says quietly. “My love.”

She kisses his brow. “Yes,” she breathes. “Do you have any idea how happy this has made me?”

He chuckles. With one last kiss, he shifts his weight and she rolls off him, allowing him to rise from the bed. He strides to the bureau and rummages through it, pulling out an old shirt. He cleans himself off and sits on the edge of the mattress, taking her forearm gently in one hand. She watches, startled, as he wipes her hand. After everything they have done tonight, this single gesture is strangely one of the most intimate.

They are silent for a moment, sitting side-by-side with their knees knocking against each other. Aureia leans her head against his shoulder and gazes across the room. The pervasive chill that had settled in the air is long gone, chased away by a fervent heat. Whether it is from the hearth or their activities, it is hard to tell. Perhaps both.

She wonders what comes next now. Should she kiss him and leave, returning to her dingey half-forgotten room in the Forgotten Knight? Perhaps it would be for the best; they would avoid unnecessary explanations about her presence at the manor should anyone call on him tomorrow. But she doesn’t want to leave. She wants to stay. She wants nothing more than to curl up with him beneath the covers, embrace him, hold him, burrow against his warmth. She seeks his touch, but it is no longer one of desire—it is one of comfort and safety and affection and…

Something else she cannot say.

You should ask. Just ask. Do you think he’s going to ask you to leave? Kick you out into the freezing rain?

“Aureia?” Aymeric is looking at her, concern in his eyes. Nothing gets past him, it seems. “Are you… are you well?”

She rests a hand against his forearm, fingers clasping his wrist. His pulse beats against the pad of her thumb. “I am,” she says.

He bunches up the shirt and lets it fall to the floor. A heavy pause before he speaks, as if he is considering his words carefully. “Do you have regrets tonight?” he asks hesitantly.

“Regrets? No. Gods, no. Never.”

“I ask only because I wish to have certainty—”

A realization clicks in her mind. He’s called you my love. Gods, Aureia, you need to say something back.

“—though even as I say so, I would not ask you to shoulder or assuage my personal fears. You are dear to me. More than any other. That is a truth I would proclaim from the seat of Halone herself if I must. I do not wish for this to be the only night I share with you. I would look to tomorrow. And the day after. And every day that is yet to come.”

Her heart pounds. Deep within her, she can feel the creeping anxiety crawling back in. She has done so much to keep it at bay, but she cannot stave it off forever. What has she done to deserve someone like Aymeric? Someone warm, patient, and unashamed of how much he loves her. Who has done nothing but shown her honesty from the very beginning. There is a raw earnestness to his affection, one that envelopes her and protects her and shields her from harm.

But even a shield can be used to suffocate. There is a part of her twisted up with fear, wondering whether this is too much too soon. Too fast. He is in love with her, that is for certain, and he is dear to her. But she doesn’t know if she loves him in return.

Not yet.

And so she takes his hand and twines their fingers together in her lap, her gaze refusing to leave his. “Coming here tonight was one of the best decisions I have ever made,” she says firmly. “I want this, Aymeric. I want to be with you. How could I regret the choices that led to that?”

He chuckles and presses a kiss to her forehead. “I am being foolish, am I not?”

“We all have our moments.”

She embraces him, wrapping an arm around him, and snuggles against his chest. Her hand brushes by the scar above his navel, gentle against the red and knotted tissue. Where had she been that night? Caught in a snowstorm on the outskirts of Falcon’s Nest during the long journey back to Ishgard with Thancred in tow, straining herself to conjure enough fire-aspected aether to keep them warm and alive. He was different then, not the jaded, bitter mess he has turned himself into. Though now she wonders how much of it was a façade. He listened attentively while she informed him of everything that had happened after his disappearance. Perhaps his uncharacteristic silence and lack of customary quips and jests was a sign.

When did it go so terribly wrong between them? He may be alive and breathing, but some days… some days she feels she has lost a friend as surely as if he had died.

Aureia exhales softly and puts the thought from her mind. She is not—cannot concern herself with him anymore. Not when there is someone who cares so ardently for her in her life now.

She sits there with Aymeric for a moment longer, the pull of sleep lulling them into a gentle stupor. When he strokes her hair and kisses the top of her head, it is the only invitation she needs. They find their way beneath the covers, tangled together against soft cushions and between silky sheets. She curls into him and rests her head against his chest, one leg thrown over him as she holds him tight. His heart pounds against her ear, in rhythm with her own.

“Aymeric?” she murmurs, voice muffled.

His fingers twine in her hair. “Hm?”

“I… I love you.”

Her stomach twists the moment her words leave her lips, even as he pulls her tight and presses a kiss to her mouth. Is it a lie? A fabrication? A half-truth? She doesn’t know. The puzzle of her life is too complex, her emotions too snarled and tangled to make any sense. Right now, in this moment, she is desperate for the ease of simplicity for once in her life.

He loves her. Nothing is simpler than that. And if telling him that she loves him in return brings him joy, then she is satisfied with that. A white lie that will become a truth.

Some day.

One day.

That is the best she can do for now.

A note & some thoughts: The condition Aureia displays in this chapter is called primary provoked vulvar vestibulodynia and affects around 1 in 6 AFAB people at some point in their lifetime. It occurs when the pelvic floor muscles spasm in a protective guarding response. There is no specific cause (and not necessarily a result of sexual trauma, as some gynecologists assume it to be). The is an involuntary reaction of the nervous system, making penetrative sex extremely painful or physically impossible. Symptoms can be relieved or reduced through physical therapy with a pelvic floor specialist, but relapse is very common. There is a taboo discussing pain during sex, at least in western cultures. We’re still in an age of “lie back and let it pass”—it’s easy to dismiss pain as something insignificant that goes away with enough arousal or lube, or to just force your way through it for the sake of your partner. It is distressing to want to have sex in a particular way, but to be physically unable to do so. And with cisgender M/F couples, penetration is often the climactic sex act, the one everything builds towards with everything else counting as foreplay. Erotica—especially in fanfic—is often a fantasy. Fall in love with the right person, have mind-blowing sex with them. But I think it is neat to expand on what can be included in that fantasy, and explore different aspects of communication, love, pleasure, and respect in the context of sex. Sometimes that includes when things go wrong or when an unexpected issue arises. This is one of the more vulnerable sex scenes I have written since many of Aureia’s struggles hit a personal note for me. But it was very cathartic to get this down on paper. Thank you for reading. 🖤

#ffxiv #ff14 #final fantasy 14 #ffxiv fic #ffxiv fanfiction #wolmeric #aymeric x wol #aymeric de borel #aureia malathar #ffxiv wol #oc tag #writing tag #long post #some day i'm going to find tumblr's word count limit on a text post lolololol

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a-queer-seminarian · 1 year

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"Pulse Christ" by James Day

Today, June 12 2023, marks seven years since the shooting at the Pulse gay bar on Latin Night in Orlando, Florida. The deadliest single act of violence against LGBTQ people in US history, this shooting took 49 beautiful, vibrant lives, and left countless more wounded and traumatized.

In the above painting, James Day depicts Jesus Christ as one of the victims of the Pulse shooting.

Image description: Jesus with light brown skin and dark hair and a close-shaved beard lies with his eyes closed on a dark background, a gold and white halo around his head. A purple cloth drapes his body, stained with blood from a bullet hole near his left shoulder. / end ID.

____

Day wrote a poem to go with his painting based on Romans 8 and Psalm 139, which reads as follows:

Who is it that condemns us, and who would see our destruction? Shall narrow -minded preachers, or self-righteous religious zealots, Or conservative lawmakers, or unjust judges, or brutal police officers Convince us that we are unworthy?

What charges do they lay on us, and wherein do they find us guilty? Is it the color of our skin, or our economic status? Is it the religion we practice, or the religion we don’t practice? Is it that our bodies don’t conform to their ideals, Or that our love makes them uncomfortable, Or that we don’t blithely submit to their authority? Are these the crimes for which they persecute us daily and assign us to Hell? Can these separate us from the love of God or make us unworthy of love?

We are persuaded that neither rejection by our families, nor two-faced friends, Nor thoughtless neighbors, nor hate-filled co-workers, Nor being single, nor being divorced, nor being lonely Can define us as unlovable.

We are persuaded that neither unjust laws, nor biased public policy, Nor hateful tirades from pulpits, nor bullies with bullhorns, Nor ignorance, nor silence, nor invisibility Can separate us from our connection to the divine.

For we are fearfully and wonderfully made, Whether by the hand of God, or countless generations of ancestors. We are fully human and imbued with the divine spark of life, Curiously wrought in the depths, and encompassed even in our incompleteness. We are the image of God, and in us the love of God can be seen clearly.

And even though they lock us away, or commit us to institutions, Or drive us from our homes, or fire us from our jobs, Or shower us with bullets at night clubs, Or allow us to die from deadly diseases, Or find any number of ways to grind us into the dust, We will find color and light in the darkness, We will sing together, We will march together, We will protest, and preach, and live lives filled with joy and love, And, even in the face of fear and despite the hypocritical calls for false humility, We will be proud of who we are.

Find more artistic, spiritual responses to the Pulse shooting here.

#God let us remember and honor and act for all those killed. Amen.#qspirit #pulse #martyrs #queer christians #faithfullylgbt #prayer #mass shooting

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mariacallous · 2 years

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While there is no simple cure to the threats we face to our democracy, one small change could go a long way towards restoring trust: states should stop reporting incomplete vote totals on election night. This will provoke howls of protest from the news media which is, even now, preparing elaborate stages, fancy electronic maps and complex forecasting models in a race to be first to call the election—some even going so far as to put a “democracy desk” on their stage—in order to explain the chaos that is likely to happen.

But “election night” no longer exists and states can get rid of it. Today it’s more like election month. Early voting begins in some states in early October and continues into November and absentee voting has skyrocketed. Some of these trends are the direct result of COVID which shut the country down in 2020, leading election officials in many states to come up with ways to hold an election that didn’t involve standing in line inside a polling place and possibly contracting the virus. For the first time in history, only 30% of voters cast their ballots on Election Day in 2020.

The second reason election night no longer exists is that most states have laws which forbid counting the early votes before Election Day. That is understandable—imagine the unfair impact reporting an early vote winner might have on subsequent voters. So, most states forbid counting these early votes until Election Day itself. This was never much of a problem when the early vote counted for a small portion of the overall vote. But in 2020, in addition to the large increase in early voting, early voting itself became politicized. These two factors combined to make the Election Day vote a very poor predictor of the election outcome.

This happened because President Trump decided, even before Election Day 2020, that absentee ballots would be the source of fraud against him (although he and the First Lady voted absentee). He convinced his supporters to vote in person while Democrats were urging their voters to vote early and/or by absentee ballot. The election night returns created what became known as “the red mirage”—the in-person votes were for Trump—the early and absentee ones for Biden. As more and more votes were counted the candidate in the lead changed, creating a fertile situation for conspiracy theorists. In Phoenix’s Maricopa County, election deniers believed that 40,000 ballots had been shipped in from China marked for Biden. They set about looking for bamboo fibers in the ballots—surely one of the crazier theories in an altogether crazy year.

The third reason to get rid of election night is the prospect of chaos or even violence at polling places on Election Day and the prospect of interrupted or chaotic vote counts. We aren’t even at Election Day and already a court in Arizona has had to step in to keep armed men from establishing a threatening presence around ballot drop-off boxes.

The move towards hand counting of ballots and the many possible instances of chaos in a close election makes it likely that in some instances the courts will have to step in and sort things out—a prospect that could take some time.

The combination of these factors plus many very close Senate races means that trying to call winners on election night—let alone control of the Senate—is a fool’s errand and one that is guaranteed to create even more confusion and suspicion as the votes are counted or the courts sort out issues. Below are multiple charts showing how many early votes and absentee votes were received as of the end of October in states where there is a key Senate race. Of the nine states with competitive Senate races, only three allow votes to be counted before Election Day. In the other six, vote counting could take a week or more. Early and absentee voting numbers are already breaking records, leading analysts to predict an even higher turnout than in 2018—which broke records for a midterm election. In many states, Republicans are also voting early—a sign that perhaps the convenience is outweighing the paranoia Trump spread in 2020. No matter how you look at it, election officials who cannot start counting votes until Election Day have a huge job before them, and they will need to do it accurately.

The bottom line? There is no reason that we need to know winners on election night especially when the race to call elections creates confusion and a fertile field for more conspiracy theories. States should resist the hyperventilating of the networks and announce winners when enough of the vote has been counted that the outstanding vote is trivial and cannot change the outcome.

EARLY VOTES CAST AS OF the END OF OCTOBER 2022 AND WHEN THEY CAN BE COUNTED

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 24 days

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Trump sycophants parroting attacks on justice system risk further provoking MAGA extremists

Defending the Judiciary in 2024

May 17, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Events on Thursday highlighted yet another reason Democrats must vote in record numbers in November to defeat MAGA extremism. Republicans are undermining the institution of the judiciary in every way imaginable. Eroding the legitimacy and authority of the courts is textbook fascism. Indeed, in fascist states, courts are co-opted or replaced, becoming instruments of totalitarian rule.

Every American should be concerned about the coordinated assault on the judiciary by MAGA extremists.

It is difficult to identify Thursday’s most egregious attack on the legitimacy of the courts, but it seems appropriate to begin with Justice Samuel Alito.

Justice Alito displays a “Stop the Steal” flag on his front lawn.

As a Supreme Court justice, Alito has been unapologetic in his efforts to defend Trump's lawlessness. He has risen to Trump's defense with gleeful spite and unveiled resentment against those seeking to hold Trump accountable under the Constitution.

On Thursday, the New York Times revealed that Alito’s home displayed an upside-down US flag during the fraught days after the January 6 insurrection. At the time, flying the US flag upside down was a symbol calling to “Stop the Steal” of the 2020 election from Trump. It was a call to insurrection—proudly displayed by a US Supreme Court justice sworn to defend and protect the Constitution. See New York Times, At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display. (This article is accessible to all.)

In response to an inquiry from the Times, Alito said,

I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag.

Notably, Alito did not deny the veracity of the photograph of the flag flying upside down on his lawn. He did not deny the symbolism of the upside-down flag. He did not deny that he was aware of its continued presence in front of his house. Instead, he blamed his wife, whom he claimed flew the “Stop the Steal” banner in response to anti-Trump signs in the neighborhood.

Alito’s response to the Times is a lie. He owns the flag. He owns the flagpole. He owns the property on which the flag was displayed. He permitted it to remain on display on his property. He, therefore, did have “involvement” in “flying the flag.” It does not matter that it was his wife who physically raised the “Stop the Steal” banner on the flagpole. Alito’s hair-splitting denial is misleading and incomplete—and therefore false.

All of this leaves us with a second justice on the Supreme Court whose spouse was a booster of the effort to overthrow the Constitution and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

Those justices—Alito and Thomas—are currently considering Trump's presidential immunity defense to the indictment alleging that Trump attempted to subvert the election. Under any reasonable reading of Code of Conduct that applies to Supreme Court justices, Alito and Thomas should have recused themselves long ago (under Canons 2 and 3).

The fact that Alito and Thomas have failed to do so is an open wound on the Court, oozing pus and bile every time they take the bench in a matter involving Trump's coup and insurrection.

Ultimately, the feckless Chief Justice John Roberts is to blame. He has allowed a sprawling and continuing scandal to consume the dwindling legitimacy of the Court. He has allowed that scandal to fester in order to provide cover for the most corrupt president in our nation’s history—which is a fitting epitaph for Roberts’ squandered legacy.

Texas Governor Abbott nullifies jury’s conviction of racist who killed Black Lives Matter protestor.

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, Daniel Perry shot and killed a protester who was carrying a gun (which is legal in Texas). A jury heard the evidence—including Perry’s claim of self-defense—and convicted Perry of murder. Perry was sentenced to 25 years in prison. After the verdict, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he wanted to pardon Perry.

On Thursday, the Texas pardon board gave Abbott the recommendation to pardon Perry. Abbott issued an immediate pardon, and Perry is now back on the street—with his right to carry firearms restored. See Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pardons Daniel Perry, Army sergeant convicted of murdering protester in 2020 (nbcnews.com).

In pardoning Perry, Abbott issued a statement that denigrated the jury’s verdict and consideration of the evidence of self-defense. Abbott wrote,

Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury . . . .

When a jury hears the evidence and concludes “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the defendant is guilty, notwithstanding claimed self-defense, that verdict is not a “nullification” of the law; it is the application of the law. But in Abbot’s MAGA extremist administration, jury verdicts that run contrary to MAGA orthodoxy can be disregarded.

Overriding the justice system to advance partisan political ends is dangerous. If some Texans believe that the law does not apply to them, they will act lawlessly—exactly as Daniel Perry did when he shot a protester who was trying to make the point that Black lives matter to the same degree as white lives. Today, Governor Greg Abbott told Texans that is not true in Texas—and he did so by attacking the integrity of the jury trial system. The message and the means are antithetical to democracy.

New parade of GOP representatives appears at Trump trial

The “red tie” brigade was back in force at the Trump trial in Manhattan. About a dozen Republicans (mostly from Congress) appeared outside the courtroom to bash Judge Merchan, his family, and prosecutors. They filed into the courtroom as a phalanx, interrupting the cross-examination of Michael Cohen.

Why was Thursday’s spectacle worse than those on previous days? Because those who rose to show their support for Trump included Trump's indicted co-conspirator, Jeffrey Clark, as well as outcasts of the Freedom Caucus Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz.

In a particularly appalling statement, Gaetz posted a picture of Thursday’s parade of GOP officials at the trial alongside the caption, “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President.”

To be clear, Gaetz’s statement is a threat of violence against the judiciary if Trump is convicted. There is no other reasonable interpretation of the picture and caption in the context of the statements made outside the courtroom. See HuffPo, Matt Gaetz Parrots Trump’s Call To Proud Boys At His Trial.

The continued spectacle by Republican lawmakers is a clear violation of the gag order. The government officials are escorted into the courtroom and seated in seats reserved for Trump's defense team. As visible members of Trump's defense team, their statements are made on behalf of Trump. Judge Merchan should find Trump in contempt for those statements and order Trump to be detained. The failure of Judge Merchan to do so further undermines the authority of the judicial system.

While I am not criticizing Judge Merchan, it is clear that the willingness of Republican officials to break every norm of the rule of law has overwhelmed the ability of the judge to enforce the rules against Trump. And with the overlay of Gaetz’s threat of violence, Judge Merchan’s reluctance to apply the rule of law to Trump is understandable—though disappointing.

Here's my point: Thursday brought to the fore multiple examples of the MAGA effort to undermine the judiciary in the US. The only way to stop the attacks is to defeat Republicans up and down the ballot. The 2024 election is important for many reasons, not merely because we will re-elect Joe Biden. We must reverse the retrograde, reactionary MAGA movement to destroy one of the most important guardrails in democracy—a fair and independent judiciary.

Justice Alito dissents in case that would have triggered a Great Depression

On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In so holding, seven justices rejected a theory that would have declared two-thirds of federal funding unconstitutional and eliminated regulations that control the banking and financial markets. The banking industry was so alarmed that it begged the justices to save the CFPB and the regulations that instruct the industry on how to conduct business lawfully. See Ian Millhiser in Vox, The Supreme Court decides not to trigger a second Great Depression.

The case is notable because it represents another defeat for the rogue judges on the reactionary Fifth Circuit who are hellbent on destroying the federal system of regulation that is responsible for the orderly operation of the world’s largest economy. See Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, Supreme Court CFPB: The judicial arsonists went too far for the conservative justices this time.

But justices Alito and Gorsuch dissented, arguing that Congress must continually re-authorize and fund federal programs that are permanent fixtures of the American system of regulation. As Mark Joseph Stern notes, Alito cited to English history under King James to bolster his contention that the Supreme Court can strike down congressional appropriations:

To side with the 5th Circuit, Alito had to fixate on a somewhat random period of English history in the 17th century—from James I to Charles I—to assert that the Constitution empowers courts to strike down appropriations that they dislike.

Alito and Gorsuch are dangerous radicals whose voices must be overwhelmed by expanding the Court.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B Hubbell Newsletter #Corrupt SCOTUS #rule of law #corruption #Gov Abbott #Alito #Gorsuch #5th Circuit #US Judiciary #expand the court #Sheneman #political cartoons

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1morespiral · 2 months

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i just tripped out during this study session and i don't know where this chat ends.

disclaimer/s: first, most of these are one-liners/mostly incomplete thoughts because, again, this is in between trying to actually get information in and trying to not copy the whole textbook on these sheets of paper, and actually trying rest during a study break. secondly, this whole thought sits closely to the importance of language to any self-identifying adult, the concept of community itself, and to africans entirely.

i asked myself: 'what is the broader south african coloured community's stance on the events of 16 june 1976?'

quick context: 16 june 1976, also known as 'june 16'/'sharpevillle massacre'/'youth day' is a day on which the youth of south africa took to the apartheid-thick streets to protest against being taught in the afrikaans language - which, although indigenous to south africa and spoken by most if not all of the coloured community as a first language, was (and continues to be by most people) considered as 'the oppressor's tongue'. reports say 'about 200' people died in soweto that day after the apartheid police opened fire on literal children.

a couple of things went through my head after that:

there were coloureds in support of that movement. (in whatever capacity) so they must've been able to detach themselves, right?

this whole 'oppressor's tongue' name is weird too, right? because the coloured community has developed an entire culture with whatever history has thrown at them. for sure having that as a basis of a movement must have sat funny with some coloured folk.

not all coloured people identify as 'coloured'. some identify as 'ethnically coloured & politically black'. in fact not all coloured people are 'coloured'. some are bi-racial and none of their parents are afrikaans-speaking. so what is these individuals' significance in this conversation?

should they feel a type of way about it? while it would be weird to say being coloured was 'forced on them', (insert the full history of coloured people with the dark and bright parts) it would also be remiss to not include the white man's involvement in the creation of the community. should they champion and protect their own oppression?

does it continue to become their 'oppression' once they have owned it and made it theirs? or does it just become a part of history?

while all of that is happening, a thought that i have shared with my friends in the past resurfaced. it basically says: 'the day south africa has a true and honest conversation regarding the coloured community is the day the relationship between the minorities in the country will start getting better or horribly worse.'

as i type this post i am asking myself 'does south africa even need to have that conversation in the first place? does the coloured community need to be re-legitimised beyond what we known them?'

yes? becuase in doing so, we get to clear some politcal grey areas?

no? because it is not our (non-coloured folk) place to decide what is worth talking about regarding their community and identity? especially just because it doesn't make full sense to us.

#if it bothers you what my opinion is: i believe all coloured people are my brothers and sisters in arms against a much bigger threat.#regardless of how they choose to identify themselves.#politics #south africa #south african politics #coloured #law school #1morespiral

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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By: John McWhorter

Published: Mar 8, 2023

I have argued recently that a useful and inspiring history of modern Black America need not be dominated by discussions of white racism. And having done so, it seems reasonable for me to explain, to at least a limited degree, what I would envision as a potentially better approach.

Specifically, I wrote about a draft curriculum of the College Board’s Advanced Placement course in African American studies. So what other topics might it have included, to counterbalance topics — clearly worthy, yet incomplete — such as reparations, Amiri Baraka and the Black Lives Matter movement?

Let’s try, for one, the notion of Black power. The good word would seem to be that we never really have any. But that isn’t true, and any valid chronicle of the history of what’s been happening to Black Americans since the 1960s must not pretend otherwise.

We have now had a two-term Black president, two Black secretaries of state, one Black (and South Asian) vice president and a Black secretary of defense. These were all borderline unimaginable goals a generation ago.

Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., was elevated in 2020 to become the Catholic Church’s first Black cardinal. He was the first Black president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as far back as the early 2000s — a time at which Dennis Archer was also the first Black president of the American Bar Association.

Lowe’s and Walgreens, two of the nation’s largest retailers, are run by Black chief executives. The reason you probably didn’t know that is because there are now enough Black chief executives to bypass the notion of firsts. This contrasts with 2000, when there were only two prominent Black chief executives of Fortune 500 companies — Franklin Raines at Fannie Mae and Lloyd Ward at Maytag — although that, too, was awesome progress over what had come before.

Successes of this kind should be held up front and center, not dismissed as footnotes or all but buried in equal coverage of remaining disparities — although those should of course be covered elsewhere in a curriculum. The question is how people like this achieved as much as they did despite the obstacles, largely but not exclusively racial, they all faced. We might ask why there isn’t more focus on that question.

I often sense that we are supposed to think of people like this with a certain formulaic admiration. They are what are sometimes called “Blacks in wax” (after, presumably, the museum in Baltimore): nice to know about but ultimately fluky superstars irrelevant to what some might say Blackness is really about. Is the idea that, because they have not usually dedicated themselves to political protest in deed or gesture, it somehow makes them less impressive or less important? That itself would be a radical proposition.

Something else: A modern history of Black America should include how Black English has become, to a considerable extent, a youth lingua franca since at least the 1990s. It is absolutely a fact that attitudes toward Black English can be influenced by racism. However, this is neither the most important nor even the most interesting thing about the dialect. Beyond its awesome grammatical structures, it is fascinating that such a dialect primarily confined to Black usage just 50 years ago now decorates the speech of countless Americans who are not Black at all. And that is because how Black people talk has become an integral part of how America talks.

In Black English, “I’m going to” can be rendered as the marvelously terse “Ima,” as in, “Ima go downstairs.” Thirty years ago, I overheard a white undergraduate woman use this phrase with Black male friends. Then, white people using it were generally ones especially identified with and situated within Black culture — i.e., with a substantially Black friend group. Today I hear white and Asian young people use “Ima” all the time; it is no longer interesting. A student of South Asian heritage wrote a paper for me recently chronicling how his texting with friends, most of whom are not Black, was couched considerably in Black English, as a default medium with no performance or ridicule entailed.

And dismissing this as cultural appropriation won’t do. It’d be like Jewish people complaining that non-Jewish people say “klutz,” “schmooze” and “shtick.” Black English’s transformation of mainstream English has likewise been inevitable, harmless and cool. It’s something great that has happened since the 1960s.

A true and healthy history of Black America should also cover, with the same ardor that it does the L.A. riots of 1992, the efflorescence of Black film starting in the 1980s and continuing into the 2000s. After the Blaxploitation film flame burned out rather quickly in the 1970s, Black movies came out here and there. But starting with the electrically odd, goofy, plangent and true “She’s Gotta Have It” by Spike Lee in 1986, and Lee’s titanic oeuvre of films in its wake, it started to get hard to see every Black film that was released. (I had to give up around 1999.)

The comedies were often of a kind that both taught and amused (“Barbershop”); the romances gave Black women especially equivalents to movies like “When Harry Met Sally” (“Love Jones”); the dramas gave us our forms of movies like “Terms of Endearment” (“Soul Food”); and the gangster pictures finally gave us our James Cagneys and Lee Marvins (“New Jack City”).

A line one often used to hear in response to the idea of progress in Black film was that there existed no Black producer who could greenlight a movie alone. But that’s no longer true, now that Tyler Perry rules his own filmic empire. Some think Perry does not really count because most of his films appeal more to the gut than to the intellect. But then the vast majority of films always have, and I for one have never seen a film of Perry’s without at least one immortal performance of some kind, including, frequently, his own. And they are indeed often damnably funny.

That Black movies are now ordinary is something our historiography should chart and celebrate, much as it should a two-term Black president. The prospect of a film like “Black Panther” even getting made on such a lavish budget, much less being an international sensation, would have sounded like science fiction as recently as the 1990s. The prospect of a high-budget sequel with a mostly Black cast being made even after the star of the original had died? It beggars imagination.

One last example: From the Florida A.P. draft, one might suppose that the thing most interesting about hip-hop is its usage as protest music, given that in the draft music is so dominatingly associated with social and political purposes, advocacy and empowerment. Certainly, protest is part of what the music is; its confrontational cadence is fundamental to the genre. But as to the idea of a hip-hop revolution whereby the music was always supposedly about to unite Black America into some kind of radical political consciousness: How has that panned out?

Hip-hop has been a glorious revolution, indeed — in music, period. Be it party music, protest music, political music, obscene music or Dr. Octagon, a genre that started as street fun in the Bronx has transformed the musical fabric and sensibility of America — as well as that of the whole world. (I once watched a teen rap in Indonesian in New Guinea.) No one denies this, of course. But it is this basic triumph that should center its coverage in a course and be offered as a topic of engagement to curious young people.

I suspect that the idea that a Black historiography would not just wave at but stare at positive developments will rub some the wrong way. But the idea that our history must elevate protest as the most interesting thing about us is peculiar.

It’s worth noting that not that very long ago, Black American movers and shakers were of a similar mind in celebrating the victories more than the — very real — obstacles. In 1901, an issue of the Black newspaper The Indianapolis Recorder listed all of the city’s businesses owned by Black people and crowed, “If after reading the facts and figures as succinctly presented an inspiration comes to any who may be considering embarking in some business enterprise or renews hope in those who are now struggling to attain success we shall feel gratified.”

If a Black man could write that in the era of Plessy v. Ferguson, surely today our curriculums on Black history can recognize more clearly what Black people have accomplished, continue to accomplish and accomplish more with each passing decade. Just because time moves more slowly than we wish it did doesn’t mean we should not recognize its motion. Relaxing the impulse to hold the spotlight on what white people are doing — or not doing, or should have done — can be, among other things, a way to recognize what Black people have accomplished in a nation that brought them across an ocean as slaves.

The protest-focused perspective is rooted, it seems to me, in a take on being Black that was memorably articulated by the writer Ellis Cose in the 1990s in “The Rage of a Privileged Class,” his widely discussed book about middle-class Black people’s sense of alienation: “Hurtful and seemingly trivial encounters of daily existence are in the end what most of life is,” Cose attested, in what he described as the story of what it’s like to be Black in modern America.

Cose’s Weltanschauung is one especially prevalent among academics, artists and journalists. But most people — and most Black people — are none of those three things. I have lost count of how many Black people told me back in the day that they did not share Cose’s take on what we now call “microaggressions” as the very fabric of our existence. Many do share it, to be sure, but their positions share space with those of the other millions of Black Americans who feel closer to the way I do.

The story of Black people in America is much more than the story of what’s wrong with white people. To pretend that this isn’t true, to downplay or ignore decades of progress and accomplishment and to portray political activism — however important and necessary, and it is both — as Black Americans’ main form of accomplishment, is to suggest that white people have already won.

Reminder: Critical Race Theorists believe that progress hasn't been made, that nothing has gotten better, and even that it's only gotten worse. How do they justify such a remarkable claim? Through the religious apologetic of "interest convergence," which they believe operates as a form of plausible deniability.

At bottom, it functions akin to "the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." You can know the racism is even worse, because now you can't see it. "But the US has had a black president, black Supreme Court justices, black military commanders, a long list of black cultural heroes - entertainers, artists, athletes..." See? That's how deeply ingrained it is, that's how concealed, pervasive and permanent it is.

[Critical] movements initially advocated for a type of liberal humanism (individualism, freedom, and peace) but quickly turned to a rejection of liberal humanism. The ideal of individual autonomy that underlies liberal humanism (the idea that people are free to make independent rational decisions that determine their own fate) was viewed as a mechanism for keeping the marginalized in their place by obscuring larger structural systems of inequality. In other words, it fooled people into believing that they had more freedom and choice than societal structures actually allow.

-- Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, "Is Everyone Really Equal?"

Instead of the endless nihilism of inevitable black hopelessness and inescapable white guilt, why not positivity around progress, success and how people feel about life?

[ Source: Gallup ]

The answers aren't that complicated.

Firstly, a key pillar of Critical Race Theory is a "Critique of Liberalism." That the entire liberal order - and particularly the color-blind, "content of their character" approach espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - has failed. To admit to progress, and especially to admit that black Americans are a world away from where things were 100, or even 50 years ago, undermines the proposition that the liberal order needs to be torn down.

And secondly, wokeness is not capable of creating nor solving problems. Its only function is to deconstruct: to pick, pick, pick, to scrutinize power dynamics, root out hidden oppressions and expose them. The only thing it produces is activism, programs to create more activists (DEI, schools), demands to forcibly redistribute resources (equity), and division through greater paranoia and fixation on differences. Like how those who study "Gender Studies" are unqualified for any vocation other than teaching "Gender Studies." It's not possible to create a society based on wokeness, not only because it has no coherent vision, but also because it will always eat whoever is claimed to be at the top with the most power, through competitive resentment. You therefore can't make progress with it. But you're not supposed to notice or talk about that.

#John McWhorter #antiracism #antiracism as religion #neoracism #nihilism #victimhood complex #victimhood #victimhood culture #cult of woke #woke #wokeness #wokeness as religion #wokeism #progress #civil rights movement #civil rights #black positivity #religion is a mental illness

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greatmuldini · 1 year

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The events of 6 December 1890 were neither preordained nor were they premeditated. Nothing that transpired on the day was inevitable or irreversible: participants chose to stay in character, and to act out their roles in what would eventually be described by biographers and historians as the Parnell Tragedy (Jules Abels, 1966).

Everyone at the time would have been aware of the historical significance of their actions, if not the long-term consequences - excluding of course, the one female member of the cast who could not possibly have known what she was doing. By dint of this congenital deficiency she would also quite naturally be blamed for causing "Ireland's misfortune." Simple and satisfying in terms of its mass market appeal, feminine impulsivity does little to explain the supposedly rational decisions taken by the men around her in the name of patriotism and political expediency - which far from producing an amenable solution served only to exacerbate the crisis. Whereas the exact circumstances and full cast of characters have faded over time the larger-than-life figure of Charles Stewart Parnell still towers over the events of 6 December 1890 as the one man who could have had it all - and lost it all.

Sixty-four years later, the Fall of Parnell inspired an episode of the BBC's "experimental" television series You Are There which set out to present the known historical facts, faithfully, but with an added dimension unique to the new medium: actors would impersonate the key personnel as in a conventional re-enactment. While going about their "business," however, they would be interviewed by modern television reporters. The curious anachronism underlined the artificiality of the concept; it meant the programme was deliberately drawing attention to itself which would have been an unwanted distraction, for You Are There it was the defining feature. Neither the programme nor its - fictitious - journalists were interested in the exploration of alternative histories or in-depth character studies: the point was to demonstrate the possibilities of "live" television, ironically, in a simulated setting. Fact and fiction are trading places as the reality of 1890 becomes the subject of a 1950s fantasy, and the medium of the future interrogates the evidence of the past. For the actors it would have been a challenge to navigate between imaginative portrayal of a fully formed human being and the faithful rendition of the intrinsically incomplete historical record.

The historical record states that Charles Stewart Parnell was born in 1846. The son of a Protestant Irish landowner and an American mother was not naturally predestined to champion the cause of destitute Catholic tenant farmers; indeed, nothing in his early life pointed to any such leanings. As an aristocratic country gentleman he had nothing to fear and everything to gain from the firm imperial rule exerted by the British Crown over the Island of Ireland.

And yet it was Parnell, the English-educated man of pedigree, who emerged as the voice of the starving rural population. Having decided to enter politics for reasons that are still unclear, he found his calling as the Westminster MP for County Meath not in the defence of privilege but in the vocal support - initially for land reform and then increasingly for Irish nationalism ("Home Rule"). Over the next five years Parnell gained a reputation and a following as a fiery orator back in Ireland and a force to be reckoned with in the House of Commons, where is name became synonymous with the new parliamentary tactic of "obstructionism." If the English politicians could not be moved to act in Ireland's interest Parnell vowed to meddle in English affairs. And meddle - or obstruct - he did. After a century of inaction and neglect, the Irish Question seemed relevant again, if only because its proponents made it impossible for English laws to be passed. Parnell seemed to thrive on his tactical manoeuvring which he was prepared to carry to painful extremes, on multiple occasions – including arrest and imprisonment, at the risk of damaging his already fragile state of health.

By 1880 Parnell controlled both the radical grassroots movement in Ireland and the parliamentary representation of Irish interests in London. The position made him a frequent dinner guest in the homes of friends and allies, where on several occasions he also enjoyed the hospitality of Mrs Katharine O'Shea, the English wife of a fellow Irish MP, who was sympathetic not only to the cause but to the man who personified the struggle. Mrs O’Shea had a discreet arrangement with her husband, Captain William “Willie” O’Shea, the Member for County Clare and Galway: their marriage would exist on paper only for the benefit of Willie’s career; while he conducted his business in London she would reside at their official family residence and entertain important visitors. Parnell would often stay as a guest of the family - to recuperate after gruelling campaigns in Ireland, was the official explanation given.

For the next ten years the couple conducted an illicit affair that produced four children and saw the singled-minded saboteur of the political system lead a double life away from Parliament and in the company of Katharine O’Shea. The relationship was not as one might assume a tempestuous whirlwind romance but a curiously claustrophobic still-life of Victorian domesticity - an alternate, self-contained reality where Parnell and his "Queenie" could act out their fantasy of living simply as husband and wife. Their apparent longing for simplicity may also help to explain the ease with which they expected to lead two entirely separate and parallel lives, apparently unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge the inherent paradox and inevitable complication.

In the political arena Parnell was for most of the 1880s an extremely effective manipulator of moods and opinions, always weighing and adjusting the demands of Irish nationalists against the calls for the use of force from the British press, the public, and its politicians. Anyone looking for a core belief or deeply held conviction would have been disappointed by the vagueness of Parnell's own stated aims - which he used to great advantage because it allowed him to gain the confidence of the British side and the respect of his own following. As a small but significant minority, the Irish (or Home Rule) Party under Parnell's skilful machinations was able to make demands in return for the votes it lent to either one of the two dominant forces in 19th century British politics: the Tory (Conservative) Party or the slightly more reform-oriented Liberal Party.

Parnell’s elusiveness became his trademark: the less he said in public, the fewer appearances he made in Parliament, the taller he grew in stature. In 1887 he was accused of having endorsed the murders of two British politicians in Dublin. When the alleged endorsement turned out to be a forgery two years later, the popular reaction was one of relief and renewed admiration for the noble freedom fighter who had been so horribly maligned. By 1889, it seemed as if nothing could go wrong for Charles Stewart Parnell.

Home Rule seemed within reach when, in May of 1889, Katharine O'Shea learned of the death of a wealthy aunt whose fortune she was to inherit. The additional funds would have been a welcome boost to Katharine's finances had it not been for her husband's unexpected interference. Captain William “Willie” O’Shea chose this moment to strike, possibly to exact revenge, more likely to improve his own pecuniary situation. And thus, Captain O'Shea went ahead and contested the will, citing his wife’s infidelity, and his intention to divorce her. Surprised but hardly alarmed, the lovers welcomed what they thought would be an opportunity for them to make their relationship official, the sooner the better.

From the very beginning their affair had been an open secret in political circles, but the Captain’s announcement put the fact of their adultery in the public domain. With their case not due in court for at least another twelve months (i.e. late 1890), Katharine and Parnell were powerless to stop the scandal from spreading, and their silence on the matter allowed grievances to fester. No public statement was ever published, nor did the couple make any public gesture of remorse. They did launch a half-hearted and unsuccessful counterclaim not to deny the adultery but to accuse Captain O’Shea of adultery as well, presumably to shame the Captain into withdrawing his allegation.

For an entire year the unresolved state of their private affairs overshadowed Parnell’s political battle; it affected his health and continued to corrode confidence among his allies in parliament and at home but most significantly among the ranks of the Liberal Party led by Prime Minister William Gladstone. Ironically, and with tragic consequences for Katharine and Parnell, the earliest and most vociferous condemnations came not from the Catholic Church (both Parnell and Katharine were Protestants) but from the other “Nonconformist” denominations outside the established Church of England, which was traditionally a preserve of the Tory (Conservative) Party. An influential group among the Nonconformists were Methodists, whose large working and middle-class following had found in Gladstone’s Liberal Party their political home.

When the divorce eventually came through in November 1890 (decree nisi), Parnell was branded a “convicted adulterer” but also won the legal right to marry Katharine after completion of the obligatory six-month waiting period (decree absolute). The salacious - and uncontested – testimony offered in the course of the trial was, however, fresh on the minds of his party colleagues who were meeting to decide on his future as party leader a mere fortnight after the court’s decision. Gladstone had already warned Irish MPs of the danger to their alliance, the implication being that the Liberal Party would lose the support of its Nonconformist base if it continued to cooperate with a “convicted adulterer.” The message was clear: Irish MPs had no hope of winning Home Rule with Parnell as their leader. They needed the good will and legislative might of a strong Liberal government - and Liberal voters had strong ideas about marriage and adultery. Gladstone did, in effect, issue an ultimatum to Irish parliamentarians: lose your leader or lose Ireland.

Party activists in Ireland meanwhile re-elected Parnell as leader of the Home Rule Party before news of the ultimatum reached their shores, creating an awkward situation which allowed Parnell to claim he had the backing of the party rank and file, while Gladstone faced the beginnings of a split in his own party over the very issue of Irish Home Rule.

Parnell promptly refused to stand down, declaring instead that he considered the matter of Mrs O’Shea’s divorce closed and that, far from being a friend of Ireland, Gladstone had betrayed their cause. Whether or not the accusation was based in fact [substance] hardly mattered in the greater scheme of things. It was Parnell's word against that of the Prime Minister, and a decision had to be made: should the Irish Home Rule Party defy Gladstone and keep Parnell as their charismatic leader, or should the convicted adulterer be deposed in return for English concessions?

On 6 December 1890, after seemingly endless negotiations, Irish parliamentarians convened another marathon session to break the deadlock without destroying the party, its leader, or their country. Obstacles proved insurmountable as Parnell himself chaired the meeting and overruled any motion calling for a vote. Members present at the meeting noted his increasingly autocratic behaviour with concern and were alarmed by the apparent disintegration of his mental and physical identity. What they were witnessing may have been, on one level, the self-evisceration of a disgraced politician, but the concrete struggle of the individual to control his own destiny, and the narrative about it, had gained additional layers of meaning that transcend literal explanations for Parnell's fate.

The extent to which he did control the mythology of his downfall as well as his subsequent (and posthumous) apotheosis is a fascinating subject for debate: was he drawing attention to the opposing forces behind his identity or trying to deflect attention away from his failure to reconcile the two when he claimed that Gladstone and the Liberals were the true enemies of the rightful Irish claim to self-determination? No longer was the crisis a moral dilemma but a question of national pride. The private transgression becomes an affair of state - no longer is it a moral dilemma but a question of national pride: if it was up to the English to dictate who is to be their leader, then Gladstone truly was the master of the Irish Party.

Parnell's rhetorical masterstroke elevated his imminent ouster as party leader to an affront of international proportions by blurring the very boundaries he had otherwise hoped to maintain between the private man and his public persona. It also drew an instant reaction from the assembled party colleagues. "Who is to be the mistress of the party?” put paid to Parnell's noble-minded aspirations and reminded those present once again of the sordid scandal and the root cause of their troubles. Unable to vote the party leader out of office, 44 of his fellow members stood up and left the room, 26 remained with Parnell. It is this moment You Are There chose to dramatize, for the sheer symbolism of the scene: the leader without majority, his party crippled for decades to come. The Liberal Prime Minister ruling unencumbered.

Parnell's story, the story of Ireland's struggle, could have ended here. Or it could have ended differently. If each of the protagonists had chosen a different course of action. Parnell, for his part, chose to fulfil what he must have thought of as his destiny: within hours of the party meeting that left him - it must be remembered - still nominally undefeated, he embarked on a tour of Ireland to speak at rallies and unite the crowds behind the candidates he chose to stand in by-elections. Any hopes of regaining the momentum lost in London were slim at best; the winter weather and Parnell's failing health reduced the schedule and, compounded by his ever more radical oratory, crowds became more difficult to control, and enthusiasm for the struggle was waning. But just as the chances of a concrete, real-life settlement were growing increasingly remote, the idea of the struggle captured the imagination of contemporary and subsequent generations, and Parnell became its idealized figurehead - not without considerable work from Parnell himself, who cultivated an air of steely nerves, superhuman strength, and emotional detachment in public while being fiercely protective of his privacy. The polar opposites that defined his existence, through their very incompatibility, presented an impossible conundrum: unable to reconcile the two, incapable of compromise, the Parnell machine was at a crisis point.

Campaigning in Ireland continued throughout the summer but none of the chosen candidates were victorious. Parnell and Katharine finally became a married couple on 25 June 1891, but their life together as husband and wife only lasted a little over three months and ended with Parnell’s death on 6 October 1891. They were both 45 years old at the time.

In poetic terms, Parnell had committed the ultimate sin of the tragic hero: to think of himself as indispensable. In the eyes of his supporters, and presumably his own, Parnell had become the personification of an idea, an idea that without him was thought to be non-viable. Parnell and Irish Home Rule were interchangeable; the means and the end had merged into one. Much like the fatal flaw carried by every tragic hero in the history of human endeavour, Parnell's hubris made him both unique and universal, gave him superhuman powers and made him vulnerable - not in a simple case of crime and punishment but in the pursuit of a noble mission that is ultimately larger than the man who has internalized it as his own.

To paraphrase Hilary Mantel, we tend to fictionalize those who can no longer speak for themselves; in Parnell's case there is perhaps a greater need than with many of his peers to interpret where we cannot explain, and to speculate were we cannot know.

Indeed, so strong was the sense even among contemporaries of a catastrophic derailment of their hopes and dreams, and so great the loss of confidence in the political process, it gave rise to an entire subgenre of historical fantasies indulging in mostly wishful thinking: what if Parnell's campaign had been successful and he had lived to see an independent Ireland? What if there had never been a scandal? What if we could turn the clock back far enough to prevent all bad things from happening? This being a male-centric scenario we easily move on to imagining the hero going about his business without "distractions," and what might have been if Parnell and Katharine O'Shea had never met. The further the fantasy travels back in time, however, the more it will be about erasure of the past rather than an extension of existing timelines. As a work of fiction, it may well be a legitimate subject for philosophical or even psychological enquiry that can provide a temporary reprieve from the struggle. It can never be the solution. [Part 2 of 2]

#Patrick McGoohan #Helen Shingler #were 26 and 35 years old respectively #when they portrayed Charles Stewart Parnell and Katharine O'Shea live on BBC TV #impossible casting by today's standards but in 1954 #leading men were expected to cover a much wider age range #fortunately the BBC secured for the part #of the enigmatic giant of Irish nationalism #an actor whose heritage and disposition were an uncanny match #having played much older men on stage before as was indeed the practice in #repertory theatre and the tradition carried over into early television #interestingly the young talent that the new medium attracted in its experimental phase #later launched a televisual experiment of his very own in the pursuit of something #as elusive maybe as the source of Parnell's political ambition #whether it is life imitating art or patterns emerging in hindsight #we will interpret and fictionalize #compare and analyse to satisfy our own obsessions #because that is what this is really #who in their right mind would see shades of Parnell in Col Rumford #or the myth behind the man #for fleetstreetpauline always

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