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freeleyenrashespeakstruth · 1 year

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By Kitty Werthmann

“I am a witness to history.

“I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history.

If you remember the plot of the Sound of Music, the Von Trapp family escaped over the Alps rather than submit to the Nazis. Kitty wasn’t so lucky. Her family chose to stay in her native Austria. She was 10 years old, but bright and aware. And she was watching.

“We elected him by a landslide – 98 percent of the vote,” she recalls.

She wasn’t old enough to vote in 1938 – approaching her 11th birthday. But she remembers.

“Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.”

No so.

Hitler is welcomed to Austria

“In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25 percent inflation and 25 percent bank loan interest rates.

Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs.

“My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.’

“We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933.” she recalls. “We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living.

“Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group – Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone in Germany was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria. We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back.

“Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.

“We were overjoyed,” remembers Kitty, “and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.

“After the election, German officials were appointed, and, like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.

“Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family. Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been re- quired to give up for marriage.

“Then we lost religious education for kids

“Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school.. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang ‘Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,’ and had physical education.

“Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail.”

And then things got worse.

“The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free.

“We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.

“My mother was very unhappy,” remembers Kitty. “When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination.

“I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing.

“Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time, unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler.

“It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.

“In 1939, the war started, and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and, if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death.

“Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.

“Soon after this, the draft was implemented.

“It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps,” remembers Kitty. “During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys.

“They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines.

“When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat.

“Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.

“When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers.

“You could take your children ages four weeks old to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, seven days a week, under the total care of the government.

“The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.

“Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna..

“After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything.

“When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full.

“If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.

“As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80 percent of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families.

“All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.

“We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables.

“Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands.

“Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.

“We had consumer protection, too

“We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the livestock, and then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.

“In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps. The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated.

“So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work.

“I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van.

“I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months.

“They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.

“As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.

“Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law-abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long afterwards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

“No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.

“Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria. Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.”

“This is my eyewitness account.

“It’s true. Those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity.

“America is truly is the greatest country in the world. “Don’t let freedom slip away.

“After America, there is no place to go.”

Kitty Werthmann

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trianglart · 2 years

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[”Abortion will soon be banned in 13 states. Here’s which could be next.”

Trigger ban to take effect within a month: Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky

Likely to ban: Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina

Uncertain: Arizona, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida

Likely to remain legal: Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine]

[”Thirteen states have trigger laws that will ban abortion now that Roe is overturned. BUT only three of them go into effect immediately: Kentucky, Louisiana, and South Dakota. If you have an appointment in those states, CALL YOUR CLINIC NOW. They can help you go somewhere else.

Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas have trigger laws that go into effect after 30 days. If you have an abortion appointment in those states, DO NOT ASSUMED IT'S CANCELED. Call your clinic now. You may have 30 days left in your state. Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Wyoming also have trigger laws but they require a government process step to go into effect. If you have an appointment in those states, DO NOT ASSUME IT'S CANCELED. There may be time. Call your clinic NOW."]

--------

It is still legal to travel to states where abortion is legal. The FDA allows abortion pills to be available by mail, and they are approved for the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Telemedicine abortions will banned in states where abortion is illegal, but international groups like Aid Access will offer online consultations and mail pills to all states.

Your internet activity can be used against you in court. Delete any period tracking apps and do not disclose your pregnancy online. Learn about internet privacy to keep your abortion private and secure.

National resources for info and access to abortion:

Aid Access: https://aidaccess.org/en/

Find an abortion provider: https://www.abortionfinder.org/

National Abortion Federation: https://prochoice.org/#

NAF Hotline (Monday - Friday 8 am - 7 pm EST, Saturday & Sunday 8 am - 4 pm EST): 1-800-772-9100

Now is the time to donate to your local abortion fund. If you live in a state where abortion is likely to stay legal, clinics expect an influx of people from other states looking for healthcare.

National Network of Abortion Funds: http://abortionfunds.org

List of abortion funds in states likely or certain to prohibit abortion:

https://www.thecut.com/article/donate-abortion-fund-roe-v-wade-how-to-help.html

#Im really not the best informed about this just wanted to share some resources because I have a following on here #abortion #roe v wade #roe vs. wade #abortion rights #reproductive choice #reproductive rights #bodily autonomy #pro choice #reproductive health #abortion ban #abortion funds #abortion access #boost #signal boost #abortion resources

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dottores · 1 year

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HELIOTROPES

pairing: dottore x fem!reader & segments

summary: the gods were sick and twisted. for five hundred years, he believed he was fated to be alone. he had long accepted it—embraced it, even. that is, until a midwinter night when that elusive red thread finally appeared on his finger. but as much as he wants to ignore it, the pull of a soulmate simply cannot be ignored.

genre: soulmate au, canon compliant for the most part

warnings: fem!reader, worldbuilding for snezhnaya & fatui & fontaine

notes: finally reader's pov! and YES, theta segment IS webttore! i started making the segment sheet, ill post it at some point sunday or monday so if u want to see it, keep an eye out for it!

THE COLOR PURPLE

“If anyone is to ask, your soulmark has gone black, your thread is severed, and your soulmate is lost to the world. Should anyone find out that your thread leads to the north, all of us will be under suspicion and Her Excellency is not merciful.”

You stood tall, hands clasped behind your back as you stood between your mother and your half-brother, listening to the Hydro Archon’s announcement. It was an abrupt assembly, as they typically had been lately. You had been preparing for bed when the bell rang throughout the massive palace that housed all of the nation’s aristocrats in the center of Fontaine’s capital city.

If you looked up, you would see the moon high in the sky, the stars glittering against the darkness, but you didn’t dare look away from the Hydro Archon or her court officials.

“... for months, we have allowed ourselves to be lenient with the heretics plaguing our capital. We allowed ourselves to be patient, but the time for leniency and patience is over, we must…”

It was an honor to be welcomed into the Hydro Archon’s abode, the chief justice had claimed, but you knew better. It was no honor for the nobles to be forced out of their countryside estates and into the city--it was a means for surveillance, to make sure that the most influential members of Fontaine’s society were not sympathizers to the growing dissent throughout the capital.

The people were unhappy. The Hydro Archon was becoming more and more severe with her sentencing, more and more strict with her laws. Fontaine prided itself on being the center of culture and arts, but the nation was declining, their energy apparatuses were failing, and their judicial system was becoming corrupt, though no one dared to say it.

The Hydro Archon’s descent had to do with rebellion stirring in the north. You weren’t sure what it was, exactly, you didn’t think anyone really did, but you had heard your grandfather whispering about it vaguely with some of the other court officials--an uprising against the gods, one that she believed would draw the wrath of Celestia down upon all of Teyvat. You thought this might have begun as a noble cause, the Hydro Archon desperate to protect her people and keep Fontaine absolved of conspiring with Snezhnaya, but it was going to become a witch hunt where anyone with any affiliation to Snezhnaya would be found guilty of collusion.

You felt acutely aware of the thread tied neatly around your thumb, of the soulmark branded in between your shoulder blades--the ones that connected you to a citizen of Snezhnaya and would make your whole family a target should anyone ever learn.

You thought it was unfair. It was unfair that you had to hide the fact that you had a soulmate. It was unfair that you and your family would be under suspicion if it got out that your soulmate lived in the north. It was unfair that you had to deal with people gossiping about you because of it--because nothing good ever came along with someone that never received their mark. There were a lot of things unfair, you thought to yourself, and while you didn’t have it as bad as some of the civilians living in Fontaine City who had to deal with the Hydro Archon’s forces constantly prowling the streets looking for dissidents, you thought it was rather ironic that everything unfair about your life stemmed from Celestia’s decision to give people soulmates.

You frowned as your gaze tracked to the side instinctively, looking at where your mother was standing next to you. Behind your mother, your stepfather lingered. You could feel him hovering directly behind her, you could see him out of the corner of your eye, and you couldn’t help the resentment that pooled in your stomach.

Your stepfather. Your mother’s soulmate. The man who had all but turned your life upside down when you were three years old after his arrival in Fontaine.

“... this organization is a blight upon our esteemed nation and court of law, staining the purity of our ideals, defiling our magnificence in the eyes of the divine…”

You tuned the Hydro Archon out as your gaze drifted back down to your own thread. Your soulmate was annoyed with something--you could feel the emotion deep in your gut, muted enough to know that it was not your own. Your soulmate never really felt anything strongly--not sadness, not fear, not anxiety, and certainly not happiness. You weren’t sure you had ever felt them actually happy before.

They were angry sometimes, though, and annoyed occasionally. It was never overwhelming like you had overheard some of your peers talk about. They said sometimes it felt as if they could feel their soulmate’s emotions more intensely than their own--when they were angry, a burst of joy or excitement from their soulmate could ease their anger, or worse, when they were in a good mood, a surge of anger could have them lashing out at their friends and family for no reason.

You never experienced any of that, for better or for worse. In fact, for nearly a year after your tenth birthday, the only proof you had that your soulmate was alive was that your mark was still brightly tattooed between your shoulder blades. They did not tug the string back in response to your own goodnight tugs--though you tried not to let it bother you--and you never really felt anything from them, pain nor emotions.

It wasn’t until you learned how to separate their tiny inflections from your own emotions that you had a way of knowing whether or not your soulmate was alive besides the shared mark and thread, but even then it was just… underwhelming. You didn’t know what to expect from your soulmate, which was unfortunate because by your age, most people at least had an idea of their soulmate’s personality through their shared emotions.

“Perhaps, it just means they’re calm,” your nanny, Miss Elyna, had tried to soothe you while you were making yourself upset over it one night.

“Not feeling anything strongly is not a bad thing,” your father had agreed quietly, “it makes it easier to hide that you have one.”

But you didn’t want to hide, you were sick of hiding--you wanted to go looking for them, you wanted to travel to the frozen wastelands of Snezhnaya, you wanted to wear open-back dresses to show off your mark in hopes that someone had seen the match, you wanted to find them, and you wanted to be with them.

But if you wanted to be with them, it would mean leaving your country behind, leaving your family behind. So much as you might resent your stepfather, you couldn’t bear the thought of leaving your father, your mother, Miss Elyna, or even your half-siblings. Unless the Hydro Archon changed her stance on Snezhnaya, you would be forced into an impossible decision: your blood or your soulmate.

You let out a quiet breath, shaking your head. From the corner of your eye, you caught sight of your stepfather, again. Donned in a lavender dress shirt with a fancy watch that once belonged to your mother’s late father, he looked like the image of Fontaine aristocracy despite hailing from the City of Freedom.

Purple was your favorite color, it was your family’s color, but you hated how it looked draped against your stepfather’s skin. You felt irked again, unable to draw your gaze from the older man. You hated him--you hated how he treated your father, you hated how he treated you, and you hated how he was trying to pit your half-siblings against you. You knew you couldn’t fault your mother for wanting to be with her soulmate, but if this was her soulmate, you couldn’t help but wonder what that might mean about her.

Your throat felt tight as you forced yourself to look away, eyes instead falling on your grandfather standing at the Hydro Archon’s side as she spoke. He was Warden of the Black Cells, the highest security level of Fontaine’s prison--he was one of the Hydro Archon’s most trusted confidants, the one she counted on to make sure her enemies stayed locked deep beneath the lakes of the city. His eyes were sharp as he stared down at the aristocrats standing before him, reminiscent of a predator hunting its prey, waiting for someone to slip up and place themselves under suspicion. He paid particular attention to your stepfather, you couldn’t help but notice, and it made you almost want to giggle.

The assembly was finally near its end, you could tell from the Hydro Archon’s tone: “... a curfew will be instated to preserve our-”

And then your arm burned--so intense that it took all your self-control to not cry out, somehow both hot and cold at the same time. It was dragging against your skin in even strokes as if branding letters onto you. You bit down hard on your lower lip, hand flying to clutch your forearm and trying not to make a scene. You could feel several pairs of eyes on you, including your mother, half-brother and stepfather… and your grandfather.

Branding words.

You felt light-headed as realization began to hit you.

It was past midnight.

It was your birthday, and you were fifteen.

It was the start of the third phase, and the first time that words were shared between soulmates, the pain was excruciating.

What terrible timing, you thought to yourself as your eyes teared up and your half-brother shifted in front of you once he noticed something was wrong, looking at you with a questioning look that you couldn’t even respond to.

Just as your vision began to go spotty, you caught sight of the words being seared into your skin--the same shade as the soulmark stamped between your shoulder blades, but only visible to you:

Deactivate.

“Do you think I won’t have you deactivated, Theta?” Dottore asked, voice calm but internally, his anger was rising as he looked down at the report in front of him detailing the near destruction of one of his labs down in southern Mondstadt and along with it, most of the progress that they had made the past six years in stabilizing delusions.

The Theta Segment looked unbothered, staring at Dottore emptily. “You won’t have me deactivated because you don’t have the resources to create a new segment right now. Otherwise you would have replaced Beta already, and you haven’t. Either way, deactivating me wouldn’t have prevented the situation unless you’ve figured out a way to endow segments with prophetic abilities,” Theta said, voice dry and mocking.

Beta, Dottore inhaled, trying to reign in his temper as it spiked at the reminder of the Beta segment. His head was pounding--he had been dealing with setbacks in his own research, and the Balladeer was being less than forthcoming regarding information about the Abyss and Irminsul. He was losing his patience with it because the only reason Scaramouche was even capable of withstanding the hostile energy in the Abyss was because Dottore had unlocked his latent powers as an Archon’s creation.

He could by all means deactivate Theta, but Theta was right in that he didn’t have the resources to create another segment to replace him. He had all of the physical materials, despite how hard they were to come by, but he lost the connection to Irminsul he had in Snezhaya, drained the sprout of all of its energy, and he needed the connection to Irminsul to create the segments in the mindsets of his past self. There were rumors of other withered sprouts in the ruins of Vindagnyr--he had the Rho and Gamma segments searching through the bitter cold to try to find ways to revitalize the sprouts, but their efforts had been fruitless thus far.

“Careful,” he warned quietly, looking up from the report to finally look at the Theta Segment, who stiffened a bit at Dottore’s tone. “You’re testing my patience.”

“There was nothing I could’ve done,” Theta’s voice was still sharp, defensive, which Dottore expected of the segment. Theta was the segment created right after his expulsion from the Akademiya--volatile, uncontrollable, always angry and always on edge. He never took well to being told that he did something wrong, Dottore was surprised it had taken him this long to snap.

“If it were Rho or Delta, they would have made the necessary preparation to deal with such a situation,” Dottore countered, reading through all of the reported damages and lost research. He pressed his lips together tightly as he realized that all of their research had been lost. It would set them back over a year, maybe two or three. “Instead, we-”

“Don’t compare me to them,” Theta bristled, hands fisting at his side, teeth clenched so tight that Dottore could practically hear them grinding. “Not to Delta.”

Dottore smiled thinly, “Then do not do things that make me compare you to them,” he said coldly. He leaned back in his seat, placing the papers down. “This was easily preventable, Theta.”

“How was I supposed to know about a stray wyvern nesting in the Mondstadt countryside?” Theta said, aggressive and loud.

Dottore stared at him, “You research, Theta,” he responded, tone a bit more sharp. “You research the area where you plan to waste hundreds of thousands of mora building one of our labs to make sure that it’s a location conducive to our research. All of the older segments would have known to look into the property and the surrounding land before throwing away our limited mora. If you can’t even bother to make an effort to show a little bit of responsibility, you will be stripped of your independence and sent to the Fontaine border to assist Delta permanently, do you understand?”

“You can’t do that,” Theta hissed. “I’m not a child-”

“No, you’re not. You are a tool,” Dottore interrupted, “and tools do what they were created for and when they are no longer useful, they are disposed of.”

Theta turned to leave, fists balled tight at his side, Dottore spoke up again before he could walk away, “Did I dismiss you?” he asked. Theta stopped but did not turn to face Dottore. “You will go to Sumeru with Lambda. The two of you will work on replacing all of the lost research. You will explain to him the situation and why he is being forced to halt his part of the residue project. You have half a year to replace all of the lost research.”

“Or what?” Theta spit out.

Dottore did not respond, he figured that was enough of an answer.

You will be deactivated.

Theta scoffed, shaking his head—and just like that, Dottore’s temper snapped. His hand shot forward quickly, iron-grip latching around Theta’s wrist as he yanked the segment closer to him, tone low and laced with poison as he leaned forward over the desk, “You have wasted far more resources than you are worth. Time and time again you have proven yourself to be the most useless segment that I’ve created. Tread carefully because your next mistake will be your last, I don’t care enough to replace you.”

Theta ripped his arm out of Dottore’s grasp, taking a step away. His lips were twisted, and his eyes were ablaze with rage, but he didn’t respond this time.

Dottore looked back down at the desk, shuffling through the papers and looking for the one that he had been trying to get through before Theta had arrived to disrupt his peace.

“Leave,” he ordered, void of emotion as he relaxed back into his chair. “Now, and don’t ever bring up the Beta segment again.”

Theta didn’t say another word as he left the room, closing the door harshly behind him. Dottore let out a sharp exhale, squeezing the bridge of his nose as he tried to calm himself down so he could refocus. Instinctually, his gaze drew to his other hand, where the thread was tied snugly around his thumb.

His soulmate hadn’t tugged the thread tonight. He looked back to the window on the far end of the room, where the sky was dark and the stars shone brightly against the black canvas. He wondered if they had finally given up or if they just hadn’t fallen asleep yet--he wasn’t sure which he would prefer. Usually, he could tell when they fell asleep, but this time he had been distracted by Theta and wasn’t paying attention.

Tonight would be the start of the third phase.

He looked over to the side, in the direction of the chart that he had set up. He wouldn’t know the exact time, but it was soon, and he was glad he got Theta out of the room before it began. His thread had shown up in the dead of night ten years ago--he remembered the day very well--and he had dreaded this day ever since it had shown up. The third phase was a violation, a breach of his privacy. He did not want his thoughts being transcribed onto a random person at all, much less when he couldn’t even control what words were being sent to them.

This was when the concept of a soulmate really became an issue. They had already been a personal issue, but now it extended beyond just him. It was an issue for the whole organization because if one wrong word got transferred to them and they mentioned it around the wrong people, it could spell a lot of trouble for the Fatui and their goals.

He should have gone to the Jester by now. He should have gone to him and told him the situation so they could work to track down his soulmate before it got to this point before it put the Fatui at risk. He didn’t know why he hadn’t yet. Something odd and unfamiliar tugged at his gut, an emotion he couldn’t recognize. It wasn’t from his soulmate, he could feel that much, but he convinced himself it was.

You haven’t gone to the Jester because you’re going to sever the bond, he reminded himself, and then this would become a nonissue. But it was not as easy as he thought it would be. There was no previous research done into severing a bond between soulmates, there were old folktales but no legit information to back the validity of them. Dottore had a feeling that Irminsul would have answers for him and he found it ironic that the tree seemed to be the root of all of his most recent issues--he had half a mind to burn the thing to the ground when he finally got to it.

Just as he was going to finally force himself to focus back on the report, he felt it--a searing pain in his left forearm, nothing compared to what he had dealt with before but he hadn’t expected it to be as intense as it was.

He paused only for a second before rolling up his sleeve.

Purple, the word said, and Dottore couldn’t help but shake his head. He wasn’t sure what he had been anticipating from them, but he supposed that a color was about as predictable as it could get.

He wondered what they might have gotten from him--it could’ve been anything from his argument with Theta to his thoughts on Irminsul. He hoped that it wasn’t the latter. He felt stressed suddenly, rubbing his temples and letting his eyes slide shut as he tried to figure out what he could do, if there was a way that he could control his thoughts and filter out what they could be receiving from him.

He didn’t think there was, realistically. He had done a lot of research trying to prepare for this day, and he had come up empty-handed. The only way to prevent his soulmate from receiving words he didn’t want them to receive was to stop thinking about them, and that wasn’t an option. He had work to do, research to complete, and he refused to let them interfere more than they already had.

Hesitating for a second, he reached for a notebook laid out on the desk next to him, jotting down the word he had received before pushing the notebook out of sight and pushing his soulmate out of mind, returning to the heaps of papers he had to get through before the night was up.

You lounged in the garden, relaxing to the soft scent of lilies beneath the gentle glow of the sunset over the horizon. You could hear a songbird chirping in the distance, people chattering in the streets as they made their way back to their homes before curfew, the quiet hum of the apparatuses set up throughout the garden to keep the flora rich and healthy. It wasn’t raining, for once. You swore that the past two weeks had been nothing but torrential downpour, you’d been trapped inside the library of the palace, spending your time reading old tales of forbidden love and the old gods.

You didn’t like being in Fontaine City. It was always muggy and ugly outside, it was usually raining, and even when the skies were clear, there was a strange, intense mechanical scent that made your head hurt--the only place free of it was the garden on the roof of the palace, but even then, sometimes the sweetness of the flowers was sickly. You wanted to return to the countryside, to your mother’s family estate near the Snezhnayan border where the air was brisk and fresh, and the grass was lush and green, the thick scent of the wild and the subtle scent of smoke from the estate’s fireplace being the ones most familiar and dear to your heart.

You sighed as you rested your head against the cool stone of the statue you were sitting against, pen tapping steadily against your notebook as your eyes grazed over the past few words that you had received from your soulmate: sever, residue, research, failure.

You couldn’t make much sense of it, you had thought two years ago that maybe you would finally get to know more about your soulmate now that you were sharing thoughts, but you found yourself at even more of a loss than you were at before. They were a complete mystery to you. They thought words in the old tongue rather often--Theta, Iota, Lambda, and Delta, most frequently but there were others that appeared less often: Kappa, Rho, Gamma, Epsilon, Zeta—and no one really knew the old tongue unless they were an academic or some sort of priest of the dead gods.

And even the thoughts you received in the common tongue were just strange, and you didn’t even understand half of them. Ever since the start of the third phase, you seemed to spend the majority of your days in the palace’s libraries trying to understand them by looking up the random words that were showing up on your forearm, but somehow, it only left you more confused.

You thought that maybe they were a scholar at Sumeru’s Akademiya who had traveled north for research. Fontaine had its own institute, but it focused on engineering and mechanics, not languages, and students who graduated from the institute typically remained in Fontaine unless they were granted leave to introduce and promote their invention to other nations… and even then, they would never be granted leave to Snezhnaya, but as far as you were aware, the Akademiya did not have such restrictions.

It would be better for you if that were the case--that way, your soulmate wasn’t a citizen of Snezhnaya, and you didn’t have to worry about being prosecuted by the Hydro Archon for treason.

You hummed to yourself, doodling on the corner of your notebook as you eyed the word that was currently branded against your forearm: dead. It followed the string of words you had received earlier in the day--normally, you only received one word from them a day, two if you were lucky, but since you woke up this morning, you’d gone through five words.

You bit down on your bottom lip, hesitating before you finally noted the word down beneath failure, adding it to the grouping you had made for today. Sever, residue, research, failure, dead. Not foreboding at all, you thought to yourself, trying to put together what it all might mean. You weren’t sure how the first word fit in with the rest, but you figured the other four were all related.

Research into some sort of residue? What residue? Failed in whatever they were doing, something or someone ended up dead.

They didn’t seem distressed about it, so you supposed that no one important to them got hurt or died… or if they did, your soulmate simply did not care… and it kind of worried you that you genuinely did not know them well enough to know which was the case. You sighed, a pout tugging at your lips as you looked away from your notebook and up to the sky.

There was another storm already rolling in, you could see the dark clouds in the distance. You didn’t know what to think about your soulmate. You got strange words from them, you never felt anything from them sans the occasional annoyance or anger, and they never responded to your tugs when you tried to tell them goodnight.

You supposed it hurt a bit. Your whole life, you had watched kids your age babbling on, excited about their soulmate. You watched them have invisible flicking competitions that only the two of them could follow--seeing who could flick the thread the most before the other person gave up. You watched the way they reacted to feeling waves of emotions from them. You watched the way they would all giggle and talk about the words they received--figuring out their favorite colors, their favorite foods, what they liked to do and maybe even narrow down to where they might be living. You watched as they blushed and got flustered when it became apparent that their soulmate was thinking of them.

You couldn’t do any of that--not only because your soulmate was from, or lived in, Snezhnaya, so you couldn’t even talk to anyone your age about them but also because you weren’t experiencing any of that with your soulmate anyway. Every time you tried to get them to flick the thread back, you were ignored, and your soulmate never thought about you, the most frequent words you received from them were deactivate, failure, and sever. You didn’t know what deactivate meant, you assumed failure was in regards to whatever research they kept thinking about, and you had no idea what they were trying to sever.

It was frustrating and upsetting. You just wanted a soulmate that you could be with like your peers, someone to be excited about and look forward to. And you were excited, and you did look forward to eventually meeting them, but you couldn’t help but be a bit bummed and anxious over it all.

Three years.

You were seventeen now. There were three years left until you and your soulmate entered the fourth and final stage--being able to communicate through the shared thoughts and then you would finally get some answers from them.

“There you are.”

You slammed your notebook shut, eyes wide as your head snapped to the side, gaze falling upon your half-siblings, Elliot and Sylvie, approaching you from behind. You smiled as best as you could, trying to glance around to make sure that their father wasn’t following them.

“He’s busy with mother at a meeting,” Sylvie said quietly, eyes lit up with a sort of mischief that you hadn’t seen in her for quite a bit. “We snuck out.”

She spoke hushed, as if the flowers around them might tell her father what she was saying. You supposed it was possible--you wouldn’t put it past the Hydro Archon and the court officials to install listening devices throughout the city to make sure that no one was conspiring against them.

“How did you sneak past Miss Elyna?” you asked her as the two of them came to sit cross-legged with you on the ground next to a bed of pretty pink flowers.

They were almost fourteen years old now. Both of them had been born with their marks, so they and their soulmates would be entering the third phase soon too. They were excited, constantly whispering about what they thought their soulmate would be like. You remembered when you had been like that, bouncing around in bed as you rattled off possibilities to Miss Elyna because you had no one else to talk to about it.

Now, you only felt a dull sense of disappointment.

“She wasn’t looking, so we snuck out the door and ran,” Elliot told you, a bright smile on his face. You doubted that was the case—Miss Elyna had the senses of a hawk, it was more likely she let them leave because it’s their only chance to spend time with you without their father hovering and dragging them away.

You hated their father. At one point, you had been hopeful. You thought that your mother meeting her soulmate would change little in the way your family worked. Your father was more than happy to step aside and let your mother find solace with her fated, but it wasn’t enough for your stepfather. He wanted your father gone and he wanted your brother to replace you as your mother’s heir, but you had no way of proving it. He hid the rotting carcass he called a personality behind a kind smile and empty eyes that your mother refused to look past.

“Can you tell us what it’s like?” Sylvie whispered, drawing you from your thoughts. Your brow furrowed in confusion, shooting her a questioning look, but Sylvie only looked pointedly down at your notebook.

Your eyes widened, instinctively tucking the notebook closer to your chest. Your lips and mouth felt dry as you stared at your half-siblings, trying to figure out if Sylvie was implying that she knew that you had a soulmate. No one should know—no one besides your father and mother and Miss Elyna. You had worried the day you received your first word from your soulmate would draw suspicion, but your father had brushed any unwanted eyes off by telling them you had been ill.

No one should know, you felt sick and anxious, unsure of how to respond to Sylvie--both of them were looking at you expectantly, excited for an answer.

“It’s okay,” Elliot said, once he realized how upset you suddenly looked. “We’ve known for a while, we won’t-”

“Elliot! Sylvie, have you seen-”

It was Miss Elyna, out of breath and on the verge of tears--she cut herself off as soon as she saw you hidden behind the statue. You rose to your feet, concerned, “Miss Ely-”

“It’s your father,” Miss Elyna said, voice choked and wobbly. At once, the world around you shattered. “Come, we must hurry.”

“I suppose I owe you thanks,” a familiar voice murmured, approaching Dottore from behind. He tilted his head to the side, glancing over his shoulder to where his old recruit, now promoted to the Ninth seat as the Fatui’s Regrator, came to a stop next to the column that Dottore was leaning against, waiting for his chance to slip away from the celebrations.

“Thank me with funding,” Dottore said. “I’ve exhausted all of my resources. I’ll need a significant amount of mora and test subjects to begin research into Archon residue if we want to find a safer alternative to delusions any time soon… which I’m sure you’d be personally vested in and I am not cutting the funding from my own personal projects.”

Pantalone let out a huff of laughter, Dottore was not sure what exactly the new Harbinger found amusing about what he said so he turned to face him, lips flat and eyes void of emotion behind the mask he wore.

“Relax, doctor,” Pantalone said quietly. “I have not forgotten about our original deal. Have you not already seen an increase since my induction into the Fatui?”

“Not a large enough increase in comparison to the risks I took advocating for you,” Dottore said coldly, looking away from him up to where the Jester was preparing with the Captain for the official inauguration of Pantalone as one of the Eleven Harbingers. “Go, this event has lasted long enough. As soon as all of the official business is over with, I can leave.”

Pantalone did not look pleased, lips pressed together tight as his gaze swept across the large room. All of the higher-ranked members of the Fatui based in Snezhnaya were attending the event--agents trained by Arlecchino, vanguard captains trained by Capitano, even some mages and Mirror Maidens that had gone through La Signora’s strict training regiments lingered around where the Eighth Harbinger was lounging back at one of the tables. She looked just as ready for the night to be over as Dottore was.

Pantalone looked anxious, only thinly concealed behind an otherwise blank expression, and Dottore supposed he couldn’t blame him. All of the people in this room were the people that had been considered and rejected for the Ninth Seat in favor of him. The Fatui were united, yes, but their loyalty only went so far when the prospect of a promotion was dangled in front of their face. Not a single person in this room would forego the chance of taking out the new Harbinger if it gave them a shot at being one of the Eleven.

They had tried it with him centuries ago, when Dottore had initially been promoted to Harbinger. The Fatui was a younger organization then, less structured and far more anarchic, and there had been more attempts on his life than he could count. Only one had succeeded, and he had made it so that it could never happen again.

Now that he had centuries of authority, his moniker inducing fear and respect throughout their ranks for all of his accomplishments, he didn’t have to worry much about greedy, ambitious underlings trying to take off his head and claim his position.

But the Regrator would have more trouble, he noted to himself.

Something felt odd in his chest--a twinge of anxiety, or fear. It was not his own, and he had been blocking off his segments for the duration of the night so he was not interrupted while at an important event. He could only assume that it was coming from his soulmate. He frowned to himself, eyes darting down to his forearm but it was covered by his sleeve, and he would draw too much attention to himself should he go to check if the word had changed.

Instead, he forced himself to focus on the situation at hand.

Pantalone was no fighter, his delusion harmed him as much as it helped him--more so than it did to the average person--it tore apart his body from the inside whenever he summoned the volatile energy, and he couldn’t even control the energy yet. He was incompetent with a sword, couldn’t pick up a claymore, and was awkward with a polearm. He was decent with aiming a bow, but that would be useless in a close combat assassination like the ones that would be attempted on him. If he were attacked, the only real defense he had would be that decorative blade strapped to his waist.

Dottore wondered if it would be worth it to enlist Sandrone in creating a sort of projectile weapon that could be used both in close and ranged combat… but that was not something he was going to waste his own time doing, he would present the option to Pantalone only once Dottore’s funding has been increased significantly.

“Is funding the only thing you want?” Pantalone suddenly asked, voice cryptic in a way that Dottore did not like. He peered at the younger man from the corner of his eye, waiting for him to explain himself. But he didn’t, instead, violet eyes only looked down pointedly at Dottore’s right hand--the hand that his red thread was tied around his thumb. Dottore inhaled, not responding, and finally, Pantalone continued, “I’m just saying, I have other resources, connections… should you need to find something,”

Someone.

Dottore was livid, he could feel his anger rising, and he could feel that strange anxiety begin to get worse from his soulmate’s end, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about that now--was it a taunt? A threat? Or a genuine offer of help?

Either way, Dottore didn’t like it. No one should know about the thread tied around his thumb. No one should know that he had a soulmate. Did one of the segments let it slip? Did they mention it in public? It was possible, but Dottore doubted it--the younger segments were never around people and the older segments knew better, even Theta. They knew very well that even if they had no interest in meeting their soulmate after all of these years, that if their soulmate died, it would cause irreparable damage to all of them.

They would not risk it.

So then how-

“If you’re wondering how… I’m very observant, that’s all,” Pantalone interrupted his thoughts, watching him carefully. “I had to be, considering my lifestyle before you recruited me into the Fatui. Abrupt movements for no apparent reason, flinches, stiffening, sudden jerks… a gaze flickering down just a bit too often… tucking a thumb into your fist--I learned to watch for certain tells to find weak points in my enemies...”

Dottore unfisted his right hand immediately, not moving nor responding even as Pantalone stared at him expectantly, waiting for a response. He felt like a fool, and he hated feeling like a fool. He wanted to say something, make a dry comment about how yes, of course the way he held his hand meant that he had a soulmate, but his lips wouldn’t move and he wasn’t sure if responding would be more damning because Pantalone hadn’t even said the word soulmate yet anyway, only implied it.

“... but we are not enemies, so you need not worry. It’s not something I plan to use against you… just offering some extra resources. If you need them, just let me know,” Pantalone finally said, the heels of his boots clicking against the marble ground as he began to make his way past Dottore toward where Pierro and Capitano were waiting for him. “You know where to find me.”

Damn all of the subordinates looking for a quick promotion, Dottore had half a mind to kill Pantalone himself, right there in front of everybody. His rage was clouding his mind, a wicked storm about to break through the calm facade. He felt like he was young again, the years just after he was kicked out of the Akademiya when he was brewing with uncontrollable fury and a switch that could flip on or off at any given moment with no warning.

He forced himself to leave. He would deal with the Jester and his complaints about his premature departure later, he was certain that if he remained there any longer, blood would be spilled and all of Dottore’s efforts to get himself more funding would go straight down the drain.

He couldn’t tell anymore if the anxiety he was feeling was from himself or his soulmate. The corridor around him swayed like he was on a ship sailing through the rough, northern sea. He had been so careful to keep it hidden and the way he positioned his hand gave it away? There was no way. Pantalone had to have been throwing out a wild guess and hoping for confirmation--his only hope was that he had been able to keep his face devoid of the anger that was twisting his insides, that he hadn’t given Pantalone any reason to believe his suspicions had been correct.

His chest felt tight--like he couldn’t breathe properly, which was ridiculous because he was breathing but it felt like he wasn’t getting enough air to his lungs. He didn’t know what this was. It was not something he had ever felt before, and that meant it had to be coming from them, his soulmate--he cursed himself for giving in to his own bout of emotion, a show of weakness that allowed their emotions to engulf his and he didn’t know how to fix it now that the spiral had begun.

Unless it wasn’t emotions, and that was why it was so intense.

Were they getting strangled?

It didn’t make any sense, he would be able to feel the hands around their throat, the bruises forming against their skin.

He leaned against the wall of the corridor he had escaped down, only dimly lit by a candle halfway down the hall--far enough from the event that he shouldn’t have to worry about anyone stumbling upon him while he was like this. He pulled off his mask, pressing a hand hard against his chest, right over where his heart would’ve been.

Calm down, he wanted to spit out at them, his rage blending with his soulmate’s anxiety and fear. Calm down.

This was not the place. He could hear the Jester speaking in the distance, he could hear the crowds of people applauding dutifully at the official announcement of the Regrator’s position, he could see the shadows of people walking just a bit too close to the side hall for his own comfort.

He was being overwhelmed, and he had never been overwhelmed by someone before, not like this. His fury was subsiding, being replaced by his soulmate’s intense surge of emotions. He had never felt anything like this before, and he wasn’t sure what it was or how to describe it. It felt as if the walls were closing in around him, as if someone was dragging jagged nails down the inside of his throat, as if his blood had turned into lead—thick and heavy, weighing his whole body down.

He couldn’t even tell what was wrong, he couldn’t tell if the pain was physical or emotional. Was his soulmate dying? Was that it? The thought made his stomach churn, wondering what that would mean for him, if he would become the husk that all widowers became after their mark went black.

No, he told himself, you are stronger.

The Captain was able to move on from the death of his soulmate. Dottore had seen the blackened mark himself when the man asked him to fix up his arm after a challenge had gone wrong years ago against one of the ancient gods of the far north.

Had he moved on? Dottore questioned himself, or was he just a shell of himself, moving on autopilot to bring the divine to their knees before he could join his soulmate in the next life?

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter whether or not Capitano had been able to move on because Dottore would--he was above man, above mortal. He refused to let something as inconsequential as the death of a stranger inhibit his research, and obstruct him from his goals. He refused to let nearly five hundred years go to waste.

But he wasn’t sure, no matter how much he insisted to himself that it didn’t matter. He wasn’t confident he would be able to brush it off, and the uncertainty was damning because the thought of his soulmate—who would be no older than sixteen or seventeen now, a year or two older than the Gamma segment—dying such a brutal and untimely death made him sick to his stomach for reasons beyond just selfish ones, reasons that he didn’t dare try to delineate.

Celestia is cruel, he thought to himself as this situation forced him to come to terms with what he had been pushing away for over a decade. Because they were not just a stranger, so much as he tried to convince himself of it. Dottore was a pragmatic man at heart, and he knew himself very well, no matter how much the past twelve years have tested his sense of identity. From the moment he had noticed that thread and felt those childish little tugs, Dottore had formed an attachment to the person on the other side. He was selfish and possessive, and he had never in his life had something that was so fundamentally meant to be his before and he didn’t want the gods to take yet another thing from him--he convinced himself it was more out of pride, out of anger toward Celestia than out of fear.

He had known it was too good to be true from the start. He knew that the gods would dangle his soulmate in front of his face like meat to a starved dog--it was why he was so intent on finding a way to sever the thread before this could happen. He knew that they would let him get accustomed to their distant presence, they would let him get accustomed to the goodnight tugs and the frequent swells of emotion that he was not capable of feeling on his own. They would even let it get to the point where he was beginning to accept it, noting down all of the words that were transferred to him in hopes to find clues regarding where they were… in hopes of getting to learn more about them—who they were, why they were meant to be his fated.

He knew that they would let this all happen, and he knew that they would rip it away, and he let himself fall for the trap they had laid out anyway.

Dottore was a fool. He had always been one, but the past decade or so had truly made a comedy of it in the eyes of the divine.

His fingers fumbled for the buttons on the cuff of his dress shirt, trying to see which words would be branded on his skin for eternity--to see if it would give any sort of hint as to who they were, or where they were, or what happened to them so if the opportunity ever arose, he could deal back tenfold to the person that did this.

Father

He paused, taken aback for a second. Was their father the perpetrator? If that was the case, it might not be all too hard to find the culprit--filicide was considered taboo across all seven nations… but Dottore had a feeling that it wasn’t so simple because him being startled at the word gave him the bit of clarity he needed to compartmentalize and digest all of the stray emotions tearing through him.

It was not physical pain, he realized, trying to pinpoint what exactly it was. He had gotten better at deciphering emotions over the past seven years, but whatever this was, it was still foreign to him. The only consolation he had was that he couldn’t feel his body weakening, he couldn’t feel any physical pain. The thread was still bright and very much connected to him.

And the intensity was fading--albeit at a snail’s pace, but it was fading. It was becoming something heavier, more oppressive, as if the weight of the world was being tossed onto his shoulders.

Grief, he slowly recognized, this must be grief.

Grief. He had never experienced grief before. Not like this. He had mourned failed experiments, he had mourned the loss of his resources, he had mourned wasted time but he had never experienced an emotion like this before.

He felt relieved knowing that his soulmate was not, in fact, dying, knowing that he didn’t have to stress about figuring out how he was going to move on when Celestia damned all those who had lost their soulmates to desolation, knowing that he would not have to deal with his segments losing their minds over this but at the same time-

“Dottore.”

He was not even able to dwell on his train of thought, forced to try to compose himself as a familiar voice met his ears. Now back in control of himself, getting ahold of the unwelcome emotions still crawling around inside of him, Dottore could focus. He tucked away the feelings deep within him as he straightened, slipping his mask back on and rolling his sleeve down as discreetly as he could.

He looked over his shoulder to where Brighella was standing several feet away, a glass of wine in his hand, green eyes beady and curious as he spoke, “Is something wrong?”

He spoke with a sort of faux care that made Dottore irrationally annoyed because he knew very well that it was just that--faux. He wanted something. Brighella always wanted something and Dottore wasn’t particularly in the mood to humor him this time, lips twisting down as the man brought it upon himself to draw closer to Dottore.

“No,” Dottore answered shortly. “Why are you not attending the event?”

“I could ask the same of you,” Brighella’s response was challenging and quick. Dottore raised his eyebrows beneath his mask, not that Brighella could tell, but the other Harbinger quickly grew uncomfortable in the silence, letting out a sheepish laugh, nervous gaze flicking back and forth. “Ha, sorry. I’ve had a few drinks, you know how it gets-”

“I do not,” Dottore said, voice icy as he observed the man.

Dottore had never been particularly good at reading people. He spent more time in his lab than socializing, even during his years at the Akademiya, and the only use he found for humans once he joined the Fatui was utilizing them to make advances in his research. But he could tell something was off, Brighella’s eyes were too sharp--they didn’t have the drunken glaze that they usually did when the man had been drinking.

Was he faking it?

Dottore didn’t think so. Brighella reeked of alcohol, and he seemed off-balanced, and Dottore didn’t think that he could really fake much of anything to anyone, much less to Dottore. He was always skittish and anxious around higher-ranked members of the Harbingers, but something wasn’t sitting right with him. Dottore thought-

“Oh god, I didn’t mean-”

Dottore stared down at his stained clothes, at the red wine seeping through his white dress shirt, sticky against his skin. Dottore’s lips twisted, barely restraining the resurfacing fury and Brighella was panicked, stuttering over his words as he apologized, stumbling over his own feet as he searched for something to use as a cloth or napkin to clean up the mess he had made.

Dottore only inhaled sharply, turning on his heel and ignoring the calls after him as he made his way down the hall in the direction of his quarters for the night.

Tonight had been a trainwreck, he thought to himself bitterly. Between Pantalone, his soulmate, and now the drunkard that called himself a Harbinger, Dottore swore he was on the verge of losing his mind.

Ever since the red thread had appeared on his thumb twelve years ago, he had been losing control. He was losing control of his segments, he was losing control of all of the carefully calculated plans he had created, he was losing control of himself, and tonight was proof enough of that.

He was done.

He would figure out a way to sever the damned thread before this got any further. It was too close of a call for comfort--he didn’t know how the death of his soulmate would affect him, and it was a gamble that he wasn’t willing to take. He couldn’t afford to let something like this happen again, especially in public. It made him seem weak in front of those that would use it against him—and Dottore was not weak. He was sick of being strung around like a marionette by the emotions of a child.

And if there was not a way to sever the thread, then he would make a way.

reblogs appreciated!

#dottore x reader #dottore smut #dottore x you #genshin x reader #genshin smut #genshin x you #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #genshin impact smut

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eretzyisrael · 4 months

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That's not even the worst example from Sunday.

Iraqi Shiite news site Baratha imagines a world without Zionists - and without Jews:

What would the world lose if the Jews became extinct?! Quite the contrary, humanity will have a good opportunity to live quietly and without the evils of this malicious sect. The idea is so wonderful that I can almost see the desert blooming, the earth getting excited, and millions of beings losing their minds from extreme happiness! Jews are the curse that came from the worst dreams of the accursed Devil. Without them, humanity would not have known atheism, the theory of evolution, and racism. With their help, the prophets were killed, usury and immorality spread, wars broke out, and nations perished. With their dirty thinking, epidemics developed, the death trade became widespread, and the world turned into an arena of conflict in which man eats man and death spreads everywhere. . If humanity had not known this malicious sect, it would not have known socialism, capitalism, and Nazism. It would not have known Zionism, Freemasonry, Illuminati, and Wahhabism. It would not have known the Cold War, nuclear and hydrogen bombs, and it would not have known corruption, anomalies, drugs, cancer, global warming, the right to veto, America, injustice, and oppression. They are a dirty, atheistic sect that claims faith, a dirty race that considers itself the only one worthy of life, and a strange society that contains the essence of meanness, malice, and deception accumulated over thousands of years. Their history is rotten, their books are false, their principles are evil, their morals are malicious, their methods are satanic, their goals are ominous, their presence is dangerous, and their survival is not good for man or animal. These people never lived among a people without their corruption, unrest, and devastation spreading, and they never moved to any country without carrying evil with them to it.. So it behooves all humanity to be hostile to them until it is safe from their evil, and I am not exaggerating here if I say that their disappearance is life and good, and their survival is death and evil. If humanity wants to live in peace, it must first stop their evil; And everyone who stands against them is on the side of truth, goodness and peace. There is no alternative to God’s laws, and the path of Satan and his servants will end in failure. Everyone who stands against them will be helped and supported by God’s care. Goodness, which is the path to salvation, is in standing against evil, not by standing by and watching. The responsibility that one cannot escape from bearing is through awareness, work, and patience, and the outcome is survival and victory in This world and the hereafter, God willing.

Unlike the resurgence of antisemitism in the West, there are next to no articles condemning the incitement to violence that is now widespread. The pretense that arab media had in separating Jews from Zionism in the past 25 years has all but disappeared. The Jews remaining in Tunisia are frightened to death that they will be slaughtered at any time.

Western NGOs who claim to be supportive of human rights do not say a word against these explicit calls to rid the world of the evil of Jews.

#antisemitism #islamic antisemitism #jews #nazis #incitement

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workersolidarity · 8 days

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[ 📹 Scenes from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Sunday, when the wounded arrived to the hospital following a raid carried out by the Israeli occupation forces bombing residential buildings in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp. 📈 The death toll in "Israel's" ongoing genocide has risen yet again to 34'097 Palestinian killed, while a other 76'980 others have been wounded since October 7th, 2023.]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

DAY 198: MASS GRAVES DISCOVERED IN KHAN YUNIS, MASSACRE IN RAFAH, CHILDREN VICTIMS OF "ISRAEL'S" CRIMES

On the 198th day of "Israel's" ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 5 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 48 citizens, mostly women and children, while another 79 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

Gaza's Ministry of Health went on to add that thousands of Palestinian victims remain missing under the rubble or strewn across the streets of Gaza, unable to be reached by civil defense and paramedic crews while under continuous Israeli bombardment.

In a truly horrific discovery, two mass graves were unearthed in the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, in the south of Gaza, following the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation army, including bodies of Palestinians missing their heads, some with skin removed, and some with their internal organs missing.

According to the spokesperson for Gaza's media office, Ismail Thawabta, “The occupation prepared a cemetery inside the walls of the Nasser Complex to hide its crimes,” revealing that “there are 700 martyrs in mass graves who were executed by the occupation inside the Nasser Complex."

"We discovered two mass graves in the Nasser Medical Complex, and we expect there to be more." Thawapta explained, adding that "the occupation executed dozens of displaced, wounded, sick, and medical personnel, and that the fate of dozens of those who were in the Nasser Complex is still unknown after the occupation's withdrawal."

According to a report in Al-Quds News from occupied Jerusalem, Civil Defense crews uncovered 190 bodies of Palestinian victims in the two mass graves, and more than 500 victims remain missing from the Nasser complex massacre, while around 2'000 Palestinians disappeared in total from the Khan Yunis area during Israeli ground operations.

Gaza's media office confirmed that the majority of victims found in the mass graves consisted of women and children, while the Israeli occupation forces deliberately bulldozens over dozens of bodies, burying them before leaving the complex.

In yet another criminal violation of International humanitarian law, the Israeli occupation blocked on Sunday humanitarian aid convoys attempting to deliver desperately needed fuel to Palestinian hospitals in the Gaza Strip.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), nearly two-thirds of humanitarian missions in the Gaza Strip have faced obstacles, imperiments or delays by Israeli occupation authorities, with an average of 5-hours of delays enforced by the occupation on each mission.

As a result of the delays, vital supplies such as medical equipment, medicines, food, fuel and supplies have remained undelivered.

Meanwhile, "Israel's" mass murder and ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip continued over the weekend, with dozens killed in the Israeli occupation's bombing and shelling raids across the enclave.

In one of the latest horrific atrocities, Zionist warplanes and artillery forces targeted two residential homes in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Saturday night, killing at least 19 Palestinians, including 14 children.

In the first raid, occupation fighter jets bombed a civilian home belonging to the Joudeh family in the Ashdod Camp area in central Rafah, murdering 4 Palestinians, including the husband of the family, his pregnant wife and their young daughter.

According to a report on the bombing, emergency crews were able to perform a cesarian section on the slain wife just prior to her death, removing her unborn child and saving the infant's life.

In the next massacre, Zionist occupation forces bombed a residential home belonging to the Abdel-Al family, east of Rafah city, slaughtering at least 15 civilians, including 13 children and two women.

In a previous strike earlier in the night, Israeli occupation forces targeted a house in the Shaboura Refugee Camp, in central Rafah, martyring three civilians.

Sources said a number of victims from the strike remain missing under the rubble, with local civil defense personnel continuing to perform their duties in attempting to remove those victims trapped under the building's debris.

Following the massacres, Israeli aircraft bombarded agricultural lands in the Khirbet al-Adas area, east of Rafah, during which three Palestinian civilians were wounded.

Occupation air forces also bombed civilian homes north of the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, where no victims were reported yet at the time of publishing.

In further Zionist assaults, IOF warplanes bombed a house adjacent to an encampment for displaced civilian families in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Yunis, in the south of Gaza, resulting in the deaths of two civilians and the wounding of more than 10 others.

Occupation air forces also bombed neighborhoods north of Khan Yunis, while Zionist forces bombed farmlands on Saturday night near the entrance to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.

IOF warplanes also bombed lands outside Rafah near the border with Egypt, with no casualties reported in the bombing.

As a result of "Israel's" ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the death toll among Palestinian citizens has risen yet again, now exceeding 34'097 citizens killed, including upwards of 14'685 children and 9'670 women, while another 76'980 others were wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

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thehopefuljournalist · 7 months

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unrelated- what's your favorite news story recently?

Hello, thank you so much for asking!! I've had a hard time because this week was actually full of news stories and I'm working on releasing them all to you guys!

But let me tell you about my favourite one from today :)

As an activist, working within my own country and out especially in climate-related themes, I believe in people-power, fully. I know, of course, that some people have more power and influence than others, but there's no denying that there's strength in numbers.

This recent, huge, protest in New York is such a hopeful turn, I think. I love seeing that I'm not the only one worried, that I'm not alone in my fighting. With numbers, we have a bigger chance of winning over our world leaders, and by doing that, to protect ourselves and our futures.

Well, this is my favourite news story from the past two days.

This past Sunday, 75K climate activists took to New York's streets in a “march to end fossil fuels”

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the US continuing to approve fossil fuel projects, something which the Biden administration did earlier this year with the controversial Willow project in Alaska.

“We are all here for one reason: to end fossil fuels around the planet,” Ocasio-Cortez told a rally at the finish of the march, which ended close to the UN headquarters where world leaders will gather this week. “And the way we create urgency is to have people around the world in the streets.”

“The United States continues to be approving a record number of fossil fuel leases and we must send a message, right here today,” adding that despite record profits the support for the fossil fuel industry was “starting to buckle and crack”.

“This is an incredible moment,” said Jean Su of the Center for Biological Diversity, who helped organize the mobilization. “Tens of thousands of people are marching in the streets of New York because they want climate action,"

“This also shows the tremendous grit and fight of the people, especially youth and communities living at the frontlines of fossil fuel violence, to fight back and demand change for the future they have every right to lead,” she said.

The march came during Climate Week, as world leaders gather for this week’s UN general assembly, and a UN climate ambition summit on Wednesday.

On Friday, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Biden was not currently scheduled to take part in Wednesday’s UN climate summit. Biden has been praised by climate activists for last year passing a historic $369bn climate law but criticized for allowing oil drilling projects and the expansion of gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.

A decision for Biden to stay away from the UN climate ambition summit is “unacceptable”, said Su of the Center for Biological Diversity. “The time is now for Biden to lead on the world stage, and show he means it when he calls climate change the existential threat to humanity.”

During the march, the Rev Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip Hop Caucus, likened today’s climate movement to the US fight for racial justice.

Youth climate activist Vanessa Nakate, from Uganda, said: “When we say that we want climate justice, we’re not just talking about transitioning to solar panels. We are talking about leaving no one behind when you’re talking about addressing the injustices that come with the climate crisis."

Article published September 17, 2023 - The Gaurdian

Another article, interviewing a young climate activist

#climate change #climate #hope #good news #climate crisis #more to come #climate emergency #news #climate justice #hopeful #long post

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frankendykes-monster · 1 year

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Check their shoes and look for mud!” shouted one Atlanta police department officer to another. The sun was setting against a tree line growing greener daily due to recent balmy, spring-like weather in Atlanta, but the bucolic setting of a Sunday in the sun at a free music festival abruptly became panic and chaos. Dozens of law enforcement officers, many with automatic weapons, swarmed into a forest of hundreds of acres, seeking to find any of the 200 or so activists who had set fire to a bulldozer, trailer and other infrastructure used for construction on “Cop City”, a $90m, 85-acre police and fire department training center, about an hour earlier. The clash was just the latest dramatic chapter to hit the Cop City project, which has already seen one environmental activist shot dead by police – the first incident of its kind in the US – and drawn national and international attention to the fight to save the Georgia forest where the giant project is planned. The one officer’s frenzied order about dirty footwear seemed as absurd as any part of the Sunday night operation, since Georgia rains had left muddy patches all over the forest, and at least 600 people were lying on the grass, or camped among the trees, or entering the forest to catch an evening’s music under the stars or leaving – thus many had mud on their shoes. But such was the situation on Sunday night, on the second night of the fifth “week of action” by activists over the last year dedicated to protecting the land called South River forest on municipal maps and Weelaunee forest by activists – using the Muscogee (Creek) word for “brown water”. The scene included police running through trees, arresting a legal observer from the National Lawyers Guild, sending a negotiator to agree on terms with five randomly chosen individuals for letting about a hundred music festival audience members safely leave the forest, and detaining journalists for questioning on “what they were there to cover”. The first two days had included free music, herbal workshops and a peaceful march through neighborhoods surrounding the forest south-east of Atlanta. Then, around 5.30 on Sunday evening, about 200 activists, most in balaclavas and camouflage clothing, began lining up to the right of the stage. They marched around three sides of the audience, chanting “Viva Tortuguita” – a reference to Manuel Paez Terán, a 26-year-old activist who was camping several hundred feet away from that spot on 18 January when police shot and killed him in another raid. It was the first time police killed an environmental activist while protesting in US history. Authorities said that Paez Terán fired first. After several hours of chaos on Sunday night, 23 people – including a legal observer with the National Lawyers Guild – had been arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism” under state law, adding to the 18 defendants facing the same unprecedented charges who have been arrested in recent months.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 days

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Precaratize bosses

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SUNDAY (Apr 21) in TORINO, then Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Combine Angelou's "When someone shows you who they are, believe them" with the truism that in politics, "every accusation is a confession" and you get: "Every time someone accuses you of a vice, they're showing you who they are and you should believe them."

Let's talk about some of those accusations. Remember the moral panic over the CARES Act covid stimulus checks? Hyperventilating mouthpieces for the ruling class were on every cable network, complaining that "no one wants to work anymore." The barely-submerged subtext was their belief that the only reason people show up for work is that they're afraid of losing everything – their homes, their kids, the groceries in their fridge.

This isn't a new development. Back when Clinton destroyed welfare, his justification was that "handouts" make workers lazy. The way to goad workers off their sofas (and the welfare rolls) and into jobs was to instill fear in them:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/welfare-childhood/555119/

This is also the firm belief of tech bosses: for them, mass tech layoffs are great news, because they terrorize the workers you don't fire, so that they'll be "extremely hardcore" and put in as many extra hours as the company demands, without even requiring any extra pay in return:

https://fortune.com/2022/10/06/elon-musk-jason-calacanis-return-to-office-gentlemens-layoffs-twitter/

Now, there's an obvious answer to the problem of no one taking a job at the wage being offered: just increase the offer. Capitalists claim to understand this. Uber will tell you that surge pricing "incentivizes drivers" to take to the streets by offering them more money to drive during busy times:

https://www.uber.com/blog/austin/providing-rides-when-they-are-most-needed/

(Note that while Uber once handed the lion's share of surge price premiums to drivers, these days, Uber just keeps the money, because they've entered the enshittification stage where drivers are so scared of being blacklisted that Uber can push them around instead of dangling carrots.)

(Also note that this logic completely fails when it comes to other businesses, like Wendy's, who briefly promised surge-priced hamburgers during busy times, but without even the pretense that the surge premium would be used to pay additional workers to rush to the restaurant and increase the capacity:)

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/feb/27/wendys-dynamic-surge-pricing

So bosses knew how to address their worker shortage: higher wages. You know: supply and demand. For bosses, the issue wasn't supply, it was price. A worker who earns $10/hour but makes the company $20 profit every hour is splitting the surplus 50:50 with their employer. The employer has overheads (rent on the shop, inventory, advertising and administration) that they have to pay out of their end of that surplus. But workers also have overheads: commuting costs, child-care, a professional wardrobe, and other expenses the worker incurs just so they can make money for their boss.

There's no iron law of economics that says the worker/boss split should be 50/50. Depending on the bargaining power of workers and their bosses, that split can move around a lot. Think of McDonald's and Walmart workers who work for wildly profitable corporate empires, but are so badly paid that they have to rely on food stamps. The split there is more like 10/90, in the boss's favor.

The pandemic changed the bargaining power. Sure, workers got a small cushion from stimulus checks, but they also benefited from changes in the fundamentals of the labor market. For example, millions of boomers just noped out of their jobs, forever, unwilling to risk catching a fatal illness and furious to realize that their bosses viewed that as an acceptable risk.

Bosses' willingness to risk their workers' lives backfired in another way: killing hundreds of thousands of workers and permanently disabling millions more. Combine the boomer exodus with the workers who sickened or died, and there's just fewer workers to go around, and so now those workers enjoy more bargaining power. They can demand a better split: say, 75/25, in their favor.

Remember the 2015 American Airlines strike, where pilots and flight attendants got a raise? The eminently guillotineable Citibank analyst Kevin Crissey declared: "This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers":

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/american-airlines-flight-attendants-bash-citi-analyst-who-put-shareholders-before-workers-14134309

Now, obviously, the corporation doesn't want to offer a greater share of its surplus to its workforce, but it certainly can do so. The more it pays its workers, the less profitable it will be, but that's capitalism, right? Corporations try to become as profitable as they can be, but they can't just decree that their workers must work for whatever pay they want to offer (that's serfdom).

Companies also don't get to dictate that we must buy their goods at whatever price they set (the would be a planned economy, not a market economy). There's no law that says that when the cost of making something goes up, its price should go up, too. A business that spends $10 to make a widget you pay $15 for has a $5 margin to play with. If the business's costs go up to $11, they can still charge $15 and take $1 less in profits. Or they can raise the price to $15.50 and split the difference.

But when businesses don't face competition, they can make you eat their increased costs. Take Verizon. They made $79b in profit last year, and also just imposed a $4/month service charge on their mobile customers due to "rising operational costs":

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1c53c4p/79bn_in_profits_last_year_but_you_need_an_extra/

Now, Verizon is very possibly lying about these rising costs. Excuseflation is rampant and rising, as one CEO told his investors, when the news is full of inflation-talk, "it’s an opportunity to increase the prices without getting a whole bunch of complaining from the customers":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

But even stipulating that Verizon is telling the truth about these "rising costs," why should we eat those costs? There's $79b worth of surplus between Verizon's operating costs and its gross revenue. Why not take it out of Verizon's bottom line?

For 40 years, neoliberal economists have emphasized our role as "consumers" (as though consumers weren't also workers!). This let them play us off against one-another: "Sure, you don't want the person who rings up your groceries to get evicted because they can't pay their rent, but do you care about it enough to pay an extra nickel for these eggs?"

But again, there's no obvious reason why you should pay that extra nickel. If you have the buying power to hold prices down, and workers have the labor power to keep wages up, then the business has to absorb that nickel. We can have a world where workers can pay their rent and you can afford your groceries.

So how do we get bosses to agree to take less so we can have more? They've told us how: for bosses, the thing that motivates workers to show up for shitty jobs is fear – fear of losing their homes, fear of going hungry.

When your boss says, "If you don't want to do this job for minimum wage, there's someone else who will," they're telling you that the way to get a raise out of them is to engineer things so that you can say, "If you don't want to pay me a living wage for this job, there's someone else who will."

Their accusation – that you only give someone else a fair shake when you're afraid of losing out – is a confession: to get them to give you a fair shake, we have to make them afraid. They're showing us who they are, and we should believe them.

In her Daily Show appearance, FTC chair Lina Khan quipped that monopolies are too big to care:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

Philosophers of capitalism are forever praising its ability to transform greed into public benefit. As Adam Smith put it, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." The desire to make as much money as possible, on its own, doesn't produce our dinner, but when the butcher, the brewer and the baker are afraid that you will take your labor or your wallet elsewhere, they pay more and charge less.

Capitalists don't want market economies, where they have to compete with one another, eroding their margins and profits – they want a planned economy, like Amazon, where Party Secretary Bezos and his commissars tell merchants what they can sell and tell us what we must pay:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

Capitalists don't want free labor, where they have to compete with rival capitalists to bid on their workers' labor – they want noncompetes, bondage fees, and "training repayment agreement provisions" (TRAPs) that force their workers to stay in dead-end jobs rather than shopping for a better wage:

\https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Capitalists hate capitalism, because capitalism only works if the capitalists are in a constant state of terror inspired by the knowledge that tomorrow, someone smarter could come along and open a better business, poaching their customers and workers, and putting the capitalist on the breadline.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/18/in-extremis-veritas/#the-winnah

Being in a constant precarious state makes people lose their minds, and capitalists know it. That's why they work so hard to precaratize the rest of us, saddling us with health debt, education debt, housing debt, stagnating wages and rising prices. It's not just because that makes them more money in the short term from our interest payments and penalties. It's because it de-risks their lives: monopolies and cartels can pass on any extra costs to consumers, who'll eat shit and take it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#overinflated

A workforce that goes to bed every night worrying about making the rent is a workforce that put in unpaid overtime and thank you for it.

Capitalists hate capitalism. You know who didn't hate capitalism? Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels. The first chapter of The Communist Manifesto is just these two guys totally geeking out about how much cool stuff we get when capitalists are afraid and therefore productive:

https://pluralistic.net/SpectreHaunting

But when capitalists escape their fears, the alchemical reaction that converts greed to prosperity fizzles, leaving nothing behind but greed and its handmaiden, enshittification. Google search is in the toilet, getting worse every year, but rather than taking reduced margins and spending more fighting spam, the company did a $80b stock-buyback and fired 12,000 skilled technologists, rather than using that 80 bil to pay their wages for the next twenty-seven years:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Monopoly apologists like to argue that monopolists can rake in the giant profits necessary to fund big, ambitious projects the produce better products at lower prices and make us all better off. But even if monopolists can spend their monopoly windfalls on big, ambitious projects, they don't. Why would they?

If you're Google, you can either spend tens of billions on R&D to keep up with spam and SEO scumbags, or you can spend less money buying the default search spot on every platform, so no one ever tries another search engine and switches:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Compared to its monopoly earnings, the tech sector's R&D spending is infinitesimal:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/11/nor-glom-of-nit/#capitalists-hate-competition

How do we get capitalists to work harder to make their workers and customers better off? Capitalists tell us how, every day. We need to make them afraid.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

Image: Vlad Lazarenko (modified) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_Street_Sign_%281-9%29.jpg CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #petard #precarity #cares act #stimulus #market discipline #competition #too big to care #antitrust #labor #trustbusting #consumer welfare #every accusation is a confession

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