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mirkwoodshewolf · 3 years

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Guardian of creatures; AU! Queen x oc female x reader Chap. 11

*Author’s note*

Well this got done within a night shift of writing lol but now we discover the TRUE mythology of the Wizards in this story. I also hope you all enjoy the face cast I’ve picked out for you all, I know some of you are gonna FLIP OUT!! So enjoy this chapter folks and until the next update :)

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things

@queendeakyy

@queensdivas

@queen-paladin

@geek-and-proud

@waddles03

@psychosupernatural

@ixchel-9275

@simonedk

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels

@kinole009x

@wormzteef

@glitter-at-the-panic

Chapter 11,

The Truth

__________________________________________________________-

*3rd Person POV*

Serafina and Balthazar walked side by side along the desert as the rain continued to softly pour down on top of them.

“Why didn’t you tell us that you were—the Balthazar when you first met us?”

“I don’t usually give out that information freely.” He answered using the Egyptian’s actual voice. It was more softer compared to his original voice but it still held a commanding tone to it.

“Also this body……this clearly isn’t your human body. Are you possessing this poor man?”

“He volunteered it freely all those centuries ago when I went to find you and John. Plus I have to keep my true self hidden. As I’m sure you remember that the Sorcerer Supreme can sense every living creature on Earth. And ghosts give out the strongest power force known to our realm. If Grindelwald saw me freely moving about in the world, all hell would break loose.”

“That is true.” She muttered.

“We’ve arrived.” Balthazar soon said as he stopped. Serafina stopped beside him and the two of them stood on top of a semi-high (around 3-4ft) rock wall which stood over more desert.

“You woke me up in the middle of the night just to bring me out further into the desert?” Serafina sassed at the great Wizard. He softly chuckled and said with a sigh.

“Oh you even have his sarcastic nature.”

“Whose sarcastic nature?”

“Close your eyes dear one.” Serafina closed her eyes before feeling 2 fingers press against each side of her temples and soon Balthazar’s real voice spoke in her head.

‘Over a thousand years ago the world of Sorcerers was a very different place. Instead of one Wizard ruling over all others, all of us lived and helped serve under the 3 great apprentices of Merlin.’

“This was the story we were taught on our first day of school. The history of Wizards.”

‘Indeed. While each wizard and witch lived in their own countries, all Sorcerers were considered equals and called a special sacred place known as the Garden of Merlin, home. Now—open your eyes.’ Serafina opened her eyes and she was greeted with an amazing sight.

Nothing but pure green surrounded her, the sky was just shining it’s dawning colors of pink and blue as the sun continued to rise higher into the sky. She stood up on a hill and saw wildflowers growing as far as she could see in all various colors and types, trees so big she’d swore they’d brush against the clouds in the sky.

“Did we just time travel?” she turned and saw Balthazar as his true self. He now stood roughly about John’s height, maybe a couple inches taller. His ghostly eyes stared at Serafina as he told her.

“There’s too much to see and so little time. Try not to ask too many questions.” With that he walked deeper into the forest. Serafina ran behind him and when she caught up to him, she looked around the forest.

Listening to the frogs and birds bring the forest to life, squirrels scampering around the tree branches and deer along with other forest creatures doing whatever it was they do.

“This is where your family was born. Behold.” Balthazar pushed back a shrub and soon they saw a group of wizards all talking amongst one another, children playing games with either one another or with their parents.

“But won’t you disrupt the time stream by being here?”

“No. Because this is just a vision. No one can see nor hear us.” Serafina looked out watching everyone all happy and smiling at one another. Nothing like she had seen before with sorcerers of different nationalities and skin colors truly living like brothers and sisters.

“Hang on you said this is where my story began? That’s not true at all. My family didn’t come around till after the fall of the 3 apprentices.”

“Not true.” He immediately said to her. She looked at him confused. “You see that little girl over there? Who does she remind you of?” he pointed towards a young girl with long brown hair and blue eyes.

Playing alongside her was a Hispanic man with brown hair, warm brown eyes and a mustache over his upper lip while at his jaw a stubble of a beard was forming. He wore an elegant golden wizard robe and watched with pride and a warm smile as he saw this young girl practicing her magic.

“She…..she almost looks like me.”

“That’s because she is your ancestor. Wanda Arya Black. And that man she’s with is my brother Archimedes.” Serafina’s eyes widened as her jaw dropped.

“Archi—Archimedes?! As in Archimedes the Wise?! That Archimedes?” she turned to Balthazar.

“Yes is there an echo in here?” wow he was definitely John’s ancestor. He cleared his throat and said, “He was the only one out of the three of us to take on an apprentice. As the first muggle-born witch she showed prose and potential, so Archimedes took her in as his ward as well as her teacher.”

“But there was never an apprentice in the legend. Balthazar no offense but I’ve been taught your story throughout my entire life. Why did you bring me here?”

“Because you don’t know our story. Come with me.” He walked away leaving Serafina to stare at her ancestorial grandmother as well as the 3rd great apprentice of Merlin. As she watched the two of them walk away, Serafina turned and followed in the direction Balthazar went.

Day soon turned to night as they kept walking to another part of the garden. As they stopped, they spotted 3 figures sitting at a clearing looking up at the moon and the stares in the night sky. Serafina obviously recognized the two men because she was standing right next to him now.

The two men were Archimedes and Balthazar (back when he was alive). A woman was also with them. She wore a long, short-sleeved black dress and had long wavy brown hair. She was around their age and she was sitting upon a rock beside inbetween the two men.

“It’s you guys. And that woman, is that—”

“Shh! Pay attention now.” Balthazar told her. They turned back towards the three young apprentices and soon they heard Archimedes speak up.

“I know that I was chosen to be his wisdom and destined to teach future young ones of our ways but I—don’t think I’m ready just yet.”

“There’s no way we could ever feel ready for this. I mean how do you think I feel about being the next Sorcerer Supreme?” asked Balthazar.

“Some help you are.” Archimedes scoffed out a laugh.

“I’m not finished!” Balthazar stated.

“I think what cheekbones is trying to say is, is that we’ll be fine. Merlin has never steered us wrong before my brothers. We are all ready for this. And we’ll always have each other for when things get hard, right?” Morgana said as she got off the rock and placed her hands on each of her brother’s shoulders.

“Right.” Balthazar agreed with a strong nod.

“Right.” Archimedes however had a slight hesitant tone to his voice but the smile on his face fooled the other two. Morgana let out a yawn and Balthazar said.

“I think we’ll go ahead and retire for the evening.”

“Goodnight. I’ll see you both tomorrow.” Archimedes said. As Balthazar and Morgana flew off, together (Balthazar using his magic to fly while Morgana summoned her broom).

“Cheekbones? Really Morgana?” Balthazar asked offensively.

“C’mon Balthazar, you’ve got to admit you have sharper cheekbones than even our Master.” Morgana teased back. The two of them continued to banter with each other till they were out of sight.

Archimedes softly chuckled and shook his head before growing solemn again and looked back up at the moon.

“You see…….at the time I didn’t realize that while Archimedes was ready to take his place as the Wisdom of Merlin, he wasn’t happy.” Balthazar explained to Serafina.

“You guys have the most famous story in all of Wizard lore, what was it that could make him happy?”

“A friend of yours.” They turned back around and after a little while a female voice spoke up.

“Are they gone master?”

“They’re gone.” He said. Soon coming out of the shrubs was Wanda. She was older, now the same age as Serafina and she could see for herself that she looked almost identical to her ancestral grandmother.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep him away much longer.” She suddenly shrieked as someone lifted her up and spun her around.

“Well then don’t make me stay away so long next time!” Soon coming into the light of the full moon was none other than Roger Taylor himself.

Serafina couldn’t believe it! She knew Roger had been around since the creation of the seas but he actually was there before the fall of the 3 apprentices of Merlin? He knew Archimedes the wise personally as well as her ancestral grandmother?! Was that why he seemed to flirt with her cause she reminded him of Wanda? And why didn’t he ever mention it before?

“How can I survive without my favorite witch and wizard?” Roger said as he nuzzled into Wanda’s neck affectionately.

“We’re sorry my friend, we just don’t……don’t want Morgana and Balthazar to—” Archimedes said as he pulled Roger away from his apprentice and gave the Nokken a brotherly embrace. Roger separated from Archimedes and looked at him confused.

“You—you mean to tell me that Roger. My Roger knew Archimedes as well as my infinite great grandmother!? So what were he and Wanda friends like we are? Or—”

“Archimedes and Wanda both cared for their brother and sister wizards. But the beings they both could be truly happy with, were the Magical creatures.” Balthazar explained to Serafina.

“I just don’t understand why you won’t tell them you don’t want to do this anymore? What will you do tomorrow when Merlin crowns you the Wise?” Roger asked.

“I’ll go through with it. It’s been destined that I become his Wisdom after he passes on so—I will.”

“And then what you’ll forget about all the creatures we’ve helped? Forget about me?” Wanda said.

“No! That will never happen! Querida you know I’ll always love you.” Archimedes said as he cupped Wanda’s cheeks in his hand, stroking her cheekbones with his thumbs.

“Right. You say you love her, but you don’t want your fellow wizards to know what you both have been building! Sure we get it!” Roger huffed as he took Wanda back into his arms.

“This duty was chosen for me at birth what else am I supposed to do?! I don’t have a choice Roger.”

“You weren’t born to serve a purpose. You were born to live your life. You always have a choice.” Roger said.

“He’s right Master. Think of what we’ve worked so hard to build. Do you really want that to go down in flames? I don’t have the power to convince the Wizard council to keep what we’re trying to do secure. I need you. They need you.” Archimedes brushed a strand of Wanda’s hair out of her face and placed a hand onto Roger’s shoulder.

“Come on. This way now.” Balthazar guided Serafina away from the three of them and the two of them walked to another part of the garden.

The sun slowly started to rise but already in Serafina’s mind, dozens of questions were buzzing around her head. She soon saw Balthazar stop beside a tree and she ran up to catch up to him.

“Where is he?!” Morgana’s voice snapped. “Sorcerers from across the world are out there waiting for our coronation!”

“We’ve searched everywhere. But no one’s seen him ma’am.” Said a young blonde wizard.

“Well look again! He could’ve been captured or-or killed!” Morgana snapped.

“Lady Morgana! Lady Morgana!” soon a young witch with ginger hair came running up. She had freckles decorated all over her face and bright green eyes. “I have news about Lord Archimedes.”

“Thank Paracelsus. Where is he?”

“He and his apprentice Wanda left with a creature known as a Nokken. He said to tell you that he and Wanda are safe and not to worry.”

“Left with a Nokken? For what?”

“It seems that he—” she went quiet. She cleared her throat and continued hesitantly. “He said he had a greater calling. Than staying here, ma’am.” At hearing this, Morgana went silent. Slowly her face contorted to anger as she sneered softly.

“You said a Nokken right? They’re like sirens yes? It tricked them both and then kidnapped them.”

“No. My Lord Arch—”

“I AM MORGANA LE FEY! MERLIN’S CHOSEN LAWKEEPER!! I DECIDE WHAT’S TRUE!! Where did it take them!?” she snapped with pure rage at the young witch.

“He—they didn’t say.” She said fearfully.

“No matter. I’ll find them one way or another.” Morgana growled lowly.

Balthazar sighed heavily with solemn. He then turned to Serafina and warned her.

“This next scene won’t be pretty.” He walked ahead. As Serafina passed over the tree, she was greeted with a gruesome sight. Hundreds upon thousands of sea creature corpses lay across the land.

From mermaids, to sirens, Nokks to Kelpies. Every sea creature known to mankind could be seen. Their bodies pale and their eyes soulless with death.

“Morgana declared war between us and the sea creatures. Accusing Roger of seducing both Archimedes and his apprentice and demanding retribution. It resulted in a massacre on a scale never seen before in Wizard history until two other occasions.” Balthazar explained as he and Serafina slowly walked over the corpses of the poor sea creatures.

“Me and Freddie.” Balthazar nodded solemnly. They arrived at seemed to be the end of the garden. “Heartbroken at his apprentices fall into darkness; with his final breath, Merlin arranged the meeting between the four of them to meet at the sacred, neutral ground known to all creatures.” Balthazar once again pushed the shrubs away and Serafina soon saw Roger, Wanda, Archimedes, and Morgana standing in a landscape that she knew all too well.

“It’s—my home.” She whispered in awe as well as shock.

“I’ve come as Merlin decreed. Now give them back, and all of this can be over.” Morgana took a step when Roger, who was now in his full Nokken form guarding Archimedes and Wanda, snarled as his gills flared angrily.

“Stay back! They came here to talk! That’s all!”

“Please sister stop this. I can’t give you what you want.” Archimedes pleaded.

“That’s not true. You’re our brother!” Morgana tried to reason with him.

“Yes. You and Balthazar have been my brother and sister. You both will always be my brother and sister. But our journey together has come to an end.”

“You’re—abandoning us? For what purpose? What purpose is greater than being with your own family?” Archimedes swallowed his tears and said as he looked directly at Morgana.

“The protection and safe security of all Magical creatures. So please, let them live in peace.”

“There is no peace without you Archimedes! You belong with your own kind. With Sorcerers. With us.” Morgana pleaded. Archimedes turned his head and refused to look Morgana in the eye. She took another step before looking towards Wanda now. “Wanda, you know this is the way. Please child come with me.” Roger’s claws dug deeper into the ground as his fangs grew longer.

“I said….STAY BACK!!” then like the animal he truly was, he launched himself at Morgana, pinning her down and snarled down at her.

Morgana’s gagging echoed in the night as Roger began to choke her to death before he felt ready to deliver the final blow. He wasn’t just doing this for his Sorcerer friends but he also lost all his best friends and family to this witch.

She cause in a complete genocide against the sea and now he was going to have his revenge.

“Roger stop it what are you doing!?” Wanda exclaimed.

“SHE’S A MONSTER WANDA!! She’ll keep hunting you both. Just like she hunted my people! I. Have. To end this!” Morgana continued to choke as she tried to get Roger off of her but he was too strong for her.

“Roger please listen to me! I know she’s slaughtered your people but—” Archimedes started off. “If you kill her now, you will be no better than she was. We—we can’t bear to see you……”

“Please Roger let Lady Morgana go! For us.” Wanda pleaded as tears formed in her eyes. Roger looked at his friends with helpless eyes but when he looked down at Morgana, his eye grew hard and filled with hatred.

But he knew they were right. If he killed the high witch now, he’d not only have to go into hiding but he’d also be consumed by revenge. Soon enough what would stop him from killed all other sorcerers? Including Wanda and Archimedes who have shown him nothing but kindness and love. Something his kind never truly understood, until he met them. He turned back towards them and said softly.

“Only for you both.” He released Morgana and crawled over towards them. Morgana let out a series of coughs as she slowly raised herself off the ground. Archimedes pressed his forehead against Roger’s and whispered.

“Thank you my friend.” Roger then turned to Wanda who immediately hugged him and kissed his blue/grey scale cheek. “Sister Morgana I—”

“SANGUINE MALICE!!” Morgana cried out. Wanda pushed Roger away and took the spell head on. She stumbled backwards as she clenched her stomach with one arm and held her hand to her mouth. Wanda grunted and groaned before she suddenly vomited out blood.

Serafina watched with horror as she was experiencing déjà vu. For that spell was the very same spell that was used on her by John’s own mother.

“WANDA!!” Both Roger and Archimedes exclaimed fearfully. Roger quickly phased back into his human disguise and caught Wanda as she collapsed and proceeded to keep coughing and vomiting out blood. Her eyes dripping out bloody tears as they slowly went red. Her coughs and gagging now pierced the air.

Archimedes joined alongside Roger and took the young witch’s face in between his hands.

“She-she wasn’t the target. It was for the Nokk. But if a witch is willing to die for a monster, then she’s no different!”

“No. No, no, Wanda. Wanda, Wanda hey, hey, hey querida por favor. Por favor, stay with us. Stay with me.” Wanda slowly lifted her bloody hand towards Archimedes’ face and tried to speak, but all that came out were haunting gurgles. “Shhh, shhh, shhh. Save your strength my darling girl. Shhhh, shhh.”

“Please Wanda just hold on. Archimedes will heal you just hang on we’ll get you help. Just please hold on for us. I love you so much my soulmate.” Roger pleaded as he stroked through her hair.

Slowly her head became limp as her gurgling ceased and her arm fell to the ground, leaving a bloody sweep across Archimedes’ right cheek.

“No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no! No!” Roger pleaded and begged but it was too late. Wanda Arya Black was gone. “NOOOOO!!!!” Roger roared out in heartbroken agony and wept over her corpse. Archimedes too couldn’t hold his tears back as he pressed his forehead to Wanda’s and his tears fell upon her face.

When Roger slowly turned his head towards Morgana, his blood boiled with more rage than ever.

“You’ve killed one of your own!” He went to charge towards Morgana but a hand stopped him from moving any further. Roger looked down and saw that Archimedes had stopped him. Before he could snap, Roger’s anger suddenly turned to fear as he sensed a sudden spike of power rising within Archimedes.

The wizard slowly stood up and Morgana stared at her brother in fear.

“Archimedes?” she softly spoke his name. Suddenly she felt something beginning to choke her. She dropped her wand as her hands went up to neck, trying to feel what it was that was choking her but she felt nothing but her own skin. The sky grew dark, the wind softly picked up and even the moon went dark. It was then Archimedes spoke in a low, haunting chant.

By the Guardian of all creatures

I give my voice to the Seers.

Soon even the moon itself grew black till it practically seemed to have disappeared completely. Archimedes began to glow a bright white color as his lower half changed and morphed into a long snake-like tail.

It soon came towards Morgana as it now revealed that a tail was now choking her. Coils also formed around Wanda’s body protectively while Roger fell to the ground and submitted in fear, for he knew just what was coming.

Suddenly from Archimedes’ lips not only did he speak but a thousand other voices both male and female came out of him.

“FOR YOUR CRIMES ON THESE SACRED GROUNDS, YOUR SOUL WILL KNOW NO PEACE! NOT FOR YOU OR YOUR DESCENDANTS!!” Soon Archimedes’ upper-half grew and grew till he stood well over the trees themselves.

His eyes now glowed pure gold with a white slit as the voices continued to speak through Archimedes.

“EVERY DESCENDANT YOU GIVE BIRTH WILL BE MARKED WITH SUFFERING. AND WE, SHALL BE YOUR DEATH IN EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM. SO SAYS THE NAGA, THE SEERS OF ALL. THE GUARDIAN OF CREATURES CONDEMNS YOU. MORGANA THE TRAITORUS!”

Morgana had never in her life felt such fear surge through her body. Her brother had surrendered his very being to the most powerful and dangerous creatures known to the supernatural world. The eyes closed and with a bright light, all three of them disappeared, leaving her cowering on the ground as the wind blew her hair around her face.

Her expression frozen in pure terror.

From the bushes Balthazar looked down solemnly while Serafina was just in shock.

“None of this—was taught to us at school.”

“That’s because Morgana obliviated the entire Wizard community of what really happened that night, told her own version of the tale. And from there she made Morgana’s law, the execution and hunting of all magical creatures, out of her hate and fear. Years after I became Sorcerer Supreme, and saw for myself what happened that night thanks to the help of Freddie Mercury himself, I exposed her for the coward she really was. But when you obliviate an entire community, there is only so much you can do to rewrite certain parts of history without dire consequences. And her laws and teachings would soon make their way to my bloodline and the massacre of the Naga soon commence.”

Soon the forest changed to the very day the Naga genocide happened with Thomas Riddle Deacon was Sorcerer Supreme. All of the Nagas surrounded them before the vision went black as Balthazar choked out sadly.

“I did my best to warn him, but—it wasn’t enough.” Soon the two of them were back in the real world. Balthazar in his vessel’s body, a broken expression on his face as his head lowered in sorrow. “Archimedes has been missing since that night and Morgana’s law continues to be enforced. That’s why at the end of every Sorcerer Supreme reign they plan, target and exterminate every living creature.”

“You mean Archimedes—is alive?” Balthazar nodded sadly. “This whole time?! So why hasn’t he been protecting these creatures?”

“He renounced his claim to it. So their only hope is for the next chosen one to take the mantel. That’s why Freddie also chose you along with John.”

“What?”

“You are Wanda’s descendant. You are destined to be the next Guardian of Creatures. If you don’t, the cycle will only continue. Archimedes will stay hidden, Morgana’s law will remain, and Sorcerers will continue to kill till only they are the supreme beings. That’s why we want you to help us end it.”

“I’m—sorry Balthazar. That’s too much even for me.” Serafina sat down along the wall and said as she held her legs to her chest. “I’m not a Guardian or a descendant of anyone connected to the 3 apprentices, I’m just……me.”

“You can believe in that and forget what I’ve told you or can continue to help fix a broken world. Your choice.”

For years she had been following in what Freddie has foreseen her and John to do but never did she imagine that she’d have to also lead all Magical creatures into peace. Not to mention that she now suddenly got a whiplash of the fact that her family line was connected to the 3 apprentices of Merlin through apprenticeship.

But she had come too far now. If she fled now then all this work would have been for nothing. She’d be abandoning her family yet again and that was something she couldn’t do. Not when she finally started to rebuild it once again with the return of her adopted sons.

“Okay. What do you need us to do now?”

“Find Archimedes. He’s in his Motherland of what is now known as Chile. He has got to crown a Guardian of Creatures.”

“But Chile has one of the most powerful magical barriers. We wouldn’t even know where to start looking once we got there.”

“He’ll come to you dear one. He’ll trust his apprentice’s bloodline. But uhh… Archimedes won’t train you if you bring forth my descendant let alone know that you’re married to him. Best if you go find him alone.”

“You want me too—abandon my family?”

“You’re not abandoning them. Your destiny lies on a different path than theirs right now. You and Archimedes both need this.”

“I don’t know if I can do this on my own.” Balthazar placed his vessel’s hand on Serafina’s shoulder and both the vessel and Balthazar’s real voice spoke to her.

“When the time comes, I know you will do the right thing.” Their voices echoed in her head.

Back at camp Serafina’s eyes suddenly shot open and she panted heavily as a cold sweat stuck to her entire body.

“Melda?” John’s voice groaned beside her. She looked down and rested her hand against John’s temple and used her magic to put him back to sleep.

“I’m alright my love. Go back to sleep.” He cleared his throat tiredly before letting out a moan and immediately fell right asleep. Serafina stared outside of the tent and thought to herself, ‘A descendant of Archimedes’ apprentice.’

She turned her night dress into traveling clothes and looked down at her husband and sons one last time.

“I’ll be back my loves. Please don’t worry.” She sent three red auras of magic into the minds of her boys who all smiled in their sleep and let out tired moans.

Serafina got out of the tent and she got on top of her horse and proceeded to race off into the desert.

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pellicano-sanguino · 4 years

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Finland’s most famous graveyard must be Hietaniemi Cemetery. Many famous people are buried there, including presidents. And a whole bunch of artists. They have a separate area for them, the “artist’s hill.” But one famous artist didn’t get to be buried there among other great painters, sculptors and writers.

Helene Schjerfbeck.

One of the most famous Finnish artists wasn’t buried in the artist’s hill. She did get a grave in another part of Hietaniemi Cemetery, though. And that grave? Until very recently, was left unattended, growing weeds. It was only because there’s a movie coming out about Schjerfbeck that someone pointed out the sorry state of her grave. Everyone excited about the movie was making great speeches how her art being so loved internationally brought Finns national pride, and someone wrote an angry comment in the newspaper, pointing that it’s disrespectful for politicians and art patrons to claim they love and appreciate her work while her grave grows nettles and we can’t be bothered to pay for the caring of her grave from public sources.

Some organisation took taking care of Schjerfbeck’s grave as their responsibility. But it was still very disturbing to me how a female artist was treated so differently, even in death.

The reason I’m writing this is because I went to see Portrait of a Lady on Fire recently. The movie left me an emotional wreck, it touched me on such a basic, almost subconscious level that I’m not sure I’m able to write anything coherent about my feelings. But I will try. Though I think this is a movie one must see for oneself, nothing I say about it will be able to describe the experience properly.

This post contains spoilers for the movie.

The movie is set in 1770 France. A time when female artists were forbidden from painting men, but allowed to paint portraits of women. The protagonist Marianne is one such exceptional lady who had a father open minded enough to allow her an artist’s career instead of choosing from the remaining three options.

The remaining options? Convent, marriage or suicide.

The plot revolves around a woman, Heloise, who chose convent, but has that choice forcibly taken away from her after her sister chose suicide over arranged marriage and the family now needs to go for plan B and sell their second daughter to some man she has never met. Her mother needs a portrait of her to use as a selling tool, showing it to the man she intends to make her marry. Heloise resists and refuses to pose for an artist. So her mother hires Marianne, who is to pretend to be someone hired for keeping Heloise company, but secretly she is painting her portrait.

I admit I don’t often enjoy watching movies. It’s just not my medium of choice. But then again, most of the movies I’ve seen are Hollywood stuff or pretentious artsy films, and both of those can be too much for someone as sensitive as I am. I can’t handle violence or unnecessary sex scenes. Also, the vast majority of movies are stories made by men, about men, for men. Even the women in movies are seen through the eyes of men.

But this movie is made by women, about women, for women.

The absence of man’s eyes is notable in small details. How there are no important male characters in this movie, men only show up in the very beginning and end and even then they are just background extras. The fact that we don’t get sex scenes (a male director could never resist doing that when handling a story about lesbians). The fact that both leading ladies look rather plain, ordinary women instead of your typical Hollywood barbie-dolls. The last time I saw a woman in a movie with unshaved armpits was back in highschool when during Swedish lesson we watched some Swedish flick that had a loudly feminist character who made a point of not shaving.

There’s a scene where a woman goes to an old lady to get an abortion done. If this scene was done by a man, if it had been filmed in Hollywood, they would have made her scream in pain and showed the blood and discharge and feasted on every gruesome detail of the procedure. But the scene is calm, peaceful and intimately respectful. We don’t need to see any details. Focusing on what’s going on between her legs is unnecessary, seeing her face trying to keep calm but breaking into silent, suffocated cries is enough.

Women suffer silently. We have all been taught to grin and bear it, the harder it hurts, the harder you must smile.

The movie isn’t gloomy and depressing. The unpleasant truths jab at your heart without you noticing. Because they let the story speak for itself. No one needs to point out the unfairness of women’s fate in a world ruled by men. The doomed romance between Marianne and Heloise speaks loud enough. Their knowledge that once the portrait is finished, it’s all over. Heloise’s family home is situated on an island with steep cliffs around its shores and surrounded by the restless, ice cold waters of the sea. It’s all very symbolic. There is no escape.

The story builds slowly, patiently. I shouldn’t constantly compare this to Hollywood movies, but in an American movie you could never have this few spoken lines and take this long before the romance buds. Marianne knows she only has few days to finish the portrait, but she and Heloise don’t rush anything and live like they had all the time in the world. They are powerless to do anything to the fate looming ahead and instead spend their last days together without worrying about it. But the viewer is constantly aware of what is going to happen in the end. The tension builds, invisible hands are placed on my throat and slowly tighten their grip. When the last scene begins, I feel so choked by catharsis that I have to breathe through parted lips. I was happy for the movie theater’s darkness, so that neither of my friends sitting beside me could see the tears flowing down my cheek. Women suffer silently, I have been taught to hide my tears and be ashamed if they are discovered.

My friends gave me a ride back home and we talked about the movie. Tigel mentioned that she’d probably have to search the net for fix-it-fics to help her deal with her feelings. I responded that I probably have to call my mother and thank her for letting me choose my own fate and loving me just as I am.

I had to make a phone call like that once before. It was when I was reading Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall. At first I didn’t even like the book, or the main character. But slowly I began to notice similarities between myself and Stephen. They felt so familiar, so much more personal than any of the things het characters in other books did or said. I became frighteningly aware that this book wasn’t just about one specific person, it was about my people. I knew that the story wouldn’t have a happy ending (with a name like Well of Loneliness, what do you expect?) but I couldn’t stop reading. I felt as if I had a responsibility to read on, that I owed it to my past fellow lesbians. Stephen was a fictional character, but she was made to speak for us, to speak for the unfairness of a homosexual’s fate in a world ruled by heteros. For the silent suffering of women who were rejected by society.

When I got to the part where Stephen’s mother tells her that she wished she had never been born, I had to stop. The pain became unbearable. I had to put the book away and call my mother, seeking relief from the invisible hands choking me. I don’t remember that call very well, because I was an emotional mess during it. I remember telling her over and over again that I don’t take for granted the fact that she loves me despite knowing I’m a lesbian. That I am painfully aware that many have not been as fortunate as me. Even today, even in modern, civilized countries like Finland, there are countless gays and lesbians who are rejected by their parents. When you’re homosexual, being loved by your parent isn’t a default, it’s a matter of luck. I have been so very, very lucky.

Both the Well of Loneliness and Portrait of a Lady on Fire have touched me by making me aware of the history of my people. While some parts of our history is celebrated (all the great artists and other historic figures who were one of us), there’s the heavy weight of knowledge about our oppression, how in order for lesbians to live happily ever after in the past they had to be sneaky and so very, very lucky. Not all lesbians were Anne Listers, whose family was ok with not pressuring her to marry. I feel pain thinking how many women there must have been who were forced to suffer just like Stephen, just like Heloise.

Another reason why our history lies heavy on my mind is because so much of it is lost, hidden, denied and shamed because of heteros. They burned Sappho’s poems. Fire also claimed the love letters men sent to Philippe, brother of Ludwig XIV. While gay men were sentenced openly, lesbianism wasn’t even spoken out loud, out of fear that women couldn’t commit such a sin if they were unaware of its existence. Oscar Wilde was sentenced to prison and died in France, his legacy to the art of writing unappreciated by his countrymen. How many of our graves grew nettles, because we were the dirty secret that everyone wanted to forget? How many of us had uncared graves because the only thing lesser than a woman is a woman who refuses to center her life around a man?

Now I’m going to voice an unpopular opinion that’s probably going to give me hatemail but I’m going to voice it anyway. I don’t like it when people posthumously push trans identity to people who did not identify as trans in life. There’s no way around it, I find it disrespectful. The reason I’m mentioning this is, that despite not liking it, I completely understand why they do it. Trans folks long for a history. They want their own Sapphos and Oscar Wildes. They want great historic characters to look up to and think “We have always been here and despite the world being against us, we could achieve great things.” The weight of lesbian and gay history can be a painful burden, but it will also give us comfort, knowing that people like us have always been and will always be there, that even when heteros made attempts to silence us or wipe us out of existence, we clung to the surviving parts of our history and treasured them. We will never know what the full poem behind the fragment “Someone will remember us/I say/even in another time” was like, but even so those words are precious to us. I do not blame trans folks for wishing for a history, even small fragments to reach through time and give them comfort.

In case I will receive hatemail for this, I will make an announcement. I have no obligation to react to any message, comment or reblog sent my way. This is my blog, my house, my personal space. I decide who is invited in and who is not. If someone tries to contact me and I see they want to debate, before even reading what they’ve written to me, I will check their blog. A quick glance will usually be enough to reveal if the person in question is capable of intelligent and mature conversation or if engaging in debate with them will just be playing chess with a pigeon (the pigeon will knock the pawns over, bite your nose, shit on the board and then fly to boast to its fellow pigeons how well it won you in a game of chess). If I deem you a pigeon chess player, you will be ignored. I have no time to waste on useless debate. All terfhunters will be ignored as well, I do not wish to interact with the likes of them. However, just like not all gender criticals are radical feminists, not all trans folks are terfhunters. I am willing to speak with people I disagree with, but I will be choosing who I wish to speak with and who I won’t. If I see that you can’t behave, you are not welcome here.

#portrait of a lady on fire #lesbian #feminism

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savrenim · 4 years

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I love you and I love IFMLAM but,,, I also don't have the mental capacity to try and remember what has happened previously and/or re-read 200k right now. Is it quite alright if I ask you for a summary of the previous rounds?

Yeah totally! Under the cut:

Round 1: event-wise, basically the same as the musical. a quiet take on “if Aaron Burr was the Seer, absolutely nothing happens differently, and also oof the dramatic irony of musicals kind of having fourth-wall breaking is replaced in the written medium by Burr knowing what’s going to happen and not really believing it, and then slowly believing it more and more until he can’t stop it from happening.” Burr ends up saying “if I could pay in my own blood, I would do so seven times over, I would–” in a moment of incredible guilt as Alexander is dying, and, uh, who really knows how Seers work (I do, I know how Seers work) but for some reason it looks like time is repeating and, uh, here we go.

Round 2: plagued by guilt, Aaron tries to make Everything Go Right. This…. kind of works. He ends up confessing to Alexander exactly what is going on the first winter of the Revolutionary War, and getting together with Alexander. The War goes better than great–it will, in fact, end several years early–but Alexander is no longer quite Washington’s favorite and is sent away for Winter’s Ball. Aaron attempts to befriend Eliza so he can introduce her and Alexander, but is frustrated to find that Eliza is not interested in Alexander, Alexander is not interested in Eliza, and the fact that he’s been paying attention to Eliza means that everyone now expects him to marry Eliza. Begrudgingly, he does, although he intends to absolutely give Eliza the best possible life once he has committed as he also feels very guilty about how he left her a widow with no monetary assistance.

Come the Constitutional Convention, with encouragement from Alexander in the years leading up, Aaron decides to attempt to get slavery banned from country in the Constitution. He just barely manages to succeed, and in the process forms an unlikely alliance with James Madison. Alexander never makes it to the Constitutional Convention, but still is Secretary of Treasury. Things actually go pretty much identically to Round 1, except Aaron is sent to England to ward off the War of 1812 and comes back and finds Alexander has submitted his name and gotten him successfully elected Vice President while he wasn’t even there. This makes him very upset, and strains his friendship with James, who thinks Alexander is using him. The next election, Alexander insists on running Aaron for President with now himself as Vice President, and James Madison (with Jefferson in tow) decide to step in and stop Alexander as the threat he seems to be what with controlling Burr via Dramatic Blackmail They Have. Aaron assumes this blackmail is about his and Alexander’s relationship during the war. It is revealed that the blackmail is actually over the fact that Alexander has been sleeping with Eliza since pretty much day 1, and is still the father of his children.

Aaron decides that the only way to proceed forward is to not break with Alexander and not even bother to deny the rumors, because at this point the rumors going around about everyone are ridiculous and he figures if they don’t react, they’ll coast it out. He’s right. Unfortunately, Alexander can’t bring himself not to care when James Callender publishes claims that Alexander’s mother was a whore, and challenges Callender to a duel, gets shot, and dies. About two years later, Philip also decides to get in a duel about his own legitimacy, gets shot, and dies. Aaron completely shuts down and Eliza decides to try to send him on a ship to South Carolina where John Laurens, who survived the war just fine, is now Governor. The ship is lost at sea. (You know, the exact way his daughter Theodosia died.)

Round 3: Aaron decides that his problems came from the fact that everyone knew he was the Seer, so he decides to just not tell anyone. He also decides that the one person who didn’t betray him or really try to use him was James. He befriends James at Princeton. During the war, rather than risk himself, he decides to go to France to work with Benjamin Franklin to try to figure out what actually makes Seers tick so that he can maybe write out the science of what’s happening to him. The war ends, Aaron comes back to the States, and Franklin tries to pressure him a bit too hard to reveal himself and speak against slavery at the Constitutional Convention, and he decides to flee again back to France, because there are more historical resources there on Joan of Arc he can study. Unfortunately, in France there is Thomas Jefferson who has figured out that Aaron is the Seer because of some old notes of Franklin’s and good gut instincts, and uses it to blackmail him (as not revealing that he was Seer during the war is treason) and have him seized and placed under house arrest. He returns to the States when Jefferson returns, and decides to continue feeding Jefferson information about the future and all-around cooperating because of the good chance that if Jefferson figures out Madison knew, Madison would also be complicit in this treason.

This lasts until the Election of 1800, when Aaron is distracted by James being sick and doesn’t step down and declare Jefferson winner quickly enough, cue Jefferson deciding that Aaron has crossed the line for the last time and needs to die. He ends up running and is put just as he was historically on trial for treason for a ridiculously large number of things, all trumped up charges. As it becomes increasingly obvious that Jefferson rigged the House of Representatives to vote against him, he decides to dramatically drink poison on the stand instead of letting the US government and perhaps entire nation fall apart at the caliber of scandal that the very third president might already manipulate things to such an authoritarian state.

(There is eventually still an impeachment trial along with half of Congress resigning as James and Alexander use Aaron’s written visions and testimonies to bring Jefferson down because they decide screw him, and they manage to succeed without destroying the country, although barely.)

Aaron doesn’t know any of this, he decides to start Round 4 having learned the lessons: okay fucking admit to being the Seer early on so no one can blackmail you with it (goes good), find and befriend James Madison again! (goes entirely off the walls), and now he’s back and ready to rumble and honestly doesn’t really know what he’s doing except that he’s maybe tired of letting people walk all over him.

#ifmlam #summary of the story so total spoilers for the story so far

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whalexflowers · 4 years

Photo

{ sophia bush, lesbian, cisfemale + she/her } ➸ hey look, it’s SAWYER CICERO! they’re a 32 year old originally from WASHINGTON, DC. i heard she’s pretty EVASIVE, but i think she’s so LOYAL at the same time. while they’re terrified of being harmed, they’re perhaps more afraid of people finding out HER FATHER IS A DESPISED FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. they had no idea what they were getting themselves into when they moved to wrenbury.

tw: abuse, republicans, sex, drugs, rock’n roll, non graphic mentions of assault, lesbian butch mess

ok here i go again, reg back on her bullshit with my chainsmoking, dog training, doberman wrangling, chip-on-her-shoulder lesbian

Decades before Sawyer Cicero existed, there was Sally Maxwell, the youngest of the six children of Ernest Maxwell, a prolific republican politician from Topeka, Kansas. The power of her first cries was a force to be reckoned with, for an already exhausted mother that was trying to juggle her husband’s rapidly growing career and very attention demanding siblings.

Sally was born with the label of black sheep tattooed to her face even before she learned how to run. She was loud, curious and would not stay still, constantly interrupting the peaceful formation that her picture perfect family had to maintain as they got more and more thrusted into the public eye.

As Sally grew and started being more aware of her surroundings, she noticed that a lot of the things that happened around her made her feel uneasy: the bruises on mother’s face, the smell of alcohol on her parents breath’s before 10 am and the way her siblings did everything to get out of the house. Also, there were words thrown around that Sally knew they weren’t supposed to say, words thrown at their maids, and cooks, and gardeners and waitresses, usually people with skin darker than hers. They were called slurs, she learned one day at school.

The pain of Sally’s self awareness did nothing but intensify as the years went on. The Maxwell’s house grew bigger and their universes got smaller, a sea of ignorance and bigotry surrounding their existence. And Sally was trying her best to stay afloat, to not be one of them, to not be like her father and her meek mother. She liked her nannies and chauffeurs better, they were the ones with the real knowledge, with the colorful worlds and tolerant answers that spoke of real freedom. Not the American Dream bullshit that Sally’s father went on and on about during dinner, face red from whisky and expensive steak dripping with blood.

So Sally did the only thing she could and started rebelling. She went by Sawyer and stop responding to her real name. She pierced her ears and went heavy on the eyeliner. She snuck out of the public appearances her family made or scowled directly at the cameras, proudly displaying her USA flag pin upside down.

She was sixteen when Republican candidate Ernst Maxwell won the presidential election and her family started packing to move into the actual White fucking House. Sawyer’s worst nightmare had come to life, both personally and for the minorities in the country that just wanted to live a decent life away from the bullies that populated Sawyer’s daily life. Her mother, the First Lady had long ago lost her voice and so had her siblings.

So she rebelled even harder, openly flipping off cameras, speaking against her father’s policies, attending democratic party events and reading everything she could to educate herself. The coup de grace came when paparazzis caught her in the Rose Garden, fervently kissing a female classmate from her private school. Sawyer was, of course, a lesbian. She had been stealing kisses, glances and handholds since her early teen years, trying to figure out her identity. And as soon as she did, there was no holding her down. Sawyer was pictured almost every week with a different girl, in gay bars and lgbt+ events.

Her chaotic ways reached newer heights in college, when her parents swiftly shipped her off to London. Sex, drugs, rock’n roll plus a whole lot of lesbianing and disorderly conduct, but Sawyer finally felt free. It took her almost seven years and four colleges to finally graduate with her own mixed-and-matched degree on Pre Law, Ethology, Women’s Studies and Political Science.In the meantime, her father, President Maxwell had done a number on America. Cut ties with nations and organizations, failed military operations, dubious alliances. Almost everyone hated him and his time in office. And even having distanced herself from him from an early age, Sawyer felt the repercussions of their relations everywhere she went. Sawyer Maxwell became Sawyer Cicero after being assaulted by a small mob while working in Morocco. It took several months in the hospital for Sawyer to get back on her feet, take control of her hefty trust fund and disappear into the shadows, completely off the grid. Some tabloids reported her dead, some missing, nobody knew for sure, not even her parents or intelligence agencies.

In reality, Sawyer was bouncing around the world, exploring sights she never imagined she would see, with only a backpack and a flip-phone. It was a lonely existence but it was the price she had to pay for her freedom. She charmed ladies here and there, but she was always gone before breakfast. She got certified as a professional dog trainer in South Africa and that’s when she met her new best friend and companion: Lazarus, a 75 lb, purebred Doberman trained to protect and attack. He is always by her side, having been certified as a service and support dog for PTSD and other remnants from the incident in Morocco.

Sawyer landed in Wrenbury thinking it was time to take a break from international waters, looking for a quiet coastal town to set some roots and maybe get rid of the unbearable grief that has been festering inside of her. She comes across as a detached, unimpressed, chain smoking hermit, with a whole lot of a bad girl charm. She misses people, she misses connections, she misses not looking over her shoulder every two seconds, and letting down her guard. Maybe this town will do.

#/wtf is this #abuse tw #violence tw #alcohol tw #drugs tw #finalgirlintro #{ sawyer }

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uzumaki-rebellion · 5 years

Text

“Stark’s New Intern” Chp. 6

Summary: Erik hangs out with Tony...

NSFW. Mature Audience. Smut.

youtube

"Why are you selling dreams of who you wish you could be A prince in all of the magazines They'd have no words for the man I've seen Talk real fast 'fore they see your face

And would they love you if they knew all the things we know We've got these images We need them to be true Not ready to believe we're no more insecure than you…"

Res – "Golden Boys"

Erik wore his expensive suit again when he sat in the foyer of Stark's office. Tony's secretary Devika eyed him from time to time. She offered him water and juice to drink but he sat on the foyer couch rigid, muscles ready to spring and take him far away from Stark Industries and Los Angeles. His suitcase and duffle bag sat right next to his left leg.

"The restroom is over there if you need to use it," Devika said. She let her chin rest on her hand, her dark dewy skin looked radiant. Working for Tony must've been great for her.

"I'm good."

His voice came out gruff. Devika's eyes went back to her computer.

"I'm cool, just chillin," he said in a softer tone.

Devika's dark brown eyes watched him. She glanced down at his bags.

The door of Tony's office swung open and four of the intern project managers walked out. Erik's project manager, Yuri Deetz, stepped out last. When he caught Erik's eye, he gave a weak smile to him as Tony swept into the foyer.

"Erik Stevens is here," Devika said.

Tony glanced at his watch and then his eyes planted themselves on Erik's face. He walked over to Erik and stood in front of him, folding his arms across his chest. Erik kept his own stare steady. Face hard. He wasn't backing down over no bullshit white boy.

Tony looked as if he was going to spill a lecture, but then he glanced at his watch again.

"Come with me," he said.

Erik stood and followed Tony to a private elevator. On the ride down, Tony stayed quiet and Erik just stood in silence too. The ride down to a mid-level floor had Erik keeping a swift pace with Tony's stride. Passing through several security checkpoints, they arrived inside a cutting-edge computer lab. Erik's eyes marveled at the hardware and Stark employees programming with software that was never going to fall into the hands of the general public. Not even the military.

"Hi, Janine, this is Erik Stevens, one of the new interns…"

Tony stood next to a red-faced programmer with piercing gray eyes who leaned against a specialized programmer's desk and stared at Erik.

"Stevens…you programmed some Sandex code to be a placeholder for Yang's new software," she said.

"Yeah," Erik said. Janine's eyes stared him down and their intensity made him nervous. He glanced at her expansive four-dimensional screen.

"How's that working out for you?" he asked, recognizing the AmDX7 computer language that was all the rage in certain programming circles.

Janine glanced over at her screen. A simulated biometric passport glowed before them and she enlarged it.

"Trying to figure out a way to keep data secure from RFID tech is proving to be quite a task. We want to be the first on the market with full-proof E-Passports, but the problem is—"

"Many national identity cards aren't ICAO9358 compliant, and a lot of countries don't want a universal chip," Erik said.

Janine smiled. She looked over at Tony.

"Can I keep him?" she asked.

"I'll pick him up at dinner time," Tony said.

"Pull up a seat," Janine said.

She didn't have to tell Erik twice.

###

Rubbing his eyes, Erik leaned back in the computer chair and took a moment to rest his brain. Ten hours straight he had been at Janine's desk coding for her, skipping lunch and dinner in the cafeteria. The regular staff was already gone for the dinner break, and Erik was left to be supervised by Janine's assistant Manuj and four other programmers. Janine's crew oversaw all of Stark Industries' facial, fingerprint, and iris recognition technology.

This is where Erik wanted to be. Stark was so far ahead in the future with biometrics that Erik felt confident that everything he learned in this department would secure his future. Technology changed at an extreme pace, but to be with a company that shaped future tech would bode well for him at this time. Learning the pitfalls of cybersecurity would help him devise ways to hack it when he needed to. A day would come when he would have to go into Africa…East Africa in particular…Wakanda to be exact. He needed to find ways to circumvent some of the tech that his father showed him before he was murdered. And if Wakanda really was that far ahead of the world, the lab he sat in at that moment was the start of his preparation to defeat it.

"Janine said for you to go home and be back here tomorrow at seven. We've sent you some time-sensitive cheat codes to help get you to speed. Read them over tonight and be ready to rock and roll again in the morning. Good work, Stevens," Manuj said heading back to his desk on the other side of the room.

Erik stood up and put on his suit jacket. Ten hours and not one word from Tony—

"There he is."

Tony walked in wearing a totally different suit from the one he had on that morning. Formal. Black. With a bow tie.

"I was told to come back here in the morning," Erik said.

"Well, Janine must really like you. She doesn't like very many people. Good on you."

Erik just stared at Tony.

"I thought we were going to talk this morning—"

"You sat in that chair for over ten hours, without a break I was told and did what you love to do. You want to be here—"

"What about Wesley?"

"What about him? His dad is just a Congressman. Who fucking feels threatened by a Congressman? A Senator…maybe a little concern. Let's go. There's a party at my house tonight and we are going to be late if we don't get you dressed to impress."

"My stuff is still—"

"Your bags are back in your apartment. Maria made sure it went in your room. We have about thirty minutes to get you some new threads before we go to mi casa su casa."

Erik grinned.

"You really think I would cut you loose just because you punched a drunk asshole? You know how many times I have punched people…or been the asshole? I brought you to Janine so you would know what you are here for. She's your new project manager. And she wants to know who else on your old team you want to bring over with you. So, if you could pick only two people to ride with you—"

"Valentina and Maria."

"Nice. Let's go."

Tony's Lagonda Vision was waiting for him in the parking garage with his personal valet standing watch over the car. Tony opened up the moon roof and the Cali air blew in.

"Tonight, I think we'll put you in Hugo Boss," Tony said glancing at Erik.

They drove into Beverly Hills and Tony ushered Erik into a Boss shop where Tony paid for a brand new tuxedo, shirt and bow tie for him. The shop owner threw in some free boxer briefs and dress socks to be nice. The tuxedo didn't even have a price tag on it. None of the suits did.

"I've been in an office all day. I need to clean up," Erik said.

"I already have toiletries at the house. Never opened. I've got you covered. And if we hurry, you will have time to shower and shave."

The PCH was packed and by the time they reached Tony's Malibu "house", hired valets and caterers were already looking after people in the ultra-luxury mansion overlooking a high sea bluff. They slipped into the mansion through a back entrance and Tony took Erik up to a private guest suite where he could shower and change.

Pepper was already hounding Tony when he arrived complaining that she had to entertain too many people without him being there as the real host.

Tony had everything he needed for Erik to get ready, and within twenty minutes, Erik was showered, suited and booted. He had trouble with the bowtie. He stuffed it in his pocket and made his way down several stairs looking for the party spot. Over one hundred people were already in the home and Erik found Tony standing next to a group of attractive white women who hung onto his every word.

"Kid, ya gotta wear the tie to complete the look, excuse me, ladies…"

Tony ushered Erik to the side and helped him tie the bow correctly. "I thought I looked suave without the tie," Erik said.

"No…no you didn't."

Tony stood back and admired his handiwork.

"You look good, kiddo."

Erik nodded.

"Stick next to me a learn something," Tony said moving back into the crowd.

The man was smooth. Memory impeccable. He knew names and nicknames and greeted each person with enthusiasm. When there was a break in the mingling and Tony sipped a bit of white wine, Erik could finally talk to him.

"What is this party for?"

"Some investors in the lower-tiered companies I own. I throw them a shindig every now and then to make them feel special. Let them know that no matter how global I am, I always remember the little guy. It's once a year and it makes me look peachy."

"Gotcha."

"I will allow you a glass of wine here…hey…one glass of wine," Tony said as Erik put one of the wine glasses back on a server's tray as they swept past him.

Two chic blondes walked over to Tony, red wine in their hands as they fawned over him.

"My, my, my," Tony whispered as his eyes took in the décolletage on their dresses that highlighted their fake breasts. The only things that weren't plastic on them were the leather heels on their feet.

"This is my assistant, Erik Stevens," Tony said. Erik went along with the ruse and watched Tony maneuver his way to the other side of the room without the women realizing he was dumping them.

"Does this ever get old?" Erik asked.

"Here in Malibu, yes. I'll take you to my European digs and you can see how the Euro Trash party crowd changes everything," Tony said winking.

"I'll hold you to that," Erik said.

Later in the evening, Tony gave a speech to the crowd touting the growth of the companies he owned and highlighted the party-goers fatter bank statements due to Tony's leadership and smart business acumen. Two hours in, Erik became bored. And tired.

Tony worked the room and his rock star status among his guests was apparent. He was truly the King of razzle-dazzle and Erik watched Pepper keep him in check as she also worked the room, helping to move Tony when he was tired of talking to certain people. Pepper must've been working for Tony for a while because on instinct almost, she knew when to interrupt and pull Tony away with her to meet other guests. As much as Pepper came off as nit-picky with Tony, Erik got the sense that she loved her job with him. Tony allowed her a lot of leeway to butt in when she felt the conversations were veering into territory that Tony didn't need to speak on. She was also good at cockblocking certain women who didn't seem to fit Tony's type.

That's where it got interesting.

Tony's only type was beautiful and female. He was a breast man and a leg man from what Erik could see from the women he took an interest in. One tall sleek white brunette eased into his orbit, and within an hour, Tony was walking around with an arm around her waist. She was now the chosen one.

At one point, Erik had walked around a staircase where Tony was speaking to the head of a law firm, and Tony had his hand up the back of the brunette's dress digging all in her ass. The woman was standing there as if nothing was happening while Tony fingered her. When the lawyer walked away and they thought they were well hidden from view, Tony lifted the back of her dress higher and openly fingered her shaved pussy. She had no panties on at all.

Tony whispered in her ear and the woman's eyes shut tight. Her moan was loud.

"Talk that talk, T," Erik said under his breath as he sipped on a glass of Chablis. Tony's fingers were glossy and he must've been digging deep in the right spot because the brunette whimpered and held onto his left arm that cradled her waist while his right hand went to work. After a few minutes, Tony positioned himself behind the woman, unzipped his pants, rooted inside the fly of his underwear, and inserted his lengthy erection between her folds.

"Damn, no condom…bruh," Erik thought to himself watching the action.

Tony's strokes were hard as he palmed the woman's pale breasts that spilled out of her dress. Slamming into her, he kept talking, his voice urgent.

"Take it…take it…like a good little slut," Tony grunted, his eyes pressed shut and his face tight with lust. He was getting close. Looked like it was going to be a fat nut too. He pulled out abruptly and the brunette fell to her knees facing him, her hungry mouth wide open.

Time to go.

Erik turned and walked in the opposite direction feeling himself wanting to find a babe to finger fuck and clap cheeks. But there was no one there worth his time or energy and he had no condoms. The reality was, the women who were young enough for him to step to had their eyes on Tony. A billionaire genius was better than a broke genius.

He pulled out his cell and contemplated calling Giselle. The memory of her hand on his dick had him wanting a part two encounter. Tony was out here getting his rocks off. Erik wanted to do the same.

"Erik."

Tony's secretary Devika walked over to him. She wore a copper-colored body con dress and her thick black wavy hair was tucked in a chignon.

"Having fun?" she asked.

"It's interesting," Erik said.

"Very diplomatic answer," she said, giggling.

"How often does he party at his house like this?"

"Four or five times a year. I think you might be the first intern to ever come here."

Erik's eyes swept over the entire first floor.

"He lives in this big ass mansion by himself?"

"Yes."

"Rich people."

"This could be you one day."

"My spot will be bigger than this. A palatial estate."

"Listen to you," she said slapping his arm.

She dug into her small purse and pulled out a cell.

"You'll be back tomorrow, hopefully?" she said.

"I'll be there."

"Good. I heard nothing but good things about you."

"From who?"

"Mr. Stark."

Pepper walked over to them, her eyes looking around the room as she approached.

"Have you two seen Tony?" Pepper asked.

Erik's eyes swept over to the last place he saw him and there was no sign of Tony or his dime piece.

"He was talking to that lawyer from Fielding and Houstons," Erik said.

"If you see him, tell him that Mona Richards wants to speak to him and it is very important," Pepper said.

She walked away from them on the hunt for Tony.

Devika's eyes scanned the room.

"He was with a brunette," Erik said, making sure Pepper was far away.

"Ah, let me guess, the one with the…"

Devika held her hands out in front of her chest.

"You be knowing," Erik said.

"I'm going to call it a night. If Pepper is hunting him down, it can't be a good sign."

"Where do you live?"

"North Hollywood."

"Can I get a ride with you to the Oakwood?"

"Party over for you so soon?"

"I'm beat. Gotta get up early."

"Was Mr. Stark your ride?"

"Yeah."

"I'll give you a ride."

"Cool, let me get my stuff," Erik said.

He stood for a moment trying to remember which direction he came down to the first floor.

"Come on, I'll show you where your stuff is. You were in the guest room on the third floor."

"Thanks."

Erik followed Devika to the East side of the mansion and they walked up some stairs.

"There it is," Erik said walking into the room and grabbing his original suit that he placed inside the Hugo Boss bag he kept.

"You know where I can get my hair lined up?" he asked her.

"I look Black so you assume I know where to get hair done?" she said.

Erik stared at her face.

"My bad. I thought…the name Devika…it sounded…"

"It's Sanskrit and means 'little Goddess'. My parents are Indian—"

"I didn't—"

"—and Black. My brother gets his hair cut on Crenshaw, right across from the mall."

Erik smiled. "Los Angeles is a melting pot," she said.

"A segregated one."

"I hear you."

"I'm ready. Let's dip."

"I just texted Mr. Stark to let him know you are leaving. Just in case he wants to keep you longer," she said.

When they made it back down the stairs, Tony was waiting for them. Erik noticed his tie was fixed back up in haste. His hair was not as perfect either.

"Pepper said there's a Mona looking for you," Erik said.

"Here? Now?" Tony said looking around like a sniper was gunning for him.

"Yeah."

"Shit. Follow me," Tony said.

Erik and Devika followed him out onto his ocean view balcony that circled the entire mansion. Tony's eyes darted around as he slipped past guests out on the balcony and entered his private den.

"You owe her some money or something?" Erik asked, intrigued by how secretive Tony was acting like they were in a spy movie.

"No, she's just a friend with benefits whose benefits I no longer want."

Devika rolled her eyes at Erik.

"Hopefully she didn't see you with that brunette," Erik teased.

Tony's eyes narrowed. Erik threw up his hands.

"Hey, you were getting it in. I just happened to be there when it went down."

"Really? In front of Devika?" Tony said.

"I'll just be leaving Mr. Stark. Erik asked for a ride—"

"Yeah, I saw your text. Thanks for taking him. Put it on your T & E report for mileage. I'm going to hang out here," he said. He swiped his hand over his desk and security cams popped up on a floating screen.

"There she is. Damn it. I thought I had her taken off the invite list," Tony huffed, his hands on his hips looking distraught, "…oh shit."

"What is it, Mr. Stark?" Devika said.

"Pepper found her…and…oh no…"

Erik and Devika stepped around Tony's desk to look closer at his security feed.

"Let's go, let's go!" Tony said shoving Erik and Devika toward the door.

They exited the den and headed toward Tony's private exit where he and Erik had first entered the mansion. They were practically running down a hall and jumping into an elevator.

"Why are we running?" Erik asked.

"Pepper is bringing Mona to me," he said. Tony glanced at his watch and the security feed popped up there.

They scurried into an underground garage. Tony made them jump into a silver Lamborghini.

"Where are you parked Devika?" Tony asked.

"Second level."

Tony sped them over to a little red BMW.

"See you in the morning," Tony said.

"Where are you going?" Erik asked.

"I have a penthouse downtown. I'm staying there tonight."

"You're leaving your own party?" Erik asked.

"Pepper will shut it down," Tony said.

"Goodnight Mr. Stark," Devika said.

"Night Devika. Good job today, Stevens."

Tony took off like the wind.

"Get in," Devika said.

###

Part 7

Tag List:

@fd-writes @soufcakmistress @cherrystainedlipsbaby @tclaybon @thadelightfulone @allhailqueennel @bartierbakarimobisson @cpwtwot @shookmcgookqueen @yoyolovesbucky @raysunshine78 @the-illllest @terrablaze514 @l-auteuse @amirra88 @jimizwidow @janelledarling @chaneajoyyy @sweetestdream92 @purple-apricots @blackpinup22 @hennessystevens-udaku @scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade @bugngiz @stariamrry @honeytoffee

#Stark's New Intern #killmonger #erik stevens #tony stark #black panther fanfiction #n'jadaka

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shrewful · 5 years

Text

Settings: Corsiva

World Halve: Veralon

Haelian or Vezuvaelian?: Haelian

Nation: Siva

Colors: Turquoise & Terracotta

In the City of Cities, there are no humble places. Haelsiva, the youngest metropolis, boasts its great citadel; Ahnsiva, the eldest, is home to numbers the likes of which the Alliance knows no match. But Corsiva, the middle child, is a place which needs no claim to fame; in the old Siv tongue, it is known as the Immaculate City — a title which garners respect amongst such a wide, glimmering family.

In the days before the alliance, when dragons — terrible beasts borne of faulty deals with the terrible entity, It — ruled and roamed the land, Skyppa the Silvertongue brought peace and plenty to the valleylands. Using his sweet words, he flattered the dragons into leaving him and his people be. Though one demanded more than honied compliments; Ergotsil, the tall shadow, was enamored with Skyppa’s mind, and in exchange for riches and his life, tasked him with creating a palace for their leisure.

Ergotsil was right in their estimation of Skyppa’s abilities. The Tall Shadow’s Palace — which now stands as the capitol building of Corsiva — was the greatest piece of architecture of its time. Though not as large as the cathedral of Haelsiv, it is a towering figure, five times as tall as it is wide. The doorways and ceilings loom high above the contents of their rooms; the fact that it was designed for dragon, not human leisure, is evident. Despite this, every nook and cranny was etched with detail — the building itself is a gothic work of art, the likes of which we can compare to buildings such as the Notre Dame. Ergotsil was endlessly pleased, so much so that they would commission the creation of many other structures, rewarding Skyppa to no end.

By the time the dragons — Ergotsil with them — were banished and locked away, Skyppa was nearing the end of his days. Not wanting to see his creations to go to waste, he gave the array of structures to the newfound Haelian Alliance for their use. In his honor, the Alliance used what Skyppa built as a hub for the Alliance’s many paperwork-intensive tasks — finding which countries need soldiers and what soldiers are needed for the task, how to get food from one end of the continent to the other the fastest, going through countless census to calculate taxes and grants. To accommodate the people coming to assume these jobs, the Alliance commissioned more and more buildings, but required them to follow the same standards of Skyppa’s art.

Thus, Corsiva was borne; the immaculate city, a place where every home, every street, and every bridge was crafted as if it was to be put on display. It is the most beautiful place the Alliance has to offer in the day — but the perched gargoyles and poised statues are painted in a grim, melancholy shade as night passes over the city. The tall buildings, adorned with their columns, buttresses, and crow’s nests, cast long shadows over the countless canals; a river runs through the city, and the canals that run from It serve as the main transportation.

The Corsiv beach has no water, aside from where the river spills over the cliff’s edge. The edge of the city ends abruptly with a sheer cliff; the ground beneath, however, is obscured from view by verdant leaves. Corsiva borders the Verult Sea, where the water had long since fled to lower ground, leaving an enormous vacancy in the earth — a vacancy which would soon be filled by a thick jungle, so lush that its contents remain largely undiscovered. Instead of rolling waves, the Corsivs look out across a windswept canopy.

Most every Corsiv is a white-collar worker, either doing paperwork for the alliance or some other organization within the city. Hard labor — cleaning & maintaining the city’s precious buildings, tending the greenhouses, piloting canal boats — is preformed largely by disciples of various entities, with the occasional skilled everyday mortal strewn between their ranks. In contrast to what one would assume, what we would call blue-collar workers are generally respected and paid far more than their indoor-dwelling neighbors, making up most of the upper class.

The Corsivs are known for their marble-smooth skin and still demeanors, but moreso for their splotched blue-gray skin. Shortly after the death of Skyppa, and while the Alliance was still caught in the chaos of being so recently formed — and had yet to claim the city — there was a long struggle as neighboring Ahnsiva and Haelsiva attempted to claim it for themselves. As the conflict went on, it only became more fueled by hate and rage, and the only people who managed to survive by the time the Alliance was able to end the war were those able to hide in the canals and corners of the palaces. The traits of blue, shark-like skin to match the water and noiseless breath were “selected for”, and they’ve been associated to the Corsiv identity ever since.

Corsiv culture is centered around respect and manners; everything from the order in which people in a group speaks to who holds open the door for who is dictated by various rules of etiquette. How well one follows these rules is often what dictates the hiring process, much to the disdain of those trying to move in from elsewhere; Corsiv etiquette is extraordinarily complicated, and if you haven’t grown up in Corsiva, it’s highly unlikely you’ll pick up on it entirely without some intense studying. Traditional Corsivs view outsiders as uncultured and rude, both in part to their rigid manners and the fact they live in a giant work of art. To characters like El’ai, Tsil-dyyn and Tsilayli, this makes interacting with Corsivs so often uniquely difficult.

#writeblr #writing #wip #apex tempest #fantasy writeblr #writeblr wip #apex-tempest #fantasy #El’ai #Tsilayli #Tsil-dyyn #Corsiva #Siva #Veralon #Lona

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keyfyapmak · 5 years

Text

Proud?

When I was 17, my mother and I sat on my bed in my room in Ankara: the wall was covered, corner to corner, with fine art prints. It was the backdrop to my mother as we chatted casually, on some weekend morning. “What would you do if I married a woman?” I had asked, not even aware of not being straight at the time; it was genuinely a hypothetical question. She paused, took a breath, and looked aside thoughtfully. “Well”, she said, “I’d be sad about two things: one, the way that the world would treat you. And two, that I wouldn’t have natural grandchildren.”

And that was that. Two perfectly reasonable fears, one of which doesn’t even apply (Mum you doknow that IVF exists right?). That simple answer, which she probably doesn’t even remember responding with, ensured that I would live my entire life free from insecurity about my sexuality. It cemented itself deep in my brain, and I knew without a single wavering doubt that my mum would accept that part of me unconditionally. And that’s exactly what happened when I accidentally came out to her last month. We were talking about a queer arts event, when my mum offhandedly said ‘but wouldn’t you be the only straight one taking part?’.

Turns out the countless hints I had left over the years never hit home. I have always been content with the idea that I have never had to really ‘come out’, that I just dated as I pleased, and dropped enough hints or casual mentions that everyone probably knew or guessed and that was good enough for me, and if they assumed I was straight I wasn’t really bothered either. For me sexuality has always been more connected to my dating life than an intrinsic part of my identity, so I genuinely have never really cared, or thought much about it. But suddenly here I was, lounging on my sofa in the middle of a conversation with my mum, about to come out. I paused, chose my tactic, and went for it.

“Oh no Mum, I’m not straight,” I replied, with a casual smiling condescension.

“Oh right,” she replied. “But you’ve had so many boyfriends?”

Later I would look back and wish I had replied with “Just because I’m not straight, doesn’t mean I have good taste,” for extra comedic retelling value, but instead I just went, “yeah I know.” I then moved the conversation along swiftly as if we had just discussed what I was planning to have for breakfast. This was exactly how I would have wanted to come out: casually, with no anxiety, no big deal. But my casual demeanour dropped as the conversation came to an end. I blurted out, “Mum! Before you go I just want to say I didn’t tell you because I never bothered to because you never gave me a reason to be scared about it, and that’s why I’m so ok about it, because of you, thank you, I love you.” She paused again, and as I was halfway out the door to let a friend in, she finished with “But you know I would always love you anyways, of course.” And I did. Of course I did.

My mother happened to be visiting my godparents at the time, a gay couple, who called me some weeks later. They told me how she had come down the stairs, sat down at breakfast slightly dazed, and relayed the conversation back to them. “Just like that?!” They had asked her, incredulously. “Yes, just like that.”

‘Just like that’ is how I planned to continue as well. I didn’t like the idea of one one or two people knowing, because now it felt like a secret. I decided to suck it up, and consciously come out to my aunt as well. I did this while putting on liquid eyeliner, with her on speakerphone. “Oh by the way,” I added at the end of a conversation, “I told Mum I wasn’t straight because it just came up, and I didn’t want it to be a secret, so now you know too.” My aunt didn’t even pause before saying “Oh, I kind of figured.” At least someone in my family has a gaydar. I completed a perfect wing-tip, and hung up. Two down. That would do for now.

That casual tone, that implication that it simply isn’t a big deal or interesting enough to warrant a conversation, is how I have always viewed my sexuality. For me, it simply isn’t. Perhaps pride is something that comes from struggle, and I hadn’t struggled. I didn’t feel like I had earned something that I was just born with, and hadn’t fought for. And I suppose that’s why, after a lifetime of safely not caring about being bisexual, I finally encountered the one thing that would shatter that comfort:

Other queers.

I have spent my life moving country, on the periphery of all communities and groups. With the exception of my university friends, who I cemented my heart to in a way I haven’t with any other groups of people, I generally keep at the edges of everything. Last September, in a Facebook thread, I mentioned that I had written a poem about how inconsequential it was for me to be bi. I was surprised that this led to me being immediately booked to perform said poem at the annual Bi+ Ireland Bi+ Visibility Day event. I was even more surprised when, at my first ever queer event, I won the award for bi visibility. Me! The person who at the time had no coming out story, and spent my life comfortably under the radar! I remember meeting new people who I immediately liked, who made me laugh with terrible puns, and with great taste in tropical shirts. It felt strange, being in a room with people ‘like me’. I didn’t really know what that even meant.

After that initial dipping a toe in, I went a step further and joined the Bi+ Ireland Facebook group. I suppose that’s where things started rubbing up against insecurities I didn’t know I had. The group itself is lovely, and supportive. I was drowning in a sea of posts about bi colours, and queer in-jokes, and flags I didn’t know existed. It reminded me of how when I was in the bathroom during the Bi Visibility event, I overheard two people talking about queerness, with a confident and casual hold over terms and references and in-jokes that I didn’t understand. I didn’t feel a sense of joy whenever I see the colours blue, pink, and purple. I couldn’t relate to the jokes, the stories, the coming out tales, or the relationship structures most people seemed to have. It came as a huge shock, after being so quietly confident about this part of myself, to find out that I did in fact have fears about queerness. It was the same fear I’ve had about joining any community. It was the fear that, after all that, after finding ‘my people’, I didn’t fit in at all. Even though the group does everything in its power to reassure people that no matter what, they are queer enough, now that I was in a pool of people ‘like me’, I felt like I wasn’t anyways. My deepest insecurity that informs most of my life is the fear of not being ‘enough’. Suddenly this was tapped in a new way, and ‘not queer enough’ became my new obsession. I finally found something I could relate to with other queers: the feeling that I hadn’t earned my queer stripes.

And I suppose that’s where pride comes in. I’ve never felt proud of being bisexual, because I’ve never felt anything about being bisexual. For me it was like asking me to be proud about my favourite colour. But of course, I’m aware it’s nothing like a favourite colour. It’s intrinsic, and something you choose to act on. The same applied to my nationality, my ethnicity, my womanhood. These are all things I was born with, and so I’m not proud of them. I didn’t work hard to be bisexual, or Indian, or a woman. I worked hard at making a career in the arts, at being an immigrant, at supporting my friends. THOSE are the things I am proud of, because I feel like I have earned them. When I am finally Irish I will be overwhelmed with pride, because I would have fought 8 long years to earn that title. And perhaps I am just that little bit prouder of being a woman since Ireland repealed the 8th, because I knew that despite my mental health and inability to vote, I fought. I put up posters. I wore Repeal merchandise even though I knew it made me a walking target. I still wear an Abortion Rights NI tote bag, because the fight isn’t over. During the Marriage Equality referendum I was deeply unwell in my old job, and so I felt like I absolutely didn’t do enough to canvas, or help, or fight for that glorious outcome. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? The fight? How could I be proud of something I didn’t fight for?

So here I am. On Pride morning, in 2019, trying to figure out what I am proud of. And I think I am starting to figure that out. Yes, pride seems to come from coming out the other side of a struggle, and I realise, there are fights I haven’t fought yet. I am not proud of my nationality because I haven’t begun working through my cultural identity issues and insecurities. I’m not proud of being bisexual because I still am so distanced and a little baffled at my own sexuality that I don’t feel ownership over it. I haven’t done enough work on the things I was born with because I feel like I didn’t earn them. And the fight in this case isn’t on the streets, or with facebook posts, or by canvassing strangers. It’s a conflict I haven’t resolved in myself, and I suspect once I am on the other side of that struggle, a sense of pride will come naturally. I may be very late in the game coming to terms with myself, but better late than never.

In the meantime, I have a very bright pink pair of trousers and a tasteful tropical shirt to put on, and a March to attend. Even that small step might be something to be proud of.

#Pride #pride month #coming out #bisexual #bisexuality #proud #identity #bi #queer #family #friends #insecurity

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southeastasianists · 6 years

Link

Hate speech isn’t a new phenomenon in Myanmar. But it has intensified with the advent of social media, smartphones and affordable SIM cards.

“I’ve been called a k****-lover [and] had my address, my ID card, ethnicity, native city, religion and address leaked,” said youth activist Khin Sandar, describing her experiences on the receiving end of hate speech on Facebook. She’s had to deal with the panic of reporting daily posts of abuse on the site that insult her religion, disclose her personal identity and threaten her safety.

Memes calling Muslims rats or dogs, or using the word k**** – a common racist slur against Muslims and Indians – are just some of the examples of hate speech that continue to be shared on Facebook, despite the scrutiny of activists and promises by the platform. Personal attacks like those Khin Sandar experiences are still slipping by Facebook’s monitoring team, several sources have confirmed to Southeast Asia Globe.

Facebook defines hate speech in its Community Standards as “a direct attack on people based on protected characteristics – race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disability or disease.” But, while its standards are clear, its detection of breaches falls short, say critics.

The other major problem is that social media is a new information delivery technology with a steep learning curve. In Myanmar, Facebook is so dominant that it’s seen as the internet itself, said one activist. Most Myanmar people use Facebook as a search browser and their primary news source. Internet literacy is extremely low in the country, as a new generation leapfrogs from a time under the military regime when only the elite could afford to buy a SIM card that cost up to an astounding $1,500, to a new generation of smartphone users who can now buy SIMs for just $2 each.

Myanmar is not alone. As one Sri Lankan analyst told the Guardian, while Sri Lanka enjoys high literacy, it suffers from a lack of information literacy: “It means the population can read and write but tends to immediately believe and uncritically respond to that which they see on social media.”

At a peace march in Yangon in May, around 300 activists held signs with doves on them as they called for an end to all military skirmishes in the country between government forces and ethnic minorities like the Kachin in northern Myanmar. The demonstration was shut down after some civilian Buddhist nationalists showed up and started attacking protesters as the police looked on. When police finally decided to intervene, it was to arrest the protesters who were under attack.

Khin Sandar was one of those activists. She pulled up a screenshot of a Facebook post showing a photo of her being arrested by police at the protest. The Burmese comment that went with it translated roughly to: “These people earn dollars and are creating unrest by associating with rebels and kalar.” The post was shared again and again, often with comments calling for violence and even death threats against Khin Sandar.

Khin Sandar said she reported the post to Facebook as hate speech. Twenty-four hours after the protest, she checked her phone to find that the post was still up – and was clocking hundreds of shares. She was scared, so she alerted family and friends.

“I was at risk and my friends were trying to help me,” she said. “Friends were reporting the post through their accounts and others were trying to email Facebook administrators directly to alert them to this serious case.”

It took 48 hours for Facebook to review, respond and delete the post. By then, it had been shared nearly 1,900 times. She felt helpless.

Critics say Facebook’s slow response time to hate speech increases the danger to those at which it’s directed.

Although Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to commit to a 24-hour review and removal of hate speech at the landmark US Senate inquiry in April, Myanmar activists say the average response time is closer to 48 hours.

“The problem of hate speech has not gone away,” said Htaike Htaike of the Yangon-based Myanmar ICT for Development Organisation (Mido), a group that teaches internet literacy and monitors hate speech. Mido launched its Safe Online Space (SOS) curriculum in 2016 to teach people the basics of social media and the internet, how to report hate speech on Facebook and how to identify hearsay versus actual news. Through its “training of trainers”, Mido is developing a network of people to pass on this knowledge across Myanmar.

Htaike brought out her laptop and showed the data Myanmar activists have been collecting of serious hate speech posts that have been reported to Facebook. Next to each post was a column showing how many hours it took for it to be removed. The most common wait time was 48 hours. But Htaike said these few posts represented a tiny fraction of the thousands of hate-filled posts Mido has tracked.

This slow response time has not improved since March, when the UN called the social media giant a “beast” for its alleged role in fuelling the violence against the Rohingya – in part by allowing hate-speech posts to be shared online.

These Facebook posts included lists of well-known activists and Muslim community leaders who were vocal on the Rohingya issue, with links to their Facebook accounts. Some posts called for activists to be assassinated. One post depicted the purported corpse of a Rakhine Buddhist woman with ripped clothes lying in the grass, with the suggestion that she had been raped and murdered by Muslim men – an old story that led to deadly violence in Rakhine State in 2012.

Two chain messages – one to incite violence against the Muslim community and a separate message mirroring the words of violence against the Buddhist community – were shared hundreds of thousands of times leading up to 9 September last year. They ordered people to take up arms, warned of jihad and encouraged an anti-kalarmovement.

Since the crisis that led to over 700,000 Rohingya fleeing from Rakhine State to Bangladesh – described as ethnic cleansing by the UN – hate speech only continues to escalate.

“We know we’ve been too slow to respond to the developing situation in Myanmar,” admitted David Caragliano, a Facebook content policy manager, during the company’s first visit to Myanmar, in May.

A team of five Facebook staff visited the country for one week for a whirlwind of meetings with Myanmar-based civil society organisations, activists and the government.

The Facebook rep insisted the company is improving as a hate-speech watchdog. Referring to the same protest in Yangon, Caragliano vaguely suggested they were able to respond to some reports during the protests within 24 hours: “We removed numerous pieces of threatening content towards activists within three hours and a video depicting graphic violence.”

These examples are not enough, said Burmese activists.

“Two out of how many hate-speech posts?” asked Ei Myat Noe Khin of the Yangon-based tech accelerator Phandeeyar, which helped Facebook translate its Burmese-language community standards. Despite her group’s repeated requests, she said Facebook had not shared any information or metrics with Myanmar groups to show how it is monitoring posts – or how many posts it had removed and how quickly.

Herein lies the problem at the heart of the hate: no evidence or transparency of country-specific Facebook reports. So activists from Sri Lanka, Vietnam, India, Syria, Ethiopia and Myanmar formed the Global South coalition in May to hold Facebook accountable for failing to put adequate protections in place.

Wirathu, Myanmar’s most notorious hardline Buddhist nationalist monk – who has been charged with inciting anti-Muslim riots – finally had his Facebook account suspended in late January this year after he had been repeatedly caught breaching Facebook’s community standards with hate-filled posts.

Yet Htaike Htaike said monitoring by Mido has found that bad actors like Wirathu are still active on the platform, sometimes using fake names. And even if Wirathu and his ilk are locked out, they have plenty of followers to carry their hate torches high. Wirathu’s hardline nationalist group, the Patriotic Association of Myanmar, abbreviated in Burmese as Ma Ba Tha, thrives on Facebook pages and in multiple groups.

Reporting and deleting of posts is not enough, say activists – better detection is sorely needed. Facebook’s Caragliano said the platform is getting tougher in its approach to hate speech by implementing systems to “proactively detect this kind of content”, but Myanmar cybersecurity groups say they are still seeing these blacklisted figures online.

Caragliano admitted it is hard for artificial intelligence to identify hate speech with the same precision with which the platform identifies nudity, terrorist propaganda and spam. In Myanmar, the challenge for Facebook to build systems that detect hate speech in the Burmese script-based Zawgyi One and unicode fonts isn’t as simple as taking down posts with key words.

When Facebook suddenly banned the slur k**** last year, Htaike Htaike said it was a Band-Aid solution: “When they brought in the blanket ban of the word kalar, it became a joke because it didn’t work.” That ban didn’t establish a process, Htaike explained. It was a shortsighted decision that meant phrases like kalar page (lentil beans) were also suddenly taken down. Facebook said its review system now considers context.

Another roadblock is detecting hate speech on closed pages and in private messages. One improvement Facebook has made is to provide a reporting button in Messenger, but group members of pages are not likely to report hate speech if they are in a group that aligns with their beliefs. To combat this, Facebook said it has “updated our guidelines and now have more nuanced rules that help us take down abusive groups that have bad intent”. But Facebook hasn’t shared any data to back this claim.

Activists say that instead of these narrow policies that target words, Facebook should invest more in a language team in the region that can react in real time.

“We are still doing the reporting, [but] they can’t keep relying on us,” said Htaike. “They ask us for data, which of course we will provide, but for longterm data collecting, they need a better team.”

She stressed that the job of monitoring hate speech is extremely risky in Myanmar: “I am in a dilemma about having a Facebook in-country team as I am very concerned about security aspects, because even community civil society organisations like us are harassed and cyber-bullied just for having a relationship with Facebook.” Her group Mido has been harassed when something goes wrong, as with the “lentil beans” fiasco.

But anyone Facebook hires to do this job should be based in Myanmar, said Htaike, who is concerned that the site recently advertised a position for a Burmese analyst to join its team, but that that person would need to move to Dublin. “They at least need to be in the same time zone,” she said.

Facebook said it is hiring three new people a week, at the time of this writing, to work on Myanmar hate-speech reviews, but would not reveal the size of its Myanmar team.

Caragliano would say only that “we have added dozens more Myanmar-language reviewers and we hope to double that number by the end of this year.”

In July, Facebook announced that it had hired the San Francisco-based nonprofit Business for Social Responsibility to conduct a human rights impact assessment, which Myanmar activists and the Global South welcome. Yet questions remain unanswered about what exactly the report will reveal or how it could help things on the ground.

“We are waiting to know what their methodology will be and what they will actually enforce after the assessment,” said Ei Myat Noe Khin of Phandeeyar.

Without solid sustainable improvements from Facebook to tackle the hate-speech problem, the Global South coalition said that online inequality will continue to widen as Facebook expands to capture emerging markets without proper investment in monitoring and protections.

The Global South is blunt in its assessment of the power held by social media in the nations that make up the coalition: “The coalition countries include the world’s largest democracy, the first social media–enabled genocide, state-sponsored troll armies and the devastation of the Syrian war. In each of our countries, Facebook has been weaponised by bad actors against our citizens.”

In its press release announcing the new coalition, Global South accused Facebook of failing to invest in the “basic contextual understanding, local language skills, and human resources needed to provide a duty-of-care for users in sometimes repressive regimes”.

Myanmar activists seem reluctant to put much hope in Facebook’s promises since it hasn’t been able to tackle a problem that first erupted in 2014 in Mandalay, the country’s second largest city. In July that year, an unsubstantiated story circulated online that claimed a Buddhist employee of a tea shop had been raped by her Muslim employers. The resulting riots spun out of control, taking two lives and shattering the calm of a nation taking baby steps into the promises and dangers of the gilded information age.

#Southeast Asia #Burma #Myanmar #Social Media #Hate Speech #Facebook

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recentanimenews · 2 years

Text

The Saint’s Magic Power Is Omnipotent, Vol. 6

By Yuka Tachibana and Yasuyuki Syuri. Released in Japan as “Seijo no Maryoku wa Bannou desu” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Julie Goniwich.

One of the better things about this new volume of The Saint’s Magic Power Is Omnipotent, aside from waiting till near the end of the book to justify that title, is that it’s committed to trying to figure out how the magic in this world works, rather than just seeing it as a stat. Of course, it IS a stat here, and we get lots of talk of HP and MP, But Sei realizes here that potions and medicine are not the same thing, and that in fact the use of potions may mean that diseases and maladies that might otherwise have been researched and analyzed are completely glossed over. That said, medicine takes years of testing and watching for side effects, and may not be all that potent, whereas potions are a magic cure-all that you just need to drink down. I don’t see one supplanting the other, especially given that Sei manages to invent the bestest potion of them all. The secret? Apples.

The bulk of this book concerns itself with the arrival of a visiting dignitary from the nation where Sei got her Asian food last volume, which continues to be very much not-China. One of the many princes in this country, he is here to study herbs and medicine, and despite the best efforts of the kingdom to hide Sei whenever he’s around, it’s pretty inevitable that they eventually run into each other. While she’s able to conceal her identity as the Saint to a certain degree, she can’t help but find a kindred spirit in the Prince, who really seems to know his herbs… and is also searching for a specific kind of cure. Can Sei manage to figure out what it is that the Prince’s mother has wrong with her? And if not, is there a way that she can weaponize her OPness to save the day?

The cover art shows off Prince Ten’yuu as a handsome bespectacled young man, but what I noticed more was the internal illustration, which showed him with the “spiral coke-bottle glasses” common to Chinese stereotypes in Japan (see Ranma 1/2 for the most famous instance). Fortunately the stereotypes seem to end there, with the main plot instead revolving around him as a sort of villain (everyone’s trying to stop him seeing Sei and figuring out who she is) who eventually becomes sympathetic (when we find the reason he’s there in the first place). It also reminds us that keeping Sei under wraps just is not going to fly as a long-term plan for much longer. Marrying her off to keep her in the Kingdom seems like the obvious answer, but again, she’s still in the ‘blushing maiden’ stage, and Albert is not inclined to push the matter. The politics remain boiling quietly in the background.

This is apparently one of the top ten light novel franchises in Japan right now, and I can see why. It’s solid and has likeable characters, and Sei is overpowered without being boring about it. She puts in the work.

By: Sean Gaffney

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

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the tangled web of fate we weave: xiii

yes i finished it after getting Extremely Distracted last night, and tumblr even appears to have fixed its issues with wonky symbols in text posts. it’s a christmas miracle.

part xii/AO3.

Garcia Flynn has spent the last two years – well, he hasn’t had a single permanent address, a stopover longer than a few months, any phone that wasn’t a burner, a consistent identity or nationality, a less than fifty percent chance that someone will appear with a semi-automatic weapon to finish the job, or a fully legal exit from any of a dozen countries. So really, draw your own conclusions. On the run seems almost hilarious in its understatement; he vaguely recalls that the literary device is called litotes. Completely undersell something for sharper rhetorical effect, usually by presenting it as the negative or opposite of the truth, the kind of sassy and contrary thing that appeals to him. You call Chernobyl just a little industrial fire. Or Rittenhouse really not that bad. Or Garcia Flynn a sensible, well-adjusted man who has a full idea of what he’s doing and everything under control. There, you see? Irony.

Flynn has a full half-dozen fake identities under his belt by now, an assortment of dollars, loonies, euros, pounds, and pesos in reserve depending on where he’s going, and has lived in shitty hotel rooms for so long that he has forgotten there is any other kind of human domicile. It’s better not to ask how he’s getting the money. The NSA doesn’t exactly offer severance pay, and while he has a few accounts in Croatia, they are under his real name and if Rittenhouse knows the first damn thing about their business, they are just waiting for him to try to access them. They’re probably frozen anyway. And while Flynn is perfectly willing to mug someone in an alley if need be, this does not generate any substantial or sustainable income. So he owns one computer, firewalled and encrypted and IP-randomized up the wazoo, a computer that God Himself could not hack (Flynn has made sure of this by running monthly attempts on it himself). This computer is configured to access the Deep Web, otherwise known as the Dark Web, where at least seventy-five percent of the world’s high-level organized crime takes place, a murky cyber underworld and the lifeblood of the black market. Every few weeks, Flynn logs on, performs a few tasks for someone whose real name or employment he will never know, and one to three business days later (good to know that crime syndicates are reliable about their payroll processing) a large amount of money turns up in one of the corresponding fake identities’ offshore bank account. Never the same one twice in a row, or on too consistent a schedule. Flynn likes to think that he hasn’t taken jobs for anyone truly terrible, that it’s the usual petty exchange of knockoff prescription drugs, corporate sabotage, data ransomware, and insurance scams, but he doesn’t know for sure.

And yet. Morally questionable or not, black-hat hacking has enabled him to keep a roof (even a terrible motel one) over his head, eat regularly, change his identities as needed, and track Rittenhouse across multiple countries and continents, so he’s going to keep doing it. For obvious reasons, he cannot return to either Philadelphia or West Point. D.C., where there must be the highest concentration of them, is also out. He can’t go at them directly, so he has to come at them from angles and pincer movements, feints and probes, a subtle, surreptitious game. Try to pin down just how far their influence extends, and how deeply it’s entrenched. It would be impossible for an entire task force with all the money and time in the world. For one man, it’s beyond that. And yet. Garcia Flynn is doing it anyway.

His first port of call was Bavaria, in Germany, seeing if Rittenhouse shared any connections or resources with the Illuminati, founded in 1780 for similar aims but (supposedly) quickly repressed. If you ask your bog-standard conspiracy theorist, they’ll claim the Illuminati are still alive and kicking, and Flynn wanted to figure out if they just subsumed their operations into Rittenhouse. So Dr. Alexander Kovac went to some regional archives and libraries, looking for stuff on Adam Weishaupt and his disciples, any contacts they might have had with David Rittenhouse and his. He found a few things that seemed to suggest this was possible, but Germany has, for obvious reasons, cracked down hard on these kinds of groups post-WWII. It is no longer the ideal environment for Rittenhouse to flourish, even if they probably have a few tendrils planted near Angela Merkel and the EU. Europe might be the birthplace of this kind of thinking, but America has realized it to its fullest potential.

After that, Flynn went to the Caribbean, since he guessed that most of their money has to be moving through the same havens as his. The Caymans, he thinks. But he can’t get physically near it, if there was anything to get close to, without setting off alarm bells, and even his hacking attempts have to be careful. He did enjoy sleeping on the beach beneath the tropical stars, but the news that a hurricane was on the way, plus seeing the same man wander casually past him a few too many times, felt like his cue to leave. Where, he wasn’t quite sure. He wanted to go back to California, wanted like crazy, but he didn’t dare.

Thus, he went to Ottawa instead. It was an unpleasant shock to go from the sunny Caribbean to Canada in winter, but there are bigger problems at stake. Canada obviously has close ties to America, so Flynn could pick up on some things by inference, intercept bits of useful intelligence here and there, and it was close enough to the border that he could nip over a few times and prowl around upstate New York (very, very carefully). The black site in West Point still seems to be in operation, and Flynn made every possible effort to hear about it if Lucy ever returned there, if there is any whisper that Rittenhouse has gotten their hooks into her again. If he did hear anything – well, to hell with subterfuge or delicacy. He would in fact just crash in and pull her out, even if it meant blowing the whole operation, and he’s relieved for any number of reasons that he has not had to. It’s a good thing she did not come along. He could never have been this flexible and this relentless if he had to keep one eye on her and teach her how to live this way. This isn’t a job to learn on.

(A very good thing.)

(Very good.)

(Very.)

Ultimately, however, Flynn’s Canadian sojourn ended up concluding the same thing as Germany: that Canada was not the right place for Rittenhouse to think it worthwhile expanding their foothold. Too nice, probably, and they don’t have the same sense of American imperialism and exceptionalism, don’t fit into Rittenhouse’s patriotic-fascist grand design. So then it was the question of the time machine, which he has been putting off in the hope it was just some sort of trick (even if he has very good reason to know it’s not). Connor Mason has been generously bankrolled to build it, according to Emma, and while Flynn will kill the bitch if he ever sees her again, she’s not lying about that. How much more do they still need to get done to make it a viable operational threat? Where are they getting their engineers, their machinery, their tech? Is Mason himself in Rittenhouse? He has to be. No way they’d outsource that little job to just anyone. Does Mason owe his entire fortune, all his well-publicized accomplishments, to these people? How much else has he done for them?

Flynn still cannot return outright to the Bay Area without sending up too many smoke signals. He has to be strategic. Finally, he lucks into a tip that Connor Mason is taking his team to London for a week in February, bringing the whole circus. As London is obviously also where Emma said she wanted to go, where Rittenhouse was supposedly trying for a new foothold, the coincidence is perfect and self-explanatory. London calling? London calling.

Thus, Flynn picks up from where he has been living in a log cabin in Vermont for the last two months (it’s practically home, he feels an odd pang at leaving it), and takes a flight out of JFK on the Canadian passport that gives his name as Gabriel Ashe. It’s a Commonwealth country, he’ll get less scrutiny entering the UK that way, especially since the passport is only mostly legit. If he blows this, he could find himself out on his ass and in even more hot water, but his luck has held thus far. He has to trust that it will.

On the flight, Flynn supposes that he knows very well what sins he is being punished for by getting stuck in the middle seat, and thinks about Lorena Kovac. About seven months ago, on a lonely, late night, he gave into a moment of weakness and emailed her from his untrackable computer. He hasn’t really spoken to her in several years, and didn’t know what he was going to achieve by getting in touch again. He didn’t say anything about where he was or what he was doing, just that he hoped she was well. He knows it probably confused and hurt Lorena, since he gave her no explanation for dropping out of her life in the first place, and he’s sorry for it. But he wanted – he wanted something, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. Just to be sure he didn’t dream a real life, perhaps. The one where they met for coffee on sunny mornings in Dubrovnik, looked over the glittering Adriatic Sea, and did not talk about war.

Lorena’s reply, three days later, was polite and to the point. She also hoped that he was well. She was doing fine – better than fine,. She has recently had a baby girl, Iris. She and Iris’ father – a childhood friend of Flynn’s, an old schoolmate, Luka – are engaged, and they are very happy. A summer wedding is planned. She wishes Flynn the best in his life, and remains fond of him. She hopes he is at peace. She is.

Reading it felt, for Flynn, like being punched in the chest. Somehow it never occurred to him that Lorena would also move on with her life, that since her feelings for him never turned into the relationship she was hoping for, she would tidily shut the door and walk away. And Luka – he’s a doctor, he’s a great guy, he and Flynn have known each other forever, he and Lorena will have a wonderful life. A baby girl named Iris. The ghost of a smiling child floated into Flynn’s head and has never entirely left. It hurt in a way he can’t articulate. It still does. He loved Lorena, in some unformed, tentative, unrealized way, even if Lucy was already between them, somehow, from the start. He knows why Lorena has written the letter as she did, with the tone of wishing an old flame well, even if they were never officially together. She has made it clear that as far as she and her life are concerned, the wound is no longer open, the space has been filled. Perhaps this put them out of danger from Rittenhouse, but Flynn can’t risk writing back. Lorena will probably wonder why she even bothered, and go to her child and future husband, and live. He wants that, God, he wants that, he does. And yet.

That was the night he finally broke a little, under the strain, the effort, the loneliness. He feels corroded, rusted and deformed and darkened, and he was no saint to start with. He is fighting for something, not just against, but he’s not sure he can see it anymore. It was a strange and highly colored dream, and he’s losing the impossible kernel of faith, or fate, that has driven him thus far. It’s too much. It’s too much.

Someone found his hideout the next day, and Flynn killed him. It’s not clear whether he needed to. It was probably just a lost backpacker stumbling on a place that looked inhabited in the woods. Probably. But Flynn shot him anyway and buried him five miles away from the nearest cell phone signal. It’s not the first man he’s killed on this journey, and by far not the first he’s killed in his life. But it was the first one he killed while the man was defenseless, on his knees, and begging that he just wanted to see his mother again.

(It’s a good thing Lorena is with a man, not a monster.)

(A very good thing.)

(Very good.)

(Very.)

The flight finally lands in London, Flynn just makes it through customs with the bogus Gabriel Ashe passport (the customs officer is a little dubious, but the queue is very long and he smiles as unthreateningly as possible) and heads into the City. He has guessed the approximate location of the hotel that Mason Industries is staying at – it’ll be somewhere fancy – but he can’t be completely sure. There are a lot of upmarket hotels in London, after all, and he needs to be careful about which member of the squad he snipes off. He needs someone well-placed on the project, who can answer his questions, and someone who is conveniently clueless about the fact that Mason is in it deep with Rittenhouse, who is so blessedly fortunate as to never have heard the name “Rittenhouse” in their life. Flynn has a few ideas, but he is willing to be flexible. See what comes up, as it were.

The law is almost a ridiculous concept to Flynn now, has had no bearing on his actions whatsoever for months and months. And so he does not care that he has flagrantly illegal methods of tapping into the vast network of data, of closed-circuit television and cell phone signals and open wifi hotspots and all the other stuff that you can access with just a little effort. He narrows it down to Covent Garden, wanders around until he has visual. Yes, it’s him. One of Mason’s engineers. Due to Flynn’s extensive scrutiny of the employee lists, he can identify him as Rufus Carlin. He looks to be on a date. That’s unfortunate.

Flynn takes a better grip on his gun inside his jacket pocket, and strolls forward for a chat.

“I’m sorry?” Rufus repeats, when Mysterious European Gunman makes another brusque motion. Is he a Bond villain? Is this the start of a heist film where Rufus and Jiya race through London, Paris, Madrid, Budapest, and Rome, trying to stop him before he can launch a nuke from his secret Swiss Alps base? (Rufus should wonder what it says that he has this fantasy all ready to go, but better for all concerned that it remain a fantasy – he is not an action hero). “How do you know my name? What is – do you think you can just – ”

“Let’s just agree I know more than you do, Rufus.” A flash of a shark-like white smile, which (amazingly) does nothing to make him feel more confident. “Sorry to interrupt your date.”

“It’s – ” Rufus starts into his well-worn spiel that it’s not a date, until he realizes that a) they are getting sidetracked, and b) this is not Douche von Douchebag’s business anyway. “Well then? How about you not interrupt it? And just let me go? Look, I’ve got some money. Is this a robbery? You want that? You can have it, man. Seriously”

He makes a motion as if to go for his wallet, thinking that at least he wasn’t dumb enough to bring his passport out – as long as he doesn’t need to spend his time here tied up in the consulate getting a new one, Jerkface McGee here can have the rest. Cancel his credit cards and whatever else, it’s not worth his life. But the man shakes his head. “I don’t want your money. Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

Rufus hesitates. The dude does have a gun and it’s clear just to look at him that he’s not afraid to use it, and who knows what he has in the other jacket pocket – a detonator for a bomb? Damn, and one of the things he was looking forward to on this trip was a lessened risk of being shot for walking down the street while black. “Can I just – can I just tell Jiya that – ”

“Sorry,” the man says pleasantly. “Can’t have her calling anyone. Come on.”

With that, he takes Rufus by the jacket sleeve and walks him briskly out, into the plaza and up toward Leicester Square. Rufus keeps twisting vainly over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of Jiya – great, there goes that entire successful day, she’s gonna think he ditched her on purpose like an asshole, or he’s just the world’s most inattentive doofus who couldn’t bother to wait for her before running back for a nap. Yes, he has more problems on his hands, but that one stings. “Hey,” he says. “Can I call you back? You know, meet for coffee tomorrow, if this is really what you – ”

“Do you think I’m an idiot, Rufus?”

“No… sir?”

“Good.” Sir Shithead keeps walking. Rufus wants to ask him to let go of his sleeve, but he has a feeling that wouldn’t go anywhere good. They make their way up into the maze of side streets and closes that branch off the major thoroughfares in London, toward a tea shop – wait, really, the guy is going to abduct him in broad daylight and then buy him an Earl Grey? Is this the most British kidnapping in existence? His accent isn’t British, though. Rufus is confused enough not to struggle (besides, he also can’t see that going anywhere good) as they reach the shop, Herr Horrible orders a small black coffee, and does not offer to get Rufus anything (he just had his latte, but still). Rufus asks for a Coke just as the man is about to pay, though, which means that he is obliged to buy it. As they sit down at a corner table barely large enough to fit him, the Red Baron raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

“Well what?” Rufus snaps. “Like I’m the one who needs to explain myself here?”

“I just want answers.” The man – Rufus is enjoying coming up with new disparaging nicknames for him, since it’s the only satisfaction he is getting out of this, but he would like an actual one – sounds impatient. “Do that, you can be back on your way in ten, fifteen minutes, tell the girl that you just got lost. You want to cooperate or not?”

Rufus holds out as long as he dares. Then he says, “How do you know my name?”

“You work for Mason Industries. Yes?”

Oh brother, Rufus thinks. Not another throw-his-weight-around military white boy coming to ask probing questions. This one is almost making him miss Wyatt. “Yeah, so?”

“Does Emma Whitmore still work there?”

“She transferred? About a year and a half ago? She still works there, yeah, but I think she took a job at one of the other offices. Here, maybe?”

“Where?” the man demands. “Where?”

Rufus stalls. It’s pretty clear from the look on the Teutonic Terror’s face that it’s bad news for Emma if he catches up to her. He and Emma have never been buddy-buddy, but they’ve worked together for a while, he’s done the calculations responsible for sending her through time, and he doesn’t want that on his head. He is relieved that it is the truth as he says, “I don’t know. We haven’t exactly been keeping up with Christmas cards.”

The man stares at him narrowly. “Do you know if she’s planning to rejoin the main office?”

“I don’t know,” Rufus repeats. “Maybe you should have kidnapped the HR manager.”

For half a moment, a sardonic but genuinely amused smile flickers across the hard lines of the other man’s face. Then it’s all back to business. “Fine,” he says. “How close is the time machine to being done?”

“I – ?” Rufus stares at him. “I – what are you talking about?”

“You’re a smart man, Rufus. Don’t act like an idiot.”

There is a silence long enough to turn very uncomfortable. They stare at each other over the rickety table. Rufus feels as if his odds of flipping it and launching the hot coffee into the man’s face are very slim, but he has to fight down an urge to do just that. Instead of answering, he says, “I’m guessing you and Wyatt Logan know each other?”

Something brief and inscrutable appears, then disappears, in the man’s guarded gaze. “We were acquainted in the past,” he says noncommittally. “Answer the question, please.”

“This is going to get me into trouble.”

“I honestly don’t care if it does or not.”

“Yeah, well. I do.”

“You’d care about something more if you knew why I was asking. And if you have to make me do it a third time – ”

“Jeez.” Rufus raises his hands. “Scorched-earth everything with you, isn’t it? Look. We’ve progressed to running more extensive tests, but it’s still very buggy. One of the lead engineers just got out of an eight-month coma. It’s not out of any sort of beta.”

“When do you think it will be?”

“What are you, some kind of corporate spy? Government whistleblower?” Mason has, for obvious reasons, wanted to keep this project strictly under wraps, and Rufus has definitely already breached several paragraphs of his organizational NDA by talking this much. “Shoot me if you want, but you’re not going to make me turn on – ”

That mirthless smile pays a visit to the corner of In Soviet Russia’s mouth. “I don’t have to shoot you,” he points out. “The girl you were with. I got a nice look at her face. From my examination of the employee directory, I think that is… Jiya, yes? Jiya Marri?”

That rocks Rufus onto his heels and all further smart remarks out of his mouth. “You son of a bitch,” he says, low and hard. “Stay away from her.”

“Do your part, Rufus, and neither of you ever have to see me again.” The man shrugs. “A little answer. Very easy.”

Rufus chews his tongue. Whatever he says, he has a feeling that it isn’t just an academic interest, that he could be directly responsible for setting off a barrel of nitroglycerin in the middle of Connor’s life – in everyone’s. Finally he says, “Again, like I said. It’s in beta. There is no expected timescale of completion when we’re talking about something this. The Mothership runs better, but we – ”

“The Mothership?” The man leans forward with an intent, wolfish expression. “What’s that?”

Shit. Rufus wants to bite his tongue off. He says reluctantly, “The main machine is called the Mothership. There’s a backup called the Lifeboat, but it’s designed just for short-term use, in the event of something going wrong with the Mothership’s crew and a rescue squad being sent to pull them out. That one’s really in beta.”

“Two time machines.” The man taps his fingers on the table, thinking hard. “And either of these, how do they run? Can you visit moments in your own lifetime?”

That is a weirdly specific question. Rufus almost wonders if he’s a crazy UFO fan, or something like that. Or maybe he’s clung onto a time machine as a solution for the big steaming heap of cow poop that his life appears to be – go back and change all your bad choices, that kind of thing. “No,” he says. “That’s not possible. You can’t travel on your own timeline. The ones that’ve tried, you – you don’t want to know what happened to them. The universe doesn’t like it, it’s not like Harry Potter with two versions of you running around.”

For some reason, that answer disturbs his interlocutor (yeah, he’s disturbed now, finally some equality). Rufus wants to demand how the hell he knows this, where he’s got his information and what he is planning to do. There is a final pause until the man makes up his mind. “Give me your access card to Mason Industries,” he says. “Your ID, your key card, whatever I need to get in. You can say you lost them.”

“I just happened to lose my ID?”

“Or I can rob you,” the man points out. “Yes, I think it might be better if we do that. I will take your money after all. London is an expensive city, why not?”

“I can’t let you into Mason Industries. I can’t – ”

“You’re here in London for the whole week. The entire team is. That is much neater, I don’t need to kill anyone to get in. You can tell Jiya that you were robbed, she will feel very sorry for you. A happy ending. You don’t report it to anyone and you don’t say anything about losing the card until you get back.”

“To what, a giant bomb crater where Mason Industries used to be?”

“Oh, no.” The man shakes his head. “I don’t want to destroy it. I just need information. Now. You give me your ID card, the cash in your wallet, and anything else a robber might take. I will let you keep your phone. Hurry up, Rufus. Jiya must be looking for you.”

Rufus has never wanted to kill anyone with a stare more than he has wanted to kill this idiot, but he can’t think what else to do. Slowly, he fumbles out his Mason Industries ID and key card on its lanyard, jerks the cash envelope out, and shoves it over the table. It’s not even his money, but still. He feels the betrayal on a soul-deep level, the one thing he hates most. What a way to repay Connor, after everything he has done for him. Rufus feels tainted and unhappy and used. “There,” he snaps. “Take it. Are we done?”

“You tell me.” The man shrugs, pocketing the card and cash. “Actually, I have changed my mind. A robber would take your phone. Give it to me, I will mail it back in a few weeks.”

“I – ” Rufus clutches his phone like his firstborn child. Like any proper millennial, he cannot function more than a few hours without it. “Like I’m going to believe that?”

“Phone. Now.”

Rufus grits his teeth, thinks that he can hopefully report it as stolen and freeze it before the bastard has time to mine all its data, and drops it into his hand. King Kraptacular, of course, makes sure to ask him for the passcode, makes Rufus do it to demonstrate that it is in fact the right one, and then finally stands up with a mocking grin. “It’s been good to do business with you,” he says, touching two fingers to his hat. “Enjoy your trip to London, Rufus.”

And with that, leaving Rufus sitting there completely gobsmacked, he goes.

Wyatt Logan has no idea how to find a man whose entire professional value lies in his ability to completely fucking disappear at will, but by God, that is not going to stop him trying.

He can’t exactly drive up to NSA headquarters and demand to consult their personnel files, especially for ex-personnel that, as far as Wyatt knows, still have a standing arrest warrant. He did try the old phone number for Flynn, but he was not surprised at all when the cool female robot voice told him that this number was not in service. He’s tried to think if anyone in the intelligence branch of things owes him a favor, or might feel bad for him because his wife is probably dead and would be willing to kick some rocks. The possibility of the quest has galvanized Wyatt like a direct intravenous hit of caffeine; he hasn’t slept more than three hours at one time since this started. It’s been four days, and he has barely focused on the fact that for all intents and purposes, the cops are looking for a body. That’s not it, that’s not what happened. Jess is alive somehow, somewhere. She’s alive.

In the course of this, Wyatt has also been managing to convince himself that Flynn is not as bad as he remembers. Sure, he was an abrasive jackass with zero interpersonal skills and an amazing ability to make everything ten times more difficult than it needs to be, but to be fair, when they actually met face-to-face, Flynn had just been shot twice and was freshly out of emergency surgery. That might put a damper on anyone’s sunny disposition, and Wyatt is painfully aware that his own behavior has been no basket of roses. Maybe it’s just because he’s so lonely, he’s so desperately lonely and so terrified that this in fact the one mistake he cannot take back or get around, but he’s already half-made Flynn into a friend in his head. Grumpy, but essentially good-hearted. Definitely willing to lend an old pal (even in a very loose sense of the word) a hand. It’ll work out. It has to.

No one ever said that this was the most realistic appraisal of the situation, but at least it’s kept Wyatt from eating bark off trees, and after his feverish hours of work, he’s decided that the best angle he has into the whole thing is Mason Industries. However, that is going to piss off Rittenhouse something wild; the whole scene in the car was very clear at instructing him that he had better never come near that place again. If Wyatt is trying to be clandestine, this is not the way to do it. The only other person he can still contact (hopefully) is not guaranteed special access either, and it could once more put her in danger. But she’s also the only human being on the planet who might know where Flynn is, or at least want to see him again too. And really. Wyatt has nothing left to lose.

He takes out his phone, and dials.

It rings once, then twice, then again. Just as he thinks it’s not going to be answered, it is. “Hello?” She sounds confused and tenuous. “Is this – Wyatt?”

“Hi.” Wyatt blows out an unsteady breath. He was the one who told her to call him if she was ever scared, if she needed anything, and now here he is, practically ready to beg. “Lucy. I – I know it’s been a while since we talked. I’m sorry to just call you out of the blue.”

“No, of course,” Lucy says. “It’s fine, it’s fine. Are you okay?”

Wyatt was fondly supposing that he didn’t sound like that much of a wreck, but he appears to have been disabused of that along with everything else. “Actually,” he says, swallowing hard as his voice catches. “Actually. . . since you ask, I’m. . . I’ve been better. A lot better. I’m sorry again, I know this may not be something you want to talk about, but have you – have you seen Flynn recently? Garcia Flynn?” As if there can be another.

There’s a marked silence. Then Lucy says, “No. I haven’t seen him for almost two years.”

Wyatt can feel his fragile, giddy optimism heading for a crash as fast as it went up, but he still refuses to let this be the end of the road. “So you – you don’t know where he is these days, or what he’s doing, or – ?”

“No,” Lucy says. “I have no idea. Wyatt, what’s – what’s going on?”

Wyatt stares at the ceiling, trying to formulate the words. The idea of speaking it aloud is still unbearable, and it’s bad enough for Lucy that he called her like this, he doesn’t need to start unloading his flaming trainwreck of emotional baggage onto her. He tries to keep his voice as calm as it would be at a briefing for his superiors. Tells her, as succinctly as he can, what’s happened, and why he’s looking for Flynn.

Lucy makes shocked and sympathetic noises, which Wyatt appreciates, but he knows he still does not deserve her pity. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Is there anything else I can do? Do you have – have family in town, or anything?”

“Family?” Wyatt laughs, bone-dry. “My family? Nah. Grandpa Sherwin died a few years ago. Jess’s family has – they’re in town, they’ve been with the cops. I get the feeling that they think I should be at the station more, that I wasn’t there for her when she was alive and now I’m not there for her when she’s – ”

He stops. He can’t bear the fact that he almost said it, that it seemed so terribly possible. It feels like there’s a boulder wedged in his throat, and he rubs his hand over his eyes, trying to collect himself. “Anyway,” he manages. “I told them that I was – that I was working on something, and – this is my fault, I know it is. But if it’s not just some local scumbag, if it’s more – if it’s them – ”

Lucy doesn’t answer immediately. He can hear what she must be thinking – that he’s got a lot of nerve strolling into her life again, dumping a sob story about his wife on her, and assuming she will return to something that must hurt her as well, that she will unearth what must be some not-very-well-buried bodies and contend once more with the ghosts. She would be justified in any or all of it, and he tries to steady himself for her telling him to take a hike. There might still be some other way to track down Flynn, though it gets much narrower and more impossible if so. But when there’s nothing else but this –

“Okay,” Lucy says, quiet and level and cool as stone. “What do you need?”

This is not the wisest idea Lucy has ever had, not by a long shot. She should be unnerved, perhaps (but again, that is the whole point) at how greatly not-wise it is. And yet. She’s not.

It feels like something has changed in her, turned as sharply as a key, and she’s not even sure what. Just in that moment of finally accepting that Flynn was gone (the way that Wyatt is desperate not to do with Jessica, but it is not for Lucy to decide that before its time) it was like she woke up, somehow. There was never any chance that she was going to sit around and languish on a couch and weep. She got right on with her life, professionally and personally, and she’s done fine with it. And yet, after her visit to her mother’s the other day, when she’s gotten even fewer answers than she has questions, when she realized that she’s lived like she’s sleepwalking, determined that things are normal, not to rock the boat, to make everyone else’s lives easier and safer, pushing herself further and further away –

She doesn’t know what, but she’s sick of it, she’s angry, she’s tired, and she’s not willing to do it anymore. So suddenly, when Wyatt Logan calls out of the clear blue sky, says his wife is missing, and hints that he thinks Rittenhouse has something to do with it, Lucy’s game.

She drives to her mom’s house when she knows that Carol will be out for a doctor’s appointment, goes upstairs, and gets the gun out of the box. Takes the ammunition as well, hurries down to her car feeling properly scandalous – she has never done something like this, it doesn’t even feel like her. She’s licensed the gun in the state of California, she’s allowed to carry it, but she still puts it in the glovebox and locks it. Her hands are shaking, but she clenches them, and they stop. Then she drives back to Stanford, finishes her day, and waits.

It’s around five o’clock when there’s a knock on her office door, and she stands up to open it. Has guessed who it is, but it’s still a small shock to see him in person. He doesn’t look that great, with a missing wife and a long drive under his belt, but he manages a wan smile and offers his hand. “Hey, Lucy.”

Lucy pauses, then reaches out and hugs him. She doesn’t know why, other than that he looks like he could use it, and Wyatt goes briefly stiff, then awkwardly hugs her back. They step apart after a moment, and he clears his throat. “I – so. . . how. . . how are you?”

“Fine.” The word almost lives on her lips these days. “It’s not going to cause you any problems with the cops or Jessica’s family if you came up here, is it?”

“Them?” Wyatt laughs bitterly. “They’ve never exactly been my biggest fans, and honestly, I’m not sure I blame them anymore. Her stepdad almost didn’t attend the wedding – he’s a son of a bitch anyway, but. . . yeah. I told them I was working on something to get her back, and that’s not a lie. Told them to call if the cops – ” He stops. “Well, if anything came up.”

Lucy supposes this is his business, and what they are proposing is going to take enough attention and concentration that they don’t need any more distractions. Wyatt waits as she finishes up a few things, turns off the lights, and grabs her purse. They have a few hours to kill, so they get a quick dinner and try to catch up. The conversation isn’t exactly bountiful, and it’s hard to be sure what the dynamic here should be. Old friends? Not exactly friends, but they did trust each other in a tight spot, and they’re not strangers. Heist partners preparing for the night’s action? Some of that is true, but still. Should she be comforting him, offering to talk him through his problems? She is not a trained psychiatrist, and she gets the sense that Wyatt’s problems are a lot more than she’s reasonably prepared to take any kind of crack at, but there’s also value to be had in just talking to someone who cares. She doesn’t get the feeling there’s a whole lot of that in his life, really. Especially not now.

In any case, it’s getting later, and it’s time to put their plan (such as it is) into action. There is a solid chance that this night ends with both of them arrested, but (who is she and what has she done with Lucy Preston) the idea almost exhilarates her. They drop off her car at home, and Wyatt glances at the house. “All that space just for you?”

“I – no. We – live together. My boy – boyfriend and I.” Lucy feels like a high schooler about to blush at saying the word, given how awkward it feels on her tongue. “Noah.”

“That was – ” Wyatt gives her a funny look. “Wait, was that the doctor at the hospital when Flynn was shot?”

“Yeah. We dated a couple years before that, and I… we got back together about a year ago.” Lucy goes around the side of Wyatt’s truck and climbs in, hoping that none of the neighbors are peering out their windows and will feel like telling Noah about it later. Suburbanites are in fact horrible gossips, apparently. But this way, they streamline their operations, Noah will hopefully just think she’s out for a walk or whatever when he gets home, and it’s just easier to do this in one car. “He works in Oakland now.”

Wyatt glances at her, but doesn’t say anything, as if well aware that he has no stones to throw at anyone else’s relationship choices. He starts the truck and they pull out, heading down the street and back toward the freeway. Here goes nothing.

They are, of course, not going to do this like total savages and/or jailbirds if at all avoidable, and pull into the Mason Industries parking lot when, as planned, it has almost cleared out for the day. There are in fact almost no cars there, which might either make things easier or much more complicated, and Wyatt considers it with a furrowed brow. “Technically, we’re still going to have to break in,” he says. “Let me take the lead, all right? I’ve got a lot less to lose if I’m popped for B&E, but I’m guessing Stanford would be less impressed.”

“I don’t care,” Lucy says, startling herself. She leans forward and checks that the zipped gun case is still in her purse; she took it out of the glovebox before leaving her car. “We’re going to save your wife, all right? We’re going to save your wife and I don’t care if we have to step on Rittenhouse’s toes to do it. I’m tired of waiting and worrying if they’re coming after me again one day. Maybe it’s time we found out.”

And with that, as Wyatt is still blinking, Lucy pushes open the truck door and steps down into the blurry blue evening. She unzips the case and checks that the gun is loaded, but that the safety is on and there’s no risk of it discharging automatically. Her hands are almost practiced at this, though she has obviously never been in a real situation of possibly having to use it and doesn’t know that she ever wants there to be a first. Obviously, they are not going to blaze in and hold a lab full of terrified scientists (or even the lab’s night crew) hostage, but Wyatt wants to talk to Connor Mason, and Lucy intends to see that he does. If that involves a little hardball, even though ‘hardball’ is far from a five-foot-five history professor’s skill set, fine.

They cross the parking lot and head for the visitor’s entrance, which is still open. They push the glass doors open and stroll down to the reception area, where the poor receptionist is just switching off her computer and preparing to go home. At the sight of them, she looks up with a start. “I’m sorry, we’re just about to – there aren’t any more appointments scheduled, I’m sorry, I was just about to lock the building, sir, ma’am, so – ”

“Hi,” Lucy says, smiling sweetly. “We’d like to talk to Connor Mason.”

The receptionist goggles at her. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, this is past business hours. Besides, Mr. Mason is out of the country until next week. Obviously, he’s a very important and busy man, you can’t just expect to walk in off the street and expect to see him – ”

“Fine.” Wyatt steps up next to Lucy. “Who else is here?”

The receptionist’s eyes whiz back and forth between them. She is obviously getting the sense that they are neither a pair of IT professionals late for an appointment, or a couple of starstruck fans wandering off the street and trying to cadge a meeting with their idol for a viral video. She makes a move as if to reach for a security button under the desk, but Wyatt says, “I wouldn’t, ma’am.”

The receptionist glances at Lucy, clearly hoping for some female solidarity here. Normally, that is 100% Lucy’s bag otherwise, but tonight, alas, principles have to be sacrificed in more ways than one. “Tammy,” she says, glancing at the ID badge around the receptionist’s neck. “How about we just borrow that for a few minutes? You sit here and we’ll be right back.”

“I’m going to call security,” Tammy the receptionist warns them. “You need to – ”

“I wouldn’t,” Wyatt repeats. “What you’re going to do is switch off the security cameras, or at least scramble them for a few minutes. We don’t want to hurt you, ma’am, we don’t want to hurt you at all. But we need some answers, and we won’t leave until we have them.”

“I told you. Mr. Mason isn’t here.” Tammy’s face is white. “I couldn’t bring you to talk to him even if I wanted to. I don’t know what you want. Please, I have two children, I – ”

“Calm down,” Lucy says gently. “We’re not here to hurt you, like he said. But even if Mason isn’t here, there has to be someone else we can speak with.”

“No, they’re – it’s a team trip, all the project leads and main engineers went to London, it’s only a few part-timers here, and they’re gone for the night. I don’t want to lose my job, I – ”

“Yeah?” Wyatt says roughly. “Well, I really didn’t want to lose my wife. So I guess it’s going to be hard knocks for everybody, isn’t it? How about his office? Can you take us to his office? Probably won’t be able to get into his computer, but there have to be some paper files. Your boss know anything about Rittenhouse? Probably does, doesn’t he? Since he’s in it?”

Tammy flinches as if she’s been slapped. “Sir – ” She looks appealingly back at Lucy. “Please, it’s – you don’t know, you – ”

“I think you should take us to Connor Mason’s office,” Lucy says, gently but relentlessly. “I really think you should.”

Tammy hesitates.

Lucy reaches into her purse, and draws out what’s in her hand just enough to be seen.

Tammy blanches, and Wyatt blinks again, as if he had no idea she was carrying until now and is impressed (and slightly turned on) despite himself. Lucy shakes her head minutely at him when he opens his mouth as if to ask, and they wait until Tammy, fingers trembling, takes her key card, swipes it, and enters a few things clearly intended to put a five-minute freeze on the relevant cameras. Then she clicks around the desk, beckons them with a very tight nod, and starts to walk, as Lucy realizes she can’t let her get too far ahead of them, and jogs to catch up. She takes firm hold of Tammy’s wrist, and the other woman jerks as if it’s a handcuff. Lucy has never had anyone look at her with that much fear and revulsion before, and she isn’t sure she likes it. And yet, there is an unmistakable frisson of power that is, in a sick way, kind of appealing. Oh God, she isn’t a psycho, is she? She’s not. She’s not.

They walk down a glass corridor that overlooks a vast, dim steel warehouse, banked with computers and consoles on every side. It looks kind of like NASA launch headquarters, an impression reinforced by the sight of the large white plasteel eyeball sitting on struts in the middle of the expanse. It’s banded with blue blinking lights, increasing its resemblance to a UFO even more, and Lucy suddenly thinks that she might know exactly what that is. There has, obviously, still been a kernel of doubt in her mind – Emma was convinced that Mason Industries was building a time machine and she was test-piloting it, yes, but Emma was crazy. This, though. It could somehow be a film prop that Mason Industries is building for some bizarre reason rather than a set dresser in Hollywood, but Lucy doesn’t think so.

Wyatt, who has no clue (probably for the best) that time travel enters into this anywhere, is totally befuddled, but Lucy once more shakes her head at him. They complete the traverse to the doors of important-looking offices – Connor Mason, Anthony Bruhl, a couple others – and Tammy swipes her key card to open Connor’s. One of them is going to have to watch her while the other ransacks for useful intel. Otherwise she will run away and raise the alarm, and then they’re definitely getting arrested. Or worse.

With Tammy still firmly in hand, Lucy ventures over the threshold. She has no idea how they’re supposed to shake down Mason’s office in five minutes or less for some convenient Rittenhouse papers that he might just happen to have in some carelessly unsecured file cabinet. Wyatt, however, clearly doesn’t care if they’re secured or not. He takes a small crowbar out of his jacket and advances in after the women, looking around as if to decide where he needs to start smashing. Lucy appears to be on Tammy-minding duty, but she hopes Wyatt doesn’t leave too much of a mess. There’s no guarantee how long the cameras stay off. Or did they actually even go off in the first place? Maybe they should have worn balaclavas like proper robbers. Wyatt’s right, Stanford will not be enthused, and –

Just then, all the remaining blinking lights in the room, and along the hall, go dark. Wyatt, who was about to start bashing the bejesus out of Connor Mason’s file cabinets, stops with a startled curse, and Lucy thinks that this must be it, Tammy tricked them and the emergency protocol is kicking in. But if so, you’d expect klaxons and flashing lights, not just silent darkness. What the hell? Power just shut down at eight o’clock every night? But from what little Lucy can make out of Tammy’s face in the red emergency backups that are just flickering on, she is as startled as they are. Wasn’t expecting that.

Lucy looks down into the launch area, which she can see from Mason’s magisterial God’s eye view of his kingdom, and her heart skips a beat. She can just see a dark figure wending through the shadows, making its way purposefully toward the time machine (as it has to be). There’s someone else here, someone else broke in, shut down the lights and surveillance with a lot more skill than their clumsy receptionist kidnapping, and is making for its – for his? – target like a homing pigeon. No way to tell if it’s bad news or worse.

“Wyatt?” Lucy hisses. “Wyatt!”

Wyatt, who has clearly been about to decide if he should just smash some shit anyway for the stress relief, looks over with a start and follows her pointing finger down to the interloper on the operations floor. He stashes the crowbar hastily back in his jacket and pulls out his gun instead, then strides out of the office and toward the metal stairs that open into the warehouse. Lucy hurries after him, Tammy bumping in her wake like a kite on the end of a string, then pushes her down to hide behind a computer bank, which the receptionist does only too gladly. If she can somehow call 911 from there, well, that’s another problem. Lucy wants to have her hands free in case Wyatt needs any help.

She reaches in, pulls out the gun, and switches the safety off. Can in fact feel the difference, the way it comes alive, and advances at Wyatt’s side in recon stance. They’re just on the other side of the time machine from the intruder, and Lucy and Wyatt flatten themselves stealthily against it, guns in hand. They exchange a look, trying to decide if they need to actually fire. Not in a warehouse full of priceless technology, not when they’ve already illegally entered, not when they don’t know who the other person or what they want, but –

They can hear footsteps. They need to make a decision.

They throw themselves out from behind the time machine and come around, raising their guns at the intruder, who – even faster than them – has already done the same. Lucy has an indistinct impression of unusual height, and a merciless stare in the low, hellish light, and then, all the blood draining out of her head, her heart, her world. It can’t be, it can’t, and yet. All along, there was really no one else it could be.

She can’t get enough air into her lungs, and isn’t sure she will again. Her strangled whisper sounds as loud as a shout.

“Flynn?”

#lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #timeless ff #the tangled web of fate we weave

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Firefighters battle exhaustion along with wildfire flames (AP) They work 50 hours at a stretch and sleep on gymnasium floors. Exploding trees shower them with embers. They lose track of time when the sun is blotted out by smoke, and they sometimes have to run for their lives from advancing flames. Firefighters trying to contain the massive wildfires in Oregon, California and Washington state are constantly on the verge of exhaustion as they try to save suburban houses, including some in their own neighborhoods. Each home or barn lost is a mental blow for teams trained to protect lives and property. And their own safety is never assured. Oregon firefighter Steve McAdoo’s shift on Sept. 7 seemed mostly normal, until late evening, when the team went to a fire along a highway south of Portland. “Within 10 minutes of being there, it advanced too fast and so quick ... we had to cut and run,” he said. “You can’t breathe, you can’t see.” That happened again and again as he and the rest of the crew worked shifts that lasted two full days with little rest or food. They toiled in an alien environment where the sky turns lurid colors, ash falls like rain and towering trees explode into flames, sending a cascade of embers to the forest floor. “The sky was just orange or black, and so we weren’t sure if was morning or night,” he said. “My crew and I said that to each other many times, ‘What is going on? When is this going to end?’”

Rescuers reach people cut off by Gulf Coast hurricane (AP) Rescuers on the Gulf Coast used boats and high-water vehicles Thursday to reach people cut off by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Sally, even as a second round of flooding took shape along rivers and creeks swollen by the storm’s heavy rains. Across southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, homeowners and businesses began cleaning up, and officials inspected bridges and highways for safety, a day after Sally rolled through with 105 mph (165 kph) winds, a surge of seawater and 1 to 2 1/2 feet (0.3 to 0.8 meters) of rain in many places before it began to break up. Crews carried out at least 400 rescues in Escambia County, Florida, by such means as high-water vehicles, boats and water scooters, authorities said. In Alabama, on both sides of Mobile Bay, National Guard soldiers from high-water evacuation teams used big trucks Thursday to rescue at least 35 people. At least one death, in Alabama, was blamed on the hurricane. Nearly 400,000 homes and businesses were still without power Thursday night, mostly in Alabama and Florida.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87 (AP) Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a towering women’s rights champion who became the court’s second female justice, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87. Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said. Her death just over six weeks before Election Day is likely to set off a heated battle over whether President Donald Trump should nominate, and the Republican-led Senate should confirm, her replacement, or if the seat should remain vacant until the outcome of his race against Democrat Joe Biden is known.

Flights to nowhere (Washington Post) With international travel in much of the world still disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, some airlines are resorting to “flights to nowhere” that target passengers who long for air travel—and some are willing to shell out plenty of money for the tickets. Qantas, among the latest to advertise a flight that departs and arrives at the same airport, told Reuters that the trip sold out less than 10 minutes after going on sale on Thursday. “It’s probably the fastest-selling flight in Qantas history,” a spokeswoman for the airline said.

Health-care workers make up 1 in 7 covid-19 cases recorded globally, WHO says (Washington Post) Health-care workers account for 1 in 7 coronavirus cases recorded by the World Health Organization, the U.N. agency said this week. “Globally, around 14 percent of covid-19 cases reported to WHO are among health workers, and in some countries it’s as much as 35 percent,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference in Geneva. The figures are disproportionate: Data collected by the WHO suggests that health workers represent less than 3 percent of the population in the majority of countries and less than 2 percent in almost all low- and middle-income countries. In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that health-care workers accounted for 11 percent to 16 percent of covid-19 cases during the first surge of infections in the United States. When covid-19 began spreading through Western nations early this year, health-care workers faced critical shortages of personal protective equipment, also known as PPE. Even now, well over half a year into the pandemic, there are shortages of tests.

Bank of England considers negative interest rates (Yahoo Finance) The Bank of England yesterday indicated that it could cut interest rates below zero for the first time in its 326-year history as it tries to shore up a U.K. economic recovery that is facing the dual headwinds of the coronavirus and Brexit. After unanimously deciding to maintain the bank’s main interest rate at the record low of 0.1%, the nine-member rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee said it had discussed its “policy toolkit, and the effectiveness of negative policy rates in particular.”

Why French Politicians Can’t Stop Talking About Crime (NYT) In the Babel Tower of French politics, everyone agrees at least on this: Crime is out of control. The leader of the far right warned recently that France was a “security shipwreck” sinking into “barbarity.” A traditional conservative conjured up the ultraviolent dystopia of “A Clockwork Orange.” On the left, the presumed Green Party candidate in the next presidential contest described the insecurity as “unbearable.” And in the middle, President Emmanuel Macron’s ministers warned of a country “turning savage”—the “ensauvagement” of France—as they vowed to get tough on crime and combat the “separatism” of radical Muslims. The only catch? Crime isn’t going up. The government’s own data show that nearly all major crimes are lower than they were a decade ago or three years ago. But like elsewhere, and mirroring the campaign in the United States, the debate over crime tends to be a proxy—in France’s case, for debates about immigration, Islam, race, national identity and other combustible issues that have roiled the country for years.

India’s coronavirus cases jump by another 96K (AP) India’s coronavirus cases jumped by another 96,424 infections in the past 24 hours, showing little sign of leveling. The Health Ministry on Friday raised the nation’s total past 5.21 million, 0.37% of its nearly 1.4 billion people. India is expected to have the highest national total of confirmed cases within weeks, surpassing the United States, where more than 6.67 million people have been infected. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday on Thursday made a fresh appeal to people to wear masks and maintain social distance as his government chalked out plans to handle big congregations expected during a major Hindu festival season beginning next month.

Russia boosts its military presence near Chinese border (Foreign Policy) Russia is bolstering its troop presence in the country’s east in response to growing geopolitical threats in the region, though the Kremlin did not say what those threats are. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that 500 units of new, advanced equipment were being sent to the region, but he did not specify the destination. The moves are likely a response to China’s growing assertiveness, though some parts of the region have been gripped by protests against the government of President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks. In July, people took to the streets in the city of Khabarovsk, which lies along the border with China, after the arrest of the region’s hugely popular governor, Sergei Furgal, who beat out Putin’s favored candidate in an election in September 2018.

Taiwan scrambles air force as multiple Chinese jets buzz island (Reuters) Taiwan scrambled fighter jets on Friday as multiple Chinese aircraft buzzed the island, including crossing the sensitive mid-line of the Taiwan Strait, in an escalation of tensions the same day a senior U.S. official began meetings in Taipei. Earlier on Friday, China’s Defence Ministry announced the start of combat drills near the Taiwan Strait, denouncing what it called collusion between the Chinese-claimed island and the United States. Beijing has watched with growing alarm the ever-closer relationship between Taipei and Washington, and has stepped up military exercises near the island, including two days of mass air and sea drills last week.

Apprehensive Thais await major political rally in Bangkok (AP) A two-day rally planned this weekend is jangling nerves in Bangkok, with apprehension about how far student demonstrators will go in pushing demands for reform of Thailand’s monarchy and how the authorities might react. In an escalation of tactics, organizers plan to march to Government House, the prime minister’s offices, to hand over petitions. The initial demands of the alliance of groups behind a series of anti-government demonstrations were for a dissolution of Parliament with fresh elections, a new constitution and an end to intimidation of political activists. But the main organizers behind this weekend’s rally have been promoting an additional point. They want restraints on the power of the monarchy, an institution long presented as the nation’s cornerstone and untouchable. This open challenge to the palace has dramatically raised the political temperature.

‘Boiling again’: Lebanon’s old rivalries rear up amid crisis (Reuters) An old rivalry between Christian factions who fought each other in Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war has flared again on the street and in political debate, renewing fears of fresh unrest as the nation grapples with its worst crisis since the conflict. The feud between supporters of Michel Aoun, now Lebanon’s president, and Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces (LF) led to a tense standoff this week near Beirut. Gunshots rang out, but no one was hurt. The rivalry today is about more than Christian politics: Aoun is allied with Hezbollah, the heavily armed, Iran-backed Shi’ite party. Geagea spearheads opposition to Hezbollah, saying it should surrender its weapons. The standoff was the latest in a country that has seen sporadic violence intensify as an economic crisis that erupted last year has deepened. It was compounded by a huge blast that ripped through Beirut on Aug. 4. The government has resigned and efforts to form a new one under French pressure are floundering. “The security situation is reaching a breaking point,” said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Israelis Prepare to Celebrate the Year’s Holiest Days Under Lockdown (NYT) As Israelis prepare to celebrate the holiest days on the Jewish calendar under a fresh lockdown, organizing prayer services is proving to be more of a mathematical brainteaser than a spiritual exercise. Rabbis are having to arrange worshipers into clusters of 20 to 50, separated by dividers, determining the number and size of the groups based on complex calculations involving local infection rates, and how many entrances and square feet their synagogues have. Masks will be required, and many seats will have to remain empty. The three-week national lockdown was timed to coincide with the Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur holy days and the festival of Sukkot, in the hope of causing less economic damage because business slows down in any case around the holidays. It was also aimed at preventing large family meals that could become petri dishes for the virus. Israel successfully limited the spread of the virus in the spring, but recently its infection rate has spiraled into one of the world’s worst. The country has had more than 300 confirmed new cases per 100,000 people over the last week—more than double the rate in Spain, the hardest-hit European country, and quadruple that of the United States.

Violence in Ethiopia (Foreign Policy) More than 30 people were killed in militia attacks in western Ethiopia last week, officials said on Thursday, underscoring the country’s worsening security situation and creating new problems for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The attackers are “groups aimed at overturning the reforms journey,” Abiy said in a tweet. Abiy entered government promising sweeping reforms of the country’s political system, but his efforts have since faced criticism from opponents and former allies. Last week, the country’s Tigray region held parliamentary elections despite the national government’s decision to postpone the vote over coronavirus concerns. The region is home to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the country’s dominant political force before Abiy’s takeover in 2019.

#headlines #news

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