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eddiemunsonssoulmate · 3 years

Text

Late night devil, put your hands on me

Pairings: Dabi x Hero!Reader

Words: 7.7k

Summary: It was supposed to be a relaxing Saturday night while your roommate was out on a date. Finally some peace and quiet from all the work of the last few weeks. Just you, your bathtub and a good book. Too bad someone had a whole other idea.

Rating: M for Mature & F for Filth

Warnings: Mentions of dubcon, rough sex, choking and a lot of other things. It’s Dabi, you know what’s coming.

Also on: AO3

A/N: How much would I let a man ruin me, level: Dabi. This was supposed to be short and filthy and now it’s long and filthy. Enjoy!

Ain't no one else who can burn me like that

“Have fun and good luck with your date,” you yelled from the hallway when your roommate was almost out of the door.

“Thanks, I’ll need it,” was the only reply you got before the door closed.

Your roommate had been nervous all day long, so it was no surprise to you that words were a little short right now. You just hoped it would go all right, it had been quite some time since the last date.

Which also meant you finally had some peace and quiet on your own this Saturday evening. During the week you two barely saw each other because of work so you would normally spend the weekend together which can be quite exhausting at times.

But today it was only you, a good book and a bathtub. The hero business was always buzzing, there was always a criminal to catch at some corner and the last couple of weeks had been tiring your body out so much that your agency had given you off for this weekend.

Being a sidekick was hard enough in such a renowned agency and you had the tendency to work too much, rarely looking after yourself. They barely had to kick you out yesterday evening and ban you from the agency for the weekend.

You were happy they did, really. Your body needed the rest.

As you were walking through your room, trying to gather the things you needed for a relaxing bath you kept thinking back to the last few cases this month alone. Two attacks from the League, kidnapped children and people getting set on fire for seemingly no reason with no pattern. You didn’t get the League sadly but could at least solve the other two cases.

The one with the children strained your body and your mind the most. It had been hard seeing all those kids in danger, almost getting drowned in acid as an empty threat from the villain. Your team had been able to get everyone out alive, thankfully. But all those crying and terrified children that would have a hard time getting back to their lives...it had been different.

You closed your eyes and shook your head. You shouldn’t think about such things when you are trying to relax and actually forget about work for once.

With a fresh towel and your book under your arm you walked over to the bathroom where you had the water running. It had been quite some time since you actually had the time to take a bath. Normally it was just showers and mostly not even long ones.

You took your clothes off and dipped into the water, letting out a sigh as the hot water moistened your skin.

You leaned back into the tub and closed your eyes for a moment, simply enjoying the warmth around you on this rather cool fall evening.

When you felt comfortable enough to reached over to grab the book you were currently reading, almost halfway done but still so much to go.

It was a fantasy story about love, revenge and a lot of faeries. It was a nice read and you actually really loved the story, you just didn’t have enough time to read it on a regular basis so your plan was to read as much as you could this weekend. You should be able to finish it because as soon as you were caught up in the story again, you knew you couldn’t just leave it be anymore.

As you were reading your book you really did get caught up in it again, the story drawing you in and-

Bang.

Your head shot up from the lines in front of you, eyes looking towards the closed door of the bathroom room. A frown was forming on your face, there clearly had been a loud noise just now.

Was your roommate back already? Did the date go to shit? Was it another bird that flew against your window? It had just happened three days ago so what were the chances?

“Back already?” you hollered with a slight teasing tone on your lips. You would be happy if your roommate had been able to take his date back to your place already but you highly doubted it. It had been barely twenty minutes, you had only been in the bath for roughly ten.

There was no answer. Maybe it was really a bird or something fell from the table. Maybe it had been one of the neighbors in the hallway in front of your apartment but it sounded a little closer.

You shrugged and turned your head back to the book in your hand, trying to find the line where you were when you heard steps. You quietly put your book down and listened in closely.

You swallowed and took a deep breath. There wasn’t enough time to jump out of the tub and get dressed so you readied your quirk while your naked body was still in the water, the bath foam the only thing hiding you.

The handle of the door was pushed down and you were about to set your quirk off when the door opened wide and you were met with blue flames, briefly wrapping around your hands and burning them so you couldn’t use your quirk.

Blue flames.

You hissed in pain and put your hands under the water quickly, trying to cool them down. It wasn’t a bad burn but it still hurt.

“Calm your quirk, doll. It’s just me and we know how far you get every time you used it,” the black haired man said almost annoyed while standing there, leaning against the doorframe with that stupid smirk of his.

Dabi.

“What the fuck are you doing here? In my apartment? Don’t you have people to burn somewhere?” you snapped back at him and he put a hand on his heart, acting like he was affected by your words.

“Oh my, doll. Your words hurt me. I just wanted to visit my favourite hero on her day off,” he told you with a wolfish grin on his lips as he took a step forward. His blue eyes were looking you up and down and only then you realized once more that you were actually naked.

Your relationship with Dabi was...complicated, to say the least. It had started a few months ago when you were chasing him once more, deep into the forest and him setting trees on fire as you two passed through.

Your quirk had been almost useless against him but that didn’t mean you wouldn’t try to catch him. When he had suddenly vanished only to show up behind you, it had been the turning point.

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Strong arms wrapped around your middle, pulling your back close to his chest. He put his hand around your throat and you could feel the heat radiating from them, seeing small blue flames dancing along his skin.

“Such a sweet girl, following me wherever I go,” he whispered against your ear and you knew that he could snap your neck within a second when you moved now.

“Let me go,” you growled as a weak warning but he just laughed against the skin of your neck when he started to nuzzle it, squeezing with his hand a little.

“What a weak protest. You actually like this, don’t you?” His voice was venom that was dripping into your body and you clenched your jaw.

“The others will be here soon,” you replied, ignoring his comment.

You had met him a couple of times before, never catching him and you couldn’t deny his handsome features, especially those icy blue eyes of his but that wasn’t something you would admit to anyone. He was a villain, you were a hero. He killed people, you saved people. Simple as that.

Your eyes widened when the hand that was wrapped around your middle moved upwards and squeezed your right boob.

“What the-” you started but he squeezed your neck once more, preventing you from getting enough air.

“Shut up and let me enjoy this moment alone with you,” he growled before he spun you around, pressing you against the next tree. His hand was still wrapped around your throat, one of his knees now pressed between your legs.

A chuckle left his throat when he looked at you as you were gritting your teeth, trying to think of a way to get out of this.

“Don’t act so strong, little hero. I’m not going to hurt you that bad, you’re too precious for that,” he growled as his lips were so close to yours that you could feel them brushing against you ever so lightly when he spoke.

You couldn’t deny the attraction, the pull that made your body relax.

Something he noticed, of course.

“Good girl.” He licked his lips, looking at you like you were his prey that he had been hunting down. You for sure felt like that right now.

“y/n!” Suddenly someone yelled your name and Dabi let out an almost feral growl of annoyance while looking around, trying to find the person but from the sound of their voice, they must have been still quite far away.

You tried to answer but felt the fingers around your throat closing tightly once more.“Too bad, I was hoping to have more time with you. Well, maybe next time,” he whispered against your lips before sealing the kiss.

The villain was kissing you and there was nothing you could do about this, except gasp in surprise which he only took as an invite to invade your mouth with his tongue, tasting him and the faint metallic taste of his tongue piercing inside of you.

And as if you didn’t have a mind of your own, you kissed him back only to feel him grin against your lips only a second later. He had what he wanted and you knew it.

What a fool you were.

“Such an obedient doll,” he said with a chuckle when he pulled apart, leaving you breathless and feeling filthy at the same time. “I’ll be back for you.”

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And back he came. Multiple times. He was pestering you over and over again and you didn’t stop him.

You gave yourself willingly to him and didn’t even know why. He was a dangerous man that had no problem killing you if he wanted to. Had no problem with killing everyone you loved just to get what he wanted and yet, you couldn’t stop it.

Whenever you saw him he was ready to stuff you full with his massive cock, splitting you apart and you were always begging for more.

Maybe it was the feeling of doing something forbidden that was always pulling you back to him. Maybe it was the fault of his eyes that sometimes had a hint of sadness and you just wanted to find out more. The burn scars of his body didn’t come out of nowhere after all but you would never dare to ask. It was all physical after all.

“Cat got your tongue?” he barked at you and got you out of your trance, realizing he stood right in front of the bathtub now, towering over you. “It’s not nice to ignore your guests, you know.”

You bit your lip from keeping the reply inside, still trying to ignore the pain on your hands.

“It’s not like I invited you. How did you get in anyway?” you asked, trying to sound nonchalant while his crotch was so close to your face. You kept your eyes on his but that wasn’t making it any better. His eyes were one of the biggest selling points after all.

“Balcony, it wasn’t that hard to just melt the lock,” he said with a shrug as he crouched down in front of you, face now on the same level. For a moment you wondered how he even got up here, you didn’t live that close to the ground but he probably had his ways. For some reasons the League of Villains were always able to show up in the most unexpected places and they had been seen using portals before even though you doubted he would use portals for such occasions.

“I hate you,” you replied, just thinking of the damage he had done to your door only to get in. You had no idea how to explain a melted lock to your roommate and there was not enough time to switch it out before they would notice.

“I know, that’s why this is so great.” While he said ‘this’ he gestured between the two of you.

You hated him.

You should just gather new strength with your quirk and at least distract him so you could grab clothes and leave.

You should kick him out, inform your colleagues so they can catch him. You should do something and yet you didn’t do a single thing when he let his hand run over your arm with a featherlight touch that was so unlike him.

You didn’t do a thing when his hand dripped below the water, tracing around your breast, your nipple, along your stomach until the center of your legs.

What a fool you were. A naive fool that couldn’t keep her physical needs in check. It wouldn’t be that hard to go out and find a decent man to just get your needs satisfied with.

And yet here you were, with one of the most dangerous, most wanted villains of your generation and you would let him do anything to you.

Kind of pathetic if you would really think about it but thinking was out of the window when his fingers find your clit under the water and you lean your head back with a moan.

Whenever he touched you it felt so electric, you had no explanation for any of this. You were nothing but a toy to him and you didn’t even complain.

“That’s my girl,” he chuckled when he watched how your body started to squirm, you arching your back so your boobs were outside the water. “And I’m barely touching you.”

You knew, for fucks sake. He was only rubbing small circles against your clit and yet you already felt like you were on fire.

One of his fingers dipped inside of you and you let out another moan, opening your eyes again to look down, watching how he was pumping one finger in and out of you, then adding another one.

“You’re so wet,” he chuckled and you turned your head towards him. His other arm was resting on the side of the bathtub, his head on his arm, looking almost innocent if it wasn’t for that wolfish grin on his lips that made you afraid he would just eat you up any second.

He was pumping three fingers in and out of you now and you were barely able to hold it together, your legs were moving on their own, splashing water around more than necessary until he pulled his hand away suddenly and your whole body stopped.

“What?” you said in confusion and heard his laugh, shaking his head and simply putting his hand in front of you, spreading his fingers apart and you could clearly see your wetness coating his fingers. He dipped his hand under water once more to clean them.

“What what?” he replied as if he didn’t know what you were talking about. Fucking bastard.

“I-” you stopped yourself, biting your lip. Your body was burning hot and you just wanted release but that’s just what he wanted to hear.

“You what, doll?” He grinned at you and watched you taking deep breaths, trying to calm your body down but with him so close that turned out to be quite the challenge.

“I want to cum,” you mumbled, barely audible even to yourself. God, you felt so ashamed even thinking about this.

“Excuse me? I must have water in my ears, what did you just say?”

Gods, you hated him. You hated that smug smile, that teasing tone, that pleased look in his eyes that he had when he got close to getting what he wanted.

“I want to cum,” you said again, this time louder and clenching your jaw in anger. You didn’t just hate him, you also hated yourself for this.

“Why didn’t you just say so, princess?” he chuckled and stood up, opening his buckle. You looked at him confused and he caught on, shrugging with his shoulders. “Well, you have to earn it first.”

Of course he wouldn’t just let you off the hook that easily.

His pants and underwear dropped to the ground and he let out a relieved sigh when his cock sprang free, not straining against the fabric anymore.

“Open up,” he told you and you sat up straight in the tub, feeling a cool breeze especially around your breast, only causing your nipples to grow more. Something he clearly approved of because his cock started to twitch at the new sight that you were giving him.

Dabi took his cock in his hand, pumped it a few times before ligning it up with your open mouth.

“Tongue,” he demanded and you pushed your tongue out, letting him put his dick it. He let it rest there for a moment before pushing inside of you slowly and you closed your lips around him.

“Hm, that’s good,” he said with a low moan falling from his lips and you got to work. After all this time you had figured out what he liked, figured out how to be careful of his piercing in your throat so you didn’t hurt yourself or him.

You shifted a little in the tub, trying to take him deeper and reaching forward to fondle his balls.

He let out a choked gasp and leaned forward, hands resting against the tiled wall of your bathroom while he tried to hold himself steady. For some reason it made you proud that you could do this to him because he always did way worse to you.

Wet sounds were filling the bathroom, sounds of the water splashing a little as you were moving around and sounds of your lips and tongue swirling around his cock, making him moan from time to time.

But suddenly he grabbed the back of your head without a warning and pushed his dick deep inside of you.

“C’mon, be a good doll and choke on it.” His words were ringing in your ears when he was hitting the back of your throat, tears gathering in your eyes and you felt like you couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t be dumb, you have a nose for a reason,” he reminded you and you tried to breath through your nose before he pulled back out almost completely, only to push forward with more force and there was nothing you could do against it. You simply took his dick as far in as you could, opening your jaw to its maximum and yet, it still felt like it wasn’t enough.

He did this a few times and after one more big push and his tip once again tickling the back of your throat you felt his hot semen spilling down your throat and you were struggling not to choke.

When he pulled out you were coughing, trying to catch a breath, some of his cum still on your lips.

You heard how he started to hum when he picked his pants back up and you looked at him with widened eyes.

His eyes landed on you once again as he was about to close his belt. “I really like this sight of you, you know. Wet, messy, my cum still on your lips.” He chuckled, more to himself than to you.

The black haired man noticed the look on your face and he tilted his head a little to the side. “Hm? You want to say something?”

Obviously but you couldn’t. Your throat was still burning from the ruthless attacks only seconds before and you were trying to catch a breath to even form a sentence.

“I thought-” you started but had to stop, swallowing hard. He was once again just standing in front of the tub, looking down at you with that cold look of his. “I thought you’d...give me release.”

“Are you saying you don’t want me to go, princess? Because it really sounded like you wanted to get rid of me when I arrived.” He tried to hide his grin but you saw the edges of his mouth twitching, the staples moving ever so slightly, giving him away. Not that he would mind. He knew exactly that you were at his mercy and he knew that you knew.

“Gods, I ha-” Once again you stopped midway when you saw how his eyes darkened and you swallowed the rest of the sentence. “Can you please not go?”

“That doesn’t sound really convincing, maybe try again?” He crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze fixed on you and it almost felt like he was trying to drill a hole in you with his look.

You took a deep breath. “Can you please stay and...fuck me?”

“Are you begging for my cock, doll?” Dabi asked and started to smirk again.

You hated this, him, you.

“Yes, please fuck me with your cock. I need it,” you said without thinking. You were tired of thinking, tired of fighting this. It had been a lost fight from the beginning, you knew this and even worse, he knew this too.

“My, why didn’t you say this sooner?” he replied with a chuckle and looked almost a little too gleefully for a second. “Up.”

“Up?” you repeated his words back at him and looked at him confused.

“Out of the tub, doll. You’ll get all wrinkly otherwise and as much as I’d love to leave bruises on you, I’m not interested in having them on myself. Meet me in the living room.” With that he left the bathroom so casually as if he would live here. As if he wasn’t a dangerous villain.

You got out of the bathtub, legs a little weak. You used your towel to dry yourself and thought about putting on clothes for a moment. That would be the perfect time to get back on track, to gather your things and get out. He was distracted and you would have your chance to get away from him.

Only problem, you didn’t want to. The pull was too strong. It was something feral that was boiling in your stomach, something raw that you couldn’t stop.

Your clothes were ignored and forgotten as you made your way over to the living room. Only dimmed lights were on and you saw how the balcony door was opened a bit, letting cool air inside.

It made you shiver so you wrapped the arms around yourself.

“Cold?” he asked and you spotted him in one of the dark corners. “I actually appreciate the look.”

Dabi walked towards you and pinched both of your nipples at the same time, already hard from the cold and now even harder. Arousal was building up between your legs again.

It felt quite humiliating to stand in front of him like this, naked in dimmed light. If your neighbors would look carefully they might even spot what was going on through the big windows of your living room.

Normally you only had quick fucks with clothes on, simply pushed down to the knees and ankles, him forcing himself inside of you, trying to get as much out of the little time you had together.

But this? This was different. You didn’t just have fifteen minutes, you probably had at least two hours or however long it would take for your roommate to return. A lot of things could happen during this time.

You felt the heat radiating from his body, standing so close to you but he was fully dressed and not naked.

“Tell me again, doll. What is it you want from me?” You weren’t sure if he just loved his own voice so much or if he only wanted to hear you say filthy things. Maybe a bit of both.

You closed your eyes for a moment, trying to clear your brain. Thinking wouldn’t help now. You just had to give in to your urges. Forget who he was, who you were.

“I want you to fuck me,” you replied after opening your eyes and he took a step forward, causing you to take a step backwards out of instinct. One more time, two more times, wall behind you.

The cool wall was not really comfortable against your back but the heat in front of you was close to burning your skin. You wondered if he had activated his quirk without the flames to cause this heat or if it was just your body reacting to him.

“Are you sure you can handle it, doll? It won’t be like the other times. We’ve got time. I’m going to split you apart and make you mine, there’s nothing to stop me this time,” he growled, his voice so deep and dripping with lust.

He put his hands next to your head, trapping you with his whole body. It sounded almost like he was asking for your consent, not something he would normally do. He liked to take the things he wanted.

“What if I say no?” you blurted out, surprised at the words leaving you but the curiosity was too strong. Curiosity also killed the cat.

He grabbed your chin with his right hand and forced you to look him deep in the eyes.

“Can you?” he asked with a raised eyebrow and his blue eyes looked at you so intensely that it felt like he was looking directly into your soul. As if he could see that you would not refuse, could not refuse.

“Please use me.” You didn’t directly reply to his question but your words were enough of an answer.

Without wasting another moment he pressed his lips against yours. You felt relief and your body relaxed, even more so when you opened your mouth and let him in. He always kissed like he was a dying man and maybe he was. You didn’t know, wouldn’t know if you asked him. It was not your place to know.

His hands started to wander over your naked body, groping your breasts, then down to your ass, fingertips running through the slit of your ass before grabbing your cheeks and hoisting you up, pressing you more against the wall, all of it without breaking the kiss.

“You really are special, you know?” he said when he pulled away from the kiss and you tilted your head, asking what he meant without using words.

Dabi started to kiss along your neck, licking and sucking the soft skin there. “You’re so defiant, so rebellious whenever we fight and yet here you are, acting like my willing slut.”

He was right about this but you couldn’t explain it to him because you didn’t have an answer to yourself. You knew it was wrong and yet, you still wanted him, all of him.

Thankfully he didn’t expect a reply to his words, not that you were able to answer the moment he bit down hard on the flesh of your neck, bruising and almost breaking the skin there.

The villain in front of you was marking you. Marking you as his and people would probably see the mark at some point, asking you questions and you had to make up a stupid excuse. You couldn’t tell anyone the truth.

Your legs were wrapped around his middle and you could feel his cock once again straining against the fabric of his pants, pressing against your center, begging to be freed.

Dabi growled against the wounded skin on your neck, a feral sound that left his throat and you felt how his hands got hotter while holding your ass. You tried to ignore the pain that was slowly growing stronger and suddenly, it stopped.

He lifted his head from your neck to look at you and you leaned forward into another kiss, wrapping your arms around him.

The black haired man started to move with you in his arms, carrying you across the living room before dropping you without a warning, turning you around and pressing you against the window next to the broken balcony door.

You only had a moment to prevent being pressed completely against the glass, hands in front of you.

“That’s not how we play, doll”, he said, followed by a disapproving ‘tsk’ and he took your wrists, pulled them towards him and put them on your back so you were completely pressed against the cold glass in front of you.

Thankfully it was rather dark in your room but you were sure if some people from the apartment block over there or even just from the street, they would be able to spot you.

You felt humiliated once again, pressed against the window with your cheek , nipples on display for everyone.

“Imagine all those people being able to see you now,” he said with a dark chuckle behind you, hands grabbing your ass before pressing his chest against your back, towering over you and also getting a good look on the street below you.

You were pretty high up here but not high enough to not get noticed.

He slipped a hand to the front and ran his fingers through your folds. “Looks like that turns you on.”

You were almost embarrassed with how wet the thought made you. You didn’t want it to happen and yet, when he was saying those things to you, you couldn’t stop being aroused by that.

Dabi lifted his wet finger to your face and used his free hand to grab your hair to pull you back a little. Even though your hands were not held in place anymore now, you let them rest at your back, they were still trapped with his body anyway.

He lifted your face and held his wet finger in front of you. “Lick.”

Without another thought you opened your mouth to let your tongue swirl around his long finger, licking your own juice off of him.

You felt filthy and used but loved every second of it.

He let go of your hair and you put your face back against the glass, letting the cold glass cool you down for a moment before he grabbed your hips and pulled you back roughly. This time you had to use your hands to brace yourself against the window or you would have fallen over.

You felt the tip of his cock dancing around your entrance and you hadn’t even noticed that he had taken off his pants once again. God, you were really dazed with lust and need if you couldn’t even notice this. So much for not letting your guard down around a villain.

Without a warning he pushed deep inside of you, making you scream in surprise and you had to bite down hard on your bottom lip to stop yourself. The balcony door was broken and open after all, they would not only be able to see but also to hear you.

“You feel so good, doll. My cock buried deep inside of you. Is that what you wanted?” You felt his piercing rub against your most sensitive spot inside of you and you moaned, nodding slightly.

“Yes, it feels so good,” you replied, trying to keep your voice down, afraid you might give someone outside a clue about what was going on in here.

Dabi started to pull out and push back in, first with a slow rhythm, actually giving you time to get used to his thickness, time you normally never had. During your usual encounters he would leave you split open and with a burning. Not that he cared. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling but it made you remember him for days afterwards.

This time was different. He let you adjust, giving you time and you wondered what plans he had in that sick mind of his.

Your hands started to get sweaty against the glass, slipping down millimeters from time to time whenever he pulled out of you and pushed back in.

It didn’t take long for his rhythm to get faster and all you could do was moan and take him. With every thrust he hit the right places, his hands gripping your waist tightly, fingernails digging into your skin.

Soon enough you could only hear the slapping noises of skin meeting skin, his balls hitting against your from behind.

Suddenly a loud slap rang into your ears and the pain came only a moment later. It wasn’t the normal pain of getting spanked, it burned.

You gasped in surprise and saw blue flames from the corner of your eyes when you turned your head around.

“Don’t hold back with me, princess. I want to hear those moans.” It wasn’t a request or a reminder, it was a threat, the blue flames speaking for themselves.

You hated yourself for actually liking it.

When he pushed deep inside of you with the next thrust you let out the moan he wanted to hear, trying to forget that you were right in front of a window, that the door was open, trying to forget everything but him and how he made you feel.

“That’s it. Stop thinking. I’m the only important thing that exists for you, my little doll.”

You repeated his words in your mind over and over again, letting him fuck you hard from behind, letting him take control over you. It felt good to let go for once.

Your mind was taken back to reality when you felt how he started to massage your butthole from behind.

Once again you turned your head to look over your shoulder, your gaze meeting his and he started to grin. His thrusts had become a little slower while he kept rubbing soft circles around the sensitive skin of your back entrance.

“What are you-” you didn’t get to finish the sentence when he started to slowly press a wet finger inside. You weren’t sure if it was your own wetness or just spit.

“I told you to stop thinking. Are you deaf or just a brat?” He sounded way more aggressive but even this tone sent more arousal down your core and you felt yourself getting even wetter. Something he must have felt too with his cock buried so deep inside of you.

“I’m sorry,” you mumbled and he nodded, pushing the finger inside deeper. It burned but not as much as your cheek that he had slapped moments before. It was a different kind of burn.

“I can actually feel my cock from here,” he said with a chuckle and wiggled his finger inside your back entrance, causing you to moan loudly. It was a completely new sensation for you. You had done it yourself before but this...this was different.

You closed your eyes and your legs started to get weak when he picked up the pace again, one finger buried deep inside your ass. The whole feeling had shifted, the penetration felt completely different now and you were barely able to handle it. He was really fucking you stupid at this point.

When he added a second finger you moaned loudly, not sure if it felt good or if it was just discomfort, you weren’t sure of anything anymore at this point.

His hips snapped at you roughly and you could feel wetness running down the insides of your thigh.

“You sound so sweet when you take all of me.” He sounded so amused, knowing he had you at his mercy, there was nothing you could do at this point. “But I want more. You better not resist or it will hurt.”

Without having the chance to even process what he said he pulled out of you, leaving you to feel horrible empty. You started to whine, almost desperate noises leaving your mouth and when you tried to look back you felt it.

His wet tip at your ass as he started to push it in. You wanted to protest, wanted to say something but you tried to focus on relaxing so it wouldn’t hurt.

It hurt anyway, his thickness was too much for you.

You were a sobbing mess by the time he had all of himself buried inside of you, his piercing rubbing against you on a whole other level now.

Tears were in your eyes but to your surprise, he didn’t move. Let you adjust once more.

“Good girl,” he replied and stroked your back. It was actually comforting, something you had never felt with him before.

When you sobbed once again he slapped your ass hard, only making you whine louder.

“Don’t be like that now. I’ve told you I’d split you apart. You gave yourself willingly to me,” he said with a slight edge in his voice. He was right, of course, you just didn’t expect it to be like that.

He was rough and yet gentle. He made you sob and moan at the same time. You wanted this, you had agreed to this and after a long moment of silence and adjusting, it actually started to feel good.

Dabi must have felt how your tights rings started to relax around himself because he patted your cheek he had slapped before almost gently.

“See, not too bad. Better brace yourself.” He pulled out of you slowly only to slam it back inside and your body surged forward, pressing back against the window, your hands stopping the collison.

“Well, actually,” he started again and grabbed your wrists again, pulling them to himself once more and pinning them on your back like before.

Once again your face was pressed against the window, your back was arching so far back it almost hurt but the feeling of satisfaction that was soon added to your rollercoaster of emotion was overshadowing everything.

The way he was buried deep in your ass and kept fucking you hard from behind felt so good, made you feel alive, made you forget the world around you.

“You’re such a willing slut if you want to be. Not a single thought in that mind of yours right now, pressed against the window with no care in the world if anyone sees you now or not,” he said and watched you in your state. You almost felt high from the feeling, his grip on your wrists was strong, his words were dripping sex to you in this moment.

“Do you want to be seen by people, doll?” he asked and you swallowed, trying to form a thought to answer his question.

“I don’t care, just fuck me. Fuck me hard.” Your reply was music to his ears and he was happy to give you what you wanted.

His hips started to snap against your behind, his dick going outside and back inside almost forcefully. You moaned loudly now, not holding back anything anymore. It felt too good, everything had become such a haze.

You had never felt this way with anyone before and you knew that was his way to make you his, to claim you, to make you come back for more.

You knew you would.

He reached forward with a hand and pinched your clit for a moment before letting it wander towards your breast, stroking them for a moment until his hand closed around your throat.

You swallowed hard and he growled behind you.

“Stop being scared, it’s annoying.” To emphasize his words he gave you another, single hard thrust that made you squeal, a sound he could feel against his hand that was comfortably wrapped around your throat.

“You’ve been so good, don’t ruin it now,” he mumbled and you barely heard it between your moans and the sound of wet skin.

Your body was sweating already and you could barely breathe, even less with his hand wrapped around you.

Dabi suddenly pulled you back, making you choke briefly with his hand. The angle of his cock changed and without even realizing it, your tight rings clamped down around him and you came, wetness coming out of you and running down your thighs.

“Anal orgasm, hm? Never seen that before,” he chuckled and sounded almost proud but you weren’t sure if he was proud of you or himself.

You felt his cock twitch when you were clamping around him and he already sounded out of breath with every word that left his mouth.

“I’m close, doll.” At least one warning this evening but the tone in his voice told you he wanted something. You knew exactly what it was.

“Please, come in my ass. Claim it, it’s yours,” you moaned out between sobs and quick breaths, breaths you weren’t able to take anymore when his hand tightened around your neck, pressing yourself back roughly against him.

You felt dizzy when you felt his cum seeping inside of you. It was still so much even after you had swallowed quite a bit before.

Your insides became hot when he painted you with his cum and you whined, trying to catch a breath but he didn’t let you.

Only when the world started to spin and became slightly black at the corners of your eyes did he let go of your throat and you immediately took a deep breath.

“Don’t pass out on me now, princess.”

Your chest was heaving and you tried to get as much air in your lungs as you could. He pushed you forward slightly and pulled out of you.

Your own wetness was running down the insides of your thighs while his cum came out of your other entrance.

He chuckled slightly and slapped your ass, something that made you realize how weak your legs actually were. You were about to meet the floor but he caught you without any effort.

“Got you better than expected,” he told you with a grin that you didn’t see but heard.

Dabi lifted you up and carried you over to the couch, putting you down on your stomach. When he wanted to turn around he stopped you.

“Stay. I want my cum to stay in your ass, just as a reminder,” he said with a cheeky wink and you felt exhaustion washing over your body.

For a moment he vanished from your sight and returned fully clothed to your sight. He crouched down in front of you and pushed some hair out of your tired face.

“Cat got your tongue again?” he asked, trying to provoke you into saying something stupid as you always did.

“Shut up,” you mumbled weakly and he laughed at your weak attempt. A dark laugh but different than before.

You wanted to say so much more, so slap him for making you almost pass out, yelling at him for being so rough but you just couldn’t. Your body and your mind were tired and you didn’t have the energy to fight it. That would have to wait until your next meeting.

“Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out. I’ll even use the front door this time.”

You just hummed in approval, hoping he wouldn’t seal anything on the way out. Tiredness was coming over you and you barely felt how he threw a blanket over your naked body before you fell asleep.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I’m back,” you heard the familiar voice of your roommate while you slowly woke up from your slumber.

You smiled slightly when waking up, a yawn leaving your mouth when he started to turn around on the couch.

It took you way too long to realize where you were and why you were there.

Still naked on the couch, covered only with a blanket with Dabi’s cum in your ass. Balcony door still melted, imprints of sweat against the window next to it, and the bathtub was still filled.

Your roommate walked into the living room and turned the light on maximum from it’s dimmed state.

“Date was okay but I don’t think she is the girl for me,” the young man you shared your flat with replied and he was looking at your widened eyes.

He squinted his eyes at you and took in the surroundings. He wasn’t stupid. He would know. The state you were in would give it away if not anything else.

The small grin tugging at the edges of his lips told you that he knew.

“Looks like someone had fun on their own while I was gone. Please clean that up tomorrow, I don’t want to sit on any bodily fluids,” he replied and waved with his hand, a blush forming on your cheeks.

“Of course,” you replied, still tired. All you wanted was for him to go to his room so you could either fall back asleep on the couch or make it to your bedroom. When you shifted on the couch, it was clear that you would go nowhere. Everything hurt and your legs were still weak.

Suddenly his two colored hair peaked back out around the corner, followed by his face and he grinned at you again.

“Actually, I’m quite jealous. I wish my date would have gone that way,” he told you with that bright grin of his and you threw a pillow after him.

“Go to bed or I’ll give you a scar that matches your other one!”

You only heard the young man laugh as he made his way down the hallway and you waited until you heard the telltale sound of his bedroom door close.

Once again you shook his head, mind filled with Dabi as you fell back into a deep slumber.

It was only the next morning that you noticed all the hickeys on your neck and the imprint of his hand on your ass that he burned in on there. It wouldn’t be permanent but it would for sure be there for a few days.

'Cause I'm a sucker, I'll do 'bout anything

#Dabi x Reader #Dabi x y/n #Dabi x You #Dabi #touya x you #touya todoroki #my hero academia #dabi imagine #mha #boku no hero academia #bnha #dabi fanfic #smut

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elizabethsharmon · 4 years

Text

So. Poland has chosen its "president" yesterday - if we can even talk about real choice here when he won by approximately 422k votes. When he won in 6 out of 16 regions, all of them with significantly lower number of eligible voters. When there are huge discrepancies between the results displayed in each polling district and the ones published on the website of the National Electoral Commission. When there were recurring instances of some voting cards not having the necessary stamps which automatically classified the vote as invalid. When some people went to vote and it turned out they're not registered in their designated district because of system error. When people abroad didn't get their voting cards on time. When his party sent over 150 buses to villages in Eastern Poland to take older, conservative people to voting stations. When this is how the results map looks like - and somehow the blue wins with orange.

In the last five years, Du*a and his party PiS (literally lAw AnD jUsTiCe but believe me, they're none of these things) have completely ruined the country and regressed it to Middle Ages.The democracy practically doesn't exist anymore, not since they have the majority to rule (the opposition won the senate back in the parliamentary elections so it's a small win but it's still not enough). They started with the judicial system, appointing conservative judges who are always ruling in their favour. The courts are not independent anymore. The Constitution is being broken over and over and over again. People have been marching and protesting for years now but to no avail.

The national television, TVP, is practically owned by the ruling party. The propaganda, fake news, hatred on the opposition and minorities is getting stronger each day. What you need to know is that this is literally the first channel on every TV set in the country. No matter where you live, no matter if you have cable or satellite, you turn on TV and TVP is what you get. Their reach is so much higher than other TV stations from the big four (TVP1&TVP2, TVN, Polsat). Poland has fallen to 62nd out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders. Before PiS took over in 2015 we were 18th. For du*a's presidential campaign now they gave TVP 2 billion PLN in order to strengthen the propaganda. There was a project to give those money to hospital oncology wards but PiS said no. TVP has only been showing him during the campaign. The other candidates have either been showed in a bad light or haven't been showed at all. Voters for whom TVP is the only source of information haven't seen other candidates nor their campaigns.

During the second round of the campaign, when another tv station, TVN, with two major Polish online media, Onet and WP, invited him and his opponent, Rafał Trzaskowski, for a debate. Du*a declined because he said he won't participate in a debate which isn't available for everyone and he asked them to reach an agreement with TVP to host the debate together. In the end there were two debates. Du*a on his own in TVP, answering predetermined questions from journalists reporting to his party and people in the studio that were paid to be there. Trzaskowski on his own in TVN and live on his Facebook channel, answering questions from the journalists from 16 independent offline and online media teams.

At the beginning of his and PiS first term of destroying the country, they started their crusade against women, because as we all know middle aged men are the most eligible people to make choices for women and their bodies. Abortion is Poland is (was? honestly who knows now) only allowed in three cases: if the woman's life was in danger, if the prenatal testing indicates severe damage of the fetus, if the pregnancy was the outcome of rape. With their pro life and anti women initiative, PiS was determined to ban abortion completely and punish it by prison. The bill was so flimsy that in some cases even miscarriage could be turned against woman. Even if the baby would've been born sick or severely disabled, even if the pregnancy could be fatal for the mother, even if it was caused by rape. We went on the streets. All dressed in black, with umbrellas in hand. Hundreds of thousands of women and allies marching and protesting together against the government. And they got scared. The bill proposal was dropped but the fight wasn't over and it still isn't. They tried to bring it back now during the pandemic just because they knew we wouldn't go out protesting. But we did, we blocked the streets with our cars.

The day after pill can only be bought on prescription. But if you end up going to the conservative ob/gyn they can invoke conscientious objection to abortion and they won't prescribe it for you. They want to ban sex ed from schools. In their opinion sex ed “demoralizes children and teaches them masturbation.” They want young people to be uneducated and have sex and get pregnant and give birth. They want to make kids have kids just so they would depend on the government and social wage programme 500+ which gives 500PLN (approximately 125€) each month to families with 2 or more children for each of their children. Right now you can be a woman raising your three or four kids and you will get the equivalent of minimum wage just for that. This program made people vote for them in 2015. First Du*a used it in his presidential campaign, then PiS was blackmailing the voters saying the program will only happen if both president and the government will be on board aka they have to get in so Du*a will sign the bill and people will get the money. People still believe only they can ensure the stability of the program even though almost all the other candidates said it will not go away.

In the last couple of weeks of presidential campaign, it became more clear than ever how Du*a is planning to win the elections - by trying to reach to the mindsets of elderly and conservative voters by attacking the LGBT community. He called us “ideological hurricane”. He said we are worse than communists. His party members have been saying we're not humans. He was saying over and over again how he doesn't care what people do in bed as long as they're not obnoxious on street and in real life about it. How sexuality is a private thing and we shouldn't be proud of it. How there's no place in Poland for “LGBT propaganda that wants to demoralize our children”. How there's no space here for unions for same-sex couples, not even mentioning marriage or adoption. How he'll do everything in his power to protect the “traditional Polish values and family model” (whatever that means). The most conservative parts of the eastern Poland has claimed their towns and villages as “anti-LGBT zone”. It's been going on since last year. After Dua's words now the hate crime is stronger than it ever was. When LGBT activists asked him to apologize for his spiteful words, showed him proofs that suicide rate among LGBT teenagers is higher than it was since his party is ruling, showed him the photographs and shared the stories of the people we lost because of the bashing they encourage and support, he said he won't apologize because he stands by his words and there's a freedom of speech in the country. Not for everyone I guess.

The journalists have been interviewing many people in different parts of Poland after it. What stuck with me were the words of some old man from the countryside who has said that “LGBT should be exterminated in Majdanek”. It's one of the places where the death camp was during World War 2. I don't think I have to tell anyone what words like this mean, how much they hurt, and how much worse it is when they’re said in the country that’s lost so so many lives during WW2. In a country that fought so hard for so many years to reclaim its freedom from the nazis and then from the soviets. In the meantime of this bashing, Du*a has pardoned a pedophile so he could return to his family (and the victim he abused). So that would be it for protecting family values.

The exit polls results yesterday were so close that they gave us so much hope that we would wake up in a new reality today but the hope died quickly. Now we're stuck again with a man who said in the middle of the global pandemic that he's anti-vaccination and he doesn't think vaccine for covid-19 should be obligatory. With a man who thinks climate change and global warming isn't real. With a man whose actions are constantly destabilitizing economy because he only acts like there is today and doesn’t look forward in the future and doesn’t know the way he and his party ruin the country will have terrible consequences in a few years. With a man who is homophobic, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and many, many, many other things. With a man who is a "president” of Polish people but only if you're a straight catholic man voting for his party.

Now our fear is that with him being “elected” as the “president” again, his party will try to meddle with the Constitution and try to change it so they could either extend his term for more years or extend the number of terms a president can have. And even if the change can’t happen so easily, what’s sure is that they will try to take away basic human rights from women and LGBT community. They made it perfectly clear in the last five years and during the campaign now.

So if you’re asking yourself now what can you do about it the answer is simple: spread the word. Read about it. Educate yourself. Make a buzz in the social media. We need as much help as we can get. We need foreign media to pick up the topic, we need them to talk about it and to make the noise. We need the foreign governments to know about it. European Union has already declared that if the bashing on LGBT continues, they will take away the development aid from the self-proclaimed “anti-LGBT zones”. Our country has suffered so much and somehow we’re still standing but I don’t know for how much long we will last. So please. Don’t leave us alone.

#poland #lgbt #feminism #tw homophobia #signal boost

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fairiesherefairiesthere · 4 years

Text

Fraxus Anastasia au #4

Here it is on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23144866

Preview: Once on the train, it's quickly made clear that Laxus will not be enjoying a delightful morning meal. Hell, he won't even be enjoying his morning at all. Something Laxus has never once thought of in his life is currently making said life miserable. He's motion sick and he can't even stand the plain smell of bread, so he's also banning the others from eating, dragging them along in his illfated anguish."Oh baby, I'm so sorry", Bickslow says somehow managing to sound amused and sincerely worried at the same time. "If we had known, we would have walked to Paris with you", he claims, patting Laxus' head. Evergreen snorts at that declaration and Freed flat-out says: "No. No we really wouldn't have. Don't give the princeling false hope like that." Laxus groans in response and completely out of it, he grumbles: "Shut up. Let me live the illusion of someone caring about me."

Fic under the cut!

Once on the train, it's quickly made clear that Laxus will not be enjoying a delightful morning meal. Hell, he won't even be enjoying his morning at all. Something Laxus has never once thought of in his life is currently making said life miserable. He's motion sick and he can't even stand the plain smell of bread, so he's also banning the others from eating, dragging them along in his illfated anguish.

"Oh baby, I'm so sorry", Bickslow says somehow managing to sound amused and sincerely worried at the same time. "If we had known, we would have walked to Paris with you", he claims, patting Laxus' head. Evergreen snorts at that declaration and Freed flat-out says: "No. No we really wouldn't have. Don't give the princeling false hope like that." Laxus groans in response and completely out of it, he grumbles: "Shut up. Let me live the illusion of someone caring about me."

"Dramatic, aren't we?" Without giving him a chance to protest, Freed stands up from where he'd been seated with his friends. "Move over", he orders because the man apparently doesn't know how to ask things. Laxus complies, because he absolutely doesn't want to fight the man right now and mercifully, Freed doesn't lord it over him. Instead, he pats his lap and Laxus looks at the man's legs in confusion.

What does he want now? Sure, they're nice legs but he doesn't see why Freed would need to bring that up now. "Lay down, idiot." Dang, it's almost as if the man can read his thoughts. Deciding to not experience any more thoughts today, the idiot in question tentatively lays his head down.

Vaguely, he's aware of Freed carding his fingers through his hair and it makes him feel sort of warm and fuzzy. He wonders whether certain parts the other man allows his fingers to linger on are pressure points, because he feels a bit better, but also more sleepy. He blinks slowly and yawns. He thinks he can hear someone chuckle above him. "Why don't you take a nap?" a pleasantly deep voice asks and bonelessly, Laxus complies.

"Well well well, how the turntable-turns have tabled during this turn", Bickslow smugly states as he shoots Freed a wink. Freed shudders in disgust. "Don't open your mouth again. Ever." Pouting, Bickslow reaches over the table to poke Freed's cheeks. "But baby, I need to open my mouth to eat. I'll die otherwise." Slapping his hand away, Freed blankly stares at him. "I will not retract my statement. Repent."

Ah these truly are her boys, Evergreen thinks as she watches them converse without an ounce of intelligence being spilt into their talk. "So, what do we think about the young man currently residing in your lap? I personally think we're going to have to work very hard to pass him off as a royal. He's nice, but not exactly majestic."

"Neither is Makarov", Freed interjects and she reluctantly nods at that. "I suggest we go through with it." Out of his jacket's pocket, he plucks a pocket watch. "We've got this one and the lad over here has what seems to be the key to it. Not that we really needed it", he says as he puts the object back and briefly shows them the key they had ordered by a blacksmith. "It is a nice touch, though."

"How are we going to teach him his background? Amnesia isn't going to cut it", Bickslow muses and Freed smiles a wicked little smile. Lately, his smiles have been like that a lot and Evergreen wishes he would relax and enjoy himself for a while instead of playing this grotesque caricature of himself.

"We teach him through the power of suggestion. I don't think that he'd like classical teaching very much and more importantly, we have to sell him as the true prince. Give him tidbits here and there and let him glue the pieces himself. He'll think that he's remembering his life and will consequently come across as a genuine person in front of Makarov. We've got this you guys."

"Do we want to have him though?" Bickslow asks and for a moment, his usual tomfoolery has made for a seriousness that he doesn't often showcase. "Don't you think he deserves better than a couple of strangers lying to him? We're abusing his trust, you know." With each word, Bickslow had shuffled a bit closer to him and in the end, they were nearly nose to nose. Bickslow's eyes have this unnerving quality to them that makes it look as though they are able to see the deepest part of your soul and right now, Freed's exposed to the full extent of it. Evergreen feels a bit sorry for him.

That is until he opens his mouth. Freed's good with words and that makes the string of words that leaves his mouth only more insufferable. "So? People who believe lies and promises of love and family are practically asking to be deceited. The sooner one learns that, the better."

Bickslow leans back with an eyeroll. "Didn't you say that you suspected the prince is still alive? And didn't you call yourself 'the greatest detective' all those years ago? If you're so smart, why are you dragging him into this?"

"Well, the difference between me now and the past me, is that know I can admit that I'm stupid", ignoring the noises of agreement from her and Bickslow, Freed continues, "Secondly, he wanted to go to Paris, we're helping him." Bickslow barks out a laugh at that. "Sure Jan", he says and pats Freed on the shoulder. "Sure, sure."

A commotion outside their train compartment dissolves the tension between them and shifts their focus elsewhere. "I'll go look", Freed offers before gently getting up as to not wake Laxus. For someone who doesn't care for their ward, he's awfully considerate, going as far as shoving a scarf under his head before he darts out of the door.

As soon as Freed's out of sight, Bickslow brushes a part of his hair over his right eye. "Hur dur my name Freed, me no careth for anyone", he mocks their pseudo-brother and Evergreen stifles a laugh. "You know that's how he warms up to people right? One day one he'll hate you and one day two he'll tell you about the crimes he's comitted. He is like that."

"Still, I don't know what he's thinking lying to this man. I'm not sure I agree." Evergreen smiles whistfully at that. "That's because you and me have a history with the prince and Freed doesn't. We're looking for an old friend and who knows what Freed's looking for."

Evergreen remembers meeting Freed as though it was yesterday, mainly because of how similar they had been. She and Bickslow had been looking for anyone who could give them hints about the young prince's whereabouts and whether he was alive at all. But nobody wanted to give two snooty little kids like them the time of day, except for another snooty brat, laughing at them. "It's obvious that's he's still alive, dummies", he had said and she had kicked him in the shins before asking him who exactly he thought he was.

Surprise had flickered in his eyes (she still doesn't know why, but does it really matter?). He had proudly declared himself 'the world's best detective', which of course prompted both her and Bickslow to laugh at the tiny brat. Stomping his foot he had declared to lead them to their prince and well, would you look at the situation now? The boastful brat had become a brother to her, but there are times when she has no idea what's going on in his head. His past seems to be his greatest motivation to move forward, but it simultaneously seems to drag him back the most. It's a shame he doesn't want to talk about it.

Speak of the devil. Freed pops his head back in and his face betrays his troubled feelings. "Guys," he says and clacks his tongue, "There's a bit of a problem with our passports. They're in the wrong colour, so it's quite obvious that they're fake."

"Ah", Bickslow, the one in charge of making them helpfully says. "Oh dear", Evergreen adds, wanting to heighten the rising tension in the atmosphere and piss Freed off a bit. She didn't make those documents though, so have fun dealing with it Bix!

After two seconds of thoughts, Freed grumbles out his temporary solution. "Bix, the conductor is coming from the right, go stall him for a bit. Ask him where the toilet is or something, I don't care. Join us after ten minutes, we'll be waiting in the wagon where they store the heavy luggage. Let's move." Before either of them can ask what he's planning with their fourth member, Freed has already gathered him in arms. "This looks so suspicious", he sighs and Evergreen suggest: "I could cry a bit? Nobody asks a nice lady why they're crying. Nice ladies are respected."

"If only you were a nice lady", Freed can't help but chime in and she gives himan ice cold glare. "One day, I'll mix out your shampoo for a mixture of shampoo and bleach with a high enough percentage of shampoo so you won't be able to tell the difference but also a high enough dosage of bleach that your hair'll fall out." She yanks the door open after that, fortifying her threat and Freed quietly follows. Bickslow goes the opposite way.

Laxus wakes up feeling sicker than before. He retches and before he can actually vomit, he's dumped on the floor. A bucket quickly appears in his line of sight and luckily, it's quick enough. Throughout the act of rearranging his guts, somebody strokes his back and murmurs soft and encouraging words. That part is quite nice.

"What's going on?" he asks as soon as he's able to, which actually takes an embarassing amount of time. "Your royal highness, we saw it fit to move you to a more serene cabin", Freed says and Laxus takes the time to properly look around. "This is the bagage compartment", he dryly notes. "But it's more serene, right?" Freed retorts. Laxus wishes he could go back to sleep or put the other man to sleep (permanently).

Then it hits him. If they're hiding, that must mean something's wrong. And if there's something wrong, that means he can bully Freed for being an incompetent ass. "Say Freed", he says casually, "There wouldn't happen to be anything wrong, right? You, as my number one loyal servant, wouldn't allow that to happen. Surely you wouldn't put me in harm's way."

"Don't worry my prince, no harm will be inflicted to you except for the harm done by these hands", Freed snaps back and finally, finally Laxus is truly grating on the man's nerves. "Where is Bickslow?" he asks to let the man calm down so he can later rile him up again. "On his way here, he should be here about now."

As though his name had summoned him, Bickslow cheerfully joins the party. "Hey guys, who wants to play dress up with whatever we find in those bags?"

They don't get the chance to answer as the smell of fire alerts them to things not being quite right. Immediately, Bickslow opens the door he just came through only to discover that it isn't connected to the wagon in front of them anymore. Upon opening the door behind them, they find out that they aren't connected to that part of the train either. They are however, still hurling forward at an impossible speed.

"Looks like someone's trying to kill us. Bit of an overreaction to fraud if you ask me", Evergreen bemuses. "Find the source of the fire and put it out with wet cloth", Freed orders Evergreen and Bickslow. Laxus, you help me search for the brake."

It doesn't take long for Laxus to find the brake. It takes him an even shorter amount of time to break it. He had lost his balance due to a bump in the rails, grabbed onto the handle and broke it off. It had been a honest to God accident, like what Freed's going to make his death look like if they make it out of it.

"That wasn't a bump Laxus. That was a change of track. We're now unfortunately moving towards that." Calmly (how he does it, Laxus doesn't know), Freed points at a rotting bridge. "Dang, do I give my last words and epic I-love-you-guys-speach? By the way Laxus, you're included." Bickslow's words may be those of a bit of a lunatic, Laxus still feels oddly touched. Freed breaks the moment by rolling his eyes. "No idiot. Grab that rope over there and bind a shitload of crooked iron to it. Then we'll throw it on the tracks on hope it gets stuck somewhere."

Quickly they set to work, Evergreen, Bickslow and Laxus trying metal object to the rope as Freed instructs them with his level voice. The way he keeps his composure makes it easier for the rest of them to do the same. When Freed is satisfied with the result, he hands them all big coats and blankets before ordering them to throw their rope. "These are for breaking our fall, should the rope-trick not work." Laxus nods and breathes through his nose, trying to not let his eyes travel to the nearing bridge.

A hook on the rope gets stuck on the rails and without hesitation, Evergreen and Bickslow jump out. Laxus, thrown off by the sudden change in rhythm feels sick again. Within a second, the rope breaks and the shock throws him off his feet. Fuck, he's going to die.

"Laxus." The sound of his name draws his attention to Freed who offers him his hand, still so calm and composed. "We're going to have a bit of a harder landing, but we'll be alright I think. I'll count to three and we'll jump." Laxus nods and collects himself.

"One."

He takes the hand. Freed offered after all.

"Two."

And because Freed's an unpredictable asshole, he jumps and drags Laxus with him before they've even reached three.

"Three!" Freed yells before the world goes black.

#Freed Justine #Laxus Dreyar #Fraxus #Evergreen fairy tail #Bickslow #fanfic #Anastasia au #TheFairyWrites

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marymosley · 4 years

Text

Google Targets Conservative Sites In Latest Crackdown

Google has moved against another set of conservative sites. While many have celebrated the action against ZeroHedge and The Federalist, I remain deeply concerned over the free speech implications of such actions. I have written for years about public and private censorship, including recent actions to regulate and control speech on the Internet. Democratic leaders have been calling for censorship on the Internet and in social media for years, a move that will destroy the greatest forum for free speech in the history of the world. Writers have joined in this movement and two such academics recently declared “China was right” all along about censorship.

As will come as no surprise to many on this blog, I view this latest action as another form of private censorship that targets conservative sites while ignoring similar rhetoric from the left. I am not very complex when it comes to such conflicts over free speech. I am not as much concerned with the merits of these fights as the implication of targeting some sites over others. I know very little about ZeroHedge while I am familiar with some of the writers on The Federalist. Google has said comparatively little about the reason for barring the sites and what NBC originally reported has been contradicted by the company. However, it is the explanation given for the action taken against the Federalist that I wanted to address. It seems to follow the pattern of politically biased, content-based discrimination against conservative sites by companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Despite the clear bias shown in these actions, most academics are either applauding the crackdown or remaining conspicuously silent as companies silence those with opposing or unpopular views.

NBC News reported yesterday that ZeroHedge and The Federalist were banned from generating revenue through Google Ads. This demonetization of sites is a favorite tool for critics to shutdown writers or sites with opposing views. Google holds a virtual monopoly on such ad revenue (by some estimates over 70 percent of such revenue). Many groups recognized years ago that they could achieve a form of private censorship by getting Google, Twitter, and other companies to effectively cut off the ability of readers to see opposing views. For those of us who are part of the dinosaur class on free speech, the solution to bad speech should be more and better speech — rather than preventing others from hearing or reading opposing views.

The NBC reporter Adele-Momoko Fraser broke the story which ncorrectly stated that both sites were demonetized. The Federalist was not demonetized but warning that it might be demonetized unless it changed its site to meet Google’s demands. In fairness to Fraser, some have claimed that she got the story wrong. However, NBC has quoted a Google spokesperson as saying “When a page or site violates our policies, we take action. In this case, we’ve removed both sites’ ability to monetize with Google.” Google later clarified that it was forcing The Federalist to meet its demands.

In her reporting, Fraser characterized both sites a “far right.” Again, I am not that familiar with the sites but “far right” or “alt right” has become a ubiquitous label for sites that liberals or Democrats despise. There are virtually no comparable references to “far left” or “alt left” sites that routinely run conspiracy theories about Republicans or raw hateful statements against conservative figures like the Daily Kos and other sites.

Here is what Google noted about the Federalist action.

The Federalist published an article claiming the media had been lying about looting and violence during the protests, which were both included in the report sent to Google.

This is a common view held by both conservative politicians and writers today. Indeed, it often seems that you have to turn to Fox to check on the rioting and turn to CNN to check on the protesting. While one side claims that the rioting is being ignored, the other is claiming that it is being overblown.

This is a legitimate debate over the focus and bias of coverage. For example, Craig Melvin, an MSNBC host and co-anchor of “Today,” tweeted a “guide” that the images “on the ground” are not to be described as rioting but rather “protests.” That and other reporting led too many questioning the disconnect in reporting on peaceful protests with the scenes of burning buildings in the background and the report of hundreds of officers injured during the protests.

Then however a new reason for the threat came from Google which objected to its comment section. As we have discussed previously, many sites have eliminated their comments section because of trolls, paid or bot comments, or offensive speech. As one of the larger sites committed to free speech issues, we have resisted this trend to be open a forum for people to express themselves. We have tried to respond to complaints about offensive speech and in relatively few cases we have barred those who engage in such commentary. Because I have teaching and litigation duties, I have to rely on people raising racist or offensive content. However, comment section allow people to express their views and, while I often disagree with comments, I have tried not to censor them. Indeed, I routinely leave comments that insult me or say things that are demonstrably untrue about my past writings or testimony. The reason is that I feel uncomfortable with the role of censoring, particularly when I am the subject of the criticism.

Google has demanded that The Federalist remove its comment section because it offended the company’s policy against “dangerous and derogatory content.” The Federalist relented and reportedly eliminated its comment section. The result is the loss of the forum for individuals to exchange their views. The response of Google was an unmistakable message that sites would either comply with its demands or face ruin:

“Our policies do not allow ads to run against dangerous or derogatory content, which includes comments on sites, and we offer guidance and best practices to publishers on how to comply. As the comment section has now been removed, we consider this matter resolved and no action will be taken.”

There is also a concern over the NBC reporting. It was not only incorrect on the facts of the Goggle story but Fraser appeared to erase the line between reporting and advocacy in congratulating groups which target sites on the rights and seemingly celebrating the result.

Adele-Momoko Fraser

@AMFraserNBC

NEW — from @NBC_VC. Thanks to @SFFakeNews and @CCDHate for their hard work and collaboration! https://twitter.com/NBC_VC/status/1272962743436374016 …

NBC News VC

@NBC_VC

Two far-right sites, ZeroHedge and The Federalist, will no longer be able to generate revenue from any advertisements served by Google Ads.@AMFraserNBC reports.https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-bans-two-websites-its-ad-platform-over-protest-articles-n1231176 …

152

3:43 PM – Jun 16, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

The Federalist complained that NBC did little to seek their view before running the story. Fraser relied on the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British nonprofit that targets online hate and misinformation. Conservative sites have complained that the group is primarily seeking to shutdown conservative sites by labeling them purveyors of hate, including holding them responsible of comments.

As we discussed earlier with regard to Twitter, Google seems to be making the case for not only pushing forward with anti-trust inquiries but stripping it and other companies of immunity protections. Indeed, the Justice Department just announced that it is moving forward with proposals to strip away protections. Google and other companies were given protections under Section 320 because it has claimed to being a neutral supplier of virtual space for people to speak with one another. It is now effectively shutting down sites because they allow others to comment freely on their sites. This biased targeting of sites has led to congressional objections and renewed threats to amend the federal law. Indeed, Google is undermining the support with some of us who viewed protections are fostering free speech values. It is now using its role to stifle and regulate speech, the very antithesis of not just free speech but the federal protections.

Google Targets Conservative Sites In Latest Crackdown published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

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echoboots · 7 years

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Red, White, and First Amendment Blues

One of the most fascinating and rapidly evolving news stories this week involves Nordstrom dropping Ivanka Trump’s clothing line, citing poor sales as its reasoning. In case you missed this, here is more-or-less what happened: First it was a simple schadenfreude-laden headline, because the Trump dynasty loves selling things and also is historically bad at it. But the collective amusement turned into incredulous outrage when Trump censured Nordstrom’s from the POTUS account, in typical 45th fashion. Then we all watched a Spicer Double Down Special in yesterday’s press conference, when he referred to the business move as “a direct attack on [the President’s] policies.” And by the time Kellyanne Conway got around to literally advertising Ivanka’s product in her official capacity as a White House adviser today, nothing was surprising anymore.

I’ve seen a lot of people note Conway’s endorsement that was illegal (which it was), that this whole story illustrates Trump’s inherent conflict of interest(which it does), and also that Spicer apparently doesn’t know what the word ‘direct’ means (which he doesn’t). But I also think this is the latest in a larger picture issue, and I don’t hear a lot of people talking about it. And that issue is that this administration is launching a systemic assault on the First Amendment.

What does Trump’s conflict of interest have to do with the First Amendment?

I’m glad you ask, Hypothetical Person in My Head! The key is both Trump and his proxy Spicer censuring Nordstrom’s business decision. The groundwork was laid when Trump criticized Nordstrom’s business decision from the POTUS account, saying: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. . . . Terrible!” This is because a statement from an official account that something was “unfair” can be reasonably read to carry an implicit threat. But that idea wasn’t fully developed until Spicer said this in the press conference yesterday: “There are clearly efforts to undermine [Ivanka’s] name based on her father’s positions on particular policies that he’s taken. This is a direct attack on his policies.” And it’s when a business decision becomes an “attack” on Presidential policies that the larger picture about the First Amendment starts to take shape. As it happens, these statements taken together tread awfully close to Nordstrom’s right to freedom of speech — specifically its freedom of association and freedom of expressive conduct (And also its freedom to contract, but that’s a whole other ball of wax.).

A Brief First Amendment Primer

For those of you playing the home game, the First Amendment contains more-or-less five basic rights:

Freedom of the press;

Freedom of speech;

Freedom of religion (encompassing both the right to practice religion without government hindrance and the right to freedom from government laws “respecting a religious establishment”);

Freedom to petition; and

Freedom to peaceably assemble.

Though whole treatises could be (and have been) written on this topic, the main thing to take away for now is that the government generally cannot tread on these five things. That includes all branches of the federal government, not just Congress (which is what the First Amendment literally says), and thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment it includes state government as well. (Note that it does not, however, extend to that moderator on reddit who banned that one guy for using slurs, regardless of what that guy is yelling on 4chan.)

Okay, but One Tweet Isn’t an Attack

Good point, Other Hypothetical Person Also in My Head! But this is the part where I remind you that this wasn’t just one tweet in a vacuum — it’s just the latest part of a sustained, systemic effort. Let’s go through that list above, with an eye towards things this administration has done in the past as well as in the past few weeks, and see if they hit all of the First Amendment tickyboxes.

Freedom of the Press: Check. At this point, the 45th discrediting specific members of the press (and especially CNN) as “fake news” has become so commonplace that it’s a recurrent joke on Saturday Night Live. And that skit was hilarious, but it touches on a real phenomenon that’s pretty frightening: The idea that if you report displeasure with the President’s policies, you no longer get to count as real news. This is in addition to a growing rhetoric that the members of the fourth estate are enemies of the state generally, which is popping up in everything from serious allegations that the press is “refusing to cover” terrorist attacks to random statements attacking the “so-called media” over, of all things, reporting on a bathrobe. These statements, taken in tandem, paint a picture of this administration’s general desire to make Americans mistrust news in general.

Freedom of Speech: Check. I covered this one briefly above, but let’s spend a few more minutes on it. This administration has a long-established position of disliking First Amendment freedom of speech, which predates its assumption of office — from threatening to sue the people who stepped forward about sexual assault during his campaign to threatening to jail Hillary Clinton for telling ‘so many lies’ to threatening to remove citizenship for flag-burning. Since taking office, the administration has continued this trend, issuing a communications lockdown impeding executive government staff’s use of social media, demanding that park service officials retract tweets, and beginning to dismantle net neutrality. These actions, taken in tandem, suggest this administration wants people to fear speaking and relaying information freely in a variety of circumstances.

Freedom of Religion: Check. This administration has touched upon both the exercise clause and the establishment clause within the past few weeks. On the exercise end, mounting evidence is being considered by courts that the recent executive order is intended to curtail Muslim entry to the country due to specific Islamophobic animosity within the administration. On the establishment end, we have Trump threatening to dismantle the Johnson Amendment at the National Prayer Breakfast so that Christian organizations can participate more directly in politics, and promising to make persecuted Christians a political priority for immigration. None of this is a good sign, especially so early on in the Presidency.

Freedom to Petition: Check. This one is a more nebulous concept in some ways than the others, but the freedom to petition generally involves being able to talk to government directly about issues with governance. Political texts books often point to things like lobbying, letter-writing, e-mail campaigns, testifying before tribunals, filing lawsuits, supporting referenda, collecting signatures for ballot initiatives, peaceful protests, and picketing. It’s pretty closely tied to the freedom to assemble, which I’ll get to below. But things like shutting down the White House comment line, lying about the number of people who attended the Inauguration, the forcible follow of the POTUS account by 560,000 Twitter users, ignoring one of the most popular We the People petitions in history, and repeatedly attacking the judiciary branch all implicate the freedom to petition, and also all have happened in the past few weeks. Taken together, they suggest this administration wants to make it difficult for constituents as well as other branches of government to interact with its decisions.

Freedom to Assemble: Check. This right applies both to the right to protest and to the general right to associate with other people in things like unions. Though in general the Trump administration has been a bit cagey about this one, we do see early indications that we can expect future infringement of the right of assembly . Trump’s threat to cut federal funding over Berkeley protests is a mixed example at best, but his early description of protests as “unfair,” later description of Madonna’s statements at the Women’s March as “disgraceful to our country,” and more recent iterative rhetoric that protesters are being ‘paid’ all paint a larger picture that can be separated from the violence associated with the Berkeley news. And they come at a time when several state legislators are suggesting criminalizing protest. These things suggest a broader stance against protest generally.

Why does all of this matter?

It matters because the First Amendment collectively is an important check on centralized government process. The Founding Fathers knew this — the anti-federalists fought so hard for a Bill of Rights because they wanted to have a system in place that could slow the federalist machine and prevent it from steamrolling human rights. It’s not a coincidence that the First Amendment is, well, first.

And a natural extension of that is that a healthy enforcement of the Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment in particular, prevents a lot of the hallmarks of fascism from finding purchase (particularly the intertwining of government and religion, controlled mass media, suppression of labor power, and censorship of the arts). It’s a foundational part of American history, and one of the things that does, in fact, make America great. We’ve seen a lot of discussion about whether Trump’s administration is ushering in an era of fascism, and I personally believe that it is. In order for a nascent fascist state to take root in the United States, the Bill of Rights and especially the First Amendment (along with the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Tenth) need to be bludgeoned into submission. And we’re watching it happen, one tweet at a time.

What can we be doing? (Besides getting the 45th to stop tweeting. That isn’t going to happen.)

Okay, you raise a compelling counterpoint, Final Hypothetical Person, despite the noted disadvantage of not actually existing. But there are things we can be doing nonetheless!

Resist normalization of deviance. This is basically just a fancy sociological way of saying that there is real actual societal value in stamping “This Isn’t Normal” on your forehead and yelling it every time something infringes on a First Amendment right. On a related note, Amy Siskind recommends keeping a list of all of the things you notice changing around you — experts say this can be a very effective technique for resisting normalization. She keeps a weekly list herself, and you can read this past week’s here.

Continue to exercise your own rights, especially the last two. Protest things! Sign petitions! Call your senators and yell a lot! Obviously, this is easier for some people than others, but one very real way to preserve rights is to exercise them.

Keep track of the news. You can’t know your rights are being infringed if you aren’t paying attention — but more importantly, you also don’t know when your rights are being protected. The Ninth Circuit took a big step towards protecting freedom of religion today, though that fight is far from over, and that’s really helpful to know — it’s a form of petition being successfully preserved, at least so far.

Take care of yourself. It’s the best way to keep on fighting.

And on that note, I am going to take my own advice, and save writing about today’s three executive orders for tomorrow. Self-care, folks. It’s a thing. But you’ll hear from me again soon!

#first amendment #fascism #politics #authoritarianism

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witsyo · 4 years

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Sun and Moon 6

Year 17, Month 9, Day 30

Razz tucked his hands behind his head, closing his eyes as the sun warmed him from above. The smell of grass filled his nose, and he took a deep breath to catch a whiff of the nearby flowers. You couldn't tell, looking at it from the town, but the temple had a massive garden, carefully tended to by more than a few silent priestesses. He would have assumed that a picnic on the hill would have been frowned upon, but the only reaction the women had had to their approach had been to nod a greeting and return to work.

Adrian was unpacking their food, a few hunks of bread and cheese as well as the treat of one of the same sweet rolls they’d bought on their very first day in the town.

When Razz had shown up at the docks that morning, the only ship in port was one they had loaded the day before, so he had been waved off without work. It was obviously not ideal, with their money still slowly dwindling, but he hadn’t been able to help being relieved for a day of rest. It’d been easy to convince Grelda to give Adrian the afternoon off, and it’d been the boy that suggested visiting the temple.

Apparently, Halle had been visiting Grelda’s shop often, and had suggested the picnic to Adrian. Razz’d met her a few more times, quickly growing comfortable around this companion to the queen of moons even on days he wasn’t exhausted. He sighed, opening one eye to watch Adrian lay out their meal. “Do you want any help?”

“I’ve almost got it!” he said cheerfully, handing Razz a slice of bread and a piece of cheese. “Eat this.”

Razz raised a brow, then obeyed, chewing slowly as he watched the other. “Thanks.”

“You need someone to take care of you for once!”

Snorting at that, Razz patted the other’s knee, continuing to eat as he enjoyed the atmosphere. “Will your new friend be joining us?” he asked, referring to Halle.

Adrian frowned, then glanced at the temple. “Do you think she’d like to?”

“Maybe. Not like we can ask her.”

“Ma’am?” Adrian called, and Razz jumped, looking quickly to see who he was talking to. One of the priestesses had made the mistake of wandering too close, looked up at Adrian’s call with a squint.

“Did you need something?”

“Do you know Halle?”

Razz huffed, laying back down and trying to wipe the embarrassed flush from his cheeks. It was one of the things he loved most about Adrian, the absolute willingness to engage with anyone, but it could emerge at the worst times.

Laughing, the priestess replied, “Yes, I should hope so.” She seemed young, probably around Razz’s own age. He wondered if she’d come here in the hope of being the queen of suns, stayed anyway to serve the goddesses when she hadn’t been. “Did you need something from her?”

“Is she here?” Adrian asked.

“Do you need someone to ask her?” came a voice from Razz’s other side, and he jumped violently, looking up to see Halle herself standing over him. She was raising her brows at him, but quickly shifted her gaze back to a now-grinning Adrian. Her smile softened, then she waved casually at the priestess. “Thank you, Hiela. I don’t think these hooligans are here to cause trouble.”

Hiela laughed, and Razz looked to see her moving further into the garden, leaving them alone as Halle plopped down in the grass beside him. She was sweating lightly across her forehead, leaving Razz to assume she’d just hiked up the hill from the town. “Make yourself at home.”

“I live here!” she protested, opening the basket she’d had slung over her arm. “Grelda told me the two of you would be on the mountain. Could I join you? It’s been a long day, and Basille will be in town until tonight.”

“The queen of moons?” Razz asked, interested despite himself. He couldn’t help it, the legend was one he’d grown up with. It was still hard to believe that she was a real person, living and breathing so close to him.

“Yes, as opposed to the other Basille,” she snarked, pulling a bundle from her basket and beginning to unwrap it. “Adrian, I will trade you some of that cheese for these grapes.”

“What’s a grape?” he asked, sitting up on his knees and looking at her with interest.

“They’re a fruit from the south. Here, try one.”

Adrian popped one of the purple fruits into his mouth, chewing slowly at first, then faster as his eyes widened. “Oh, by the goddesses, that is good!”

Narrowing his eyes, Razz held out a hand.

“No samples,” Halle said with a grin, and he scoffed, then stole one before she could block him as Adrian forked over some of their cheese.

“The queen of moons came into the shop yesterday,” Adrian said excitedly. Razz had already heard the story numerous times, but he smiled anyway, picking up another piece of bread as Halle got out some kind of a dark salted meat wrapped in paper. “She’s gorgeous, and was nice. She knew my name!”

“I’ve mentioned you once or twice,” Halle said, handing a slice of the meat to Razz and snatched away the bread he’d just picked up. He looked down at the forced exchange in consternation, then shrugged, deciding just to eat it. The food would be good for the both of them. As much as he always tried to prevent it, weight had started to slip from Adrian’s stout frame, and certainly from his own. This always happened when they were staying in a city, where food cost money instead of time.

Adrian seemed flabbergasted. “You have ?!”

“Of course!” Halle laughed, nudging some of the food into Adrian’s hand. “You’re quite talented, and she’s a famed healer. Grelda can’t seem to get enough of raving about you, either.”

All at once, Razz realized Halle wasn’t eating a bite of the food in front of her. She just seemed to be piling the contents of her basket into their laps, distracting them quite easily with her talk. He’d never been one to be shamed by charity, but he felt his cheeks redden. Was it that obvious that he couldn’t provide for Adrian?

“She did ask me where I had studied!” Adrian said excitedly, grabbing onto Razz’s arm. “She seemed very surprised when it was nowhere! Imagine, the queen of moons believing me to be skilled! Perhaps I could study under her!”

“Not to disappoint you, young master, but she’s not much older than yourself,” Halle said. "I don't think she plans to take an apprentice."

Adrian wilted, then perked back up as he asked, “How old is she?”

“Seventeen, and it’s nearly the tenth month, isn’t it?” Razz asked without thinking, and Halle blinked.

“Yes. Not many people outside of the temple keep track of the month.” Her question was obvious in the tone of her voice, and Razz shrugged.

“I was born in the same week as the queen of moons. It was a thing of pride for my family.”

She considered him for a long moment, then grinned. “I don’t suppose you’re trying to make your pilgrimage? I could easily be wrong, but you don’t look much like a Reinne from here.”

Laughing, he sat back, turning his food in his hand and taking a quick bite, speaking around it. “Is that the queen of suns? I’d never heard their first names before.”

“Oh, her name could be anything right now,” Halle said mysteriously, and Razz saw Adrian hanging on her every word. “That’s just what it was, long ago, and what she goes by whenever she returns. Shouldn’t be long, now.”

“You excited to meet her?”

Halle just chuckled, finally picking up a piece of cheese and tearing off a small piece to eat. “Maybe, just to find out what the fuss is all about. I’ve grown up hearing about her.”

“That’s something I’ve been wondering about,” Razz asked, sitting forward to peer at her. “I’ve never heard of the queen of moons having a companion, and I thought all family was banned from the temple during that life.”

“They are!” she said. “I’m not family by blood. My mother was a friend to the priestesses, and when she passed, they took me on. I think that since Basille and I are of a similar age, they thought it could be good for her to have a companion."

"Is that weird?"

Halle shrugged. "I was raised for her, I suppose, but we’re friends by our own decision.”

Someone called Halle’s name, and she cringed, looking in the direction of the temple. Razz followed her gaze, spotting a wrinkled old woman rounding the corner. She looked kindly enough, but Halle groaned at the sight of her.

“Who--”

“Caroline. She’s the teacher to the queen of moons. Probably wants me to visit someone in the town,” she muttered, seeming to half-consider hiding in the grass before she seemed to accept her fate. Quickly, she grasped Razz’s shoulder, nodding towards the food. “Keep it. We have plenty.” He hesitated, but she was already standing, waving to the priestess as she grabbed her basket, calling back a goodbye and crossing the gardens.

Then Adrian hummed happily, popping another grape into his mouth, and Razz decided to ignore his bruised pride.

~~~

Year 17, Month 10, Day 5

They couldn’t stay here any longer.

It was becoming a harsh reality, the longer Razz stared at the pile of coins on the table. He’d gotten them out to add today’s pay, tears jumping to his eyes as he saw how small the stash had gotten. He was laying in the bed now, blanket pulled up to his chin and hearing Adrian’s slow breaths behind him as he stared at the money.

There wasn’t even another option. Staying on the streets was an impossibility, with guards patrolling, and that was no life for Adrian even without the illegality. It was bad enough when they stayed in workers berths and piles of hay, but then at least they had a place .

He wasn’t sure why the thought of returning to the roads hurt him so much. Razz didn’t want to leave, which was a feeling he was incredibly unfamiliar with. They usually came into a town for no more than a week or two, but they’d been here for nearly two months.

It was like the pull to travel had been snatched from his blood, adventure paling next to what? A few nice people? Adrian’s happiness to work under Grelda? He’d been happy working for other healers, and they’d made friends at other places. Razz had even found a girl, once, one that he’d thought might be worth staying for, but not even she had been able to beat his urge to move on.

There was nothing here that was unique, no reason he should be risking so much to stay. They would have plenty if they continued to travel, went to the next city where they wouldn’t have to stay in an inn and Razz could be paid a bit more for even less work.

Why were the goddesses urging him to stay?

He’d considered asking Adrian what he thought, but Adrian had wanted to stay in every city they’d laid eyes on. Maybe that was part of it. He was getting older, getting to the age where he needed to find a place to settle, and Adrian, he knew, was tired of the traveling. The kid would follow him to the ends of the earth. He had to stop exploiting that at some point.

But even the next town over--

He was interrupted in his thought by the creak of the door opening, and he went entirely still, eyes squeezing shut as his heart started to hammer. No, no no. Had he not locked the door? How could he be so stupid?

The clinking of coins made his eyes fly open, cursing himself again for leaving the money on the table. The shadowy figure of a man was scooping the coins into his hand, reaching for Razz’s open coinpurse as if to check for more.

That was all they had, and no matter how stupid it was, how unarmed Razz may be, he couldn’t just let him take it.

He sat up all at once, tossing the blanket over Adrian and throwing himself at the figure. The coins rained to the ground, and there was a grunt of surprise as he sent them both to the floor.

“You little shit --” Razz heard an unfamiliar voice grunt, and a blow to his face made him see stars.

His head hit the floor. The man was over him, holding him down easily. The glint of a knife made Razz gasp for breath, desperately clawing at the hand on his shoulder as he kicked upwards. It made no difference. The knife arced down, and he flinched.

At the last second, it jolted to the side, as though stopped by an invisible barrier. The man cried out as his wrist twisted, keeping hold of the knife even as he gasped in surprise. Razz’s eyes went wide, but before he could do anything, the man grabbed him by the collar, lifting him slightly before slamming the back of his head against the floor and making his vision go blurry.

He still couldn’t see the other’s face, hidden beneath a deep hood. “Please--”

“Shut up!” He hissed, pressing the knife to Razz’s throat and making him go very still. “You brought this on yourself, boy. I had no intention of killing either of you.”

“It’s all we ha--” he choked as the knife tightened, feeling a bead of blood welling up around the blade.

“I said, shut up . Or do you want me to have to kill the kid, too?” That made Razz’s mouth snap shut. The man drew back the knife, aiming the point at his chest and adjusting the fingers around the blade “That’s what I thought. Now, keep your mouth shut, and I’ll-- oof! ”

Razz gaped, the man disappearing from his sight. Adrian was yelling, the sound of fighting reaching Razz’s ears as he tried to sit up. He gasped for breath, rolling over to come up onto his knees and looking over just in time to see the knife sink into Adrian’s stomach.

The man laughed disbelievingly as Adrian gasped in pain, and Razz’s vision went white.

He was on his feet before he knew how he had done it, fingers curling into the back of the stranger’s shirt and yanking him into his front. His free hand wrapped around the other’s forehead, and a pulsing anger filled his body, arcing through him like fiery electricity until suddenly, it shot out of him.

The fire concentrated to the place where his hand met the other’s head, burning its way so fast through the man that he didn’t even have time to scream. The smell of burning flesh filled the room, and as Razz let the body fall from his grip, he caught sight of Adrian’s horrified stare.

Razz’s legs went out from under him, and the last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was Adrian choking out his name.

#writingyo #sun and moon #demigods #violence tw #reincarnation #magic

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epchapman89 · 6 years

Text

The Fight Continues: An Interview With ACLU Deputy Legal Director Cecillia Wang

It both feels like a century ago and like it was yesterday—but here in America, this weekend marks the one year anniversary (or thereabouts) of President Trump’s absurdly unconstitutional attempt to ban Muslim immigrants from seven countries from entering the United States. In response to the attempted Muslim ban, more than 800 cafes across the United States joined us in an organized fundraiser to support the American Civil Liberties Union, whose legal actions in response to the Muslim ban helped strike the whole thing down in court. Together those cafes, alongside several other coffee companies and industry leaders, raised more than $400,000 for the ACLU, united under the twin banners of #RefugeesWelcome and #YesEqual inspired by coffee’s capacity for moral and civic leadership.

Our friends at the ACLU are so grateful for this work—not just for the financial contribution, which directly helped fund their travel and organizational efforts opposing the ban, but for the community support. They, too, are coffee drinkers—it’s a bunch of lawyers, after all!—and for ACLU staff and partners to see such overwhelming support at the cafe level during this time of crisis was incredibly meaningful for all involved.

Cecillia Wang is a deputy legal director at the National ACLU, and she’s worked previously as director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project. Wang was directly involved in the ACLU’s response to the initial Muslim ban, and has worked tirelessly over the last year to continue to oppose the ban and its many revisions. She’s also a coffee lover—make her a pour-over, please—and had the unique experience of seeing the outpouring of support from cafes across the San Francisco Bay Area, where she’s based, when stopping in for coffee to and from her work with ACLU National.

When the ACLU gave us the opportunity to speak with Cecillia Wang about the events of last year, and her work over the last 12 months, we absolutely jumped at the opportunity. The below interview does include talk of coffee, but only briefly; if you’re part of the “Stick to coffee, Sprudge” crowd, this might not be the feature for you. (We have a nice “Coffee at the Puppy Bowl” story you may prefer instead.) But for us it’s meaningful to give over these pages today to someone actively fighting the good fight with the ACLU, on behalf of immigrants and allies everywhere.

We’ll be organizing more work with the ACLU in 2018 as part of our bi-annual Night of 1000 Pours initiative. More info coming soon—watch this space. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who participated in last year’s ACLU fundraising work, including all 800+ cafes and dozens more companies who supported this work. Cecillia Wang says it best in the interview below. “We feel so supported by what cafes and local cafe communities have done over the past year,” she tells Sprudge co-founder Jordan Michelman. “It makes such a big difference, and we are incredibly grateful to have that partnership.”

The feeling is mutual.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Jordan Michelman: Hello Cecillia Wang, and thanks so much for speaking with us today on the anniversary of the 2017 ACLU coffee fundraiser. By way of introduction, can you let us know a bit about what your role is with the ACLU?

Cecillia Wang: Sure. I am one of three deputy legal directors at the National ACLU, and my issue areas include immigrants’ rights, voting rights, speech, privacy and technology, as well as human rights and national security. I help to oversee our program work in those issue areas and connect our litigation with our other kinds of advocacy, including legislative advocacy or communications work, so that we’re on track to meet our goals. I’m also the former director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project, and I still oversee that project. On the Muslim ban in particular, I’ve been on a legal team and argued the case in front of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, just a few weeks ago on December 8th.

Michelman: Wow. That’s all pretty remarkable. Set the scene for us last year: what were you doing in advance of the attempted Muslim ban?

Wang: Well, we were still waiting to see what President Trump would come out with. He had just been inaugurated, and prior to the first version of his Muslim ban—it was issued on January 27 of 2017—so prior to that we were anticipating some kind of move not only to ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States but also, more broadly, to restrict immigration, to go after immigrant communities around the country in all the ways that he promised to as a candidate.

Even before he was inaugurated, we were ready. We had put in some pieces, put kind of a plan in place to respond to the president’s anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda and also to push pro-immigrant and pro-integration, pro-equality measures around the country on the state and local level as well as on the national level.

Michelman: Okay, so jump to January 27, 2017—the ban comes out, in a pretty haphazard fashion, and the ACLU springs into action. What was that moment like inside the organization? Take us there.

Wang: Okay. On January 27, 2017, to take us back a year, we knew that the president was going to issue something on Muslim immigration among the first things he did in office. Just two days previously, January 25th, he’d issued two really broad ranging executive orders on immigration, one that focused on border enforcement, one that focused on interior enforcement, so we were already responding to those two executive orders. We got word on Friday the 27th that he was going to issue something on the Muslim ban.

As you may recall, reporters actually got a copy of the original executive order before anyone else did because it was leaked, so there was chaos. It came out around 4:30 in the afternoon on a Friday, January 27th, and we were immediately scrambling to read it as quickly as possible. We were anticipating that we might immediately see people being turned away at the airports. We worked with our partner organizations like the International Refugee Assistance Project, which ended up identifying a few people, including Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who were scheduled to land at JFK Airport in New York that evening. We immediately went to work with the Yale Law School Clinic students, with IRAP and with the National Immigration Law Center in order to start preparing legal papers in case Mr. Darweesh was turned away and in case others were being turned away.

From there, it’s almost like a minute by minute scenario. So many things were happening minute by minute starting as soon as the executive order was leaked on the late afternoon of January 27th. That night lawyers were at the airports waiting to see if Mr. Darweesh and others would be coming in or not. They were initially blocked from coming in, so we worked overnight to file a habeas petition for writ of habeas corpus, which is the form of lawsuit that you file when the federal government has custody over someone illegally. We got that on file early in the morning on Saturday, January 28th.

Meanwhile, we were of course seeing then by the time Saturday rolled around that there were other people, countless people really, who were trying to get in at airports around the country who were being detained and turned away by Customs and Border Protection officials. On Saturday as we were preparing the legal papers, getting them on file and trying to get a handle on what’s happening around the airports, ACLU lawyers around the country along with other volunteer lawyers and lawyers from other immigrants’ rights groups were mobilizing to the airports. We had a colleague, Andre Segura, who went to JFK, and Cody Wofsy, who went to SFO, and then other ACLU state-affiliate lawyers around the country going to airports joining with other lawyers. And so literally, you’re basically pounding the pavement to try to get a handle on what was happening, because government officials were not telling us.

We would go to the arrivals area of all these international airports and basically scan the arrivals area for people who looked like they were relatives anxiously awaiting people who were coming into the US. As you also saw, at the same time people were mobilizing to go and protest at airports around the country. We ended up seeing the immense show of support for immigrants and refugees from these banned countries with people turning out at the airports to resist the Trump administration’s executive order and to show support for immigrants both already in the United States and who were trying to come in through the airports that very day.

On the evening of Saturday, January 28th, we ended up going to federal court in Brooklyn, the eastern district of New York, and there was an immense crowd of about 1,000 people gathered outside of the courthouse, because we quickly got word out through social media that this hearing was happening. As our colleague Lee Gelernt, who’s an ACLU lawyer, was arguing the case of Mr. Darweesh in federal court in Brooklyn, there were people who were literally being put on planes by federal government officials at airports around the country illegally under the executive order.

There was this very dramatic moment when Peter Markowitz, who is an immigrants’ rights attorney in New York, rushed in. He had been at JFK all day long and rushed into the courtroom and went up to Lee Gelernt, who was standing at the lectern arguing to this US district judge, and whispered to him, “Get her to issue the ruling now. There is a woman who’s been put on a plane. It’s literally taxiing to the runway. She’s being deported now under the executive order, and we need a court order.” The court ruled as it did, staying or basically freezing all the deportations under the executive order.

Then further chaos ensued because the Trump administration had not rolled out the executive order in any coherent way. They also didn’t roll out the court order in any coherent way. So there were these volunteer attorneys, and even in JFK there were all of these city officials, New York City officials, and members of Congress who were desperately trying to persuade the CBP officials in the airport that in fact a federal court had ruled against the Trump administration and that they had to turn the planes around to the extent that they had people who were being deported so that they could come in to the United States.

Michelman: Wow. I know this happened in real life, but hearing you tell it, this story sounds like a movie.

Wang: It was a very intense weekend. We had lawyers around the country both at the ACLU and at other organizations and volunteer private attorneys who were doing everything they could and repeating this process of filing individual habeas corpus petitions in federal courts wherever there were airports where people were being turned away and deported under the executive order on January 28th.

Michelman: It’s crazy that this was just one year ago. Can you update us a little bit on where we’re at now? Many of our readers care about the issue of immigrants’ rights, and so I’m wondering what the ACLU’s work on this specific issue or set of issues is looking like now a year later.

Wang: Yeah. It has been an incredible year. 2017 was an amazing year of legal challenges and popular resistance. The same kind of dynamic that I just played out over the course of the 36-hour period starting on January 27, 2017, continued throughout the year. What was so critical throughout the year was that the lawyers went to court to stop the Trump administration from carrying out its illegal and white nationalist policies on immigration, supported by this groundswell, including all the cafes who came forward and raised money in communities; micro-communities sent in financial support and actual support in the form of speaking out, turning up, showing up around the country, whether it’s at airports or at marches or just expressing in local communities our resistance to the Trump administration’s plans on immigration and refugee admissions.

That continued, and so we’ve had the president on the ropes throughout the year. The ACLU with our partners filed the initial lawsuit that got a stop to version one of the Muslim ban. Then Trump came out with version two of the Muslim ban in March. We had to start at square one again amending our complaints, filing new lawsuits in order to stop version two in March. At that point, as you know, or soon after all of the immigrants’ rights organizations and the ACLU went forward with our legal challenges to the first version, the state of Washington jumped into the fray, which was a sign of how widespread the harms of Trump’s Muslim ban are that state governments were coming forward to say, “We’re going to take the Trump administration to court because our state interests are being harmed by these discriminatory anti-Muslim policies.”

Then you saw the victories that were scored not only by the ACLU but the state of Washington with version two, which rolled out in March. We similarly beat the Trump administration in court, and then he rolled out version three. Version three contained a provision meant to separate out the refugee piece from the visa piece, which meant that there were even more lawsuits filed. We again filed. We amended our complaint when version three came out and said, “Version three is like the other two versions.” The state of Hawaii, which had filed its lawsuit, also was litigating in parallel with us, and again the Ninth Circuit in the Hawaii case and the Fourth Circuit in our IRAP case again ruled against the Trump administration.

What’s going on right now is that version three has just been taken up by the Supreme Court. On Friday, January 19th, the Supreme Court granted a cert in the Hawaii case. Right now, we are still waiting for our decision from the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, so our case may end up in the Supreme Court as well, but basically the president has continued to doggedly pursue his Muslim ban and other anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim policies despite being rebuked by the courts time and again.

Beyond the specific legal issues that have to do with the Muslim ban, which are about the Establishment Clause or the First Amendment and about the Immigrant and Nationality Act, there’s this more fundamental issue that’s being raised in the Supreme Court case and that’s been raised all year long in all of the lower courts, and that is President Trump is asserting that he can bar anyone he wants from the United States, any non-citizens that he wants from the United States, whether it’s because they’re Muslim or because they’re from certain countries, and that no one can stop him. He’s basically taken the position that the courts have no power to review what the president does when it comes to immigrant policy.

That’s what the Ninth Circuit and the Fourth Circuit and the lower district courts have repeatedly blocked him from doing. They’ve categorically rejected the notion that the president can act without any judicial review, and that is one of the core issues that will be taken up by the Supreme Court when it hears the Muslim ban.

Michelman: People talked a lot last year about this specific claim by the administration, where they said, in effect, “Our ban doesn’t say the word ‘Muslim’ in it, so it’s not really a Muslim ban; it just happens to be from these countries.” Which resulted in people going back and saying, “Well, wait, you said X, Y, and Z on the campaign trail, and so here’s your statements to the contrary of what you’re trying to say.” How much of that is still in play? What role do past statements play in determining the true intent behind the ban?

Wang: It’s a great question. There are basically two questions on which the president’s own statements out of his own mouth or out of his own Twitter account have drastically deviated from what the president’s lawyers have said in court. The first one is what you’ve identified, which is the president’s lawyers come into court and they say, “This is not a Muslim ban. We’re not going after Muslims. We are going after national security risks from these countries.” The courts have been unanimous in saying, “Well, we’re going to consider what the president himself has said.”

He has reaffirmed time and again, including recently after taking office and with respect to the third version of his Muslim ban, that in fact he is going after Muslims. He is making good on his campaign promise of barring Muslims from immigrating to the United States. He was very clear in saying that. He initially said as a candidate, “I want to ban Muslims from coming to the United States,” and then he was told by advisors, “You can’t do that. It would be unconstitutional.”

From there he literally goes to Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, and says, “Giuliani, tell me how I can do my Muslim ban in a legal way.” The recommendation he got back was, don’t do a religious test for admission to the United States; the way you should do it is to go after territories or countries. In other words, they’re using countries as a proxy for religion, and you see that in the countries they’ve chosen now in the third version. Every single version of the ban that’s been in place has overwhelmingly affected Muslims because they’ve picked countries that are predominantly Muslim, overwhelmingly Muslim in their demographics.

The president has continued to say through his Twitter account that he wanted a tough ban from the beginning; he was told to water it down by the lawyers and that he was right all along. He wanted to go with the full-out version of his Muslim ban. That’s been the story that has come out in the courts, the story of how the president shifted from an explicit religion-based ban on Muslims to the proxy of a country-based ban that has the same effect of banning Muslims.

The second point in which the president has deviated from what his lawyers have said in court is that as a legal strategy, the government lawyers keep saying, “This is just a temporary suspension on the admission of people from these countries.” Well, that too has been belied by the fact that what originally was a 90-day suspension, they’ve been trying to pursue it for a year. The third version of the ban, which came in the form of this proclamation, has a feature of giving the president or the president assuming for himself the power to indefinitely re-up the ban and even to add new countries to the ban. It says so on the very face of the proclamation.

As many of our clients have said in our more recent filings in court, even if one of our individual clients was separated from their spouse or their child who had a visa to come to the United States and was blocked by Trump’s executive orders, even in those cases where our litigation has successfully reunited that family and got a court order that permits the person to come into the country to be united with their family member—even in those cases—the impact of the Muslim ban is still devastating. Everyone in the country and around the world knows that President Trump is going after Muslims and that that’s had devastating impacts on our communities around the country.

Michelman: Right. I can only imagine, but it’s so embarrassing to know that this is being done in our name, as Americans, and so many people feel the same way—that’s why you saw so much support for the ACLU’s fight on this issue.

I’m sure that it was a dizzying time while this was all going on, but I’m curious to know, did people at the ACLU see the support happening from the coffee community during this time last year?

Wang: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, we saw it on an individual level where I personally would go to cafes at home in San Francisco or while I was on the road and see that. Cafes play such a critical role in how our communities come together. We all know that. What was so heartening to see is it’s a two-way street in terms of the impact. I can go as just a resident of the local community to my local cafe and see I’ve got a way to plug in to the effort. I’ve got a way. We’re not going to have an airport protest every weekend, but I can drop my $5 bill and I know that’s going to support the work, which makes it possible for the lawyers to go and travel and do our work. That support makes it possible for us to lift up immigrant communities in all of these ways through our work, but it’s also a way for individuals and families around the country to say, we’re joining in.

That protest, the visibility of the American people saying no to the president’s policies, has been so critical throughout the year. We wouldn’t have these wins in court if we didn’t have the people behind us. At the end of the day, we’re going to have to keep going to court, because the president is undeterred, and he’s going to keep pushing illegal policies that we need to challenge through the court system. But at the end of the day, what’s going to really make the difference and what is going to definitively shut down the efforts of President Trump and his base to re-institute a white nationalist immigration policy is the flexing of the people’s political muscle.

What cafes have done in raising money, in putting up a flier, in displaying that Refugees are Welcome sign in the door or the window, all of those things are part of that groundswell of the American people saying, “We do not agree with President Trump.” It makes such a difference not only because it empowers regular people who want to show their support and actually take part in democracy, but it also is critical for the targeted members of our communities. When I am a refugee anxiously awaiting my relative who’s been blocked by President Trump and I go to my local cafe, I can see a visible manifestation of the community’s support and love for me, that the community is saying, “We don’t agree with Trump, we welcome you.” That is so beautiful to see.

Michelman: Did you ever have a moment while it was going on where you went into a cafe and you were like, “Hi, I work for the ACLU”? Did you ever have that moment?

Wang: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t recall actually specifically where, but I can recall on more than one occasion where I walked into a cafe and saw that people were raising money to support the ACLU and our work on the Muslim ban. I definitely, like I said, I’m walking into that cafe both as a customer but also as someone who’s doing the work, and it felt so good. Every time that has happened, I have felt so great about the fact that I feel supported by it both as an individual and as a representative of this organization. I wish I could remember the specific cafes, because it happened more than once, but I remember actually emailing my colleagues and saying, “Hey, I just went into this cafe and saw this amazing sign… ”

Michelman: That’s awesome.

Wang: Yes, and so many of my colleagues had the same experience.

Michelman: What’s your preferred cafe order? What do you like to get when you go out for coffee?

Wang: [laughs] I just get a pour-over.

Michelman: Always a pour-over?

Wang: Yes! I’m a drip coffee drinker.

Michelman: That’s awesome. Well, for people who really care about this stuff and want to stay involved, what are some ways people can stay involved going forward as the fight continues?

Wang: We have our People Power effort, which really has been made possible by the donations from people around the country. The ACLU has always been one of the leading civil rights and civil liberties legal outfits. People know that you can count on us to go and sue the government when the government needs suing. What I think has been really neat is that we have this People Power initiative so people can gather in local communities to say, we want to work on this issue, whether it’s the Muslim ban, whether it’s supporting Dreamers or supporting abortion rights. Whatever it is, people can ban together. You can go to PeoplePower.org and organize yourselves around the issues you care about that the ACLU is working on.

As our country gets more and more polarized, and as President Trump’s base continues egging him on to enact white supremacist policies, we also have on the opposite end of the spectrum; well, actually it’s not really a spectrum, I would submit that the great majority of American people disagree with what he is doing. He’s got a very vocal minority base that’s egging him on, whereas the majority of people in this country are fighting to maintain our better values. We care about integrating, we care about fairness, we care about equality; we care that everybody gets an equal opportunity to live their best life in their local communities.

I think that we’re going to have protracted fights. We see it right now with the government, with the Republicans briefly shutting down the government because they’ve refused to give Dreamers a chance to continue living and contributing in the United States. As those kinds of fights come down to legislative battles, I think that people around the country can literally speak up by calling a member of Congress, who’s making a very important decision to say, “I’m not a Dreamer. I am not an immigrant myself, but I care about this, and I’m going to be voting accordingly.” I think that’s really critical.

I think that one of the concerns that we had as civil rights advocates, as human rights advocates is January 28, 2017 was this crescendo moment where you saw just thousands of people. You know the president was sitting there in the White House watching CNN, watching MSNBC, watching these protests, and the concern we have is you can’t protest in the airport every day. You can’t protest in the airport every weekend. We just had this fantastic, perhaps annual Women’s March, which I took part in and so many people took part in. That’s a crescendo moment where the people are expressing their will in numbers, but how do we keep that up every day?

I think that you keep that up every day by expressing solidarity in your local community and by calling your representatives in Congress and having those one-on-one conversations with your awkward uncle, who may not be informed on these issues. It’s the same way that we won on LGBT equality. It’s having those immediate conversations in our families, in our local communities and keeping up the pressure, translating that up to the national level. What they feel you can do is to help people to coalesce and have those conversations locally, and we can definitely help in translating that local action to the national level. We all just have to keep doing our part wherever we are.

Michelman: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time today, and thank you for everything that you do with your professional work on this. It’s hugely important. I really appreciate you and everyone at our small company appreciates you.

Wang: Thank you. I really want to emphasize that we feel so supported by what cafes and local cafe communities have done over the past year. It makes such a big difference, and we are incredibly grateful to have that partnership and to have all of the work that we can do collectively because people pitch in everywhere.

Michelman: That’s fantastic—thank you so much Cecillia. They better choose somebody good to play you in the movie.

Wang: [laughs] Thanks.

Learn more and get involved at ACLU.org and PeoplePower.org. Special thanks to Danielle Silber and Cecillia Wang of ACLU National for organizing this interview. Even more thanks to Sprudge staffers Robyn Brems and Zac Cadwalader for their tireless work behind the scenes organizing last year’s fundraising effort.

More coverage:

A Nationwide Coffee Fundraiser For The ACLU

Top Coffee Brands To Match Cafes In Nationwide ACLU Fundraiser

Coffee Sprudgecast #35 With Mokhtar Alkhanshali

ACLU Attorney Edgar Saldivar Enjoys Good Coffee, Liberty

A Handy Map For This Weekend’s ACLU Fundraiser

Coffee Just Raised So Much Money For The ACLU

An Open Letter To Howard Schultz [Update: He never wrote us back.]

#refugeeswelcome

#yesequal

The post The Fight Continues: An Interview With ACLU Deputy Legal Director Cecillia Wang appeared first on Sprudge.

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Your Friday Morning Roundup

Put aside the protests and the Zeke Elliott situation, actual NFL football returned last night. And it was fun to watch if you hate the Patriots.

The Andy Reid-led Chiefs took care of the defending Super Bowl champs, 42-27. That’s the most amount of points the Pats have given up under Bill Belichick. And Reid did a really good with time management? Weird world.

Anyway, Alex Smith, who could be entering his last year as the team’s starter with Patrick Mahomes behind him, went 28-for-35 with 368 yards passing and four touchdowns. Rookie running back Kareem Hunt had himself a night after fumbling his first carry in the NFL. He ran for 148 yards on 17 carries with a touchdown, and also caught five passes for 98 yards and two scores. He set an NFL record for yards from scrimmage in the first game of his career with 239. The Eagles play the Chiefs in KC next Sunday.

Tyreek Hill made seven catches for 133 yards and a touchdown, but left the game in the fourth quarter with cramps.

Star safety Eric Berry was carted off the field after suffering an Achilles injury. Looks like it could be a tear.

#Chiefs coach Andy Reid said star S Eric Berry has a potential Achilles tear. They'll know more tomorrow… but horrible news after a big W.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) September 8, 2017

Tom Brady went 16-for-36 with 267 yards passing, and Mike Gillislee scored all three of New England’s touchdowns on 45 yards rushing.

Andy Reid put up 42 points and 536 yards on the Super Bowl champion Patriots. My god. Next week should be fun.

The Roundup:

Eagles’ owner Jeffrey Lurie held an impromptu press conference where he discussed clickbait, Kelly Green jerseys (better happen), and having dinner with Andy Reid.

The Eagles also unveiled their new hype video for the season. Thumbtack. Thumbtack. Thumbtack. Kyle ranked all the yearly hype videos. If you give a crap, here’s mine:

5. 2016 (solely because it included St. Joe’s Prep, my high school’s (La Salle) archrival

4. 2014

3. 2015

2. 2017

1. 2013

Tim McManus went on a car ride with Carson Wentz and asked him a few questions.

Zach Ertz is going to break out this year, finally, and more valuable fantasy advice from fantasy guru Jim.

Alshon Jeffery’s cleats are fire.

These are the personalized "AJ XIII Cleats" Alshon Jeffery will be wearing this weekend #Eagles http://pic.twitter.com/mkqweL0uWy

— Eliot Shorr-Parks (@EliotShorrParks) September 7, 2017

He also won’t chirp at Josh Norman on Sunday.

Finally, check out Sean’s first Eagles Mailbag post.

—

Some not-so-good news regarding Joel Embiid from Howard Eskin on 94 WIP yesterday:

“He’s not ready for five-on-five play, according to the Sixers. But what I understand is, his agent wants a new contract before he — remember he’s eligible to get a new deal. Now, if you’re the Sixers you can’t give him a max deal until you see that he can play, how many games he can play during the season.

“But my understanding, part of the reason that they’re saying — whoever it is that is saying that he’s not ready for five-on-five play, is because — and Joel Embiid, I don’t think worries about the money, but they listen to their agents. And the agent wants a new contract.”

Brett Brown on WIP – article from Liberty Ballers – said Eskin’s report is BS.

Training Camp will take place from September 26 until September 29 in Camden. One practice per day.

Amir Johnson said some more promising things about Ben Simmons after a community event at the Strawberry Mansion PAL Center:

Was going back over Amir's comments from today.

There was also this: "I truly believe that Ben is going to be the future of this league."

— Brian Seltzer (@brianseltzer) September 7, 2017

Did we see a glimpse of a new red jersey yesterday? Our good friend Conrad Burry made some predictions:

Took a stab at some predictions…I actually don't mind the wacky art deco font. Maybe it'd be alright if they re-drew it cleaner. http://pic.twitter.com/KASlHlRLMS

— Conrad Burry (@conradburry) September 7, 2017

To add to the intrigue, CEO Scott O’Neil gave some input about the funky 70s wordmark in a Tweet two years ago:

I actually like those u? https://t.co/S9Nh0UY6TR

— Scott O'Neil (@ScottONeil) April 17, 2015

EuroBasket updates:

FINAL: 107 – 69

Saric – 22MIN / 18PTS / 10REB / 3AST

— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) September 7, 2017

Furkan Korkmaz (Turkey) got a rebound in eight minutes of play in Turkey’s loss to Latvia.

—

The Phillies played a game last night as well. They lost to the Nationals 4-3.

Odubel Herrera extended his hit-streak to 20 games, and Jorge Alfaro hit his second big league homer. Aaron Nola gave up three runs on seven hits in 5.1 innings.

Phillies and Nationals do battle again tonight at 7:05. Jake Thompson takes the mound for the Phils against Max Scherzer. God bless.

Scott Kingery and Tom Eshelman were the recipients of this year’s Paul Owens Awards, given to the team’s top minor league player and pitcher.

Meanwhile, former pitcher Brett Myers has a new music video. Not gonna lie, he’s kind of good. Him and Kyle had a weird Twitter exchange:

Thanks… wasn’t bashing you (really). Just not my scene. The song itself isn’t bad

— Kyle Scott (@CrossingBroad) September 7, 2017

Maybe u should come down and hang and see how we have a good time then u might change ur mind