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therealbeachfox · 4 months

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Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.

It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.

To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.

This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.

Join me below, if you would.

2004 was an election year, and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today, in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff. Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage from destroying everything good and decent in the world.

Enter Gavin Newstrom. At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. Despite living next door to the city all my life, I hadn’t even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004 when he announced that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.

It was a political stunt. It was very obviously a political stunt. That shit was illegal, after all. But it was a very sweet political stunt. I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.

But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system to come in and make them knock it off.

The next day, we’re on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that she’s surprised the two of us aren’t up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.

“Everyone else?” Goes I, “I thought they would’ve shut that down already?”

“Oh no!” goes she, “The courts aren’t open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. They’re doing them all weekend long!”

We didn’t know because social media wasn’t a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as I’d read on CNN, and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.

"Well shit", me and my man go, "do you wanna?" I mean, it’s a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but we’re not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?

The next day, Sunday, we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station. We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.

We had slightly miscalculated.

Apparently, demand for marriages was far outstripping the staff they had on hand to process them. Who knew. Everyone who’d gotten turned away Saturday had been given tickets with times to show up Sunday to get their marriages done. My babe and I, we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.

“Isn’t City Hall closed on Monday?” I asked. “It’s a holiday”

“Oh sure,” they reply, “but people are allowed to volunteer their time to come in and work on stuff anyways. And we have a lot of people who want to volunteer their time to have the marriage licensing offices open tomorrow.”

“Oh cool,” we go, “Backup.”

“Make sure you’re here if you do,” they say, “because the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.”

And all this shit is super not-legal, so they’ll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.

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We don’t get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.

It’s… incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of others’ joy and happiness in all my life before or since. My face literally ached from grinning. Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd and cheering and leaping and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another. A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi. One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in. More than once I was giving some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.

At some point in the mid-afternoon, there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps, even though no one was coming out. There was a group going up the steps to head inside, with some generic black-haired shiny guy at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me, “That’s Newsom.” He said, because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.

Ooooooh, I go. That explains it. Then I joined in the cheers. He waved and ducked inside.

So dusk is starting to fall. It’s February, so it’s only six or so, but it’s getting dark.

“Should we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?” we ask.

“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.” One of the volunteers tells us. “We’re not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. We’d need Porta-Poties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot, and no one had time to get all that organized. Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.

Monday is the last day to do this, after all.

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So we go home. We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get the first train up. We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.

The line stretches around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall. You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people who’re up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.

“Uh.” We go. “What the fuck is -this-?”

So.

Remember why they weren’t going to be able to have people hang out overnight?

Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security. And some anonymous person delivered over a dozen Porta-Poties that’d gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.

It’s 6:30 am, there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this literal once in a lifetime marriage, the last chance we expect to have for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front. It was not looking good. We were just happy we lived in California were we at least weren’t likely to loose job protections any time soon.).

Then it starts to rain.

We had not dressed for rain.

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Here is how the next six hours go.

We’re in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. It’s around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and you’ve got a makeshift raincoat! So you’ve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice wearing trashbags over it.

Everyone is so happy.

Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.

People online start making delivery orders.

Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it. We get pizza. We get roses. Random people come by who just want to give hugs to people in line because they’re just so happy for us. The tour busses make detours to go past the lines. Chinese tourists lean out with their cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.

A single sad man holding a Bible tries to talk people out of doing this, tells us all we’re sinning and to please don’t. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against God’s will. She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.

The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors. Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how “Not even DOGS do such things!” Which… Yes they do.

A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that we’re willing to come out in the rain to do this while they’re not willing to come out in the rain to protest it proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.

Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall we’re on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when we’re on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when we’re on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun. Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth.

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We have Line Neighbors.

Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us. They’ve been together for eight years. The older one is a school teacher. He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him. He’s worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired. The younger one will step away to get interviewed on his own later on. They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on. They’d started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.

The most perky energetic joyful woman I’ve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. She’s their local friend who’d just gotten their message about what they’re doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them. Her friends cry on her shoulders at her unconditional joy.

Behind us are a lesbian couple who’d been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. “We met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because it’s our first love city.”

“Then they announced -this-,” the other one says, “and we can’t leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.”

“I told them why,” her partner says, “I don’t care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.”

My husband-to-be and I look at each other. We’ve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? We’re potentially taking a spot from another couple that’d been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.

“This is as much for you as it is for us!” says the lesbian couple who’ve been together for over a decade behind us.

“You kids are too cute together,” says the gay couple’s friend. “you -have- to. Someday -you’re- going to be the old gay couple that’s been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.”

We stay in line.

It’s while we’re on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last that we pick up our own companions. A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders. “Can we say we’re with you? His uncles are already inside and they’re not letting anyone in who isn’t with a couple right there.” “Of course!” we say.

The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but there’s free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so he’s having a great time.

We pass by a statue of Lincoln with ‘Marriage for All!’ and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.

It’s about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.

They’ve promised that anyone who’s inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. We’re safe.

We still have a -long- way to go.

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They’re trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.

It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. “It’s an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”

We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.

We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.

I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.

The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.

Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.

The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. “Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today I’m acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“

The guy behind the counter has been there since six. It’s now 1:30. He’s still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. “Alright, go to the Rotunda, they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.” “Can’t you just mail it to us?” “Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”

We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.

If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.

That’s for the people who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.

There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing. There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.

We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)

I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.

There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that we’d made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands who’d cheered for us generally.

Then we're married.

Then we get in line to get our license.

It’s another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.

Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked “THANK YOU!”s that have been piled up against it.

We make it to the marriage records office.

I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.

It's almost 3PM.

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There are cheers, there’s rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. It’s no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. There’s barely even any news vans.

We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.

I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south, and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. “Hey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just… I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m- I’m just really glad, glad you could get to do this.”

He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.

Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.

We get back to our car and climb in.

It’s 4:30 and we are starving.

There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.

We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.

We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.

The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsom’s marriages.

My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. “No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! I’ll just be there for the next one!”

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It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didn’t even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was “marriage really isn’t that important, aside from the legal benefits. It’s just confirming what you already have.”

But maybe it’s just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and I’ve never really come up with a better metaphor is, “It’s like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. We were keeping each other above water, we were each other’s support. But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up to meet our feet. We were still in an ocean, still in the middle of a storm, but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet. We still supported each other, but there was this other thing that was also keeping our heads above the water.

It was different. It was better. It made things more solid and real.

I am forever grateful for all the forces and all the people who came together to make it possible. It’s been twenty years and we’re still together and still married.

We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. We’d done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husband’s collection hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.

Rushed. In a hurry. Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again if it passed.

It did, but we were already married at that point, and they couldn’t negate it that time.

Another few years after that, the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said "Fine! It's been legal in places and nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts. It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"

And that was that.

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When I was in highschool, in the late 90s, I didn’t expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldn’t see how the American public as it was would ever be okay with it.

I never expected to be getting married within five years. I never expected it to be legal nationwide before I’d barely started by 30s. I never thought I’d be in my 40s and it’d be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers would’ve had to move onto other wedge issues altogether.

I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.

I never thought I’d live in this world.

And it’s twenty years later today. I wonder how our line buddies are doing. Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag will have graduated college by now. The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried would see him are probably married too now. Some of them to others of the same gender.

I don’t have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you can’t predict. For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with all of you.

The future we’re resigned to doesn’t have to be the one we live in. Society can shift faster than you think. The unimaginable of twenty years ago is the baseline reality of today.

And always remember that the people who want to get married will show up by the thousands in rain that none of those who’re against it will brave.

#gay marriage #gay rights #gay history #gay

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inkskinned · 4 months

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there's a video on instagram of a man kicking his partner's door in. the top comment is (with over 4 thousand likes): "how about you tell us what you did to make him that angry?"

barring emergency, nobody should be kicking anybody's door in. many of us lived in houses where it was always, somehow, an emergency. there is a strange, almost hysterical calm that comes over you in that moment - everything feels muted, and you almost feel, however incongruently, like you should be laughing. you are living inside of "the emergency." oh my god, you think. i am now a fucking statistic.

there is another comment with 2.8 thousand likes: "if this was a woman doing it to a man, nobody would give a shit."

do people give a shit now, though?

barring emergency, the door should remain standing. the emergency should be panicked, desperate - "i'm coming in there to protect you." many of us know what it feels like when the emergency is instead "i'm coming in there to get you."

1.5k likes: "and yet you post this for notes. glad to see being the victim has become your whole personality."

hysteria is a word connected to womb, from greek. what you're experiencing is so senseless and inhumane that you (a rational creature) try to find any ground within what is irrational and cannot be explained. one of the most frustrating things about staying in bad situations is that we also lie to ourselves. we also ask ourselves - wow. what did i do?

women can be, and often are, also abusers. abuse is not gendered. abuse is not just a "straight person" problem. abuse does not have a face or figure or sexuality. you cannot pick an abuser out of a crowd. an abuser could be actually anybody.

and then so many people rally behind the man kicking the door in. here is something nobody should be doing, right? you want to ask every person that liked that first comment: do you ask this because you side with him? do you ask this because it helps you feel safe from this ever happening?

in some ways, you're weirdly sympathetic to the top comment, because it is the same logic you see frequently. the idea is that the average, normal, sane person doesn't just break down a door. doesn't just shoot up a school. doesn't stalk and kill women. doesn't threaten sexual assault. doesn't run over protesters. doesn't shoot an unarmed black person. doesn't scream at underpaid walmart employees. doesn't just "lose it". something had to have happened, right? because the default (white. straight. cis.) - that is someone who is always, you know. "sane."

(right?)

on a podcast, you hear a sane, normal, rational person. "if you piss me off, i'm going to need to hit something. sorry but i'm not apologizing. that's just who i am that's how it is." his voice almost sounds like he's laughing.

you think of the door, and how you were almost laughing behind it, too. ironically, every real emergency in your life has almost felt peaceful in comparison. fire, car accident, flash flooding - these felt quiet, covenant to you. you'd stood in all of them, feeling them pass over and up to your chin, never actually overwhelming.

but when the door was coming down, you had felt - is there a word for that? there has to be, a word, right.

surely one of us has figured out the word for that, i mean. it's such a large fucking statistic.

#spilled ink #writeblr #warm up #this is so disorganized #i just saw that video and the comments made me want to vomit #it's actually like. in the way it's funny that you got into a car crash and got the flu within the same 24 hours #it's like.#it's funny #because certain people will blame everything on mental illness #even being transgender.#they will not #however #at any point - even vaguely suggest that a man should maybe get therapy.#like. a guy busting down a door isn't a danger-to-himself-and-others #(you just pushed him too far).#but a young adult looking for top surgery should be institutionalized for even wanting to change their body.

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cryptotheism · 1 year

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A Review of The Way Of The Shadow Wolves: The Deep State And The Hijacking Of America by Steven Segal

Alleged rapist and human trafficker, cop groupie, washed-up action movie star, and personal friend to Vladimir Putin, the paradox of Steven Segal is how he manages to stick around despite being –by damn near every account– a universally unpleasant vacuum of charisma. I could go on, but I feel that no introduction of Steven would be complete without the tale of the headlock. Legends tell of Steven’s conflict with legendary martial artist and hollywood stunt coordinator “Judo” Gene Lebell. Allegedly, the two fell into an argument on the set of the film Out For Justice. The crux being Steven’s claim that he was “immune” to being choked unconscious. Allegedly, LeBell called his bluff, and put the actor in a headlock. A headlock that resulted in Steven losing consciousness, and control of his bowels. Steven denies the story. He also wrote a book.

The book is garbage, but garbage in a way that can be easily overstated. I wanted to take a page from other reviewers of this book, and call the text what it is; a fever dream of exhausting mediocrity, swaddled in delusions of grandeur. I wanted to whale on it. I wanted to denounce it like some ridiculous fire-and-brimstone preacher of internet literary criticism. But this does not capture the core, the essence of Way of the Shadow Wolves. There is a paradox at the heart of this text, a contradiction that even now I struggle to describe. Because despite everything, despite the balls-to-the-walls premise, the disastrous prose, and the buckwild plot, this book is deeply and powerfully boring. To call it a fever dream is to imply that it might be exciting.

Some books are bad in a way that must be experienced firsthand. This is not one of those books. In a way, I feel that you’ve already read this book. You know Steven Segal. You met him in elementary school, when he told you he has “every black belt.” You met him in college when you tricked him into smoking a bag of oregano. You met him at your most recent family gathering, where you were trapped in an awkward one-sided conversation about “those people.” The bad-ness of Steven’s work is deeply familiar.

We have our boots. We have our waders. We have our shovels. But, before we wade into the shit, there is one more thing we need to get out of the way: The Shadow Wolves are real. In 1972 the United States government agreed to the Tohono O'odham Nation’s demand that border enforcement agents patrolling their land have at least one quarter native ancestry. The result being the specialized unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers known as The Shadow Wolves. In the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film, Dr. Eggman states that they are who trained him in the art of tracking.

WAY OF THE SHADOW WOLVES

Let us cook Way of the Shadow Wolves from scratch. Think of every dogshit C-list action movie you’ve ever seen. Ideally, you want the trash cuts of post-9/11 hysteria marbled with ex-cia heroes and vaguely arab villains. Drop it all into a stockpot. Next, roughly dice some comic books and kung-fu movies, the more racist the better. Now add some datura, it doesn't matter if it's edible or not, because you saw a native American in a movie make something like that once and you’re totally 1/64th Cherokee. Add a whole can of Qanon and a whole can of racism. Boil until you have pacing thicker than mud.

Way of the Shadow Wolves is a police procedural meets a spy thriller, a fast-paced action drama about elite agents on the fringes of the law who have the huge sweaty meaty balls to do what needs to be done for our country. It is Steven's attempt at the action schlock he embodies as an actor. Our hero is John Gode: Shadow Wolf. Reservation-born native American tracker, ICE agent, and Kung-Fu master. I believe he might have been described at one point. If he was, I do not care. Steven does not care. It does not matter. John Gode is Steven, and he’s the most badass dude to ever not be gay. He is: Special Agent Shaman Cop. He’s gonna beat up the deep state. That’s all you need to really need to know. In fact, it is shocking just how little you need to know about this book.

We begin in a movie theater, where our protagonist is alone, watching the end credits of a movie about the atrocious treatment of native Americans on behalf of the united states government. When the film finally ends, John says to himself “It’s about time.” He gets up to leave. The chapter immediately ends. My compliments to the chef. A delightfully bland apéritif of a character introduction. Steven uses the essential point of first contact with our protagonist to tell us vital information like “He doesn’t like it when movies are long.” or maybe “He didn’t like this movie about the trail of tears.” It is unclear. To quote English-Albanian philosopher Dua Lipa, “Go girl, give us nothing.”

I have been dancing around the quality of the writing. It seems impossible to approach without the footing of a new paragraph, an opponent that requires full-focus, an all-out assault. It is nigh-incomprehensible. I hate comparing bad writing to drugs. It feels too easy. But there is a specific air to Way of the Shadow Wolves. There is a distinct cadence, simultaneously manic and lethargic, that comes from attempting to write while day drunk on over-prescribed amphetamines. And make no mistake, if Steven was not entranced by the muse of Too Many Uppers And Downers At The Same Time, if he wrote this thing stone sober, that is worse. Small quotes will not do the writing style justice, you must see for yourself how sentences flow into each other:

“The desperado’s mind went back in time to a small town in Mexico twelve years before, where he first met his two cohorts when they were thrown together by a tragic set of circumstances. Their parents had been gunned down by a cartel who was at war with a competing cartel for control of the area, which was a pathway to the American border near Nogales, Arizona. All three had been shepherded to a local mission where they were being cared for by the Franciscans, who were becoming overwhelmed by the growing number of children left homeless due to the rampant killings by the warring cartels . . .”

Labyrinthine. A paragraph structure that would feel more at home with Calvino, or Garcia Marquez at his most experimental, though stripped of its deft control and musicality. Segal will regularly change temporal perspective in the middle of sentences. A single run-on sentence will begin in the past, have a middle clause in the present, and then return to the past by the end. There is a downright massive cast of characters for a 200 page book. Damn near every chapter introduces three or four more names, and we are lucky if Steven describes them before discarding them entirely. This book is a slog. I find myself losing patience with Steven.

—

Some time has passed since I began writing this review. Originally, my approach was surgical disassembly. I was going to go over the plot, summarize its anatomy, pick apart its flaws with surgical precision. But the more I cut, the more I felt as if I was the butt of a joke. I was performing an autopsy on a clown, pulling sheets of colorful rope from its gut, and the cadaver was laughing at me.

There is a moment, about halfway through. A woman approaches John at a bar. An assassin, who later attacks John in the parking lot with karate. A furious series of crescent kicks, effortlessly blocked by John Gode, who punches her in the ribs and knocks her to the ground. Realizing that her martial arts are defeated, she draws her gun, but John Gode is too fast. He fires his own weapon before she can get the shot off, killing her instantly. “Her round went upward toward the sky as she fell backward with eyes wide open, seeing nothing.”

This scene stuck with me. It illustrates one of the critical flaws at the heart of Way of the Shadow Wolves. Nothing hurts John. Nothing even gets close. He does not struggle. He does not sweat. He does not bleed. Steven clearly intends this scene to be badass, a moment where his self-insert hero defeats a dangerous enemy without trying. This book is an action movie, but John’s untouchability makes every action scene read as a moment of profound and boring cruelty. This was not a contest of master martial artists. This was an adult kicking a child in the throat.

I find myself losing patience with Steven. I am running out of humorous ways to describe this vapid tripe. This is, in my mind, the greatest condemnation of bad writing. There is no hell lower than being boring to mock. I see myself as a sort of sommelier of the awkward and disastrous. I will be the first to tell you “Wait! Don’t throw that out! There are things to be learned!” But Steven repeatedly proves himself to be a sort of Alchemist of Shit, capable of transmuting theoretically interesting bullshit into just fucking nothing. If this book deserves credit for anything, it is its miraculous ability to squander its own premise.

Why write this? Any of this? Steven clearly does not read. Or, if he does, he seems to subsist entirely on a diet of comic books about monkeys that do kung-fu. Why write this? At some level it all comes down to “because Steven wanted to” right?

Right?

But I cannot shake the feeling. To call this book masturbatory is to imply that Steven might have enjoyed it. There is a desperation to the power fantasy here. To be feared by men, desired by women, revered by all, yaddah yaddah yaddah, all the same trite excretions of blunt masculinity. But there is something else. Steven wants the same thing that every conspiracy theorist wants; a simple world. A world he can understand. Steven is exhausted, overwhelmed with a world he feels he can neither effect nor understand. I am exhausted.

I fear my earlier allusions to expressionist novels may have been more spot on than I imagined. Way of the Shadow Wolves has a plot in the sense that Sunny-D contains fruit juice. Its presence is a formality, a ceremonial hat worn for tax purposes. The plot is there, but it is unimportant. This is not a text that can be debated with. Because within the world of the text, politics is not complex. It is not actually a web of interconnected groups, each with their own interests, rivalries, alliances, and historical contexts. Behind all of it is two things: Good guys, and bad guys. The good guys are all working together, and the bad guys are all working together.

I find myself losing patience with Steven. I fear my earlier allusions to expressionist novels may have been more spot on than I imagined. Way of the Shadow Wolves has a plot.

John Gode finds a human tooth in the desert. It belongs to a body, a body of a woman described in lurid detail. Nearby, he meets a young native American man, a man who calls himself Sweet Tooth. The body is missing teeth, missing hands, missing feet. A trademark cartel killing. A young native American man. “I’m gonna be like, your assistant right?” A buddy cop dynamic. Meeting the task force. Tailing an ICE van full of cartel soldiers. A hostage situation. A shootout in the desert. Far away, faceless men in suits with masonic ranks plan a mass killing. Some sounded like they had Arabic accents. Freemasonry. Interrogation with a snake. The corpse was a woman. The woman was a reporter. She had the evidence on a flash drive, evidence that proved the existence of the deep state. What if its all connected? A sex scene, or almost a sex scene. A sex scene interrupted. A shootout in the desert. Kung Fu assassins at a bar. A cartel defector. A shootout in the desert. What if its all connected. They’re working with the Jihadists. The USA is already “half latino.” The government is paying the cartels to ship Jihadists north across the border. They’re well-trained and well armed. You can’t trust anyone. A terrorist defector who hears the voice of the prophet. The ghost of John’s grandfather. The sun sets over the Sonora. A shootout in the desert. They kidnapped John’s mother. Bring them the flash drive. They’re planning to bomb the casino. A shootout in the desert. The police chief was a traitor. The Catholics are in on it. Its all connected. A shootout in the desert. Assault by night. Rescuing the hostage. A knife dipped in pigs blood. A pit of vipers in the sonora.

Steven ends a chapter with the line. “They had functioned like a well-oiled machine that had just saved two innocent lives. All lives matter. Do they not?”

I am tired. I find myself at a neighborhood block party, trapped in a conversation I’ve had a thousand times. This time the man on the other end is a sweaty divorcee in range glasses who looks like a sunburned thumb. Last week, it was a woman with a necklace of crystals and blonde hair bleached blonder. “Haha yeah” I say, looking down at my phone. “Burgers look good this year huh?”

Thank you to my Patreon supporters who made this review possible.

#Steven Segal Review

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anantaru · 1 year

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i love LOVE your safeword fics with the genshin boys and wanted to ask if its possible with blade??😋😙 love your fics btw

cw. angsty?? saying the safeword, fem! reader

blade, who would beat himself up for it— to proceed without overstating the situation, he had experienced a roughed up couple of weeks in the near past and hadn't had the single chance to meet you.

blade had missed you, excessively, no, dreadfully, ravaging in his direful despair. but he had also seemingly forgotten about his own sense of self.

his inconsistent breathing was trapped immovable, floating around the jammed air as he fell into his own dangerous ploy of channeling his pulverizing frustration in each of his new blows. another thrust, and you taste the way your throat wilted a little, a bullet of panic rising inwardly, aside from your usual glory look— you wobble in shock.

what had started as an eye rolling and euphoric closeness with the man you utterly cherished, had now slowly swiveled into that of a clenching dread, eyes brimming with crystal pebbles as your chest constricted. There was a faint note of hysteria webbed into your expression as you at last— distantly, were able to make one last terrible, strangled sound of a word blade feared to hear one day.

he should've coddled, kissed and pleased you, but he gapes at you in utter disbelief, conceivably was his face dramatically stricken as all the nerves in his body froze to a standstill.

blade directly pulled out of you, as circumspect as physically doable while also aiming to not touch you at all. he couldn't bare to bestow twice as much damage on your shaking frame. you turn around to face him as the previously locked tears began to trickle down your warm cheeks.

his pulse raised at the terror-stricken sight, and all the man wanted to do was to enfold you in his arms but he couldn't— first, he had to be certain that you get everything you needed before you would allow him to get close to you again.

preliminary to helping you covering yourself up, blade rose off the mattress to get you a glass of cold water before carefully placing it on top of the nightstand, following suit and slanting back into the bed.

weight comes off his shoulders when he bottled up enough courage to speak to you for the first time, "i am—" but he pauses, breaking from within, "i am so sorry." and his eyes glimmer with hope for the entirety of this night, when you silently place your hand on top of his own.

2023 anantaru do not repost, copy, translate, modify

#blade x reader #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #hsr smut #honkai star rail smut #blade smut #hsr blade x reader #honkai star rail blade x reader #honkai star rail blade smut #hsr blade smut

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capellla · 30 days

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Your Past Life - Pac Reading

There are many connections between our past lives and our present ones, and we generally experience this heavily in childhood. If you believe in reincarnation than in this reading you will see your most important past life and you will get message from that life.

Get a past life reading from here

Timeframe: Late modern age

Identity: Husband

Love: Companionship

Faith: Philosophical

Trauma: Betrayal

Location: Central or South America

Death: Public Execution

Lesson: Accountability

Story: You were a well-positioned man and a husband, and you had a good position socially.But unfortunately, you were actually using your power to oppress, especially against women.You were probably one of the important writers, but your greed and rebelliousness got you into trouble.You were having problems in your love life even though you had a good spouse.You cheated your woman. I see that one day you witnessed an event and it was an important event. Even though you became an important writer and contributed new things to people, your life did not end well.

Message from this life: Don't be too independent or too impulsive. Once you've made up your mind, set off. Confusion and indecision may have caused trouble in your life. Find the middle ground and be balanced.

Timeframe: American Civil war era

Identity: Sibling

Love: Deceived or betrayed

Faith: Agnostic or atheist

Trauma: Opression

Location: Western Europe

Death: Childbirth

Lesson: Truth and discernment

Story: You were a helpful person, but you always expected something in return and forced situations to get that reward. You didn't care about many issues and were relaxed. You were just a follower and not a leader in your own life. You behaved sometimes too extreme. You were a wise woman actually , either your secrets were spread by your sister or you spread your sister's secrets. As a result, you experienced the hardest moments of your life. You found yourself in the rock bottom. After that events you fell in love with someone and got married. But your husband let you down.

Message from this life: Take your power, don't let others or events destroy your power. You may be depressed or resigned. Stand up for yourself.

Timeframe: Age of atlantis

Identity: Older woman

Love: Spinster

Faith: Philosophical

Trauma: Psychological or verbal abuse

Location: Asia

Death: Broken heart

Lesson: Truth and discernment

Story: You were a woman who lived until her late years and healed with her hands. But you were subjected to psychological and verbal abuse. Despite your good heart, you had a difficult life and experienced psychological health problems. Obsessions and hysteria were part of it. I see that this person who is giving you trouble is a younger woman. You have witnessed many difficult events, your place was destroyed by natural disasters, but your death was caused by your own hand.

Message from this life: You may find yourself on the verge of a sudden and difficult loss. No matter how painful this may seem, it is actually a gift in disguise. In reality, this pain is a gift that guides you away from a problem and towards real opportunities.

Timeframe: Pre-earth

Identity: Young male

Love: Unrequited

Faith: Sacrificial

Trauma: Betrayal

Location: Stars

Death: Fire

Lesson: Gluttony

Story: You were one of the prominent leaders in a star. You were interested in science and philosophy .You could have sacrificed your life for your people. You had a beautiful heart and a great soul .You were a romantic soul and you also wrote poems. You had unrequited love for a woman. There were many volcano mountains here. And someday you burned to death.

Message from this life: The pieces will fall into place on the issue that has been in the air for a while. The more you find your past, the better you will understand your present. Use your intuition and everything will become clearer.

Timeframe: World war age

Identity: Adult Male

Love: Star- crossed

Faith: Primal or aboroginal

Trauma: Physical or sexual abuse

Location: Baltics or Central Europe

Death: Non contagious illness

Lesson: Self Identity

Story: You were pure, open to learning and free, but when you were born, this was prevented. You have experienced many difficulties and in this life you met the love of your life. There were many obstacles between you but you did not give up and you made many sacrifices but in the end you passed away due to an illness.

Message from this life: You have lost your purpose, your friends, your higher self, and contact with the holy spirits that accompany you. Maybe you're too emotionally stressed or too busy, remind yourself why you're here.

Timeframe: Early Modern Age

Identity: Adult Male

Love: Polygamous or polyamorous

Faith: Cult

Trauma: Material Loss

Location: Middle east

Death: Poison

Lesson: Gluttony

Story: You were a very greedy and insatiable man. The trauma of losing a lot of material things and this has led you down the path of becoming a disgrace and a beggar. You had more than one partner and were insatiably sexual. One day you were poisoned to death.

Message from this life: Establish the balance of giving and receiving.

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gatitties · 11 months

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The truth

—Yandere!Bonten x motherly!reader (platonic)

—Summary: an accident makes you more aware of reality even though you already knew it, but what can someone like you do?

—Warnings: blood, kidnapping, obsession, toxic behaviors, harassment

I never thought this would go so far as to have five parts but... here we are! 🫣 (maybe this part is a bit long, srry)

@boycigs there you go!! 🫶🏻

Part one / Part two / Part three / Part four

You fumbled with the wall for the light switch, your tired eyes playing with you and making you almost trip over a blanket that had been thrown on the floor.

You yawned stretching your back, you had been working on some files that Kokonoi asked you to correct, you fell asleep without dinner and your stomach decided to wake you up at this time of night.

Luckily you had some leftovers from today's lunch, everyone had come to eat despite it being your 'day off', but since they had been busy with work more than usual lately, they couldn't spend as much time with you as they would like, although that didn't stop them from hiding cameras in your apartment to check that everything was okay from time to time.

A knock at the door made you frown, remembering the first time you met Sanzu. You walked slowly, expecting to run into him, or even one of the Haitani brothers who ran brothels near the area, it wouldn't be the first time they've come home drunk after a good night.

When you opened it, confusion flooded your face, there was no one there, not a note, nothing, you thought that maybe you were still too sleepy and you had hallucinated, or maybe it was some late-night teenager making a joke. You shrugged shutting to go back to your dinner, but before you knew it or could make a move something hit you in the back of the neck, knocking you unconscious, the last thing you saw was a few blurry faces, but none you knew in the slightest.

Panic, panic was the first thing Mochizuki experienced when he saw the recordings from the cameras installed in your house. He had to do a checkup the next morning and just seeing how careless they had been to let that trash kidnap you made his thoughts turn to disgust and guilt.

Not even five minutes after seeing that, all the executives were gathered in their meeting room, no matter where they were, they all got there instantly upon answering Mochi's call.

"And if I pause right here..." Mochi stopped the video just as two men lifted your unconscious body "this guy here, on his neck, his tattoo is from another band."

"Those bastards have been giving us so much trouble lately, I'm looking forward to seeing blood drain from their brains."

Sanzu slammed both hands on the table, completely irritated and concerned for your well-being, he was controlling his urge to go looking for you only because Mikey had remained silent with a blank stare throughout the entire meeting.

The Haitani brothers were already warming up to fight, Takeomi was mobilizing some men to search your apartment for clues while Koko and Kakucho were trying to find where your chip signal was. Yes, although unknown to you, they decided to insert a tracking chip into you a while ago just to know where you were when they couldn't be around.

The signal was bad, either because you were too far away from their location or because you were somewhere underground, which didn't help much. They were all probably on the verge of hysteria, the search wasn't going fast enough as they'd like and it only made their mood worse.

It took at least five days for them to come up with any solid leads to your whereabouts, the worst five days of their existence, the poor people or employees who will come across any of them probably aren't alive anymore. Mikey locked himself in and refused to come out unless they heard from you, he barely ate and his sleep schedule got even worse.

"Are you sure it's there?"

"Yes, several of our men have seen these guys with the same tattoo come and go, it doesn't appear to be their central base but it's hidden enough to carry out kidnappings."

Takeomi pointed to a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, everyone mobilized to go there immediately, even Mikey and Kokonoi, who didn't usually get their hands dirty with this kind of work, decided to go.

As for you... it was confusing the first day you woke up, the feeling of a gun pointed at your head became familiar as did the ropes on your wrists and ankles. Your reaction upon seeing the criminals was to release an inaudible sigh, without fear or surprise, your state was neutral.

You knew it, you knew that sooner or later this was going to happen, as much as your guys will try to hide you from problems with other mafias, there are always some leaks, and playing with loved ones from enemy gangs is the easiest card to play to threaten. Although in this case they didn't even have time to issue a threat to Bonten when they had already been threatened by your kidnapping.

The following days were threats to your people to try to get information that could put Bonten in trouble, as well as planning to move to another of their hideouts, however you were unaware of most of the things that Bonten did, although you were their secretary, you were only in charge of planning schedules and correcting some superficial reports from Kokonoi, you were not much help to these scoundrels.

"Damn! I don't understand how they could have protected you so much if you're just a useless old woman, you're useless! Why the hell do those guys hold you in such high esteem...?"

In the outburst of anger as he took it out on you, the sound of his hand slamming into your cheek sounded as the door above fell off its hinges.

"Boss, we have a prob-!"

The eye of the man who was coming down the stairs was blown out thanks to a bullet, landing right between your feet, you closed your eyes and, no matter if you don't believe in any god or anything, you prayed, not for you, but for what all these people did not suffer such a painful death.

You knew what Bonten men were capable of, at first you thought you were exaggerating, but that was the truth and at times, it terrified you. You were terrified to think of all the lives that left this world just because of you, your boys were more than gangsters, more than just criminals, they were monsters looking for any excuse to kill, and you were that excuse.

You knew that there was nothing in this world that would make you reverse time to the point of not having helped that drunk guy at the door of your house, you knew that nothing would make all those men leave your side because of showing your kindness, you knew that no kind of therapy could help such rotten minds at this point, so you could only swallow, as scared as you were, as much as your legs trembled, you had chosen this path yourself and you had to accept it.

"Mom..."

Your breath quickened slightly as you felt Sanzu's cold hand resting on your cheek, you slowly opened your eyes to see pure relief reflected in his, ignoring the bloodstains on his clothes and face, and even ignoring the blood he was leaving on your face, you smiled at him.

"I'm fine guys, I'm… fine."

You had to swallow and avoid getting dizzy from the smell of oxide in the place, your memories are blurry when you try to remember when you left there, you remember seeing many practically mutilated bodies, a river of blood and many arms holding your body as if you were going to disintegrate at that precise moment.

After you were rescued, you spent at least two days in a hospital at Kokonoi's request to see that you didn't have any injuries, everyone turned to you with questions about how you were doing, especially mentally.

It became suffocating, the amount of attention you received after that event, made you understand that, from now on, you could not have a single moment for yourself, no matter the job, the time or the place, you will always have one of them on top of you to keep an eye on you.

It doesn't matter if you complain, the truth, which you had to accept once again, is that nothing but death could separate you from these men, because they were not willing to let you go, ever. But the worst of all is that you accepted it, you accepted your fate, a fate that was sealed a long time ago, you accepted that you lived with monsters, that you helped and treated horrible people like completely sane people, but, an ordinary person like you, no could change anything.

"How long until the cake is ready?"

"Don't be impatient Rin, it's only been in the oven for five minutes."

"That's already a long time..."

"Shut up, you're always so impatient!"

"Are you looking for a fight!?"

"Kakucho, could you...?"

A nod from him made you sigh in relief, breaking up the Haitani brothers' fight as you sat at the table with the others who were talking about random topics. You stared into your teacup, your blank stare imagining imaginary scenes of another lifestyle in the steaming liquid.

"Are you ok? You seem distracted."

You looked at Kokonoi, keeping your gaze off without focusing on his face, you nodded with a slight smile when you saw that everyone had shut up to look at you.

"Yeah, I just didn't sleep well today."

"We'll buy a new bed then."

"I did not mean that..."

And like many things in your current life, your opinion was thrown away just to bring you more 'comfort'. You had no power and that was the absolute truth, nothing could change at this point.

#tk #tokyo revengers #tokyo revenger x reader #reader insert #fem reader #x reader #xreader #platonic reader #sfw #yandere platonic #yandere tokyo revengers #yandere bonten x reader #bonten x reader #bonten x platonic reader #yandere platonic bonten x reader #platonic yandere #tokyo revengers x platonic reader #motherly reader #old reader

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flowerandblood · 4 months

Text

The Sin & The Penance

[ modern Frollo • Aemond x Esmeralda • female ]

[ warnings: sex content, smut, angst, revenge motive, description of physical and mental disabilities, remorse, depression, hysteria attacks, swearing, trauma, suicidal thoughts ]

[ description: After a car accident, his brother has to deal with the consequences of what happened, and he, as his protector, does not know how to help him. His sister comes up with the idea of hiring someone as his carer who will be able to cheer him up and occupy his mind. It turns out, however, that the girl he hired charmed not only his younger brother. Obsession, self-destructive behavior, verbal and physical aggression, sexual tension, dark, malicious Aemond. ]

Author's note: This story is a request, but I decided to freely use what I liked in the book and Disney film to create a new, disturbing story taking place in modern times. It is intended to be uncomfortable and will contain scenes that are at least morally questionable, in my version "Esmeralda" is not Romanian. This story will also include motifs from Jane Eyre, which was a separate request. My story will also touch on the problems of people with disabilities, so if these are sensitive topics for you, I advise against reading further. You have been warned.

Part 1 − The Knight & The Judge Part 3 − The Doubt & The Delight Epilogue

Main Characters Moodboard Aemond NSFW Alphabet

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

Next chapters: Masterlist

_____

That night he could not sleep – he wriggled in bed, checking from time to time whether she had perhaps called him back or written anything. Although he had tried to reach her at least ten times she did not answer and he was afraid to write her a message.

What if she went to the police with this?

Maybe that's what he deserved, he thought after a while with regret, staring blankly at the bright screen of his phone, wondering if he should try again despite the late hour.

As much as he tried to find some logical justification for what he had done, he couldn't explain what had really driven him.

Admittedly, at first he was guided only by anger and spite, but then these emotions disappeared, replaced by a hot, dark desire that filled his loins, completely overshadowing his cool judgement.

Something about her brightness, her lightness, her joy, made him long to lean over her like the dark sky, like night over the stars, and cover her with his blackness, his emptiness, consuming and devouring her.

He had never experienced such a disturbing and overpowering sensation before and was horrified that he was prone to such thoughts and such actions.

He had completely lost his mind because of her.

She had asked him to let her go, so why didn't he do so?

Alys had always been eager for his aggressive, violent games, he knew that, and he felt no remorse about what he was doing to her or where, but this little girl was terrified, trembling all over with fear, and yet all he could think about was how desperately he needed to feel her.

Perhaps subconsciously her cheerfulness, her attitude attracted him.

Maybe after years of sadness and mourning he wanted to feel at last something more than grief.

He covered his eyes with his hand, sighing heavily at that thought, feeling a squeeze in his throat and heart.

He only fell into a restless sleep in the morning with his phone lying next to his face, and was awakened two hours later by his alarm clock anyway, which he switched off with displeasure, tired, sad and embarrassed by what he had done.

He couldn't look Daeron in the face as they ate breakfast together. His little brother looked up at him from over his bowl of his favourite cereal with milk – he knew he was about to start asking questions about her.

"When will Esmeralda come here to sew our costumes?" He asked finally, stirring the milk with his spoon, looking at the chocolate balls that floated on its surface.

He pressed his lips together, not knowing how to explain to him how much he had fucked up.

What he had done to her.

"I don't know if she'll even show up here again." He replied truthfully, Daeron gave him a quick, horrified look.

"She promised me. She promised me we'd sew them together and go to the ball." He muttered, his eyes filling with tears again.

He decided he wouldn't be so cruel as to let him believe it was her fault, though part of his mind opted for that.

"I know, but I hurt her and I'm afraid she won't forgive me." He said lowly, swallowing hard, fiddling with his coffee cup, not daring to look at him, his heart pounding like mad.

"What do you mean? Did you hit her?" He asked in disbelief, and he clenched his eyes, realising that in his childish mind the greatest harm a man could do to a woman was that he could slap her.

He was silent for a while, not sure how or if I should explain it to him, whether it would be too much.

"In a way. And I did something else, much worse. Against her pleas. I could go to jail for that." He muttered, covering his face with his hand, feeling that even though he hadn't eaten anything he felt sick to his stomach.

"Why did you do that? She's so kind. What did she do to you? Did you get angry with her because of me?" He mumbled through his tears. He felt a tightening in his throat at the thought that, like any child, he was trying to justify the adult in his head, deciding that after all he was smarter and more experienced than him, so his behaviour must have been because he, his little brother, had done something wrong.

"No. No, it didn't and doesn't have anything to do with you. This is our adult business, but she has the right to be very angry with me and not speak to me. However, I'm completely sure she doesn't blame you." He replied quickly, biting his lower lip.

It wasn't until he spoke it aloud that it occurred to him how pathetic, inappropriate and cruel what he had done was, how afraid she must have been of him.

Was she telling herself she liked it so she could somehow survive it? She decided to go along with it so she wouldn't suffer?

"Do you think I can call her?" He asked in a quivering voice, and he looked at him with his heart pounding fast, recognising in the back of his mind that it was an excellent thought, that she might want to at least talk to him.

"Yes. Yes, of course. I'll give you her number, but call her from your phone. She's not answering from me."

He stared feeling the cold sweat on his back at his brother's reflection in the mirror driving towards the centre, seeing as he pressed the numbers written on the piece of paper on the keypad of his phone and lifted it to his ear – he heard the quiet beep of a call waiting.

He shuddered as someone answered, trying to focus on the road, complete panic in his mind.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

"Hello? Hi, it's Daeron. Can you talk? No, he can't hear what you're saying, we're just driving to the centre." He muttered, and he swallowed loudly, feeling a constriction in his chest from which he found it hard to breathe, trying to erase from his mind the image of him slamming into her again and again with the brutal, sharp thrusts of his hips.

"He told me that he had done you wrong and that he had hurt you very badly. I'm very sorry he did that. I just wanted to ask when we're going to sew our costumes." He mumbled out quickly. He felt his eyebrows arch in shame and covered his mouth with his free hand, resting his elbow against his car door, looking ahead in disbelief.

How could he do this to her?

For a moment Daeron listened to what she was saying on the phone with concentration and he was dying inside, afraid that she would explain to him with details of what he had done to her. After a moment he nodded as if he understood what she meant, he saw his face lighten a little.

"Okay. Okay, I'll ask my brother if he agrees to it. Bye bye." He said softly and hung up, sighing heavily.

"And?" He asked looking at him in the mirror, stopping in the car park, feeling like he was about to go crazy. His brother looked down at his fingers.

"Esmeralda said that after your argument she can no longer come to our house, but that I can come to her at the University. She said that the building is modern and wheelchair accessible, there are special toilets, lifts and everything needed. We could do my homework in her room in the dormitory and then walk around the campus, sewing and painting." He said uncertainly, glancing at him pleadingly. He swallowed loudly, feeling disappointed and at the same time understanding of her decision and grunted softly, turning off the engine.

"Would you like that?" He asked him calmly, and his brother nodded quickly.

"Then so be it."

Despite his requests, Daeron refused to tell him which of the boys had called him Quasimodo.

He said that it didn't matter now.

He thought with regret that his younger brother had more maturity and calmness in himself than he did.

Sitting at work he was all nerves, he had not received any notification that anyone had filed a police report on him, so for some reason, perhaps out of fear, she had not done so.

He felt both relieved and ashamed at the same time, unable to look at himself, thinking that he was not only disgusting on the outside but also on the inside.

When Alys suggested that they go to the toilet for a while he simply agreed, feeling that he needed to lash out, to expel the grief, shame and desperation that seemed to fill his whole body.

He turned her body violently with her back to him, thinking with fatigue that he didn't want to look at her face. As he unzipped his trousers he tried to focus on what he saw in front of him, on her panties lowered halfway down her thighs, her entrance sticky with arousal. He closed his eyes and grasped his cock firmly in his hand, giving it a few aggressive, hard strokes.

As much as he tried, he couldn't stop thinking about her sweet moans, about how wonderful she smelled, about how tight she was, about her body convulsing in his embrace.

He got instantly hard, wasted no time and surprised his lover, who moaned with delight at feeling how direct and exceptionally violent he was this day, his thrusts full of desperation and aggression, his groans low and throaty.

Something was wrong – her insides were different, her buttocks were different, her scent was different, too intense, her moans too deep, too sensual, not as innocent and surprised as hers.

He pressed his lips together feeling he couldn't focus or get as much pleasure out of it as he would have liked.

"− shut the fuck up −" He growled speeding up but it was to no avail – when he opened his eyes he saw a completely different woman in front of him. He slowed down, swallowing loudly, feeling that nothing would come of it.

"− fucking bastard − ah, don't stop − what happened? − did I do something wrong? −" She asked as he slid out of her and fastened his zipper in a quick motion, furious, disappointed, humiliated, distraught that he wanted her, this little girl, her moans, her scent, her touch, her gaze, her tight, weeping cunt, being able to spend whole nights with his face sunk between her thighs, begging her forgiveness, muttering between the flicks of his tongue that he would make it all up to her.

"− no − I'm sorry, it's my fault −" He said lowly, not wanting to lash out at her. She grunted quietly, surprised, putting her lacy underwear and trousers back on over her hips, fastening them with a quick, nimble movement.

"− you seem stressed − something wrong? − do you want to talk? −" She asked softly, and he felt a kind of gratitude that she hadn't laughed at him or judged him, that she had acted as if nothing had happened.

He decided, however, that he didn't want to share his thoughts with her.

"− no − forgive me − have a nice day −" He said calmly, opening the cubicle door and left the restroom, moving down the corridor in front of him, clenching his eyelids, brushing his short, slicked-back hair with a quick movement.

What had happened between them, what he had done to her had left a mark on more than just her.

He felt as if he had woken up from a lethargy after five years, everything around him was sharper and brighter, painfully clear.

The next morning, according to the arrangements made between her and Daeron, he was to turn up in the car park outside the University from where she was to pick up his brother.

He dreaded this meeting, dreaded what he would see in her face, disgust, regret and bitterness, all the way to the place he felt like stopping and throwing up.

He felt a shudder and a loud pounding of his heart when they arrived at the agreed spot and he noticed her, standing between the cars dressed in a fitted strapless dress with daisies on it, her beautiful hair the scent of which he could still smell in his nostrils loose, trainers on her feet.

He stopped, swallowing hard, unbuckling his seatbelt and getting out, glancing at her – she stood at a safe distance from them and looked away, playing with the fingers of her hands, thoughtful and sad.

What he saw hurt him even more than if she had been staring at him with hatred.

He walked around the car and took out Daeron's wheelchair to which he helped him move from the back seat – his little brother beamed at the sight of her and began to move the wheels himself heading towards her. He saw with regret that she smiled warmly when she saw him, genuine joy on her face.

"Hi. High five!" She said to him cockily and their hands hit each other in the air, even though he was standing a few steps away she didn't give him a single glance.

"So, shall we go?" She asked encouragingly, and Daeron nodded.

He wanted to ask if she was sure he would be safe here, if she would remember to take him to lunch, if she would watch out for him, but he didn't dare, shame took his speech away.

He decided it would be better if he kept quiet and led them away with his gaze, then got into his car and drove to work.

He spent all day thinking about her, sitting over the case files recalling again and again her appearance, her pleasant figure, her warm face that beamed all over at the sight of his younger brother.

Why did she have to be like this?

Why did she have to be what he craved, the personification of his deepest, darkest needs, a ripe peach that someone had placed in front of him on a platter while he was starving?

When he arrived after work to pick up Daeron they both stood in the distance, said their goodbyes, and she turned away without even bestowing a single glance on him. He got out of the car, intent on helping his brother into the back seat.

"And how was it?" He asked lowly, feeling sadness and emptiness, anxiety and a strange tightening in his stomach.

"Great! We studied together in her room and then she showed me around the whole campus. We even looked in the classroom where the students were painting portraits and she told me a bit about how it was done. Everyone was very friendly." He said quickly, clearly excited and pleased. He swallowed hard, sighing softly as he folded his wheelchair and threw it back into the boot.

"Have you eaten anything?" He asked calmly, returning to the driver's seat, buckling his seatbelt and turning on the engine.

"Yes, we had lunch in the university canteen. I could choose whatever I wanted." He said with satisfaction, a wide smile on his face.

He felt like asking him if she had mentioned anything about him, if she had anything to convey to him, but realised that there was nothing she might want to tell him.

She was doing this to keep her word to Daeron.

For a few weeks it seemed to him that he had locked himself in some kind of circle, looking forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays, days during which he would see her, albeit only from a distance, her figure bright and graceful.

He wondered with pain if she still had the bruises on her neck that his lips had left and swallowed loudly, feeling ashamed that his manhood reacted to that thought with a strong throbbing in his trousers.

He had suspected it before, but now he was absolutely sure.

He was fucking mad.

On the day the carnival ball was to be held, he was supposed to drive Daeron to the centre and pick him up after a few hours, but he decided that it wouldn't be worth going home for such a short time and he would just wait for them somewhere off to the side without bothering them.

As he pulled up in front of the building he swallowed heavily, seeing her from a distance, already dressed in her Esmeralda costume, her dark, loose hair tied with a violet scarf to form a headband, bells tied to her purple skirt, simple black ballerinas on her feet, round gold earrings in her ears, clanking bracelets on her wrists.

However, what drew his attention most was her white, buff long-sleeved shirt, tucked into the the sea-colored corset under her breasts that wonderfully emphasized her waist, it's sleeves lowered so that her shoulders were bare, it was slit down in the middle, showing the bare skin of her chest.

He swallowed loudly, looking away, feeling with horror that the very sight of it made him hard.

He grunted, helping Daeron out of the car and moved behind him, guessing that she wasn't going to help his brother dress after all, not wanting to invade his privacy.

"You really look like Esmeralda! So beautiful!" Exclaimed his younger brother, and she turned gracefully raising her hands with a clink of her bells and bracelets, showing off her costume in all its glory.

He couldn't take his eyes off her.

"Where's my costume?!" He asked excitedly, and she picked up the large paper bag that stood next to her feet and smiled.

"Here. Let's go." She said lightly without looking at him, Daeron immediately pushed the wheels of his wheelchair and headed after her.

He moved behind them, feeling like an intruder, looking everywhere but at her, trying not to think about the sight of her partially exposed back.

She explained to him quickly what needed to be put on first and how – he was impressed that what she had made really did look like golden armour, but when he took out the individual pieces they turned out to be surprisingly light.

He locked himself and Daeron in one of the toilet cubicles, helping him to change, his brother looking extremely pleased.

"Are you two reconciled?" He asked, clearly thinking that since she was speaking to him again she had forgiven him. He swallowed loudly, not knowing how to explain to him that what he had done could not simply be taken back.

"I don't think so. But don't think about it. Hm?" He asked softly and he lowered his gaze, disappointed.

The sight of himself in the armour gave him confidence – it appeared that the whole thing had been designed so that he could flex his arms, elbows and wrists, the parts fitted together.

He thought with a pained grin that she had really made an effort.

"You look great. What a real knight you are. Come, it's time for you to dance a little with your beautiful Esmeralda." He said calmly, opening the door for him. He wheeled out into the corridor with a smile, his Esmeralda catching her cheeks with a wide smile of delight.

"My knight. Promise to protect me from the evil thugs!" She called out theatrically and glared at him – he swallowed loudly, turning his face away in shame, his younger brother assuring her that he would not let anyone hurt her.

Too late, he thought.

For some reason, he felt tears under his eyelids, his throat squeezed so tight he had trouble breathing.

He watched as they moved ahead into a large gymnasium where the lights were slightly dim, a disco ball was spinning on the ceiling, Girls Just Want To Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper was playing in the background, children and their caretakers spinning around, dressed as various characters and creatures.

Although many of the costumes looked quite impressive, he couldn't take his eyes off her – as she danced she sang the lyrics of the song with theatrical devotion as if she knew them by heart, her hair, bracelets and earrings glistened in the light of the multi-coloured lights, the sweat on the bare skin of her exposed arms glittered like little crystals.

He looked at her leaning with his back against the wall with his hands folded in front of him, feeling the heat in his lower abdomen, covering up what was happening in his trousers.

He looked around the room and noticed a group of boys looking at her and Daeron. He frowned, wondering if they were the ones calling his brother Quasimodo.

He felt some kind of satisfaction at the thought that they were watching his brother dance with a pretty girl.

He really deserved her.

Such a good kid.

He left after a while, pulling a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket – even though he hadn't smoked in months and was trying to quit, he felt that what was happening was too much for him.

His hands trembled as he put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it with his lighter, taking a loud drag, closing his eyes, clenching his fingers on the base of his nose.

There was only chaos in his head.

"We need to talk." He heard her soft, trembling voice and turned around immediately, taking a few steps away, for some reason terrified by her sudden proximity.

He stared at her with his lips slightly parted, his body froze still, his heart pounding like mad, his cigarette burning slowly between his fingers.

God, she was pregnant.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

"I can no longer take care of Daeron. I just wanted to keep my promise and go to the ball with him. I think he's had enough disappointments in his life and I didn't want to provide him with any more." She said shivering all over, looking everywhere but at him – he felt like he was about to vomit from terror and grief.

What?

"But…if I'm the problem, we can arrange it so that I bring him in a while early and you pick him up from under the main entrance. I'll pay you more." He muttered, completely surprised by her words, not knowing what to say, not wanting to imagine how his little brother would react.

She shook her head quickly at his words, fiddling with the bracelets on her wrists in a nervous gesture.

"I can't. He reminds me of you. You two are similar in appearance." She mumbled and burst out crying, drawing in air loudly, covering her face with her hand in an attempt to calm herself. He looked at her in disbelief, feeling his voice get stuck in his throat.

"I haven't told anyone about what you did to me, because in his eyes you are his authority. I don't want to put him through unnecessary suffering, but I expect you to come up with something and find some convincing explanation as to why I can't continue to take care of him, Mr Prosecutor." She muttered regretfully wiping her cheeks swollen from tears, struggling to catch her breath, her plump lips parted, her eyebrows arched in despair.

He didn't know when he fell to his knees in front of her, when he clasped his hands around her waist, dropping his cigarette to the ground – he pressed his face to her womb, breathing loudly, feeling like he was going through some kind of panic, his lungs compressed, tears streaming down his face one after another, everything around him seemed to spin.

"− I'm sorry − I'm sorry − I'm sorry − I'm sorry − I'm sorry − I'm sorry − please, please, forgive me −" He mumbled hysterically what he had wanted to say to her for weeks – he heard her gasp loudly in shock, raising her hands in a gesture of helplessness, felt her place them on his shoulders trying to gently push him away, her stomach trembled under his face in sobs.

"− l-let me go − please, get up −" She whimpered pleadingly, but he shook his head – he thought he couldn't do it, he couldn't let her go.

"− I need you − even if for the rest of my life I will only look at you from afar −" He exhaled helplessly, sinking his nose into the material of her soft skirt, feeling her wonderful scent fill his lungs again, the warmth of her body that enveloped his face.

He didn't care that the people around them were looking at them like they were crazy, didn't care that perhaps they knew who he was.

"− I can't − I've tried − I've forgiven you, but I can't forget − you robbed me of my dignity −" She said in a raspy, broken voice – he felt himself whooping with his own tears, clasping his fingers at her back, his helpless mumbling ripped from his throat as if without the participation of his free will.

"− do what you want with me − fucking destroy me −"

"Aemond? What's going on?" He heard his brother's frightened voice and immediately rose from his knees, letting her go, both of them wiping their faces quickly, her cheeks pale and at the same time red from tears.

"We needed to talk. I'll be right back." She said quickly, forcing herself to smile – Daeron could sense the tension between them though, his lips tightened, his gaze wandering from him to her.

"Have you…reconciled yet? Has my brother apologised to you?" He asked uncertainly and she nodded and laughed lightly, something in her response made him clench his eyelids and swallow loudly – he covered his face with his hand, feeling that for some reason he couldn't stop crying.

You robbed me of my dignity.

"− y-yes − yes, we've already explained everything to each other, we simply got a little emotional − come on, let's go back inside −" She said softly and stroked his head – he smiled at her and glanced over his shoulder.

"Are you coming?" He asked, but he shook his head, choking out that he would wait for them in the car.

He locked himself inside in the driver's seat and put his forehead on the steering wheel, feeling an overpowering emptiness and this awful, terrifying chill, as if someone had gouged out his insides with a spoon like the flesh of a fruit, leaving only a mere shell.

He thought that he had died five years ago, on the day of that accident.

He only existed so that Daeron could live on.

He shuddered, as if awakened from a deep, restless slumber, hearing a knock on the window on his side – he glanced there and saw Daeron waving at him and his Esmeralda, looking at him uncertainly, terrified of his condition, dark night all around them.

He got out of the car, massaging his forehead, feeling a terrible headache, not being sure for a moment where he actually was or what time it was – in an automatic reflex he opened the back door and helped Daeron get in, he could smell her scent beside him, her gaze fixed on him.

"Are you sure you should drive?" She asked hesitantly, and he swallowed loudly, thinking that since the day of that accident he had never gotten into a car that someone else was driving.

"Yes. Shall I drive you back?" He asked lowly, not looking at her, folding Daeron's small wheelchair.

"No need, thank you, I'll get an Uber." She muttered, his younger brother furrowed his brow, looking at her worriedly.

"We'll drive you back. It's late, you shouldn't be going home alone." He insisted.

She sighed quietly and nodded, walking around the car, sitting down next to Daeron in the back seat.

He got behind the wheel and started the engine, involuntarily glancing at her in the mirror – their gazes met, her eyes sad and tired, full of a regret she had every right to feel.

He drove ahead, trying to wake up and focus on the road, looking at the lights of the cars passing him and thought that maybe if he had killed them it would have been better for all of them.

He grunted loudly, tilting his head back, leaning against the backrest, recognising that he had completely lost his mind, that he was sinking into depression and hysteria, that he had reached the very bottom.

It seemed to him that she sensed that something was happening to him – he was catching her on the fact that she was glancing at him uncertainly, answering something to Daeron who was chatting her up, talking about his friends' costumes. She was just nodding, pretending to listen to him, her hands playing with the material of her skirt in a nervous gesture.

God, how he longed for her to drive with him to their house, to go with him to his bedroom, so that he could kneel before her and whisper how sorry he was, how he wished he could make it all right, to slide with his hands the material of her shirt and her skirt, so that his lips could kiss her whole beautiful, warm body with devotion and adoration, her feet, her calves, her thighs, her stomach, her breasts, her neck, her face, her….

"WATCH OUT!" He heard her scream of terror and pressed the brake suddenly, at the last moment stopping in front of a crossroads where he should have given way to those driving on his right and left – a man almost rammed into them and started honking at them, gesticulating aggressively, opening his window and shouting, asking what the fuck he was doing.

He looked quickly in the mirror, feeling as if he was deaf, his brother was crying loudly, snuggled into her, shaking with fear, her eyes wide, staring at him in horror.

"… are you all right?" He asked dully, feeling like his head was spinning – he saw her nod quickly, and then suddenly he went dark in front of his eyes, his head dropped limply and hit something hard.

He was awakened by someone's conversation. He felt someone touching him, something pleasantly warm enveloped him – his body was lying on something soft and comfortable, he thought he was lying on the sofa in his house.

"− overwork, dehydration, stress, trauma − anything could have caused this, ma'am − when can his sister come? −" An unfamiliar voice asked.

"− his younger brother called her, but she only managed to buy a plane ticket for tomorrow −" He heard her soft, warm voice – he shuddered and opened his eyes with difficulty, wanting to see her, to make sure nothing had happened to her.

He spotted her blurred silhouette in the warm light of the night lamp – she was sitting next to him on the sofa in his living room, still dressed in her Esmeralda costume.

"− can you stay here until she arrives? − are you a friend of the family? −" Asked the man who was apparently a paramedic, packing his suitcase and pulling off his latex gloves. She nodded.

"− y-yes − yes, I'm his little brother's carer −" She replied calmly, the man and she both glanced at him when they noticed he was awake.

"− how are you feeling, sir? − you had a panic attack and fainted − I have given you intravenous sedatives and strengthening medications, you should feel better soon −" The man with the black beard, surely a few years older than him, said to him.

He grunted quietly as he tried to raise himself up on his elbows, feeling everything around him swirl and lay back, giving up.

"− fuck − I'm dizzy −" He muttered, his stomach sore and clenched.

She rose from her seat as the doctors left Daeron's room, sighing heavily in relief when the woman explained that he had only been scared.

"Aemond!" He shouted when he saw that he was awake, riding up to him in his wheelchair, wiping his face red from tears.

"− I thought − I thought you had died − you weren't moving − w-we couldn't wake you up −" He mumbled, and he hugged his head to his chest, closing his eyes, stroking his soft hair with his large hand.

"− I'm sorry − I'm so sorry − I've been working too much lately and I fainted −" He lied, swallowing loudly, his brother nodding his head in understanding, cuddling into him like a teddy bear. He kissed his temple, feeling tears well up in his eyes.

He thought he needed to pull himself together.

"− Esmeralda said she would stay with us until Helaena arrives − now it's up to us to take care of you − lie here and don't worry about a thing −" He said in a voice hoarse from crying and patted his head – he felt a tightness in his throat at his words, his eyebrows arched in emotion, he smiled involuntarily, feeling his lower lip tremble.

"− then I'm in good hands −"

He watched wordlessly as the doctors and medics left their house, Daeron showing his Esmeralda where she could find clothes to change into – she appeared a few minutes later in his long black hoodie reaching halfway down her thighs, her legs wonderfully bare.

She bustled around the kitchen with Daeron, trying to make dinner – he couldn't get out of his awe at what a harmonious duo they were, his brother talking to her without shame or embarrassment.

If he had been wiser, if he had given her a chance then instead of humiliating her, maybe now they would be preparing dinner together.

He rose to sit down when she brought him tea and sandwiches, thanking her meekly. He sighed heavily feeling he wouldn't swallow anything and although the medications were starting to work, he felt like his head was going to burst.

She only returned to the living room after she had helped Daeron change into his pyjamas and put him to bed. She approached him hesitantly and sat down next to him on the couch, not looking at him but at the floor.

"How are you feeling?" She asked quietly, covering her knees with the material of his sweatshirt.

He looked at her, silent for a long moment.

"Exactly as I should after what I did." He replied finally, not knowing how else he was supposed to call what he was feeling.

She looked at him with her eyebrows furrowed in pain, regret and sadness in her gaze, but at the same time also some kind of concern.

He thought in disbelief that his fate mattered to her despite what he had done to her.

She lowered her gaze to her knees, fiddling with the material that covered her thighs in a nervous gesture.

"He needs you composed. Emotionally stable." She said sadly, her lips trembling.

He stared at her face unable to take his eyes off her, thinking only of how much he wanted to touch her, dreaming of her hugging him and locking him in her arms.

"I know." He said dryly, understanding exactly what she meant.

He couldn't be unpredictable, distracted while driving in the car, at work and on a daily basis.

Could not be distracted by her.

"Why did you do it? Then when I wanted to leave?" She finally asked in a voice quivering with grief, and looked at him, the depth of disappointment, sadness and emptiness in her bright eyes.

He licked his lower lip dry with stress and swallowed hard, feeling his heart pounding like mad as he stared straight into her face.

"Because I wanted to feel you. You were so sweet and soft. You were melting in my hands. I couldn't stop." He muttered at last, feeling with shame how pathetic that explanation was, thinking he was just a fucking pervert.

He drew in a loud breath as she slid the blanket off him and sat on top of him, pressing her buttocks against what was under his trousers – he wanted to grab her hips, feeling a rush of adrenaline from disbelief, but she grabbed his wrists.

"No. Don't touch me. If I feel your hands on my body I'll start screaming. I will tell Daeron everything you did to me and that you tried to do it a second time." She said with a seriousness from which his breath caught in his throat; he immediately placed his hands as before on either side of his body, watching in disbelief as her tiny fingers undid his button and zipper, his cock immediately swelled and began to pulsate, a loud shuddering sigh escaped his lips.

God, was she really going to do this?

As if in response to his thoughts, she spread the material of his trousers to the side and slid his boxers down, revealing his throbbing erection, twitching with lust, the head of it pink and glistening. He pressed his lips together and closed his eyes, swallowing loudly when he felt her grab it's base with a gentle flick of her hand and direct its thick tip between her warm thighs.

She had no underwear underneath.

She lowered herself onto him a tiny bit, barely sinking the fat head of his cock inside her, teasing him with the lewd click of her moisture – the sight of him stretching her slit and how wet she was turned him on so much that a low, helpless groan escaped his throat.

"− be quiet or I'll stop − do you want me to stop? − you didn't give me that choice, but I'm not that cruel −" She said with regret as he shook his head quickly, feeling how desperate he was to feel her again.

"− please −" He heard his own pathetic voice, not believing he was allowing it, but he no longer cared what she would do to him, he wanted to fuck her in any way she would let him.

He felt some relief at the thought of being humiliated, he wanted her to do to him what he did to her even though he knew she didn't have his awful nature.

"− what are you asking me to do? −" She whispered softly, almost tenderly, as if her superiority over him was giving her back what he had taken from her, her power over her own body, over what was happening to her.

"− use me −" He breathed out in a voice hoarse with emotion, saw that something had changed in her gaze, her lips parted in a shuddering breath.

He clasped his hands on the fabric of the couch and leaned his head back, gasping out loud as he felt her let him all the way inside her, his hard, fat cock throbbed aggressively with desire squeezed wonderfully by her hot, tight walls – he knew he was embarrassingly close to fulfilment and that she felt it too.

She put her hands on his shoulders, leaning over him, but not moving, waiting for his manhood to stop twitching inside her – her pretty, flushed face surrounded by her dark, shiny curls, her bright eyes fixed on him, her plump, swollen lips parted in a quickened breath.

"− use you? − mr. prosecutor wants to make me feel good? −" She asked in a whisper, her voice trembling with fear and arousal, as if she herself was shocked by what she was doing and by the fact that he was listening to her, by the way he was responding to her, by how much he desired her.

"− yes −" He mumbled out and closed his eyes with a low moan, feeling that with flick of her hips she slowly slid his cock out of her only to push it back in with a loud click of her wetness.

"− why? −" She exhaled, moving on top of him painfully slowly, her tight fleshy muscles giving him a wonderful squeeze each time she forced him back between her plushy folds, they both began to breathe louder and louder. He bent his legs at the knees, involuntarily tentatively responding to her thrusts with deep stabs of his hips.

"− God, don't you see that I crave you? −" He groaned low, with the last of his strong will restraining himself from tightening his hands on her buttocks and forcing her to move faster.

There was something wonderful about this slow agony, in the way she teased him, rubbing herself at the spot from which she felt the greatest pleasure, a sweet moan escaped her lips at his words.

"− are you always like this when you see me? − like you are now between my thighs? −" She mumbled in embarrassment, speeding up, their naked bodies began to slam against each other with splats of her moisture – he dared to buck into her harder, they both began to pant loudly, looking at each other with their mouths wide open, her lips puffy with desire.

"− of course − I jerk off every day thinking about you − fuck −" He muttered with difficulty, feeling the tickle and heat in his lower abdomen, his cock swelling with desire so much that he felt like it was about to explode if he didn't come inside her, their naked bodies slamming against each other.

He delighted in the sight of her throwing her head back at his words, her hot core pulsed hard around him, sucking him inside, her fingers clenched on the material of his sweatshirt, her buttocks slapping loudly against his thighs, soaking him all over.

"− touch me − touch me −" She cried out and he caught her quickly, one of his hands weaved into her hair and pressed her face against his, their lips joined in an aggressive, thirsty, sticky kiss, the fingers of his other hand clenched on the soft, firm skin of her ass.

They moaned loudly into each other's mouths as he began to pound into her like mad, almost not sliding out of her anymore – he embraced her and hugged her body to his, gripping her around the waist, her hands stroking his cheeks, his neck, his scar, his cock thrusting into her weeping folds twitching and throbbing like crazy.

"− fuck − fuck, baby, m gonna cum −" He babbled between the flicks of their lips, tongues and teeth. She gasped and came at his words with a loud mewl of surprise – he felt her moisture run down her thighs onto his lower abdomen, her muscles began to clench on him greedily, squeezing him wonderfully. He threw his head back and moaned in relief when he felt his warm seed spurt out inside her.

"− oh God − oh my fucking God −" He mumbled, experiencing such an intense orgasm for the first time in his life – for a moment he went dark before his eyes, he could see or hear nothing, there was only the wonderful hot pleasure spilling over his whole body, his hands clenched on her hot skin.

He hugged her close, snuggling her face into the hollow of his neck, covering their bodies with his blanket, not wanting Daeron to accidentally find them in this position, while having no intention of changing it.

He felt wonderful.

He stroked her soft hair placing tender, wet kisses on her temple, his other hand trailing reassuringly down her back, feeling that she was trembling all over with emotion, unsure as he was of what had really happened between them.

"− sleep here, little one − I won't touch you against your will − I promise −" He whispered, but her silence answered him – she breathed loudly along with him, lying still, his half-soft manhood still throbbing deep inside her.

"− I know −" She replied quietly after a moment, rising on her shoulders, sliding him out of her with a soft motion of her hips, his hands clasped helplessly on her thighs.

"− please, don't go −" He muttered, looking at her in horror, his heart pounding like mad.

Please, let me go.

"− I'm sorry −"

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Please, let me go.

She rose from the couch, trembling all over, covering her thighs with his sweatshirt, his semen mingled with her moisture ran down her naked skin.

"− I'll sleep in the free room next to Daeron's bedroom − I'll lock myself in − don't come to me and don't ever touch me again − we're even −" She said in a calm, quivering voice full of sorrow, sadness and emptiness.

He wanted to touch her fingers but she turned and left the living room, hiding her face in her hand as if she was crying again, disappearing down the corridor.

He lay looking dully at the spot where she had stood just a moment before, feeling a squeeze in his throat – with trembling hands he slipped his boxers back on and zipped up his trousers, feeling tears of disappointment running down the sides of his face onto the pillow under his head.

We're even.

_____

Aemond Taglist:

(bold means I couldn't tag you)

@notnormalthings-blog @nikstrange @zenka69 @bellaisasleep @k-y-r-a-1 @g-cf2020 @melsunshine @opheliaas-stuff @chainsawsangel @iiamthehybrid @tinykryptonitewerewolf @namoreno @malfoytargaryen @qyburnsghost @aemondsdelight @persephonerinyes @fan-goddess @sweethoneyblossom1 @watercolorskyy @randomdragonfires @apollonshootafar @padfooteyes @darylandbethfanforever9 @fudge13 @snh96 @rwdkarla @echos-muses

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femsolid · 9 months

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"In his disgusting discussion of Dora, who suffered from “hysteria”, Freud relays her experience of being sexually assaulted at the age of fourteen and pontificates upon what she should have experienced. He describes the scene in which an older man and friend of the family, having managed to get Dora alone, “suddenly clasped the girl to him and pressed a kiss upon her lips”. Freud’s profound analysis follows: "This was surely just the situation to call up a distinct feeling of sexual excitement in a girl of fourteen who had never been approached. But Dora had at that moment a violent feeling of disgust, tore herself free from the man, and hurried past him to the staircase and from there to the street door." Clearly, Freud assumes that any woman who is “approached”, that is, sexually accosted, should respond with uncontrollable visceral desire for the man who mauls and violates her. Thus Dora’s normal reaction of disgust and self salvation is negated. Freud drones in: "In this scene, the behavior of this child of fourteen was already and entirely hysterical. I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable; and I should do so whether or no the person were capable of producing somatic symptoms. Instead of the genital sensation which would certainly have been felt by a healthy girl in such circumstances, Dora was overcome by disgust." In this maze of obscene babble the great mind-shrinker announces that any woman who does not enjoy rape is hysterical. Freud’s psychoanalytic babble is a paradigm of the rapist’s erasure of male responsibility for rape on all levels. The patient is not merely blamed for being a victim who “asked for it”. She is blamed for being a victim who did not “ask for it” and who did not love being violated."

- Gyn/Ecology by Mary Daly

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quotesfrommyreading · 1 year

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In the terrible winter of 1932–33, brigades of Communist Party activists went house to house in the Ukrainian countryside, looking for food. The brigades were from Moscow, Kyiv, and Kharkiv, as well as villages down the road. They dug up gardens, broke open walls, and used long rods to poke up chimneys, searching for hidden grain. They watched for smoke coming from chimneys, because that might mean a family had hidden flour and was baking bread. They led away farm animals and confiscated tomato seedlings. After they left, Ukrainian peasants, deprived of food, ate rats, frogs, and boiled grass. They gnawed on tree bark and leather. Many resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. Some 4 million died of starvation.

At the time, the activists felt no guilt. Soviet propaganda had repeatedly told them that supposedly wealthy peasants, whom they called kulaks, were saboteurs and enemies—rich, stubborn landowners who were preventing the Soviet proletariat from achieving the utopia that its leaders had promised. The kulaks should be swept away, crushed like parasites or flies. Their food should be given to the workers in the cities, who deserved it more than they did. Years later, the Ukrainian-born Soviet defector Viktor Kravchenko wrote about what it was like to be part of one of those brigades. “To spare yourself mental agony you veil unpleasant truths from view by half-closing your eyes—and your mind,” he explained. “You make panicky excuses and shrug off knowledge with words like exaggeration and hysteria.”

He also described how political jargon and euphemisms helped camouflage the reality of what they were doing. His team spoke of the “peasant front” and the “kulak menace,” “village socialism” and “class resistance,” to avoid giving humanity to the people whose food they were stealing. Lev Kopelev, another Soviet writer who as a young man had served in an activist brigade in the countryside (later he spent years in the Gulag), had very similar reflections. He too had found that clichés and ideological language helped him hide what he was doing, even from himself:

I persuaded myself, explained to myself. I mustn’t give in to debilitating pity. We were realizing historical necessity. We were performing our revolutionary duty. We were obtaining grain for the socialist fatherland. For the five-year plan.

There was no need to feel sympathy for the peasants. They did not deserve to exist. Their rural riches would soon be the property of all.

But the kulaks were not rich; they were starving. The countryside was not wealthy; it was a wasteland. This is how Kravchenko described it in his memoirs, written many years later:

Large quantities of implements and machinery, which had once been cared for like so many jewels by their private owners, now lay scattered under the open skies, dirty, rusting and out of repair. Emaciated cows and horses, crusted with manure, wandered through the yard. Chickens, geese and ducks were digging in flocks in the unthreshed grain.

That reality, a reality he had seen with his own eyes, was strong enough to remain in his memory. But at the time he experienced it, he was able to convince himself of the opposite. Vasily Grossman, another Soviet writer, gives these words to a character in his novel Everything Flows:

I’m no longer under a spell, I can see now that the kulaks were human beings. But why was my heart so frozen at the time? When such terrible things were being done, when such suffering was going on all around me? And the truth is that I truly didn’t think of them as human beings. “They’re not human beings, they’re kulak trash”—that’s what I heard again and again, that’s what everyone kept repeating.

— Ukraine and the Words That Lead to Mass Murder

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gabrielsbubblegumbitch · 4 months

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Do you have any ideas on the types of fears the Vee’s would have? Like genuine- panic-attack-inducing fears :o

(just wanna say your hcs give me life I love them so much the way you characterize them all SO perfectly is so freaking amazing and cool !!!!! hope your day is going good so far !!!! :] )

Thank you for being so cute 🥰 And I love your question, sorry it took me so long to answer tho.

Anyway, I've published a 10k word fanfic about Vox facing his fears and experiencing a panic attack sksksksm but to summarize: Vox's worst fear is people discovering how fragile he really is. He is entirely dependent on others admiring him or at least perceiving him as powerful and this need is so crucial that he already took his own life over it. In Hell, he could handle being hated but not being perceived as vulnerable. He believes that showing any weakness would lead to others taking advantage of him, resulting in his complete downfall.

For Valentino, it's loneliness. He doesn't care whether he's loved or feared; he must have someone around. He experiences his emotions so intensely that he can't manage them without another person who can serve as either a mirror or a vessel for them. He goes crazy if he has to experience a single unpleasant thing without at least complaining to some random girl at the club. If he's alone for more than a few hours without any means of communication, he starts going absolutely insane and spirals into hysteria because he's so overwhelmed by his own thoughts.

For Velvette, the scariest thing is restraints. She can't cope with the feeling of powerlessness. Though in her case, it's very much literal. Unlike Vox, she believes that no matter how much she loses, there's nothing she can't handle—she started from nothing twice and did great. However, she's terrified of the feeling when you literally cannot do anything but wait for the inevitable. She has recurring nightmares about being buried alive or being walled up in a tomb.

#hazbin hotel #vox #valentino #velvette #vox hazbin #valentino hazbin #velvette hazbin #ask #headcanon

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ace-touya · 5 months

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My Favourite Quirk Ideas I’ve Come Up With for OCs

Solidify

The user has the ability to solidify the water in the area to a pink material than can be formed into any shape, meaning it can be used as a shield, armour, a weapon, etc. quirk obviously cannot be used if there is no water around. It also doesn’t wear off - the water stays in the solidified form.

Namesake

By repeating a person’s name, the user is able to freeze, speed up, or slow down that person’s movement. It only works for as long as the user is able to continuously repeat their name. As soon as they stop saying it, the effect ends.

Amplify

The user has the ability to amplify the sound of anything they touch with all five fingers. They cannot amplify their own voice, but they can amplify musical instruments that they play, including ones that use breath. They can also amplify other people’s voice. My oc used this on my friend’s oc who is related to Present Mic.

Sleep Paralysis Demon

A sentient quirk. The user has an 8’0 demon with enhanced strength that follows it everywhere. The demon’s strength depends on how much sleep the user gets - more sleep = weaker demon, but if the user hasn’t slept in ages, the demon becomes angry and attacks the user. My oc’s demon is named Shy.

Ghost

Another sentient quirk, a being that only the user can see and hear. The being can interact with physical objects and therefore can communicate with other people by writing. If the user doesn’t eat enough, the being disappears.

Hot-Blooded

The user has a resistance to heat and is sensitive to cold temperatures. They cannot get burned. Anything they touch with the palms of their hands sets alight

String

The user shoots golden strings that vary in length from their knuckles. They have electrical properties, so can be used to electrocute people, but my oc mainly uses them as a capture weapon instead.

Hysteria

Based on the game Alice: Madness Returns, when the user is experiencing a lot of physical pain, they get a power boost. Their eyes go red and their skin goes completely white, and they get enhanced strength and can’t feel pain. They cannot die while hysteria is active, but it doesn’t heal wounds, so when it deactivated, if fatal wounds are left untreated, the user will still die.

#my hero academia #boku no hero acedamia #quirk help #quirk ideas #bnha ocs #mha #bnha #mha quirks #oc help

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dragoneyes618 · 22 days

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The major lesson that reviewer Christine Rosen extracts from Rob Henderson’s new memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, is: “The people who control a great deal of our cultural and political conversations are a rarified elite with little understanding of how most people live their lives.” (I have not yet read Troubled, though I’m eager to do so. What follows draws primarily on Rosen’s review in the Free Beacon and on Henderson’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.)

To comprehend the gap between those elites and the vast majority of Americans, consider a recent Rasmussen survey of what the authors call “elites” — more than one post-graduate degree, an annual income of $150,000 — and a subset of those “elites,” who attended an Ivy League school, or another elite private school, such as Stanford or University of Chicago, whom Rasmussen dubs “super-elites.”

Three-quarters of the elites and nearly 90 percent of the super elites describe their personal incomes as on the upswing, while almost none describe their incomes as on the decline. For all Americans, however, nearly twice as many view their income as worsening as view their financial situation as improving — 40 percent to 20 percent.

Despite having eventually made it to Yale as an undergraduate in his mid-twenties and later earning a PhD in psychology at Cambridge University, Henderson most certainly did not stem from the elite class from which so many of his classmates came. Students at Yale from families in the upper 1 percent of wealth are more numerous than those from the bottom 60 percent.

One of Henderson’s Yale classmates, who had attended Phillips Exeter Academy, America’s top prep school, once lectured Henderson on his white privilege — even though he is actually half Asian and half Hispanic. Yet it would take a certain obliviousness to label Henderson a child of privilege. One of his earliest memories is of his drug-addict mother being pulled away from him in handcuffs and hauled off to jail, when he was three. He never knew his father.

After that, he was shuttled between various foster homes, none of them stable, until he joined the US Air Force after high school. The discipline of the military helped him overcome some of the chaos that had characterized his life until then. But many of the old demons remained, including his penchant for self-medicating with alcohol, and he ended up in a detox program, where a talented therapist helped him work through some of those demons.

One of the central messages of Henderson’s memoir is that a non-stable childhood family life is not just bad because it hurts your chances of getting into an elite college or attaining a high-paying job later in life, but also because those raised in such an environment experience “pain that etches itself into their bodies and brains and propels them to do things in the pursuit of relief that often inflict even more harm.”

Given their difference in backgrounds, Henderson found many of the social rituals of his classmates incomprehensible. One example was when the Yale campus erupted in hysteria over an email from Erika Christakis to the students of Silliman residential college, of which she served as co-master with her husband Nicholas, suggesting that they were old enough to work out themselves which Halloween costumes to wear, without asking the administration to issue an elaborate set of rules to avoid “microaggressions” or “cultural appropriation” — e.g., a white student wearing a sombrero. After the childhood and teenage years he experienced, a fellow student in a sombrero did not seem like such a big deal to Henderson.

Erika was eventually force to resign her position in Silliman and on the Yale faculty, much to Henderson’s disappointment, as he had been eager to take her course on early childhood development. Meanwhile, the black undergraduate who confronted Nicholas Christakis in the Silliman courtyard, in an expletive-laden tirade, in front of a group of students cheering her on, was given an award for extracurricular excellence at the next Yale graduation.

Henderson offers an invaluable term to describe the opinions expressed so fiercely and with no tolerance of opposing views by his fellow undergrads: “luxury beliefs.” Luxury beliefs, as Henderson defines them, “confer status on the upper class at little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.” The conspicuous displays of wealth and leisure activities that broadcast elite status in Thorstein Veblen’s time have been replaced by opinions and beliefs that give proof of one’s elite education. After all, Henderson notes ironically, how many non-Ivy-League-educated Americans can easily toss off terms like “cisgender” or “heteronormative”?

Mantras such as “defund the police” are luxury beliefs because their impact on those living in gated communities or the most affluent neighborhoods is likely to be negligible. Henderson comments about the policies implemented to combat white privilege, “It won’t be Yale graduates who are harmed. Poor white people will bear the brunt.”

He recounts the story of a refugee from the North Korean police state, attending Columbia University, who raised concerns about the anti-free speech movement on campus, only to be taunted with “Go back to Pyongyang” on a social media site for Ivy League students. Normally, nothing will earn faster exile to social media purgatory than telling an immigrant, “Go back to where you came from,” but this particular refugee was deemed deserving of insult, writes Henderson, because she “undermined these people’s view of themselves as morally righteous.”

Incidentally, I would rank as near the top of “luxury beliefs” the familiar chants about Israeli genocide and apartheid. They cost their proponents nothing, yet effectively broadcast one’s moral righteousness and humanity, not to mention elite education, especially when terms like settler-colonialism and intersectionality are thrown into the mix.

Henderson is primarily concerned with the way that bad ideas — e.g., dismissal of matrimony and monogamy as passé, decriminalization of drugs — filter downstream in the culture, where they wreak havoc. As Charles Murray thoroughly documents in Breaking Apart, rates of marriage, children living in two-parent homes, and attendance at religious services have remained more or less constant in the most affluent quintile of the population, while plummeting in the lower quintiles. But on elite campuses, marriage is more likely to be portrayed as a prison for women, just as the same students for whom the words “capitalist oppression” roll trippingly off their tongues can be found the same day lining up for interviews with Goldman Sachs.

But the danger posed by the holders of luxury beliefs lies not only in their pernicious cultural influence. Holders of those views are quite comfortable with the use of coercion to advance their beliefs. Four-fifths of the super elites, interviewed in the Rasmussen poll cited above, would ban gas-powered cars. Just under 90 percent support strict rationing of meat, gas, and electricity, and 70 percent would ban all nonessential air travel.

The impact of these restrictions on the most affluent would likely be relatively small. They can afford electric cars, and would buy carbon offsets to circumvent some of the most onerous rationing or purchase them on the black market. And dollars to donuts that their air travel would be deemed necessary. The impact of such policies on the less affluent doesn’t figure into their calculations.

Elite campuses have been focal points for the limitations on free speech, and over half of the super elites educated on those campuses describe Americans as possessing too much freedom. That goes with a general contempt for markets, which allocate equal weight to the choices of the unenlightened and the enlightened.

That concern with “too much” freedom goes together with a remarkable trust in government among 70 percent of the elites and 90 percent of the super elites. Government is beneficent, in their eyes, because it can force people to do what the enlightened have determined is good. The elites know that their hands will be on the levers of coercion, particularly administrative agencies. (I would wager that the majority of those lower-level staffers staging mini-rebellions in the White House and the State Department over American support for Israel’s war on Hamas are holders of elite credentials.) Ronald Reagan’s quip, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,’ ” does not resonate with the elites.

Sixty years before Rob Henderson first stepped onto the Yale campus, another man already in his mid-twenties entered Harvard as an undergraduate. Like Henderson, Thomas Sowell came from a deprived background and served in the military before entering college. He was born in the Jim-Crow-era South, in a home without electricity, and served in the Marines during the Korean War, after dropping out of high school.

The 1969 black student riots at Cornell, where Sowell was an economics professor, and subsequent pressure at UCLA to lower his standards for students, soured Sowell on academia, which he left for a position as senior fellow at the Hoover Institution almost half a century ago.

Over 50 years and almost 40 books, most still in print and many of them standard texts in economics, and ten volumes of collected columns, Sowell has leveled a sustained critique at the dominant intellectual doctrines of our day, in particular those of his fellow black intellectuals, whom he views as having spectacularly failed the black masses by advocating for policies that may serve their interests but not those of the large majority of American blacks. (Only about one-third of his writing concerns issues of race, and he has penned classic works in intellectual, social, and economic history.) Jason Riley’s intellectual biography of Sowell is appropriately titled Maverick.

In a short new work, Social Justice Fallacies, which I would commend to every college student and social justice warrior, Sowell fleshes out many of Henderson’s observations, including the detachment of elite theorists from the lives of those whom they purport to advocate, and their sometimes subtle, sometimes not, contempt for those whom they view as their inferiors.

The second chapter compares the Progressive movement of the early decades of the 20th century to present-day progressives. At first glance, it would appear that little connects the two groups, apart from their position on the political left of their day. A strong streak of racial determinism characterized the early progressives, and many of their leading lights fretted about the disastrous impact of an influx of people of inferior races to America. By contrast, today’s progressives start from the premise that there are no differences between races and that all differential outcomes are a result of systemic racism.

In the earlier period, Professor Edward Ross, the chairman of the American Sociological Society, warned that America was headed toward “race suicide” by virtue of being inundated by people of “inferior types.” American universities and colleges taught hundreds of courses in eugenics, defined as the reduction or prevention of the survival of people considered genetically inferior. The most famous economist of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, was founder of the Eugenics Society at Cambridge.

Irving Fisher of Yale, the leading monetary economist of the period, advocated for the isolation or sterilization of those inferior types. Or as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “Three generations of idiots are enough.” Sowell remarks upon how casually Fisher spoke of imprisonment of those who had committed no crime and the denial of normal life to all regarded as inferior. Not by accident did Hitler yemach shemo term a work on eugenics by Madison Grant, a leading conservationist and advocate for national parks and the protection of endangered species, his Bible.

At first glance, today’s progressives could not seem further removed from their namesakes. They are the opposite of racial determinists. In the modern progressive creed, all differences in outcomes between people of different races can have one and only one explanation: discrimination by the majority group.

Despite the opposite views on race, Sowell finds important continuities between the progressive movement of the early 20th century and that of today. Today’s progressives share, according to Sowell, their predecessors’ aversion to confronting empirical evidence that challenges their fixed verities, and a similar inclination to respond to empirical challenges with ad hominem insults — racist being the most powerful — rather than with counter-arguments and evidence.

And they are similarly inclined to use government power to coerce the less enlightened to behave in accord with their “expert” opinions, and too frequently oblivious to or unconcerned with the impact of their policy prescriptions on those constituting the “lower orders,” in their minds.

Woodrow Wilson, perhaps the leading figure of the Progressive era, served as president of Princeton before being elected president. Like many of his fellow progressives, he was an unabashed racist who insisted that black employees in government offices be physically segregated.

But what joins him to present-day progressives is his enormous confidence in government by experts. He presided over a massive expansion of the federal government and the creation of many of the largest administrative agencies, run by “experts.” He viewed the Constitution as outmoded for a modern age. But not to worry, government agencies headed by experts would usher in a “new freedom,” albeit not quite the freedom of a constitution limiting the power of government and enshrining individual rights.

Today, DEI bureaucracies on almost every campus seek to enforce right-thinking and enter into every aspect of university governance, including faculty hiring. Those mushrooming bureaucracies account for a large part in the explosion in higher education costs.

Sowell takes aim at the racial theories of the early progressives and contemporary ones alike. He seeks to empirically refute the claim that each race has a different “ceiling” for intelligence. (If anecdotes were data, his own genius would serve as refutation.) He met with and debated Professor Albert Jensen, one of the leading modern proponents of that view.

Sowell argues that environment, not inherent ceilings, underlies much of the difference in IQ between races. For instance, those raised in the Hebrides Isles and the hill country of Kentucky, though of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, have IQs comparable to American blacks. And like American blacks, their IQs tend to decline from childhood to adulthood. Social isolation appears to be the key. Sowell cites another study that blacks raised by white adoptive parents had IQs six points above the national average.

As an amusing example of the fallibility of IQ tests as measures of inherent capabilities, Sowell quotes Carl Brigham, who developed the SAT test. Brigham claimed on the basis of army mental tests administered in World War I that the myth that Jews are on average highly intelligent had been refuted. At least he had the good grace to admit by 1930, as Jews excelled on standardized tests, that his earlier conclusions had been without merit, and had failed to take into account that most immigrant children were raised in non-English-speaking homes.

Sowell is equally effective skewering the present-day progressive belief that all differences in outcomes are explained as products of racial discrimination. He chafes at the resultant cult of victimization that stands in the way of examination of cultural behavioral factors that prevent black advancement.

He insists that behaviors count and explain a great deal of the differences in income levels between different racial groups. For instance, black married couples have experienced poverty rates of less than 10 percent for decades, which is less than the national poverty rate for all families. And black married couples have higher income levels than white single-parent families. The problem is that black marriage rates overall are lower.

It is often said that the high illegitimacy rate in the black community is attributable to the “legacy of slavery.” But for nearly a century after slavery, the rates were relatively low. In 1940, they were one-quarter of what they are today. Sowell suggests that the rapid expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s explains much of that rise, as births to single mothers have also risen rapidly in Sweden, the welfare paradise, where there is no legacy of slavery.

Evidence cited to show discrimination against black children by “white supremacists” — e.g., discipline rates two and a half times those of white students — proves the opposite, Sowell suggests. For white students are themselves twice as likely to be disciplined as Asian students. Perhaps, then, disruptive behavior, rather than discrimination, explains differential rates of discipline. To get rid of school discipline in the name of equity leads to schools in which it is impossible to learn, and ends up harming black students, he argues. Attacks on discriminatory school discipline is thus another one of those “luxury beliefs,” like defunding the police.

One of the major causes of the burst housing bubble of 2007, which Sowell predicted, was government pressure on lenders to greatly reduce credit requirements for mortgages. The regulators’ theory was that blacks were being discriminated against in the mortgage market, as evidenced by the higher rate of rejection for black mortgage applicants. The only problem with the discrimination hypothesis, Sowell shows, was that black-owned banks rejected black mortgage applicants at even higher rates.

The hypothesis that different income levels are exclusively a function of discrimination founders on the fact that other minority groups — e.g., Asians — have, on average, incomes well above the medium national income, and dark-skinned Asian Indians earn on average $39,000 more per annum than full-time, year-round white workers.

The victimization narrative, in Sowell’s eyes, is not only unhelpful but damaging to blacks, as it shifts the focus from one of encouraging the types of behaviors that are associated with success. In the immediate wake of slavery, and for nearly a century afterwards, almost all graduates of all-black Dunbar High in Washington, D.C., went on to college. Black and Hispanic kids in New York City charter schools are six times as likely to pass city math proficiency exams as their counterparts in the regular public schools. Why? Sowell wants to know.

Focusing on the behaviors that foster success rather than wallowing in a narrative of discrimination — which he personally experienced in his younger years and does not deny still exists today — is for Sowell the key to black advancement. And that requires more empirical study and less airy theorizing.

Many of the panaceas that derive from au courant theories have been conclusively refuted on the ground. Black political power in most of America’s largest cities, for instance, has done little to change the lives of the vast majority of black citizens. And affirmative action has, in Sowell’s view, reinforced stereotypes of black inferiority, among whites and, even worse, among blacks themselves, while doing little to help inner city blacks.

Without a clear-eyed attention to empirical evidence and an openness to debate based on facts and logic, in Sowell’s terminology, we are forever consigned to the realm of “luxury beliefs.”

#mishpacha magazine #yonoson rosenblum #woke #woke madness #woke liberal madness #liberalism #leftism #sjw idiocy

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