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storm-and-starlight · 3 months

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so the idea of an Earthspark fic following the bots not on Earth after the spacebridge broke has been rattling around inside my head basically since the show first came out, centering around "what if the Quintessons took advantage of Optimus and Megatron being out of the game and Rodimus had to step in", but I never really had a plot for it until about two-ish weeks ago when one just Showed Up.

I'll warn you now it just straight up doesn't have an ending, but who knows, maybe that'll show up too someday.

Anyways since I doubt I'll ever be able to write in in a way that does it justice, here's the bulletpoint outline of what I do have, under a cut bc Long

Important Backstory Notes (not, like, a prologue, just stuff that would need to be sprinkled throughout as context)

The whole Knights of Cybertron thing was well before the Thirteen Primes, enough that it's mostly fallen into legendary-type history instead of commonly-taught history, though the process is more pronounced due to how centralized information storage (and really the entire concept of information storage that isn't entirely dependent on a living being like a Titan) wasn't really a thing until late(er) in the Age of Primes, and only became standard until after the loss of most of Cybertron's Titans.

The Thirteen Primes, Prima and all the rest, rose to fame during the last Quintesson war by being generals and heroes and scientists, the figureheads of the war and the people who saved the Cybertronian species from perpetual slavery.

All but one of them, that is. Quintus Prime, researcher, scientist, who loved life in all its forms (and, some would say, who loved organic life a little too much), disappeared with his artifact the Emberstone -- the final safeguard against the loss or corruption of the Allspark -- and was later found to have defected to the Quintessons, with his technology and that of the Emberstone showing up in the Quintesson efforts.

The Primes eventually won, and beat the Quintessons away from Cybertron.

Unwilling to lose their image of planetary harmony that they worked so hard to create even before the war, the remaining Primes recorded his disappearance as a death in battle, implying that the loss of him, his Titan, and the Emberstone was simply a terrible accident), and went about rebuilding and beginning the Age of Primes.

(Timeline note: the Thirteen Primes unified Cybertron, got attacked by the Quintessons, fought in what was actually the Second Quintesson War -- the first was the initial liberation of Cybertron before the Knights set out on their explorations -- and then started the Age of Primes, which ended in the betrayal of Solus and the departure of the colony Titans.)

(post-betrayal leads into another age of unrest, before the new lineage of Primes (ones without the Matrix) begins the Cybertronian Golden Age, which really wasn't all that golden.)

Story begins millions of years later, about, oh, twenty years before the events of Earthspark

Most of section one takes place well before the spacebridge closes, and the initial journey back to Cybertron takes a few years, so from the time of Hot Rod's capture to their return to Cybertron just after the spacebridge closes is probably in the vicinity of five-to-six years.

Hot Rod, way out in the middle of nowhere on a mission, is captured by the Quintessons and presumed dead by the Autobots. He's not, but he's been enslaved by them -- however, they're still operating on their understanding of Cybertronian neurological defenses from before the Autobot-Decepticon War, meaning that their ability to control him is unable to keep up with his anti-virals and is slowly weakening over time. He gains more and more autonomy back, right up until the Quintesson ship he's on discovers Theophany (by horrible chance) and elects to begin the Quintesson resurgence right then and there.

Crucially, Crystal City hasn't been part of the war, so their anti-virals aren't at Hot Rod's level, and so nearly the entire city is enslaved and formed into the first and worst core of the Quintesson army.

In the middle of the attack, he finally manages to grab back almost full motor control, flames on, and burns out most of the adaptive nanites that are serving as a reservoir for the control code even as his anti-virals keep destroying the stuff that makes it into his processor. He flees the battle, ending up in the wastes of Theophany while Crystal City is overrun and the Third Quintesson War begins.

There is, however, one mech in Crystal City who has war-grade antivirals and manages to survive the inital assault of a non-nanite transmitted code infection (think radio broadcast) and who fled the city at Wing's request once it was clear the entire city was lost and the Knights of Light taken captive and the city destroyed.

He meets Hot Rod once they both come back to the ruins of the city for lack of anywhere else to go, and Hot Rod reveals what, exactly, happened to everyone around him. Hot Rod manages to convince Drift that they need to go and warn whoever else they can find, so they take one of the least-damaged ships in deep storage and set out to warn Cybertron.

En route to Cybertron, they slowly gather together a crew of various outcasts and misfits -- people who for one reason or another have been stationed out in the reaches of deep space, far away from Cybertron -- and even the odd prisoner (Whirl), all packed together on an ancient tiny shuttle and still desperately trying to outrun the Quintessons and make it in time to warn Optimus and Megatron.

At one point, they meet the Camien trio, Windblade, Nautica, and Chromia, who are also heading to Cybertron to ask for aid for Caminus completely unaware of the Quintesson threat, but in finding an ancient, injured Titan who's already been taken over by the Quintessons everyone learns of the risk they're all facing, and the dangers of letting this war spread further than it already has -- the destruction of Crystal City was bad, but the fact that every Cybertronian infected is another weapon in Quintesson hands is what really sinks in here.

At another point, they come across the remains of the Ark and manage to pull two people out of stasis: Cyclonus, the perfect warrior and Galvatron's right hand, and Tailgate, sanitation worker kept in stasis since the launch of the Ark as auxiliary personnel that they wouldn't have to feed since he wasn't awake.

The major climax is encountering Kimia, a secret Autobot research station under attack by Decepticons. With the Quintessons right on their heels, Hot Rod and Drift attempt to reconcile both the primarily-Autobot crew and the Decepticon squad attacking (maybe Deathsaurus's?), but negotiations keep breaking down until the Quintessons show up with an entire army of enslaved Cybertronians. Hot Rod manages to destroy their ship by crashing the entire station into it, but only a handful of people on either side survive the battle (Chromedome, Rewind, Brainstorm, Perceptor, and probably a handful of Decepticons that I haven't decided on yet), and everyone in their tiny enclave of free Cybertronians realizes that this is bigger than their old war, and that if they don't work together they're never going to survive.

End Section One

Section Two

They finally make it to Cybertron, but it's already too late -- the spacebridge to Earth is closed with most of the Autobot and Decepticon high command on the other side of it, the Allspark was lost somewhere while it closed (it's actually stuck in-between the planets in subspace, since the subspace route is still open but inaccessible with one end of the bridge destroyed, but this isn't relevant to the rest of the fic) and the Quintessons have already arrived and begun a planetary takeover -- most of the ground troops still remaining on the planet have become part of their forces.

Jazz has escaped with a handful of special ops from both sides and is hiding down in the deep underlayers struggling to survive and start up a resistance, and the arrival of Hot Rod and his motley crew is a huge boon and a huge hassle, since most of them (yes, even the Kimia scientists) was assigned that far from the front lines for a reason. About the only ones who're really considered command material are Cyclonus, and he's still struggling with the fact that he's been in stasis for millions of years and has no desire to lead what he sees as a pack of misfits and rejects, and Ultra Magnus, who has no desire to be in command whatsoever, so Hot Rod got the job largely by virtue of being the person to start this mission in the first place.

Moreover, they can't even get off Cybertron because the Quintessons have a major planetary cordon eliminating anyone who tries to flee.

Still, they try to get a resistance going and start figuring out how to actually fight the Quintessons, rather than just escape them, and are making some progress. Slowly. The deep planetary tunnels are largely safe, and a lot of the Kimia scientists have managed to use one of Shockwave's labs to find some protection against Quintesson influence -- as long as they don't get physical access to your brain, you probably won't get enslaved! -- and are attempting work on a cure. It's starting to look like it'll be long and hard but they might even manage to win this war!

And then the judge shows up, and brings with them not just the limited number of Cybertronian slaves they have, but nearly uncountable hordes of mass-produced Sharkticons, because they have access to Cybertron's entire industrial complex and all its fabricators.

On top of that, the Quintessons have discovered the existence of the deep underlayers, and are preparing an assault on the resistance bases.

Right before the assault goes down, Drift gets a vision (he's been having weird premonitions his entire life but it's only after he started actively using them to avoid Quintessons that they've started getting noticeably stronger) and gathers together a group (definitely Hot Rod and Rung, maybe also a bunch of the Camiens/some scientists) to try to find the location of a ship he saw, one that can get them off the planet.

They've been gone less than a day but are already entirely out of range when the Quintessons attack

Magnus and Cyclonus rally, together, against the assault and and try a desperate attempt to repel it and save the scientists' work that might be the only hope to save their species.

NOTE: Prior to this, Magnus and Cyclonus had not gotten along, with both of them having an extremely rigid code that is not... entirely compatible with the other but when it comes down to the wire and both Hot Rod and Drift are off on hopeless errands, they're the only ones left to coordinate the defense and try to save what they can.

Midway through Drift and Hot Rod's journey, the planet transforms (something it has, quite notably, not done since the Age of Primes) and cuts Hot Rod and Rung off from the rest of the group, with the only way out being down deeper into the planet, past even the deep layers and down into the core.

Separated, they continue on.

Drift ends up in the Hand of Primus, way out in the middle of the wastes, the site of the last true hotspot on the entire planet (after it was harvested during the early years of the Golden Age, all new sparks on the planet came from the Allspark). Deep below the surface, underneath a strange spiky red metal formation, they find a ship literally embedded in the stone, not entirely spaceworthy but possible to get to working conditions, and with a set of unique quantum engines that might be enough to get them away from the planet before the Quintessons can shoot them down.

Leaving Nautica (and possibly any other scientists they brought with them?) to try to repair the ship and get it flying, Drift and the rest race back to the base only to find it under attack. Magnus and Cyclonus manage to punch a hole through the Quintesson ranks and start the evacuation, and they all race up through the sublevels back to the surface.

Meanwhile, Hot Rod and Rung are (apparently) desperately trying to find a way out of the deep tunnels and back to the surface, but every turn they make just redirects them deeper towards the core, and eventually Rung comes to the conclusion that whatever's at the center of the planet must want them to go to the core. As they travel, it's apparent that there's something going on with him, though he won't tell Hot Rod what (the truth is that he's regaining his memories of being a part of the long-dormant core of the planet, and he's realizing that the Core, that Primus, the heart of their world, is somehow calling Hot Rod in).

Upon reaching the core, Rung acts almost as cityspeaker for the planet, one of the many fragments of its great multi-part mind that's separate enough to speak for itself, and offers Hot Rod a Matrix -- not the Matrix, the old one, the original one, the one that Optimus Prime still carries and that was lost on Earth when the spacebridge fell -- but a new, empty one that still nevertheless holds the ancient property that the Matrix was made for in the first place -- protection against the Quintesson scourge, a way to store crucial information in a way that can't be stolen by them and is much harder to lose if groups are split up or scientists killed, and most importantly the chance at a true cure.

Hot Rod accepts the Matrix from Rung, and becomes Rodimus Prime.

Rung, in making a new Matrix, returns to the Core and cannot return with Rodimus, who races back up through the planet desperately, trying to reach the ship before they write him off as dead and leave.

Right as Nautica and the rest get the ship's strange quantum engines online, engines that almost seem to work as a spacebridge in their own right, Rodimus appears and gets on board, and they flee the planet ahead of the approaching hordes, abandoning Cybertron entirely to the Quintessons.

End Section Two

Section Three

Now the fight has gone to the stars -- there are still the colonies, Caminus and all the rest of the titans, to consider -- though there are a couple that aren't in Caminus's or Cybertron's records at all, such as the titan of the traitor Quintus Prime, who in the last war against the Quintessons led by the Thirteen Primes that cemented them in history as a collection of heroes.

The project begun on Cybertron, with the addition of the Matrix, has mostly succeeded -- they have effective defenses against Quintesson mind control, and with the Matrix in hand the scientists are making real breakthroughs on a genuine cure, instead of something that leaves the "cured" screaming and nearly catatonic.

Rodimus, still trying to figure out what it means to be Prime and what it means to now be considered the unambiguous leader of the remaining Cybertronian forces instead of having to deal with balancing the authority of Jazz, Magnus, Cyclonus, Windblade, and several of the more prominent Decepticons, is in command and is trying to find and gather the remains of the Autobot and Decepticon fleets into something that can actually fight against the Quintessons.

He's... not the best at it.

While they're fighting and gathering new members, they intercept some kind of Quintesson communication and find out that Caminus, thought safe because of how hidden it is, is under attack. The Lost Light and the few other ships they've got (Vis Vitalis, maybe? which is another major source of character conflict, becauseRodimus still feels inadequate as a leader in the face of Thunderclash's... everything, and lets it lead him to make bad decisions) race to Caminus to try to save the city.

They try, during which there is a huge battle, but they cannot stop the Quintessons from infecting Caminus, who sacrifices himself to save his people as they all flee, and Cybertronians become a species without a home, adrift in space. At the same time, the records of the last Quintesson War are given to them by Caminus, revealing the strategies used by the Thirteen Primes and the record of Quintus Prime's treachery that nearly lost them the war -- as well as the fact that Quintus Prime's Titan is still alive -- lost, but alive.

The war continues, and Rodimus slowly gets better at learning to be a general and at gathering people together to try to survive this. They start making progress, though it's hard and often painful. Maybe Caminus is the end of the section, maybe there's something more that's less of a downer ending, I don't know, but Section Three is all about the war as it goes on in space, a tiny desperate fleet trying to beat the odds and win.

Oh also at some point the Lost Light is revealed to be a newborn Titan, the first one to be born in millions upon millions of years, who aligns herself with Rodimus because he's a Prime and also her captain.

Also Metroplex possibly shows up at some point, and he and Windblade form a very strong bond together, to the point where when he dies, not even in sacrifice but just straight up in battle, it deeply deeply affects her, to the point that not even Lost Light can help. (Might be a plot point, might not be, depends how dark I want the overall story to end up.)

End Section Three

Section Four

Years into the fight, Rodimus is a far better leader than he was -- massively depressed about the whole thing, but still learning how to be an effective general. They haven't quite been making progress, but they've been surviving and gathering together fighters from all the different colonies, and it looks like the tide might turn any day now.

Drift, prompted by visions he's been having of Quintus Prime, is working alongside Nautica and a handful of other historians to put together the true story of what happened during the last Quintesson War. The facts aren't entirely adding up -- if Quintus was truly a traitor and gave the Quintessons the Emberstone, why weren't the Thirteen Primes overwhelmed by endless armies of newsparks? Why was it only certain pieces of Quintus's hybrid technology that got integrated into the Quintessons, and not the organic-Cybertronian bonding elements that would have massively increased their ability to control Cybertronian slaves? Why did he disappear, only recorded by his technology showing up in Quintesson warships, and why did his Titan drop completely out of the spacebridge network, even though Caminus insisted that he was still alive?

He realizes that figuring this out could be the key to actually winning the war, instead of grinding along slowly getting themselves worn away by attrition the way they've been doing -- the Quintessons can constantly replace soldiers while the Cybertronians have lost every method they had of reproducing, and on top of all that any soldier captured or infected on the battlefield will turn against them.

With Rodimus and Jazz and Brainstorm's knowledge (and maybe a few others, haven't decided yet), Drift fakes his death and goes flying out to search for answers, thinking that there has to be something Quintus was hiding and that it might be the answer to surviving, if not winning.

Meanwhile, Rodimus and the rest of the United Cybertronian Fleet's (name subject to change) high command find out from Jazz and his espionage corps that the Quintessons are looking for something, some kind of newly created weapon that can be used against them more effectively than anything created before (over the course of this war, they've gone on a total scorched-earth policy with regards to their planetary conquests and any species, biological or cybernetic, that even remotely gets in their way -- the new Judge created to lead this war is ruthless and angry and isn't interested in things like "public relations" -- so while there isn't really anyone who can fight back against them the way the Cybertronians can, because in terms of firepower and who's willing to get involved in this, they're kind of the only ones, it's totally plausible that there might be the last remnants of a destroyed species out there who are working on creating some kind of weapon).

Both of their paths, Drift's journey looking back through the records of the last Quintesson War and the history of the Thirteen Primes, and Rodimus's search for something to turn the tide, lead them back towards Earth, which somehow hasn't been found by either side yet, and has remained totally undisturbed. No matter how hard anyone looks, they can't find any outward sign of Cybertronian activity that might indicate Earth's location.

Drift, following the history of what happened to Quintus and his Titan and the Emberstone, finds a subspace connection that leads him to a strange system of caverns, filled with green light and old Cybertronian writing and technology that looks extremely similar to Quintesson tech and yet has somehow been neutralized without being destroyed.

Rodimus, following something (maybe some kind of connection through the Matrix?) lands in secret on green and blue planet that looks a whole hell of a lot like Earth, and traces the signal down into a system of caves.

Both Rodimus and Drift get attacked by an ancient Quintesson defense system, bioengineered monsters that feed off energon and which pursue them through the tunnels and herd them towards a central location, where bang they run into each other--

--and also into Optimus, Megatron, quite a lot of both Autobot and Decepticon High Command, and the Malto family, who are all down in the tunnels for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with either Cybertron, ancient weapons, Quintus Prime, the Emberstone, or the Quintessons, and everyone is very confused and also kind of panicked about what to do about the giant monster.

But when it arrives, the Maltos and the Terrans are able to fight it, without being affected by its energon-eating nature or the defenses it usually has against Cybertronians.

They flee down the only route they have left, deeper into the cave systems, where they pass through a massive and very strange green door into a set of corridors that look like metal, and that are decorated with icons and emblems of Quintus Prime, though woven through with Quintesson mind-control tech -- ancient Quintesson mind-control tech, not the modern kind currently in use and not even the kind of outdated tech that was used on Hot Rod before they managed to adapt to modern Cybertronian neurological defenses, but the kind that was in use back in the last Quintesson War, against the Thirteen Primes, and the pattern of the tendrils seems to be leading them somewhere.

Where it's leading them to is a massive processor chamber, one for a Titan -- Quintus Prime's titan, lost all these many millions of years.

Drift, finally, reveals what he's learned about Quintus Prime's supposed betrayal, and what really happened -- how he tried to be a double agent, learning about the Quintessons: half just for the sake of learning about them -- remember, he was most noted for his fascination with organic life -- and half for the sake of finding ways to end the war.

Before he could find a way, his Titan was overrun, exposed to an experimental piece of technology that would take over not just his mind but his body, turning him into an unending weapon that couldn't even be killed.

Quintus fled to Earth, looking for a way to save his Titan, and apparently died there.

worked against the Quintessons from the inside, stealing away secrets of their technoorganic engineering and their mind-control techology and eventually fleeing with his Titan and the Emberstone to an unknown location, and Rodimus reveals that they're here hunting a supposed "weapon" that the Quintessons are terrified of.

The Titan (name TBD) manages to tell Windblade the story of what really happened, that Quintus defected with the Emberstone to try to find a way to use it to create Cybertronians who were naturally immune to Quintesson control, who could live in peace away from the war and everything and never have to worry about being made into slaves, and all of the bots that have been trapped on Earth all this time turn to look at the Malto family -- and the Terrans.

End section four

aaaaaand that's more or less where I run out of ideas, because I have no clue how to effectively pay off this reveal with how the Terrans are supposed to defeat the Quintessons, but who knows, maybe I'll think of something

#transformers #transformers fic #transformers earthspark #my fic #also this fic has plenty of room in it for driftrod because that's currently my main ship but like... it's not explicitly a driftrod fic #maccadam

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faishalt · 1 year

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The Takfiri(s)

The Indonesian Muslim Tragic Story.

My current thinking is mostly based on Ust.Nouman’s speech. He construes the religious teachings of our Holy Book in a meticulous manner, focusing on every word and their etymologies so that the audience can easily comprehend the implicit meaning of the verses. One plausible thought that stayed in my mind was when he told the story of Rasulullah SAW in the late Makkah era. Specifically, after the occupation of Makkah, when the Muslims retake the leadership of the holy sites, many indigenous people rush to become Muslims. The community is now a hodgepodge of people who came to Muslim a long time ago and newly reverted sides.

The story continued when this amalgam community won a war with the Kaafirun (sorry, I don’t remember the name of the war), and It left with significant spoils of war. However, the issue came out when one Sahaba named Dzul Khuwaishiroh At Tamimi said to Rasulullah SAW, “Please, be just Rasulullah!” It surprised many other famous Shahabas, including Umar R.A who wanted to cut Khuawaishirah’s neck right away. Actually, the reason why he said that was understandable, especially because Rasulullah SAW gave the newly reverted Muslims, the Mualafs, more spoils than the long-time friends who have fought alongside Him SAW for a long time. Of course, as Muslims, we believe that Rasulullah SAW is the justest person in human history, and Mualaf is one of the criteria that deserved zakat based on Allah SWT’s decree. But questioning Rasulullah’s acts is considered a deadly sin. It was easier to accept what Rasulullah SAW did if we love and believed in Him SAW and then do the reasoning process afterward. Some reasons are maybe because giving the neophytes a material gain can make it easier for Rasulullah to control them since He gave them what they want rather than rules and obligations in the first place, which can give them reluctance.

Many Islamic scholars said that this event was the first time came out the terms of Khawarij. If someone is belligerent to the main source of Muslim teachings, how about respecting the other Muslim? They are likely to diatribe the people who have the same belief system with lesser credibility than Rasulullah. It can lead to the worst call: the Kaafirun, and the verb for calling someone Kafir is Takfiri.

Now, we shift a little bit to the Indonesian story about a famous Indonesian religious lecturer, Ust. Oemar Mita. After giving lectures in many cities with strict and detailed attitudes, people, or even another Ustadz, misnomer him as a Kafir, which is indifference to him but not to the audience. Ust. Oemar Mita never brought up the topic unless somebody was asking him about it. He reacted in a calm manner and started explaining the history of Khawarij, as mentioned earlier. He said that just because there is a discrepancy in different schools of thought, it doesn’t mean that the other side is wrong and one’s view is right. As long as we do not differ on the core beliefs of Islam, the way we act is quite flexible. Many Shahaba and Tabi’in, the generation who meet the Shahaba but not the Rasulullah, were given different answers from Rasulullah based on the context, who the asker is, and what the circumstance is. Rather than making a deterioration of the teachings and the Ummah, I think that it gave the same urgency and importance to every aspect people asked.

Looking at those events, I saw that there is a correlation between what Rasulullah experienced before and what the Ustadz had; the situation of the late Makkah era represents the situation of Indonesia nowadays. Particularly here in Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim country in the world, people hold the Islamic status not because they have critical reasoning for the teachings but because their families and surroundings make them Muslims. Indonesia is the new amalgam/hodgepodge of people who staunch their beliefs and people who oscillate in their understanding. Some people who “re-find” Islam at a later age call themselves doing Hijrah, which also explains the trend of why it is occurring. But without a proper understanding of the core beliefs, it is easy for people to say the others as Kafiruun.

So, the question is, how should we close this problem? I would suggest two ways to address this issue.

The first one is increasing the people’s understanding of Islam. In Indonesia, Islamic knowledge is already taught since we are in kindergarten. But what we learn about Islam is only on the surface level, like the events of Rasulullah’s history without actually taking the lesson to learn, or like how to pronounce the Arabic verses of the Quran without actually extracting the ideas. The analogous is that this teaching is like teaching English grammar without actually learning the context of the culture and like memorizing the Indonesian histories without actually grasping the reason behind those events. Arabic learning should give more emphasis on the grammatical syntax of the scripture, which can extract the beauty of the Quran. The learning of Rasulullah’s history should also give more respect to the correlation with our daily. By increasing the understanding of core beliefs and teachings of Islam, while also developing the love for Rasulullah SAW, we can avoid seeing people attacking each other verbally on social media because we know that the unity of the Ummah is much more important than holding negligent matters severely.

The second one is quite general, increasing the reasoning skills of Indonesian people. While some Islam teachings are easily acquired by a low-level thinking process, some others are required a good level of comprehension. For example, it is easy to understand why we have to give zakah to other people or have to fast in Ramadhan because it is beneficial for our health. But in a complex situation, such as whether we should pray together in the mosque when the pandemic started, it requires deep measuring which one is better to do or to react. I already mentioned this solution in my previous writing that people are mixing the “Hakekat,” the reason why something happens when everything is coming from Allah, and “Shariat,” the reason why something is happening because of the worldly reason like in the environment of science and psychology.

To conclude, the solutions that I gave are related to increasing the level of people’s thinking ability, both in knowledge and reasoning ability. And by doing so, I believe that we can avoid saying one another as a Kafir because we have the common ground that unity is much more important than factious.

The last thing to mention is that this problem is already mentioned in the Quran as well, which means that it must be happening in the future after the Quran comes down for humanity. I am totally afraid that the verses are related to the Indonesian’s situation today because the signs indicate the issue. Our job is to stop this from happening in Indonesia since the Quran’s purpose is to guide people. To guide means that the All-Knowing already predicted that this would happen and tell how to overcome the issue.

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f1 · 2 years

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Mexico City pole-sitter Verstappen expects good fight for victory as home hero Perez rues costly qualifying issue

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen is readying himself for a scrap with Mercedes pair George Russell and Lewis Hamilton during the Mexico City Grand Prix, after beating them to pole position in qualifying. Verstappen and the Mercedes drivers were closely matched after the first Q3 runs at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, but the reigning world champion pulled three-tenths clear with an impressive final lap of 1m 17.775s. Admitting that he found it difficult to get into a rhythm ahead of his pole-setting effort, Verstappen reflected: “I think every session it got a little bit better and, in Q3, we finally could push a little bit more with the car and [deliver] two decent laps. READ MORE: Verstappen fends off Mercedes pair for maiden Mexico City pole “I’m very happy, as around here, for me at least, it’s very hard to nail a lap – it’s always very low grip. There are a few kerbs you have to perfectly hit to actually gain time, so it’s definitely not the easiest of qualifying [sessions] – it’s the same with the tyre warm-up. But it seems like in Q3 we had it under control.” 2022 Mexico City GP Qualifying: Max Verstappen seals pole position ahead of Mercedes pair Verstappen will be looking to make it four wins from five races in Mexico on Sunday, having claimed victory there in 2017, 2018 and 2021 – the 2020 event cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Assessing his chances of keeping Russell and Hamilton at bay, Verstappen said: “I’ve started everywhere except pole here, and we won the races! It’s always important to have a good start here. I think our top speed is not too bad to defend at least with people who are in the draft, so we just need to focus on that. READ MORE: ‘It was our pole to have’ says Russell as he and Hamilton rue Q3 mistakes in Mexico City “I think if we have good race pace, it will be a good fight [for the victory]. Of course, we’ll try to stay ahead [of Russell and Hamilton] into Turn 1.” While Verstappen stormed to pole position, Perez had to make do with P4 in front of his home fans Verstappen’s team mate, home favourite Sergio Perez, was unable to join in the fight for pole position after encountering technical problems in the grid-deciding session, with the Mexican having to settle for P4, and left to ponder what might have been. “It was a big shame. We had an electrical issue throughout quali, and with DRS we were struggling and so on. It was important to make sure we got everything right, but I was pretty much blind through quali – I had no reference lap time, I had no information on my brake balance or times, so it was just a mess,” he explained. FACTS AND STATS: Verstappen starting P1, but no pole-sitter has finished on the podium here since 2016 “When I look back at my quali, I nearly got knocked out in Q1, and in Q2, so to be P4 is not the end of the world, but I really believe we could have fought for pole position.” via Formula 1 News https://www.formula1.com

#F1 #Mexico City pole-sitter Verstappen expects ‘good fight’ for victory as home hero Perez rues costly qualifying issue #Formula 1

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whatwh · 2 years

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Lethia, Monster of the Week Project

Story

Magic has been thriving underneath the world for as long as one can imagine. A culture carefully formed in order to protect themselves, the practice quickly became that of an outsider. Families with complicated backstories and melinia long feuds, old hermits in the outskirts that depend upon the earth more than any other, and abandoned (or maybe saved) children roaming city streets with remarkably good luck. Due to the stain of secrecy it now is, almost, impossible to attempt a normal life. The witches learned the hard way that any form of structure among the scattered denizens only drew attention in small towns, but with the development of cities they have been able to begin.

This in of itself comes with problems though. As the people decide that they can attempt connections, covens form. Groups, 1000 members at most, bring the complicated feuds, debts, and power struggles together. Many Covens are dedicated to the protection of “Lay-people,” or those without magic, but there are a few that are less kind to laypeople.

As these feuds became more and more commonplace, fights began breaking out. Wars that were carefully balanced between worlds. Eventually the wars escalated to those who wanted to gain control over the world, push all Lay-people into the position witches spent centuries in, and those who didn't want anyone to go through what they had. As the wars went on, witches didn't always want to pick sides, either they were too weak to be of any use, had no interest in joining a war, or wanted a mix of the ideals being fought over. Eventually, over the span of 23 years, the Lay-Mancers won. The covens returned to their work, having been cleared of debts and feuds, but peace rarely lasts.

The two largest covens in the city of Knife's Edge were Comita and Aribuas. The land this far North had mostly escaped the war. As such two lovers were able to plan a wedding. The concept of unity would be great for the two Covens, and the lovers were beloved by all, but the smaller covens were scared by the pure power this would bring. As such they banned together to make a spell that would end the wedding, one that would cause minimal harm. They decided on the idea of a sleep spell that would only affect the two. They would be together one day, just not yet.

On the day the spell was cast, The Covens mourned and tried cure after cure, taking them to their proper homes. Nothing seemed to work. The lovers fell asleep, yes, but they soon began sleep walking. At first this seemed unmonumental.

At this time the lover of Comita was locked away in fear that she would spread her ailment. The imprisoned lover was able to stay in a dream state, wandering her room as her feet were worn with blood. They were still carefully fed and loved by her coven though and died a peaceful death 2 weeks later due to a fall.It seems she was unable to recognize the balcony's edge.

The lover of Aribuas only seemed to worsen, as they began to grow violent. It seemed they left a dream and started falling into a nightmare. They began being violent towards those who hoped to care for them, eventually reaching a state where they had to abandon her. When they had been abandoned for a month, something seemed to snap within her. She was able to break the door of their prison with ease, not flinching at the broken wrist and dislocated arm. They looked for something to eat. They were starving. As the lover broke into the coven's main hall They went for the first person they saw, eating chunks of the Woman that taught her all they would need to know. As guards came to the Teachers defense, The lover fought in a way they had never before. Brutally. They took out 3 guards before dying to a spear through the heart.

As the guards from the fight went to sleep through their wounds however, few woke up.

As the Maraeo infected the town city, Lay-people got their first glimpse of magic. Tube illness spread quickly, inexplicably, and without a need for a ground Zero. As the Covens were forced to come to light, Lay-People had to deal with the infection. Lethia. Wars were started, at the worst of times, in the hope of a cure. As the world became a nightmare.

Game Start

83 years after Lethias release, the world has mostly calmed down from the Omens Reign. The illness has yet to be properly researched. No information is known about how it spreads or any possible cure, causing the land around settlements to be surrounded by feared creatures upsetting the balance of nature. We meet our characters in Closure, Ofix, one of the larger civilizations left and therefore a very violent and anti magic town. While smaller communities were able to find a new social structure, the criminals, merchants, and otherwise lost all came to larger towns in the hopes of gaining structure, supplies, and power. Closure is known as an Ideal example of this, being run by sketchy people but being stable enough to risk traveling to for trade.

#Lethia #Monster of the Week Project

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lokistoriesblog · 3 years

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Sin City

Summary: Thor, Loki, Natasha, Clint and Y/N spend a night out in Las Vegas following a successful mission. After many rounds of drinks the lure of a bet and a Chapel leave Y/N waking up to a man in their bed and a wedding ring on their finger.

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters.

Pairing: Loki x Female Reader

Length: 2500 words

Warnings: Alcohol & fluff

The sun peaking through the hotel curtains woke you from your deep sleep. As your eyes flutter open to welcome the morning you notice a cool hand wrapped around your waist. Your heart skips a beat for a moment and a sinking feeling sets in. Who were sharing a bed with? Your mind runs blank not able to even remember getting back to the hotel last night.

Could you slip out of bed without them noticing? You begin to plan your exit strategy but the frim hand twitches sending shock waves down your spine. Oh no, are they awake? Was this some random guy you picked up at the casino last night? What would the others think? You couldn't bring yourself to look back at the owner of the firm hand, but as you gained the courage to get up and put your exit strategy into action you heard a muffled sign from behind you.

“Good morning love”, said the smooth voice. All of the oxygen expelled from your body like you had been hit by a truck because in that moment you knew exactly who you were wrapped up in bed with, without even looking. Loki.

You gasp to catch your breath but surely you had to be dreaming, or you misheard, it could not be Loki. You take a deep breath to regain control of your spinning world and turn your head over to look at the God of Mischief right in his blue eyes. One piercing look was all it took for the entire series of events leading to this moment to come flooding back to you.

Tony had sent you, Thor, Natasha, Clint and Loki to collect classified documents and artifacts from an ex Hydra facility in Nevada just outside of Las Vegas. Being one of the newest and youngest agents, you were brought on the mission to help mitigate any potential fallout from the raid because Stark was keen to not have a repeat of Sokovia. Thankfully the mission had been a success, you had even managed to stop a knife from hitting Loki in the thigh which he thanked you with only a half smile while he and Thor fought off the others so Nat and Clint could grab the items for Tony.

Since the mission ended early the team had 24 hours to kill before they were due back in New York for the debrief meeting. It was then that Nat and Thor hatched a plan to check out the nearby Las Vegas strip.

Thor was eager to experience the infamous 'Sin City' having only heard about it from Tony. Nat, of course, egged him on and before you knew it you were walking down the strip.

There were people everywhere and almost everyone thought you were just actors in costumes and left you be. The Las Vegas strip was home to all kinds of unique characters and you hardly stood out, even Thor and Loki in their Asgardian garbe blended in for the most part. Except Thor, of course, was stopped by a Bachelorette party and a round of flirtatious selfies followed. Clint groaned and Loki rolled his eyes in clear annoyance of his brother's popularity.

The group walked into a casino and first checked out the roulette tables. Loki seemed intrigued, and with a flash of green magic he fabricated chips out of thin air to place a bet on black. Of course he won and doubled his money, Thor was exuberant and you slow clapped mocking his success. Loki cashed out his winnings with the teller and Thor declared “the first round is on Loki!”.

Everyone was so thrilled with how seamless the mission was, we were all riding a natural high into the Elixir lounge. The drinks kept flowing and the jovial times continued.

Thor kept ordering countless pitchers of ale to the table while Loki and Clint took shots of Whiskey. Being the newest member of the group, you were keen to drink away any nerves while brushing shoulders with deadly assassins and literal Gods. You were pounding back shots of tequila at a pace you had never met before, letting a little hiccup escape your lips. “Be careful little one” Loki mused with a smirk. “Please, as if you could keep up with me” you bit back looking him right in the eye as you downed another round. Nat laughed clearly enjoying that someone was finally giving the trickster a run for his money.

You had spent time with Thor before, but never Loki. There was something about him that made you nervous and you felt like knots were moving around in your stomach whenever he looked in your direction. You shook your head as if to wash the feeling away.

As the night went on and the drinks began to multiply, Nat and Clint were providing an impromptu education to the Asgardian Princes on the saying ‘What Happens in Vegas’.

“What an interesting concept, and here I thought Midgardians did not have a capacity for such mischief.” Loki muttered while sipping on his drink.

You heard his mutterings and thought for a moment to let it go but you were feeling bold with the alcohol running through your veins, “There are a lot of things you do not give us *Midgardians* credit for” you said rolling your eyes as you placed a hand on Loki’s forearm, teasing him.

“Careful, Y/N, do not forget you are speaking to the God of Mischief himself” Thor teased as if sensing the growing tension between you and Loki.

The group grew restless at the bar as they felt the call of the lights from the strip and decided to walk back to the hotel. Nat and Clint were still teasing Thor on some Earthly traditions, while you and Loki walked in the back of the pack taking in the night sky. Every once and a while the liquor would catch up with you and you would stumble a little causing Loki to smirk.

“Watch yourself darling.” Loki said with an eyeroll. He had been so pleasant this evening, nothing like how the others made him out to be. You were not sure if it was the successful mission or something else, but he seemed to be enjoying himself and was even getting along well with Thor, having brotherly banter back and forth. They both were fascinated by this place which seemed to test their understanding of us meager earth dwellers.

Thor turned around to face you and Loki with his eyes almost bulging out of his head, the biggest grin on his face. “Brother! You will not believe this” Unsure if Loki was keen to indulge his brother, or if he was generally interested he lept forward with a hint of mischief in his eye.

“You see that chapel there, Lady Widow explains that apparently in some bizarre Midgardian tradition you can marry here in less than 10 minutes” Thor exclaimed, grabbing his brother on the shoulder in a playful manner.

“Are you serious?” Loki asked Nat, clearly baffled by this development. “Yah, Vegas is famous for their shot-gun weddings. Is there not something similar on Asgard?”

Loki genuinely laughed in disbelief “Absolutely not, Asgardians are sticklers when it comes to traditions.”

“Weddings are week long celebrations with endless events and complex rituals. If I knew it was this easy, maybe I would ask any fair maiden on the street here to marry me by night's end.” Loki smirked as he opened his arms as if to welcome a hoard of willing participants.

Everyone laughed, the alcohol had clearly taken its affect on you all, giggling like rebellious teenagers. “Looks like they are really lining up” You chimed in.

“Y/N, you wound me” Loki puts his hand on his heart as if to pretend you stabbed him, a smile creeping up on him. Was Loki drunk? He wasn’t this friendly around Stark tower, or was it that he enjoyed his current company you wondered.

“Ah well, I am sure your future wife could be at any of these other casinos, I mean they can’t all be secret agents who save you from the occasional rouge dagger!” you joke back rubbing in your save from earlier that day. But you notice now your face is completely flush, had the banter with Loki made you blush? You were not the only one to notice this slight development either.

“Any women on the street eh Loki? Seems Y/N is keen” Thor jested back.

You laugh thinking you are all joking around, “Clint you might have to procure some wedding bands soon if these two keep this up”. What you forgot to remember was that this was the God of Mischief you were talking to, and this was a challenge he would likely not back away from.

Thor, clearly the most intoxicated of the group, had one hand on your shoulder and the other on Loki “YEESSS! What a fantastic idea, Y/N you can always get an annulment if my brother does not live up to his reputation" he said with a wink. You feel your heart pounding harder and faster, they had to be joking, as if you a simple agent would marry an Asgardian Prince, even if it was just for a laugh.

Nat chimes in as the voice of reason, “It's all fun and games boys but I dont think Y/N is really looking to get hitched to an intergalactic prince, of that I can be certain.” The fun died down for a moment as they thought their little scheme had fizzled. But you looked up at Loki who still had the look of Mischief in his eye and a smirk on his face. “You're right Nat," his silky voice called out. "I don't think Y/N is up to the challenge anyways, a little too daring for an innocent thing like her.”

You weren't sure if it was the alcohol in your veins or the magnetic pull you began to feel towards Loki but you were not going to let him have the last laugh. “You want to bet, Reindeer Games?” You knew this nickname of Starks would be sure to gas him up.

“You are in for it now, Brother” bellowed Thor. “What do you say, Loki?”

“Here we go” Clint mumbled under his breath.

A grin spread across Loki’s face and the next thing you knew he was down on one knee, clearly making a big spectacle to amplify his joke, and asked you “Lady Y/N of Midgard, would you do me the great honour and privilege of being my wife?” Loki held his hand out, placing your hand on his. A shiver ran over your body feeling his cold touch.

Loki was calling your bluff, he expected you to chicken out of this challenge. Another spark of green flashed before your eyes and a deep green velvet box appeared in his hand, opening to reveal a 4 carat emerald and gold ring. Your heart was racing, you knew he was pulling a stunt but again you felt pulled toward him.

“Who could say no to a proposal like that” you said with a wink. What were you doing? Your body was telling you to back away but your mouth kept going along with this ridiculous scheme. Loki rose and placed the ring on your finger.

“We’re going to the Chapel, and you’re gonna get marrrried” sung Clint as he sipped back an unknown substance from a flask he carried on our short walk to the cheesy Las Vegas chapel.

Thor and Loki marvel at the tiny chapel while they fixed bow ties to their regular Asgardian attire. Nat was attaching a tacky headband veil to your head, you all couldn't help chuckling at this outlandishness of this evening. Even with his clip on bow tie, Loki still looked like a chiseled God, his leather outfit clinging to his lean but muscular frame.

The elvis officiant was ready to begin when you shouted out to Thor “Come on Thor, you don't get to get out of this that easy - you are walking me down the aisle”

“Okay, Y/N, now's your last chance to back out of this” he offered.

“Oh, there is no way I would give him the satisfaction and the upper hand, I am so doing this.” you said with determination.

“Brave girl” Thor laughed and linked arms with you before you began your short trip down the blue velvet aisle.

You and Loki kept giggling while a poor excuse for an Elvis presided over your ceremony. Clint and Nat were sitting in the front two seats taking sips out of a flask. All jokes stood still while it was time for the vows, for a moment you and Loki locked eyes and there was a peculiar look on his face, one of almost awe as you said ‘I Do”.

“You may kiss your bride, thank you, thank you very much” You could hear Clint sighing at the scheer ridiculousness of what was transpiring before him.

Loki locked eyes with you and before you knew it he had cupped your face in his firm hands and brought your lips to greet his. You almost forgot about your dare and lost yourself in Loki’s embrace.

He let you come up for air for a moment before pushing you in this time, his tongue exploring you. Your heart was beating out of our chest and you kissed Loki back for what felt like an eternity.

Nat coughed as to suggest that we were putting on quite the show, you let go of one another for a moment before the music began playing. Thor was shouting obscenities and congratulations to you both, Loki grabbed your hand and you ran out of the chapel like two giddy kids having pulled off one of the greatest jokes.

You came crashing back to reality, a grin on your face as you relived each moment from the night prior. Loki used the hand on your waist to turn you over bringing your body to face him in bed. Your legs still wrapped in his. Your chest pressed against his.

“Loki, tell me we didn’t!” You played as you placed your hand on his collarbone.

Loki let out a chuckle and smirked, “Now that, I cannot do.”

You looked at him in disbelief. Could this really be happening? You MARRIED the God of Mischief himself? You put your hand to cover your mouth in shock but in doing so you noticed the ring on your ring finger. Loki smirked again, he was clearly enjoying your reaction. Your face was beet red as you took in your surroundings.

Your clothes from the night before were thrown all over the room, making you look down under the duvet to reveal you are completely naked as was Loki. Fragments of bliss flashed in your memory of your return to the hotel room last night, you could tell your face was flush.

Loki pulled you closer to him and buried himself in your neck, leaving a trail of kisses leading to your ear purring, “No need to blush I have already devoured every inch of you, Mrs. Laufesyon."

Thanks for reading! I may or may not be writing a NSFW follow-up to this fic, let me know if you would want to read that.

^ I did it - Part Two AND Part Three

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shepard-ram · 3 years

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Part 2 of Echo’s Madoka AU

-This is just gonna be me explaining my reasoning behind why I assigned some people certain roles.

-Also this is important but in this AU everyone is around the age of 16-17 because it makes things easier. Okay? Okay!

🚫TW/CW for death, violence, angst, also Spoiler for Madoka Magica🚫

-Anyways I put reader as Madoka because yeah...no reason other than they the protag. Just saying it now, Reader doesn’t become a magical girl until the very end of the AU.

-Tommy is Sayaka because I feel like making you all suffer with Tommy angst. That’s not the only reason but I gotta explain more actual character stuff. In the show Sayaka is best friends with two girls, Madoka and Hitomi. Sayaka wants to become a magical girl for two reasons. Reason one, one of the first magical girls she meets is Mami, and Sayaka looks up to Mami. The second reason is that she wants to use her wish Kyubey will grant to heal her crush, Kyosuke. Kyosuke used to play the violin but he permanently damaged his hands so he can no longer play. After Mami dies Sayaka decides to use her wish to heal Kyosuke and becomes a magical girl. Sayaka gains a rival named Sakura and they almost kill each other on several occasions. Sayaka’s friend Hitomi confesses to Kyosuke that she likes him and he accepts her feelings. The despair this causes Sayaka causes her to turn into a witch.

-So, in this case scenario the reader, Tommy, and Tubbo are all good friends. Tubbo likes to play the piano in this AU so after he permanently damaged his hands he becomes depressed that he can no longer play. Tommy uses his wish to heal Tubbo’s hands so he can play again. Tommy is happy to see Tubbo happy until Tubbo starts slowly leaving him behind and making new friends. Specifically with this new transfer student named Ranboo. Tommy already had to go through the grief of losing Wilbur, having to deal with Techno, and finding out the truth of the soul gems, this was seemingly the final straw. He felt all alone after Tubbo left and almost regrets wishing for his hands to be fixed. His soul gem breaks and he becomes a witch.

-Wilbur is Mami because they are both good with their words, they think things through, they are wise, brave, and strong. Mami in the show saves Sayaka and Madoka then they become friends. Kyubey and Mami think that the two girls have potential to become strong magical girls. Mami is seen as the perfect magical girl in almost everyone’s eyes. She fights for justice and the people of the city.

-This is where I think Wilbur’s character in the AU would be slightly different. At one point in time Wilbur did believe in those things. At one point he fought for the benefit of the people. That was until he had a major falling out with a close friend of his. His friend had very different beliefs to his on how they should be taking down the witches. One of the biggest reasons why magical users fight witches is for the grief seeds used to keep their soul gems clean. A witch that has killed more people is more likely to drop a grief seed. Wilbur’s friend thought it was better to let the witches kill a few people before hunting them down. Wilbur didn’t agree with that and they fought. Neither sides won the fight and they split up. After the whole situation Wilbur kind of stopped caring about justice and fighting for the people. He grew tired of it all, that was until he met the Reader and Tommy. He could tell they both had a lot of potential and he could use them to make his job easier. The whole fighting for justice thing was something he was on you really saying to make himself look better in front of the pair. He honestly didn’t care about the two of them that much...at first. He found himself getting happy when he got to spend time with them. Sure Tommy was hella annoying but he enjoyed having him around. Wilbur had fun teaching them about what it meant to be a magic user. Reader confesses that they see Wilbur as a real hero and they want to be like him. Wilbur breaks and confesses that this whole time he hasn’t been honest about really caring about justice. He was just fighting because it was the only thing keeping him alive. He fought because at this point he had no other choice. But now he feels like he actually wants to try and fight for justice with the reader and Tommy by his side. He wants to change for the better and his sudden urge of motivation drives him to be reckless and that’s what leads to his end.

-Techno is Kyoko because they are both strong, powerful, they can be kinda rude, and maybe a bit selfish, but they have soft sides to them.

-In the AU the friend Wilbur had a falling out with was Techno. After their fight Techno leaves to a different city to hunt for witches somewhere where he wouldn’t be bothered. He only came back to the main city after hearing Wilbur kicked the bucket. He felt a little sad but acted like it didn’t affect him. He was so confident that he would be able to easily control the area until Tommy showed up. Tommy had the same idealism as Wilbur. Fight for the people, not for yourself. Techno tried to kill off Tommy after their first encounter but it failed. Afterwards he would often taunt Tommy and even threatened to kill Tubbo at one point. Tommy got pissed at Techno so they fought on a bridge over a highway. The reader and Karl interrupted though and it caused Tommy’s soul gem to fall onto a moving truck. This is when they all find out about half the truth of soul gems. (Soul gems can only be a certain distance away from the users body for else the body will die. They can be brought back though if the soul gem is still intact)Techno feels bad for what he did when looking back on it. When he looks at Tommy he sees Wilbur but he also sees a old version of him. Someone who made their wish for someone else and it backfired. Techno tries to reach out to Tommy but it fails. After Tommy becomes a witch he goes into denial asking for the reader to help him turn Tommy back to a human even though it’s not possible. The reader almost dies until Karl saves them. Techno ends up killing Tommy’s witch by sacrificing himself to let Karl and Reader escape. Techno knew he could have escaped too but he rather die with Tommy then let him be alone.

-Karl is Homura because time magic go brr.

-Homura is seen as a cold, mysterious person but in reality she’s not. She’s seen so much suffering and so much pain that it made her act the way she does. Who was it that was suffering? It was Madoka. Homura was weak and alone till she met Madoka. Madoka brought color and hope into her life when she saved her from a witch. Madoka always said she was her friend. Then a terrible witch named walpurgisnacht appeared and destroyed the entire city. While protecting Homura, Madoka died. Homura blamed herself for what happened and wished to be able to go back in time to protect Madoka. Her wish was granted and she was given time magic. In countless timelines she watched Madoka die but she continued. She repeated the same time of events again and again. She eventually found out the truth behind the soul gems and Kyubey’s existence and so she made it her goal to prevent Madoka from ever becoming a magical girl and to kill walpurgisnacht.

-In this AU Karl grows very attached to the reader. They were the first person who showed interest in his hobbies and encouraged him to be himself. He never felt that loved until then. Then in the blink of an eye it was all gone, you were gone. He watched as you sacrificed yourself for himself for him as screamed and begged for you not to go. He only had one wish to protect you from this fate. He didn’t care how many times it took he was determined to create a timeline where you could live happily with your friends and family. He would do anything to keep you safe even if it meant it made you hate him at the end of it all. Your the only friend he has in this god forsaken world and he won’t let you go so easily.

And that’s all I got. If anyone wants to add onto this AU or write about it then feel free too just credit me for the idea :p (also sorry if my writing is bad I don’t really write stuff like this)

GOD DAMN THIS IS GOOD-

Again not exactly my thing but,,,,, the emotional drag you can feel on all the characters is just- You can really get a sense of just how cruel and grueling life is for them

#ask #echo anon #tw. death #c: tommy #c: wilbur #c: techno #c: karl #c: tubbo

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statetalks · 3 years

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Were Democrats Or Republicans For Slavery

Presidency Of Martin Van Buren

Democrats Responsible for Slavery, Republican Party for Abolition.mp4

The Presidency of Martin Van Buren was hobbled by a long economic depression called the Panic of 1837. The presidency promoted hard money based on gold and silver, an independent federal treasury, a reduced role for the government in the economy, and a liberal policy for the sale of public lands to encourage settlement; they opposed high tariffs to encourage industry. The Jackson policies were kept, such as Indian removal and the Trail of Tears. Van Buren personally disliked slavery but he kept the slaveholder’s rights intact. Nevertheless, he was distrusted across the South.

The 1840 Democratic convention was the first at which the party adopted a platform. Delegates reaffirmed their belief that the Constitution was the primary guide for each state’s political affairs. To them, this meant that all roles of the federal government not specifically defined fell to each respective state government, including such responsibilities as debt created by local projects. Decentralized power and states’ rights pervaded each and every resolution adopted at the convention, including those on slavery, taxes, and the possibility of a central bank. Regarding slavery, the Convention adopted the following resolution:

What Happened In 1969

The war in Vietnam came to a head. The democrats under Kennedy had gotten us into the war and then after Kennedy was killed President Johnson continued and grew our presence in Vietnam.

Peoples opposition to the war became the focus of the democrat party and the emotional democrats became the protagonists for eliminating the policies that kept blacks in the back of the bus as well as free love and marijuana.

I was young at the time and this is the Democratic Party i remember which were opposed to real things. There was a war in vietnam. People were dying. There was segregation.

Republicans didnt resist outlawing segregation. The resistance was focused on the remaining segregationists in the Democratic Party. Strom Thurmond a democrat from the south fillibustered the passage of the civil rights act.

In 1968 the democrats held a national convention. This convention devolved into riots and was the watershed for racism and the Democratic Party. The racists were ejected from the Democratic Party ostensibly.

Democrats today claim that in 1969 what happened is that the racists in the Democratic Party moved to the Republican Party.

There is no evidence of this. Storm Thurmond, Robert Byrd never switched parties. Robert Byrd a former KKK leader stayed a democrat until he retired from the senate in 2010. Biden called Byrd a mentor.

Biden was one of the most outspoken opponents of busing.

None of that is true.

If you arent a democrat then they dont want you in the identity group.

After The Civil War Democrats Continued To Fight Against Equality For Blacks

For 100 years the democrats staged a rear guard action seeking to keep blacks subservient and doing their bidding.

They passed laws to limit black peoples ability to vote, to sit on the front of the bus, to own land, to rent apartments, to go to the same schools and many other things.

If anyone owes black people reparations it is these democrats.

Given this history of democrats it is stunning that the Democratic Party continues to exist. Shouldnt it be disbanded? We are tearing down statues, removing names of historically racist people and institutions so why not destroy the Democratic Party? It is slavery and was the principal advocate of slavery. They also were heavily involved in passing racist laws, hanging blacks and many republicans who opposed the democrats.

Why would anyone want to be part of a party that was historically so critical and central to the whole effort to enslave and repress blacks?

People have a tendency not to be partisan and to label this as white Americans that did this but it was the Democrats. Republicans were the ones fighting it. If not for those republicans the black people in America would never have been freed or gotten voting rights or many other things that had to be fought. Many white republicans were killed by democrats even after the end of the civil war who were called sympathizers.

Again, why doesnt this basic fact that is indisputable matter?

Those blacks who could vote between 1860 and 1969 voted for republicans.

Recommended Reading: How Many Registered Democrats And Republicans Are There

Political Firsts For Women And Minorities

From its inception in 1854 to 1964, when Senate Republicans pushed hard for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against a filibuster by Senate Democrats, the GOP had a reputation for supporting blacks and minorities. In 1869, the Republican-controlled legislature in Wyoming Territory and its Republican governor John Allen Campbell made it the first jurisdiction to grant voting rights to women. In 1875, California swore in the first Hispanic governor, Republican Romualdo Pacheco. In 1916, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman in Congressand indeed the first woman in any high level government position. In 1928, New Mexico elected the first Hispanic U.S. Senator, Republican . In 1898, the first Jewish U.S. Senator elected from outside of the former Confederacy was Republican Joseph Simon of Oregon. In 1924, the first Jewish woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives was Republican Florence Kahn of California. In 1928, the Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Charles Curtis of Kansas, who grew up on the Kaw Indian reservation, became the first person of significant non-European ancestry to be elected to national office, as Vice President of the United States for Herbert Hoover.

A New Political Party

After passing all these pro-slavery laws, in May 1854, a number of anti-slavery members in Congress formed a new political party to fight slavery. These anti-slavery members were from the Whigs, Free Soil advocates and Emancipationists. They wanted to gain equal rights for black Americans.

The name of that party? They called it the Republican Party. They chose this name because they wanted to return to the principles of freedom and equality. These are the principles first put forth in the documents of the republic before the pro-slavery Congressional members had misused and manipulated to their own purposes those original principles.

You May Like: Who Won More Democrats Or Republicans

The New Deal Era: 19321939

After Roosevelt took office in 1933, New Deal legislation sailed through Congress at lightning speed. In the 1934 midterm elections, ten Republican senators went down to defeat, leaving them with only 25 against 71 Democrats. The House of Representatives was also split in a similar ratio. The “Second New Deal” was heavily criticized by the Republicans in Congress, who likened it to class warfare and socialism. The volume of legislation, as well as the inability of the Republicans to block it, soon made the opposition to Roosevelt develop into bitterness and sometimes hatred for “that man in the White House. Former President Hoover became a leading orator crusading against the New Deal, hoping unrealistically to be nominated again for president.

Most major newspaper publishers favored Republican moderate Alf Landon for president. In the nation’s 15 largest cities the newspapers that editorially endorsed Landon represented 70% of the circulation. Roosevelt won 69% of the actual voters in those cities by ignoring the press and using the radio to reach voters directly.

Roosevelt carried 46 of the 48 states thanks to traditional Democrats along with newly energized labor unions, city machines and the Works Progress Administration. The realignment creating the Fifth Party System was firmly in place. Since 1928, the GOP had lost 178 House seats, 40 Senate seats and 19 governorships, though it retained a mere 89 seats in the House and 16 in the Senate.

Southernization; Oh That Sounds Fun Wait It Isnt

From the 1960s to the 2000s a southernization of the Republican party occurs. Paired with Goldwater and;Hoover states rights conservatism and along;with old Anti-Communist ideology, it was enough to completely change the political parties.

From the late 1800s to the 2000s Republican progressives moved toward the Democratic Party and Southern Conservatives moved toward the Republican party. See;the New Deal Coalition and Conservative Coalition.

The grand result is that the David Dukes of the world today fly the Confederate Battle flag and vote Republican.

This story;is a major reason why the voter map looks the way it does.

Meanwhile, while we can still see Gores and Clintons, and sometimes even a Byrd, in the modern Democratic party, those Redeemer and Redeemed liberals made a conscious choice to ally with the dominate Progressive and Neoliberal factions in this cycle.

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What Does Republican Mean

The word republicanmeans of, relating to, or of the nature of a republic. Similarly to the word democratic, the word republican also describes things that resemble or involve a particular form of government, in this case the government in question is a republic. A republic is a government system in which power rests with voting citizens who directly or indirectly choose representatives to exercise political power on their behalf.;

You may have noticed that a republic sounds a lot like a democracy. As it happens, most of the present-day democracies are also republics. However, not every republic is democratic and not every democratic country is a republic.

For example, the historical city-state of Venice had a leader known as a doge who was elected by voters. In the case of Venice, though, the voters were a small council of wealthy traders, and the doge held his position for life. Venice and other similar mercantile city-states had republican governments, but as you can see, they were definitely not democratic. At the same time, the United Kingdom is a democratic country that has a monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, and so it is not a republican country because it is not officially a republic.;

Slavery And The Emergence Of The Bipartisan System

Civil Rights and Slavery – Republican and Democrat Parties – Prager University

From 1828 to 1856 the Democrats won all but two presidential elections . During the 1840s and 50s, however, the Democratic Party, as it officially named itself in 1844, suffered serious internal strains over the issue of extending slavery to the Western territories. Southern Democrats, led by Jefferson Davis, wanted to allow slavery in all the territories, while Northern Democrats, led by Stephen A. Douglas, proposed that each territory should decide the question for itself through referendum. The issue split the Democrats at their 1860 presidential convention, where Southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge and Northern Democrats nominated Douglas. The 1860 election also included John Bell, the nominee of the Constitutional Union Party, and Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the newly established antislavery Republican Party . With the Democrats hopelessly split, Lincoln was elected president with only about 40 percent of the national vote; in contrast, Douglas and Breckinridge won 29 percent and 18 percent of the vote, respectively.

Don’t Miss: Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In Us

On This Day The Republican Party Names Its First Candidates

On July 6, 1854, disgruntled voters in a new political party named its first candidates to contest the Democrats over the issue of slavery. Within six and one-half years, the newly christened Republican Party would control the White House and Congress as the Civil War began.

For a brief time in the decade before the Civil War, the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson and his descendants enjoyed a period of one-party rule. The Democrats had battled the Whigs for power since 1836 and lost the presidency in 1848 to the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor. After Taylor died in office in 1850, it took only a few short years for the Whig Party to collapse dramatically.

There are at least three dates recognized in the formation of the Republican Party in 1854, built from the ruins of the Whigs. The first is February 24, 1854, when a small group met in Ripon, Wisconsin, to discuss its opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The group called themselves Republicans in reference to Thomas Jeffersons Republican faction in the American republics early days. Another meeting was held on March 20, 1854, also in Ripon, where 53 people formally recognized the movement within Wisconsin.

On July 6, 1854, a much-bigger meeting in Jackson, Michigan was attended by about 10,000 people and is considered by many as the official start of the organized Republican Party. By the end of the gathering, the Republicans had compiled a full slate of candidates to run in Michigans elections.

Culture Conflict And Al Smith

At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, a resolution denouncing the Ku Klux Klan was introduced by Catholic and liberal forces allied with Al Smith and Oscar W. Underwood in order to embarrass the front-runner, William Gibbs McAdoo. After much debate, the resolution failed by a single vote. The KKK faded away soon after, but the deep split in the party over cultural issues, especially prohibition, facilitated Republican landslides in 1924 and 1928. However, Al Smith did build a strong Catholic base in the big cities in 1928 and Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s election as Governor of New York that year brought a new leader to center stage.

the myth of the Democratic Party masterfully re-created, a fresh awareness of the elemental differences between the parties, and ideology with which they might make sense of the two often senseless conflicts of the present, and a feeling for the importance of dynamic leadership. The book was a mirror for Democrats.

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Presidency Of Andrew Jackson

The spirit of Jacksonian democracy animated the party from the early 1830s to the 1850s, shaping the Second Party System, with the Whig Party as the main opposition. After the disappearance of the Federalists after 1815 and the Era of Good Feelings , there was a hiatus of weakly organized personal factions until about 18281832, when the modern Democratic Party emerged along with its rival, the Whigs. The new Democratic Party became a coalition of farmers, city-dwelling laborers and Irish Catholics. Both parties worked hard to build grassroots organizations and maximize the turnout of voters, which often reached 80 percent or 90 percent of eligible voters. Both parties used patronage extensively to finance their operations, which included emerging big city political machines as well as national networks of newspapers.

Behind the party platforms, acceptance speeches of candidates, editorials, pamphlets and stump speeches, there was a widespread consensus of political values among Democrats. As Mary Beth Norton explains:

The party was weakest in New England, but strong everywhere else and won most national elections thanks to strength in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the American frontier. Democrats opposed elites and aristocrats, the Bank of the United States and the whiggish modernizing programs that would build up industry at the expense of the yeoman or independent small farmer.

Why It Doesnt Make Sense To Equate Modern Democrats With The Old Southern Democrats

The Democrats, formally the;anti-Federalists,;had an;aversion to aristocracy from the late 1700s to the progressive era.

That truism;led to the southern conservatives of the solid south like;John C. Calhoun and small government liberals like Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren allying;in the same party;for most of U.S. history.

However,;that changed;after Civil Rights under LBJ and the rise of Goldwater States Rights Republicans .

Today the solid south, and figures like Jeff Sessions, are in an alliance in the big tent of the Republican Party . This was as much a response to the growing progressiveness of the Democratic Party as anything.

One simple way to confirm this is to look at the factions of;Lincolns time. There were four. They;were:

The Northern liberal Whig/Republicans, The;Nativist Know-Nothing; allies of the Whig/Republicans, The Southern Democrats and their Northern allies , and The;Free Soil;;allies of the Democrats who;took a libertarian like position.

Todays Democrats are more like socially liberal Whig/Republicans , libertarians are like Free Soilers , Trumpians are like Nativist Know-Nothings , and Southern Democrats are like the modern Southern conservative Republicans.

The current parties are thus:

Social Liberals and Neoliberals vs. Social Conservatives and Neoliberal Conservatives AKA Neocons .

Clearly, the country has never been fully polarized, even at its most polarized.

Also Check: Do Republicans Want To Impeach Trump

The Second Bush Era: 20002008

George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush, won the 2000 Republican presidential nomination over Arizona Senator John McCain, former Senator Elizabeth Dole and others. With his highly controversial and exceedingly narrow victory in the 2000 election against the Vice President Al Gore, the Republican Party gained control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952. However, it lost control of the Senate when Vermont Senator James Jeffords left the Republican Party to become an independent in 2001 and caucused with the Democrats.

In the wake of the on the United States in 2001, Bush gained widespread political support as he pursued the War on Terrorism that included the invasion of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. In March 2003, Bush ordered for an invasion of Iraq because of breakdown of United Nations sanctions and intelligence indicating programs to rebuild or develop new weapons of mass destruction. Bush had near-unanimous Republican support in Congress plus support from many Democratic leaders.

Bush failed to win conservative approval for Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, replacing her with Samuel Alito, whom the Senate confirmed in January 2006. Bush and McCain secured additional tax cuts and blocked moves to raise taxes. Through 2006, they strongly defended his policy in Iraq, saying the Coalition was winning. They secured the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act.

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/were-democrats-or-republicans-for-slavery/

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fivestarglam · 3 years

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How the US government destroyed the social-political movements of the 1960s-1970s.

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November 1, 2017

the truth is freedom

Counterintelligence Program [Cointelpro]: The United States government program that destroyed the social and political movements of the 1960s and 1970s

Table of Contents

Counterintelligence Program [Cointelpro] operations in general

Specific covert actions against La Raza

III. Domestic covert action remains a serious threat today

Domestic covert action did not end in the 1970’s

“Bags of dirty tricks”

Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro) Operations in General

How the Cointelpro program destroyed the progressive social and political movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States

Since Cointelpro was used mainly against the progressive movements of the 1960s and 1970s its impact can be grasped only in the context of the momentous social upheaval which shook the country during those years. Chicano and black communities throughout the United States [US] came alive with renewed political struggle. Most major cities experienced sustained disciplined Chicano and black protests and massive barrio and ghetto uprisings. Chicano and black activists galvanised multi-racial rebellion among welfare mothers, students, and prisoners. College campuses and high schools erupted in militant protest against the war in Vietnam. A predominantly white New Left inspired by Chicano and black movements fought for an end to US intervention abroad and a more humane and co-operative way of life at home. By the late 1960s deep-rooted resistance had revived among Puerto Ricans and Native Americans. Millions of people began to reject the dominant ideology and culture plus thousands challenged basic US political and economic institutions. For a brief moment “the crucial mixture of people’s confidence in the government and lack of confidence in them which allows the government and the ruling class to rule threatened to break down.” By the mid-1970s the upheaval had largely subsided. Important progressive activity persisted, mainly on a local level and much continued to be learned and won, but the massive, militant Chicano, black and new left movements were gone. The sense of infinite possibility and of our collective power to shape the future had been lost.

Progressive momentum dissipated and radicals found themselves on the defensive as right-wing extremists gained major government positions and defined the contours of accepted political debate. Many factors besides Cointelpro contributed to this change. Important progress was made toward achieving movement goals to the war in Viet Nam and university reform. The mass media owned or controlled mainly by Jews and their big business and cowed by government and right-wing attacks helped to bury radical activism by ceasing to cover it. Television, popular magazines, and daily papers stereotyped activists as hardened criminals and welfare chiselers or as the supposedly affluent beneficiaries of “reverse discrimination;” white radical and leftist youth were portrayed first as hedonistic hippies and mindless terrorists, later as an apolitical, self-indulgent “me generation” and both were scapegoat as threats to “decent and hard-working middle America.”

During the severe economic recession of the early to mid 1970s former student activists began entering the job market some by taking on responsibility for children. Many were scared by brutal government and right-wing attacks culminating in the murder of rank-and-file activists as well as prominent leaders. Some were strung out on hard drugs that had become increasingly available in black and Latino communities and among white youth. Others were disillusioned by mistreatment in movements ravaged by the very social sicknesses they sought to eradicate such as racism and class bias. Limited by their upbringing, social position, and isolation from older radical traditions, 1960s activists were unable to make the connections and changes required to build movements strong enough to survive and eventually win structural change in the US. Middle-class students did not sufficiently ally with working and poor people and too few white activists accepted third world leadership of multi-racial alliances. Originally motivated by goals of quick reforms, 1960s activists were ill prepared for the long-term struggles in which they found themselves. Overly dependent on media-oriented “superstars” and one-shot dramatic actions, they failed to develop stable organisations, responsible leadership, and strategic perspective. Creatures of the culture they so despised, they often lacked the patience to sustain tedious grassroots work and painstaking analysis of actual social conditions. They found it hard to accept the slow uneven pace of personal and political change. This combination of circumstances, however, did not by itself guarantee political collapse.

The achievements of the 1960s movements inspired optimism and provided a sense of the power to win other important struggles. The rightward shift of the major media could have enabled alternative newspapers, magazines, theatre, film, and video to attract a broader audience and stable funding. The economic downturn of the early 1970s could have united Chicano and black militants, new leftists, and workers in common struggle. Police brutality and government collusion in drug trafficking could have been exposed in ways that undermined support for the authorities and broadened the movement’s backing. While the problems of the 1960s movements were enormous, their strengths might have enabled them to overcome their weaknesses had the upsurge not been stifled before activists could learn from their mistakes. Much of the movement’s inability to transcend their initial limitations and overcome adversity can be traced to Cointelpro. It was through Cointelpro that the public image of Chicanos, blacks and new leftists was distorted to legitimise their arrest and imprisonment and scapegoat them as the cause of working people’s problems. The FBI and police instigated violence and fabricated movement horrors; dissidents were deliberately criminalized through false charges, frame-ups, and offensive bogus leaflets and other materials published in their name. This is why and how Ramsey Muñiz of La Raza Unida Party was framed! [See part V “bag of dirty tricks.”] Cointelpro enabled the FBI and police to exacerbate the movement’s internal stresses until beleaguered activists turned on one another. Whites were pitted against blacks, blacks against Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, students against workers, workers against people on welfare, men against women, religious activists against atheists, Christians against jews, jews against Muslims, while “anonymous” accusations of infidelity ripped couples apart. Backers of women’s and gay movements were attacked as “dykes” and “faggots.” Money was repeatedly stolen and precious equipment sabotaged to intensify pressure and sow suspicion and mistrust. Otherwise manageable disagreements were inflamed by Cointelpro until they erupted into hostile splits that shattered alliances, tore groups apart, and drove dedicated activists out of the movement. Government documents implicate the FBI and police in the bitter break-up of such pivotal groups as the La Raza Unida Party, the Brown Berets, Black Panther Party, Students for Democratic Society (SDS), the Liberation News Service, and in the collapse of repeated efforts to form long-term coalitions across racial, class, and regional lines. While genuine political issues were often involved in these disputes, the outcome could have been different if government agencies had not covertly intervened to subvert compromise and fuel hostility and competition. Finally, it was Cointepro that enabled the FBI and police to eliminate mass movement leaders without undermining the image of the US as a “democracy” complete with free speech and the rule of law. Charismatic orators and dynamic organisers were covertly attacked and neutralised before their skills could be transferred to others and stable structures established to carry on their work.

Corky Gonzalez and Ramsey Muñiz were imprisoned and Malcolm X was murdered in a “factional dispute” which the FBI took credit for having developed in the Nation of Islam. Martin Luther King was the target of an elaborate plot to drive him to suicide and replace him “in his role of the leadership of the negro people” with conservative black lawyer Samuel Pierce [later named to Reagan’s cabinet]. Many have come to view King and Malcolm’s assassinations as in itself a domestic covert operation. Other prominent radicals faced similar attack when they began to develop broad followings and express anti-capitalist ideas. Some were portrayed as crooks, thugs, philanderers, or government agents, while others like David Sanchez of the Brown Berets were physically threatened or assaulted until they abandoned their work. Still others were murdered under phoney pretexts such as “shootouts” in which the only shots were fired by the police. To help bring down a major target, the FBI often combined these approaches in strategic sequence. Take the case of the underground press, a network of some 400 radical weeklies and several national news services, which once boasted a combined readership of close to 30 million. In the late 1960s, government agents raided the offices of alternative newspapers across the country in purported pursuit of drugs and fugitives. In the process, they destroyed typewriters, cameras, printing presses, layout equipment, business records, and research files, and roughed up and jailed staffers on bogus charges. Meanwhile, the FBI was persuading record companies to withdraw lucrative advertising and arranging for printers, suppliers, and distributors to drop underground press accounts. With their already shaky operations in disarray, the papers and news services were easy targets for a final phase of Cointelpro disruption. Forged correspondence, anonymous accusations, and infiltrator manipulation provoked a flurry of wild charges and countercharges that played a major role in bringing many of these promising endeavours to a premature end. A similar pattern can be discerned from the history of the La Raza Unida and Black Panthers. Brutal government attacks initially elicited broad support for these new militant and highly visible national organisations and their popular programs for self-determination. But the repressive onslaught severely weakened these Parties making them vulnerable to sophisticated psychological warfare which so discredited and shattered them to such an extend, that only a few people today have any notion of the power and potential that these organisations once represented. What proved most devastating in all of this was the effective manipulation of the victims of Cointelpro into blaming themselves. Since the FBI and police operated covertly, the horrors they engineered appeared to emanate from within the movements. Activists trust in one another and their collective power was subverted and the hopes of a generation died, leaving a legacy of cynicism and despair which continues to haunt us today.

Specific operations against La Raza

La Raza Unida Party of Texas was plagued with repeated unsolved Cointelpro-style political break-ins. Former government operative Eustacio “Frank” Martinez admitted that after the close of Cointelpro the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) paid him to help destroy “La Casa del Carnalismo” [The House of Brotherhood] a Chicano community anti-drug program in Los Angeles. Martinez, who had previously infiltrated the Brown Berets and the Chicano Moratorium, stated that the ATF directed him to provoke bombings and plant a drug pusher inside of “La Casa del Carnalismo.”

In 1973, Chicano activist and Lawyer Francisco “Kiko” Martinez was indicted in Colorado on trumped-up bombing charges and suspended from the bar. He was forced to leave the country for fear of assassination by police directed to shoot him “on sight.” When Martinez was eventually brought to trial in the 1980s, many of the charges against him were dropped for insufficient evidence and local juries acquitted him of others. One case ended in a mistrial when it was found that the judge had met secretly with prosecutors, police, and government witnesses to plan perjured testimony, and had conspired with the FBI to conceal video cameras in the courtroom. A serious and damaging Cointelpro action against La Raza has been the framing of Ramsey Muñiz. Ramsey Muñiz was an effective leader of La Raza Unida Party in Texas and was its candidate for governor in 1974. Falling victim to trump up charges, Ramsey is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at Leavenworth federal penitentiary. There is a strong movement underway to obtain his freedom and to release him from long term “solitary confinement” within the prison. Starting in 1976 the FBI manipulated the grand jury process to assault both the Chicano and Puerto Rican movements. Under the guise of investigating the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña [FALN] and other Puerto Rican urban guerrillas, the bureau harassed and disrupted a cultural centre, an alternative high school, and other promising community organising efforts in Chicago and Puerto Rican barrios and in the Chicano communities of Denver and Northern New Mexico. It subpoenaed radical Puerto Rican trade union leader Federico Cintrón Fiallo, a key staff of the National Commission on Hispanic Affairs of the US Episcopal Church, to appear before federal grand juries and jailed him for refusing to cooperate. The independent labour movement in Puerto Rico and the Commission’s important work in support of Puerto Rican and Chicano organising were effectively discredited.

On July 25, 1978 an undercover agent lured two young Puerto Rican independence activists, Carlos Soto and Arnaldo Darío Rosado, to their deaths in a police ambush at Cerro Maravilla, Puerto Rico. The agent, Alexander Gonzalez Malave, worked under the direct supervision of the FBI trained intelligence chief of the island’s police force. The FBI refused to investigate when the police claimed they were merely returning gunfire initiated by the activists. Later it was proved that Soto and Dario had surrendered and were then beaten and shot dead while on their knees. Though a number of officers were found guilty of perjury in the cover-up and one was sentenced for the murder the officials who set up the operation remain free. Gonzalez was even promoted. On November 11, 1979 Angel Rodriguez Cristobal, a popular socialist leader of the movement to stop the US navy bombing practice on the inhabited Puerto Rican island of Vieques, was murdered in the penitentiary at Tallahassee, Florida. Although prison authorities claimed “suicide,” Rodriguez Cristobal in the second month of a six-month term for civil disobedience had been in good spirits when seen by his lawyer only hours before his death. He had been subjected to continuous threats and harassment including forced drugging and isolation during his confinement. Though he was said to have been found hanging by a bed sheet there was a large gash on his forehead and blood on the floor of his cell. Another front line organisation victim of Cointelpro type operations was the Brown Beret National Organisation. David Sanchez, its leader, was the victim of a Cointelpro “psychological war” against him. His home was fired bomb during the early 1970’s and this almost resulted in the death of his little sister. He had to disband the Berets during the upheavals of the National Chicano Moratorium Committee marches in East Los Angeles in order to stop the shedding of blood between some of the units. The disunity and division was caused by the infiltration of Cointelpro agents.

III. Domestic covert action remains a serious threat today

The public exposure of Cointelpro and other government abuses elicited a flurry of apparent reform in the 1970s. President Nixon resigned in the face of impeachment. His Attorney General, other top aides, and many of the “plumbers” were prosecuted and imprisoned for brief periods. The CIA director and counter-intelligence chief were ousted and the agency was directed to cease covert operations against domestic targets.

The FBI had formally shut down Cointelpro a few weeks after it was uncovered. As part of the general face-lift the bureau publicly apologised for Cointelpro and municipal governments began to disband the local police “red squads” that had served as the FBI main accomplices. A new attorney general notified several hundred activists that they had been victims of Cointelpro and issued guidelines limiting future operations. Top FBI officials were indicted for ordering the burglary of activists’ offices and homes, two were convicted, and several others retired or resigned. The bureau’s egomaniacal crudely racist, closet homosexual and sexist founder Edgar J. Hoover died in 1972. After two interim directors failed to stem the tide of criticism, a prestigious federal judge, William Webster, was appointed by President Carter to clean house and build a “new” FBI. Behind this public hoopla, however, the bureau’s war at home continued unabated. Domestic covert action did not end when it was exposed in the 1970s. It has persisted throughout the 1980s and become a permanent feature of the US government domestic policy.

Domestic covert action did not end in the 1970s

Director Webster’s highly touted reforms did not create a “new” FBI. They served mainly to modernise the existing bureau and to make it even more dangerous. In place of the backbiting competition with other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which had previously impeded coordination of domestic counter-insurgency, Webster promoted inter-agency co-operation. Adopting the mantle of an “equal opportunity employer,” his FBI hired women and people of colour to more effectively penetrate a broader range of political targets. By cultivating a low-visibility image and discreetly avoiding public attack on prominent liberals, Webster gradually restored the bureau’s respectability and won over a number of its former critics. State and local police similarly upgraded their repressive capabilities in the 1970s while learning to present a more friendly public face. The “red squads” that had harassed 1960s activists were quietly resurrected under other names. Paramilitary police [swat] teams and tactical squads were formed, along with highly politicised “community relations” and “beat rep” programs featuring conspicuous Black, Chicano, and female officers. Generous federal funding and sophisticated technology became available through the law enforcement assistance administration, while FBI-led “joint anti-terrorist task forces” introduced a new level of inter-agency co-ordination. Meanwhile, the CIA continued to use university professors, journalists, labour leaders, publishing houses, cultural organisations, and philanthropic fronts to mold public opinion. At the same time, army Special Forces and other elite military units began to train local police for counter-insurgency and to intensify their own preparations, following the guidelines of the secret pentagon contingency plans called “garden plot” and “cable splicer.” They drew increasingly on manuals based on the British colonial experience in Kenya and Northern Ireland, which teach the essential methodology of Cointelpro under the rubric of “low-intensity warfare” and stress early intervention to neutralise potential opposition before it can take hold. While domestic covert operations were scaled down once the 1960s upsurge had subsided they did not stop. In its April 27, 1971 directives disbanding Cointelpro the FBI provided for future covert action to continue “with tight procedures to ensure absolute security.” The results are apparent in the record of 1970s covert operations, which have so far come to light.

The Native American Movement

The 1970s FBI attacks on resurgent Native American resistance have been well documented. In 1973, the bureau led a paramilitary invasion of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota as American Indian Movement [AIM] activists gathered there for symbolic protests at Wounded Knee, the site of an earlier massacre of Native Americans by whites. The FBI directed the entire 71-day siege deploying federal marshals, US army personnel, Bureau of Indian Affairs police, local Goons [Guardians of the Oglala Nation, an armed tribal vigilante force] and a vast array of heavy weaponry.

In the following years, the FBI and its allies waged all-out war on AIM and the Natives. From 1973-76 they killed 69 residents on the tiny Pine Ridge reservation, a rate of political murder comparable to the first years of the Pinochet regime in Chile. To justify such a reign of terror and undercut public protest against it, the bureau launched a complementary program of psychological warfare. Central to this effort was a carefully orchestrated campaign to reinforce the already deeply ingrained myth of the “indian savage.” In one operation the FBI fabricated reports that AIM “dog soldiers” planned widespread “sniping at tourists” and “burning of farmers” in South Dakota. The son of liberal Senator [and Arab-American activist] James Abourezk was named as a “gunrunner” and the bureau issued a nationwide alert picked up by media across the country. To the same end, undercover operatives framed AIM members Paul “Skyhorse” Durant and Richard “Mohawk” Billings for the brutal murder of a Los Ángeles taxi driver. A bogus AIM note taking credit for the killing was found pinned to a signpost near the murder site, along with a bundle of hair said to be the victim’s “scalp.” Newspaper headlines screamed of “ritual murder” by “radical indians.” By the time the defendants were finally cleared of the spurious charges, many of AIM’s main financial backers had been scared away and its work among a major urban concentration of native people was in ruin. In March of 1975, a central perpetrator of this hoax, AIM’s national security Chief Doug Durham, was unmasked as an undercover operative for the FBI. As AIM’s liaison with the Wounded Knee Legal Defence Committee during the trials of Dennis Banks and other Native American leaders, Durham had routinely participated in confidential strategy sessions. He confessed to stealing organisational funds during his two years with AIM and to setting up the arrest of AIM militants for actions he had organised. It was Durham who authored the AIM documents that the FBI consistently cited to demonstrate the group’s supposed violent tendencies. Prompted by Durham’s revelations, the senate intelligence committee announced on June 23, 1975 that it would hold public hearings on FBI operations against AIM. Three days later, armed agents assaulted an AIM house on the Pine Ridge reservation. When the smoke cleared, AIM activist Joe Stuntz Killsright and two FBI agents lay dead. The media, barred from the scene “to preserve the evidence,” broadcast the bureau’s false accounts of a bloody “indian ambush” and the congressional hearings were quietly cancelled.

The FBI was then free to crush AIM and clear out the last pockets of resistance at Pine Ridge. It launched what the Chairman of the “civil rights” commission described as “a full-scale military-type invasion on the reservation” complete with M-16 rifles, huey helicopters, tracking dogs, and armoured personnel carriers. Eventually AIM leader Leonard Peltier was tried for the agent’s deaths before a right-wing judge who met secretly with the FBI. AIM member Anna Mae Aquash was found murdered after agents threatened to kill her unless she helped them to frame Peltier. Peltier’s conviction based on perjured testimony and falsified ballistics evidence was upheld on appeal. The panel of federal judges included William Webster until the very day of his official appointment as director of the FBI. Despite mounting evidence of impropriety in Peltier’s trial, and Amnesty International calls for a review of his case, the Native American leader remains in maximum security prison.

The black movement

Government covert action against black activists also continued in the 1970s. Targets ranged from community-based groups to the provisional government of the republic of new Africa and the surviving remnants of the Black Panther Party. In Mississippi, federal and state agents attempted to discredit and disrupt the united league of Marshall County, a broad-based grassroots “civil rights” group struggling to stop racist violence. In California, a notorious paid operative for the FBI Darthard Perry, code-named “Othello,” infiltrated and disrupted local black groups and took personal credit for the fire that razed the Watts writers workshop, a multi-million dollar cultural centre in Los Angeles in 1973. The Los Angeles police department later admitted infiltrating at least seven 1970s community groups including the coalition against police abuse.

In the mid-1970s, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms [BATF] conspired with the Wilmington, North Carolina police to frame nine local “civil rights” workers and the Rev. Ben Chavis, field organiser for the commission for racial justice of the United Church of Christ. Chavis had been sent to North Carolina to help black communities respond to escalating racist violence against school desegregation. Instead of arresting racist Klansmen, the BATF and local police coerced three young black prisoners into falsely accusing Chavis and the others of burning white-owned property. Although all three prisoners later admitted they had lied in response to official threats and bribes, the FBI found no impropriety. The courts repeatedly refused to reopen the case and the Wilmington ten served many years in prison before pressure from international religious and human rights groups won their release.

As the republic of new Africa began to build autonomous, economic, and political institutions in the Deep South, the bureau repeatedly disrupted its meetings and blocked its attempts to buy land. On August 18, 1971, four months after the supposed end of Cointelpro the FBI and police launched an armed pre-dawn assault on its national office in Jackson, Mississippi. Carrying a warrant for a fugitive who had been brought to its headquarters by FBI informer Thomas Spells, the attackers concentrated their fire where the informer’s floor plan indicated where President Imari Obadele slept. Though Obadele was away at the time of the raid, the bureau had him arrested and imprisoned on charges of conspiracy to assault a government agent.

The Cointelpro triggered the collapse of the Black Panther Party and support in the winter of 1971 left them defenceless as the government moved to prevent them from regrouping. On August 21, 1971 national party officer George Jackson, author of the political autobiography “soledad brother” was murdered by San Quentin prison authorities on the pretext of an attempted jailbreak. In July 1972, Southern California panther leader Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt was successfully framed for a senseless $70.00 robbery-murder committed while he was hundreds of miles away in Oakland, California while attending a panther meetings for which the FBI managed to “lose” all of its surveillance records. Documents obtained through the freedom of information act later revealed that at least two agents had infiltrated Pratt’s defence committee. They also indicated that the State’s main witness, Julio Butler, was a paid informer who had worked in the party under the direction of the FBI and the Los Angeles police department. For many years, director Webster publicly denied that Pratt had ever been a Cointelpro target despite the documentary proof in his own agency’s records. Also targeted well into the 1970s were former panthers assigned to form an underground to defend against armed government attacks on the party. It was they who had regrouped as the Black Liberation Army [BLA] when the party was destroyed. Files show that within a month of Cointelpro closing, further bureau operations against the BLA were mapped out in secret meetings convened by presidential aide John Ehrlichman and attended by President Nixon and Attorney General Mitchell. In the following years, many former panther leaders were murdered by the police in supposed “shoot-outs” with the BLA.

A recent covert domestic operation by the CIA has come to light. Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News and US representative Maxine Waters has uncovered a “CIA crack cocaine connection” that has shocked the nation. The operation consisted of allowing the importation of tons of cocaine from Colombia in order to fund the right wing “contras” that were operating in Nicaragua. The plot in the early days of the “crack cocaine epidemic” consisted of the manufacture and distribution of crack cocaine in Latino barrios and in black communities through the utilisation of gangs such as the “bloods,” the “crips,” and Chicano gang members. The operation had a double benefit for the CIA. Not only did it provide covert funds but it also assured the addiction to cocaine of potential young leaders in our community.

“Bags of dirty tricks”

Harassment through psychological warfare

While boring from within, the FBI and police also attack dissident movements from the outside. They openly mount propaganda campaigns through public addresses, news releases, books, pamphlets, magazine articles, radio, and television. They also use covert deception and manipulation. Documented tactics of this kind included the following:

False mass media stories

Many Cointelpro documents expose frequent collusion between news media personnel and the FBI to publish false and distorted material at the bureau’s behest. The FBI routinely leaked derogatory information to its collaborators in the news media. It also created newspaper and magazine articles and television “documentaries” which the media knowingly or unknowingly carried as their own. Copies were sent anonymously or under bogus letterhead to activist’s financial backers, employers, business associates, families, neighbours, church officials, school administrators, landlords, and whoever else might cause them trouble. One media fabrication claimed that Jean Seberg, a white film star active in anti-racist causes, was pregnant by a prominent black leader. The bureau leaked the story anonymously to columnist Joyce Haber and also had it passed to her by a “friendly” source in the Los Angeles Times editorial staff. The item appeared without attribution in Haber’s nationally syndicated column of May 19, 1970. Seberg’s husband sued the FBI as responsible for her resulting stillbirth, nervous breakdown and suicide.

Bogus leaflets, pamphlets, and other publications

The Cointelpro documents show that the FBI routinely put out phoney leaflets, posters, pamphlets, newspapers, and other publications in the name of movement groups. The purpose was to discredit the groups and turn them against one another. Cartoon leaflets were used to divide and disrupt the main national antiwar coalition of the late 1960s. Similar fliers were circulated in 1968 and 1969 in the name of the Black Panthers and the “United Slaves” [US] which were a rival black group based in Southern California. The phoney panther leaflets together with other covert operations were credited with subverting a fragile truce between the two groups and igniting an explosion of internecine violence that left four panthers dead and many more wounded in a once-flourishing regional movement decimated. Another major Cointelpro operation involved children’s colouring book which the Black Panther Party had rejected as gratuitously violent. The FBI revised the colouring book to make it even more offensive. Its field offices then distributed thousands of copies anonymously or under phoney organisational letterheads. Many backers of the party’s program of free breakfasts for children withdrew their support after the FBI conned them into believing that the bogus colouring book was being used in the program.

Forged correspondence

Former employees have confirmed that the FBI has the capacity to produce state-of-the-art forgery. This capacity was used under Cointelpro to create snitch jackets and bogus communications that exacerbated differences among activists and disrupted their work. One such forgery intimidated civil rights worker was Muhammad Kenyatta [Donald Jackson] causing him to abandon promising projects in Jackson, Mississippi. Kenyatta had foundation grants to form black economic co-operatives and open a “black and proud” school for dropouts. He was also a student organiser at nearby Tougaloo College. In the winter of 1969 after an extended campaign of FBI and police harassment, Kenyatta received a letter purportedly from the Tougaloo College Defence Committee which “directed” that he cease his political activities immediately. If he did not “heed our diplomatic and well-thought-out warning” the committee would consider taking measures “which would have a more direct effect and would not be as cordial as this note.” Kenyatta and his wife left. Only years later did they learn that it was not Tougaloo students but FBI covert operators who had driven them out. Later in 1969, FBI agents fabricated a letter to the mainly white organisers of a proposed Washington, D.C. anti-war rally demanding that they pay the local Negro community a $20.000 “security bond.” This attempted extortion was composed in the name of the local black united front and signed with the forged signature of its leader. Informers inside the front then tried to get the group to back such a demand and bureau contacts in the media made sure the story received wide publicity. The senate intelligence committee uncovered a series of FBI letters sent to top panther leaders throughout 1970 in the name of Connie Matthew, an intermediary between the Black Panther Party national office and leader Eldridge Cleaver. These exquisite forgeries were prepared on pilfered stationery in panther vernacular expertly simulated by the FBI in their Washington, D.C. laboratory. Each was forwarded to legal attaché at a US Embassy in a foreign country that Matthew was due to travel through and then posted at just the right time “in such a manner that it cannot be traced to the bureau.” The FBI enhanced the eerie authenticity of these fabrications by lacing them with esoteric personal tidbits culled from electronic surveillance of panther homes and offices. Combined with other forgeries, anonymous letters, phone calls, and the covert intervention of FBI and police infiltrators, the Matthew’s correspondence succeeded in inflaming intra-party mistrust and rivalry until it erupted into the bitter public split that shattered the organisation in the winter of 1971.

Anonymous letters and telephone calls

During the 1960s, activists received a steady flow of anonymous letters and phone calls, which turn out to have been from the FBI. Some were unsigned while others bore bogus names or purported to come from unidentified activists in phoney or actual organisations. Many of these bogus communications promoted racial divisions and fears often by exploiting and exacerbating tensions between Jewish and black activists. One such FBI concocted letter went to Students for Democratic Society [SDS] members who had joined black students protesting the New York University’s discharge of a teacher in 1969. The supposed author an unnamed SDS “member” urged whites to break ranks and abandon black students because of alleged anti-Semitic slurs by the fired teacher and his supporters.

Other anonymous letters and phone calls falsely accused movement leaders of collaboration with the authorities, corruption, or sexual affairs with other activist’s. The letters were used to provoke “a lasting distrust” between a black “civil rights” leader and his wife. The FBI authors hoped that his “concern over what to do about it” would “detract from his time spent in the plots and plans of his organisation.” As in the Seberg incident inter-racial sex was a persistent theme. The husband of one white woman active in “civil rights” and anti-war work filed for divorce soon after receiving the FBI-authored letter. Still other anonymous FBI communications were designed to intimidate dissidents, disrupt coalitions, and provoke violence. Calls to Stokely Carmichael’s mother warning of a fictitious panther murder plot drove him to leave the country in September 1968. Similar anonymous telephone threats to leader James Forman were instrumental in thwarting efforts to bring the two groups together. The Chicago FBI office made effective use of anonymous letters to sabotage the panther’s efforts to build alliances with previously apolitical black street gangs. The most extensive of these operations involved the “black stone nation” or “blackstone rangers,” a confederation of several thousand local black youth. Early in 1969 as FBI and police infiltrators in the rangers spread rumours of an impending panther attack, the bureau sent ranger chief Jeff Fort an incendiary note signed by “a black brother you don’t know.”

Fort’s supposed friend warned that “the brothers that run the panthers blame you for blocking their thing and there’s supposed to be a hit out for you.” Another FBI-concocted anonymous “black man” then informed Chicago panther leader Fred Hampton of a Ranger plot “to get you out of the way.” These fabrications squelched promising talks between the two groups and enabled Chicago panther security Chief William O’Neal, an FBI-paid provocateur, to instigate a series of armed confrontations from which panthers barely managed to escape without serious casualties.

Pressure through employers, landlords, and others

Large number of records reveals repeated manoeuvres to generate pressure on dissidents from their parents, children, spouses, landlords, employers, college administrators, church superiors, welfare agencies, credit bureaus, and the like. Anonymous letters and telephone calls were often used to this end. Confidential official communications were effective in bringing to bear the bureau’s immense power. Reports indicate that such FBI interventions denied Martin Luther King and other 1960s activist’s foundation grants and public speaking engagements. It also deprived alternative newspapers of their printers, suppliers, and distributors and cost them crucial advertising revenues when major record companies were persuaded to take their business elsewhere. Similar government manipulation may underlie steps recently taken by some insurance companies to cancel policies held by churches giving sanctuary to refugees from Central America.

Tampering with mail and telephone service

The FBI and CIA routinely used mail covers (the recording of names and addresses) and electronic surveillance in order to spy on 1960s social and political activists. The CIA alone admitted to photographing the outside of 2.7 million pieces of first-class mail during the 1960s and to opening almost 315.000 letters. Government agencies also tampered with mail, altering, delaying, or “disappearing” it. Activists were quick to blame one another and infiltrators easily exploited the situation to exacerbate tensions. Dissident’s telephone communications often were similarly obstructed. The SDS regional office in Washington, D.C., for instance, mysteriously lost its phone service the week preceding virtually every national anti-war demonstration in the late 1960s.

Misinformation to prevent or disrupt meetings and activities

A favourite Cointelpro tactic uncovered by senate investigators was to advertise a non-existent political event, or to misinform people of the time and place of an actual one. They reported a variety of disruptive “dirty tricks” designed to cast blame on the organisers of movement events. In one “misinformation” case, the FBI Chicago office duplicated blank forms prepared by the National Mobilisation Committee to End the War in Vietnam [NMC] soliciting housing for demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention. The FBI filled out 217 of these forms with fictitious names and addresses and sent them to the NMC which provided them to demonstrators who made “long and useless journeys to locate these addresses.” The NMC then decided to discard all replies received on the housing forms rather than have out-of-town demonstrators tried to locate non-existent addresses. The same program was carried out when the Washington Mobilisation Committee distributed housing forms for demonstrators coming to Washington for the 1969 presidential inaugural ceremonies.

In another case, a FBI Midwest field office disrupted arrangements for State University students to attend the 1969 inaugural demonstrations by making a series of anonymous telephone calls to the Transportation Company. The calls were designed to confuse both the Transportation Company and the SDS leaders as to the cost of transportation and the time and place for leaving and returning. This office also placed confusing leaflets around the campus to show different times and places for demonstration-planning meetings, as well as conflicting times and dates for travelling to Washington.

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chrmiing · 3 years

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▍ What is R.O.A.R.

Royal Order of Auradon Regimen eg. R.O.A.R for short is an agile based fencing sport curated in the last 20 years during the union of the kingdoms. The sports style draws from different kingdoms more interpretive fighting styles. If to be compared to a sport R.O.A.R is a more dynamic evolution of old time fencing, with the rapier (featuring a blue tip) being the sword of choice for the sport. Despite being an independent R.O.A.R is also overseen by the FDR (fédération d'escrime du royaume) as it is seen as a ‘continuation’ of fencing and is governed by the same board.

R.O.A.R was first developed as a united military training but later became a sport after it took popularity to it’s appealing nature. Upon the union of the kingdoms, kingdom relations were pushed. Guards from other kingdoms started to spar together and quickly realised they all fought differently, instead of traditional sparring they started to ‘backyard’ it. With large groups meeting to showcasing their styles and how they fight creating hybrid dynamics and movements, learning from one another they started to sword fight each other in a controlled sparring environment and see what it would be like adopting different styles. It was when this style of ‘training’ grew in popularity among guards that it started to show up in tutors and knight orders pushing through as a recreational activity. The Order of Fencing caught wind of this rising art and decided to study it for several years, creating rules and regulations it became an official sport of Auradon.

Although similar to fencing in both protective equipment and that it can be a team sport R.O.A.R differs on many fronts. The major difference is the play style, although using the traditional sword on sword scene R.O.A.R is not played in a strip like modern fencing, instead is in a circular arena with blocks for height and different movement to simulate a more realistic fighting environment. Participants can take advantage of the blocks too; leap, jump and even flip over their opponent (if the competitive rules allow), for this reason most R.O.A.R players are both significantly skilled in the art of swordsmanship and parkour. Competitors are also allowed to touch the floor, it should be noted that acts such as sliding and cartwheel motions on the floor are also permitted.

It should also be noted R.O.A.R has two separate styles, R.O.A.R PTW and R.O.A.R. The latter of the two is the most common play style within which an opponent must yield or be disarmed for the round to be won. R.O.A.R is played in three three minute rounds (if a participant wins the first two then it is won) each is concluded after a yielding has been stated or a clear disarming made. This was the original sport but has since also spun off a ‘lesser’ evolution often played by juniors, R.O.A.R PTW. R.O.A.R PTW which is played through the channels of ‘point to win’, it is here that landing hits upon an opponent gets points and the match is concluded either when the number of points are met (normally 15) or when the rounds are over. However, many athletes who partake in R.O.A.R frown down upon the adult inclusion of PTW hence its lack of popularity amongst the older members. R.O.A.R is a cross-kingdoms recognised ‘olympian’ sport, which was first included in the games 5 years before the barrier comes down and is a rising sport.

In order to partake in R.O.A.R each individual must have a license in their name. Holding this license means they are able to join a club and compete at competitions, the license is differing depending in which kingdom it was allowed. Membership Licenses have to be renewed each year and act as insurance for the participants so if they are injured competing or at their club that are able to claim money. Their license also contains a record of the competitions they have participated in and their coaching levels if they have any. R.O.A.R is a nationally and interkingdoms ranked sport.

Unlike many modern sports R.O.A.R PTW is not electronically based, meaning it relies on three judges to decide if the point is given or not.

Note: R.O.A.R is a sport for both female and male participants however during school competitions is a gender separate sport. Auradon Prep did not feature a female team hence the issue that arose in D2.

▍ Equipment.

R.O.A.R equipment is identical to that of fencing: ⎯ Jacket. ⎯ Plastron. ⎯ Glove. ⎯ Breeches/Knickers. ⎯ Socks. ⎯ Shoes. ⎯ Mask (Can be custom mesh). All the equipment must meet the standards and regulations set out by the FDR.

Rapier grips can differ and be customised however all grips must be of the same weight to allow no competitive advantage. All blades are a consistent standard.

▍ Ages and Bands.

Training for R.O.A.R can start from aged 7, the age at which an individual can hold a License despite this many clubs will not take anyone under the age of 9 due to the responsibility it takes. Most athletes hoping to play R.O.A.R start between the ages of 7-11 but there are a number of players that start when they are older.

R.O.A.R is broken down into several different age categories, in these different age bands there are different rules that apply when competing. It should be noted that although flips are not aloud competitively until aged 11-13 kids between the ages of 9-11 are allowed to practice in their club if so permitted by their coach under extreme supervision and should only be done so with extreme caution. Under 9′s are only allowed to compete under MPW style but are allowed to practice R.O.A.R style.

The age groups following is how the sport is broken up.

⎯ Mini (AA Band) (7-9) - plastic blades are permitted, no flips, mpw style. ⎯ Juniors (A Band) (9-11) - plastic blade flips allowed. ⎯ Pre-cadet (B Band) (11-13) - metal blade no flips or plastic with flips. first to meet x. ⎯ Cadet (C Band) (13-15) - metal with flips. ⎯ Junior (16-18) ⎯ Senior (18+) ⎯ OAP (60+) - still developing sport however flips are not permitted.

The age categories with a ‘band’ are those which are allowed to compete at the Inter-Kingdom Age Bands a competition specifically curated for juniors for fun. It is an unranked competition which provides no ‘license points’ for global events.

▍ Competitions.

Most competitions offer entry to both MPW and R.O.A.R styles but a competition may also just be for one of the other. It is traditional at competitions for the younger groups to compete in the morning with the older groups going further into the day however everyone must sign in by 9am to compete. Competitions are normally day long events with sometimes both team and solo events occurring in the same competition. Much similar to fencing R.O.A.R does not feature weight categories. Competitions for R.O.A.R are broken into five different categories:

⎯ Age Bands．are a ‘local’ or ‘inter-kingdom’ competition for juniors. these competitions are seen as ‘practice’ for juniors who go on to compete. all participants get a medal and it is engagement focused hoping to give confidence to fencers. ⎯ Regionals．are a small competition normally held by rival clubs or within cities in order for a more formal competition setting governed by the Fédération Auradon d'escrime (FAE). Regionals are much more competitive based than age bands and tend to have a category for each age band. They are frequent occurring competitions used for good sparring practice. ⎯ National．are a kingdom competition that give points towards kingdom classification. a formal competition also governed by the FAE. Competing in a ‘national’ competition (in this sense a ‘nation’ is such as; Auroria, Cinderellasberg, Auradon) allows one to start national ranking. Winners are ‘Nationals’ are granted titles such as National Champion. ⎯ Kingdom．or union wide event’s are bigger than ‘nationals’ , this is where highest ranking ‘national’ fighters go on to represent their kingdom. Kingdoms are one of the biggest annual competitions there are. This competition does provide ‘license points’ and is governed by the FDR. Winners of ‘Kingdom’ competitions are then granted titles as ‘Kingdoms Champion’. ⎯ Interkingdoms / Global．a newer competition the global or Inter-Kingdoms event is the biggest R.O.A.R event there is where the best of the best come to compete. Members over the age of 11 who have gained the required amount of qualification license points are allowed to compete at Interkingdoms and is overseen by the FDR. People who compete here and win are known as ‘World Champions’.

Note: In these categories participants can enter under a club name or as independents but must have a valid license. There may also be ‘non-pro tournaments’ this means that those who have competed in national or above capacity are unable to compete. *** Nationals, Kingdoms and Interkingdoms are held annually. These are open both to individuals and teams.

⎯ School Competitive League(s)． ⎯ Schools Challenge Cup(s)． ⎯ University League League(s)． ⎯ University Challenge Cup(s)．

Within a ‘League’ Schools/Universities compete against one another for ��points’ in matches set up across the season, the school with the most points at the end of the league wins the League. A MVP will be picked at the end of the Season based off of performance along with a ‘Team of the Season’ a Team comprised of what the board consider the best competitors of the season.

The Challenge Cups are a knockout based competition in which ‘Regional’ (Such as United States of Auradon) Champions and Runners-Up compete against other regional champions at the end of the ROAR season for a cup. This competition is the ‘Best of the Schools’.

Solo Member school league competitions are based off monthly events which participants gather and compete. Members to compete in solo’s must be a member of a team. The Solo Players Challenge cup takes the players who have scored the most in their ‘Region’ and plays them off against each other takes place at the end of the season on the same day as the team event.

▍ Team and Solo.

In R.O.A.R there’s two different events. Team and Solo. One can play either or both. I

The way to win in a solo is either by winning the most rounds or winning the most points depending on the style, wheres in Team R.O.A.R it is a little more complicated. Each team member is assigned a number by a coach, this number is important when assigning matches. First’s fights firsts, seconds fight seconds. There are 8 rounds in a match where each member is matched against their respective opposite. When a team wins the majority of the rounds they ultimately win the match.

#♚・headcanons ⎯ the paper crown made him feel better ·✦#long post tw #/ So here are some thoughts.

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covencloud · 3 years

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What Women’s Equality Day Means For Women in the United States

How many times have you heard that a woman’s place is in the home? How often have you been told to make yourself smaller and less visible, to make others (men) comfortable? It is disheartening and embarrassing that women still have to fight for equal rights and respect in the 21st century, but fight, we will. In honor of Woman’s Equality Day this week, I want to share what equality means to me as a woman and a pagan.

What is Women’s Equality Day?

Every year, on August 26, we celebrate women’s equality day. This holiday commemorates the woman’s suffrage movement and celebrates all that American women have accomplished since gaining their right to vote. This is the day the 19th Amendment was first signed into law in 1971 by President Richard Nixon, which is why it is also referred to as Nixon Day. Although we have come a long way since then, we still have a long way to go. A recent study showed that 40% of women don’t feel safe walking alone at night, and 56% feel unsafe when riding public transportation or walking alone at night near home.

A quick history of women’s rights in the United States

At one point in history, women were considered less than men. They couldn’t vote or hold office; they weren’t legally recognized as people at all, not even when it came to violent crimes against them. Fast forward to now: We’ve made a lot of progress—it’s hard to imagine a world where woman are constantly denied their human rights. But it happened (and still happens) every day.

March 31, 1776: In a letter to her husband, Founding Father John Adams, future first woman Abigail Adams made supplication to him and the Continental Congress to “remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

July 19-20, 1848: The Seneca Falls Convention was held in New York City with 300 attendees. The convention was the first women’s rights convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. The Declaration of Sentiments was signed by 68 women and 32 men, including Frederick Douglass. The document sparked decades of activism, eventually leading to the passage of the 19th Amendment, which we celebrate today.

January 23, 1849: The first woman graduates from med school and becomes a doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell, MD. She graduated from Geneva College in New York with the highest grades in her entire class.

May 29, 1851: Sojourner Truth delivered the famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron Ohio. As a former slave, turned activist Sojourner stated, “And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! Ain’t I a woman?”

December 10, 1869: Wyoming passed the first woman’s suffrage law in America, thus granting women the right to vote and hold office. Late, in 1890 Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the Union and became the first state to allow women to vote.

May 15, 1869: Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association.

October 16, 1916: Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States.

April 2, 1917: The first woman was elected to Congress as a member of the House of Representatives – Jeanette Rankin of Montana.

August 18, 1920: Ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is completed, declaring “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

May 20-21, 1932: Amelia Earhart became the first woman pilot ever to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic.

Read more about this history of women’s rights here

How can we honor the divine feminine by fighting for gender equality?

When stories about regular women are ignored, stories about goddesses are often buried, never to resurface again. Women’s empowerment can come in many forms, including the rediscovery of ancient cultural beliefs and stories that glorify the divine feminine.

In an age where feminism has become mainstream and gender equality has become more of a social norm, how can we honor goddesses like Isis, Hecate, Aphrodite, Artemis, Hera, Kali, and other Goddesses? Where do we find inspiration to fight for woman’s rights when so many women are fighting already? The answer is simple:

Learn from their fight.

Learn from these goddesses (both in the mortal realm and beyond) who fought tirelessly to achieve power and respect.

Read the stories of your ancestors.

Reflect on them.

Find strength and wisdom in these ancient tales.

Our fight is not over until every woman is free with equal opportunity to love, be loved, and have their voice heard. We are mighty beyond measure, and we will continue to fight as our ancestors have until our battle is won.

Carry on, sisters!

View this blogpost on our website: https://coven.cloud/2021/08/26/what-womens-equality-day-means-for-women-in-the-us/

#coven #witch #witches #pagan #deities #women #feminism #equality

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hrthrive21 · 3 years

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Ready for Myan-War

Myanmar, also known as Burma, is in South East Asia. It neighbours Thailand, Laos, Bangladesh, China and India. It has a population of about 54 million, most of whom are Burmese speakers, although other languages are also spoken. The biggest city is Yangon (Rangoon), but the capital is Nay Pyi Taw. The country gained independence from Britain in 1948. It was ruled by the armed forces from 1962 until 2011, when a new government began ushering in a return to civilian rule. Following 10 years of gradual progress on political and economic liberalization—and a landslide victory for the NLD in the 2020 election—the Burmese army took power in a coup on February 1, 2021, just hours before the newly elected members of Parliament were set to convene. The army has quickly reversed hard-won progress toward democracy and human rights in Burma. It has arrested elected officials, activists, and journalists, done away with even the most basic civil and political rights, blocked access to social media, and, intermittently, to the internet entirely.

Those who have followed transition from a military authoritarian government to a civilian one in other countries of the world, know quite well, the inherent constraints in that transformation, more so in a country wrecked by ethnic fragmentation and rebellion with external involvements, and where all civilian institutions were systematically emasculated and replaced with military organizations and institutions, and its economy controlled by an inefficient and corrupt military clique. Unlike in other countries where the military got involved in businesses as they consolidated their political control in course of time, in Burma the take-over was simultaneous. Almost all private property was confiscated and handed over to a number of military-run state corporations. The old mercantile elite, which to a large extent were of ethnic Indian and Chinese origin, left the country, and so did many of Burma’s intellectuals. To restore all that were lost, is a stupendous task for any government and requires full cooperation of all the stakeholders in that process, including the international community and foreign investors.to create the enabling environment for the same.

That enabling environment lies in the rapid economic development of the country allowing everyone to be able to have a share of the cake. Average GDP growth so far under Suu Kyi’s leadership has failed to reach even 7%. When the need was for much higher rate for the challenging task of eradication of poverty of large sections of the population, and improving the quality of life for others. To sustain current experiment in democracy and development, the twin goal for which the people of Myanmar have fought and sacrificed under a crippling military dictatorship for more than five decades, success in the economic arena is the only weapon she could use in the absence of enabling political conditions.

Even while the investment environment in Myanmar have improved with the implementation of the new Company Law in 2018 and the Investment Law in 2017, Myanmar has not been able to attract much-needed large-scale foreign investment from foreign manufacturing companies to create jobs from the Western countries, some for economic reasons, but more for extra-economic factors like lack of progress on human rights issues. Although Myanmar’s democratization was expected to increase investment from Europe and the U.S., large amounts have come mainly from Asian countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea. The West will have to have a fresh look at Myanmar, increase their investments for companies to establish reliable supply chains.

Despite some minor differences, the pathology, the ideological outlook and the experiences of the Myanmar army is similar to Indonesian military, and is likely to follow the same trajectory in its movement towards democracy — a guided political system with a certain role for the armed forces till the economy grows to accommodate both the security and economic interests of the armed forces through an expanded defence budget, opportunities in corporate sectors for children of military officers and eventual creation of a middle class demanding greater transparency and accountability from the government. However the international community might try to push for political change in Myanmar, it will not happen under conditions of sanctions or strained relations between the Tatmadaw and other stakeholders, even while the coup was illegitimate and on flimsy grounds of voter irregularities with no substantial evidence to prove that charge.

India has always been steadfast in its support to the process of democratic transition in Myanmar. We believe that the rule of law and the democratic process must be upheld. We are monitoring the situation closely.” India has learnt from its earlier mistakes of democratic activism in late 1980s and early 1990s and have become more pragmatic in its approach to Myanmar keeping in mind its national and security interests. Myanmar is too important to New Delhi to ignore as it sits at the of India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ and ‘Act East Policy’ policies, being the land bridge to connect South Asia and Southeast Asia, and thus demands a special place in India’s diplomacy in the broader region of Indo-Pacific.

Apart from strategic necessity to maintain links with whichever dispensation is in power, New Delhi can use its access to military leadership to impress upon them the need for peaceful transfer of power back to the civilian elected representatives through back-room channel. From that perspective, Indian response to the coup has been mature, though it may not satisfy the democracy warriors in our country who find ideology more important than actual ground realities in a country like Myanmar.

Case in hand:

Indian government has decided to work in hand with ‘Secret e-Cell’ unit of the country where the units are planning to help Myanmar in its difficult times as well as willing to extend the support to the Democratic Party and the citizens facing the injustice. For this, the government has opted for 2 years Transfer Strategy of some specialized agents of the RAW and fresh talent personnel from Indian Army officials who will be solely responsible for negotiating with and spying the Military troops who are in action, and communicating the scenarios to the Secret cell on the regular basis to come up with a solution to help Myanmar regain its democratic power.

Task in hand:

Considering the above mentioned situation and keeping in mind the pandemic, you are appointed as the Executive Head Officer for the mission and you are responsible for:

Prepare an overview of the execution plan for the span of 2 years.

Define the recruitment drive and strategy adopted for the same.

Expatriate selection procedure.

Expatriate training and development program.

Define the expatriation policy adopted and compensation provided.

Perform a locational analysis and security check for the accommodation and travel.

State the contingency plan that would be taken into consideration in case of any emergency.

Specify the usage of Tech based equipment and Artificial Intelligence in the whole mission.

Any extra deliverables you seem necessary.

Deliverables:

Prepare a report of not more than 30 pages.

A ppt summarising the same.

P.S Top 10 much?

Submission Details:

Deadline: 9am, 7th April 2021

Mail: [email protected]

Mail subject: ZENXX_READY FOR MYAN-WAR

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cpd5021 · 4 years

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Unexpected Chapter 3

Hailey sat in her car, hands tightly gripping the steering wheel despite the fact that her vehicle had been shut off for some time now. She stared straight ahead, the neon lights from the street around her blurring as she struggled to focus. In the distance, she could hear her phone going off but she couldn’t bring herself to look at it, knowing that it was most likely Jay. She briefly thought back to the look on his face as she had rushed out of the locker room and she regretted causing him any concern or hurt. But she simply couldn’t be around him right now, or anyone for that matter. Hailey told herself, again and again, to get out of her car, go into the little convenience store she had been parked outside for the last hour, and buy the stupid test. There was a chance, she repeated to herself for the hundredth time, that she might be freaking out over nothing. What were the chances of getting pregnant after only having sex once...maybe twice? And they had been safe that morning...it was just the unknown of the night before that caused her doubt. And maybe they hadn’t actually done anything the night before, neither could really recall the events, not a month ago and certainly not now. But deep down, Hailey could tell that something was different inside her. The minute Vanessa had spoken the words, something inside Hailey clicked. But she was trying her hardest to block that feeling out. What was that feeling anyway? Fear? Certainly. Embarrassment? A little. But the thing that was scaring Hailey the most, was the tiny little bit of hope she felt brewing within. Hope that maybe she was pregnant. Hailey flashed back to another memory, to a time much longer ago, before intelligence, before Jay.

“Hailey, I’m afraid it’s not good news.” The doctor had had a no nonsense attitude since she got here so the bluntness didn’t really surprise her.

“Lay it on me doc..” Hailey tried to front her own nonchalant attitude, despite the fact that she was falling apart inside.

“After a thorough examination, it appears that the injuries you sustained in your attack have caused significant damage to your uterus.” The doctor standing in front of her, dealing this heavy blow, never once looked up from his clipboard as he continued. “It’s highly unlikely, if not impossible, that you will ever be able to have children. I’m sorry.” There it was, the brief glance at her, the quick assessment of how she was handling this news. The charade of good bed side manner didn’t last long as the doctor tucked the clipboard under his arm, reaching to shake her hand as if she had won a prize, before turning to leave the room. The nurse, who had been standing quietly in the corner, came to stand in front of her now.

“I’m sorry, he’s very straightforward.” The nurse gave a sheepish, almost embarrassed look as Hailey fought back tears. She wouldn’t cry here. She would remain in control until she was in the safety of her own home.

“Kids were never really in my future plans anyway.” Hailey tried to maintain her tough girl front, but it faltered as the words left her lips.

The nurse finished her task of unhooking Hailey from everything before she told her she was free to go, giving another small smile as she slipped out of the door. Hailey took a deep breath as she stood from the exam table, grimacing as her sore body protested her movements. She could do this, she could make it home before she fell apart. Hailey was lucky to make it to her car before her emotions crashed over her and silent sobs racked through her body.

Blinking herself back into the present, Hailey wiped at the tears forming in her eyes. She took a few deep breathes, trying to steady her emotions so she could go make her purchase and find out one way or another. She took her now stiff hands off the steering wheel, reaching down to unclip her seat belt, and taking one more breath before opening her door. The cool Chicago breeze swept over her and she was thankful for the extra air it provided her as she walked towards the storefront. Another deep breath as she pulled open the door, the dinging of the bell causing her to jump slightly. A young kid, maybe eighteen, manned the counter. He gave her a smile and a nod as she walked in, immediately darting to the isle she needed. Her hands shook as she reached for the tiny pink box on the shelf, she clenched her fist to steady herself before plucking the box from it’s spot and pivoting back to the counter. The cashier tried to make small talk with her but his words were mumbled in her current state and she didn’t respond. A small smile was all she could muster as he handed her the bag and receipt. She briefly registered him telling her to have a good night, but that was highly unlikely to be the case.

Hailey made the drive home in a blur, she couldn’t recall the trip from point A to point B, but suddenly she was parked outside her house. The lights on inside signaled her room mate was already home. Probably waiting for her, worrying for her. She loved Vanessa, but this was something she needed to do alone. Shifting her car back into drive, Hailey pulled away before Vanessa realized she was there. Hailey looped around the city, considering her options. They were limited at best. She couldn’t go home yet. She briefly considered going straight to Jay’s house, taking the test there with him, but quickly shook that thought from her head. Hailey had no clue how he was going to handle something like this and she didn’t want to spring this on him if there was no need too. Hailey drove until she was parked in front of the only other place that brought her comfort, a feeling of safety. The 21st Precinct. It was late, most everyone would have gone home by now, save for the patrolmen on night shift, but they should be out on the roads. She’d just have to get past the night shift desk Sargent, but that wouldn’t be hard with her badge. She didn’t even know who manned the desk at night, so they certainly wouldn’t know her. She reached to her passenger seat, grabbing the little box out of its bag and tucking it into her coat pocket. Forcing another deep breath into her lungs, she got out of the car and trudged into the building. What she wasn’t expecting, was to see none other than Trudy Platt sitting atop her perch at the desk. It threw her off and stopped her in her tracks. So much for being discreet.

“Upton?” Platt looked at her over her glasses and it felt as though the Sargent was looking straight into her soul.

“Hey..I uh...forgot something.” Hailey stammered, struggling to find an excuse.

Platt eyeballed her for a minute and Hailey knew she could tell she was lying. But Platt, in her ever mysterious ways, chose not to push the matter. Nodding and buzzing her up. Hailey darted up the stairs into the bull pen. It was, thankfully, pitch black, telling her that indeed everyone else had gone home for the night. Hailey moved to her desk, mulling the situation over and trying to gain the confidence to go into the bathroom. Her body threatened to tremble as her nerves were on edge and her emotions ran unchecked. Finally she gathered enough strength to move down the hall. Hailey locked the bathroom door behind her, probably a mute point as she knew she was alone, but it made her feel just a little better. She pulled the box from her coat pocket and set it on the counter. Hailey gripped the edge of the sink, feeling dizzy and forcing herself to stay upright. She picked up the box, which suddenly weighed a thousand pounds and picked it open. The tiny little stick, something that brought so many people so much joy, looked threatening in her hand. Clenching the stick in her hand, she quickly undid her jeans and slid them down. Once she was finished, she set the stick on a paper towel on the counter and washed her hands. Three minutes. That’s what the box said. It felt like an eternity.

Maybe it had been three minutes, maybe it had been ten, Hailey wasn’t really sure. She stood with her back to the mirror, leaning against the counter with her head hanging against her chest. Her breathing coming out in shakes as her body trembled with anxiety. Slowly she turned around, looking at herself in the mirror. She was a mess. Her face was pale, her eyes rimmed red from unshed tears and dark circles dipped down into her cheekbones. Gripping the counter once again to steady herself, Hailey held her breathe as she looked down at the test. As her eyes registered the result, an intense wave of nausea had her flying to the toilet, barely making it in time as she collapsed above the bowl. Once done, she remained on the floor, not trusting her legs to hold her upright right now. She drew her knees into her chest, bending her head down and trying to gain control over herself.

Pregnant. She was pregnant.

After what felt like an eternity, Hailey finally mustered the strength to stand back up. She rinsed her mouth in the sink and wiped the tears and glean of sweat from her face. She slowly picked up the test with trembling hands, debating whether she should throw it away or keep it. Deciding she might need it to prove this to Jay, or even herself again, she tucked it into her pocket again. Hailey gave herself one last look in the mirror, realizing no matter how long she stayed in here she wasn’t going to look any better. And the longer she stayed, the more suspicious Platt would get. Hailey steeled herself to exit the small room, jogged down the stairs and almost made it to the doors before she heard Platt’s voice behind her from the desk.

“Upton.” Her voice cut through Hailey as she struggled to keep her emotions in check. She knew she wouldn’t get out of this without at least making eye contact with her Sargent, so slowly she turned and darted her eyes up briefly to meet Trudy’s.

“Hey...” Platt looked over her, deciding how to proceed. Hailey’s eyes swam with tears threatening to fall as she silently pleaded with the Sargent to just let her go. “Whatever it is...you’ll be okay.” Hailey found herself on the receiving end of a very rare, caring smile from the older woman and it pushed her to the brink.

“Thanks.” She chocked out, throat thick and tears falling freely. She didn’t wait for anything else and instead turned and jogged out the door. Hailey sat in her car, unable to even start it as her emotions coursed through her. She told herself she could fall apart, just a little bit, and then she wouldn’t lose it again when she went to talk to Jay. Jay, the thought of his face alone sent another wave of sobs through her body.

Finally, body shaking from a wide variety of emotions, Hailey started her car and made the drive to Jay’s. Once again, the journey was a blur as she found herself parked outside his building. She reached for her phone, debating if she should let him know she was here or just go knock. Her lip quivered as she scrolled through the multiple missed calls and texts Jay had sent her. The last one reading; “Please be okay..”

Hailey set her phone back down, deciding if she text him and waited for the reply she might bail in the meantime. Her hand slid into her pocket, clenching the tiny plastic stick so hard she feared it might snap, as she made her way to his door. One small rap on his door and she heard shuffling from within the apartment. In a matter of seconds, the door whipped open and she stood face to face with Jay. His face a mixture of relief and worry as she stood before him. For a split second, just seeing him standing in front of her, was enough to calm her nerves. That relief didn’t last long though as she remembered why she was here. Before she had a chance to begin, Jay’s arms pulled her into a tight embrace. He walked them back into his apartment, closing the door behind them before planting a gentle kiss on her forehead. It was enough to have her on the verge of tears again.

“Sorry..” Jay released her, taking a quick step back as he saw her tears. “I just...maybe you don’t want..” Jay scrambled for the right words but they failed him.

“Jay, we need to talk.” Hailey instantly chastised herself for her choice of words, nothing good usually came after that phrase. She watched as Jay stiffened slightly, already putting himself on the defense. She tried to salvage this situation before it even really started and took a step towards him, resting a hand on his arm. “I have something to show you....” She trailed off, fighting not to lose her confidence. Jay nodded towards the couch and they made their way over to sit down.

“I don’t know how to start this.” Hailey’s voice was quiet as she spoke, searching for the right words.

“Whatever it is, it’ll be okay” Jay’s words mimicked the ones Trudy had told her earlier and she immediately felt tears gather in her eyes. Jay moved to pull her into his arms again but she held a hand up to stop him, wincing when she saw hurt flash across his face.

“If you do that...I’m going to fall apart. And I really need to get this out before that happens.” She explained, voice trembling. Jay pulled back slightly, confusion and worry all over his face.

“I didn’t plan this, obviously.” Hailey almost chuckled at the thought. “But um...” Deciding that her words were going to fail her and she really had no good idea on how to do this, she reached into her pocket to remove the test. Her eyes bore into Jays as she watched him follow her hand, she clenched the test in her fist shielding it from his view until she moved her hand to rest on her lap. Hailey’s eyes never left Jay’s face as she slowly uncurled her fingers, revealing the bit of plastic that was changing their lives forever. She watched as he took in what she was holding, realization flashing through his eyes before they flew to meet hers.

“You’re..?” He trailed off, his own voice thick with unreadable emotion.

“Yea.” Hailey breathed out her response, quickly losing steam.

“And it’s..mine?” Hailey winced slightly at his question, not that she could really blame him. They had only been together a little over a month and had only had sex once.

“Yes.” She responded with a nod. “There hasn’t been anyone since Adam.” Jay grimaced slightly at the mention of their partner, but quickly recovered as he held her stare.

“I love you.” Jays words surprised her. Of all the things she had expected him to say, the scenarios she had running through her head the entire drive here, that wasn’t what she was expecting.

“I...love you too.” Her voice was a whisper. She could feel something bubbling inside of her, something she had previously tried to push down. Hope.

#chicago pd #chicago pd fanfiction #halstead and upton #jay halstead #hailey upton #halstead #jay x hailey #upstead #upton

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cavendish-dakota-central · 4 years

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Inspired by:

I got extremely carried away shaping Heinz into a hero and even more determining what circumstanced could possibly require Perry to need saving X)

Also I interpreted this as an Owca Files style mission and wrote it as an all!human au so I hope you like it

Thanks for this idea, it was a lot of fun to write.

Out of everyone on Owca's team, Perry was by far the most proactive. He had a certain something within him that demanded he take charge. Not that it was bad, in fact- leadership was his strongest attribute.

He had been slow to warm to his teammates, but now that he understood each of them as individuals, he had become fiercely loyal to them as a team. They often warmly joked that Perry's instinct to protect kept them the safest agents in Owca, even accounting for Heinz's -inator mishaps.

Perry was always the first in and the last out.

Lately, Heinz was working on laying off on the (often explosive) gadgets and learning to trust his OWN instincts- per Owca's request.

At first, it was incredibly difficult for him. Heinz had learned early on in his life that his instincts weren't very good at all. They caused him to act without thinking and his tendency to ramble often got the better of him. People didn't typically like those qualities, and he felt he had worked too hard to mess up his shot with Owca now.

Nevertheless, he had decided to try it. Perry's faith in him made Heinz want to try and to become better.

It was very nearly his worst mistake yet.

The team had run into a warehouse, blind. Perry had raced in ahead of the others to make sure the area was safe to enter.

The team was on the trail of a dangerous villain whom they'd been chasing through the city for the last several days.

This villain they were chasing was someone so dastardly, and who ignored the evil code so blatantly, that even Love Muffin had exiled him. He, in short, enjoyed overriding the minds of other evil scientists and using them as pawns in his twisted game. He worked them to the brink of exhaustion, forcing them to build him powerful weapons. Now that they finally found him, there was no time to waste.

The team of five sneakily lept in through a window in the roof, but the moment their feet hit the floor, the room began to fill with a masking smoke. It was still early evening outside, but the sunlight couldn't reach into the windowless room. In seconds, the agents found themselves unable to see their own feet through the thick mist.

"Perry?! Maggie?!" Heinz called for his teammates. He heard the sharp voice of Maggie calling back 'Here!' and a relieved bit of laughter from Harry, the pair barely visible to his left. Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he quickly recognized Karen's sauve but unconcerned figure just over his right shoulder.

"Alright, that just leaves Perry," he commented, troubled not to have heard from him yet. He tried to push away the uneasy feeling. After all, he was sure Perry was plugging the source of the fog.

He felt his theory had been confirmed as the fog began to clear and he saw the familiar, well-dressed man standing just across the room. His bright teal shirt and brown vest were easy to see through the dissipating clouds.

But there was something amiss about him.

Perry abruptly began walking towards them- but his pace wasn't right. His body was too stiff and the orange shoes Heinz occasionally mocked him for wearing weren't slapping against the ground in the usual way he had grown accustomed to.

"Uh... everyone?" He grabbed the team's attention. Maggie and Harry turned to him and Karen even spared him a glance, "Take a step back. Mmmmm... maybe two."

His gaze stayed fearfully transfixed on Perry.

The agent was closing in. The gentle gleam in his blue-green eye missing, leaving them lackluster.

"Hey, Perry," Heinz chuckled nervously, "how are you! Did you happen to get a haircut or something because I could swear that-"

"His hat!" Maggie suddenly called out.

The band around Perry's hat was a different color- that was the difference Heinz had picked up on. Owca agents had bands around their hats with a unique identification sown into them. Instead of his usual brown-red band, a completely black ribbon was in its place. And the band was most likely the device now taking over Perry's volition.

Karen suddenly snapped to attention, her fists raised and green eyes narrowed.

Heinz tried to mirror her, but he already knew he was at a loss. He didn't have any gadgets left on him, per Perry's recommendation, and he certainly couldn't win at hand to hand combat. Years of experience had proven that much to be true.

"Oh, of all the times to be a good guy. I spend YEARS creating traps and -inators to take this guy down and then the ONE TIME I NEED THEM-" he ended with a defeated sigh. He quickly settled on a different approach,

"Perry, now hold on a minute! We're your friends!"

The other agents faltered as well, exchanging indecisive looks. Not only did none of them want to fight their friend, but none of them wanted to fight Owca's number one agent. Heinz had fought Perry for YEARS before joining Owca and had won roughly once out of hundreds of battles. Even with four of them, those weren't excellent odds. They didn't want to hurt him either.

Their fearful eyes must have ignited something in their team leader because suddenly Perry stopped.

The control seemed to let him go. His bright eyes widened and looked over the four in unprecedented, overwhelming confusion.

"You're going to be okay!" Heinz promised, reaching out with one shaky hand.

For a moment Perry looked relieved, like he had woken up from a terrible dream to find reality untouched. He took a step forwards and then winced, freezing in place immediately. His kind smile twisted into an agonizing grimace. His worn, skilled fingers clamped down on either side of his head and in a single agonizing moment, he collapsed limply onto the cold floor.

"Perry!"

Heinz raced to him, but the sight of a new figure appearing out of the subsiding fog stopped him. The newcomer was tall and elegant looking. He wore a perfectly tailored white suit and held a shining remote in one well-manicured hand.

"He's a strong one, I'll admit," the man's voice hummed in a cold, uncaring tone. He looked down his nose at Perry and turned the dial on his remote.

Perry quickly climbed back to his feet, standing at attention, his eyes once again empty. It felt like a knife through Heinz's chest to have Perry's eyes look right through him.

The ex-evil scientist faltered. The other agents prepared themselves, squaring up for a fight, but Heinz did no such thing. He simply took a determined step forwards.

"Let him go!" Maggie demanded.

"You think he's strong, just wait until we get our hands on you!" Heinz threatened through gritted teeth.

The man only laughed with a lightheartedness that conveyed nothing more than mockery,

"You won't- get a hand on me that is. Not as long as I have him. Consider him my hostage."

"What would he want he want us to do?" Maggie asked Heinz.

The scientist's provoked rage suddenly washed away as his teammates looked to him expectantly. It was true, Heinz knew Perry the best- but he didn't think like him. He didn't have Perry's skill or experience as a good guy. He wasn't naturally sharp-witted or focused. And he certainly didn't have Perry's instinct to know what to do....

All at once, Heinz realized something more. It was true, he had been failing to live up to who Perry believed he could become- but that was okay. He did have instincts, they were just different. His instinct was to adapt, and that took failing before he could succeed.

Heinz might not know what to do when it came to fighting or making a plan, but years of hardship had taught him that he could always find a solution.

What's more, he had something no other agent did. He had a little bit of evil helping him find his direction. And it was because of that evil that he hadn't ENTIRELY listened to Perry's advice. He still had a gadget or two left on him and that was all he needed. He just had to get creative.

Heinz cleared his voice and stepped forwards confidently.

"I have to say, it looks like you've got us. I mean, taking one of our own to use against us?" Heinz gave a falsely wholehearted slow-clap and let it ring through the empty room, "That's just not something just ANYONE can accomplish."

"Th...thank you?" The man in white answered with a baffled head tilt.

Heinz continued, gaining traction, "As an ex-member of Love Muffin I can't AGREE with your methods per se, but as a scientist of my own, I just have to know how you do it before you lock us away or enslave us for your own schemes. And anyways, you must have some triumphant dialogue planned!"

"I... I suppose." The mind-controller replied, "I've been waiting for the right nemesis but I have been dying to explain."

"Explain away!" Heinz insisted energetically. He slowly approached the figure and his army of mind-controlled guards as he spoke. He passed Perry without sparing him a glance.

He continued, trying not to let his voice waver,

"I mean, something to transmit that kind of signal to so many people would need to be incredibly powerful, but you would also need to keep it near you at all times," Heinz prodded.

"Well, I won't go into the details," the evil-doer blushed at another taking an interest in his work, "but it's quite simple really. I keep it all powered through my watch right here!" He held up his wrist. On it, was a massive chunk of metal with numerous controls all over it, "I am able to control the minds of each of my subjects with the simple press of a button!"

"Well it's a shame I won't be able to learn more before the obvious, taking over the tri-state-area and all that fuss," Heinz replied, acting as disappointed as possible by the prospect. Fear was gnawing at his chest but he refused to give in. He couldn't afford to if he wanted this plan to succeed.

He confidently reached out for a handshake and- caught up in the moment- the villain did the same.

Heinz grabbed he man's hand tightly and, with his other, produced a small, handheld -inator out from his pocket.

The -inator didn't have much of a name nor did it function at all like it was supposed to. Heinz hadn't NECESSARILY counted it as a gadget because it wasn't intended for Owca work nor evil. It was, simply, SUPPOSED to recharge the team's communications devices. However, it didn't work yet and instead, one blast from it had overheated Perry's phone so greatly that it melted on the spot just a few days prior. Perry had blatantly shunned him for several hours afterwards, so the incident was still fresh in the scientist's mind.

Sure enough, Heinz's scheme worked perfectly. The moment the -inator's blast connected with the bracelet, it began to overheat.

"Ah! Hot!" The villain immediately panicked. He unlatched the watch and tossed it to the ground. He rubbed his wrist with his other hand, relieved, and watched the bracelet crackled and spark until it became a puddle of half-melted medal.

The evil man let out a sigh of relief before he opened his eyes once more to see a cunning smile beaming away on his enemy's face.

"Oh.... damn...." he realized.

Heinz punched him square in the jaw, knocking him out cold.

The guards who had been under the villain's control immediately became aware of their surroundings and asked each other what was going on to little avail.

By the time Heinz made it back to his team, Harry was holding a barely conscious Perry upright. The black band fell from his hat and softly to the floor.

Karen aggressively smashed it under her boot.

Heinz ignored everything happening around him and focused on the gently-opening blue eyes of a particular secret agent. His long, boney fingers carefully cupped under Perry's sharp square jaw.

"Are you okay?"

Perry gave a weak thumbs up with one hand and then shakily stepped up to throw his arms over Heinz's shoulders. The scientist's long arms caught him and his tall frame leaned down to hold Perry so tightly Heinz was almost worried he would crush the smaller man. After a moment, Heinz felt Perry smile as the famous agent buried his face against his old nemesis's neck.

"If it's all the same to you, I think I'll stick to my gadgets from now on."

Perry gently shook with silent laughter and replied by hugging Heinz even tighter.

Heinz let out a small breath and lowered his head onto Perry's shoulder. He chuckled with relief of his own, "I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you agree."

#i added a keep reading bc it's a little long #and i didnt want to clutter things up #phineas and ferb #owca files #owca #owca files fanfic #pnf #pnf fanfic #perry the platypus #perry the human #heinz doofenshmirtz #perryshmirtz #not exclusively perryshmirtz but their relationship is a main plot point and #thus I will tag it as such #karen the cat #harry the hyena #maggie the macaw

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a2000yearjourney · 3 years

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Rome 49BC: Order from Chaos

Two thousand years ago, at the dawn of the first century, the world was ruled from Rome. Rome was in turmoil. Civil war had engulfed the empire’s capital city. Dictators seized power, and the Roman future seemed bleak. But from the chaos, the Roman Empire would rise stronger and more dazzling than ever before. Within a few short years, it would stretch from Britain, across Europe, to southern Egypt, from North Africa around the Mediterranean, to the Middle East. It would embrace hundreds of languages and religions and would till those diverse cultures into a rich soil, from which western civilizations would grow. Rome would become the world’s first and most enduring super power, spanning continents. The glory days of Rome were studded with names that reach out to us across two millennia: Ovid and Nero, Seneca and Caligula. But the story of Rome is more than the story of famous men. Millions of less familiar figures struck different chords in the symphony of empire. People such as the wealthy benefactor, Umachia. The rebel queen, Boudicca, and countless uncelebrated soldiers and slaves, senators and peasants.

Above them all, is this man, Caesar Augustus. This was the emperor who set the tone for the astonishing renaissance of Rome.

Part one of my history tells the story of Augustus, (the great-grandfather of my 51st great granduncle) and his people, the men and women who wrested order from chaos. They shaped the greatest empire the world has ever seen and launched the Roman Empire in the first century.

Two thousand years after Egypt’s pharaoh’s reigned supreme, four hundred years after the flowering of Greek culture, three hundred years after Alexander the great - a boy named Octavian was born in a small Italian town. The child would one day be called Augustus, and his birth, one ancient historian tells us, would be gilded by legend. His father, leading an army through distant lands, went to a sacred grove, seeking prophecy on the boy’s future. When wine was poured on the altar, flames shot up to heaven. The signs were heard only once before, by Alexander the Great. The priest declared that Augustus would be ruler of the world.

Suetonius tells the story. Writing at the turn of the first century, he based his biography on eyewitness accounts, on common gossip and on research conducted as imperial librarian. In truth, he writes that the prospects of young Augustus were far from grand. The boy was sickly, with few connections. His family were country people. His father was the first in their line to join the Senate. But worse - Augustus was born into dangerous times. Civil war had flared for decades. Feuding nobles fought to gain power for themselves. And Rome’s traditions of open government were often trampled underfoot. So too, were innocent bystanders. When Augustus was just four years old, his father suddenly died. Without a male mentor, the boy’s future looked bleak. But in 49 BC, when he was thirteen, Augustus’ fortunes took a dramatic turn. For in that year, his great uncle, Julius Caesar, gained the upper hand on the battlefield. Leading an army across the Rubicon River, Caesar declared himself master of Rome and ruler of an empire still aspiring to greatness. At the time of Julius Caesar, the Roman Empire was a bit like a boy who has reached six feet tall, yet he’s only fourteen or fifteen years old. He’s not yet a man. The externals of empire were there - the armies were there. The Romans governed most of the coast of the Mediterranean, with the exception of Egypt. However, they had not yet learned to bring that into a functioning organism. The past decades of internal fighting had weakened the empire. Northern tribes harried the borders. Enemies were confronting Rome in the east. And the province of Spain threatened to break free. Julius Caesar moved quickly to bolster the frontiers, and his own legacy. Caesar had no heir, so when Augustus completed a dangerous mission, Caesar adopted the teenager in his will. Karl Galinsky, Professor of Classics, University of Texas, Austin:

“Augustus realized this was a tremendous opportunity. Mind you, he had no military training, but he was the heir of the greatest political figure that was under the Roman sky at that time - and he cashed in on it.”

It was a heady opportunity for Augustus, but also a perilous challenge. For in 44 BC, foreigners were not the only threat to stability. There were enemies within Caesar’s small circle of advisors. They murdered Caesar at a meeting of the Senate. For the second time in his life, Augustus lost a father. Now, on the verge of manhood, he thrust himself into the maelstrom of Roman politics. Keith Bradley, Professor of Greek and Roman Studies, University of Victoria:

“The death of Julius Caesar was not just a turning point in Augustus’ life, it was a turning point in world history. Augustus was extremely young at this time, only in his nineteenth year. Yet when he knew that he had been made Caesar’s heir, he immediately took up the political legacy of Caesar. He entered the mainstream of Roman politics. He didn’t hesitate to try to avenge his father. That meant, of course, stepping onto the stage of politics, raising an army and immersing himself in a contest for supreme political power in Rome.”

He displayed brutality against enemy prisoners. Once, when a father and son were begging for their lives, he ordered that they should draw lots to determine which one should be executed. The father offered himself and was killed. Because of this, the son committed suicide. Augustus watched them both die. Suetonius describes the crisis as “trial by fire” and Augustus didn’t flinch from the task. He formed a strategic alliance with Marc Antony, a powerful general, who also wanted supremacy. Together they massacred their enemies in the capital. Then they pursued their rivals to the shores of Greece, where they fought and won two of the bloodiest battles in Roman history. When the carnage ended, the empire was theirs. Augustus and Antony divided the spoils of war. Augustus remained in Rome. But Antony took control of Egypt, a land not formally joined to Rome, but firmly under the empire’s command. There, he joined forces with Egypt’s queen. Ancient historians, like Cassius Dio, believed that was a fateful move. When Antony fell deeply in love with his new ally, many feared the ambitious queen was scheming to rule Rome herself. Her name was Cleopatra. Cleopatra’s brazen desire for passion and wealth was insatiable. By love, she had made herself queen of Egypt. But she failed in her goal to become queen of the Romans. Judith P. Hallett, Professor of Classics, University of Maryland, College Park:

“Cleopatra did not enjoy a good press in Rome. What really irritated people about Cleopatra was that she was a powerful woman from the east, and from a very wealthy country with a monarchic system of government. She therefore symbolized lack of moderation, lack of control, frenzied fury, everything that Rome tried not to be. Cleopatra and Antony were cast as leaders of the evil empire.” Antony’s alliance with Augustus withered. But Augustus struck first. The poet, Virgil, later cast the battle as an epic struggle of east against west. “Standing high on the stern, Augustus leads the Italians into battle. Carrying with him the bite of the Senate and the people. Opposing him, with barbarian wealth, is Antony, suited for battle. He carries with him the powers of the orient. And to the scandal of all, his Egyptian wife, their monstrous divinities raised weapons against our noble, Roman gods.” Three quarters of the Egyptian fleet was destroyed. Anthony and Cleopatra committed suicide - and the land of the pharaohs was formally annexed to the Roman Empire. Judith Hallet:

“The annexation of Egypt for Augustus was immensely important. It was the equivalent of Hitler’s troops marching through the streets of Paris. Here was a wealthy country that was going to be providing food, that was going to be providing land. But above all, it was a country of great cultural prestige, and once Rome had Egypt as part of its empire, they had truly arrived.”

A Voice:

“There is nothing that man can wish from the gods, nothing the gods can do for men which Augustus, when he returned to the city, did not do for the public, the Roman people, and the entire world. Civil wars were finished - foreign wars ended and everywhere the fury of arms was put to rest.” Upon Augustus’ return to a war torn Rome in 29 BC, the city went wild with enthusiasm. The triumphant general vowed to restore peace and security. It was a promise he would keep. The victory of Augustus launched a period of stunning cultural vitality, of religious renewal and of economic well being that spread throughout the empire. It would be called the ‘Pax Romana’ - the peace of Rome. To many, it marked the return of Rome’s mythic and glorious past. But Augustus himself would never return to the past. He was now a hardened thirty-two-year-old man - the sole ruler of the Greco-Roman world, Rome’s first emperor. Victory had been costly, but the greatest challenge still lay ahead, for to avoid the fate of Julius Caesar, Augustus must disarm the Senate and charm the masses. He must do better than win the war. He must win the peace. That challenge would occupy the rest of his life. A Voice:

“Let me step forward, clear my throat, and announce that I am a native of Soula, a few days’ journey eastward from Rome.” While Augustus fought his way to the pinnacle of power, a boy named Ovid was coming of age under less demanding circumstances. Ovid Speaks:

“I was the second son, a year to the day younger than my brother. We always had two cakes on the birthday we shared, and were close in other ways as well. We studied together, and then went up to Rome to seek our fortunes. I used to waste my time trying to write verses. My father called it waste. He disapproved of any pursuit where you could not turn a decent living, and always used to say, ‘Homer died poor.’” Ovid came from the same stock as Augustus. They were both landed gentries, and like Augustus, the young man found his identity and his ambitions moulded by his demanding family.

Ovid:

“I tried to give up poetry, to stick to prose on serious subjects, but frivolous minds like mine attract frivolous inspirations, some too good not to fool with. I kept returning to my bad habits, secretive and ashamed. I couldn’t help it, I felt like an impostor in serious matters, but I owed it to my father and my brother to try to do my duty.” By Roman law, a father wielded absolute control over his children. Those who displeased him could be disowned, sold into slavery or even killed. The young Ovid tried to meet his father’s expectations. He married, studied law - but the strain proved unendurable. Miserable, Ovid and a friend set out on a journey of self-discovery. Ovid:

“We toured the magnificent cities of Asia. We watched the flames of Mount Etna light up the heavens. We ploughed the waves in a painted ship, and also travelled by wagon. Often the roads seemed short, as we were lost in conversation. When we walked, our words outnumbered our steps - and we had too much to say, even for the long evenings of supper.” Eighteen months later, Ovid settled in Rome, older and more self-confident than before. He resolved to become a poet. He cultivated new friends in Roman literary circles, and soon, Ovid made a name for himself as Rome’s reigning poet - of stolen kisses. Ovid:

“So your husband is coming to this dinner party? I hope he gags on his food. Listen - and learn what you must do. When he settles on his couch to eat, go to him with a straight face. Look modest and lie back beside him. But secretly touch me with your foot. Don’t let him drape his arms around your neck, don’t rest your gentle head against his chest - don’t welcome his fingers to your lap or to your eager nipples. Most of all, no kissing. When dinner is done, your husband will close the bedroom door. But whatever the night shall bring, tell me tomorrow - you refused.”

Keith Bradley:

“It’s a mistake to think that Ovid’s poetry can be read very literally in purely autobiographical terms. That wouldn’t be true, I think, of any poetry from antiquity. But at the same time, Ovid is writing of subjects of which he has some sort of experience and he certainly, through the love poetry, opens up a world that is very different in tone and quality from the official atmosphere.”

While Ovid bloomed as a man of words, the new emperor thrived as a man of action. He rebuilt Rome - and his own family. Divorcing his wife, Augustus married his heavily pregnant mistress - Livia. The move raised eyebrows and hackles, as love was not the only motive. Although Augustus shunned the trappings of absolute power, many suspected he was building a dynasty - a line of heirs to rule Rome for generations to come. Augustus knew it was a dangerous move. He knew that Julius Caesar had been murdered for appearing as a king. Augustus would not make the same mistake. He relinquished high office and struck a delicate balance between fact and fiction.

Augustus writes:

“Having, by universal consent, acquired control of all affairs, I transferred government to the Senate and the people of Rome.” Judith Hallet:

“Augustus was a very cagey political leader because he pretended to be restoring all of these republican political traditions. In fact, what he was running was a full-fledged dynastic monarchy.” A Voice:

“Augustus conquered Cantabria, Aquitania, Pannonia, Dalmatia and all of Illyricum, as well as Raetia.” Augustus not only changed the empire, he expanded it. Egypt had been added early in his career. Soon, Northern Spain was joined. Augustus drove across Europe, into Germany, and he united east and west by adding modern Hungary, Austria, the Balkans and central Turkey. These victories employed Roman soldiers and senators and offered welcome distractions to the city’s poor. When Augustus wasn’t staging chariot races or gladiator shows, he displayed exotic animals, the quarry of Rome’s far-flung empire. A rhinoceros appeared in the arena, Asian tigers in the theatre and a giant serpent in the forum.

Karl Galinsky:

“One key constituency for Augustus was the plebeian population of Rome, and that is basically the city mob. You have several hundred thousand folks here who have no jobs, and to put it very simply, who need to be kept off the streets, and kept from making trouble, because it’s a very volatile, combustible mixture.” The volatile mix that made up Rome stayed quiet for the first four years of Augustus’ rule. Then, in 23 BC, events took a critical turn. Cassius Dio writes that a series of disasters convinced the people that Augustus needed not less power, but more. “The city was flooded by the over flowing river and many things were struck by lightning. Then a plague passed through Italy and no one could work the land. The Romans thought these misfortunes were caused because Augustus had relinquished his office. They wished to appoint him dictator. A mob barricaded the Senate inside its building and threatening to burn them alive, forced the Senate to vote Augustus absolute ruler.” The demands threatened to unsettle the emperor’s precarious political balance. Augustus fell to his knees before the riders. He tore his toga and beat his chest. He promised the mob that he would personally take control of the grain supply. But Augustus refused to be called a dictator. The crowd disbanded, but the lesson was clear. Augustus was riding a tiger. To keep order on the frontiers, the streets and the Senate was a super human task. Super human skills were needed. Luckily for Rome, Augustus had them. Karl Galinsky:

“Then something very fortuitous happens: Halley’s Comet shows up and the word is given out by Augustus that this is the soul of Julius Caesar ascending into heaven. So from this point on he is called Julius Caesar the divine. Politically it became very potent, because what does Augustus do at this point? On all his coinage on all his writings, on all his symbols, whatever, he puts on the words “DF”, meaning Son of the Divine. And it’s really quite an asset in politics to be the Son of the Divine. There are modern politicians I think would be very jealous of being able to do that.”

Augustus enhanced his pious new identity with stories of his lean habits. It was said that he slept in a modest house, and slept on a low bed, that he ate common foods, coarse bread, common cheese, and sometimes, even less.

Augustus:

“My dear Tiberius, not even a Jew observes a fast as diligently on the Sabbath as I have today. I ate nothing until the early hours of evening when I nibbled two bites before my rub down.”

Moral change, Augustus began to argue, was the enemy of Rome. He believed that its future ran through its past, through the restoration of the values he thought had first made Rome great. Augustus:

“I renewed many traditions which were fading in our age. I restored eighty-two temples of the gods, neglecting none that required repair at the time.” In public, Augustus led by example. He sacrificed animals in traditional rituals and he re-established traditional social rules. New laws assigned theatre seats by social rank. Women were confined to the back rows. Adultery was outlawed; marriage and children were encouraged. To many, Roman society had recovered its true course. The son of a god was building an empire for the ages. Augustus:

“Who can find words to adequately describe the advancements of these years? Authority has been returned to the government, majesty to the Senate, and influence to the courts. Protests in the theatre have been stopped, integrity is honored, depravity is punished.” But amid the applause, there were also cries of protest. The emperor’s new traditional values rankled friends and enemies alike. It even rankled his own daughter, Julia. Long a pawn of family politics, Julia assumed that she was exempt from her father’s stringent views. She was wrong. And in the coming years, Augustus, son of a god, would have to confront Augustus the father.

“If there is anyone here who is a novice in the art of love, let him read my book. With study, he will love like a professional.” As the emperor, Augustus firmly charted a course of moral rigor. The poet Ovid staked out different ground. He was now Rome’s most famous living poet, and his boldness grew in step with his reputation. Having all but exhausted the conventions of love poetry, he decided to stretch them. He began composing a manual of practical tips on adultery.

Ovid writes:

“Step one - stroll under a shady colonnade. Don’t miss the shrine of Adonis, but the theatre is your best hunting ground. There you will find women to satisfy any desire, just as ants come and go, so the cultured ladies swarm to the games. They come for the show - and to make a show of themselves. There are so many I often reel from the choice.” Many Romans yearned to follow their emperor back to the good old days of stern Roman virtue. But others reveled in the promises of Rome’s newfound peace. Ovid was one of them. To the youthful poet, old limits seemed meaningless. “Do not doubt you can have any girl you wish. Some give in, others resist but all love to be propositioned. And even if you fail, rejection doesn’t hurt. Why should you fail? Women always welcome pleasure and find novelty exciting.” Indeed, the earlier civil wars had unleashed enormous social change. Some women had gained political clout, new rights, and new freedoms. Tradition holds that one such woman was Julia, the emperor’s only child.

“Julia had a love of letters and was well educated - a given in that family. She also had a gentle nature and no cruel intentions. Together these brought her great esteem as a woman.”

Julia didn’t reject traditional values wholesale. She had long endured her father’s overbearing control. She dutifully married three times to further his dynastic ambitions, and she bore five children. Her two boys, Guyus and Luccius were cherished by Augustus as probable heirs. But like Ovid, Julia expected more from the peace. She was clever and vivacious, and she had an irreverent tongue that cut across the grain of Roman convention. Her legendary wit was passed through the centuries by a late Roman writer called Macrobius.

Macrobius writes:

“Several times her father ordered her in a manner both doting and scolding to moderate her lavish clothes and keep less mischievous company. Once he saw her in a revealing dress. He disapproved but held his tongue. The next day, in a different dress, she embraced her father with modesty. He could not contain his joy and said, ‘Now isn’t this dress more suited to the daughter of Augustus?’ Julia retorted, ‘Today I am dressed for my father’s eyes. Yesterday I dressed for my husband.’

But apparently Julia’s charms were not reserved for her husband alone. The emperor’s daughter took many lovers.

Judith Hallet:

“Her dalliances were so well known that people were actually surprised when her children resembled her second husband, who was the father of her five children. She wittily replied, “Well that’s because I never take on a passenger unless I already have a full cargo.” The meaning here is that she waited until she was already pregnant before undertaking these dalliances, so concerned was she to protect the bloodlines of these offspring.“

Julia, like Ovid, was a testament to her times. But neither of them were average Romans. The life they represented shocked traditional society to the core. And as Julia entered her thirty-eighth year, crisis loom

"In that year, a scandal broke out in the emperor’s own home. It was shameful to discuss, horrible to remember

One Roman soldier voiced deep revulsion at Julia’s extraordinary self-indulgence. "Julia, ignoring her father Augustus, did everything which is shameful for a woman to do, whether through extravagance or lust. She counted her sins as though counting her blessings, and asserted her freedom to ignore the laws of decency.” Julia’s behavior erupted into a full-blown political crisis, which was marked by over-blown claims. The emperor’s daughter was rumored to hold nightly revels in Rome’s public square. She was said to barter sexual favors from the podium where her father addressed the people. When the gossip reached Augustus, the emperor flew into a violent rage. He refused to see visitors. Upon emerging, Suetonius reports, he publicly denounced his only child. “He wrote a letter, advising the Senate of her misbehavior, but was absent when it was read. He secluded himself out of shame, and even considered a death sentence for his daughter. He grew more obstinate, when the Roman people came to him several times, begging for her sake. He cursed the crowd that they should have such daughters and such wives.” As a father, Augustus could not abide Julia’s behavior. As an emperor, he could not tolerate the embarrassment. Augustus banished Julia for the rest of her life. “I was going to pass over the ways a clever girl might elude a husband or a watchful guard. But since you need help - here is my advice.” Soon after Julia’s exile, Ovid released his salacious poem. It couldn’t have been more poorly timed. “Of course a guard stands in your way, but you can still write. Compose love letters while alone in the bathroom and send them out with an accomplice. She can hide them next to her warm flesh, under her breasts or bound beneath her foot. Should your guard get wind of these schemes, she can offer her skin for paper and carry out notes written on her body.” Ovid’s poetry extolled behavior for which the emperor’s daughter was banished. Her fate loomed large as a warning. For the present, the emperor remained mute towards Rome’s most gifted rebel. Ovid turned his hand to less provocative forms of poetry. He remarried, and he embraced a new appreciation for discretion.

“Enjoy forbidden pleasures in their place. But when you dress, don’t forget your mask of decorum. An innocent face hides more than a lying tongue.” Ovid was on notice. The order of Augustus had firm bounds of propriety and Ovid had tested them to the fullest. “Now consider the dangers of night. Tiles fall from the rooftop and crack you on the head. And the drunken hooligan, spoiling for a fight, cannot rest without a brawl. What can you do when a raving madman confronts you? Or tenants throw their broken pots out the window? You’re courting disaster if you go to dinner before writing your will.” At the turn of the first century, the poet Juvenal, was writing verses, which exposed much of Rome to scorn. He was acerbic and had a keen eye for the gritty realities of urban life. Juvenal writes:

“Our apartment block is a tottering ruin. The building manager props it up with slender poles and plasters over the gaping cracks. Then he bids us sleep safe and sound in his wretched death trap.” Ronald Mellor, Professor of History, UCLA:

I don’t think our notion of Rome bears much relation to the Rome of every day life. Because what is left today are the big public buildings, not the squalid hovels without plumbing and sanitary conditions that ordinary people lived in. That’s precisely the reason members of the elite preferred to withdraw up into the hills, and to have their villas up on the hills, a little bit away from the noise and away from the stench and away from that incredible hoard of people pressing close together. Juvenal writes:

“I would love to live where there are no fears, in the dark of night. Even now, I smell fire and hear a neighbor cry out for water as he struggles to save his measly belongings. Smoke pours out from the third story as flames move upwards, but the poor wretch who lives at the top with the leaking roof and roosting birds, is oblivious to the danger, and sure to burn.” In the year 4, in the imperial palace, the emperor, Augustus also lost sleep, but not from fear of fire. Now an old man of sixty-six, Augustus has lost much of his youthful vigor. “His vision had faded in his left eye, his teeth were few, widely spaced and worn down, his hair wispy and yellowed. His skin was irritated by scratching and vehement scraping, so that he had chronic rough spots, resembling ring worm.” As the emperor neared death, plots to succeed him sprouted. His grandsons and intended heirs had both died, unexpectedly. And the emperor himself lived under constant threat of assassination. Speaking for Augustus, one ancient historian voiced his dilemma: “Whereas solitude is dreadful,” he wrote, “company is also dreadful - the very men who protect us are most terrifying.” Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Director, British School, Rome:

“In many ways, Augustus looked so solid, and what he created looked so solid you forget the fragility. I think contemporaries were very aware of that fragility. And surely Augustus was, he was - over anxious, in a sense, to provide a secure system after he’d gone.”

At this time, there were unusually strong earthquakes. The Tiber pulled down the bridge and flooded the city for seven days. There was a partial eclipse of the sun, and famine developed. Ancient historians report that natural disasters predicted political ones. In the year 6, soldiers, the backbone of the empire, refused to re-enlist without a pay rise. New funds had to be found. Then, fire swept parts of the capital. A reluctant Augustus turned to taxation. It was a dangerous tactic, and the emperor knew it. Fearing a coup, Augustus dispersed potential enemies. He recessed the courts and disbanded the Senate. He even dismissed his own retinue - Rome remained on edge.

“The mob, distressed by the famine of the taxes after the fire… openly discussed rebellion. When night fell, they hung seditious posters.” The crisis passed. But soon a new and even greater disaster battered the aging Augustus. It began in Germany, a land of fiercely independent tribes, and to the Roman eye, rugged barbarism. The region had been recently conquered, and Roman customs were taking root - or so they thought. “The barbarians had not forgotten their ancient traditions, their free way of life or the power of arms. But, as long as they were assimilated slowly, they did not realize they were changing, and did not resist Roman influence.” That peaceful evolution stopped, however, in the year 9. The year an arrogant young General named Quinctilius Varus became commander of the Rhine army, and brought an iron fist to the province. “He forced more drastic change on the barbarians, and exacted money as if they were his subjects.” Varus disastrously miscalculated the extent of Roman control, and misjudged German compliance. A trusted German chieftain organized a full-scale revolt, and lured Varus’ troops into a trap, deep in unfamiliar terrain. “The mountains were rocky and covered with ravines. The trees were dense and tall so that the Romans were struggling to make progress. Rain began to fall in sheets. The heavy wind scattered their numbers. The ground became slippery around the tree trunks and leaves. While the Romans were dealing with these troubles, the barbarians surrounded them, suddenly coming from everywhere. First, they came from afar. Then, since no one was fighting back and many were wounded, the barbarians came ever closer, and the Romans were unable to retaliate. They kept crashing into each other…They could not grip their arrows or javelins. The rain forced their weapons from their hands. Even their sodden shields were useless. And so every man and every horse was slaughtered.” Three legions were massacred - a tenth of Rome’s army. Augustus, his biographer reports, was traumatized. “They say he was so disturbed, that for several months, he let his hair and beard grow, and would sometimes bash his head on doors and cry out 'Quntillius Varus, give me back my legions.’” The disaster in Germany underscored a stark reality. The empire was born of violence, and to violence, it ever threatened to return. The emperor was in no mood for leniency. “Believe me, love’s climax of pleasure should not be rushed, but savored. But when you reach those places a woman loves to have touched, don’t let shame get in the way, don’t back off. You’ll see her eyes shine with a trembling light, as when the sun glitters on rippling water. She’ll moan and murmur sweet words just right for the game. But don’t outpace your mistress, or let her leave you in the dust. Rush to the finish line in unison. When man and woman collapse together, they both win. That’s the greatest prize.” Ovid’s sizzling words gripped Rome when they were first published. But a decade later, they would return to haunt him. For the patience of the emperor Augustus has reached its lowest point. Beleaguered, he saw plots in every corner, anarchy in every act of disobedience. Blaming the subversive book, Augustus banished Ovid from Rome. “Hello. Are you there? If so, indulge these verses of mine. They don’t come from my garden, or from that old couch I used to sprawl on. Whoever you are and in whatever parlor or bedroom or study, I have been writing on decks, propped up against bulkheads.” The poet was sent to an untamed backwater on the edges of the empire, on the shores of the black sea. For Ovid, the ultimate urban sophisticate, no punishment could have been harsher. His roguish aplomb crumbled to anguish. “When night falls here, I think of that other night when I was cast out into the endless gloom. We managed to laugh, once or twice, when my wife found, in some old trunk, odd pieces of clothing. This might be the thing this season, the new Romanian mode. And just as abruptly, our peal of laughter would catch, and tear into tears. And we

held each other. My wife sobbed at the hearth. What could I say? I took the first step with which all journeys begin, but could not take the second. I was barely able to breathe. I set forth again. Behind me, she fell, rolling, onto the floor, her hair swept onto the hearth, stirring up the dust and ashes. I heard her call my name. I thought I had survived the worst - what could be worst? But my wife arose, pursued me, held on to me weeping. Servants pulled her away. Whatever worth there was in me died there.”

Ovid was sure his talents would bring him home. He wrote constantly. And as he waited, he sought refuge in a remote frontier town. When the temperatures dropped, Ovid wrote, the wine froze in its vessels, the river in its banks. Across the ice thundered hostile horsemen, plundering and killing. It was a brutal life. Ovid wrote home from exile, a side of the empire that few Romans ever saw. “Beyond these rickety walls there’s no safety. And inside it’s hardly better. Barbarians live in most of the houses - even if you’re not afraid of them you’ll despise their long hair and clothes made of animal skins. They all do business in their common language. I have to communicate with gestures. I am understood by no one, and the stupid peasants insult my Latin words. They heckle me to my face, and mock my exile.” Writing for this audience, Ovid complained, was like “dancing in the dark.” As the years passed, Ovid shrivelled into a bony old man. He fell ill. Contrition replaced his former bravado. “Oh, I repent I repent. If anyone as wretched as I can be believed, I do repent. I am tortured by my deed.” Ovid, however, never got an answer to his pleas. And would never get a reprieve. As he approached death, he became sadly resigned to his fate. “Look at me. I yearn for my country, my home, and for you. I have lost everything that I once had. But I still have my talent. Emperors have no jurisdiction over that. My fame will survive, even after I am gone. And as long as Rome dominates the world, I will be read.” Nine years into his exile, Ovid died. He outlived Augustus, but he had bent to the emperor’s will. At the start of the emperor’s public life, Augustus had won the wars engulfing Rome. By the end, he had won the peace, and men like Ovid paid the price. In the years ahead, when lesser men would rule Rome, that price would rise higher still. “Oh Jupiter and Mars and all gods that raise the Roman Empire to ruler of the world, I invoke you and I pray - guard this prosperity, this peace, now and into the future.” In the year 14, prayers such as these were heard around the vast dominion ruled by Rome. For in that year, the empire stood at a precipice. The emperor Augustus had died. Augustus had been a towering figure. He had extinguished a century of civil war. He presided over forty years of internal peace and prosperity. He forged the vision and power that cemented the empire together. But the peace of Augustus came at a price. By the end of his life, Augustus had eclipsed the Senate, ruled as a monarch, and founded a dynasty that was fraught with troubles. His heirs, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius - these men would lead Rome through years of political terror, imperial madness, assassination - and through the distant founding of a new religion that would one day engulf the empire itself. The years to come would be years of trial - testing the endurance of subjects and citizens, soldiers, and slaves. The men and women of the Roman Empire in the first century.

#order from chaos

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