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anyone who thinks dostoevsky's writing is dry and humourless is missing out on passages like this

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trying to seductively get on my knees for you but my knees crack so loud it echoes and i’m stuck there for five minutes

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Truly it has been a weekend of book buying

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Adam Clague (American b.1982), Cara Oranges and Coffee, 2022, Oil on board

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Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) dir. David Lynch

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Dramatic camera zoom-ins in SCARFACE (1983) dir. Brian De Palma (part 2)

(Part 1 here)

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Fic Update: We Wild Creatures

https://archiveofourown.org/works/55816663/chapters/154913491

Chapter 20: Water

Johanna takes the interrogation too far and unspoken truths are revealed.

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i think this is probably true of every office, but there's a middle aged woman working in business who doesn't hold any particular place in the chain of command but is Sovereign. i was running support and she has access to more secure network drives than i do. im pretty sure she has an admin account. i was having trouble with my parking pass and my boss just said to talk to kristen- one day later i had parking in any garage on campus. she's not even in charge of parking in our building

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disney villains ranked by how good they would be as a toxic romantasy love interest

10. gaston. make no mistake, he ranks highly in toxicity, and would no doubt excel in one of those romance novels about douchebros reenacting the most dangerous game with nondescript brunettes. but there’s simply no way he can hold his own against the faeries and monsters and sorcerers you’ll meet in chapter three.

09. hades. lord of the underworld is a fantastic gig, but i personally feel that his reliance upon comedy and snark somewhat undercuts the promising menace of him shouting that he owns you. he’d make a real charmer of a sidequest flirtation, though, if you survive it.

08. captain hook. manipulation is the bread and butter of your common or garden toxic romantasy love interest, and we all saw the way he played poor tinker bell. it ruled. do me next. extra credit for an underplayed tragic immortal angle (hey, he’s stuck in neverland, too!) and being figuratively and literally haunted by his own doom.

07. shan yu. for a villain with limited screentime he really has a way of setting the imagination aglow. what if your village was razed by a warlord and you ended up encountering him repeatedly in battle and for all the casually contemptuous evil he’s previously displayed he faced you with respect as an equal (and he *remembered* you) and oh no he’s hot. what then. he also gets bonus points because i think they made his hawk a beautiful lady shapeshifter in the live-action movie. two for the price of one.

06. the evil queen. she sets a high bar for unhealthy obsession, and “mad scientist” is an underrepresented flavor in this genre, plus the magic mirror has a lot of creepyhot stalking potential. she’s pretty high-maintenance, though, and her vanity simply wouldn’t allow your heroic quest and/or the other corner of the love triangle to share the spotlight with her. she might be better off as a supporting character in the deadly decadent court who calls you menacing endearments and strokes your face and gives you the feeling that you’re suddenly in way over your head.

05. frollo. oh, i hear you gnashing your teeth and wringing your hands. “not frollo!” yes frollo. if i was reading a romantasy novel and the villain told the protagonist that they were just imagining a rope around her beautiful neck, i would feel ripped off if they weren’t at *least* furiously making out in secret by the climax. your conscience may demur, but who hasn’t secretly yearned to have a city burned to the ground over them?

04. mor’du. who? you know mor’du. the big fuckoff bear from brave. the big fuckoff bear who once was a brooding, hulking celtic prince who massacred his whole family and underwent a devastating transformation-by-curse into a literal monster. it’s only his sheer bad luck that he ended up as a minor character in a heartwarming mother-daughter narrative and not the villain protagonist of a romantasy that’s half beauty and the beast and half texas chain saw massacre. but, with your help, we can change that.

03. jafar. he doesn’t rank more highly because it’s less fun when they’re only creepy to you and obsessed with you for, like, five minutes at the end, but still. he pulls it off *so* well, he’s got just the right kind of megalomaniac agenda, and he gets extra credit for style and the hypnosis thing. cue the agonizing yet erotic internal monologues from our protagonist about how he *compels* them.

02. TIE! between two gentlemen who operate on very similar levels of charming toxicity and would therefore thrive in this setting:

hans. it’s honestly a shame he’s in a disney children’s movie and not a five hundred page novel called a realm of ice and snow or whatever. he would not only be endgame but he would also have a small army of booktokers calling our protagonist names for doubting his love for them after one eensy little lying to them and leaving them to die incident. he’d be exactly as awful as he is canonically and he’d come out smelling like a rose.

dr. facilier. the *perfect* balance of tragic backstory versus inexcusable jackassery, and no one is immune to the charms of a roguish magician dabbling in that which he should not. he’ll sell you the prettiest vision of a future together that you ever did see, and then he’ll sell you out to evil forces to further his personal agenda, and he will not be sorry about it. he’ll call you doll while draining every drop of your blood for The Ritual and he won’t lose a wink of sleep. no romantic groveling apology from this one, either, i’m afraid. but he’d be so worth it.

01. maleficent. evil sexy faery who lives on something called the forbidden mountain, who devoted sixteen years of her life to tormenting a beautiful peasant with a secret royal lineage, up to and including kidnapping the “correct” love interest to prevent them from saving our protagonist from her own wicked plans? if there *isn’t* already a romantasy novel out in the world that is blatant aurora/maleficent fic, i will eat my hat.

honorable mentions:

rasputin. sure, he’s only a disney villain by technicality. but what romantasy protagonist worth their salt would kick the rotting lich-priest who murdered their whole family, and is trying to murder them, out of bed on a technicality?

bruno madrigal, who wasn’t a villain at all, but by gods he should have been. secret uncle who lives in the walls and is tragically haunted by your seemingly immutable shared fate *and* you’re his *favorite*? the gothic romantasy fans would devour him.

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Had impromptu lunch with Hot Old Man..... "im writing a novel about an old man psychosexually obsessed with a younger woman :D" I said. "I love it when you swear, it's so transgressive!" I also said. I need to be removed from society.

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I have waited so long.

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But what if Coin holds Snow and Katniss prisoner and makes them do terrible things to each other, holding Prim and Snow’s granddaughter as leverage...... and she makes them fuck and makes Snow degrade Katniss and he hates it.... then she orders them to fuck and threatens to mutilate Prim if Katniss doesn't come. And Katniss is freaking out because of course she never does and she doesn't know how to force herself.... but Snow firmly tells her he'll make it happen, she just needs to relax. And she believes him because he never lies, and he makes it so good and gentle for her, and she has this horrible little orgasm but she's so relieved bc Prim will be okay. And Coin is very annoyed but hey, she's got time, she can come up with ways to break them yet.....

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Published in “Transvestia” magazine #38 (April 1966). I think original art could be by Bob Tupper.

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𝓢cenes of 𝓦itchcraft by Salvator Rosa (Italian, 1615 — 1673) are a series of paintings depicting witches created in 1645 —1649.

The first scene portrays a young witch plunging a knife into a writhing amphibian creature; it is dawn. This enchantress, perhaps inspired by the great witch Circe in her transformative imagery, is exceptionally violent in her craft: she watches, calm, as the half-turned human before her shifts into a monster.

The second painting showcases a group of old hags, holding onto skulls and brooms. These witches prepare to travel to an orgy, and the light colors in which Rosa portrays the witches add on to the grotesque image, shining some comedic light onto the scene.

The third scene has a group of witches gathered around a cauldron with a conjured skeleton soaring in the sky above the. Following a long-established tradition, the artist paints the hags in the midst of creating a spell: based on the imagery, perhaps a love one.

The fourth painting creates an especially dark image, indicating the night: a group of men watches a magician conjure inhuman, terrifying, formless apparitions. As tradition suggested, necromancy usually was practiced by men so Rosa portrays a mage, a companion to the witches of other scenes, caught in his dark art.

Rosa chose the painting's shape to reference the foundational role of the circle in practicing magic.

⚸ Scenes of Witchcraft: Morning ⚸ Scenes of Witchcraft: Day ⚸ Scenes of Witchcraft: Evening ⚸ Scenes of Witchcraft: Night

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genuinely didn't occur to me my readers wouldn't be into the torture in WWC.... not a criticism I just plain didn't consider it. Shame..... I wanted to insert a burning rod into that old man's urethra........

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I mean surely we all grew up feeling like there was a wrongness inherently deep inside us that will endure for the rest of our lives