#Doctors orders nathaniel

[zahri-melitor]

A list of DC characters that it is actually important to be able to tell apart, but half the time people forget:-

Plastic Man and Elastic Man: Eel O'Brien is the red one who turns into weird shapes and cracks jokes; Ralph Dibney is the purple one who is a detective who adores his wife.

Atom and Captain Atom: Ray Palmer is the one who shrinks down and does science; Nathaniel Adam is the nuclear explosions guy who's part of the military.

Jason Blood and Jason Bard and Jason Todd: Blood is the host to Etrigan and a demonologist; Bard is a private detective who's an ex-cop; Todd is an ex-Robin and current Red Hood. Both Blood and Todd have white streaks in their hair. They all live in Gotham.

Manhunter and Martian Manhunter: the Manhunters are about 6 different human characters, with little overlap in costumes or aims (they all like killing people who evade justice though); J'onn is a Green Martian who reads minds.

Doctor Light (good) and Doctor Light (bad): Kimiyo Hoshi is a superhero who does hard light projections; Arthur Light's a supervillain who got mindwiped by the JL to the point of stupidity. (I've skipped disambiguing other legacy names but this one is kinda important).

Azrael and Azazel: JPV and the other Azraels are human warriors controlled/brainwashed by Order of St Dumas; Azazel is a Sandman fallen angel hanging out with Lucifer.

This is brought to you by someone saying "Captain Atom is a fascist!" and me squinting and going...Ray Palmer??? Is a fascist? But no.

[just-a-dinosaur-i-guess]

tell about ur aus,,, go on

HELLO TY FOR THIS ASK

i have so fucking many aus so i'll ramble about a few

my latest one takes inspiration from this post and it's basically, dazai takes in atsushi and the akutagawa siblings, but realizing he can't really find a job to support all of them at once, he decides to go and (try to) reopen odasaku's favorite curry place. there are a few issues.

he is Not a great cook

atsushi can only make chazuke

aku and gin don't know how to cook

the place is kind of a mess

so eventually he goes and calls up chuuya and he's like "hey, you know how to cook, can you help me" problem is, chuuya's pissed at him bc THIS is when he calls him again and it's not an explanation of why he left, not a "sorry for blowing up ur car", not any of that, it's just another favor. so his immediate response is "fuck you, no" and dazai has to nag him into coming and helping, this being via taking some random pm member for hostage and specifically requesting that chuuya come pick him up

chuuya does indeed arrive, but he also breaks dazai's nose, so dazai ends up vaguely explaining with an ice pack on his face lmfao. this bit is what i have planned most vividly and is hopefully? gonna be a fic i publish. but also, later, ranpo ends up at the curry place and is like "damn you live like this" and dazai replies just kinda, "either order or get out" but ranpo offers him a better job (that being working at the ada), and while he hesitantly agrees, it's only a part time thing for the first bit. also although i haven't decided yet i think he might also end up finding kyouka before the pm gets to her and tachihara before the hunting dogs find him bc i am weak to 1. found family 2. BIG found families.

chuuya is absolutely fucking baffled when he runs into dazai during an ada job, btw.

"i thought you ran a fucking curry shop" "i do that too" "?? what the fuck" "it's called being a PART TIMER chibi" "i'm gonna break your nose again"

anyway next au!!

cowboy au (btw, they still have abilities) where nathaniel is a travellng priest looking for a doctor to cure margaret who's deathly sick, and he hasn't really been having any luck (he's been searching for months to no avail), and eventually at this one town it's like.. it's late at night, nathaniel's thirsty, he heads to the bar to get some water. nikolai promptly swaps their drinks, nathaniel drinks something really strong and passes the fuck out, wakes up to being in an inn room (with noteably less money) and storms the hell out of the building just to find nikolai petting his horse and acting all innocent about doing anything. nathaniel just tries to leave, nikolai follows, and they travel like that for a bit (occasionally trying to kill each other) before they get the third member of their dysfunctional little party

do you remember that one kid fyodor killed?

this little guy (karma), is a pickpocket who steals nathaniel's bible in the hopes of selling it to get food. the two find him, both kinda realize his situation and while nathaniel is about to point him in the direction of the town's local church nikolai goes "fuck that" and just straight up kidnaps him, and they keep traveling. nathaniel and nikolai are mutually, regrettably, falling for one another, but this just manifests as more murder attempts, to the point that one night, nathaniel tries to strangle nikolai, nikolai wakes up and strangles him back, and when nathaniel passes out he fucking dreams about nikolai and is HORRIFIED. things only get worse and gayer from there and i also think they go on a train at some point.

karma's enjoying the horse rides at least, and there's some other characters that show up though tbh idk who besides this one dazai scene and gin at one point

okay this other au is shorter, but basically: ada kajii. this is built off of SO many headcanons, but essentially kajii's backstory is just the lemon short story. except that kajii never found lemons, bc instead kunikida (his old friend/school friend that fell out of contact with him) reaches out, they become friends again, and so when kunikida joins the ada, so does kajii. kajii works as a clerk bc, like, he doesn't. know he has an ability. Oh Boy Does He Get A Surprise during dead apple

okay i was gonna talk about my eternal winter au but that would be an essay /lh

SO instead!! shiburan au, an au i never. properly named beyond that it's a shibusawa x ranpo focused au. also co owned with my bestie @feralshadowdemon <33

basically, yokohama is a smaller, calmer seaside town, no abilities or anything. shibusawa moves in, working at the pet shop across the street from this coffee shop that's connected to a bookstore. the coffee shop is run by (most of) the ada, and the bookstore is run by yokomizo; mushitaro and poe work there. the members of the ada who work at the coffee shop are fukuzawa (he owns it), ranpo, kunikida, and yosano. dazai is fukuzawa's newest adopted kid, and ran away from home. (he was living with mori (and elise) before) yosano Understands his situation, having done the same years before.

ranpo starts going over to the pet shop a lot, both bc he's running errands (fukuzawa owns three cats) and bc he likes talking to shibusawa. they eventually exchange phone numbers and start texting. in the background of this, btw, is soukoku: they had a messy breakup years ago, they act like they don't like each other, etc etc normal skk things. the flags are a biker gang who are alive and well here, and chuuya hangs out with them a lot. dazai is a bit jealous of them, ranpo knows this, and so when chuuya starts volunteering at the pet shop, ranpo brings dazai along on an errand run so the two run into each other again. they start talking again, slowly bonding again by virtue of wingmaning shiburan

also misc details

dazai and aku are just. they are just friends here :)

aku and tachi are friends!! also higugin is real

the akutagawa siblings live with hirotsu

fukuchi is the hunting dogs' dad; except for tetchou, who's jouno's boyfriend. he has stricter parents.

fukuchi here is a retired military veteran AND ex movie star. his movies are awful /aff

shibusawa has a pet cornsnake named draconia

odango is engaged here but oda travels a lot so they haven't got married yet

ango works in an office in the big city, but he visits dazai sometimes. they are friends

bramcraft is married, they adopted aya

kyouka and kenji also live with fukuzawa!! twincoded tbh

kyouka has narcolepsy

there is so much more but i have been writing this post for an hour SO just shoot me (another) ask if you're curious :D

and yeah that's some of my aus!! i have a masterpost of all of them slowly being built in my drafts hehe

[brokehorrorfan]

Invasion of the Body Snatchers will be released on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray on June 25 via Kino Lorber. The 1956 sci-fi horror classic is based on Jack Finney's novel, The Body Snatchers.

Don Siegel (Dirty Harry, Escape from Alcatraz) directs from a script by Daniel Mainwaring (Out of the Past). Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter star with Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Jean Willes, and Ralph Dumke.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers has been newly restored in 4K in two aspect ratios - 2.00:1 and 1.85:1 - with Dolby Vision. It features reversible artwork. Special features are listed below.

Disc 1 - 4K UHD:

Audio commentary by film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson (new)

Audio commentary by film scholar Jason A. Ney (new)

Audio commentary by actors Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, moderated by filmmaker Joe Dante

Audio commentary by film historian Richard Harland Smith

Disc 2 - Blu-ray:

Audio commentary by film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson (new)

Audio commentary by film scholar Jason A. Ney (new)

Audio commentary by actors Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, moderated by filmmaker Joe Dante

Audio commentary by film historian Richard Harland Smith

The Fear is Real - Appreciation with filmmakers Joe Dante and Larry Cohen

The Stranger in Your Lover’s Eyes – 2-part visual essay with Kristoffer Tabori, son of director Don Siegel

I No Longer Belong: The Rise and Fall of Walter Wanger – Film scholar Matthew Bernstein on producer Walter Wanger

Theatrical trailer

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) theatrical trailer

Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) is a doctor in a small California town whose patients are becoming increasingly overwrought, accusing their loved ones of being emotionless imposters. They're right! Plant-like extraterrestrials have invaded Earth, taking possession of humans as they sleep and replicating them in giant seed pods. Convinced that a catastrophic pandemic is imminent, Bennell, in a terrifying race for his life, must warn the world of this deadly invasion of the pod people—before it's too late!

Pre-order Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

[aswallowimprisoned]

Restless far from a Wine Dark sea - Stay with me

Tw captivity, sedation, medical whump, implied very bad medical procedure, guilt, nonhuman whumpee

In all of Logan's career as a negotiator and interrogator, he has never had to convince someone to submit to a vivisection. The experience leaves him feeling uncharacteristically emotional.

RestlessffaWDs' timeline is going off piste for @medwhumpmay

masterlist

≪ °❈° ≫

Not sure how far into Nathaniel's captivity this is, but long enough that his two interrorgators are starting to feel the emotional strain. I

≪ °❈° ≫

Logan sat down heavily next to Elias, who slid him a black coffee across the table.

“Did they get him under ok?” Elias asked quietly.

“Yes.” Logan accepted the coffee without meeting Elias’ eyes, “Dr Rana says the vivisection will take 6 hours, then he will be groggy for some time afterwards.” Logan sighed into his coffee, “The pain plus the sedatives makes the wakeup a high risk for flashbacks, but alas…”

“We’ll work something out.” Elias’ voice was assured in a way that Logan’s anthropologist brain knew was faked. “ We’ve done it before, and I know we have to do it again…” 

“You will work something out.” Logan cut him off, “I am just the interrogator that orders him to comply. You are the therapist who picks up the fucked up little pieces afterwards.”  Logan allowed the bitterness to well into his voice, the emotion he masked in every interaction; interactions with the military, interactions with the doctors, interactions with the fucking merman he had just convinced to lie still while they prepared to slice into his body and see what he was made of.

“I suppose so.” Elias was quiet for a moment, “We both have our roles here, and neither of them are easy. But it could be so much worse for that merman than it is. And you prevent that, even if he never sees the effort you make.”

“Couldn’t prevent the vivisection.” Logan could feel himself pouting.

“No, I guess we couldn’t.” Elias stared into his own coffee. 

The silence stretched.

“I… I am glad you are actually talking about your frustration though.” Elias gave Logan a lopsided smile, “You do tend to bottle your emotions…”

“Hmmm, what gave my emotional constipation away?” Logan asked dryly.

“I am a very good therapist,” Elias laughed without humour, “It’s what I am here for after all.”

“It is what we are here for.”

“But seriously, Logan, we can talk about this. You aren’t alone here, and we are probably going to be in this project for the long haul.”

“I don’t want to talk,” The spike of frustration that had welled in him was already smoothing into the familiar indifference his job forced him to take. “I don’t want to talk,” he repeated, “But for now, can you just… stay with me?”

Elias gave him the understanding smile of a man who knew the terrors they had both committed.

“Of course.”

[striderincosmos]

WIP Whenever

As tagged by @swaps55, and inviting any who wish to participate! (I'm not exactly linked to many writers on here just yet)

Here's a sneak peak (a nice, long one) between Nathaniel 'Nate' Shepard and Garrus on their way to Feros in Spectre Echoes: Memories and Portents!

- - -

The crew area was a rather bustling place at the moment, what with the new additions to the crew. It made Garrus stand out even more at the table, dressed in a shirt and pants that accommodated the slight crest of his upper back.

Nate took a seat next to him, a human beer in one hand and a turian brew from a case he’d had assigned to the Normandy’s cold storage in the other. “Evening, Garrus,” he said casually, offering the brew. “How are you holding up?”

“Rather well, honestly,” Garrus said as he took his drink, opening it and taking a sip. “This sort of environment is easy for me, no matter the species. I might have decided to go to C-Sec over joining the reserves in a decade or so, but you can’t beat out nearly a decade of military training.”

“What made you go into C-Sec in the first place?” Nate asked.

“It was the family business,” Garrus shrugged. “My father had been C-Sec before getting pulled out from the Reserves for Relay-314, and his father before him had done the same thing. Still don’t know why the old man went into politics, though. Even C-Sec is simpler than that.”

Nate shrugged. “I try to avoid politics. When you have a camera pointed at you more often than not…”

“I can see how that’d be the case,” Garrus said, pausing for long moments. “So, I’ve got a question for you about Saren.”

“Funny enough, I’ve actually got one for you, too,” Nate said. “You first.”

“Are you really planning on trying to arrest Saren and drag him in front of the Council after what he’s done?”

Nate ruminated on the query with a pull of beer. “It’d be what the Council wants done, most likely. Saren’s dangerous, but if we can subdue him, he needs to face due process.”

Garrus’s mandibles drooped slightly, the action looking almost like a grimace. Or a sneer. “There’s a lot of risk to that too, though. He isn’t the best Spectre the Council has for nothing. He could probably find half a dozen different ways to escape during transit to the Citadel, let alone what he could do if he was on it.”

“We know he’s the most dangerous person in the galaxy,” Nate said assuringly. “If there’s anyone who can guard him, it’s going to be all of us and the krogan along for the ride.”

“That wouldn’t stop the Council from offering clemency, or just finding some way to sweep this under the rug,” Garrus retorted. “But taking him in is the way it’s done by the book, isn’t it? ‘Do it right, or don’t do it at all’.”

Nate frowned slightly at the rather bitter invective. “And who said that?”

“Lucrius Vakarian,” Garrus said, washing the name back down with a pull of his brew. “Among the most renowned detectives on the Citadel. Spirits know he said to me more times than I can count.”

“Not a regulations guy, then?” 

Garrus sighed quietly. “I get why they’re there. I get that they’re useful. My father and C-Sec drilled that into me well enough. But sometimes, in order to resolve a situation permanently, completely, the regs, and the people who enforce them, can make it so that a solution becomes a stopgap. People get away. Innocents get taken advantage of or hurt when they don’t need to.”

Garrus was silent for a moment. “Take Doctor Saleon.”

“Who’s that?”

“He was — probably is still — one of the leading figures of the Citadel’s black markets. Specifically in grown organs. Real mean bastard. In a place where a krogan who’s well-connected enough could drop 40,000 credits for a full quad transplant to try and counteract the genophage, Saleon was a unique brand of fucked up.” 

“See, there was an increase in organ trade, well beyond what we expected. We managed to confiscate some, and do some genetic tests. It was a bit of a mess, but it led us to a very lively turian who was very insistent that he was not, in fact, missing his liver. We ran a background check, and saw he worked for the aforementioned doctor.”

“What did you do next?” Nate asked.

“We brought him and some of Saleon’s other former employees in for questioning. While I was interviewing one of them, I noticed something suspicious. One of the detainees, a human, started bleeding from his abdomen during questioning. Pretty badly, too. We offered to patch him up, and he got panicky.”

Garrus paused, was silent for long moments. “We found dozens of incision scars on him. Some of them fresh, like the one that gave him away. Others much older. That’s when we realized this sick bastard Saleon wasn’t just employing people. He was testing on them. Growing the organs right inside of them, then cutting them open, harvesting them, and selling them off. Most of the test subjects were poor, desperate. They only got a small cut of the profits from any sale, and only if the organs were viable. If they weren’t, he just… left them inside them.”

The beer wasn’t very appealing to Nate anymore, and he set it on the table at arm’s length. “What happened then?” he ventured. 

“We went out to go and put the cuffs on this guy. But he rigged his lab to blow, ran as soon as his mules started getting pulled in by C-Sec. Took some of his ‘employees’ with him to the nearest spacedock. By the time we found where he was, the ship he stole was already leaving. He threatened to kill who were now his hostages if anyone tried to stop him.”

“And he got away?” Nate said incredulously.

Garrus nodded. “I ordered Citadel defenses to intercept and fire on him, but C-Sec HQ countermanded my order. They were worried about the hostages. Worried about civilian casualties for how close he still was to the city arms. I told them the hostages were already the next best thing to dead, that this was just the cold, hard calculus of stopping a criminal like this now and for good. But they wouldn’t listen.”

Nate sighed. “Sounds like a recipe for hating where you work.”

“To put it mildly.” Garrus chuckled darkly. “I went to Executor Pallin, the man in charge of C-Sec, and told him what I thought about the situation and the policies that made it happen. He told me if I didn’t like it, then I could quit. To be honest, I almost did, just to spite them.”

“As tough a choice as it is, the lives of the hostages were as important as catching Doctor Saleon,” Nate said pointedly. “If we didn’t care about the lives of those threatened by the people we want to bring to justice, how different are we from them?”

It was silent between them for a moment before Garrus sighed quietly. “You know, I can see where you’re coming from. I just wish we could have stopped Saleon as well.”

Again it was silent. “So,” Garrus said after a moment, “what was your question?”

“You’ve got a personal stake in this,” Nate began. “I won’t begrudge that, and I won’t discount that we might need to kill Saren to stop him. But if we do manage to capture him… can I count on you to let justice play out?”

Garrus was silent for long, contemplative moments. “As much as it might grate at me…” he finally said. “I’ll trust your judgment. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Shepard. However the stellar wind blows, I’ll follow your lead.”

Nate nodded. “I’m glad you have my back, Garrus.”

“I mean hey,” Garrus said, his mandibles implying a slight grin, “I get to learn what a Spectre looks like from you. Thus far, I’d say I’ve got a pretty good mentor.”

[bracketsoffear]

Corruption Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Corruption Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Baxendale, Trevor: Eater of Wasps Bellatín, Mario: Salón de Belleza (Beauty Salon) Benson, E.F.: Caterpillars Brennan, Joseph Payne: The House on Stillcroft Street Butler, Octavia E.: Bloodchild

Camus, Albert: The Plague Catling, Patrick Skene: The Chocolate Touch Christie, Agatha: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side Cresswell, Helen: The Bongleweed

Dick, Philip K.: The Hanging Stranger Disch, Thomas M.: The Roaches

Enríquez, Mariana: Pájaros en la noche (Birds in the night)

Gilbert, Stephen: Ratman's Notebooks Grant, Michael: Plague

Herbert, James: The Rats Hagen, Ingeborg Refling: The Bridegroom Hawthorne, Nathaniel: Rappaccini's Daughter Hodgson, William Hope: The Voice in the Night

Kaaberbol, Lene: The Cruel Empress Keyes, Daniel: The Touch Kingfisher, T.: What Moves the Dead Knight, Harry Adam: The Fungus Krall, Dan: Sick Simon

La Sala, Ryan: The Honeys Lovecraft, H. P.: The Rats in the Walls

Mann,  Thomas: Death in Venice Mariotte, Jeff: Black Train Meruane, Lina: Fruta podrida (Rotten fruit) Messenger, Stephanie: Melanie's Marvelous Measles Meyer, Stephenie: The Host Milson, Matthew: Plague City Moreno-Garcia, Silvia: Mexican Gothic Morris, Tiffany: Green Fuse Burning

Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita Nutting, Alissa: Ant Colony (From the book Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls)

Ostrovsky, Alexander Nikolayevich: The Storm

Poe, Edgar Allan: Fall of the House of Usher Poe, Edgar Allan: The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar Poe, Edgar Allan: The Masque of the Red Death Pratchett, Terry: The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents

Quiroga, Horacio: El almohadón de plumas (The feather pillow)

Raymond, E.S.: Felicity Floo Visits the Zoo Rumfitt, Alison: Brainwyrms

Scarrow, Alex: Plague Land series Smith, Guy N.: The Festering Stine, R.L.: Go Eat Worms! Stine, R.L.: The Bugman Lives!

Tran, Trang Thanh: She is a Haunting

Umansky, Kaye: Pongwiffy Series

van Dahl, Fiona: Eden Green Vian, Boris: L'écume des jours (Froth on the Daydream)

Zelazny, Roger: To Die in Italbar Zamyatin, Yevgeny Ivanovich: We

Baxendale, Trevor: Eater of Wasps

Synopsis: "The TARDIS lands in the sleepy English village of Marpling, as calm and peaceful as any other village in the 1930s. Or so it would seem at first glance. But the village is about to get a rude awakening.

The Doctor and his friends discover they aren't the only time-travellers in the area: a crack commando team is also prowling the Wiltshire countryside, charged with the task of recovering an appallingly dangerous artefact from the far future — and they have orders to destroy the entire area, should anything go wrong.

And then there are the wasps... mutant killers bringing terror and death in equal measure. What is their purpose? How can they be stopped? And who will be their next victim?

In the race to stop the horror that has been unleashed, the Doctor must outwit both the temporal hit squad, who want him out of the way, and the local police — who want him for murder. "

Why it's Corruption: There's a dude filled with mutant killer wasps, and there's also a whole bunch of family drama and toxic love.

Bellatín, Mario: Salón de Belleza (Beauty Salon)

A strange plague appears in a large city. Rejected by family and friends, some of the sick have nowhere to finish out their days until a hair stylist decides to offer refuge. He ends up converting his beauty shop, which he’s filled with tanks of exotic fish, into a sort of medieval hospice. As his “guests” continue to arrive and to die, his isolation becomes more and more complete in this dream-hazy parable by one of Mexico’s cutting-edge literary stars.

Bellatín shows the horrors of the AIDS crisis and how the disease strips you of your humanity and body.

Benson, E.F.: Caterpillars

In the beautiful Villa Cascana on the Italian Riviera, all is not as it seems. Why does the hostess leave a perfectly charming bedroom unoccupied? Why does Arthur Inglis present our nameless narrator with a caterpillar in a cardboard pill-box one lunchtime? And rather more bizarrely, why do luminous, bloated and gigantic versions of this creature haunt his dreams? Or could it possibly be that he is wide awake?

At the end of the story, the narrator is visiting the Stanleys in England. It turns out that Inglis is riddled with cancer. No operation is possible to save him. Mrs. Stanley can’t help but thinking he caught it at the villa even though she took precautions to clean that vacant room and have no one stay there. It seems that someone had died of cancer in that room a year before. The notion of cancer as something infectious may, given the state of medicine at the time, been prevalent (and some cancers are caused by infectious agents).

I don't think that I need to explain why caterpillars either supernaturally spreading a lethal disease or being a metaphor for said disease is peak Corruption.

Brennan, Joseph Payne: The House on Stillcroft Street

A carnivorous plant takes over reclusive collector Millward Frander's house -- and Millward himself.

Butler, Octavia E.: Bloodchild

In the world this short story takes place in, human hosts (almost always male) act as incubators for eggs of the female aliens, who look something like human-size centipedes. If the host is lucky, the mother gets to him in time to extract the newly hatched larvae before they eat their way out. This relationship is presented as approaching symbiotic; the aliens (mostly) cherish the human families from whom they select their hosts, but the hosts don't get a lot of choice in the matter.

In various interviews and her afterword to "Bloodchild," Butler explains the motivations behind the story's creation. She wrote "Bloodchild" to explore her fear of parasitic insects invading her body, specifically the botfly. She also aimed to depict a human male's experience of pregnancy, including the physical risks and the development of maternal feelings towards his alien offspring.

***

A short Science fiction horror story about the unusual bond between a race of large, centipede-like aliens called the Tlic and a colony of humans who have escaped Earth and settled on the Tlic planet. When the Tlic realize that humans make excellent hosts for Tlic eggs, they establish the Preserve to protect the humans, and in return require that every family choose a child for implantation.

Camus, Albert: The Plague

A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.

The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror.

***

The story is set in the Algerian city of Oran, which is quarantined after an outbreak of bubonic plague. The novel's protagonist works tirelessly to combat the disease and care for the sick, all while grappling with the existential questions that arise in the face of suffering and death. The novel presents a snapshot into life in Oran as seen through the author's distinctive absurdist point of view.

Catling, Patrick Skene: The Chocolate Touch

The book is a children's adaption of the myth of King Midas. As punishment for overindulging in sweets against doctor's orders, John Midas becomes cursed by a mysterious shopkeeper and finds that everything his lips touch turns to chocolate. Becuase of this, he can no longer hydrate himself with water or eat nutritious food, and his mother turns to chocolate after he kisses her. This aligns with the fear of sickness, both from the spread of the titular 'Chocolate Touch' and, because of the moral lesson the book imparts, sickness from unhealthy eating.

Christie, Agatha: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

One minute, silly Heather Badcock had been gabbing on to her movie idol, the glamorous Marina Gregg. The next, Heather suffered a massive seizure. It turned out to be a deadly poison. But for whom was it really intended?

Marina’s frozen expression suggested she had witnessed something horrific. While others searched for material evidence, Jane Marple conducted a very different investigation – into human nature. Serious Spoilers for why this works as Corruption Leithner: Years before the plot Heather the victim got sick and was told to quarantine. She did not do that. She went to see her favourite star Marina Gregg instead, infecting the idol with disease costing her her child and ruining her life in many ways. Marina killed Heather. With this book showing the corruptive effect of... well Corruption.

Cresswell, Helen: The Bongleweed

Warning: Bongleweed on the loose! The Bongleweed plant is weird and wonderful, and it grows faster than anything! Becky tricks stuck-up Jason into sprinkling some seeds in Pew Gardens -- but fun soon turns to fear as a bushy Bonglweed jungle springs up, with no signs of stopping. Before long, the Gardens and the local graveyard are completely covered - and now the Bongleweed is heading for the rest of the village! It's up to Becky and Jason to stop the wickedly wild weed before it's too late...

Dick, Philip K.: The Hanging Stranger

The protagonist, a store owner Ed Loyce, is disturbed when he sees a stranger hanging from a lamppost, but finds that other people consider the apparent lynching unremarkable. He finds evidence that alien insects have taken over, manages to get out of town, talks to the police commissioner, who believes him, and after getting all the information about what Ed knows, explains that the body was hung to see whether anyone reacted to it, anyone they didn't have control over. He then takes Ed outside and hangs him from a lamppost.

Disch, Thomas M.: The Roaches

Marcia Kenwell has an obsessive fear of cockroaches. She routinely scours her apartment with roach-kill, disinfectant, and cleaner. Ever since she moved to the city she has been unable to rid herself of the pesky bugs. She was warned about them by her aunt and her mother had a phobia to all bugs, but Marcia first encounters them at one of her first jobs and it has been a never-ending battle since then. She desperately seeks a new place to live especially after the neighbors move in next door. The two men and one woman (unclear who is related and who is a lover) are loud, foreign, and dirty as Marcia sees it. Their presence brings in more roaches and this deeply angers Marcia. One day, she encounters some roaches in her apartment and without thinking, she verbally commands them to leave. In an instant, all the roaches leave the apartment. She slowly finds she has the ability to command the roaches. In a frenzy of anger, she directs them all into her neighbor's apartment. She hears yelling and screaming and then tells them to disperse. When the landlady comes the neighbor's room, she sees the mess and demands they leave. Back in her room, Marcia opens a cupboard and all the roaches flood out onto her. Instead of repulse, she feels utter love and invites all of New York's cockroaches to visit her.

Enríquez, Mariana: Pájaros en la noche (Birds in the night)

A girl has a medical condition that makes her skin begin to rot. She becomes a walking corpse in her teen years, loses her limbs, eyes and body to the rot.

Gilbert, Stephen: Ratman's Notebooks

"When his nagging mother discovers a rat infestation, the anonymous writer of these notebooks sets out to drown the pests, but finds himself unable to go through with it. Instead, he befriends the rats, learning to train and communicate with them. Before long he has the idea of using the rats for revenge against a world in which he has been a failure. His target is his hateful boss, Mr. Jones, who treats him with supreme disrespect and plans to fire him and replace him with someone less expensive. The narrator records his plans in chilling detail as his campaign for vengeance progresses from vandalism to robbery to the most horrific of murders..."

Grant, Michael: Plague

It's been eight months since all the adults disappeared. GONE.

They've survived hunger. They've survived lies. But the stakes keep rising, and the dystopian horror keeps building. Yet despite the simmering unrest left behind by so many battles, power struggles, and angry divides, there is a momentary calm in Perdido Beach.

But enemies in the FAYZ don't just fade away, and in the quiet, deadly things are stirring, mutating, and finding their way free. The Darkness has found its way into the mind of its Nemesis at last and is controlling it through a haze of delirium and confusion. A highly contagious, fatal illness spreads at an alarming rate. Sinister, predatory insects terrorize Perdido Beach. And Sam, Astrid, Diana, and Caine are plagued by a growing doubt that they'll escape - or even survive - life in the FAYZ. With so much turmoil surrounding them, what desperate choices will they make when it comes to saving themselves and those they love?

Herbert, James: The Rats

The Rats In the Walls

Hagen, Ingeborg Refling: The Bridegroom

A tragic romance novel set in Norway at the onset of the Black Death. The protagonist, Elise, is in love with a fiddler, Erik Ekset, and plans to meet him at the midsummer festivities. When he does not arrive, she waits for him until the news of the plague comes -- and the plague comes with it, killing her family. Distraught, Elise sets out to find her beloved and journeys through a nightmare of plague-stricken countryside, and she dies trying to find his grave.

Strong themes associating disease with music, love, and community throughout -- the plague first strikes at a wedding with a dead fiddler arriving in a cart pulled by a pale horse, and the bride -- now bereaved -- appears again near the end, inconsolable.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel: Rappaccini's Daughter

Giovanni Guasconti, a young student renting a room in Padua, has a view from his quarters of a beautiful garden. Here, he looks at Beatrice, the beautiful daughter of Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini, a botanist who works in isolation. Beatrice is confined to the lush and locked gardens, which are filled with exotic poisonous plants grown by her father. Having fallen in love, Giovanni enters the garden and secretly meets with Beatrice a number of times, while ignoring his mentor, Professor Pietro Baglioni. Professor Baglioni is a rival of Dr. Rappaccini and he warns Giovanni that Rappaccini is devious and that he and his work (which involves using poison as medicine) should be avoided.

Giovanni notices Beatrice's strangely intimate relationship with the plants as well as the withering of fresh regular flowers and the death of an insect when exposed to her skin or breath. On one occasion, Beatrice embraces a plant in a way that she seems part of the plant itself; then she talks to the plant, "Give me thy breath, my sister, for I am faint with common air."

Giovanni eventually realizes that Beatrice, having been raised in the presence of poison, has developed an immunity to it and has become poisonous herself. A gentle touch of her hand leaves a purple print on his wrist. Beatrice urges Giovanni to look past her poisonous exterior and see her pure and innocent essence, creating great feelings of doubt and confusion in Giovanni.

In the end, Giovanni becomes poisonous himself: insects die when they come into contact with his breath. Giovanni is troubled by this, which he sees as a curse, and he blames Beatrice. Professor Baglioni gives him an antidote to cure Beatrice and free her from her father's cruel experiment. However, when Beatrice drinks the antidote, she becomes sick and dies. Before realizing that Beatrice is dying, Dr. Rappaccini excitedly welcomes the love between his two creatures, his daughter and her suitor, Giovanni, who has been transformed so that he can now be a true and worthy companion to Beatrice. While Beatrice is dying, Professor Baglioni looks down from a window into the garden and triumphantly shouts "Rappaccini! Rappaccini! and is THIS the upshot of your experiment!"

Hodgson, William Hope: The Voice in the Night

The main character and his fiancée, aboard the ship Albatross, were abandoned by the ship's crew, who took the remaining lifeboats. After building a raft, they escaped from the sinking vessel and found an apparently abandoned ship in a nearby lagoon, covered with a fungus-like growth. They attempted to remove this growth from the living quarters but were unable to do so; it continued to spread, and so they returned to their raft. The nearby island was also covered with this growth, except for a narrow beach. Eventually, the man and his fiancee found the fungus growing on their skin and felt an uncontrollable urge to eat it. They discovered that other humans on the island have been entirely absorbed by the strange fungal growth.

As the man in the rowboat rows away from the sailors to whom he is telling his tale, just as the sky is lightening, the narrator can dimly see a grotesquely misshapen figure in the rowboat, scarcely recognisable as human.

Kafka, Franz: The Metamorphosis

1) "One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin."

2) Gregor's family is horribly toxic to him. none of them work, relying entirely on gregor to provide for them. Gregor's job is hard and exhausting, he wants to quit but feels unable to since his family depends on him so much. when he becomes an insect, his family treats him horribly and worries more about the money than Gregor's wellbeing

3) After Gregor's transformation his sister, mother, and father all get a job, proving that they were capable of providing for themselves all along. after Gregor's death they go out. "Leant back comfortably on their seats, they discussed their prospects and found that on closer examination they were not at all bad—until then they had never asked each other about their work but all three had jobs which were very good and held particularly good promise for the future." Gregor's sense of duty and the family's unwillingness to work were keeping them all miserable and codependent.

Kaaberbol, Lene: The Cruel Empress

"When Hay Lin receives an ancient lantern from one of her grandmother's friends, strange things begin to happen. She wanders into a store and finds a magical mirror, and then hears a mysterious call for help. The other Guardians of the Veil are worried. Together, they try to find out who is trying to contact Hay Lin. To solve the mystery, the Guardians travel through a portal to a city where they face a cruel empress...and an unfulfilled promise. "

In this boos W.i.t.c.h girls fight the titular Cruel Empress who uses control over insects to rule over people with an iron fist. So they fight a Corruption avatar essentially.

Keyes, Daniel: The Touch

The book follows Barney and Karen stark who are trying for a baby. an incident at barney's workplace contaminates him with radioactive dust and barney spreads it to his home and his wife. Fortunately, the incident is noticed quickly, and starks and their house are put through a decontamination process. Unfortunately, their neighbours are so terrified of radioactivity that they cut all relations with the Starks and bully them. isolation exposes the worst side of Barney who begins to get violent, and Karen copes by escapism, focusing entirely on her newly conceived baby. The Touch is corruption-aligned because the relationship between Karen and Barney is strained but they keep trying for a baby, the hostile community of the neighborhood is reminiscent of the episode 164 'the sick village', and the entire novel is kickstarted by Barney's contamination with radioactive dust.

Kingfisher, T.: What Moves the Dead

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruravia.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

***

Based on The Fall Of The House Of Usher, this adaptation delves deeper into the characters and the minutiae of their fear than the original, with much more gore and in-depth time spent at the titular house. As the plot synopsis says, "a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife"

Knight, Harry Adam: The Fungus

London mycologist Jane Wilson's efforts to cultivate a new species of agaricus bisporus fungus, using an experimental enzyme, CT-UT-8471, have success in the laboratory. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts at containment, she accidentally carries several thousand microscopic cells of a. bisporus infused with CT-UT-8471. The enzyme spreads throughout England, causing all manner of local fungi to begin growing like crazy, soon overtaking the whole country, including infesting the bodies of human beings. None of this was on purpose, but once the fungus has taken over Britain, Jane goes full mad scientist and declares that it is Gaia's Vengeance, so she goes from unintentionally causing catastrophe to being glad that she did. It's eventually revealed that she isn't as immune to the fungus as she thought; after she's killed it turns out her insides are riddled with the stuff.

Krall, Dan: Sick Simon

The book follows Simon through a week of school, as his illness spreads to everyone around him. The illustrations are just. So gross.

La Sala, Ryan: The Honeys

Mars has always been the lesser twin, the shadow to his sister Caroline's radiance. But when Caroline dies under horrific circumstances, Mars is propelled to learn all he can about his once-inseparable sister who'd grown tragically distant.

Mars's genderfluidity means he's often excluded from the traditions -- and expectations -- of his politically-connected family. This includes attendance at the prestigious Aspen Conservancy Summer Academy where his sister poured so much of her time. But with his grief still fresh, he insists on attending in her place.

What Mars finds is a bucolic fairytale not meant for him. Folksy charm and sun-drenched festivities camouflage old-fashioned gender roles and a toxic preparatory rigor. Mars seeks out his sister's old friends: a group of girls dubbed the Honeys, named for the beehives they maintain behind their cabin. They are beautiful and terrifying -- and Mars is certain they're connected to Caroline's death.

But the longer he stays at Aspen, the more the sweet mountain breezes give way to hints of decay. Mars’s memories begin to falter, bleached beneath the relentless summer sun. Something is hunting him in broad daylight, toying with his mind. If Mars can't find it soon, it will eat him alive.

Lovecraft, H. P.: The Rats in the Walls

link: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/rw.aspx

After his son dies from injuries sustained during the Great War a man named Delapore leaves New England, with his nine cats, to purchase and restore the hereditary lands of his ancestors, the De la Poer family, in England. Helped by a friend of his son's, who just happens to be the nephew of the man currently in possession of the land, he discovers generations of mistrust and suspicion aided by local traditions of horrible, nasty deeds attributed to the land and his ancestors specifically. Then the cats start acting weird, the narrator starts having troubling dreams and the newly renovated ancestral home may be overrun by an army of nocturnal rats. And things just go downhill from there...

Mann,  Thomas: Death in Venice

CW for stalking and themes of child sexual abuse. The main character doesn't get around to acting on his feelings, and the whole thing is very symbolic, but still.

Death in Venice is the story of a German writer, Gustav von Aschenbach, who develops an unhealthy obsession with a Polish boy, Tadzio. The writer follows Tadzio's family to Venice, stalking the boy and having a series of encounters that remind him of death, decay, and aging. In the city, a cholera epidemic rages, and Aschenbach begins to draw connections between the plague and his corrupt obsessions. He eventually tries to ward off his own aging with hair dye and makeup before succumbing to the plague.

Death in Venice explores themes that resonate with the Corruption in a neat package--disease, decay, and obsessive passion all intermingle in a short but memorable novella. For what it's worth, Wikipedia claims that author Thomas Man wrote in a letter that he wanted to explore "passion as confusion and degradation."

Mariotte, Jeff: Black Train

Two cowboys find a stopped train completely overrun by a black mold that infests people and animals, turning them into zombies. They rescue a man named Franklin from the train, who turns out to be the Mad Scientist who created the mold (as a bioweapon), and has devices that can kill it. Unfortunately, Franklin turns out to be more interested in getting revenge on his family than stopping the plague, and the cowboys have to take matters into their own hands before it can spread further.

Meruane, Lina: Fruta podrida (Rotten fruit)

Zoila del Campo and her sister María, known as “The Elder”, live in a small town in industrial Chile called Ojo Seco (“Dry Eye”). Here their lives revolve around Zoila’s degenerative disease and María’s job at a fruit export company.

In this setting we see the pressure Zoila is put under when she chooses to resist medical care, and the elaborate means her sister takes to gain money and power in the workplace and, as she does so, the tensions she creates that give the story its shades of the surreal.

Messenger, Stephanie: Melanie's Marvelous Measles

A highly controversial children's book with the moral of the story being that vaccines are bad and measles aren't that bad and will make you stronger in the long run.

Meyer, Stephenie: The Host

Silvery centipedes that burrow into your brain and take over your body? A constant emphasis put on how "kind" and "altruistic" these alien centipedes are and how utopian their society is compared to us violent and selfish humans? Unhealthy romance that never gets acknowledged as such by the narrative? Reads like Corruption to me.

Milson, Matthew: Plague City

Plague City is set in a world beset by a lethal plague, with the city presented as one of the last holdouts of humanity. We’re unsure if the city is alone in this, as there is no communication with the rest of the world, and no one could leave through the city wall even if they wanted to — the belief among the populace is that it’s all that keeps the plague out.

Mayor Coal knows better, however. He knows that the plague is already within the city, with them. He hates it. He detests it on a personal level, and strikes out against it with a vicious ferocity bordering on the monomaniacal, committing atrocities in the process.

Moreno-Garcia, Silvia: Mexican Gothic

In 1950s Mexico City, beautiful young socialite Noemí Taboada receives a letter from her cousin Catalina, begging for help. She firmly believes that her English husband, Virgil Doyle, intends to poison her. Suspecting that Virgil may be after Catalina's money, Noemí's father, Leocadio, sends her to the Doyle home, High Place, which is located in the mountains outside of a small town named El Triunfo. Once there, Noemí is struck by the strange and unwelcoming atmosphere of the Doyles' house and the controlling and patronising attitude of its inhabitants. Catalina is proclaimed to be suffering from consumption and Noemí is mostly kept away from her cousin. Noemí spends her time learning about the Doyle family, which also includes Florence Doyle and the frail family patriarch, Howard. The family has a history of incestuous marriages and deep intergenerational traumas, such as one of Howard's daughters, Ruth, killing several family members before shooting herself.

Twist: When she begins to sleepwalk and experience strange dreams and visions, Noemí decides that she must leave the Doyle household, only to be told that she cannot leave. They reveal that Howard discovered a strain of mushroom that has a symbiotic relationship with humans. The Doyles use this fungus and remain at High Place, the house infused with the spores of the mushrooms, which has grown inside its walls and all around it, in order to heal themselves and prolong their lives. As the fungus's potency is lessened depending on the individual's genetics, the Doyles have intermarried in order to ensure that their offspring can also receive these benefits. Because it is interlaced with mycelium and infested with the mushroom's spores, the house can hold memories, which the family refers to as the "gloom". The spores can also help the Doyles control people who have inhaled them, which frightens Noemí. She grows more horrified, however, when she learns that Howard's wife Agnes was used as a sacrifice to grow the spores - and that Howard can use the gloom to take over the bodies of family members, which he's used to further preserve his own life.

***

Socialite Noemi Taboada enjoys her lavish life in the 1950s Mexico City. She lives in a swirl of taffeta, parties, and unadulterated glamor. However, after receiving a disturbing letter from her newly-wed cousin, Catalina, Noemi finds herself in the remote estate of Catalina's husband, Virgil, and his family. High Place has been in the Doyle family for decades, if not centuries, and seems to pulse with a life-force of its own. The longer Noemi stays, the more bizarre and disturbing things she sees, or at least thinks she sees. With the help of Virgil's younger cousin, Francis, Noemi unearths the dark secrets of the place her beloved cousin now calls home. And all the secrets come with a sickly sweet stench and golden glow.

Morris, Tiffany: Green Fuse Burning

After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him-about his childhood, their family, and the Mi'kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita's girlfriend Molly forges an artist's residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up. On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin's history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest's lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channelling that energy into art like she's never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent, more intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp's decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another.

Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita

In the foreword, John Ray Jr., an editor of psychology books, states that he is presenting a memoir written by a man using the pseudonym "Humbert Humbert", who had recently died of heart disease while in jail awaiting trial for an unspecified crime. In his childhood, Hubert fell in love with his friend Annabel Leigh.This youthful and physically unfulfilled love is interrupted by Annabel's premature death from typhus, which causes Humbert to become sexually obsessed with a specific type of girl, aged 9 to 14, whom he refers to as "nymphets".

Hubert eventually lodges with widow Charlotte Haze, who takes him to a garden where her 12-year-old daughter Dolores is sunbathing. Humbert sees in Dolores, whom he calls Lolita, the perfect nymphet and the embodiment of his old love Annabel, and quickly decides to move in.

The impassioned Humbert constantly searches for discreet forms of fulfilling his sexual urges, usually via the smallest physical contact with Dolores. When she is sent to summer camp, Humbert receives a letter from Charlotte, who confesses her love for him and gives him an ultimatum—he is to either marry her or move out immediately. Initially terrified, Humbert then begins to see the charm in the situation of being Dolores' stepfather, and so marries Charlotte for instrumental reasons. After the wedding, Humbert experiments with drugging Charlotte with sleeping pills with the intention of later sedating both her and Dolores so that he can sexually assault Dolores. Charlotte later discovers his diary, in which she learns of his desire for her daughter and the disgust he feels towards Charlotte. Shocked and humiliated, Charlotte decides to flee and writes letters addressed to her friends warning them of Humbert. Disbelieving his false assurance that the diary is only a sketch for a future novel, Charlotte runs out of the house to send the letters but is hit and killed by a swerving car.

Humbert destroys the letters and retrieves Dolores from camp, claiming that her mother has fallen seriously ill and has been hospitalized. He takes her to a hotel and plans to make sexual advances on her that night, only being stopped by the sedative he gave her being weaker than expected. In the morning, Dolores reveals to Humbert that she engaged in sexual activity with an older boy while at camp that summer. Humbert then advances on Dolores, having sex with her. After leaving the hotel, Humbert reveals to Dolores that her mother is dead. In the coming days, the two travel across the country, driving all day and staying in motels, where Dolores often cries at night. Humbert desperately tries to maintain Dolores' interest in travel and himself, increasingly bribing her in exchange for sexual favors. They finally settle in Beardsley, a small New England town. Humbert adopts the role of Dolores' father and enrolls her in a local private school for girls.

Humbert jealously and strictly controls all of Dolores' social gatherings and forbids her from dating and attending parties. It is only at the instigation of the school headmaster, who regards Humbert as a strict and conservative European parent, that he agrees to Dolores' participation in the school play. Dolores eventually convinces Hubert to take her on another road trip, but as they travel, he becomes increasingly suspicious. Humbert increasingly displays signs of paranoia and mania, perhaps caused his growing certainty that he and Dolores are being trailed by someone who wants to separate the two. In Colorado, Dolores has to go to the hospital, where she is checked out by someone claiming to be her uncle; after failing to find Dolores, Humbert barely sustains himself in a moderately functional relationship with a young alcoholic named Rita.

Deeply depressed, Humbert unexpectedly receives a letter from a 17-year-old Dolores, telling him that she is married, pregnant, and in desperate need of money. Humbert, armed with a pistol, tracks down her address against her wishes. At Dolores' request, he pretends to be her estranged father and does not mention the details of their past relation to her husband, Richard. Dolores reveals to Humbert that her abductor was the famous playwright Clare Quilty, who had crossed paths with Humbert and Dolores several times. She explains that Quilty tracked the pair with her assistance, and took her from the hospital because she was in love with him. However, he later kicked her out when she refused to star in one of his pornographic films. Humbert claims to the reader that at this moment, he realized that he was in love with Dolores all along. Humbert implores her to leave with him, but she refuses. Accepting her decision, Humbert gives her the money she is owed from her inheritance. Humbert then goes to the drug-addled Quilty's mansion and shoots him several times.

Shortly afterward, Humbert is arrested, and in his closing thoughts, he reaffirms his love for Dolores and asks for his memoir to be withheld from public release until after her death. The deaths of Humbert (shortly after his imprisonment) and Dolores (in childbirth on Christmas Day 1952) have been already related in the foreword.

Nutting, Alissa: Ant Colony (From the book Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls)

"When space on earth became very limited, it was declared all people had to host another organism on or inside of their bodies. Many people chose something noninvasive, such as barnacles or wig-voles. Some women had breast operations that allowed them to accommodate small aquatic life within implants. But because I was already perfectly-breasted (and, admittedly, vain) I sought out a doctor who, for several thousands of dollars, drilled holes into my bones to make room for an ant colony."

It is with that paragraph that begins Ant Colony, a short story published as part of the book Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, the debut short story collection of author Alissa Nutting. Beside the obvious Corruption theme of its very premise, the rest of the story also touches on another, often overlooked element of this Entity: Twisted, unhealthy love.

The plot twist of the story is that the ants hadn't begun eating the nameless narrator alive from within because the queen ant hated her, as the other doctors she talks to had theorized, but because the doctor who she had paid to implant the ants into her bones, who had already been established as having a creepy crush on her, had been purposely manipulating things in order to get the ants to assimilate her consciousness and eat her whole from the very beginning, all so that he could get the ant colony to inhabit him next because, as he puts it: "When you all crawl inside of me, we will all be one forever."

Ostrovsky, Alexander Nikolayevich: The Storm

This play was meant to critique Russian merchant class and how they abuse worker and hinder social progress using religion as a reactionary force. The heroine, Katerina, is being abused by her husband's mother. She is new in town and doesn't fit in. When her affair with a merchant's nephew is revealed she is driven to suicide by the townspeople.

Poe, Edgar Allan: Fall of the House of Usher

From Goodreads: "The Fall .. " recounts the terrible events that befall the last remaining members of the once-illustrious Usher clan before it is -- quite literally -- rent asunder. Or what if a family was so isolated, so inbred, and so obviously dying that it manifested not only in the last daughter’s chronic illness but the disrepair, moldiness, and rot of the structure itself? What if her death didn’t end the story, but only hastened the family’s end?

Poe, Edgar Allan: The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar

An unnamed narrator performs a remarkable experiment when he hypnotizes a man In articulo mortis—at the point of death.

Poe, Edgar Allan: The Masque of the Red Death

The Red Death was a disease spread throughout the land, and eventually taking on a physical form to spread the disease to those nobles who isolated themselves. It came in the form of a party goer dressed as a victim of the disease, manifesting in the way that would cause the most terror as they realised it could not be escaped or killed.

It fits the theme of disease and other parts of the Corruption manifesting as something human-ish, as well as it gradually consuming even those of try to escape it.

Pratchett, Terry: The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents

Rat! King! Rat! King! Rat! King!

Quiroga, Horacio: El almohadón de plumas (The feather pillow)

The quiet, fragile happiness between Alicia and her aloof but still deeply in love husband Jordan is cut short when, just three months after their wedding, she mysteriously falls deathly ill. Jordan keeps bringing doctors to check on her, but to no avail: No doctor can answer why this young woman is suddenly and visibly dying with every night that passes.

Saying anything more would spoil the plot twist, so here's the Project Gutenberg link: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606301h.html

Not only are bloodsucking parasites well within the Corruption's domain, but it should also be noted that a common motif across those who fall victim to this particular entity is a desire for love or to connect with others, which the Entity takes advantage of. Alicia's wish for 'childish fancies', her resigned frustration with her husband's unaffectionate attitude and her seemingly complete lack of other human relationships besides said husband would make her fit right in with that pattern. And in a TMA context, the bug growing that impossibly big and yet no one being able to notice it until it was too late could easily be explained as being due to both the bug and the circumstances around its existence being supernatural in nature.

***

From the book Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte (Tales of love, madness and death) A newly-wed woman falls terribly ill. She can't leave her bed. Strange marks appear on her skin. The groom believes he has cursed her with his love. When she dies, it's revealed that a parasitic bug was living inside her pillow, feeding from her blood. The story shows love as a parasitic thing, something that drains and corrupts you, while also showing a very real parasite.

Raymond, E.S.: Felicity Floo Visits the Zoo

It begins with a zoo where all the animals are sick with what appears to be a respiratory illness and the zookeepers don't know why. The narrator then explains that the reason the animals are sick is because a sick girl named Felicity Floo went to the zoo, ignored the "Don't Pet the Animals" signs, and petted the animals with snot on her hands, which is what got them sick.

Rumfitt, Alison: Brainwyrms

One of the main characters has a fetish for parasites and learns that the reality of being infected is more horrific than they imagined. A new kind of parasite is sweeping the world, and certain people are consumed with it, intentionally trying to infect others\

Scarrow, Alex: Plague Land series

“Leon and his younger sister, Grace, have recently moved to London from New York and are struggling to settle into their new school when rumours of an unidentified virus in Africa begin to fill the news. Within a week the virus hits London. The siblings witness people turning to liquid before their eyes, and they run for their lives. A month after touching Earth's atmosphere, the virus has assimilated the world's biomass.”

Probably one of many pandemic based books that will feature in this tournament which contain similar themes like fear of infection etc, this series has a further twist that manifests aspects of The Corruption more than most:

It turns out that this virus is sentient, and as it is liquefying and assimilating Earth’s biomass, it is learning and evolving into more complex forms, eventually able to mimic life forms such as horses and eventually humans, to help infiltrate and spread into the last remaining pockets of survivors. This of course breeds constant fear and mistrust, leading to extreme acts (including immolation) of those even slightly suspected of infection. The virus, and subsequent liquefied biomass, is also a hive mind, evolving from crude simple consciousness, to being able to convert and replicate assimilated people’s consciousness, making infiltration and infection even more efficient. When it does choose to reveal itself and converse with survivors, it tries to entice them into joining it by describing the harmonious bliss of the hive mind. Truly a book series that touches on many aspects of this entity.

Smith, Guy N.: The Festering

A couple move to the English countryside to escape urban life. Their plumbing is dodgy, so they have well dug in their garden. Unfortunately, an ancient, diseased corpse was buried there, and the lads who dig the well end up contracting the disease.

This disease causes you to grow disgusting boils all over and to leak stinking pus and slime from every orifice. It also increases sexual and aggressive urges. Those who get sick end up going on violent rampages and end up as a rancid puddle of noisome muck.

Stine, R.L.: Go Eat Worms!

Obsessed with worms? That's putting it mildly. Todd is so fascinated with worms, he keeps a worm farm in his basement! Most of all, Todd loves torturing his sister and her best friend with worms. Dropping them into their hair. Down their backs. Until one day, after cutting a worm in half, Todd notices something strange. The rest of the worms seem to be staring at him! Suddenly worms start showing up in the worst places for Todd. In his bed. In his homework. Even in his spaghetti! What's a worm lover to do when his own worms are starting to gross him out?

Stine, R.L.: The Bugman Lives!

Here lies the Bugman. Woe to anyone who wakes him. Janet didn't mean to disturb the Bugman. It was an accident. She was just mowing the lawn when she ran over his tombstone. Now insects attack her everywhere she goes. Wasps, bees, ants. Even a huge, hairy tarantula. Janet is afraid the Bugman is back from the grave -- and out for revenge.

Spoilers: Her new best friend is actually a Bug-GIRL, and is determined to make Janet one as well. By the end, Janet accepts enthusiastically.

Tran, Trang Thanh: She is a Haunting

When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She’s always lied to fit in, so if she’s straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised.

But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound, while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don’t belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended. And at night Jade can’t ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves her cryptic warnings: Don’t eat.

Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. With help from a delinquent girl, Jade will prove this house—the home her family has always wanted—will not rest until it destroys them. Maybe, this time, she can keep her family together. As she roots out the house’s rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all.

Umansky, Kaye: Pongwiffy Series

Pongwiffy just loves dirt and being dirty. She is a Corruption Avatar and her books are Corruption Leitners.

van Dahl, Fiona: Eden Green

An alien needle symbiote spreads across a small group of humans, gradually taking over their bodies as it heals their wounds. Each infectee can eventually reach milestones at which their brain and even entire body is made up of needles, with horrible mutations possible along the way.

Vian, Boris: L'écume des jours (Froth on the Daydream)

the story of a wealthy young man named Colin and his love for Chloe, a girl dying of a water lily in her lung. the effects of which, besides a cough, are largely to make her beautifully pale and languid.

Zelazny, Roger: To Die in Italbar

When the immortal being 'H' meditates in a certain way, his immune system goes into a sort of Super Mode that can instantly cure anyone of any disease simply by being in his presence. However, when he goes long enough without meditation, he begins sort of radiating every disease he's ever been exposed to. When, due to a number of mistakes and understandings, he goes MUCH too long without meditation he is driven completely insane, eventually reaching the point where he can kill entire planets with a brief tour, and his powerful immune system can't keep him from being covered in open sores.

Zamyatin, Yevgeny Ivanovich: We

'We' leans heavily into a collective consciousness aspect of the corruption. It describes a society that seeks to eliminate any and all diferences in thinking so much so that people live in glass houses (literal glass houses - they can see their neighbours through the walls and the floor) and go through their day in accordance to the hour table which has a daily routine planned down to minutes. They wear identical clothes, they have numbers for names, they even chew in tact. The main character interacts with I-330, a woman so recalcitrant he cannot comprehend her, which fascinates him in a way. From this point on he falls out of synch with others, and describes this feeling of individuality as something horrible that is growing within him. He even goes to a literal doctor about it but gets told that he has a rare disease called 'a soul' and it's incurable

[icanbeyourgenie]

“ You're playing hard to get... I mean, to know. Hard to know. ” – Achilles to Nathaniel

Nathaniel fought a smile. It wasn't really effective.

“Hard to get?” he teased.

“To know.” Achilles corrected again. “Just a slip of the tongue.”

Nathaniel dropped it, but inside he felt a pleasant warmth. He was only with Achilles for a few days - just three really - but he could already tell how infatuated he was with the doctor. He should have already gone back to the sea, the traces of his victim were gone by now, but he couldn't bring himself to leave the man just yet.

“Well, as much as I'd love to say I'm just playing the mysterious card, I'm not. I genuinely can't answer this question.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't remember.”

Achilles raised an eyebrow. The two of them had spent the last days talking about many things and asking each other questions. There were a lot Nate couldn't answer, especially regarding his family. Because he had to keep it secret, but also because he didn't want Achilles' attitude to change.

But the last question Achilles asked was about his time before he was a siren. And as much as he wished to remember, he couldn't.

“Because you're asking about a time before I can remember. Sirens don't have memories of before their transformation.”

Nathaniel could see he picked Achilles' interest. He quickly learnt that the man had a very good memory, maybe the concept of not remembering was foreign to him?

“I see.... Can I try something?”

“That's onimous.” Nate answered, but Achilles laughed while coming a bit closer, and it was enough to bring back the butterflies.

“Just... trust me?”

So he did. Achilles came a bit closer against, and softly touched Nathaniel's temple with his fingers. The contact sent shivers down Nate's spine. They were very close now, but none of them seemed to care.

Nathaniel closed his eyes on instinct, and then something strange happened. It was just noises at first. A voice calling his name, the sound of the wind blowing through the trees, and then a face. A face of a man who looked like him. Who was smiling.

It lasted only a second but when Nate opened his eyes, his breathing was out of control and he realized he had grabbed Achilles' hand. He didn't know yet if he intended to move it away, or to keep it on his temple, so he just froze and looked at the man. Nate was breathing heavily, confusion in his eyes.

“What... what just happened?”

“It's my fault, I should've asked, I just wanted to see if I could... Well, the thing with memories is that they're never really lost. Even when we forget, they're here somewhere.”

“So... this voice... this face...?”

“I don't know who they are. But I can tell that your memories are here. If you want to, I can retrieve them for you.”

Nathaniel was still breathing heavily, but at some point Achilles fully took his hand in his and was gently stroking his skin, which helped him relax a little.

Nate felt his entire world shifting. He was convinced that his memories of his previous life were lost. He made his peace with that a long time ago. But now he could have them back? He didn't know yet if he wanted too? What if they were terrible?

“Just breathe. You don't have to answer right now.”

Nathaniel realized that Achilles came a bit closer in order to calm him down. Strangely, it worked. His breathing came back to normal and he smiled while looking at the doctor.

“I don't have the answer yet, but what I can tell you is that I was right.”

“On what point?”

“You're a very, very intriguing man. I can't wait to know more about your story.”

[hauntedfalcon]

there is ground to break, whatever's still to come

4,000 words of the bottom table OT3 inviting Nathaniel over for an evening. Nathaniel's POV; rated E; light Dom/sub featuring some overstimulation; please mind the tags.

The doctor tensed and gasped and widened her eyes. She did not give voice to it. This matched what Nathaniel had come to know of Doctor Basar, but where was the woman whose boldness astonished Nathaniel when she invited him here? Perhaps it was time he gave her an order. Nathaniel said, “Open your legs, Doctor.” She hesitated. Her left hand trailed down from Marion’s hair, gloved fingertips stroking along his spine, and Nathaniel recalled how those fingertips felt in the same place on his own back without the glove there to contain her flames. “Do you know,” said Doctor Basar, “that I technically outranked you?”

read on AO3

[scumgristle]

JULY PRE-ORDER ANNOUNCEMENT #1! Going on sale Thursday, July 27th at 9 AM Pacific/12 noon Eastern, only at mondomacabro.bigcartel.com! We’re sure you have tons of Jess Franco films in your collection, likely even some films in multiple formats! But how about one that’s never been released officially in the US or anywhere else for that matter? That’s why we are very excited to bring you … THE SINISTER DR ORLOFF (1982)! With his 1962 film The Awful Dr Orlof, director Jess Franco laid the ground work for the Spanish horror boom that was to follow later in that decade. 20 years on, he revisited his classic to create this chilling and macabre follow up. The Sinister Dr. Orloff features the original doctor - played by Howard Vernon - with Antonio Mayans as his son, Alfred. The film is set amongst the bright neon lights and gaudy tourist attractions of Alicante, on Spain’s Costa Blanca. Alfred Orloff cruises the bustling nighttime streets, seeking out women, whom he takes back to his empty apartment. There he drugs them and has his blind brother, Andros, carry them off to a secret laboratory where Orloff has created a strange and bizarre mind transference machine, hoping to transfer the consciousness of the captive women into the body of his comatose mother. Orloff’s father, played by Howard Vernon, becomes aware that his son is starting to enjoy these murderous night games and decides that he must stop the deadly experiments that are being conducted in his name. But when Inspector Tanner’s wife becomes the next victim, events take a tragic and unexpected turn. This region free release is the US premiere of the film and its worldwide Blu-ray debut. DISC FEATURES Region free 1080p presentation from a new 4K restoration of the film In Spanish with optional English subtitles Brand new interview with Antonio Mayans Brand new interview with author Stephen Thrower Brand new audio commentary by Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson LIMITED EDITION FEATURES 20 page full color booklet by Francisco Cesari and Roberto Curti; reversible sleeve with new and original art; 1500 numbered copies in the usual red case

[backgroundagent3]

Agents of SHIELD Villain Showdown

Ok, so I wanted to make a poll to determine the best AoS villain, but there's so many I couldn't just choose 10, so I decided to make a showdown.

I will be posting a series of polls where you can choose between 2 villains. The first round of brackets will be posted tomorrow under the #aos villain showdown tag.

Rules:

It's pretty simple, just vote one of the two villains in each poll.

It doesn't matter how you choose the villain, it can be your favourite, the one you think has the most relevance, the one you think is a bigger threat...

Candidates:

There's A LOT of villains in this show, so I made a bunch of brackets, which you can find here. The villains in each bracket were chosen from this website. I made a list (under the cut) and then randomized the order. I picked the ones I thought to be more relevant, but if you have any suggestions, please let me know and I will add them!

This is the list of villains I chose, ordered by season to make things easier. Let me know if I've missed any!

Season 1

Grant Ward.

John Garrett.

Raina.

Ian Quinn.

Dr Franklin Hall.

Jasper Sitwell.

Lorelei.

Season 2

Cal Johnson.

Jiaying.

Gordon.

Carl Creel (Absorbing Man).

Kara Palamas (Agent 33).

Daniel Whitehall.

Sunil Bakshi.

Werner von Strucker.

Season 3

Hive.

Lash.

Gideon Malick.

Season 4

AIDA/Madame Hydra.

Holden Radcliffe.

The Watchdogs.

The Doctor.

Alistair Fitz.

Anton Ivanov.

Eli Morrow.

Ellen Nadeer.

James Taylor James (Hellfire).

Lucy Bauer.

Tucker Shockley.

Season 5

Kasius.

Sinara.

Glenn Talbot (Graviton).

Ruby Hale.

General Hale.

Faulnak.

Qovas.

Season 6

Sarge.

Izel.

Snowflake.

Jaco.

Atarah.

Pax.

Season 7

Nathaniel Malick.

Sibyl.

[awritingcaitlin]

Introductions...

Have some short snippets of each major character introduction under the cut. Because why not!

Killian

Twelve tiny vials were lined up in a neat row, well-protected inside the leather briefcase on Captain McCormack’s lap. Each was luminescent, shining a clear blue light which bespoke the power each was supposed to contain, power enough to heal a nation. Or its rulers, which, to the Captain’s mind, was close to the same thing when it came to the Queen, if not necessarily the King. If Finn willed it, there would be enough to heal someone else important. At least important to the Captain.

With a sigh of resolution, he stopped his daydreaming. It was his job to deliver these vials. Staring at them, unprotected, with the case open was not a part of it. He checked the power crystal – his excuse for opening it in the first place. Its aura was strong and there was more than enough power in it to protect the case in a stasis field for the next several years. Captain McCormack snapped the case closed, locked it and handed it to Staff Sergeant Weimez, the Mage-Technician whose job it was to maintain the case.

“Everything looks in order, Staff Sergeant, carry on.”

.

Nathaniel

Corporal Nathaniel Adler woke up underwater, his drowning body dragged down by the robe disguising him as a foreign merchant. 

His Marine training kicked in, overriding the panic. He wriggled out of the coat and waited to see which way the currents pulled him. Once he knew, he propelled himself upwards with broad strokes. Against every instinct, he forced himself to blow out a thin stream of air. Getting the bends at the surface would not help him. His lungs burned. His ears rang.

When he finally emerged at the top of the freshwater sea, he gasped in precious new air and took a few moments to feel relief for being alive, tilting his head against the lapping waves of the surprisingly warm water before assessing his situation.

They’d crashed. In the Balios Sea. In the middle of the night. Fuck.

.

Rinnie

Rinnie’s boots squeaked as she walked down the marble hall of the Edansa Embassy to Schmiedland, the sound overpowering the usual swish of her skirts. Damn. Squeaky shoes were unbecoming of her position. The waterproofing enchantment must’ve worn off after getting caught in one of Himmelmauer’s scheduled rains yesterday. She wasn’t surprised. The boots were old, and all enchantments wore out eventually. She deliberated if it was worth it to re-enchant them, or if she should buy new boots.

She did contemplate the effectiveness of a soundproofing charm for the time being.

She was meeting with the Ambassador today to get her new assignment settled. She knew what she wanted, and she hoped things would work out…

“Doctor Edgewing.” Rinnie knew that voice.

.

Riela (from Nathaniel's POV)

Doctor Thiggins had barely turned off the vehicle when a woman wearing a green skirt and white shirt under a brown leather bodice came outside. She was young-looking, with olive skin and brown hair pulled off her face showing sharply pointed ears. She might be older than she looked then, as was typical of those with elven blood.

“Mama said you were coming,” she said, approaching Doctor Thiggins. “Do you need any help?”

“I’ve got help with the patient,” Doctor Thiggins said. “But if you want to grab my bag?”

“Of course,” she said.

She caught sight of Adler and the two of them locked eyes for a second. He couldn’t place the look on her face, but was painfully aware of how disheveled he looked. He smelled, too.

.

Riela (her own POV)

Riela stepped out of the shower and buried her face in a towel before she could look in the mirror. She hated her own reflection first thing in the mornings. She toweled off completely before braving it.

On her right cheek, tracing along her cheekbone to her temple was a garish spidery tattoo with thick lines. It was a brand, really. Nidtrin mages had applied it to her face when she was nine years old. They’d done it in front of her parents before taking her away to be indoctrinated into their religion. She’d escaped a couple years later with a dozen other kids.

The brands made it hard to run. The kids were more obvious, marked as being from non-conforming parents, now obviously runaways. There was witchcraft in the ink, too, whispering to them in their dreams how wrong they were for running.

.

Taryn (from Rinnie's POV)

Right as Rinnie was paying her tab, someone crashed into her and a cold wetness seeped into her lap. A glass hit the floor, but it bounced, enchanted not to break.

“Goddess Aenehra, I am so sorry!” the elf woman said in Edan.

Rinnie turned to look at her. She had short brown hair and a heart-shaped face. Her white blouse was crisp but she’d rolled up the sleeves. She looked casually disheveled in her drunkenness. Rinnie reasoned this woman must be in the first century of life. She stood and brushed the ice cubes out of her lap and onto the floor. The other woman steadied herself on the barstool, and looked at Rinnie with an apologetic expression on her face.

“Are you alright?” Rinnie asked, slipping easily into her native language. She wasn’t angry at her—she’d spent many years getting sloshed and making a fool of herself in bars not unlike this one, then waking up the next morning with, unfortunately at times, every memory. She and her cousin had been good at that. If one could be considered “good” at getting wasted.

The woman nodded. “People keep feeding me drinks.” She giggled and turned in the direction of the other sailors in the back corner. “Fuck, shit, Marrik! This is your fault!”

.

Mica

The halls of the ship shook with turbulence again. Mica hissed under her breath and steadied the flame on her small burner. She sat on her bunk in the small room that functioned as a lab and her quarters. She hadn’t slept in the crew quarters since shortly after her initial kidnapping.

She’d been celebrating Schmiedland Day in the town of Trotsberg, near her family’s farm, when it had happened. She’d been complaining about her mother, as usual, with her face neatly shaven, hair in a cute style with two bows in it—one gold and one green, her country’s colors—about how she would never be the perfect dwarven daughter Mother wanted and proceeded to become further inebriated long into the night. The drunker she’d gotten, the more she’d bragged about her alchemy, and the unconventional methods she used, which in hindsight was what’d attracted the pirates to her.

Consequentially, as she was leaving the bar, a cudgel thumped her on the back of the head. When she’d come to, she was forty miles over the Crater Sea heading east, and she couldn’t say with exact certainty that she’d been disappointed.

.

Taryn (her own POV)

Taryn Woodlance had been briefed on Doctor Edgewing’s arrogant and reckless nature. This woman was supposedly high-maintenance and troublesome.

Taryn had done her research into the Personnel Protection Order and Rinnie’s files. She was supposed to report on and potentially recruit her to Commodore Crossweave’s top secret project.

Such preparations did nothing to stop the blood from rising to her cheeks when the woman Taryn had spilled a drink on a week prior came to stand in front of her for formal introductions.

“Doctor Edgewing,” Taryn said, finding her voice, nonetheless. “Pleasure to meet you.”

[adultswim2021]

The Young Person’s Guide to History: “The Duel” | April 1, 2008 - 1:00AM | S00E01

The Young Person’s Guide to History was a spin-off of Saul of the Mole Men. Why there should be a spin-off of Saul of the Mole Men is beyond me. Originally the idea was that it was going to be four 11-minute episodes, and in fact it was produced in that format. This is one of those four episodes. When the series turned up later in 2008, they cut the length in half to TWO 11-minute episodes, each episode consisting of what was originally meant to be two episodes, edited down to half the running time. Saul of the Mole Men always came off as over-long, and when I criticized them I usually observed that they could be cut down drastically. I guess when those versions debut, we’ll actually have something to base that theory on (spoilers; I remember it still being bad). 

Okay, so this is the intended series finale of the original four-episode run. At least, one would assume that it is. The plot: it’s 1804 and a bunch of guys are called to a haunted mansion to stay the night. There’s a disembodied voice on a little desktop speaker, like the kind you’d page a secretary with in the later half of the 20th Century. That’s a running thing in the series: very casual use of anachronisms. It’s not super-jokey Mel Brooks style, more like “kids making a movie and not having the resources to replicate the past accurately so they just use a car instead of a carriage” kind of thing. I like that. It’s one of the few things I truly like about this. 

Okay, haunted mansion with guys. They all get killed except Thomas Jefferson who runs out in anguish, as though he were a man possessed while committing this brutal bout of deadly violence. It turns out the house in question is the White House, and Jefferson is now the president. He asks Benjamin Franklin to help him make a vice president, so they create Aaron Burr in a boiling vat, using “science”. Aaron Burr is, uh, neurodivergent. We see a single scene of him doing vice president stuff: being asked about universal healthcare on the senate floor. He makes an imbecilic re-re noise and pees into his own open mouth. The floor cheers. 

Later, while having pizza, Jefferson gets fed up with Burr’s buffoonery and shoots him. He then puts the gun in Burr’s dead hand and uses it to shoot Alexander Hamilton, in order to frame them for each other’s death in a supposed duel, a historical event burned into the minds of a certain generation whose “Got Milk” advertisement got a nation of history buffs rolling in the aisles. Jefferson has transformed into a tyrant, like a guy in a freaking rated-R movie.

Jefferson finally shoots Ben Franklin, but not before cruelly taunting him for his legendary weakness. The voice on the little speaker congratulates Jefferson for being so mean. The voice is in the middle of calling him “Caleb Hilttrop?” or something like that? before being cut off. The significance of this completely eludes me, and I’m not sure if this is set-up in one of the other three episodes that would have aired along with this one, or if I just missed something in the opening sequence. We may never know, because I recall this bit being completely cut out of the version that did air. Jefferson switches the speaker to some rock song and screams “I’m the president!”

I do like that ending, I just wish anything that came before it was compelling enough to call it “earned”. I’d be hard-pressed to come up with much else in this episode that makes it worth watching. This is one of the unfunniest things to air on Adult Swim. It’s barely connected to Saul of the Mole Men, which isn’t a bad thing, honestly. 

There is a scene where Seth Green (who is cut from the shortened version entirely) talks about how he and Jefferson co-authored several sci-fi books about Nathaniel Baltimore’s adventures fighting various sci-fi beasts, and we see a little scene featuring Nathaniel Baltimore shooting a creature that is just them reusing the doctor costume from Saul. This seems to imply that either Saul of the Mole Men is a work of fiction featuring Nathaniel Baltimore in this world, which would explain why there’s no real continuity between this show and Saul. I believe the Jefferson episode of Saul has events in it that would contradict the existence of this series, but I”m not feeling curious enough to even re-read my own write-up to confirm this. I will link to it though, in case you are a sicko who actually is curious. 

Later in the year the truncated version of the show would air. The full-length versions were put up on Adult Swim for a short period of time. The one guy I knew of who knew how to rip from Adult Swim actually had these at one point, but deleted them because he “didn’t think anyone would want them”. Fucker. Again, if anyone knows how to get a hold of those uncut other episodes, please get in touch. 

Oh, I put the whole thing on YouTube, if you want to watch it.

EPHEMERA CORNER

[lockoutkey]

I meant the city within the world of the comics. I don’t have a list for everything wrong with the trash fire that is that show.

I will still give you the list I do have, though

The Gotham Lazarus Pit leaks constantly into the groundwater of the city. Courtesy of Bane, the drug venom is also permeating most of it, along with Joker Venom and the same shape shifting cosmetic that turned the various Clayfaces into, well. Thomas Wayne may or may not have dumped psychoactive chemicals into the water as well.

The air is worse as on top of the lead, something that can actually also be said of the water, there is also joker gas, fear toxin, and bio-engineered plant pheromones and pollens designed to melt people in Gotham’s permanent smog lair, so if you breathe it you’ll have the worst high ever and then die as your lungs liquidate.

Both the water and air can have further problems depending on what Dr. Death and Ra’s al-Ghul have decided to use in their respective attacks recently, as well as those previously mentioned toxins increasing in concentration in the aftermath of an attack by any of the relevant villains

There are psychotropic attacks by Mad Hatter and Dr. Hugo Strange

There are psionic attacks by Dracula and the Court of Owls

The Court of Owls similarly are economically crippling the city, which only worsens the corruption problems and leaves Wayne Enterprises as the only reason people in the city can stay afloat.

Cultists among the Arkham staff sacrificed patients in order to open a hellmouth beneath the asylum. It was sealed by Jason Blood but still whispers to the patients and staff. There is also a madness hypersygil engraved into its architecture by its architect and founder, Amadeus Arkham.

The city is mystically influenced by the tomb of the malevolent warlock Doctor Gotham at the center of the city, blood curse on the land caused by the genocide of the tribe originally living there by the first colonizers, the starheart, the court of Owls again, and the separate demon cult founded by Dr. Simon Hurt, theoretically worshiping the dark god Barbatos as the Court of the Owls do, but in actuality communing with a fragment of Darkseid.

That blood curse is so potent it almost made The Spectre call down his full power as The Wrath of God on the city to destroy it and turn the survivors into salt

The Waynes are separately cursed by a witch named Annie, who was made scapegoat to the at-the-time town’s poor crop one year and avenged herself on the line of witch hunter Nathaniel Wayne who had ordered her burned and, while being correct about her being a witch, was wrong about her having any connection to the harvest.

A separate witch, Amity Arkham, also burned, cast a curse that only affects her descendants in the Silverlock family, allowing her to possess them in order to continuously burn the city generation by generation as the villain Calamity, until the last two generations was defeated by Batman and the first Robin and managed to take back control of her body with the help of her friend Mia Mizoguchi respectively.

Slaughter Swamp also resurrects corpses but is not a Lazarus Pit or Lazarus Pit adjacent.

Further confirmation New York City is irl Gotham

[stolenparticles]

theory abt stuff based on my second quantumania watch under the cut

okay, so, with this being my second time watching, i was able to focus on stuff i couldn't before. and one of those things was the interaction between cassie and kang while cassie's in the holding cell

there's something in the way he looks at her, when he turns his full attention to her, and talks about not experiencing time in a straight line. it kinda made me think of the doctor and river song, and i started to wonder: what if this kang has already met cassie, but cassie hasn't met nate (aka kang) yet?

it is also odd that he didn't seem to plan on actually killing her in the end--not until she actively got in his way and fought against him. and even when he did order modok to kill her, there was almost a hint of hesitation. now, i could have interpreted that wrong, but still. he didn't seem to plan on killing her after getting the power source back. no, instead, he was going to take her with him. almost like he didn't want to give her back. "she'll be fine without you," he said. this doesn't seem to suggest that he was going to kill her after that.

so what does that mean? i think, in a future movie or series, we're going to get nathaniel richards, aka young kang, showing up in the present time. i think he's going to help bring the young avengers together, maybe without cassie knowing that he's kang. after all, it's not insignificant that they had cassie and kang in a movie together--especially with cassie and nate's history in the comics. in fact, children's crusade almost seemed to hint that cassie's death is what finally set THAT nate on the path to becoming kang. cassie and nate liked each other a whole lot, and there's a lot of potential for interesting angst there in the movies

okay rant over kalsjdflkaj

[aswallowimprisoned]

Restless far from a Wine Dark sea - Stabbed - in 1713!

My merfolk are semi-immortal creatures, and Nathaniel is old enough to have been stabbed a couple of times at this point.

A night out with his pirate captain has gone awry, and Nathaniel finds himself a little more stabbed than is ideal. This one follows the last time the merman started drowning in his own blood (as alluded to in Fuckin oops).

For @medwhumpmay

Tw Punctured lung, old fashioned surgery, Dead Dove Jewish vampiric whumpee, cauterisation, alcohol, almost NSFW Spicey flirting, vampires, serious injury, fantasy drugs

This is not historically accurate

masterlist

≪ °❈° ≫

Kim was surprised the captain and her merman had managed to make it back to the ship.

Leaning heavily on each other, it took a while for Kim to even recognise them. He and the first mate had swooped down to help them on board as soon as they had recognised the bloody figures. They had carried the Captain up into her quarters. The merman had required a significant amount of coaxing, which was resonable considering the last time he had been on the ship it was as their captive.  

As soon as he was on the ship, the merman wanted off it. And it turned out he had a knife sticking right out of his rib cage. 

“Stay away from me” Nathaniel murmured. His lips were stained red.

“Mate, if you pull that knife out of your chest without a backup plan you are going to bleed out pretty fast,” Kim took another step towards the merman, “You can barely undo your shoe laces.”

“Last time I was here you trapped me in a bathtub to sell me on the medicine market.”

“But you managed to escape, and now you are fucking the cap. Didn’t turn out too bad, right?” Kim reasoned with his usual flippancy, “Now, I just want to help you to not die a bloody mess on our deck.”

“Stretcher” the First Mate announced her presence, “ And the captain is going to be fine; she has a broken arm and is sleeping off the vampire bite. Apparently vampire venom is much more unpleasant than mer venom.”

“Hear that Nathaniel? The captain is all sorted out, and she will be very upset if you die before she wakes up…” Kim started moving closer to the merman.

“Careful kim. Injured wild animals and all.” The First Mate muttered.

“It’s ok Nathaniel,” Kim kept his voice soothing and steady, “You are the captain's man. We wouldn’t hurt you.”

Kim inched closer, before reaching out to grab the lapels of Nathaniel’s overcoat and half lifting the man off the bannister. Nathaniel gave a weak kick in response, but whether it was an attempt to help or hinder his passage to the stretcher was unclear.

Now he was lying down, Kim could hear just how laboured the merman’s breathing was. Nathaniel turned his head to cough again, and red splattered the canvas of the stretcher.

“We will take you to Doctor Max, and he will fix you up good as new.” Kim reassured, though he doubted the merman would last much longer, “Just stay with us a wee while.”

They carried him into the bowels of the ship, and Nathaniel closed his eyes as the sky was replaced with wooden panelling.

“Not…again…” 

-8888-

Max took one look at the blade in the merman's chest before starting to give orders.

“Kim, keep pressure on that stab wound, like that…” Max positioned Kim's hands with swift precision, “Sabrina, fire up the brazier.”

The merman stared sightlessly at the ceiling, blinking slowly as the pirates moved around him. Max took out his knives and bandages, placing them on the low table by Nathaniel’s head.

“How's that fire going Sabrina?” Max asked.

“Nearly there.” The First Mate pumped the bellows, and sparks flew brightly.

“Just get the dagger out of me. Please.” Nathaniel rasped.

“Not yet.” Max laid an apologetic hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder, “I can’t just pull it out. The blade is too deep, so I have to cauterise the wound or you will just keep bleeding.”

“Cauterise?”

“Burning the flesh to prevent bleeding.”

“Przyżegać.” Nathaniel breathed apprehensively, “O kurwa.”

Max grabbed a bottle of rum from the cupboard above his bed

“Drink this,” he held the bottle to the mermans lips, “it will help with the pain.”

He tipped some of the liquid into Nathaniel’s mouth, but the merman choked, the mouthful of fluid coming back up laced with red. 

“Try again?” he asked, and the merman nodded slightly. He managed five gulps before refusing the bottle.

“Kim, check the brazier.” Kim carefully took his hands away from Nathaniel's chest, and they came away slathered in crimson blood. Max took his place, properly examining the stab for the first time. Taking scissors, he cut away the shirt around the wound, and Nathaniel hissed in pain. The material of his shirt had got caught in the cut, which had fortunately stemmed much of the blood flow, but had also masked the extent of the injury. Max put his head to the mermans chest, and could hear the tell-tale gurgle of internal bleeding upon every breath the merman took. 

Max put a hand on Nathaniel's shoulder, and the merman tilted his face to look at him.

“You're not looking too good I am afraid,” His tone was solemn, “Now, I can take the blade out and try to cauterise the wound but your lung will most likely collapse, and it is going to be incredibly painful.” He took a deep breath, “Alternatively, I can give you last rites and more rum to dull the pain. We can also return your body to the sea if that is what you want.”

“Try,” Nathaniel’s voice was a rasp, “Please.”

 “Understood.”

Nathaniel stuck his wrist in his mouth, his face clearinging somewhat as he dulled the pain with his own venom.

“Ok, nearly ready.” Max gave the poker a last turn, “Sabrina, I need you to sit on his legs and put your full weight onto his hips to keep him from moving. Kim, you at his shoulders. I have a feeling he is going to be stronger than he looks.”

Kim held out the bite rag, but the merman turned his face away.

“You are going to want this mate. Keep you from damaging your vocal cords.”

Nathaniel’s breath hitched, and he coughed out a wad of blood.

“Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ecḥad” He whispered, then opened his mouth to accept the rag, carefully tucking it behind his fangs. Max’s eyebrow raised in surprise at the recitation of the Jewish prayer. 

Kim took a hold of his shoulders, effectively pinning the merman to the table, and Nathaniel’s breathing became erratic with anxiety as he was trapped beneath the weight of the two pirates. 

“Ready?”

Max pulled the knife out with a single movement, and Nathaniel tried to buck, screaming into the gag. Max worked swiftly, pulling the remainder of the mermans shirt out of the wound and dousing it in cheap rum.

With a sickening gurgle, Nathaniel passed out.

“Check his pulse Kim” Max ordered, focusing on cleaning the wound.

“He’s just unconscious, but, Max… he’s got gills.”

Max glanced over, and the merman had indeed sprouted gills on his right side. 

“Shit. His lung has collapsed” Max grabbed a thin metal tube from his small table, “Sabrina get off and drag him to the edge of the table. Kim, take the bite rag out to clear his airways.” Kim carefully extracted the blood splattered rag from Nathaniel’s slack lips, and the man coughed again, slowly drowning as his lungs filled with blood.

Max slammed the metal tube into his side, and blood spewed from the end, splattering onto the floor. It quickly reduced to only dribbles, and Nathaniel’s gills retracted as his lung reinflated. Max breathed a sigh of relief.

“Cool.” Kim breathed.

“Still need to cauterise the wound. Glad he has passed out cos this is going to hurt like a bitch...” 

8888

Nathaniel did not come round again until the final bandage had been wrapped around his midriff and Max had moved onto sewing up the ripped vampire bite on his shoulder. How the merman and the captain had got home Max had no idea.

The merman groaned as his eyes fluttered open.

“You’re still alive merbeast.”

Nathaniel flexed his fingers, before looking up to the ceiling and muttering a quick prayer, while Max finished his stitching and tied a quick knot.

“Can I have some more rum please?” Nathaniel asked, his voice husky. Max poured a mug of water, then added a shot of rum.

“Here.” Max propped him up a bit, and passed him the mug, “Grog. Water is important.” 

Nathaniel drank deeply, then rested the mug on his chest. 

“Where’s the captain?” 

“Kim took her to her quarters. She is just sleeping off the vampire bite.” Max resumed his checking over of the merman’s body. “Apparently it is not as much fun as mer venom. She was quite disappointed.” He gently probed Nathaniel’s wrist, “Why are you turning purple?”

Nathaniel looked down wearily.

“Too much blood loss. I need to go.” He tried to sit up, but his eyes went distant for a moment and he dropped back to the table.

“You are in no fit state to go anywhere. Take a nap, and we will sling you back in the sea as soon as you can sit up without passing out.”

Nathaniel panted for a few moments before replying.

“I need to… replace the blood… that I lost… so…” He took a deep breath and tried to still his shaking hands, “I need to go.” 

“Ok.” Max’s tone was considering, “Ok. Can I like, put some in a cup and give it to you? Or use a leech? Do you think you can wait till morning when the captain wakes up?”

“No, and no.” He was slurring a bit. The purple had advanced up to his elbow and was snaking across his torso. “And I need to go soon, because this is happening really fast.” There was a slight hiccup in his voice. Max had seen many men afraid to die. It seemed that centuries old sea monsters were no different in that regard.

The door to Max’s room opened quietly, and Kim popped his head round.

“Captain is settled. Sabriana’s keeping an eye on her,” He sidled into the room, “Good to see you awake already merbeast. I thought you were a goner there.”

Nathaniel screwed his eyes shut.

“Kim. Just in time.” Max wiped his bloody hands on a damp rag, “I was just about to give Nathaniel some blood, and would really like someone to make sure I don’t pass out.”

“What?! No! you can't do that Max!” Kim protested.

“Yeah, well,” Max cut him off, “He is going to die if I don’t, and I think I did a pretty good job stitching his lungs back into him, so it seems a shame for something small like starvation to kill him.” He threw the rag down, “Besides, he is good friends with the captain, and never killed her right?”

“Still no! You have got to look after the captain and him, and you can't do that when you are high as shit on mer venom.” Kim held his hand over his heart as if hurt, “And you know that getting high as shit on stupid things is my forte.” He gave Max a shit-eating grin, “Just tell me what to do.”

Max looked down at the sea monster on the table. He’d gone kind of floppy, and his expression was glazed over.

“Fine. But tell me what it feels like cos I want to record it.”

“Hey.” Max patted the merman’s cheek, “Wake up. You can bite Kim. What do we do?”

“Wrist, please.” Nathaniel rasped. Max manoeuvred Kim so that his wrist would be comfortably angled. 

“Ok. If Kim faints, I am calling this off though.”

“I understand. Venom is strong. Look out.” 

“Aww yiss.” Kim grinned like a teenage idiot, “I can handle strong merbeast. Bite away.” He pressed his wrist to Nathaniel’s mouth. The seamonster bit him.

“Ow.” Kim scowled, then his face brightened, “Actually, that feels pretty nice actually…really nice.” Kim sighed, “Kinda tingly, like being drunk, but only really fast, and everything is all warm and nice and mmmmm…” he trailed off to close his eyes with a dopey smile. 

“Sounds like it hit pretty fast.”

“You have no idea Maxie,” Kim hummed happily to himself, and Max watched him carefully. He wasn’t swaying, but the venom was clearly a euphoric… The sea monster's Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and Max wondered how fast the blood was actually being drained. He could hear a soft sucking noise, and the breath, stronger now, rushing against Kim’s skin. He shivered.

Kim however, was oblivious to the creepiness, and seemed to be quite enjoying himself.

“You still feeling alright Kim? No dizziness of feeling sick?”

“No sick, just yummy yummy dizziness” Kim grinned, “like all the best narchotics or whatever it is you educated people call them,” He looked down at the seamonster, “I can see why the captain likes fucking him. I would pay to be in his mouth too…”

Max’s eyes flew wide open, and he glanced down to see the mermans reaction. There was none. Not that Max should really be worried about homophobic judgement from a literally inhuman monster. 

“Kim, don’t say that.” He grimaced. 

“Sorry sweeeety” Kim gave a flirtatious grin, “You are still my beau.” He leaned forward and planted a sloppy kiss on the corner of Max’s mouth. 

Nathaniel finally moved, eyes opening to glowing cerulean slits as he unhooked his teeth from Kim’s wrist.

“Thank you.” He murmured, and his head lolled sideways as he fell asleep.

“Thank YOU mate. That was awesome, "Kim slurred. 

Max pulled him away from the merman, manoeuvring him onto the bed behind them. 

“Sit” he ordered.

“Mmm doctor roleplay. My favourite.”

Max ignored him, pulling his arm up to the light. The bite marks were gone, the slightest smear of red the only sign that he had ever been bitten. That healing saliva was something else. He placed his fingers over Kim’s wrist, checking his pulse. Normal. Normal that is till Kim wound his other hand round to grab Max’s ass. Then it jumped right up.

“Anything else you want to examine, doctor” He drawled.

Max pushed him away lightly.

“I forgot that excessive hornyness is a side effect of mer venom” Max stepped back, 

“Maybe saving the life of a sea monster is just the thing that really gets me going.” Kim grinned. Max shook his head ruefully, and took off his blood spattered apron. Behind him he heard the clank of Kim undoing his belt. 

“You should record that that venom is making it very uncomfortable to keep these trousers on. I think your patient should take his pants off.”

Max lifted Nathaniel's wrist, checking his pulse to make very sure the merman was asleep. Sure enough, it was slow, but stronger than before, and lilac had ceased its crawl across his torso. But most importantly, not about to wake up any time soon. He downed a swig of rum.

“Uncomfortable you say? Well, as the ship's doctor, I will have to see what I can do about that…”

[nicsnort]

Trial by Fire (part 60)

A Nightcrawler/Fem!OC romance, drama, and mystery fanfic, with lots of Quicksilver thrown in for fun and even more drama.

Intro (with link to full Ao3 story) First Previous

Hours passed, and as expected, Pietro was having a hard time staying around. Bedelia knew it was worse than being stuck in his room. Here he could leave without real consequence, but he was forcing himself to stay...well, “stay.” It wouldn’t do to leave and have Kurt think he couldn’t do his job of guarding her. Around 1 pm, Bedelia stood up and stretched - her back cracking from sitting still for so long. “Shall we head to the cafe for some lunch?” Her stomach rumbled as she asked.

Pietro had finished thumbing through nearly all the various bits of information they had by eleven. By noon, he had read about half of them. By one, he was wondering how quickly they would get from research to action. He wasn’t the type to sit around and wait, after all. By now, he was glad for the break. 

“Yeah, sounds good. Hey, what was that list of names?” He had been reading over her shoulder as she did and noted a list that had an aged appearance. “Ellis Island immigration?” 

Kurt followed Bedelia’s lead and stood, stretching his body and his tail that was hidden. He had been trying to stay awake the last hour, but his eyes scanned over the pages of whatever Bedelia would finish reading, but his brain refused to soak in anything. “Something like that.” He yawned and grumbled. “They will hold the papers for you?” Kurt asked as he got it all a bit more organized. 

“Yes,” Bedelia answered Pietro’s question even as she continued to decipher the old fading text. “I need to figure out who this Nathaniel Essex is and who took over his doctor’s practice. Tracing lineage may be the only way to figure out who heads the company today. And y es, they will hold the papers and the table. We just need to tell them we will return.”

Pietro scoffed and paced. “Yeah, yeah...well, useful. Should become a historian, fuzzy, a sort of ‘beast and the beauty’ thing.”

Bedelia raised an eyebrow. “Please, I may be human but don’t call me a beast. I thought we were past that.” Her tone was joking, and as she did so, she took Kurt’s hand. There was no need for him to worry about the possibility of anything between her and Pietro. “Come on, let’s go get food and coffee.”

Despite himself, Pietro snorted at Bedelia’s jest. Kurt smiled and took her hand, pleased at the tentative peace the trio had. They went to the front and informed the person that they would return soon. While Pietro was clearly antsy in moving, he stayed either ahead or behind the pair, perhaps acting as a guard or perhaps just giving himself something to do -- or both. Kurt enjoyed the semi-privacy. 

When they got to the cafe/bookstore, Kurt opened the door for her. “What would you like? My treat, fraulein.”

“Though it can’t compare to yours, I am feeling like some hot chocolate to warm me up...and a chicken sandwich.” As they were ordering, Bedelia leaned up and whispered in Kurt’s ear. “We survived breakfast with your shirt intact. Let's hope for lunch as well.”

They sat down at one of the larger tables, enough room for three but still a bit cramped. While they ate, Bedelia began to plan for what they should research next. There were still names to go through but trying to find patients of the medical center would be good as well. Old documents did not have HIPPA concerns, but they were more likely to find newspaper articles mentioning the clinic. There were a few other locations that they had to look into as well. And of course, Bedelia had to find time to look deeper into the USB drive from Genosha. There was likely critical information on it - not that she would tell either of the groups that until she was ready.

“So this will be an everyday thing?” Pietro asked as he polished off his smoothie with a sharp, annoying sucking noise through the straw. 

“Could always leave her with me.” Kurt pointed out. “I don’t mind research.”

“Funny, didn’t think you knew how to read, circus freak,” Pietro insulted. Kurt rolled his eyes and ignored him. “I bet we could find a few old people who knew from their grandparents about some special clinic.” Pietro added, warming to the idea of a bit of leg work -- just for a couple of minutes. 

At his suggestion, Bedelia smiled at Pietro. “That’s a good idea. Maybe you could start compiling a list of names of people we can talk to. Find who lived in that area, then trace their descendants up through today. We can see about trying to find them to set up interviews.”

Give Pietro a task. That would keep him entertained for a while. And hopefully less antagonistic towards Kurt and her working together in the archives. When they finished lunch, the group headed back to the archives. More work. More research. Bedelia knew that there were other places to look for information. She had to find a way to get to the archives in DC and the London archives...not all the information she needed would be here.

Far too quickly, the archives were closed for the evening. Bedelia left word that she would be returning tomorrow to save her pulls. The front desk workers gave her a smile as she left though there was some curiosity in their eyes. She knew those workers from previous trips and had never come with people before. They were obviously wondering what was up now. Pietro was out following up on a few older folks that had relatives who lived near the clinic, so Kurt teleported them back to her house, and Bedelia felt a weight on her. Kurt would have to go soon. But that was for the best. Right now, she needed to trust both the X-men and the Brotherhood, Kurt and Pietro.

Kurt wasn’t sure how Bedelia did this sort of thing so often and so steadily. More than once, he had to turn and stretch. He followed after her with a smile, pleased that she knew her way around. When they went outside just far enough, he teleported her back to the house. He looked around. Pietro was still out, talking to people, no doubt. He smiled and squeezed Bedelia’s hand after turning off his image inducer. “Looks like we have a minute or two together.”

Bedelia was thrilled for this moment alone. She pulled him in for a hug before speaking. “Yes, a few moments alone together.” Bedelia basked in the feeling of his arms around her. The feeling of his tail around her waist.

“I’ll be alright, risidhe; you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve caused you enough stress already.” While the words were spoken to Kurt, they were also meant for Bedelia herself. She would be alright. He didn’t need to worry; she didn’t need to worry. There was enough stress over this already. They would text and call. It wasn’t like they couldn’t be in contact with each other.

“I trust you. And I know he will keep you safe...I just wish it wasn’t…” like this . A prisoner of sorts. He sighed softly into her hair as he held her tight. “I look forward to something more...normal one day, soon, kobold.” She could take care of herself, he reminded himself. And she could and would. 

To hear that Kurt trusted her meant the world to Bedelia. Her job revolved around trust and she knew that she would need lots of it from him. Not just with this but with being able to keep their relationship separate from any work on the X-men...and, of course, that she would not use their relationship for information on the X-men. “Soon,” she repeated softly. “Tomorrow, we can have lunch again; how does that sound? I know it was difficult for you to research all day.”

“Lunch is perfect.” He gave a sheepish grin, embarrassed that she had picked up on his discomfort so easily.

“Perhaps we could have it al-...”

“Well, I found a couple of people. Not many left, but they’re willing to talk.” Pietro was suddenly there; the sound of the door opening and closing was hardly noticeable. He was grinning, his eyes on Bedelia as if Kurt wasn’t wrapped around the journalist. “Got some interviews set up later this week.”

The moment was perfect, and naturally, Pietro had to ruin it. At least he ruined the moment with good news. It seemed he was useful for more than getting food quickly. Her grasp of Kurt tightened for a moment before she withdrew from his arms. “Thank you, Pietro,” she told him with a small smile.

Looking up at Kurt, she cupped his cheek and gave him a warm smile, but her eyes still showed the regret that they had to part. “I will see you tomorrow for lunch.”

Kurt smiled, pleased at the subtle little touches and squeezes she gave. He could practically hear how Pietro rolled his eyes. His smile was warm but with a touch of reluctance. “Tomorrow, fraulein.” He glanced at Pietro, and his eyes hardened. “Take care of her.” And with a great deal of reluctance, he stepped back and teleported away.

_______

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