#Peter Overton

[yourlocalabomination]

I am not immune to funny crackships.

+ Bonus

[stunnedstarker]

But Peter doesn’t count as a love interest, not really. He can’t. They’re– partners, or- something. Whatever it is, Peter looks up to him for guidance and advice, and Tony’s already such a sorry excuse for a leader, he can’t go throwing feelings into the mix. Which is why, for maybe the hundredth time, Tony tilts his head back, eyes the ceiling, and says, “FRIDAY, open new voice message.”

A/N: This work had sorta been sitting in my stash for a long while because I’m chronically too-anxious-to-post, but the event convinced me to go for it. These prompts are fun, and the fic def is too. :)

[tilos-tagebuch]

Der Krieg in der Ukraine als Brennpunkt geostrategischer Verschiebungen Der Krieg als Treiber der Verarmung in Deutschland Der Krieg als Zerstörer von Demokratie und EU Der Krieg als Chance für andere Staaten (z.B. Mali oder Niger) Ein Gespräch im Rahmen der Informations-Veranstaltungen von „der andere Blickwinkel“ mit Andrej Hunko - MdB die Linke, Andreas Peter - Magazin Hintergrund und Kontrafunk, Moderation: Patrik Baab - Autor.

Grafik: Screenshot 🎧 https://www.0815-info.news/Web_Links-Der-Krieg-in-der-Ukraine-als-Brennpunkt-geostrategischer-Verschiebungen-visit-11296.html

[queenlucythevaliant]

have you ever heard it? can you remember?

i. The gulls were crying. The gulls were always crying, in her memory. Whatever far off places Susan travelled after her family was gone, she always came back to the sea.

ii. The beach at Cair Paravel was the first place in Narnia where she really felt at home. She'd wade into the water with her eyes shut and feel she could be in England, on holiday with her mother and father. She'd open her eyes, and there would be waves cascading endlessly towards her.

iii. Before long, she knew every tidepool, every shoal.

iv. There weren't any bathing suits in Narnia, but no one seemed the least scandalized when Susan took to swimming in her underthings. There wasn't anything else for it, and she had to swim. She just had to.

v. She wasn't the only one of her siblings to love the sea, of course. Edmund loved sand and sailing and reading on the beach, and Peter liked to gaze out at the ocean and think. Lucy spent even more time at the beach than Susan did; she would rise before dawn and sit on the rocks as the sun rose over the waves. Susan was never sure whether her little sister was there to greet the sunrise, or to wait for Aslan.

vi. But for Susan, it was sense-memory. Water was water, wherever she was, and it always reminded her of home. She'd go out past the breakers, pull her limbs into a familiar breast stroke, and she'd feel like she was everywhere she loved all at once.

vii. Aslan came, and she was soaking wet to greet him. He laughed, in his lion-ish way, and didn't mind at all when Susan embraced him.

viii. Somehow, Aslan never got drenched from his journeys across the sea, but he was damp as though with mist. The scent of salt and brine clung to him, an overtone to that fierce, wild smell that was his own. Susan breathed in deep, those two scents she loved most in the world.

ix. In England, back at school, she'd go to the swimming pool and imagine she was in Narnia.

x. It wasn't the same, of course. The swimming pool at her school had no crying gulls, no smell of salt, no cascading waves. There was no Aslan coming towards her from the T-line at the other end of the pool. But if she submerged herself completely, Susan could imagine.

xi. She swam with her eyes shut too often, and her coach was growing irritated. It was affecting her times in practice, which would bleed over into competition if she wasn't careful. Somehow, Susan couldn't be bothered to care.

xii. One weekend, she and Lucy snuck away to visit the boys, and they all went down to the lake to reminisce about Narnia. When Lucy and Edmund spoke of their summer sailing the eastern sea, Susan was positively stiff with jealousy. Yet when they all dove into the water in the end, her heart pounded out a rhythm of home, home.

xiii. Six years after her last trip to Narnia, Susan hadn't touched a bow in four years. She still went swimming every week.

xiv. After the railway accident, she went to live by the sea. She missed her family, and she couldn't stand to live in the places they had lived. She wanted to forget.

xv. Susan had missed the salt air. She had missed the waves. There was a feeling of home by the sea that she couldn't quite place; a soothing echo of long ago dreams and fairytales.

xvi. But there were the gulls crying, "Can you remember?" and it broke her heart all over again.

[lanormie]

blipped - mcu crossover au (pt. 4)

what if? the event of Thanos snap happened in the BNHA universe? you're forced to navigate the aftermath of The Blip, where half of the population get thrown back into existence after disappearing for five years. pairing: pro-hero!Shouto x f!pro-hero!reader (ft. slight katsuki x reader) read on AO3 previous part - next part

For what seemed like hours, you watched Katsuki go through all five stages of grief through his texts. He would go through them in the utmost chaotic order, barely grazing Acceptance before flipping right back to Denial. Anger was the only constant, though maybe it was just Katsuki being Katsuki. 

A casual ‘happy birthday baby’ would go right into him lashing out with fuck-yous and other expletives, then take a dizzying sharp turn with him apologizing profusely and more sweetly than you’d ever expected Katsuki to be. The next minute he would monologue for pages about the most random thing then call you rude for not texting back.

It was after about two years and a half when his laments slowly started to peter out. Acceptance took the driver seat, his spread out texts took on a melancholic overtone instead of pure manic. 

Then it stopped altogether after four years.

* * * * *

You find Shouto in the rear courtyard methodically hanging up freshly laundered clothings and beddings on the clotheslines.

You have stopped questioning a long time ago why the wealthy family of six (plus all the strays they keep taking in, like you for example) doesn’t own a dryer, and instead have come to love the nostalgic scent of line dried clothes.

Thin sheets flutter in the breeze, catching the harsh afternoon sunlight in their undulation. Birdsong twirls and mixes with the sound of wind rustling through crisp autumn leaves in a wordless call and response. Everything is so peaceful, so quiet. Too quiet. It vehemently contradicts the storm brewing inside of you.

You think it’s trying to say that the world would march on regardless of what’s happening to little insignificant ol’ you .

In fact, it did.

“You’ve been in there for a while. Are you alright?”

Shouto peeks out from behind a blanket. Whether he means in your room or in your head, since you look like you’ve been glued to the doorway, you don’t know.

You step into a pair of outdoor slippers set neatly on one side of the porch and make your way towards one of the laundry baskets.

“Sorry I didn’t come back out. I was reading Katsuki’s texts. There were… a lot of them.”

Falling back into the song and dance of pinning clothes onto the sturdy cotton ropes is easy. You’ve helped out Shouto with laundry duty many times before, knowing exactly how to space things out so the drying is optimal.

The lingering scent of detergent nudges its way into your hair and weaves into the warm sunlight around you like a hug.

“He was the one who gave me your phone, with some choice words about showing up here if I didn’t give it to you.”

“At least that part of him hasn’t changed.” You sigh. “He said he’d kept the stuff from my apartment at the agency and he wanted me to come by tomorrow to talk to him.”

“That is blackmail.” Shouto frowns. “You don’t have to go, we can replace all of your stuff.” 

“I don’t know what is worse, Sho. Facing him or sitting here dwelling on it.” You smooth out the damp pillowcase for the dozenth time. “He was…hurt. Badly. It might not have been my fault, but I was the cause nonetheless.” 

Shouto reaches over and gently stops your hands from anxiously fussing with the fabric.

“That doesn’t mean you’re not hurting too.”

He tosses half of the final sheet over the rope and hands you one end, and you both slowly walk backwards to spread the sheet out.

Once both ends are secured with wooden clothespins, Shouto collects all the baskets and sneakily flips one upside down over your head. Your surprised laugh is muffled slightly in the confines of the rattan weaves, and he lets a soft smile dance across his statue-like features.

“If you decide to go, I’ll walk back with you.” 

“Slacker. You're just using me to get out of work.” You lift the basket from your head and start heading for the porch.

He simply shrugs. “It’s not slacking if you’re not on the payroll.”

* * * * *

The open front gate of the agency threatens to swallow you whole as you stand stock still in front of it. Normally you would have to scan yourself in, but with the number of returning employees that are no longer part of the system, they have temporarily switched to manual check-in in the main lobby, leaving the gate wide open.

Yet you can’t seem to bring yourself to walk through it. As if it’s a threshold of something that would trap you in and you would not be able to back out.

Your grip on the red metal hand truck tightens. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe you’re still not ready to see him.

Perhaps you can head straight to the storage, grab your most important stuff then run right back out, and Katsuki will be none the wiser. 

So you push yourself forward, greet the receptionist with the best smile you can muster, quickly grab the code for your container and take the stairs down to the storage floor, the hand truck trailing in the air behind you.

The storage is basically an underground warehouse that contains about a hundred metal pods, all under temperature and humidity control. You are honestly glad that Katsuki had brought your belongings here, since finding them under 5 years of dust and spiderwebs wouldn’t exactly be thrilling.

The heavy door echoes loudly in the otherwise eerily quiet warehouse, making you wince. Reaching for your phone to double check the pod number, you see a text from Shouto.

‘Please let me know when you’re done, Sero is recounting 5 years of pop culture and he’s going to let a Solo Leveling spoiler slip, I just know it.’

You shoot back a quick ‘lol will do’ with a small smile on your face, your anxiety subsiding a smidge. You make your way to the far left corner where your container sits and plug in your code. The roll up door quietly opens, the light automatically turns on and you hear something stir.

Your couch is sitting neatly against the side wall, and the person laying on it just got woken up by your entrance.

And their squinting crimson eyes widen the moment they register that it’s you.

“How long have you been in here for?” You question, internally lamenting your ruined plans.

“I got an overnight patrol.” Katsuki sits up and roughly rubs the grogginess out of his eyes. His voice is significantly deeper with sleep, its familiarity tugging hard at you.

You look away and curtly hum in reply. Setting the hand truck by the door, you step into the pod and start rooting through the pile of boxes strewn all across the room. You can feel his eyes follow you closely, until he eventually clears his throat.

“What um, what are you looking for?” 

You don’t think you’ve ever heard Katsuki sound so unsure. Maybe he’s as unprepared for this ‘conversation’ as you are.

“My clothes.” You keep your eyes on the boxes in front of you, still unable to find it in you to look at him.

“Here.” He stands up and reaches for a few boxes sitting on top of your dresser. But before he can walk over with them, you lift them out of his hands with your quirk and float them over to the hand truck.

“Thanks.” You mutter, still digging through boxes with no real purpose. 

“Right.” He nods, then pats another box next to him. “This one too, if you wanna– you know,” He gestures towards the red metal contraption that’s slowly disappearing behind the growing tower of boxes.

“Sure.” Another one-worded reply.

Katsuki leans back against the dresser and watches in a mix of disbelief and awe as you pull out your cherry blossom snow globe from a box, shake it up and watch the petals dance. You look exactly the same as 5 years ago, but of course you do.

It’s absolutely surreal seeing you right in front of him after mourning you for so long, and he finds himself lost for words.

He hated the way you looked so broken when he left for the emergency the other day, and he didn’t want to leave things like that between you two, so he insisted on seeing you today to talk it out. He also just…wanted to see you again.

But now that you’re here, he doesn’t know where to even begin.

“I’m sorry.” is all he can muster.

“For what exactly?” You finally, finally look at him.

He doesn’t have an answer. And you seem to already know so.

“That’s the thing, Katsuki.” You try your darndest to keep your voice from breaking. “It hurts so damn much for me to look at you right now but at the end of the fucking day it’s not even your fault.”

A rolling wave of pain, guilt and longing crashes against the shore of Katsuki’s eyes, but he remains quiet.

“I can’t expect you to wait for me forever.” You weakly shake your head. “Yet I feel betrayed all the same. Utterly, pathetically betrayed.” You shove the snow globe back into its box and start pinching the bridge of your nose as incoming tears burn your nostrils.

Katsuki pushes off the dresser and makes his way over to you.

“I don’t give a fuck if it’s my fault or not.” He stops in front of you. “Go on, yell at me. It’ll make you feel better.” He grabs your wrist and holds it to his throat. “Punch me. Hell, you can float me to the top floor and fucking drop me, I can take it. Please.” He searches your eyes. “I know you’re hurting, so hurt me back.”

You wriggle your wrist until he lets go.

“I think I’ve already hurt you enough.”

Your tears are free falling now. Heavy globs of salty liquid trail down your cheeks, still puffy from the past days. Without thinking, Katsuki reaches up to wipe them, only for you to hastily step back.

“Hawks offered me a job, and I’m taking it. Don’t expect me back.” You practically run to the hand truck to strap the boxes in. “I’ll ask Shouto to get the rest of my stuff when I find a place. You and I should,” you sputter, hardly able to breathe properly. “We should stay far, far away from each other, or it’d be difficult for both of us.” You take a deep inhale. “And for your fiancé.”

You don’t bother to hide the bitterness behind that word. You see him open his mouth to plead your name but you cut him off.

“Goodbye, Katsuki.”

And with that, you turn away, the metal dolly dragging sluggishly behind you as you walk out of this agency for the last time.

[paingoes]

Crash Out - Sabina

hi. this one is pretty dark. heres some backstory on paris’s parents. it’s about forced marriage and offscreen/implied forced pregnancy and rape. nothing sexually explicit is depicted, just implied. heavy overtones of domestic violence as well.

(Content: abduction, lady whump, forced marriage, physical abuse, familial whump, royal whump, intimate whumper, defiant whumpee, domestic violence, starvation, referenced child endangerment, implied noncon, suicide, poisoning, death, unhappy ending)

“Oh shit,” Paris sat up in the passenger seat, pushing the sunglasses up off his eyes. “I’ve been here before.”

The city below glowed in the early morning light, pale and crystalline. The glass spires jutted out from the soft grass. It looked cold, somehow. Twinkling. Lorelai had never seen a town look so fragile. She’d have never thought to describe one that way if she had not seen it herself.

“What?” she asked. “On conquest?”

“No,” he answered huffily, as if this were an unreasonable assumption to make.

“With my mom,” he explained, looking off into the middle distance. “Her family’s from here.”

Lorelai slid out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her. He followed her out, down the smooth stones that made up the pathway into the city center. 

It was a pleasantly cool day, but the architecture made the whole scene feel wintery. She imagined that she was entering into a kingdom of ice. She remembered Thales, how cold it had been on the night of the ball. As she slipped her hand into Paris’s own — the non-dominant, the less injured one — she felt the same chill. It wasn’t all unpleasant. There was a beauty to it.

 All it had to be was a supply run. The imperial currency was standardized, good enough for all the planets in its territory. The further out they got, the more open the locals became to haggling. She leaned forward against the counter of the fruit stand. The vendors liked her. Everyone always liked her.

After a while of staring off into the hillside, Paris propped one arm against the barrel.

“You know where I can find a Selene Lucia?” he asked them.

They were nice enough to draw up a map, the pencil carving a path up into the hills. No exact address, but Paris swore he’d know it when he saw it. By her estimate, if he’d come with his mother, he hadn’t been here since he was seven years old.

The pale buildings petered out on the climb, the houses became sparser, more residential. In time, he really did abandon the map, working purely off the distant memory. 

The trees shaded the sidewalk. She traced her fingers along the black fence that divided the path from the lawns, listening to the pleasant vibration it made in her fingers. The leaf canopy cleared for a split second as they passed another gate.

“This is it,” Paris said abruptly. He stared at it dumbfounded.

“You think she still lives here?” Lorelai asked, frowning.

“Don’t see why not.”

Neither of them moved.

“Are you coming?” he asked. It seemed like he already knew the answer.

“…If you want,” she offered. He shook his head. The one and only time she had met his father, it hadn’t gone well. She didn’t want much to do with his family.

“Call me if you need help,” he said as he pushed the gate open.

“You too.” She nodded, heading back down the hill. The sun was higher in the sky now. The city reflected it straight into her eyes, nearly blinding her.

~

“Oh, god,” Selene Lucia said as soon as she opened the door.

“Hi,” Paris said, pleasantly surprised to even be recognized. 

She pulled him into the house, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Are you being followed?” she asked.

“Uh, no, ma’am. Don’t think so. Not now.” Paris ran one hand through his hair.

“What are you doing here?” She narrowed her eyes. Her face had creased from years of that same, skeptical motion.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “I was in the area. I just wanted to stop by.”

He needed to do laundry, too. He decided not to mention that now.

Selene sighed. There was some relief there, he could tell. Maybe she thought he’d come asking for more. 

He looked around at the house. It was smaller than he remembered, but still nice. Light filtered in through the sheer curtains.

She led him into the violet-colored kitchen, the dark sharpness of him clashing against the scene. She’d been working when he knocked — and this she resumed. He leaned back against the counter, rocking gently against it, watching the knife cut thin lines through the stalks.

“Do you need me to do anything?” he offered. She shook her head. He shrugged, looking back down at the linoleum.

“You’re wanted in five hundred different territories,” she said.

Five hundred sixty one.

“Yeah,” he said, not looking up. For some reason, he hadn’t thought that’d be her first reaction. 

“It’s your father’s fault, you know. Leaving everything in the air like that. It wouldn’t have happened if he-“

“-if he believed he could die?” Paris finished. He’d had the same thought, a million times over.

She made a soft and exasperated sound — and said nothing else.

“You didn’t…call or anything. After he died,” he said tentatively. 

“We had no contact,” Selene said.

“My phone number is public record,” Paris said, not hiding the hurt in his voice. He leaned forward, his arms crossed over his midsection. She didn’t turn to look at him.

“I don’t know why you’d expect that from me,” she said.

“I didn’t.” He shrugged. “I just…I don’t know. It would’ve been nice.”

“Would it?” She asked, turning now.

He frowned. What was he supposed to say to that? He hadn’t even realized he wanted it until he entered the house. It hadn’t occurred to him at all.

“I don’t know why you didn’t,” he said. “You didn’t call me when she died, either. You didn’t reach out at all.”

She seemed to lose her resolve then. She signed, nodding her head in the direction of the kitchen table. He sat down where indicated. The whorls of wood grain stared back up at him. Their shapes had mesmerized him when he was little.

“Is ginger tea fine?” She asked as she lit the last of the stove’s burners.

“Yes, ma’am.” He agreed, though he knew he wouldn’t drink it. He tried not to drink from any open containers — and he watched her hands carefully as she prepared it, wary of pills, wary of poison.

She placed two pale yellow teacups down on the table. Powder blue chinoiserie decorated the edges of the saucers. Steam floated delicately off the golden surface of the water.

“Do you know how your parents met, Paris?”

~

On a morning wet with dewdrops, Selene and Sabina tread happily through the underbrush. The sky was pale and overcast, but the sweaters their mother had knit for them kept them warm and comfortable. Sabina picked at the roses and the sweet briar that bloomed out of the damp earth. Twin blonde braids fell down her back. They were stained with mud at the edges when she’d bent down to touch the grass.

Selene watched the skies with a kind of dormant worry. There was something she was always waiting for, but never really expected. But it had come anyway. It had landed last month.

There was a place the land crested, the point at which the forest gave way to the clear valley. When they were little, they had dragged their sleds out to it on snowy days and laughed as they flew down the hill.

With the easy familiarity of someone who had walked this path since birth, Sabina moved to the top of the ridge. She was startled to find that in the valley below, a large ship was parked. It was more expensive than anything she’d ever laid her eyes on.

All dressed in scarlet against the verdant grass, a man stood tall and impervious. For a split second, his eyes fell on her. And that was all he needed.

~

The Emperor arrived in fine robes, in the middle of town, all his footmen swarming in droves about him. His color was pale, in a way that is supernatural. Not at all sickly. He was in good health. 

In the market, Selene crowded closer to the exit, while all Sabina seemed to want to do was stand her ground. The Emperor fixed his eyes on her, matching her boldness. His hands didn’t shake the way hers did, but the length of her was all resistance.

He liked it.

“Briar Rose,” he said, sing-song, “Was that you in the canyon the other day?”

Unbelievably, his hand moved to trace her braids. She smacked it away, teeth bared, furious.

“Go fuck yourself,” Sabina hissed. 

All she got in return was a chuckle. It was the sound birds made when the bullet missed their heart.

~

The knock came in the middle of the night, with only Selene up to answer it. She peeked through the curtain, and immediately drew far back, down onto the carpet.

“Daddy,” she cried, in a pitch she had not reached since childhood. 

He came instantly and sent her back to her room, far from the thin door that separated their house from nightfall. But her room was right by the entrance. She pressed her ear to the ground to listen.

“Would you accept a dowry?” came the low drawl of the Emperor. “For the youngest. The blonde one.”

“She is my daughter,” Father’s voice came out wrathful in return. “You can take the rest of the world - god knows you already have - but you will not touch her.”

“I would take good care of all of you,” he promised. “I don’t mean to distress her. I think it’d be best if we were all on the same page about this.”

Milky, sick. Selene cried until she couldn’t breathe, then cried more. Sabina slept in the next room, fast asleep, unknowing.

~

Roses. There were thousands of them, clogging up the yard, on each surface of the porch. Roses, roses, roses. The scent was overpowering. It was like something out of a nightmare. When she moved to open the door that morning, Sabina met a stiff resistance. That was thick the petals were stacked.

They came with a note. Father snatched it away before Selene could read, but Sabina had seen it.

She heard her sister crying down the hall. She watched it through a crack in the door.

“I don’t wanna go,” Sabina sobbed, “Mama, I don’t wanna go, please.”

She hid her face in the fabric of their mother’s dress, bent over on the floor, inconsolable. Already flinching away from any touch.

~

“You will come quietly,” the Emperor said, “Or you will come in chains. It makes no difference to me.”

Sabina swung at him as if she could knock his head straight off. It took five men to drag her off in those glistening, golden chains. She was soaked with sweat and tears, an awful slickness, a thrashing.

~

Castle Thales was dark in wintertime — and to her starved body, each room was freezing. Each door had a lock — and she had no keys.

He left her in her own bedroom the first nights. Locked up there, hands bound, until she was ready to *calm down*. He’d thought it would take days. It ended up taking months. It was only when the food stopped that she became handleable.

Sabina glared daggers at him. Her hands shook too much to hold utensils. He thought it was from fear, but it was all just fury. 

She dreamt of killing him nightly.

~

“It won’t be as bad as you think,” Constantine promised her as he lifted the veil. “It does not have to be this hard. You make it this way.”

She glared and glared and glared and flinched as his hand traced her bare arm. She was too pale now. She’d been locked away from the sun for too long. Now her skin was as white as the ripped wedding dress.

“You’re a queen now,” he said, like it comes as an assurance. She wanted nothing more than to beat him until he stopped breathing.

“You could have all you ever dreamed of,” he said. He doesn’t know her at all. Tears formed in her eyes before she could stop them. He moved to wipe them away for her. She bit into his hand as hard as she could and grinned when she drew blood. It was the first time she’d smiled in months.

~

She was slapped violently for that, which surprised her, because up to this point he had seemed so hesitant to hit her in the face. He threatened to yank all her teeth out, replace them with dentures, and take them out whenever he decided she’d lost the privilege. 

This seemed unattractive, which gave her reason to doubt the threat. But she could not call his bluff, so she stopped biting.

One of his men whipped her back until it was bloody. She hated it. She reveled in it. She was making him so mad. 

She cried as the maids worked to cover the bruises, the skin still tender even at the soft touch of the brushes. The crying wet her face. They had to keep restarting.

There was no need to cover up the whip marks. The corset did it all on its own — coarse, scratching, irritating the unhealed skin. The maids undid her long braids. Her hair reached all the way to her waist now. 

She reached out for the scissors on the vanity and cut it all off.

~

He was mad he couldn’t pull her hair anymore. He could bunch it up by her scalp, but it wasn’t the same. His was a cold anger. He probably liked to think of it as controlled. He loved to think of himself as controlled.

“It looks good on you, darling,” Nezu said over dinner, just to piss them both off. Sabina made a gagging sound in the back of her throat. She reached for the unused knife by her right napkin and wields it menacingly. As menacingly as she could manage, which turned out to be a lot.

Nezu looked excited at the prospect of getting stabbed by her. In disgust, she put the knife back down.

“Picked a good one,” he said approvingly, just as soon as the Emperor rejoined them.

~

“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” Sabina held the saber in both hands. It was decorative, plucked straight off the wall, but it still held an edge. It could still kill. She meant to. She really meant to.

“You are unwell,” Constantine said. “You don’t know what’s good for you. You don’t know when to quit.”

She lunged at him. He gasped and darted away. She’d only missed him by an inch. She howled in frustration.

If they’d trained her, she’d have been a brilliant fighter. But they hadn’t. And she wasn’t. She left all of herself exposed for the next lunge — and he downed her.

“I’ll kill you,” she swore, with his hands wrapped tight around her throat. “If it’s the last thing I do, I swear, I’ll kill you”

“Sabina,” he cooed sadly. “Rose. All I want is for you to be happy.”

“I want you to fucking die,” she sobbed. 

It was a final hurrah, one last gift to herself. When the sobbing died down, there was nothing else left.

~

The baby came a year later. He’d stopped hitting her while she was pregnant. She did not know if this was temperance, or if it was merely because she’d stopped fighting. They’d both been reluctant to resume the old routine. The baby changed things. It was soft, pliant. So easy to break. Sabina cried when she held it for the first time, cried every day after that. It had kneaded at her chest, half-blind, sleepy. It didn’t know anything.

“Constantine?” She said softly as he swapped out the bandages. The Emperor up in surprise. She so rarely used his name. 

But when he did look, she didn’t know what else to say. The terror must have shown through her. She felt all her body was wretched, torn apart, aching. She couldn’t take anymore.

He seemed to recognize this. He never hit her again.

~

Years passed before she saw her family again. When her son is five years old, she brought him back to that porcelain city, back to her parent’s old house. Both of them dead now, the million wars ravaging even when she cannot see them. She didn’t get to go to the funeral.

She’s stopped crying so much at this point. There’s a dignity to her, one she’s managed to scrape up off the floor of the palace. She was the tough one. She always had been.

She sat up in her sister’s kitchen, drinking ginger tea, manicured nails tapping softly at the porcelain cup. Selene sat across from her, pale, as if she’d seen a ghost.

~

They wrote letters after that. Constantine had agreed to it, perhaps sensing that his wife had no bone for conspiracy left within her. She was locked into it now, more than she ever had been before.

There’s a desperation to her script. God, she was so unhappy. Selene wrote back just as soon as the mail was delivered, sent it out the same day. It was all she could do. It never seemed to amount to much.

Sabina hinted at it. Selene swore she knew the end.

There’s a flower that grows in the garden of Castle Thales. It is indistinguishable from the heritage rose, but a single blossom could kill when ingested.

When they did the autopsy, they found fifteen of them in her stomach.

~

Paris stared back at her from across the table, totally frozen. The teacup sat in front of him cold and untouched.

“She died of sepsis,” he said slowly, emphasizing each word.

Selene looked at him with such pity that he thought he might be sick.

“She died of sepsis,” he repeated, “Slowly. In the hospital. She didn’t commit suicide.”

“Paris,” she said softly, “It took a week, didn’t it? Did you see her before the end?”

He propped one elbow up on the table and hid his face in his hand.

“I was at school,” he muttered. “She was already comatose when I got there. She died the next day.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. 

And of course she said it now, thirteen years later. She wasn’t there when it happened. Nobody was. There was absolutely nothing.

“You understand, surely,” Selene said, “why I was not so devastated to hear of your father’s death.”

There was still something so haunted in her look. He couldn’t bring himself to look up from the wood whorls. He didn’t even hear her standing up. He flinched at the sudden brush at his hand, gentle as it was. She tilted his face up as if to study him.

“God, you look just like her.”

The doorbell rang. Selene startled.

“I thought you said you were alone.”

“She’s my friend.” He stood up quickly. “She’s the only one.”

He opened the door. Lorelai stood cheerily on the step.

“Look what I got.” She grinned. She held up her hand at his eye level and let the necklace dangle from its chain. At its end, the rose charm shined in the dying light.

~

On an air mattress in the cleared out living room, they laid in a tangle of limbs. Lorelai’s breath was shallow, light, pleasantly exhausted. Paris traced the flesh of her breastbone, intent, almost like he was trying to find something. He had told her the whole story, in hushed tones, in the dark.

“I don’t want to get married,” he said quietly, at the end.

Lorelai laughed under her breath.

“Paris, we were never gonna get married.”

“Yeah, I know. I just…” he trailed off. “l don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

Oh, what a question. He shrugged.

“…I took you away from your family,” he said it hushed, as if it was confessional.

“Is that how you remember it?” She laughed again. “That’s not what it was. I wanted to go. I asked you first.”

“I just don’t want to hurt you,” he said, finishing the thought. What either of them thought when they first started out hardly mattered anymore. It seemed so far away now.

“Then don’t,” she said.

~

They left before the sun rose, trudging the long way, past all the grave sites.

“I guess it’s weird for me to keep this now,” Lorelai said as she studied the pendant.

“It’s just a necklace,” Paris shrugged. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

But they both knew it would always hold that weight.

The grass was frosty as if it had snowed. There was so much mist in the air. It was cool and refreshing. It was the perfect morning for it. 

They passed by another memorial site. Victims of the war that Empire was waged. An orator could list them all day and never run out of names. Paris paused to watch as Lorelai moved up the knoll and placed the pendant by the base of the stone. Not for Empire. Not for Rose. For Sabina.

~~~

tags:

@catnykit @snakebites-and-ink @scoundrelwithboba @whatwhump

@pumpkin-spice-whump @deluxewhump @fuckass1000 @fuckcapitalismasshole @defire

@micechomper @writereleaserepeat @aloafofbreadwithanxiety @whump-queen

[holliday-is-holligay]

OKAY LORD OF THE RINGS HOT TAKE - I WISH THE MOVIES KEPT THE BARROW DOWNS

Art by: QuintusCassius

You don't have to keep Bombadil, they can find their own way out for the sake of pacing, but when I think about just how much this scene actually ties into the rest of the story's themes it becomes more and more of a shame it didn't make it in.

It introduces the idea of a land falling to shadow and establishes, in the most show-don't-tell way so far how intense the threat to the landscape itself the evil they're facing could be. This is a story about a war on the land as well, after all, and this land LOST. And it's NOT a far off land from their own home. Such shadowy devastation and evil and rot and despair is so close to their own home.

We learn these ruins belong to Arnor, an even greater kingdom of men than Gondor. Which, hey, is gonna become super relevant multiple times across the story - like when Boromir is pleading for help with Gondor's plight or talking about its strength, or when we see Minas Tirith under siege. And we KNOW that kingdoms of Men greater than it have fallen.

It establishes The Witch King really early and subtly. This doesn't even need to be mentioned at this point. It can be done the same way it's done in the movies RE Weathertop when Gandalf is explaining who The Witch King is. He can just explain it further. "He stabbed Frodo on Weathertop, and he laid low the Kingdom of Arnor." Flashback to Weathertop and the Barrowdowns.

This also makes it more significant, like it was in the books, that The Witch King is the one leading this army. He's destroyed a kingdom of men once before, he'll fucken do it again.

It makes Aragorn's defeat of him on Weathertop WAY more impactful! One of the Dunedain driving off The Witch King at the site of one of Arnor's greatest losses to The Witch King is a symbolic cue that though these are dark times, these are changing times.

And, of course, it sets up Merry's sword. Merry doesn't just have some random sword in the books. He takes a sword from the Barrow Downs, a sword of the Dunedain, and carries it through the ENTIRE STORY and that's what he stabs The Witch King with on Pelenor Fields. The books even have a paragraph briefly eulogising the sword and talking about the pride of the swordsmith who would never know that they made the weapon who undid their greatest enemy, wielded by a hobbit.

Like... Yeah, as a filmmaker and writer myself I FULLY understand that pacing is a vital thing to keep hold of. And The Fellowship of The Ring is perfectly paced. And deciding what to keep and what to cut is just... a nightmare that Peter Jackson and his team did better than anyone had any right to do.

But I think The Barrow Downs should honestly be talked about similarly to how we talk about The Scouring of The Shire. Its effects and thematic overtones are incredibly far reaching and important to the story and it's definitely one of those "it's a real shame it got cut" moments but I DO understand why they cut it.

[bitterkarella]

JK Rowling: hello children Rowling: i want you to sssay hello to Rowling: graham lineham Lineham: [wearing foil hat] free masons run the country Rowling: he'sss got sssome great ideasss you should hear

Poe: joanne you don't need to bring him here Poe: like, you really don't Rowling: he hass thingsss to sssay and you're ALL going to hear them Poe: this is really kind of off topic for us here Rowling: EVERYONE will hear them

Rowling: ssssee, yearsss ago i disssmisssed graham lineham'ssss babble as the bad opticsss ravingsss of a lunatic Rowling: but now that the overton window hass sshifted Rowling: i'm proud to sssay thessse bad opticsss ravingsss are quite good actually!

Rowling: go ahead, graham, tell them what you told me Lineham: trans people produce no great films, no music, no art Lineham: they're incapable of doing this basic human thing because they're subhuman Lineham: untermensch, if you will Rowling: isssn't he great?

Lineham: trans books are always universally panned because of their incoherence Billy Martin: Hailey Piper: Eve Harms: Gretchen Felker-Martin: Joe Koch: M. Lopes da Silva: Arden Powell: Lor Gislason: Julya Oui: LC von Hessen: GE Woods: Michelle Belanger: Rain Corbyn: SA Chant:

FT Catulla: Viktor Athelstan: Meagan Hotz: Ziggy Schutz: Rose Sable: WN Derring-Judith: Charles Maria Tor: Devaki Devay: Dayna Ingram: Ori Jay: Ai Burton: Gabriel Valentine: Cosmin-Mihai Birsan: Jei D Marcade: Rhiannon Rasmussen: Max Turner: Taylor J Pitts: Vincent Endwell:

Bri Crozier: Theo Hendrie: Derek des Anges: Briar Ripley Page: Winter Holmes: gaast: Maya Deane: Charles-Elizabeth Boyles: Layne van Rensburg: Amanda M Blake: May Leitz: Alison Rumfitt: Rivers Solomon: Lillian Boyd: Torrey Peters: Taliesin Neith: Daniel M. Lavery: Joss Lake: Aubrey Wood: Jonah Wu:

Daphne du Maurier: Patricia Highsmith: Franz Kafka: Kafka: wait Kafka: why did the camera pan to me

Barker: oh you know why haha Poe: clive Kafka: why Kafka: [hugging blåhaj] i don't know what you mean

[mariacallous]

do you have any book recommendations on Eastern European history / Ukrainian history and/or current events?

I would also add:

The Language of War by Oleksandy Mykhed

Vatnik Soup: The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation by Pekka Kallioniemi

The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes

I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv by Ilia Ponomarenko

Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence by Yaroslav Trofimov

Russia's War by Jade McGlynn

Nothing is True but Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev (as well as his This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality and How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler)

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder (as well as his Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin)

Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism by Charles Clover

Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age by Robert Kaplan

Mud Sweeter than Honey: Voices of Communist Albania by Margo Rejmer

The War Came To Us: Life and Death in Ukraine by Christopher Miller

Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability by Michael Kimmage

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum (as well as her Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe)

From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe by John Connelly

Not really Eastern Europe (more Central Asia) but Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan by Erika Fatland

Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land by Jacob Mikanowski

Children of the Night: The Strange and Epic Story of Modern Romania by Paul Kenyon

Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoly Kuznetsov

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

[popculturebuffet]

X-Month: X-Men Blue Origins: Kurt has Two Mommies (Patreon Review for Brotoman.EXE)

Hello all you happy muties and welcome back to Mutant Month! And it wouldn't be mutant month without a look at the Krakoan age, the previous era of x-men that sadly just ended.

So quick recap: Krakoa was a living island the x-men lived on for the past 5 years, an island nation that offered them peace, security and immortality. This sadly could not last as status quos in comics do not last nor do dreams: So late last year at the third hellfire gala all hell broke loose: Orchis, a secret shadowy enclave of humans being manipulated by robots for their own ends, launched an attack, poinsing the life saving drugs krakoa had used to barter and killing everyone present at the gala who wasn't a mutant to frame them, while then tricking charles xavier into making everyone walk into a portal.. that lead to some limbo dimension instead.

The X-Men and associates resisted thanks to something Xavier had taught and passed on, something Al Ewing had came up with in his run on New Avengers and brought with him when he came onto the x-side of things, the red triangle protocol. Basically you focus on a red triangle to block out a psycic attack. SO the x-men and allies they presumibly taught it too resisted and went underground.

So the x-men were scattered to the winds leading to a bunch of mini series leading into the end of the era. And one of those is one of the most delightfully batshit and brilliant ideas of the krakoan age: The Uncanny Spider-Man. Ladies, gentlemen, and my nonbinary folks... Kurt Wagner.. was spider-man.

Uncanny Spider-Man was the third and final part of Simon Spurrier's trilogy of x-men books. Spurrier had previously worked on the awesome and underated X-Men Legacy, following Xavier's son legoin in the wake of Charles death and fleshing out Legion tremendously.

So unsuprisingly while Kurt was the main character of this , trying to find a spirtual way forward for a mutantkind that had put a stopper in death, Legion was the deutragonist, following kurt every step of the way and helping him found their own religion/way of life, the legion of x. This eventually collapsed thanks to david having to take his girlfriend and leave reality to escape a witch after his soul, while Orchis made Kurt into a monster man that killed people and not taking that well being who he is, Kurt vanished.

So he became a spider-man. It was with Peter's full approval, as Kurt needed to hide and like any good spider-man Kurt swung around, had fun and dodged his problems till they came down on him.

And during all of this, dodging his angst, dating silver sable, and other stuff.. Mystique came back, having escaped the gala but in a barely coherent state. And it's here our story picks up.

X-Men Origins Blue is a one shot taking place during uncanny, with the comic itself pointing out exactly where. And as the title suggests it gives the REAL origin of nightcrawler... or rather his birth.

Nightcrawlers origins are a complex topic I don't know enough about, but Chris Claremont's intent for them was made clear the second he brought Mystique over from Ms Marvel to the X-Men comics with days of future past: Kurt noted they looked similar.. and she brushed it off.

Then.. this wasn't adressed for some time until his excalibur run from what I could dig up (and parts I hadn't gotten to) where it was finally confirmed. So far so simple. Thing was Chris.. intended for Mystique to be not his mom.. but his biological father.

See Chris was progressive for his time when it came to queer characters, having a LOT of friendships that had sapphic overtones. It never felt like he was intentionally queerbaiting, merely that he coudln't do anything because JIm Shooter was gay. And while some you could debate he made his otp obvius: Mystique, mistress of shapeshifting and her lover, friend and confidant Destiny, a precog. He did everything he could to make it clear these two were a thing.

So it's not a suprise his plan was to have Myistque shapeshift into a man to impregnante Irene. Granted the time scale given her age dosen't completely add up, but honestly the idea is so audacious and brilliant i'm willing to ignore it. People saying "Well irene was too old" clearly forget this universe is fucking weird and that, as many on reddit pointed out, they knew sinister.

It's even less suprising Edittorial said fuck no because gays, and tried to give Mystique a case of the not gays forgetting.. she's bisexual. Even Claremont had that in mind as when Destiny was dying she left Mystique in forge's care having a vision of them together. He also wrote Kitty Pryde as bisexual and that later became canon.

So time passed and as far as I can tell there wasn't a clear winner for Kurt's dad. So enter Chuck Austen. For those of you who are bilsfully unaware of this guys existance and thus didn't want to reflexively go numb with terror at the mention of his name, a primer: Chuck Austen wrote Uncanny X-Men during Grant Morrison's legendary run on New X-Men and proceded to write the worst run in x-men history. That's not hyperbole and having recently read most of the 90's x-men comics to filll that gap in my history, it's not a high bar to clear.

Austen's run includes: A plot by the anti mutant church of humanity to install nightcrawler as pope then fake the rapture, mutanting Juggernaughts hetero lifemate black tom into a plant monster they only stopped by having leftover member from the previous run stacey x use her phermone powers to get him horned up, angel getting healing blood and being made a literal angel, angel's healing blood making him immune to aids which is brought up for no specific reason, Angel having aerial sex with a minor right above her poor mother, and Havok's relationship with Polaris being broken up because a nurse's psycic son got the two together while Havok was in a coma.

I.. I wish i'd made all of this up but no. He also killed off two beloved gen x characters, Skin and Synch, for no adquate reason. This isn't as wacky as the rest of that, but it's still a noticable fuck you. How he got away with this while Grant Morrison was chased out I don't know. I just.. don't know

SO you may be asking/dreading "What.. what else did he do to kurt?" and the answer? He took a mutnat famed for being one of the most kind , loving beings in the marvel universe who just so happened to look like a demon.. and made him half demon. He introduced Kurt's father Azazel who you may remember from First Class where he wasn't a demon nor kurt's dad. Both improvments. Yeah so we got a whole story I haven't forced myself ot read yet that spits on the characters concept and generally sounds awful and like a bargin bin version of Raven's arc from New Teen TItnas

Azazel was largely ignored for good damn reason till Jason Aaron brought him back and decided since he for whatever reason couldn't retcon him out to make the best of a bad situation: he made Azazel into a pirate who was stealing souls from heaven, forcing Kurt to summon his friends as a crew to have a pirate fight with his dad. I swear to god this will be covered some pirate month.

This helped a little but Aaron leaving the x-side of things and no one wanting to touch this left Azazel in the wind. So with the x-men at their peak and Myistque and Destiny at the center of things after she finally brought the latter back, the time seemed right ot finally fix this. So the question is simple: how do you fix the origin to it's original form while accounting for the demon man retcon and the baron introduced Mystique cucked. The answer is convoluted, fun and mildly beautiful and it's under the cut

We begin with atiny gremlin resembling an albino nightcrawler recapping where we're at up to this point, which i've already covered. The little guy is kurt's tiny friend that talks to him during his solo and narrates the recap for us. I'll also let him explain who he is

Fair enough. I also love the tone our little narrator keeps. Winking and nodding to the fact that while part of the narrative of Uncanny it's also a standalone mostly there for the retcons it's about to do and Spurrier's clearly aware plenty of future fans will read this on marvel unilimited or pick up the issue simply FOR this one reason.

So at this point Kurt is trying to comfort his mother whose lost in the memory of loosing her baby and this being Mystique is waving a pistol around at people. Kurt tries to help by giving her the version they both know: While Mystique and Destiny were firmly together for most of their very long lives, meeting in the 1900's with Mystiques past before that a giant question mark, they were on and off for a variety of reasons from normal couple issues to the simple facts of their powers: Raven is a shapeshifter meaning she's often living a whole other life that can't always acomedate the love of her life and Destiny being a precog means sometimes she has to go off and do shit to make sure things go the right way. So while they were wives for lives, they also had a very open marraige, with Raven taking partners for lonliness, to get by what have you and vice versa.

One of these was Christian Wagner, Kurt's alleged dad and a eurpoean count Raven hooked up with soley for money's sake and being a sexist dick, it wasn't easy. So she cheated on him with Azazel because sexy devil man, had his child and had to abandon kurt.. only.. the story isn't making sense to her and her head is hurting. After another round of his mommy waving a gun in his face, Kurt decides to cut the thing with the hopesword.

Thankfully Marvel knew this might be a lot for people reading Uncanny at the time and explained it in an article. Which is good for me as I haven't reread legion of x and forgot how the hell all this happened. So Nightcrawler's stepmom whose magic made mutants into rampaging monsters to help Orchis plan, Kurt included, hence the spider-man getup, and turned Kurt's hope into a sword that his friends made sure he got back.

Said sword is the hope of posisblity what can be and Kurt hands it to his mom in the hopes it'lll help her mind.. and not cut him in half. Lucky for Kurt he has a long history of taking a bet on someone everyone else says to run the fuck away from and it works.

So we get the FULL story and the full retcon of what happened, keeping Count Wagner and Azrael, but reframing it.

So like I said the two had an open marraige, with the two open to date whoever provided it benefitted them as a couple. Hence count wagner: he was rich, full of himself and has the kind of vibe that just screams "I cum in two minutes", so while obnoxious, he was easy enough to put up with as the long con was worth it and it was easy enough to get Irene in as her bang maid since Count Wagner really wasn't paying any attention to the house as long as it didn't cost him anything.

Instead of the torrid affair it was portrayed as in the past, Raven frames it as.. honestly way more realistic for how the characters are played in most comics not written by the nightcrawler pope guy.

It didn't help she sensed Raven was growing distance, figuring he was her fairwell gift. Raven's exact words. Which honestly satan's dick isn't the worst farewell gift but... get her a demon who can perform at least Irene sheesh.

Turns out though Irene had other plans.. she wanted to make a baby just the two of them. And I love Marcus To's art in this issue in general, beauitful, heartbreaking, well done, especially since as the one handling the present day wraparound he has to carry a LOT of emotion as the wraparound is mostly talking.. granted Kurt is wearing a spidey suit so only his eyes can emote for most of it but still. But I love this panel after she gives the reveal, as Raven sokes int he emotions

I also like the charcterization of Raven: Spurrier and To don't forget that Raven. .is a bad person. While I saw a complaint or two on reddit in doing research, honestly.. it dosen't sugarcoat it. She talks about the men she dated as toys she broke, waves a gun around and is harsh with Kurt, who she later reveals once she got the memories back she knew was her baby boy. Raven is a pragmatic person who wants whatever the hell she wants and will steal and kill to get it. Yet this tale.. still works. Just because a person is awful.. dosen't mean they can't love and just because neither Raven nor Irene is a good person... dosen't mean they don't deserve a child made of love. There were other births but this was thehirs.

Raven is also recast as nonbinary, saying the only real diffrence between genders is those who can be who they are and those denied the right and Raven Darkholme is who she is. I also find Kurt's inital bafflement that 'but your both women" hilariously naive for a man who was spending his time being a spider-man while palling around with what he knew deep down was the conciousness of one of his best friends pretending to be gremlin him, while wilding a sword made of pure hope.

The comic does retcon Mystiques abiliteis; she CAN change her dna. She dosen't often becasue she dosen't WANT to but given how she can fool any scanner imaginable this makes perfect sense. Her power isn't mimicking apperance.. it's altering her genes. We get a file page from Dr. Nemisis, an immortal mutant nazi hunter who played a supporting role in both previous spurrier nightcrawler books and who fleshes this out more. She's near omega levels. Omega is a term that was just vauge shorthand for "really powerful" that kept being used way too often, and which Jonathan Hickman helpfully redefined so it was still useable, but also limited it to a handful of mutants: any mutant whose power has no upper limit. The only reason he can't formally classify her as omega as he dosen't know if she could mimic x-genes or change her own. Basically a way that leaves the door open to that but dosen't shove it too open as it was clear Spurrier didn't really have time to get into this concept and left it for future writers to do more with.

So after a brain headache, Mystqiue presses on: she immediately dumped Azazel, who took it with a lot of bitch crying and "I'M DUMPING YOU YOUR NOT ME" nonsense as you'd expect.

Christian was less easy at first: while Raven grew a bump to match his , the Baron wanted a dna test. Which given Raven used a bunch of male dna she had lying around including his could've been bad. Thankfully Baron Incel walked in on them and honestly in other circumstances i'd feel bad; Raven cheated on him, was using him for money and slits his fucking throat.. but given he both calls them Sapphic Harlots, in what given the floating timeline would've been the early 90's, planning to have them WHIPPED for it...

So they go through with the pregnancy with Raven pretneding to both be her pregnant self and the baron, dismissing the staff and generally enjoying the process. She also keeps the prengancy belly even when not in public at times... to carry the prengancy with her wife. Awww. And I like this a lot.. is it idealized.. yeah. But again a bad person CAN be happy. Evil can love. Raven being terrible dosen't mean she can't genuinely have cared.

So the baby comes and the doctors.. arne't exactly impressed.. raven though

There are so many little touches to this I didn't notice the first time I read it... but this one is so damn good. The "see me".

Sadly this didn't last as naturally the doctors of 1990 in a small villiage weren't ready for sapphic mutants and their elf child so they attacked. The setup is as it was many times and showed up in x-men the animated series, evolution and others: nightcrawler is born, and the poor boy is, like too many mutants hated and feared just for being born. So Raven flees while Irene stays behind saying she'll be fine. And it's that last part that flips the script. Raven leaves her baby boy.. but unlike the past where she threw him away , choosing his life over hers.. she simply left him. That simple. She left him at the base of a tree to go save irene.. only to find as she said, she'd left. And when Raven returns.. Kurt is gone.

Kurt tries to comfort her in the present taking off the mask.... but she knows already. Kurt does see this as a possible new beginning because.. he's Kurt Wagner. He sees the good in people even after the many horrible things his mom has done. Mystique however sees it as the past: it was a lifetime ago, theyg rew apart and what's really important is seeing this memory through.

So a few years of in her words sex, violence and nihilism that meant nothing thorugh the pain later, Raven catches up to her wife in the usual way

Yeah the story dosen't really let Irene get away with things easy either. They only reconcile, and then only barely, because Destiny basically waves Rogue in front of her face and forces her to adopt the daughter Raven always wanted. I do like how the narrative dosen't cheapen her adopting Rogue either: While Destiny does again essnetially go "here's another child to raise", when confronted with what the pimps and pushers might do to this poor child , despite all the hate and needed explinations.. Raven's first insitnct.. is to comfort Rogue. She's still fucking pissed, at her worse.. but she sees a child lost due to her gift, needing her and ignores her pain to help.

So Destiny explains once their alone and Rogue is getting so me much needed sleep now happily adopted. Turns out the reason Kurt was abandoned.. was fate. And these retcons are the parts where the issue reaches a bit for me. The rest is fine: that Mystique did love her son once, as while her abandoning him is somewhat in character, her having genuinely loved him and given him away not because she wanted to but because Destiny played it that way feels more in character with who she's become, the more nuanced character versus the pure evil she could be at times especially in the late 2000's and 2010's.

This though.. is reaching. So Azazel of all people would've conquered thew orld, which I call bullshit on as while he was portrayed as a genuine threat, and admittedly I haven't read the draco because if i'm going to do it i'm damn well going to get some content out of it and possibly money, he was never.. this level. And sure he could purely focus on it but.. dr strange existead at this point. The idea he needed to be distracted isn't terrible but I don't buy from the story set up he needed that to be stopped. It's servicible enough but dosen't feel valid.

The second part is more... iffy. Kurt needed to grow up hated nad feared , left with Margalai and growing form his pain. That feels very chosen oney and I don't like it. Kurt is who he is not due to fate but who he is. Thankfully what saves this from being pure garbage.. is the reactions of mother and son to it. Kurt is broken up, not wanting ot think he's bound to fate this tightly and just a puppet on invisible strings, while Raven.. nearly chokes irene scremaing MY SON IS NOT A TOOL OF FATE.

So Irene knowing they can't go on like this decides to mindwipe the whole stuff, something Raven agrees to but unlike irene she wants to remember Kurt's her son. Unforutnately they went to Charles Xavier for this and he warns her what her mind might do and wipes his own mind. Because he can do that. This is flimsy, but it makes sense and while Raven blames charles saying he made her hate her child, it was her own brain doing that. He warned her it might happened and as usual she didn't listen.

But she's more upset that in her rage and need to move on she let herself forget breaking down.. and as usual kurt forgives her

It's pwoerful words.. and the truth. Destiny may of seen how things were going.. but Kurt isn't who he is because of some fated path. As much as I hate that chosen oney framing, the comic does a good job making it clear that whatever Destiny saw.. Kurt is his own man.. and he's a man who wants the mom he never really had back. So the two forge an uneasy possible future, walking off.... tommorow is another day.

And so far this has stuck. Irene got restored too not wanting it at first but accepting kurt once she did get her memories properly restroed, and while both left, it wasn't to just abandon their kids, but simply because of that whole fate thing combind with being wandering soles. Plus it's easier for them to show up later in uncanny than have them in the cast from day one. Raven and Irene wander, it's what they do. So for now Kurt seems to be joining the cast of Uncanny X-Men while Myistque is getting her own mini up to some mysterious gameplan. But wherever they go... Kurt now has two mothers who love him.

X-Men Blue Origins is a fantastic issue packed with tons of fantastic emotoinal artwork, great writing and a really compelling wraparound as our heroes go through this story and find the truth. It also does the best it can to stand alone while not ignoring the story it's part of and nicely implements an idea decades in the making. This CAN go wrong as just because a great writer came up with it dosen't mean it's.. good as claremont also had some less stellar concepts, see x-men forever for that. Another sword of damocles over my head for another day. It's a great issue and well worth checking out on Marvel Unilmited or if you find it in a back issue bin or online or whatever and a gloriously gay idea executed at long last.

Next Time: We close out the month with a list! My top 12 x-runs! From factors to men it's the best of x

[loving-family-poll]

Ultimate Incest Tournament - Round 1

Propaganda under the cut:

Amma/Camille:

The sexual and romantic overtones in both the book and the TV show are deliciously disturbing and creepy. They love each other so much, and it is horrible

amma and camille literally kissed with tongue and camille loves her so much she's worried she'll hurt her. THEY SLEEP IN THE SAME BED BECAUSE SHE BEGGED HER TO.

Amma canonically refers to her as her soulmate. They KISSED.

Nathan/Peter:

the whole older/younger brother protective dynamic and the affectionate yet irritated thing that goes with it

The Petrelli brothers couldn't keep their hands of each other. Writers said that it's because they were Italians

"I don't who I am without you" -Nathan to his brother

[misfitwashere]

Veep Stakes

Will Vance be Sacrificed?

Timothy Snyder

Jul 24, 2024

In a normal presidential campaign, such as the one Vice-President Kamala Harris is running, “veepstakes” is a harmless play on the word “sweepstakes,” invoking a friendly competition to become a vice-presidential nominee.  One can enjoy thinking about matches between the presidential and vice-presidential candidates and wonder how it will all turn out.

But “stakes” can be harder, or sharper.  One can be burned at a stake, sacrificed on a stake, or killed by a stake through the heart.  For Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, this election has morbid overtones.

Trump’s candidacy is a mortality play.  He wants to die in the White House.  Whatever else he might say, or whatever else his followers might believe, this is the essential reality.   Old-guy dictatorship involves funeral planning.  When Trump says that he admires a Putin or a Xi, what he means is “that man will die in office and not in jail.”

Since Trump is thinking about death, Vance must as well.  In considering a place on the ticket, Vance was reasoning from different premises than (for example) Andy Beshear.  If Kamala Harris asks Beshear to join her on the ticket, he can imagine running for president in 2032.  Vance, by contrast, knows that Trump, so long as he lives, will never voluntarily get out of the way.

A Vance who wishes to be president needs Trump to win in November, stay alive long enough to take office in January, and then perish.  One does not have to be an actuary to understand why Vance might think that this is a good bet. 

Vance was the choice of the tech broligarchs – Elon Musk, David Sacks, Peter Thiel.  Vance was also the preferred option of the Kremlin, whose propaganda line Musk and Sacks tend to follow. Had Trump chosen anyone but Vance, he could have been sure of that person’s loyalty to him.  But Vance is a tech brotegé, not a Trump client.

In the heady atmosphere of Milwaukee, the selection of Vance could seem like a win for everyone.  Trump gets the money he needs from the broligarchs (e.g. a promise of $45 million a month from Musk), who happily contemplate installing their guy as his successor.  Trump believed that he was running against Joe Biden and that he was going to win easily.  Vance could make his private calculations about Trump’s longevity, and go along with the show. Vance was endorsed by the Russian foreign ministry for his pro-surrender foreign policy.

A week later, with Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee, everything looks different.  The Harris candidacy is bad for Putin and the broligarchs, but not fatal.  Putin wants Trump to win, because that is his only hope of winning in Ukraine.  But should Trump lose the election, Putin will figure out some other way of saving himself.  Russian propagandists are already turning against Vance. The broligarchs would like to run the American government.  Should they fail, though, nothing bad will happen to them.  Now Musk denies promising the monthly $45 million to Trump’s campaign.

The billionaires are entirely safe. Trump and Vance are the ones who are exposed.  Now that Trump recognizes that the election will be competitive, Vance’s weaknesses matter to him. 

Vance’s skillset is limited.  He was more articulate when he opposed Trump than in his present support. Vance saying that Trump is an “idiot” who could be “America’s Hitler” is hard to forget. On the campaign trail, Vance channels broligarch grievance and mocks everyone else.  This is backroom back-slapping delight when only the billionaires’ voices matter, as in Milwaukee. 

But in an election, other voices count. 

Vance’s policy approach is not very resonant. He specializes in weak-man politics.  His claim is that government is always impotent.  This does not work together with Trump’s strong-man fantasy.  Trump’s followers want to believe that the system can be trashed and they can still get what they want from it -- a bit of magical thinking that Trump’s charisma enables. 

Vance can’t pull that off.  When he explains that government is pointless, it is a bit too clear that what he means is that broligarchs should run wild at home while dictators should push Americans around abroad.  That is not actually what voters want to hear, including Republican voters.  Sacks found that out when he read aloud Putin’s talking points from the stage in Milwaukee.

Trump must now run an uphill campaign, pulling Vance along behind him. 

Vance is from Ohio.  Having a Buckeye on the ticket will not help Trump in neighboring Michigan or Pennsylvania, states he must win.  And if Ohio is in play, the Trump campaign has deep problems.  When Vance held a rally in his hometown, a local ally threatened “civil war” after a lost election. This does not express confidence.

Vance could even hurt in Ohio itself.  

Reproductive rights were always going to be central to this campaign; Kamala Harris is certain to raise it more clearly than Biden would have.  Vance is infamous for his (vulgar and public) support for a national abortion ban.  Last November, Ohio voters codified reproduction rights in the state constitution by referendum – by a vote of 57% in favor.  This was a personal defeat for Vance, who characterized the pro-choice Ohio majority as “sociopaths” who “murder their own children.”

Trump has been played by unreliable people, which could be uncomfortable for Vance.  And Vance must understand that the Harris candidacy alters his own situation. 

Instead of coasting to victory with Trump and waiting for him to die, Vance now must contemplate what it would mean to lose alongside Trump in November -- in an election angry Republicans have been trained to believe would be a landslide.  Trump cannot blame the broligarchs or Putin, since he cannot admit that he needed the money and support of others.  That leaves Vance as the scapegoat. 

Vance must now imagine a world, about three months from now, in which Trump instructs his followers that Vance is to blame.  Trump has driven Republicans out of the party by stochastic violence.  He was ready to sacrifice the life of his last vice-president.  If Vance leaves now, he will feel the heat for a moment, but can go back to his prior life.  The longer Vance waits to leave the Trump ticket, the greater the risk of a scenario involving a stake.

The necropolitics is no one’s fault but that of the people concerned.  Republicans did not have to nominate an aged coup-plotting felon. The broligarchs did not have to install their candidate to succeed a deceased Trump. And Vance did not have to join Trump’s ticket. 

On the Democratic side, the picture is much brighter. Kamala Harris seeks her vice-presidential nominee, following the familiar rules of the gentle version of veepstakes.  It is fun to follow.  Maybe Kelly? Shapiro?  Or Buttigieg?  Or Whitmer? Who knows? It is refreshing to imagine two candidates wishing each other well, having complementary policies, working towards a better future, towards life.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson)

26/02/2024

The Darjeeling Limited is a 2007 film directed by Wes Anderson, written by Anderson himself together with Roman Coppola and actor Jason Schwartzman.

The film, preceded by the short film Hotel Chevalier, with which it was distributed, was presented in competition at the 64th Venice International Film Festival. The film is a comedy with dramatic overtones, set in India mainly in the Rajasthan region, starring the three Whitman brothers, Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman).

Many scenes in the film - including the Himalayan ones - were not shot in Darjeeling area. The filming locations are practically all located in the state of Rajasthan, in the towns of Jodhpur and Udaipur.

On the other hand, there is a tourist train, the "Toy Train", which passes through Darjeeling, administered by the Darjeeling Himalayan company.

There are four characters in the film who only appear in cameos: Bill Murray, Irrfan Khan, Natalie Portman and Camilla Rutherford. In the cameo in which Bill Murray appears, he is seen chasing the train, which is leaving without being able to reach him, like the brothers do. A mystery is linked to his character: is he the ghost of the deceased father of the three or is it someone else?

Towards the end of the film there is a cameo in which Natalie Portman appears for about 8 seconds, while the camera moves from one carriage of the train to another. She finds herself in a yellow room identical to the one in the Hotel Chevalier from the prequel.

[it-happened-one-fic]

500 Followers Playlist Starter Pack: The Twisted Wonderland Version!

Thank you so much!!! I'm afraid I don't have time to do a full event (Christmas and all that jazz) but I did want to say thank you to everyone so I came up with this! I have a habit of listening to music while writing so I used few songs (I aimed for four each but didn't always make it) from my playlists to form sort of a starter pack under the cut! Again, thank you so much!!!

(NOTE: The links go to Youtube)

Genshin Impact Playlist Starter Pack

Riddle Rosehearts: 

New Rules - Dua Lipa 

Come Along - Pentatonix 

Oh No! - MARINA 

Black Roses - Charli XCX (includes cursing) 

Trey Clover:

Sugar Sugar - The Archies 

Gambling Man - The Overtones

Home - Philip Philips 

Honey Bee - Blake Shelton 

Cater Diamond:

The Tracks of My Tears - Smokey Robinson and The Miracles  

Call Me - Blondie 

Sweet Nothing - Calvin Harris (feat. Florence Welch)  

Dance the Night - Dua Lipa 

Ace Trappola:

Troublemaker - Olly Murs (feat. Flo Rida) 

Jessie’s Girl - Rick Springfield 

I Think We’re Alone Now - Tiffany 

Fire Alarm - Castlecomer 

Deuce Spade:

Waiting for a Star to Fall - Boy Meets Girl

Somebody to You - The Vamps

Hey Look Ma’ I Made It - Panic! at the Disco

Never Gonna Give You Up - Rick Astley

Leona Kingscholar:

Send Them Off! - Bastille

Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea - Fall Out Boy

We Don’t Have to Dance - Andy Black

Power Over Me - Dermot Kennedy

Ruggie Bucchi

Roll To Me - Del Amitri

Two Princes - Spin Doctors

The Way I Are - Timbaland, Keri Hilson, & D.O.E

Follow Me - Uncle Kracker

Jack Howl

Silver Night - The Rasmus

I Really Like You - Carly Rae Jepsen

Right Here Waiting - Richard Marx

I Will Never Let You Down - Rita Ora

Azul Ashengrotto:

Material Girl - Madonna

Stay With Me - Sam Smith

I’d Really Love to See You Tonight - England Dan & John Ford Coley

Diamonds - Sam Smith

Jade Leech:

Curses - The Crane Wives

She Will Be Loved - Maroon 5

Staring At You - Diane Birch

Break the Ice - Britney Spears

Floyd Leech

Out of My League - Fitz and the Tantrums

Bad Word - Panicland

Rag Doll - Aerosmith

I Was Made For Dancin’ - Leif Garrett

Kalim Al-Asim

Golden - Harry Styles

Budapest - George Ezra

Boogie Shoes - KC & The Sunshine Band

I Should Be So Lucky - Kylie Minogue

Jamil Viper:

Can’t Remember to Forget You - Shakira & Rihanna

Power & Control - MARINA

Just One Yesterday - Fall Out Boy & Foxes

Move Your Body - Sia

Vil Schoenheit:

You Make Me Feel - Cobra Starship (feat. Sabi)

Vogue - Madonna

Young and Beautiful - Lana Del Rey

Pretty in Pain - Diane Birch

Rook Hunt:

The Look of Love, Pt. 1 - ABC

Come To My Window - Melissa Etheridge

I Will Follow Him - Peggy March

Happy Together - The Turtles

Epel Felmier:

Bad Reputation - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts (cursing)

Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver

Cooler Than Me - Mike Posner

So What - P!nk (cursing)

Idia Shroud:

Something About Us - Daft Punk

Come Inside of My Heart - IV of Spades

He’s So Shy - The Pointer Sisters

Heavy In Your Arms - Florence and the Machine

Ortho Shroud:

Electric Angel - Hatsune Miku

One More Time - Daft Punk

Malleus Draconia:

I Found - Amber Run

Deeper than the Night - Olivia Newton John

Disturbia - Rihanna

Bad Habits - Ed Sheeran

Lilia Vanrouge:

I Love the Nightlife (Disco Round) - Alicia Bridges

Raise Your Glass - P!nk

Saturn - Sleeping at Last

We are Family - Sister Sledge

Silver:

Fireflies - Owl City

(They Long To Be) Close To You - Carpenters

When You Say Nothing At All - Allison Krauss & Union Station

Son Of Man - Phil Collins (From Disney's Tarzan)

Sebek Zigvolt:

The Glory of Love - Peter Cetera

Head Over Heels - Tears for Fears

You Belong With Me - Taylor Swift

Shout - Tears for Fears 

[holmesillustrations]

Vote for your favourite, the top 9 will proceed in the bracket. Since theyre all different shapes and sizes, make sure to click into the full views!

Paget Eliminations // Other Artist Eliminations

Full captions and details for each illustration below the cut:

All Sidney Paget illustrations are for the Strand Jul 1891 - Dec 1904

"A Drunken Looking Groom" Scandal in Bohemia Characters: Holmes

"He had stood behind that tree." Boscombe ValleyCharacters: James and Mr McCarthy, John Turner

"Which of you is Holmes?" Speckled Band Characters: Dr Roylott, Holmes, Watson

"I clapped a pistol to his head." Beryl Coronet Characters: Sir George Burnwell, Holmes

"Trust me, Jack!" she cried." Yellow Face Characters: Grant and Effie Munro

"There was no powder-blackening on the clothes." Reigate Squires Characters: William Kirwan, Holmes, Insp Forrester

"I've heard of your methods before now, Mr. Holmes." Naval Treaty Characters: Watson, Holmes, Insp Forbes

"Holding it only an inch or two from his eyes." Hound of the Baskervilles Characters: Holmes

"There he sat upon a stone." Hound of the Baskervilles Characters: Holmes, Watson

"Holmes smiled and clapped Lestrade upon the shoulder." Norwood Builder Characters: Lestrade, Holmes, Watson

"Shall I sign here?" he asked." Black Peter Characters: Patrick Cairns, Holmes, Hopkins, Watson

"Why, Mr. Holmes, I thought you knew things," said he."Missing Three-Quarter Characters: Holmes, Watson, Cyril Overton

[princeescaluswords]

The State Championship

One of the key things I like about Teen Wolf is the way its heroic protagonist, Scott McCall, defined heroism through his compassion. This active compassion is not restricted to simply alleviating suffering; it also extends to the awareness of people as individuals with different abilities, needs, and motivations. In other words, Scott cared for people even when they didn't make his life easy or do what he wanted. It is a defining trait for him, even though he still had to learn several important lessons, including recognizing boundaries, acknowledging failure, and coping with the idea that others would use this compassion against him.

I feel that nothing shows this more than his friendship with Stiles Stilinski. Scott doesn't need Stiles to be perfect, to be always right, to be powerful; he simply needs Stiles to be Stiles. For me, one incident in particular shows the depth of Scott's love for Stiles.

When the episode Battlefield (2x11) starts, it's the week of the State Championships, which the Beacon Hills High School has managed to reach even with two separate serial killing sprees going on during the same semester. At the beginning of the series, Scott's dream was to make First Line. That dream is gone.

Scott: Well, thanks, but I'm not - I'm not going either. Can't even think about playing some meaningless game right now. Isaac: You weren't at practice last week, were you?

It seems that Jackson, who Scott knows has not only been turned by Derek into the kanima but is now under the control of Gerard Argent is going to be playing in the State Championship. Scott decides he has to play, because Gerard is up to something. After all, he always has a plan.

The stakes are raised throughout the episode. Derek is elsewhere, beating the shit out of Peter in a useless expression of self-loathing. Scott's been benched by Coach due to Gerard's manipulation. His mother -- directly threatened by Gerard at the beginning of the episode -- comes to the game. Gerard gives a very menacing speech with serious overtones. Scott doesn't know what to do.

And then, as Stiles and Scott sit next to each other on the bench, both nervously waiting for the game to start.

Stiles: You know what's going on? Scott: Not yet. Stiles: It's going to be bad, isn't it? I mean, like people screaming, running for their lives, blood, killing, maiming kind of bad? Scott: Looks like it. Stiles: Scott, the other night seeing my dad get hit over the head by Matt, you know, while I'm just lying there and I can't even move, it just - I want to help, you know, but I can't do the things that you can do. I can't - Scott: It's okay.

And that's that. Scott spends the rest of the episode struggling with Gerard, who threatens to "have Jackson rip someone's head off right in the middle of the field and drench everyone you love and care about in blood." Gerard threatens Scott's mother, Lydia, Stiles and random spectators. While Isaac comes to Scott's assistance, Scott has to leave the game to save Isaac from being killed by Gerard and his hunters.

But throughout the game, there is not one line of dialogue and not one frame of action that indicates Scott resents or even thinks about asking Stiles for help. Stiles has told Scott that he's at his limit, and Scott won't ask Stiles to give more than he can.

So it ends up that while Stiles is happily scoring his first goal, Scott is fighting hunters in the locker room. He's stressed, he's panicking, he's in over his head, but he doesn't put that burden on a friend who has said he can't handle any more. The production actually lampshades it:

Gerard: You want to play chess, Scott? Then you better be willing to sacrifice your own pawns.

But that's the point: Stiles (and Isaac) aren't pieces on a board to Scott. He won't treat them as pawns (the way Derek and Peter treated him), even for the greater good.

In order to stop Gerard and Derek from killing innocent people, Scott has already given up his lacrosse season and he is in the process of losing Allison. His mother is now in danger. Stiles and Isaac are now in danger. And if he isn't fighting killers armed with wolfsbane bullets and broadswords, he's confronted with a werelizard agent of vengeance.

Meanwhile, Stiles is becoming the MVP of the State Championships, getting the acclaim of the crowd and his fellow players, including his father and Lydia Martin. And this never bothers Scott one little bit. He wants Stiles to play, if that's what Stiles wants to do. He doesn't try to demand or guilt Stiles into helping him. He wants Stiles to be happy.

While the episode ends badly for Stiles, that's not Scott's fault. Gerard takes Stiles because Scott doesn't succumb to Gerard's manipulations on the battlefield.

That makes Scott a good friend. That makes Scott a hero.