#Slan x you

[dollwrites]

ᴛʜʏ ᴋɪɴɢᴅᴏᴍ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° sʟᴀɴ

ｃｏｎｔｅｎｔ ｔｙｐｅ ┊ standalone

ｃｏｎｔｅｎｔ ｗａｒｎｉｎｇｓ ┊ smut ( minors dni ), virgin!reader ( f! ), monster fucking, size kink, face riding, noncon, all characters featured are aged 18+

ｉｍｐｏｒｔａｎｔ ┊ please reblog && leave feedback. not proofread so there’s probably mistakes. thanks for reading < 3

being perched on the demoness’ face was more frightening than sitting on top of the highest tower in all of Midland. one slip, and you would fall hundreds- nay, maybe thousands- of feet to your death. still, you had no choice but to remain there. the sounds of the ritualists and their blood orgy was faint, and so the gruesome scene was slowly fading to the back of your mind as you are suspended by Slan miles above the tree line. her serpentesque locks coiling around each ankle, anchoring them in place as you straddle the giantess. they were slimy and boiling hot to the touch. her mouth, which could swallow you whole if so she willed it, was parted just enough so that her massive tongue could lap at your core as plush tiers created a throne of sin for you to sit upon. the thick muscle was long and powerful, sprinkled with millions of mounded buds. a wicked boa constrictor that writhed over your netherlips. it was too massive to tease your swollen, little clitoris, so she willed it to split your folds and worm its way inside you, instead.

you gasp at the intrusion, both of your hands fleeing to plant themselves upon her face; your wrists still bound with roughened rope that dug into your vulnerable flesh and left burns against it. born from the ashes of the raging bonfire below, she was as fiercely warm as you could expect, and you mewl. “This isn’t real—“ you choked out. it all seemed like a nightmare, after all. from the invasion of the convent, to waking up and finding your habit and garb cut away from your body, your sisters all sacrificed to some pagan goddess, to this point: where the very same goddess appeared and now dangled you just below the moon and was robbing you of your innocence. “This isn’t r-real!”

however, as much as you wished to believe this was naught but a bad dream, your body could tell the difference. Slan’s tongue was long and thick, and stretched you open, prodded until she had severed your maidenhead, felt every inch of your insides as she did so. you gurgle in sobbing protests, but your inner walls flutter and greet her mammoth’s tongue, clamping down around it.

“Now, now,” the voice is disembodied, and unfamiliar, but you know it must belong to her. you know this, of course, because it echos in your mind instead of around you. “I am very real, but you know this. Your full cunt is plenty proof of that, no?” a gentle taunt, but one that has you closing your eyes tightly, throwing your head back to escape the humiliation. her voice is sultry— it beckons to you. it coaxes you, and tempts you. that’s how you know she comes from hell. “Open your eyes!” you don’t want to, but the undulating muscle that impales you batters a knot of sensitive nerve endings, demanding that you bend to her will.

your nails dig into her flesh, but you’re not strong enough to break it or make her bleed; you do it moreso as a way to relieve an unfamiliar pressure. a growing sensation as her seemingly endless tongue pumps inch after inch of wriggling, bump heat into your sex. your eyes, though pricked with tears, flutter open and your head droops forward. you’re panting, staring down the length of your body— there’s an oscillating bulge in your belly, and it moves in tandem with your pleasure, so you know it must be her tongue; too big to fit inside you without protruding. weak and wary, you find her gaze, as silvery as the moonlight that bathes the two of you, and you’re entranced by the stare immediately, trapped within it. a smile etches her lips upward, and you feel yourself sink lower towards the opening of her couplet, as if the darkness of her mouth would envelop you if her smile grew any wider. “Very good, little pet. It’s been ages since I’ve taken part in my followers’ festivities. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed the taste of virgin cunt.” both of her Herculean hands have found their way to her body: one on her right breast, groping the mound and teasing her nipple, whilst her left slides between her thighs, strumming her own core as she violates you. Slan’s telepathic voice is an eerie and yet incredibly seductive coo that breaks down the protective barriers in your psyche and renders you little more than putty for her to play with.

you’re starting to seize, your thighs trembling, toes curling. the tip of the demoness’ tongue mercilessly punches as your limit, and you’re convinced she does so just to see if she could break you. it’s working, much to your dismay, and you twist and squirm and struggle to attempt an escape that you know is impossible. you’re forced to endure this discomfort— this euphoric torture, until the Goddess of Flame has decided she is bored with you, which doesn’t seem to be any time soon. still, you attempt one last time. a breathless threat that bubbles up from your throat, but you sound more like a helpless kitten than you ever have before. “Th—The Almighty will stri—strike you down— ah!— for this!! My body— nnn!— is his temple!”

this is when Slan’s giggle stuns, enveloping your mind in a mad cackle. “Your God will strike me down? Ha! Such a naive little girl you must be. I’ve reduced his temple to a broken plaything, and he has allowed me to. It’s time to grow up, little pet.” Slan’s eyes darken, her pupils slitting as she holds your terrified stare. she moans, and it’s pure ecstasy, as if she’s getting off on your fear, her hand between her thighs working faster. “And follow a new God. One that will dote on you until your weak, mortal body gives out, and your mind is mush. You will be so beautifully irreparable by the time I’ve had my fun with you!”

[onskepa]

Can I get a Jealous Lo'ak x female human reader?

where Aonung seems to be spending too much time with the reader and getting closer than they should while the reader is straight up oblivious-

:> And yeah, I'll admit- I am a Lo'ak simp-

>////<

Heyoooooo!! Thanks for requesting! this was cute to write. Hope you enjoy!

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Slan

Lo'ak throughout his time with the metkayina clan he felt like an outsider, more than his siblings. Before and after the war. Although the Olo'eytkan, Tonowari, and the Tsahik Ronal, have fully accepted him and his family, there is still doubt in his heart.

Tsireya is there to support him and to a degree makes him feel comfortable and feel better. But there is only so much she can do, not her fault. There is no one to blame.

But when one day to the surprise of the sully family, norm and max went to visit them. And they brought a special someone. His long time dear friend slan.

Slan was a human girl who grew up with him since young. Lo'ak could always depend on slan for many things, pull a prank? she is on to it. Make something? Slan presents the only the best quality. Annoy the hell out of neteyam? Slan is there to double roast him.

Slan was there for everything. And she was everything for lo'ak. He admits he gets a tiny bit possessive over her. Not wanting one of the good things in his life. Sure he has his siblings and spider, but spider is there mostly for kiri.

So lo'ak would spend a lot of time with slan. Even if he has duties to attend to, slan was there to help him despite being small.

So when the day came that lo'ak and his family had to leave the forest, he was heartbroken, to leave the forest was to leave slan. His best friend. It hurt him to live somewhere where he doesnt know how slan is. Or what she is doing.

But now that is gone. For slan came with norm and max, she missed her blue bestie and wanted to see how he was doing.

"lo'ak!!" slan shouts as she runs and jumps into lo'ak's arms which he catches on instinct. He hugged her tightly, taking in her familiar scent, which was of fresh earth, tropical rain and hint of fruit. She smelled of the forest. A sense of home.

"its so good to see you again! I have so many things to tell you!" slan said, not letting go of her grip on lo'ak, not that he didnt mind or anything. Lo'ak smiled widely, "I have so many things to tell you too!" taking her in his home, slan looked everywhere and everything with wonder.

Took all day to show slan just his home. And he didnt mind. He was happy to have slan's attention on him. He missed her smiles and giggles. What was a distant memory now is in front of him. Her compliments, her praises, he cherished them. And couldnt wait for tomorrow!

He hated that tomorrow.

As tomorrow is now today.

Tuk suggested that lo'ak shows slan around the beach, show her more of their new home. Lo'ak thought it was a good idea. Show her everything he learned and what he does now.

His biggest mistake was to take her to the ilu pen. Lo'ak's idea was to show her the animals the people tame and use for their daily things at the reef. What lo'ak didn't think was seeing ao'nung there.

Ao'nung heard from his fathers that loyal sky demons were visiting and that they meant no hard. He didnt care, and would purposely stay away from them. Not wanting to make contact with any of them. However, seems like Eywa had other plans for him.

Not far from the ilu pens did he notice lo'ak but he wasnt alone. A little sky demon was with him. Ao'nung wanted to go away quickly but he had to take care of his ilu much to his dismay.

He couldnt flat out ignore lo'ak either, seems he was stuck. Slan saw him, she already saw how the reef na'vi look by meeting ronal and tonowari. Yet she wanted to meet more like them. Lo'ak wanted to be anywhere but there but looking at slan's face, he knew he couldnt be rude at what she wanted.

Ao'nung surprisingly made the first move, going over to lo'ak and crossing his arms. "Brining the little demon to the ilu? God board having her in your mauri?" he teased. Lo'ak kept his cool, while they were long past fighting each other, there was still a bit of competition between them.

"she has a name" lo'ak answerd. Taking that as her cue, slan introduced herself by saying her name. "but you can call me slan, everyone does" she grins nervously.

Ao'nung tilts his head, now he is interested. "well then slan, what brings you here?" he asks, "oh! lo'ak wanted to show me the ilu's!" she answered happily.

Ao'nung decided to be a little shit and confidently touches slan's shoulder, guiding her closer to the pen. "Well since I was about to do my job here, I think I am more suited to talk about ilu's than lo'ak" he smirks.

Slan and ao'nung began to talk, and ao'nung didnt care of lo'ak was thinking of a million ways to kill him. He shared slan everything about lo'ak time with the clan. Even down to his most embarrassing moments when trying to learn how to ride an ilu.

Lo'ak just wanted to dig a hole and die.

But that meeting didnt end there! oh no!

The next day ao'nung and slan chatted more and more. Brought her to many places in the island, showed her his people's culture, foods, and sign language.

Slan was taking it all in. Enjoying this new side of the na'vi. Was picking up well in their sign language.

As the days past, both slan and ao'nung have gotten closer. He would offer her rides on his ilu, would take her to interesting sides of the reef, have communal dinners with her. Everything.

That left lo'ak very jealous. Slan was supposed to come and see him only. Not make friends with the one who annoys the hell out of him! His mood dampened and would sulk in his home rather than going outside to do something. Would glare hard behind ao'nung and wish him bad things.

Many days later, slan wanted to go for a swim with lo'ak. Finding him in his hammock she jumped in on his lap smiling at him. "lo'ak! what are you doing inside? lets go outside!" she nudged him.

lo'ak hugged and turned around. "why not go with ao'nung? I'm sure you two would have fuuuuuuuun together" he exaggerated. Slan tilted her head a bit confused. "Ao'nung? no! I wanna swim with you! like how we used to back in the forest! swimming in the lake was one of our favorite things to do!". She tugged his arm, tugged a bit, anything to get his attention.

Lo'ak moved her hand away and went close to her face. "oh so NOW you remember out time together? what about these past few days? Getting closer with that fish lips while I am being ignored? I thought you came here for me! Not for that stupid skawng!" he ranted.

Things clicked in slan's mind and a smirk formed on her lips. "lo'ak.......are you jealouuuuuuuuuuuse~?' she teased while leaning against him. That made lo'ak blush a bit, highlighting his cheeks with a faint purple. Slan gaspsed happily.

"you are!"

"no I am not!"

"yes you are lo'ak!" she giggles.

She lays down, placing her head on his chest. "dont worry lo'ak. Ao'nung is a good guy, but he isnt you. He could never replace you. You are my one and only". She smiles at him, her beautiful eyes staring straight to his golden eyes. A smile reached his lips and placed an arm on her back.

"that's what I thought" he says. Slan plays with a braid on his hair, "come on, lets go for a swim!!" she begs. Lo'ak shakes his head. "nah lets lay in. The water isnt going anywhere". Slan sighs in defeat. So she snuggles up in a comfy position and continues to play with his hair.

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And that is it for this one! Hope you all enjoyed it! until next time!

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slan = support (someone) (emotional, social or personal)

[mostlyinthemorning]

Highlander Rewatch Episode 1.1

Join me for a daily(ish) blogging of what was once my favourite show.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, my first love was Highlander (the TV series). I've wanted to rewatch it for a long time, but it isn't streaming anywhere and the box of battered VHS tapes that I’d recorded off of cable have been lost to the sands of time. Thankfully, Youtube has come through, hopefully I can piece together all the episodes in the right order.

If I'm going to watch 119 episodes of this show (Wow, that's a lot of TV, I forgot how long TV seasons used to be), what better way to experience this than to share my random thoughts on the random-thought-sharing website?

*Note, this won’t be a live-blogging so much as a collection of thoughts after I watch each episode.

More below the cut in case anyone is worried about spoilers for a…checks notes…oh, god, that can’t be right…32 year old show. Anyway...there can be only one! Let’s go.

Episode 1.1 The Gathering

IMBD Description: Immortal Duncan MacLeod leaves tranquility when kinsman Connor returns and evil Immortal Slan Quince challenges him to a battle. [It's very funny that Slan has a last name in the credits, because it definitely didn't come up as he was threatening and swording at people. I'm also dying at "leaves tranquility" as a description that's supposed to mean...anything.]

Tranquility or not, let's watch this thing.

I appreciate an opening scene that transitions from giggly sex to this:

Yes. Good. No notes.

Am also belatedly realizing how imprinted I am on Mac’s nicely styled long hair and intense eyes. 

Oh, I forgot how much blatant misogyny there was in the 90s. Well, we’re just going to have to work through it together. 

Christopher Lambert is not a great actor, but there’s something subtly charming about him. Having him in the first episode really transitions the series nicely from the movie, even if everyone’s acting is a bit stiff. 

They really laid the groundwork for Tessa’s death in season 2 so early with the conversation between her and Mac about him outliving all of his past lovers. [Side note: I was enraged by her death at the time and nearly quit watching, let’s see how I feel this time around.] I love how spunky Tessa is from the get-go, not letting Mac call the shots, even though he tries to. And both of them being ride or die for each other is why I was so into the show at the time. Too bad it ended up being the latter. (Can you tell I’m still bitter?)

 Ritchie is such a punk kid. In my head he was a bit older, and a lot more annoying than he seems this time around. Now he seems more true to how a 17 year old would be if he discovered a bunch of immortal swordspeople living among us. 

The flashback scenes are another area that I’m potentially a bit yikes about - very interested to see how they hold up.

Love the ending of the episode where we’re apparently not going to talk about Mac running away or anything like that? Now everything is fine? Truly a Gen-X style resolution we can all be proud of. 

I have skipped over all the swordplay, but rest assured there was a lot of it, and the good guys prevailed.

On to episode 1.2!

[saschaederer]

- “Chu” (Japanese onomatopoeia: ‘Kiss’)

- “Steve Krömer”

- “Ka” (pertaining to SRA (sodomy of wounds), initial reference to (“Mikhaila (Peterson)” me) - “Scarlett (Peterson)”

- A line of blue toilet cleaner on my toilet seat, a drop of water on my cupboard next to it

- “The redheaded Libertarian”

- The system having made my legs feel the same way as yesterday again, while simultaneously putting pressure on my left testicle

- “(I’ve become) good (at this)” - “You’re getting good at this”

- ‘Breaking Benjamin - You fight me’ playing in my head

- “Matt walsh”

- “Wir scheißen drauf” (German: ‘We won’t bother about it’, in ‘Julian Sens’ voice, somewhat unconvincing)

- Insinuation of the system having changed the places of ‘Heroic’ and ‘Psychopathic’ in my text

- “(You don’t get to have the adventure, meaning,) Healing (and happiness)”

- Threat of (“at least”, in ‘Taylor Swift’ voice) my hair falling out

- “Wixer” (German: ‘Wanker’)

- “(‘Hundreds of’) thousands” (in ‘Taylor Swift’ voice) - “Hundreds” (in childlike voice)

- The profile picture of the X user ‘Keith’ having changed from that of a man to the current one of the two hands with those odd fingernails, sometime before I replied with my post - My ‘Razer’ (brand) PC mouse glowing up red while my laptop was in sleep mode

- Torture sounds (CO2, Taser (“electroshocks”), initial reference to me)

- “(Sebastian) Goßmann”

- “X” - “Y”

- Split-second image in red, pertaining to the demon ‘Slan’ of the Anime ‘Berserk’, looking at me viciously and sadistically - me cutting up a Nashi pear and cutting out the core looking like the eye of Sauron, what’d be at the other end of the painting pertaining to the inside of a vulva in the master bedroom of the apartment ‘Le Fin’ in LA - “Peach”

- “Mami” (initial reference to Tomoko Kuriyama) - “Sascha (Ederer)” - “Cunt” - “Du darfst” (German: ‘You may’)

- “Teddy” (pertaining to Peer Ederer) - “child” - “rape” - “Rothschild”

- “Pertain” (in childlike voice)

- Sound pertaining to a gas chamber (initial reference to anyone who might act similar to me)

- Sound pertaining to a gas chamber (initial reference to me)

- Mental Image of the color red, pertaining to blood - mental image pertaining to the YouTube Ad for Hankook tyre (pertaining to SRA (Sodomy of wounds), initial reference to me)

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REPORTS

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How I handle threats I receive (Last Update: 29. 9. 2024):

[wdcasey1895]

if i want to talk like a particularly malfeasant text-to-speech bot, that’s my right.

[ofdemonsandangels]

5 Reasons You Should Be Shipping Slannan (Slan x Dannan)

1. They’re both pretty immortal ladies: Both of them are beings who have the potential of having a long and fascinating history. Elfhelm did lie in the Interstace, which means that interactions between them are entirely possible

2. They’re the definition of “opposites attract”: You have a hyper sexual, masochistic demoness and a dainty, soft spoken fairy ruler. It’s a great combo.

3. Their color palettes compliment each other: Slan is the big tiddy goth girl who uses box dye and has an entire closet of corsets. Dannan is the pastel sweetheart with cotton candy hair and a collection of Sanrio plushies. Simple as that.

4. Slan likes people who play hard to get: That woman loves a good challenge and what more with Dannan, the leader of the elves who probably despises the God Hand and apostles. Not only would Dannan give her a run for her money but this would this be a dope enemies to lovers couple.

5. Men don’t deserve them: I said what I said.

[maxwell-grant]

One last one for the moment; top five superheroes who definitely AREN'T Pulp Heroes, but could be with a little tweaking?

Oof, that's a hard one. It's a hard one because, again, there ultimately isn't that much separation between the two to the point there's enough of a hard line in there to work with, but I guess the cat's out of the bag now that I've staked claims on there being differences between them.

Okay so, not counting superheroes who are deliberately modeled after actual pulp heroes, so no Tom Strong or Night Raven here. I'm sticking mainly with comic book superheroes (barring one oddball exception) since the medium separation is important), who I think could become pulp heroes with some tweaking.

5: Captain America

Sort of cheating because I already covered it here, but I definitely have to include Captain America in here, especially in the stories they actively go for a "pulp" vibe as well as the earliest ones.

Fun fact about Marvel: As Timely, they actually began life as pulp publishers. Not just pulp publishers, but specializing in some of the sleaziest, ghastliest magazines of the era, and you can bet this carried over to their superheroes. Where as DC's superheroes took inspiration from the big pulp heroes such as The Shadow and Doc Savage, Timely's superheroes seemed instead much more inspired by Weird Tales stories and Poverty Row horror films, and even in the 60s, Marvel never really abandoned their horror roots, the trick was just using them as a baseline to create superheroes. In DC, the world's first contact with superheroes begins with the world looking in wonder at a friendly strongman. In Marvel, it began with the world looking in panicked horror at a flaming monster rampaging through the streets desperately trying to not burn everything it touches. It should come to little surprise then that the majority of characters I'm including in this list are Marvel characters.

People think Captain America's first comics largely consisted of him fighting Nazis left and right, but they were actually much more often based around him encountering monsters and creatures of horror, like the above panel where it looks like Cap's staring down the beginning of Berserk's Eclipse (RIP Miura).

The early Captain America comics pretty much consisted of Kirby dipping his toe into the monster comics he'd make in the 50s which would later bleed into the 60s Marvel entourage. They even tried repackaging Captain America into a horror anthology in the 50s titled "Captain America's Weird Tales", just imagine how different the character would be today if that somehow stuck.

Imagine a world where Steve Rogers never became leader of The Avengers, never got to become the shining beacon of heroism of an entire universe, and instead, when he was unfrosted, he woke up to find a world running rampant with crawling nightmares and Nazi tyranny, and he has no idea what's become of his former sidekick. That definitely sounds like the start of a promising pulp adventure.

4: Namor

Another Timely creation. In Namor's case, he didn't so much encounter horrors from beyond imagination, as much as HE was the terrifying thing beyond us ready to rampage upon mankind, whose first on-screen act consists of the calculated slaughter of a ship full of innocents. The first true villain protagonist of comic books. Not just an anti-hero, a villain intent on wiping out the human race.

And not just a cardboard supervillain, but the beautiful prince of a race of ugly fish monsters, a momma's boy who's doing what he thinks is right by warring with surface dwellers. While Namor's become largely defined by his gargantuan arrogance, here, he's almost childlike, despite being much more brutal and villainous here, spurred on by the whims of his mother, who even acknowledges that Namor had no real reason to kill the divers but did so anyway, and now encourages him to genocide. His mom even tells him "Go now, to the land of white people!", and the very last panel of the story even states he's on a "crusade against white men".

The massacre of explorers at the hands of something beyond their understanding. A monster born of an interracial coupling. A race of fish monsters with bulging eyes, antagonistic towards humanity but are shown to have positive traits just the same. A dash of racism. There is no mistaking The Sub-Mariner's pulp horror influence.

A non-white superhuman warrior born from a Lovecraftian horror story, who gradually moves away from his villainous crusade into becoming more of an anti-hero, never truly putting aside his hatred for humanity, remaining a temperamental, unpredictable outcast, with a strong, palpable undercurrent of anger in his stories. I could very easily buy Namor as having crawled out of a Weird Tales story and I can't think of other superheroes whose origins are as steeped deeply in pulp horror.

3: Doctor Fate

Technically we already have a pulp hero version of Doctor Fate in Doc Fate, and I'll get to him separately, but even besides him, the earliest Doctor Fate stories in particular feel very much like he's a character steeped in the worlds of pulp and pulp horror who decided to put on a superhero costume and show up in comic.

He's got a similar set-up to The Shadow, from the pulp Shadow in the sense that he's a mysterious, eerie crimefighter who dwells as a presence more often than an active character and who kills criminals without remorse, always watching and waiting for the right time to strike as a a wrathful old-testament force of vengeance, and from the radio Shadow due to him using superpowers to fight crime while being accompanied by a smart, fierce love interest.

Originally, Fate was not a sorcerer, but instead a scientist who discovered a way to manipulate atomic structure, of his and other things, thus making it appear that he can do magic (although we never see his face, and he's implied to be thousands of years old, before they settled on the Nabu origin). And going back to Lovecraft, a lot of it appears in the earliest Fate stories. Fate was given powers not by a sorcerer, but an alien worshipped as a god. He barely encounters traditional monsters, but instead contends with hidden races, zombie slaves, abandoned alien monoliths, and half man and half fish creatures. Fate may have actually been the very first pastiche of Lovecraft in pop culture.

And of course we can't forget the gloriousness of Doc Fate pulling an Indiana Jones on us.

2: Wolverine

I don't even think you'd have to tweak Wolverine at all. You'd just have to get him out of the costume and Avengers/X-Men associations (although the X-Men have a substantial background in pulp sci-fi stories like Slan and Odd John, so they aren't really at odds here), maybe tone down his powers a bit and, that's it. Logan's already the kind of character who has such a varied sandbox history, whose powers can lead to so many different scenarios, that it's not a stretch at all to picture Wolverine in the usual pulp hero scenarios.

You can have half-naked Wolverine running around in the jungle with animals Tarzan-style, take him to Savage Land if you wanna throw dinosaurs in there. He's already Marvel's foremost "wandering samurai/cowboy" character which was one of the stock and trade types of the pulps. Western? Done. Samurai? Done. Wuxia? Just put him in China and add a couple extra fantasy elements. Wanna make a sword and sorcery story with him? He already comes with a bunch of knives and savagery and ability to survive grisly injuries. Horror? The MCU is crawling with them, or alternatively, tell a story from the perspective of someone who's being hunted down by Wolverine. Wanna tell a detective/noir/post-apocalypse story? Logan's right there.

Wanna have him crossover with pulp heroes? He's lived through the 1800s and 1900s and traveled all over the world, you could feasibly have him meet up with just about any of them. Logan may actually be the purest example of your question, because he's very much not a Pulp Hero, and yet, he definitely feels like a character who could have been one, at just about any point in the history of pulp magazines. He's perfect for it.

1: Wario

WAAA-okay, look, bear with me for a second here, I'm not just picking Wario because I love oddball choices and he's one of my favorite characters, I got some logic to this.

Okay so, the first question here: is Mario a superhero? While I'm usually adverse to calling characters prominent outside of comic books superheroes (hence why I'm definitely not interested in debating whether Harry Potter or Goku or Link or Frodo are superheroes), I do think it's a pretty shut case that, yes, Mario is a superhero. Superheroes don't just come in the form of skintight crimefighters, right from the start comic books have had varied types of superheroes appearing in comics and comic strips. For example, the "funny animal" superheroes are a type older than superhero comics, and they were arguably not only the most successful type of superhero of the 40s-50s era, but arguably defined trends dominating nonfunny animal superheroes, traits that predated or influenced Captain Marvel as well as Otto Binder's reshaping of Superman that defined much of superhero convention as we know it. It's part of why the question of "Is Sonic a superhero" has a very clear Yes as an answer.

So upon establishing that, yes, funny cartoon characters can be and are superheroes too, is Mario one? Well, I'd say yes. He's got an iconic uniform, he's got superpowers, he goes on fantastical adventures, he is both a nebulously general do-gooder as well as having a clear mission as protector of the Mushroom Kingdom. His adventures span multiple storytelling formats, he's got catchphrases, he even dresses up in Superman's colors and has a Super prefix iconically associated with him. Not a superhero the way we usually think of, but a superhero nonetheless.

And Wario? Well, putting aside Wario-Man who's more of a running gag than anything, Wario does just about everything Mario does. He's got all the traits that define Mario as a superhero short of a Super prefix and the selfless mission (which isn't exactly a rule). He goes around and gets into crazy adventures, he picks up items, beats bad guys, conquers the odds, and gets some kind of prize for it. He's got Mario's physical traits, and Mario's costume, and just about the same name short of a single letter. The caveat being, of course, that he's Wario, and so everything Mario is or does has to be exaggerated to gross extreme.

Mario is paunchy and strong, Wario's round and built like a powerlifter. Mario's got a friendly face and a fluffy mustache, Wario's got a massive horrible grin and jagged razors for a stache. Mario is a bit of an overeater, Wario can and will eat anything in front of him. Mario gets around with acrobatics and magic power-ups, Wario brute forces his way through everything and just rolls with whatever injuries he picks up along the way.

Mario gets fire powers by consuming magic flowers. Wario sets himself on fire and barrels around destroying everything in his path. Mario harnesses the elements or abilities of beings around him to clear obstacles and solve puzzles, Wario gets turned into a zombie, a vampire or a drunk to get the same things done. Mario befriends and rides dinosaurs who raised him from infancy, Wario piledrives dinosaurs and then uses their bodies to beat up more dinosaurs. Mario pals around with fellow heroes, princesses and friendly fantasy creatures, Wario pals around with aliens, witches, mad scientists, cab drivers, and lanky weirdos. Mario always ends his adventures joyfully leaping to the next one, Wario usually ends up either cackling in a pile of treasure or completely broke.

Mario races through plains to rescue princesses, Wario invades pyramids to hunt for treasure. Mario jumps through planets with baby stars guiding his path, Wario crashes into the Amazon jungle and fistfights the devil. You can see where I'm going with this.

If you were to take one of Nintendo's heroes to make them into pulp heroes, Wario, specifically the Wario Land Wario, may be the only one who really could do it, because in essence, he's the videogame equivalent of Professor Challenger. He's Bluto moonlighting as Indiana Jones, the weird brute adventurer for weird brute adventures where everything's off limits and you can trust our intrepid hero, who really shouldn't be a hero on all accounts, to deliver us a good time, give or take a couple deaths, scams, shams and oh-damns to complete said mad treasure hunts.

[jacks-obsessions]

I love my girl Slan but I’ve seen absolutely zero content for her so I am humbly asking you for a Slan x reader where reader is a member of the Band of the Hawk and she takes great interest in them, following them during their journey post-Eclipse.

This is a very good idea but I don't write female x female stuff. I don't think I can do lgbtq stuff justice and it's just outside of my comfort zone.

[yousoseelie]

THE MANDALORIAN, EPISODE 1

Alright, fellow nerds! The time is now--I have, to the more or less best of my ability, translated the first chapter into Mando’a. This is only lines spoken by Mando, because those make the most sense, not the literal entire script. Obviously there are...sort of spoilers? Most of it is pretty contextless, but still.

Notable frustrations: No word for Imperial or Empire, no words for landspeeder or speeder bike, no word for ride, no word for door. 

Also yes this includes the Armorer XD but in case revealing there’s More Than One Mando is a spoiler, I didn’t want to say that. Tally ho!

THE MANDALORIAN, EPISODE 1

I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold.

Ni lise hiibi gar o’r oyayc, ra ni lise hiibi gar o’r ciryc.

I can take you in alive, or I can take you in cold.

Alternate: nadalyc, ‘warm’ from nadala ‘hot’ Also ge’nadala, “almost hot”

I need passage to the yards.

Ni liniba slana at me’sen veeray.

I need go to ship area.

No droids.

Nu beskar’ade.

No droids.

Get out.

Slana dayn.

Go out.

Probably not.

Cuyla nayc.

Probable no.

Alt: Nu’cuyla.

These are Imperial Credits.

Ibic’e X waadase.

These Imperial credits.

Note: oyula droten? Galactic Alliance

I don’t know if you heard, but the Empire is gone.

Ni nu’kar’tayli meh gar susulu, a X kyr’adyc.

I not know if you hear, but Empire passed away.

Alt: Ret gar nakar’mi, (Maybe you’re unaware,)

Fine.

Serim.

Accurate.

Note: I wanted something besides “thanks” or “yes” to indicate the sarcasm/resignation.

I’ll take them all.

Ni ven’hiibi an.

I will take all.

Why so slow?

Tion’jor bid dar’iviin’yc?

Why so no-longer-fast?

Alt: ures, ‘lacking’ or ut’reeyah, ‘empty’

Let’s see the puck.

Ke’tengaana ni bora.

Show me job.

Alt: koor, ‘deal, contract’

Alt: jilarud, ‘disc’

Underworld?

Tion chaavla?

(Essentially) Criminal?

What else did he say?

Tion majyc kaysh ru’sirbu?

What extra he said?

Have them lower theirs first.

Ke val diryci val sol’yc.

(Order) they lower theirs first.

I like those odds.

Ni vore ibac.

I accept this.

Note: The spirit of “I can take it” was more important than a literal translation, I feel.

Beskar?

-no translation needed-

Let’s see the puck.

Ke’tengaan jilarud.

Show disc.

Note: went with ‘disc’, also made it more clipped speaking to The Client.

What’s the chain code?

Tion 

What 

Note: I’m….pretty stumped on this, tbh.

Their age? That’s all you can give me?

Tion val simir’e? Tion ibac an gar lise dinui ni?

Their years? That all you can give me?

This was gathered in the Great Purge.

Ibic ru’joruu o’r Ori’Chakur.

This was gathered in Great Stealing.

Alt: te or haar for The, if you want emphasis.

It is good it is back with the Tribe.

Jate bic yaimpa bah aliit.

Good it returns to clan.

Note: bah and at both mean ‘to’, dative and movement-related, respectively. Both work, in this instance.

Yes.

Elek.

Yes.

A pauldron would be in order.

Ni urmankala bes’marbur duumyc.

I believe pauldron approved.

Alt: serim ‘accurate, correct’ might fit too.

Has your signet been revealed?

Tion gar aliik ru’mar’eyi?

Your sigil discovered?

Alt: I feel like mar’eyla or mar’eyc would be more appropriate--it almost seems adjective-y.

Not yet.

Nayc su.

No, still/yet.

Soon.

Ti ca’nara.

With time.

This is extremely generous. The excess will sponsor many Foundlings.

Ibic ori’dinui. Majyc ven’kir’mani birov ade.

This very gift. Extra will adopt many children.

Alt: adiike for children (3 to 13) or ik’aad (baby) but also I feel like it’s not quite encapsulating the nature of the word Foundling. Mar’ey’ade (Found children) or dar’buir’ade (orphans) I feel like fit more.

Alt: orilin, ‘profit, surplus’ majyce ‘something extra, addendum’ 

Alt: vencuyanir, ‘sustain’ instead of adopt?

That’s good.

Jate.

Good.

I was once a Foundling.

Ni ru’cuyi Mar’ey’ad.

I was Found-child.

I know.

Ni kar’tayli.

I know.

Thank you.

Vor entye.

Thank you.

Yes.

Elek.

Yes.

Did you help them?

Tion gar ru’gaa’tayli val?

You helped them?

Well, then I don’t know if I want your help.

Ret ni nu’kar’tayli meh copaani gar gaa’tayli.

Maybe I don’t know if I want you to help.

What’s your cut?

Tion’solet waadas gar copaani?

How much credits you want?

Alt: Tion’solet gar koor? “How much your deal?”

Half the bounty to guide? Seems steep.

Dul waadas par taap? Ori’waadas.

Half credits for location? Big money.

Alt: marekar, ‘navigation’, shekemir ‘follow’

Alt: Wayii ‘good grief’

The blurrg? You can keep them both.

Me’ven? Gar lise tayli val bintar.

Huh? You can keep them both.

I don’t know how to ride blurrg.

Ni nu’kar’tayli 

I don’t know

Note: wow, no word for ride really fucks me here.

Perhaps he remembers I tried to roast him.

Ret kaysh partayli ni ru’kebbu hetti kaysh.

Maybe he remembers i tried burn him.

I don’t have time for this.

Ni nu’gana ca’nara par ibic.

I do not possess time for this.

Do you have a landspeeder or speeder bike that I could hire?

Tion gar gana vhetin’juri’gota ra iviin’sol’gota ni lise verbori?

You have plains-carry-machine or speed-solitary-machine I can hire?

Note: no word for landspeeder or speeder bike, had to improvise

Easy. Easy. Now all right. Settle down. Whoa! Settle. Settle. That’s good. That’s good. Easy. Okay. That’s good. All right.

Udesii. Udesii. Jii an jate. Udesii. Wayii! K’udesii. Udesii. Jate. Jate. Pakod. Elek. Ibac jate. An jate.

Calm down. Take it easy. Now all good. Settle down. Hey! Settle. Settle. Good. Good. Easy. Yes. That good. All good.

Please. You deserve this.

Gedet’ye. Gar enteyo vore ibic.

Please. You must accept this.

Then why did you guide me?

Tion’jor gar alori ni?

Why you lead me?

Then why do you help?

Tion’jor gar gaa’tayli?

Why you help?

Oh no. Bounty droid. -sigh- Droids.

Osik. Beroya beskar’ad. Beskar’ade.

Shit. Bounty hunter droid. Droids.

IG unit! Stand down!

IG gotal! Sha’kaji!

IG-made! Cease-fire!

Alt: Kyr ge’kaan! (Endex!)

Alt: Gev! (Stop!)

I’m in the Guild!

Ni o’r Beroya Tsad!

I in Bounty Hunter Group!

That makes two of us.

Ibac gotalu t’ad be mhi.

That makes two of us.

Alt: Gar bal ni bintar, ‘You and me both’

So much for the element of surprise.

Bal’ban nu’keeni.

Definitely no infiltrating.

Unless I am mistaken, you are, as of yet, empty-handed.

Meh ni serim, gar gaane, su, ut’reeyah.

If I correct, your hands, yet, empty.

I have a suggestion.

Ni gana dajun.

I have plan.

We split the reward.

Mhi me’dinui dul waadas.

We share half credits.

Great. Now let’s regroup, out of harm’s way, and form a plan.

Ori’jate. Jii, mhi tom’urci, be’chaaj par aru’ese, bal dajuna.

Excellent. Now, we converge, away from enemies, and plan.

Can we talk about this later?

Tion lise mhi jorhaa’i bat ibic nu’jii?

Can we talk on this not-now?

Let’s go!

Ke mhi slana!

We go!

He’s in there!

Kaysh o’r ogir!

He in there!

Up top!

Laam!

Up!

Whoa, you’re what?

Me’ven, tion gar nari?

Hey, you do what?

Do not self-destruct. Cover me!

Ke nu’naasta gar. Hukaat’kama!

Do not destroy you. Cover me!

Go! Go! Go! There’s too many!

Slan! Slan! Slan! Naysol!

Go! Go! Go! Too many!

They got us pinned.

Val gaanayli mhi.

They trap us.

Do not self-destruct! We’re shooting our way out. ...Okay.

Ke’ nu’naasta gar! Mhi ven’tra’cya mhi tok’kad mav. ...Wayii.

Do not destroy you! We will fire our retreat free. ...Good grief.

New plan!

Evaar’la dajun!

New plan!

 No! Stop it!

 K’uur! Gev!

 Hush! Stop!

Draw their fire, I’ll take it out. Go!

Hiibi val tra’cyn, ni ven’naasta bic. Slan!

Take their fire, I will destroy it. Go!

You know, you’re not so bad. For a droid.

Gar kar’tayli, gar nu bid dush. Par beskar’ad.

You know, you not so bad. For a droid.

That blaster hit looks nasty. You okay?

Ibac tracy’uur nyn ret’aarayla. Tion gar shupur’yc?

That blaster hit maybe painful. You injured?

Is that good?

Tion ibac jate?

That good?

Well, now we just need to get the door open.

Jii mhi shi liniba broka ibac tenn.

Now we just need to beat that open.

Anyone else?

Ash’ad?

Someone else?

Wait. They said 50 years old.

Pare. Val ru’sirbu she’eta simire.

Wait. They said fifty years.

No. We’ll bring it in alive.

Nayc. Mhi ven’hiibi bic o’r oyayc.

No. We will take it in alive.

Until Friday! K’oyacyi!

[vintagegeekculture]

The Pulp Scifi That Inspired the X-Men

I wrote before about the sources of inspiration behind King Kong and Conan the Barbarian, as both of these were so far back in time the things that inspired them are not really read much.

With the X-Men, it’s important to remember that a subgenre of science fiction once existed about mutants who we identified with because they were persecuted and feared by normal humans, which allowed authors to use science fiction to explore the idea of alienation. X-Men is a part of this trend, and seems unique because it’s the only one from this long-standing trend that is actively discussed today. Really, this is a kind of story all people who feel gifted or alienated are compelled to create.

  Slan by A.E. van Vogt

Slan is a story about Jommy Cross, a young boy who watches his parents die in front of him in the first chapter, hunted by the government because they are a telepathic, superintelligent and superstrong subrace of humans with antenna on their heads known as Slans. Slans are hunted to extinction by the corrupt government ruled by the world dictator, Kier Gray. Jommy has to go into hiding, wearing a hat to hide his tendrils.

It’s a good bet that if you think about other planets a lot, it’s because you think this one is somehow a painful and unsuitable place to be for you. Slan is an extraordinarily well written novel that is still intriguing and mysterious even today, it always tops my list of recommendations when people ask me about pulp scifi because it absolutely holds up. What makes it so important is that scifi fandom responded with an unusually strong sense of identification. The circumstances and history of the Slan are not exactly like that of outsiders who are ostracized and “different,” but we relate to emotions, not specific life details. A lot of people who were homosexual, who’s parents are drunks and like to beat them, who were sexually abused, or extremely poor and alienated from richer peers, or just “on the outside looking in” can relate to the Slans. Scifi fans, who’s culture was incredibly fringe, called themselves “Slans” for years in fanzines an fan communications.

It’s no exaggeration to say that for the 1940s to the 1950s, Slan was the most beloved and widely read and influential science fiction novel, and maybe one of the best, too.

  Mutant (aka the “Baldies” stories) by Henry Kuttner

Maybe one of the best of scifi’s forgotten geniuses of the 1940s, Henry Kuttner’s Baldies books are actually a post-atomic story, about a community of telepathic mutants known as “baldies” who hide away from a human race that fears and hates them. All Baldies were linked in a telepathic uni-mind, so none of them were ever alone. The narrator is the last surviving member of his species; the enemy is the prejudice and paranoia of the self-destructive human race.

Children of the Atom by Wilmar H. Shiras

The idea of a school as a setting where mutant children can get refuge and hide from a prejudiced world that doesn’t understand them comes from this book. 

In this one, due to atomic radiation, a sub-race of superintelligent humans emerges. They don’t have any mental powers except their superintelligence. The Children of the Atom take refuge in a school who’s true purpose is unknown. In the finale of the book, a human preacher leads a mob to the door of their school, which makes the Children realize they can’t isolate themselves from the rest of mankind.

  Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

Olaf Stapledon used to be a big deal. He inspired Asimov, C.S. Lewis, and Heinlein with his extraordinary “Last and First Men,” a story set over a billion years about the entire sweep of human history. But one of his more interesting novels was “Odd John,” a novel about the first “evil mutant.” Odd John is a charismatic and sometimes truly creepy antihero, an unusual mutant born ahead of his time; he switches between sympathetic and monstrous. We see his brutal mistreatment at the hands of the human race, but then see him use his powers on women in eerie ways, and see the hardened person he became, who created an island kingdom and base separate from the rest of the human race, a move that the evil mutants in Marvel, in imitation of Odd John, often did several times.

A lot of people identify the evil mutants with militant black leftists, but in the actual comics themselves, their worldview had way less to do with Marx and Malcolm X (as with “Dune is about oil,” that a giveaway someone hasn’t read it and just knows about it), and way more to do with some combination of Nietzsche and Captain Nemo. Like Nietzsche, their worldview is that traditional human morality doesn’t apply to them as another species. Each evil mutant is Nietzsche’s conception of the superman, elevated beyond good and evil and a “sovereign citizen” laws can’t govern. Nietchean “will to power” thinking is found in every single speech by Magneto. Likewise, like Captain Nemo, they are often driven by an urge for solitude in places they can’t be commanded by the small mindedness and petty tyranny of humans. Odd John combined both of these together: he was a Nietzchean superman who had a cruel disdain for ordinary morality, who’s strongest desire was to be left alone.

He That Hath Wings by Edmond Hamilton

 The Angel has a very specific point of origin: a wonderful and tragic story about a mutant born with wings by “Planet Smasher” Edmond Hamilton, who was always fascinated by notions of mutation and human evolution; he invented the story about the “guy who invents an evolution ray.”

The titular mutant is a man born with wings, who, when he falls in love, cuts them off to blend in with the normal human race. He loves his wife so much he gave up flight for her, but unexpectedly, his wings grow back at the end. He knows he has to get rid of them to blend into society, but he is allowed one last night of flight. 

 Gladiator by Philip Wylie

Fans of Superman probably know this novel as one of the major inspirations for the creation of Superman (possibly THE major inspiration), with Hugo Danner, an artificially created mutant who is superstrong, invulnerable, and able to “leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

I’d compare Philip Wylie to Michael Crichton: he was the one “bestseller” scifi novelist at a time when scifi was ghettoized. His work was regularly on the best seller list, including “When Worlds Collide,” a novel that created the “disaster” genre as we know it today, and is still influential through it’s film adaptation.

Philip Wylie’s Gladiator didn’t just create Superman. The angst and anger over being in a world you never made that later became a big part of the superhero story was all right there from the beginning. Hugo Danner was a misanthrope who’s attempts to help were stopped by a senseless and incomprehending mankind that feared and hated him. Like Slan, this is yet another novel from the past that is surprisingly readable and good today.

  The Humanoids by Jack Williamson

This is where the Sentinels came from.

To be clear: Jack Williamson did not invent the idea of robots who turn on the human race. But the very specific kind of robot the Sentinels are comes from the Humanoids, a novel about robots that take the instruction to protect mankind incredibly literally to the point they become dictators and ruthlessly command us, and battles consist of them adapting instantly to whatever strategies the human race uses.

[elk-ambrose-scott-writing]

Slan Review

TL:DR: “Slan” is a story with potential that completely wastes it. And don’t compare yourself to X-men. Ever. 

When I was 12, there was only one thing on my mind. It wasn’t boys, or school, or band class, or the dumb TV show all my friends watched. It was mutants. My passion was X-men, and the new X-men movie was coming out soon. I had never been more excited for a movie.

And after I saw it I had never been more disappointed in a movie.

My mutants had let me down. Actually, it was more like professional creep Brett Ratner let me down, but that’s neither here nor there. When Kevin J. Anderson’s introduction to “Slan” discussed how "Slan" inspired the X-men, I was similarly excited. Then I read the book, and just like X-men: The Last Stand, my mutants let me down. 

Let’s start with what I liked (I do try to be positive around here."Try is the keyword).

There wasn’t much (damn it). The ideas in the book were strong and engaging and were the only thing that helped me finish. The idea of the Slans, a race of telepathic mutants oppressed by a future human society was the most engaging. The idea of a bunch of these Slans screwing off to colonize space was even more interesting. The author also did a great job of detailing the various settings the main character, Jommy, found himself in, from space to the city to the dump. Even Jommy, who felt like a Mary Sue at times, made mistakes and found himself in danger. That was interesting. I haven't seen that before.

The rest of the book? I’m sorry to say, but I didn’t like it.

I realize that a lot of the problems I have are problems with older sci-fi in general. The pacing was one such problem. It was either very slow or moved at breakneck pace. Jommy went to so many interesting places and he wasn’t able to spend time in any of them. This is probably why the characters felt underdeveloped. Especially the female characters and the bad guys. The story felt like the writer had a magnum opus of epic proportions planned and then the editor said “guess what, you have 200 pages” and A. E. Van Vogt was like “shit!” and trimmed that book like an unruly bush.

Additionally, there were interesting plot threads that don’t go anywhere. The world felt very small in the sections outside of Jommy’s POV . The ending came out of freaking nowhere. There was either no time to develop some of the ideas or the author chose not to. One example of this is rumours of Slans kidnapping human babies. Wouldn’t it be interesting if there were some truth to this rumour? Wouldn’t it be cool if the author took some time to explain where this idea came from? Wouldn’t it be unique if the author had chosen to explore the themes of oppression more with this subplot? Yes, all those things would be great. Did they happen?

No, no they did not.

Yet, I can see where “Slan” influenced later sci-fi, and I find myself unable to hate it even if I didn’t enjoy it. It had unique ideas at the very least. The adventures of Jommy were entertaining at the most, and I didn’t hate any of the characters. Like X-men: The Last Stand, my disappointment comes from the potential of the story.

I give this story 2 tendrils up out of five.

[majingojira]

Monsters of the 20th Century

I had this odd notion.  A (brief) analysis of the origin of various supernatural creatures, as I wondered what ‘new’ monsters/supernatural beings had been created in the 20th century (roughly).   I’ve completed some of the research, and I’d like to share it with you all.  I’m also gonna tag @tyrantisterror because he is one of the more knowledgable people about monsters I know about on tumblr and I’m sure he can correct me a bunch in this!

1. Frankenstein - 1817 - The oldest literary monster and outgrowth of the concept of the Homunculus and Golem as an artificial being.  So pervasive is its reach, western ideas of Tulpa are tainted by it (every time you read about a tulpa ‘going out of control’, that is the influence of Frankenstein). 

2. Dinosaurs - The Dragons of the age of science entered pop culture in 1854 at the latest with the opening of the Crystal Palace Park.  Other prehistoric animals had captured people’s imagination before, and they didn’t start to enter fiction until 1864 (”Journey to the Center of the Earth”) and a short story by C. J. Cutliffe Hyne had an ancient crocodilian in his story “The Lizard” (1898).  Ann early Lost World style adventure, “A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder” by James De Mille in 1888 has the first true dinosaurs in them.  There, Antarctica has a warm spot where prehistoric monsters and a death cult lurk.  In 1901, Frank Mackenzie Savile’s “Beyond the Great South Wall” had a Carnivorous Brontosaurs worshiped by Mayan remnants.  “Panic in Paris” by Jules Lermina had dinosaurs attack a city, but it was published first in France so few saw it.  Finally, we have Conan Doyle in 1912 with “The Lost World” which solidified dinosaurs as a thing in fiction. 

3. The Evolved Man/Mutants - After “The Origin of Species” is published, it wasn’t long until Evolved Men or Mutants started showing up in fiction. “The Coming Race” and (1871), “The Great Romance” (1881).   They are generally big-headed and often have ESP of some sort.  In “Media: A Tale of the Future” (1891), they can control electricity too. It wasn’t until 1928 (”The Metal Man” by Jack Williamson) that Radiation was thrown in as a cause for Mutation.  Cosmic Rays would follow in “The Man Who Evolved” by Edmond Hamilton (1931).  After that, we have “Gladiator” by Philip Gordon Wylie (1930) where we have an engineered “Evolved Man”, and “Odd John” by Olaf Stapeldon which grants us the term “Homo superior” followed by “Slan” by A.E. van Vogt which has Evolved Humans as a persecuted minority.   And with that, everything that makes the X-Men what they are is collected.

3. Man-Eating Tree - First reported in 1874, the idea of man-eating plants grew since then to encompase many monsters, but started as Folklore about ‘Darkest Africa” (Madagascar) in the New York World.  They’d print anything back then.

4. Hyde - While it is tempting to link him to Freudian Psychology, Freud did not publish his work regarding things like the Id until much later (he didn’t even coin “Psychoanalysis” until 1896).  What is springs from, I currently cannot say without more research. 

4. Robot - Though there were automata since the days of the Greeks (Talos), the first Robot in modern fiction is from “The Future Eve” by Auguste Villiers de I’lsle Adam (1886).  THough the term Robot is not invented until 1920 with “Rossum’s Universal Robots.”  They definitely offshoot from Frankenstein, but with a more mechanical bent.  

5. The Grey Alien - The modern idea of an Alien has it’s first antecedents in the 1800s.  Specifically with the essay “Man of the Year 1,000,000″ by H. G. Wells (1892-1893). He speculates what humans will evolve into, and basically invites the Gray by accident.  It wouldn’t achieve it’s alien attachments until much later.

6. Morlocks - With the Evolved Man, there is also the ‘Devolved Man’.  That is what the Morlocks are. They are, as the name implies, tied to Well’s “The Time Machine” (1895), and the word has become a catch-all for subterranean monster-men, be they Mole People, CHUDs, or straight up Demons (’GvsE’). 

7. The Martians & Their War Machines - The First Alien Invader, and the first Mecha can be traced to “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells, 1897.  Not much more to say as far as I’m aware.

8. The Mummy - The 1800s saw an Egyptian craze in England, leading to some really nasty habits (google “Mummy Powder” if you need ipecac).  1827 saw “The Mummy!: Or, a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century” which is more a bit of futurism with an ancient protagonist.  Though “Lost in the Pyramid” (1868) by Louisa May Alcott predates it, it is overshadowed by Conan Doyle’s horror story “Lot No. 249″ (1892) which has the classically animated mummy going out and killing people under control of another.  The former is a “Curse” story rather than a monster.

9. Cordyceps - Everyone these days knows the Cordyceps fungus as a great source for making zombies, and I’m lumping that fungus in with these other monsters because, well, fungus’ that take over humans is a monster of the 20th century.  Best known for Toho’s film adaptation “Matango” (1963), it is inspired by a short story from 1907 by William Hope Hodgson called “The Voice in the Night”.  There, the poor victim doesn’t realize they’ve completely become a fungus monster, acting as a warning for those near the island.    

10. Aerofauna - Conan Doyle strikes again with “The Horror of the Heights” (1912).  A pretty tight little horror story of a whole ecosystem high above our heads in the clouds.  Many a sky tentacle owes its existence to this one.

11. Lich - Possibly derived from Kosechi the Deathless of Russian folklore, the idea of undead sorcerers became a staple of the works of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smyth, dating back to 1929.  Though Gary Gigax coined the idea together for D&D and based it on Gardner Fox’s “The Sword of the Sorcerer (1969)

12. Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster - I lump these cryptids together, because (thanks to a ton of research by Daren Naish, Daniel Loxton,  Donald R. Prothero, and others) we can trace them back to the same source: King Kong (1933).  The idea of prehistoric animals being out in the world in hidden places goes back to Conan Doyle’s “Lost World” (1912), but Kong made it widely popular.  And between the giant ape and the Brontosaurus attack (and the timing of sightings picking up), we can blame Kong for this.

13. The Great Old Ones - Lovecraft’s primary contribution to fiction first appear in “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) and expand upon from here.  As near as I can tell, he made a LOT of monsters.  These include “Ancient Aliens” & Shoggoths (1936 - “At the Mountains of Madness”), Gillmen (1931 - ”The Shadow over Innsmouth”), & The Colour Out of Space (1927).  14. The Thing - The Ultimate Shapeshifter.  It first appears in 1938′s “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell, Jr.  Though Campbell's square-jawed heroes literally tear the Thing to bits, it reached its zenith of horror in adaptation.  I can think of no earlier shapeshifting humanoids of such variety at an earlier time, or of such fecundity. 

15. The Amazons - The Amazons do indeed come from Ancient Greece, but it was a way for the Greeks to rag on Women.  It wasn’t until later that women co-opted the image of the Amazons as a source of empowerment, and that was codified in 1942 with one character: Wonder Woman. She helped spark the Amazons further into the culture, or at least, Amazon women who have superpowers (as they did in those early stories).  From there, we get a more recent direct descendant that was part of the reason I started this list: Slayers from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

16. The Hobbit - Though ideas of ‘Wee Folk” are part of worldwide Folklore, Tolkien took them out of the realm of Faerie, and made them... idyllic middle-class Englishmen with his 1937 book of the same name.  With the Lord of the Rings following in 1954-1955.  His works also gave us other monsters and supernatural beings: Orcs, Ents, & Balrogs. 

17. Gremlins - An Evolution of the wee folk once again, this time adapted for the mechanical era and of a more malicious bent. It became slang in the 1920s, with the earliest print source being from 1929.   They were popularized by Roald Dahl in”The Gremlins” (1942).  Later they were used to vex Bugs Bunny (1943′s “Falling Hare”), and then they got their own movies in the 1980s.  The rest is history.  

18. Triffids - There are a LOT of fictional plants out there, and a lot of carnivorous ones, but the Triffids were the first to be extremely active in their pursuit of prey.  From 1952′s “Day of the Triffids” by John Wyndham, the story is a keen example of the ‘Cozy Apocalypse’ common in British Fiction, sort of like the whole ‘schoolboys on a desert island make well of it’ thing that “Lord of the Flies” railed against. This paved the way for everything from Audrey II to Biollante.

19. Kaiju - 1954.  You know what this is.  Between Primordial Gods and Modern Technology, the Kaiju are born.  The difference between a Kaiju and a Giant Monster is a complex nuanced one, sort of like what makes film noir. But, in general, if the story has Anti-War, Anti-Nationalist, and/or Anti-Corporate Greed leanings, it’s probably a Kaiju movie.  If not, then it probably isn’t.

20. The Body Snatchers - Another horror of 1954 from the novel “The Body Snatchers” (1955), which includes aspects that the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” did not.  Like that the Duplicates only last 5 years and basically exist to wipe out sentient beings with each planet they infest.  Clearly drawing from the idea of the Doppelganger, these Pod People have evolved into a new form.

21. The Blob - That 1958 movie has one catchy theme song.  The whole thing was inspired by an instance of “Star Jelly” in Pennsylvania, circa 1950.  It was tempting to shift this under the Shoggoth, but I think they are distinct enough.

22. Gargoyles - Longtime architectural embellishments, they did not become their own “Being” until 1971 with “The Living Gargoyle” published in Nightmare #6.  The TV Movie “Gargoyles” came soon after in 1972, firmly establishing the monster.  Though it was likely perfected in the TV Series “Gargoyles” (1994). 

23. D&D - From 1973 Through 1977, D&D was formulated and many of its key monsters were invented.  Partly as mechanics ways to screw with players and keep things lively.  This brought us Rust Monsters (1973), Mindflayer (1974), Beholder (1975), and the Gelatinous Cube (1977). 

24. The Xenomorph - Parasitoid breeding is applied to humans to wonderfully horrible effect in the 1979 film “Alien”.  It became iconic as soon as it appeared. 

25. Slasher - The first slasher film is often considered to be ‘Psycho’ (though the Universal Mummy films beyond the first prototype the formula).  The idea of an undead revenant coming back to kill rather randomly started in the film “The Fog” (1980), but was codified by Jason Voorhees in either 1984 or 1986.   I am no expert on this one, though, so I am not fully certain.

26. The Dream Killer - Freddy Krueger first appeared as a killer in dreams in 1981, but there were other dream killers before him.  They could only kill with extreme fear, though.  Freddy got physical!  I think.  Again, more research is needed.

27. Chupacabras - This is another cryptid inspired by a movie.  In this case, “Species” (1995). No, really.  This is what it comes from.   I know a lot of these are really short down the line, but the research for this one is thorough and concise! 

28. Slender Man - The Boogieman for the Internet Age.  An icon of Creepypastas and emblem of them.

Needs More Research: The Crow/Heroic Longer-Term Revenants, Immortals as a “Group” (might go to Gulliver's Travels, but I’m trying to track Highlander here) are also on the list, but they are proving extremely difficult to research, so I thought I’d post what I have at the moment.  Shinigami might also be on the list since they are syncretic adoption of the Grim Reaper into something more.

[astramthetaprime]

Misreading the Symbol

There’s a unique cognitive fault that ties together political correctness and religious fundamentalism with regards to Autism.  You might call it “believing your own press” but Dr. Campbell had a more academic take on it -- “concretizing the symbol”.  

“Autism is My Superpower” is a trope we hear everywhere these days, perpetuated by autism moms who are trying hard to put a brave face on their child’s condition.  I get that they’re trying to spin it into something positive.  I can understand that in an abstract sense.  My mother never even noticed there was anything wrong with me, but, ya know, you do you ladies.  Looks like helicopter parenting has some upsides after all.  

However.  I spent my formative years reading the X-Men.  I have read A. E. Van Vogt’s Slan which was the very first story to explore the concept of human mutation, from which the X-Men and all other stories of human mutation took their origins.  Also, if it wasn’t obvious, I am an American.  I am just as familiar as every other American with what you might call our national superhero, Superman.  Let me tell you what I see in the concept of equating Autism with “superpowers”.    

Superman wasn’t the best of us.  What he could do, the abilities inherent in his Kryptonite physiology, meant that he was and always would be an outcast.  He could never be comfortable on Earth or anywhere else in the universe.  He was not human, no matter how much he looked like humans or acted like humans.  His genetics, his physiology, his biochemistry, everything about him was and always would be alien.  Nothing he could ever do for humankind would ever change that, and sooner or later human fear of the alien would make him either Public Enemy #1 or force him to become a tyrant simply to protect himself.  Superpowers cannot change human nature.  Superpowers cause fear, not a feeling of security.  

What people are saying when they say “Autism is a superpower”, this is what I hear:  “If you believe your Autism is a part of you, if you believe that your Autism defines you and if you believe Autism is part of your identity... if Autism makes you who you are, then you are diseased and alien and not human.  You can’t be trusted and you’re dangerous.”  

What this means for people like me is that we have to constantly hide everything we are, slap a mask on and live every moment of our lives as something we’re not simply to be allowed to live at all.  “Autism is a superpower” means if we fail to live up to the expectations of others, we’re alien and dangerous and cannot be trusted.  And that kind of attitude is what gets people like me killed by rookie cops with itchy trigger fingers.  

You know what I think is a better word for somebody with Autism?  

Survivor.  

Despite the odds.

[phoenixvinyl]

I was doing this in my tags but I ran out of tags kckflslwdlldgod

I have:

An 'RV' for my parents

'R-O-C-K me again' from the iconic anthem by one direction

Louis' silhouette

'your name' from ed sheeran's wake me up

'505' from the Arctic Monkeys song

The compass constellation

'peace + love River Phoenix' written by river

Two sets of inverted commas

'Dia dhuit slan!' + a tiny heart that Robert Sheehan wrote for me

'this road will never end' from my own private idaho

21:21 from skam

A drawing of Moriarty that Andrew Scott made for me + 221B for Sherlock

'Cor cordium' heart of hearts in Latin

My mum's signature

'We'll bleed the same way' from the 1975's Pressure

'girl almighty' written by louis

'all the love' written by harry for me

'you're alive' written by matty healy for me

Alt er love from skam

Two peonies and some leaves

A swallow

The dopamine structure

An umbrella with the number 4 for the umbrella academy and klaus

A tiny drawing my dad has been making for me since I was a baby 'because it's the only thing I know how to draw and it's also the best'

'all i ever wanted' written by vance joy for me

A cartoon snake from a comic i used to draw when i was very little

A triskel

'till the end of the line' + a star for Captain America

'you remain' from the Bible

A tiny 'x' that Niall drew for me

A cross

A rose and a dagger

'je suis prest' from Outlander

A tiny house for Home by one direction

'we were so beautiful' from Nathan's speech in misfits

Loser/lover from IT

A pennywise that Andy Muschetti drew for me

-

I want and I'm planning on getting asap:

'Divinely unispired' written by Lewis for me

'One' written by Lewis for me

'love' written by Andrew Scott for me

Something(S) from LT1

'I can do this all day' written by Chris Evans for me

'in your atmosphere' from my favorite John Mayer song

A piece of Domino

'it takes a bit more' from the 1975's song

'saudade'

A Bojack Horseman tattoo

A lyric from a Cezinando song but I can't chose one

'We'll carry on' for Mcr

'l’armure de la Foi'

'rock on' and 'I'll see you soon' that Alex turner wrote for me

Sixtine Chappelle's hands

A sakura card captors drawing

A quote from a book but I haven't chosen yet

Louis' drawing for me

Some other ed sheeran lyric

The office US jelly with the strapler

Something else with my best friend

The list goes on I'll stop now fkfkdlslgod.

gays do me a solid and rb with tattoos you have or want in the tags

[sci-fantasy]

The Annotated “Playback”

Tomorrow, Friday October 20, begins OVFF 33, the annual Ohio Valley Filk Fest, the biggest filk convention (certainly in stature; probably in people too?).

I am thus pleased to announce that after months of on-again-off-again work, and the assistance of several friends including @animatedamerican​ and @jchance4d4​, I have finished the project envisioned here, and annotated all of the references in Andrew Ross’s “Playback.”

(Well, as much as I could. One or two were not identifiable fully.)

A lot of people commented approving of this idea when @seananmcguire​ reblogged this, so I hope you see the fruits of our labor.

Song above the cut; references below.

“Playback” to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” filk lyrics by Andrew Ross

Mary Shelley, HG Wells, people meeting at hotels Rudyard Kipling, people singing ditties at the bar Gilbert, Sullivan, rounds of Young Man Mulligan Poul and Karen Anderson, songs in Key of R Martha Keller, Tolkein, songs of worlds as yet unseen TH White’s Arthurians, Frederick Pohl’s Futurians Tom Lehrer, Mondegreens, Slan Shacks, fanzines Music circles, Reprints, Jacobs has a misprint! We shouted “MacIntyre!” It’s our cry of battle for the Old Dun Cattle We shouted “MacIntyre!” And we haven’t parted since the circle started Amazing Stories Annuals, Pelz’s Filksong Manuals Dr. Demento tunes, Callahan’s Crosstime Saloons Hope Eyrie, Leslie Fish, bounced potatoes off the dish Robert Aspirin, Gwen Zak, Dawson’s Christian, Captain Jack Off Centaur, Teri Lee, making love in zero-G Filthy Pierre, Longcor, black market Tullamore Juanita Coulson, Red Lions, badges marked with Dandelions Dorsai have a Fan Club! Jello in the bathtub! Don’t set the cat on fire It will only fight it if you try to light it Don’t set the cat on fire And we haven’t parted since the circle started Peter Beagle, Consonance, chili cursed with sentience HOPSFA, NESFA, ConChord, and the Pegasus Award PFNEN, Ose, Amway, Talk Like a Pirate Day Dandelion Digitals, Julia Ecklar and the gulls Bob Laurent, Asimov, Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff Rocky Horror Muppet Shows, Frank Hayes feeling indisposed Bill Sutton DIY, Marischiello goodbye Challenger! Final tour! What else must we all endure? We saw the sky on fire While the world was staring, we were Jordin Karing We saw the sky on fire And we haven’t parted since the circle started Kathy Mar, Next Gen, Tullamore is back again Steve Macdonald, Elfquest, Interfilk funds a guest Tom Smith, 307 Ale, Lee Gold, Heather Dale Phoenyx, Keepers of the Flame, Filkontario’s Hall of Fame Echo’s Children, Bab-5, need a fool to feed the drive Hamlet done by John Woo, Marilisa Valtazanou GaFilk, Urban Tapestry, lives rich in fantasy Airwalls down at Orycon! Firebells at Baycon! We didn’t start a fire We were all but deafened, and began Kanefin’ We didn’t start a fire And we haven’t parted since the circle started Blake Hodgetts, Proteins, Vixy, Tony, Thirteen Stone Dragons, Moxie, Zander, Heather into Alexander Bill and Gretchen, dead mouse, alligators in the house ConFlikt, Judi Filksign, Tragedy at East Hill Mine Mary Crowell, Faerieworlds, brony boys and Wicked Girls Britain’s Talis Kimberly, Seanan’s Kellis-Amberlee Doubleclicks! Browncoats! Cats! FuMP! Toy Boat! Release the Cello! Sasquon! Thor! Pass another Tullamore! We didn’t start the choir It’s been so cathartic for the longest bardic We didn’t start the choir But when our turns have gone, it will still go on and on until the dawn…

Mary Shelley: As in, the writer of the first science fiction novel, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

HG Wells: Wrote The Time Machine and War of the Worlds and, along with Jules Verne, is considered one of the fathers of science fiction by people who don’t count Mary. (Jules pioneered “hard” SF, where he justified as much as he could with science; HG was busy making social metaphors.)

People meeting at hotels: AKA “conventions.” The first SF con was (debatably) Philcon in 1936, when ten people from the New York SF club went down to Philly to meet those guys. They called it a convention because the Democratic and Republican National Conventions had both been in Philly earlier that year, so it was a joke, see. The first World Science Fiction Convention was in New York in 1939.

Rudyard Kipling: English poet and journalist, famously a representation of British imperialism, but a lot of his stuff got set to music by Leslie Fish (for whom see more later).

People singing ditties at the bar: AKA filk. Or karaoke. Or any other sort of thing that happens when people who sing are near people who sing.

Gilbert, Sullivan: Light operettists famous for patter. They get refilked a lot.

Rounds of Young Man Mulligan: "Old Man Mulligan” was a 1940 story from Astounding Science Fiction by P. Schuyler Miller; as far as I can tell it was a pretty standard adventure story but it featured the titular Old Man who’d been around forever. “Young Man Mulligan” is an SFnal version of "The Great Historical Bum” (aka “I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago” or “The Bragging Song”; lyrics here); it opens “I was born about ten thousand years from now,” so you can see how it’ll go from that. It was one of the original “everybody keeps writing new verses” songs; Bruce Pelz published almost 70 in an early filkbook and many many more have been written since. (The Pelz lyrics do not appear to be available online.)

Poul and Karen Anderson: Poul was a Golden Age writing legend, one of the Grand Masters of SFWA, maybe one rung down from Asimov and Heinlein (maybe). Karen, his widow and sometimes co-writer, is among many other significant things the first person to deliberately use the term “filk music” in print. They both wrote their fair share of filk, and were inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2003.

Songs in the Key of R: Another way to say “off key.” See this folk song (lyrics here) of...disputed provenance (I have found a few different claims of authorship).

Martha Keller: Poet and balladeer, born 1902, died 1971. A number of her poems from Brady’s Bend and Other Ballads were put to music by Juanita Coulson (see below) in 1984 on “Rifles & Rhymes” by Off Centaur Publications (see below).

Tolkien: Do I really need to? Fine. Wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and basically created the modern fantasy genre on accident while he was busy with constructed languages and mythologies.

Songs of worlds as yet unseen: AKA “filk.” See also “Folk Songs for Folk Who Ain’t Even Been Yet,” by Leslie Fish (see below), which was the first commercially published filk album.

TH White’s Arthurians: White’s The Once and Future King is a distillation and to some extent modernization of the King Arthur legend; the first part was The Sword in the Stone and yes, that’s what the Disney movie was adapted from. And yes, there have been plenty of Arthurian filk songs over the years.

Frederick Pohl’s Futurians: An early group of SF fans, specifically New York area fans (several of them were part of the 1936 Philcon mentioned above). Famously, several politically-minded Futurians were arguably-banned (whether it was really a “ban” still gets debated today) from the first Worldcon in ‘39 for handing out political flyers; Pohl was one of those.

Tom Lehrer: He’s a retired mathematics professor who “hangs out” at UC Santa Cruz, but in the ‘50s-’60s he was an active mathematics professor and also a fairly popular political satirist. Despite having no love for folk music (see his songs “The Folk Song Army,” lyrics here, and even moreso “The Irish Ballad,” lyrics here, wherein he calls the folk song “the particular form of permissible idiocy of the intellectual fringe”), his stuff gets sung a lot in filk circles.

Mondegreens: Misheard lyrics, like the famous “‘Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy” (for “Kiss the Sky,” by Jimi Hendrix). Named by Sylvia Wright in 1954 after her own mishearing of the ballad “The Bonnie Earl o’Moray; the line was “They hae slain the Earl o' Moray/And laid him on the green,” and she heard “and Lady Mondegreen.” The term caught on, and it and/or some individual mondegreens have been the inspiration for no small number of filk songs and at least one filk band.

Slan Shacks: Early term for an SF clubhouse or house filled with fans; named for A.E. van Vogt’s 1940 novel Slan which was an early version of the persecuted-superior-race-of-beings story (think X-Men). Fans in the ‘40s-50s picked up the phrase “Fans are Slans” in yet another example of the weird ostracism/superiority cycle that pervades fandom to this day.

Fanzines: The internet before the internet. When fans wanted to communicate over long distances and all they had was printed paper, they printed papers. They made little bound fan-made magazines (hence, fanzines, or just zines) of their songs, stories, jokes, and opinions and mailed them to each other. A lot of early filk was in the pages of fanzines.

Music circles: How filk typically happens--people sit in a circle and sing. They usually take turns. See below for “bardic” and “chaos.”

Reprints: Printings again. A lot of filk didn’t necessarily get them, but some did, including some early albums, some early filkbooks like the NESFA Hymnal, see below, or the Westerfilk Collection.

Jacobs has a misprint!: While Karen Anderson (see above) was the first person to deliberately use the word “filk” in print, the first use of the word at all was a typo in Lee Jacobs’s essay, which ended up being called “The Influence of Science Fiction on Modern American Filk Music.” It spread in conversation as a funny typo for a while before Karen fixed it in a tangible medium of expression.

We shouted “MacIntyre!” (and the rest of that chorus): “When the Old Dun Cow Caught Fire” or “The Old Dun Cow” or “Macintyre!” is a very classic music hall song (written 1893) that gets performed by basically every folk or filk group that aims for that “British Isles drinking song” feel. See here for pedigree, lyrics, and recording.

Amazing Stories Annuals: In 1927, Hugo Gernsback published Amazing Stories Annual, a pulp magazine of “scientifiction” (the term “science fiction” hadn’t been coined yet). It sold so well he made it quarterly almost immediately; he lost the rights a few years later and the magazine ended up falling to the 800-pound gorilla that was Astounding Science Fiction. But it was arguably where all this started.

Pelz’s Filksong Manuals: Bruce Pelz, a legend of California fandom, was among other things one of the first creators of bound, organized, and published filkbooks (complete with sheet music!), which were titled the Filksong Manuals. (He’s mentioned under the “Young Man Mulligan” entry; it was one of the Manuals that had those 70ish verses to “Mulligan.”) Pelz was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame posthumously in 2007.

Dr. Demento tunes: Barry Hansen, AKA “Dr. Demento,” was a DJ in 1970 when he realized that “novelty” tunes lit up the phone banks more than rock and roll, and created the “Dr. Demento” persona for a syndicated radio show of novelty, comedy, and otherwise unusual music. It was on the radio weekly until 2010 and is now produced weekly online. He’s played a fair amount of filk over the years, reintroduced Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer, and Spike Jones to a grateful world, and both inspired and launched “Weird Al” Yankovic’s career.

Callahan’s Crosstime Saloons: Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson and the various “Callahan’s Place” stories that followed had more than a few filk songs among the lyrics (Robinson is a songwriter himself), and at one point a couple of filkers (Jordin and Mary Kay Kare, see below) appear as characters to sing their filk song about Callahan’s.

Hope Eyrie: Listen here. Considered by many to be the “anthem” of filk, or possibly of science fiction fandom (inasmuch as it’s possible). Written by…

Leslie Fish: One of the most significant filkers in history; not only did she write “Hope Eyrie,” she also wrote the infamous-beyond-infamy “Banned from Argo,” created the subgenre of “Kipplefish”  by setting Rudyard Kipling’s (see above) poetry to music, had the first commercial filk album (see above), helped to popularize filk music, wrote some of the earliest Kirk/Spock slash fiction...she’s pretty important, is what I’m saying. When the Filk Hall of Fame was founded in 1995, she was one of the first three inductees.

Bounced potatoes off the dish: At Westercon XIX in San Diego in 1966, the hotel was legendarily bad. Most notably, the Guest of Honor banquet featured completely inedible food, prompting Poul Anderson (see above) to set a filk to the tune of “Waltzing Matilda,” entitled “Bouncing Potatoes.”

Robert Aspirin: SF writer active from the late 70s until his death in 2008, Bob was also the founder of the Dorsai Irregulars (see below), and one of the people who brought early filk from private hotel rooms into public spaces, by (among others) holding a bit all-night filksing in celebration of the Irregulars’ formation in 1974. He was another of the first Filk Hall of Fame inductees in 1995.

Gwen Zak: One of the more spiritually-focused filkers, Gwen is a Pegasus Award (see below) winner for “Circles” and nominee for “I Am Lord” (cowritten with Leslie Fish).

Dawson’s Christian: A filksong by Duane Elms, written 1987, about a ghost ship. It’s been refilked more than a few times itself, including “Dawson’s Concom” (where it’s about ghost...convention runners).

Captain Jack: Not Pirates (probably), not Torchwood (probably), but the titular character of Meg Davis’s 1975 song “Captain Jack and the Mermaid.”

Off Centaur: The first filk music publishing house, Off Centaur Publications produced much of the early commercially-released filk albums, thus making filk available outside of a convention/fandom setting for the first time. They were the third of the three initial 1995 inductees into the Filk Hall of Fame. OCP was founded by Jordin Kare, Catherine Cook, and...

Teri Lee: Who went on to found Firebird Arts & Music, one of the more active filk publishers working today.

Making love in zero-G: A recurring topic in filk songs, including “Home on LaGrange,” and most notably, “A Reconsideration Of Anatomical Docking Maneuvers In A Zero-Gravity Environment, or The Zero-G Sex Song,” the latter being the most direct reference given its first line.

Filthy Pierre: Erwin “Filthy Pierre” Strauss was one of the prime movers in early filk on the East Coast of the US in the 1970s, creating some of the first songbooks, lists of top songs to know, and a lot of filk evangelism. To this day his melodica is a recurring feature at larger East Coast and world-level conventions. Pierre was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 1998.

Longcor: Michael “Moonwulf” Longcor has been a major figure in Midwestern filk since the 1970s; he has no fewer than ten published music albums, was twice King of the Middle Kingdom of the SCA, and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2014.

Black market Tullamore: Tullamore Dew, a brand of Irish whiskey, was Bob Asprin’s preferred drink (because it was cheap, or so the story goes), a preference that he passed on to the Dorsai Irregulars and filk community both. “Tully” is a commonly mentioned in songs about the DI, about filk itself, or about alcohol.

Juanita Coulson: Filker since the 1950s and still going strong, Juanita was one of the earliest filk encouragers, welcoming and encouraging new people to filk circles. She had several early OCP albums, brought Martha Keller’s (see above) poetry to the attention of many filkers, and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 1996.

Red Lions: Red Lion Hotels (now bought and owned by Doubletree) were the sites of many filk conventions, especially in the Pacific Northwest.

Badges marked with Dandelions: Kathy Mar (see below) and Lindy Sears founded the “Dandelion Conspiracy” to encourage general SF conventions to be filk-friendly and to push back against the somewhat unsavory reputation of filkers among conrunners. In Kathy’s words:  “In taking the dandelion as the filker's symbol, I hope to convey, as gently as the flower-power movement did, that filk is almost impossible to root out. If disturbed, it tends to proliferate. It can be beneficial at times, and it can even be beautiful in spite of its weedy reputation.”

Dorsai have a Fan Club!: At the Worldcon in Toronto in 1973, various security-type duties were the purview of local rent-a-cops, who...did not mesh well with fan culture, and more critically, did not understand fan valuation. This especially manifested in their Art Show duties; a very valuable Kelly Freas painting was swiped from the show because the rent-a-cop checking receipts didn’t know enough about the painting to realize that the receipt he was being shown did not nearly cover the value of the painting the thief was claiming to have bought. Bob Aspirin (see above) decided that Something Must Be Done, and formed an organization by fans, for fans, and of fans to do various convention-running duties on a by-contract basis. He named them the Dorsai Irregulars, a reference to the Childe Cycle of boks by Gordon R. Dickson about a planet of mercenaries, the Dorsai. (The joke being, if the “regular” Dorsai were off fighting in battles, doing con security was definitely a job for the “Irregular” Dorsai.) As mentioned above, the celebration of the Dorsai’s establishment was a watershed moment for filk, and to this day many Dorsai veterans are Midwestern filkers and vice versa.

Jello in the bathtub!: At the 1974 Worldcon in DC, Joe Haldeman (presumably, hopefully, jokingly) remarked that his ultimate sexual fantasy involved a bathtub full of green jello. By the end of the con, his bathtub had been jello-ed, with a couple of naked girls for, ahem, flavor. (Or perhaps texture.) The incident got inevitably filked about, though not many of those appear to be available online.

Don’t set the cat on fire (and the rest of the chorus): A four-line version of Frank Hayes’s (see below) “Never Set the Cat on Fire” (lyrics here).

Peter Beagle: Writer of The Last Unicorn (novel and screenplay) and numerous other works; also a filker himself, with an album (cassette, of course) of his live performance at Baycon 1986.

Consonance: Bay Area filk convention since at least 1992, probably longer.

Chili cursed with sentience: Beware of the Sentient Chili by Chris Weber (lyrics here).

HOPSFA: The Johns Hopkins SF club. They put out a filkbook, the HOPSFA Hymnal, in the 70s.

NESFA: The New England Science Fiction Association. They put out the NESFA Hymnal in the 70s, too.

ConChord: A filk convention held in the LA area starting in the early 80s, and closing its doors in the 2010s due to low attendance.

The Pegasus Award: The main community award (think the Hugo Award equivalent) for filkers, given out annually at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest (OVFF) every fall since the late ‘80s.

PFNEN: A fanzine (see above) called Philk-Fee-Nom-Ee-Nom, published by Paul Willett in the ‘80s. It was nominated for a Hugo in 1984.

Ose: A common musical style of filk, for sad, depressing stuff. The joke being it’s “ose, ose, and more ose!” (As in, “morose.”) Since a lot of the folk music tradition is similarly depressing, it was inevitable.

Amway: OK, I’ll admit, I’m not 100% on this one. I suspect it’s how “Amway salesman” could be considered one of the most mundane of mundanities, as in Roberta Rogow’s song “A Use for ‘Argo,’” but that’s all I got.

Talk Like a Pirate Day: The “holiday” on September 19 every year, wherein people, well, talk like pirates. Tom Smith, see below, wrote the official Talk Like a Pirate Day Song in 2003 see here.

Dandelion Digitals: Since the Dandelion Conspiracy (see above) was a thing, it’s no shock that a label called Dandelion Digital would spring up. They put out some of the first filk CDs in the ‘90s.

Julia Ecklar and the gulls: Julia Ecklar is a very well-known filker, one of Off Centaur’s (see above) most prolific artists; she has nine Pegasus Awards (see above) and also won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1991. By all accounts, she has a fondness for birds--if I’m reading this right she works at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. Beyond that, I’m not sure about the gulls.

Bob Laurent: Californian filker and fan; he founded Wail Songs in the ‘80s to distribute tapes of live convention recordings, and also founded Consonance (see above) and Interfilk (see below). He was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 1996.

Asimov: Isaac Asimov, to be precise, one of the Golden Age of Science Fiction’s most famous writers. He didn’t coin the word “robot” but you’d believe he had. He also, inevitably, wrote a couple of filksongs himself back in the day.

Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff: Californian musicians and filkers with a half dozen albums (see here), a recording setup to help other filkers record quality albums, a couple of Pegasus Awards--and Maya’s an SF writer in her own right with an impressively long bibliography.

Rocky Horror Muppet Shows: There really are no words. Just a link. Written by Tom Smith (see below) and performed a couple of time, originally in 1987 and twice more in the 2010s

Frank Hayes feeling indisposed: Frank Hayes is yet another leading light of filk. He wrote the infectiously upbeat “Never Set the Cat on Fire” (see above) as well as many other songs, but he’s most known for Frank Hayes Disease: that is, forgetting his words. And causing other filkers to forget theirs. (It’s been known to happen that someone will borrow his guitar and suddenly forget lyrics they’ve had cold for decades.) Frank was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2009 and is married to Teri Lee (see above).

Bill Sutton DIY: Bill Sutton is a filker from Indiana; he and his wife Brenda have a couple of albums. Bill’s most famous song is “Do It Yourself,” which he describes as “a vintage song about vintage computing.” (“You can build a mainframe from the things you find at home,” it proclaims.)

Marischiello goodbye: Bill Marischiello was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 1996...but had died in 1986. (I’m sure it’s this because this is chronological, as see…)

Challenger!: Space Shuttle Challenger, as you’re probably aware, broke apart on liftoff in January 1986. The song “Fire in the Sky” by Jordin Kare (see below) is largely about that and the other successes and failures of the Space Program.

Final tour! What else must we all endure?: This reads like fluff that rhymes, to me.

We saw the sky on fire (and the rest of the chorus): As mentioned above, this is all based on Jordin Kare’s “Fire in the Sky.”  (Link is to the version on the album To Touch the Stars.)

Kathy Mar: Cofounder of the Dandelion Conspiracy (see above), part of the second annual induction into the Filk Hall of Fame in 1996, winner of seven Pegasus Awards, and yet another of Those Names.

Next Gen: As established, this is chronological, so we’re into the late ‘80s. Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987.

Tullamore is back again: I can’t find confirmation of this, but I seem to recall hearing that Tully was hard to find for a few years in the ‘80s thanks to the Troubles.

Steve Macdonald: “Smac,” as he is affectionately known, is a member of the Dorsai Irregulars (see above), a 2006 inductee in the Filk Hall of Fame, winner of six Pegasus Awards, once administrator of the same to great effect, and is known as Gallamor the Bard at Renaissance Faires.

Elfquest: The legendary long-running comic book fantasy epic is one of those properties that filkers seem to really be fond of. There’s been an album of Elfquest filk, a songbook of filk about Elfquest, and, well, see for yourself.

Interfilk funds a guest: Interfilk, founded in 1992, is an organization dedicated to the cross-pollenation of filk, by paying to send filkers to conventions in other regions. They are a registered nonprofit, and most filk cons do an auction of donated goods (rare music, songbooks, knick-knacks, food, drink…) to raise money.

Tom Smith: The World’s Fastest Filker, fourteen-time Pegasus Award winner (and 34-time nominee), 2005 inductee into the Filk Hall of Fame. Along with “Rocket Ride,” his paean to the Golden Age of Science Fiction, his most famous song is...

307 Ale: ...the story of a few MIT geeks who managed to brew beer inside of a tesseract and got a liquid that’s 153.5% alcohol--that is, it has a proof of 307. (He saw 307 ALE on a license plate and ran with it.)

Lee Gold: California SF fandom, publisher of the filk zine (see above) Xenofilkia since 1988 (and still going). Inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 1997 and publisher of several posthumous filk collections (that is, collections of deceased filkers’ work; she’s still alive).

Heather Dale: Filk by way of the SCA, officially a Celtic bard-style performer with something like 20 albums to her name. She’s been at numerous filk conventions, won four Pegasus Awards, been nominated for another four.

Phoenyx, Keepers of the Flame: Celtic fusion rock band Phoenyx, founded by Heather Alexander (see below), had one album, “Keepers of the Flame.” Long out of print.

Filkontario’s Hall of Fame: The Filk Hall of Fame, mentioned extensively here; inductions happen at FilkOntario (FKO), an annual filk con--guess where.

Echo’s Children: Filk duo Echo’s Children, Cat Faber and Callie Hills, four-time nominees for Pegasus Awards for performance; Cat won seven times for writing/composing or individual songs. In addition to several songs about various tabletop RPGs they were in, and a few about other media, a lot of their songs are about…

Bab-5: Babylon 5, the TV show created by J. Michael Straczynski, which was doing long-form arc storytelling in the mid-90s in syndication. Besides Echo’s Children, a few other filkers have done songs about it; Tom Smith (see above) did a whole-show summary to the tune of Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week.”

Need a fool to feed the drive: “Fool to Feed the Drive” by Jordin Kare (see above) is a refilk of “Fuel to Feed the Drive” by Cynthia McQuillin--McQuillin being a multiple-Pegasus award winner herself and 1998 Filk Hall of Fame inductee. “Fuel,” the original, is a sad elegy about a spaceship that runs out of fuel in deep space, doomed. “Fool” points out that fusion drives use water, and humans are mostly water…

Hamlet done by John Woo: Oh, Andrew...this is a bit of self-promotion from the writer of this song, Andrew Ross. Andrew was nominated for a 2011 Pegasus Award for his song “Crispy Danish,” which is, well, a retelling of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark as a John Woo film, set to “Sheep Marketing Ploy” by Tom Smith (see above).

Marilisa Valtazanou: Oh, that’s why--he needed something to rhyme! Marilisa has been nominated for over a dozen Pegasus awards, alone or as part of a group, and helps run the annual UK Filk Convention.

GaFilk: The start of the filking New Year, GAFilk is held the first full weekend of the year in Atlanta, GA (hence the name). One of the more well established filk cons.

Urban Tapestry: Canadian filk trio of Debbie Ridpath Ohi, Allison Durno, and Jodi Krangle; they’ve won two Pegasus Awards and released three albums, and were inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2011.

Lives rich in fantasy: “Rich Fantasy Lives,” by Tom Smith (see above) and Rob Balder, is in contention for “Filk anthem” with “Hope Eyrie” (see above) and its ilk. It celebrates the joy of having more worlds than one to visit on occasion. Best sung in a crowd.

Airwalls down at Orycon!: OK, this one I can only go off of what @jenroses said: “The Airwalls at Orycon was one of those legendary disasters that ended up sparking the best filk circle I’ve ever been at.”

Firebells at Baycon!: This one got filked by Bob Kanefsky (see below): it’s the mostly-true story of a massive problem at Baycon in 2002. The fire alarms kept going off. Every five minutes or so.

All night.

We didn’t start a fire (and the rest of that chorus): See above. “Kanefin’” refers to Bob Kanefsky, considered one of the grandmasters of the refilk. 2007 Pegasus Award winner for Writer/Composer and nominee for specific songs, Bob has a legendary habit of taking one song by a singer, and rewriting the lyrics (often to make it another song by that same singer)...and then convincing the original singer to sing the filk--he got verbed. To Kanef is to sing your mashup-filk parody of a specific filker’s work at said filker. He has several albums of just that. One of the greatest parodists in filk.

Blake Hodgetts, Proteins: Filker Blake Hodgetts, two-time Pegasus Award nominee for writing, has a song called “Proteins” which is a sci-fi version of one of those cowboy ballads about a cowboy who meets a Mexican girl, they get together briefly, share no language, spend the night, then they part...in his version, it’s an alien, and our lonely singer remembers too late that biochemistry mismatches can lead to anaphylactic shock...

Vixy, Tony, Thirteen: Filk duo Vixy and Tony from the Pacific Northwest, two-time Pegasus winners; their first album was “Thirteen,” and at time of writing was their only album. (Their second came out in 2016.)

Stone Dragons: Canadian filk duo of Tom and Sue Jeffers. Tom was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2012.

Moxie: Play it with Moxie is the nine-member “house band” at GAFilk (see above), which plays the annual GAFilk Banquet.

NOTE: These next two pieces discuss trans individuals, and use their “deadnames”--the names they went by before transition. In both cases, the individuals are public about their transitions and former names, so I am given to understand that this is not considered a breach of etiquette.

If it is, I apologize and will edit the post.

Zander: Zanda Myrande describes herself as “still recovering from the trauma of being Zander Nyrond for several decades,” but still gives “ house room to Zander and the rest of the deadbeats who populate her head.” Zanda is a UK filker, two-time Pegasus Award winner, and writer of the song that UK filk has claimed as their own anthem, “Sam’s Song.”

Heather into Alexander: Celtic musician and filker Alexander James Adams, the Faerie Tale Minstrel, describes himself as “the Heir to Heather Alexander,” who went to the lands of Faerie (thus invoking the “Changeling Child” tale). He has a handful of Pegasus Awards, and wrote the archetypal song of battle, “March of Cambreadth.”

Bill and Gretchen, dead mouse: Bill and Gretchen Roper, filkers from the Midwest, literally own the domain filker.com. Bill has three Pegasus Awards, one with Gretchen; that one is for “My Husband, the Filker,” and includes a snippet about a dead mouse to the tune of “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

Alligators in the house: Filk about exactly what it sounds like. Written by Betsy Tinney (see below) and performed by Betsy, Alexander James Adams (see above), and S.J. Tucker as Tricky Pixie.

ConFlikt: A relatively new filk convention in the Pacific Northwest, foudned 2007.

Judi Filksign: Judi Miller is a talented filker, singer, and musician in her own right, but is primarily known in filk as an ASL translator. Many filk concerts see her at the side of the stage, signing the songs. She won the Pegasus Award for Best Performer in 2006 and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2007.

Tragedy at East Hill Mine: “The Wreck of the Crash of the Easthill Mining Disaster” by Brooke Abbey (formerly Brooke Lunderville), a Canadian pharmacist and filker.

Mary Crowell: That’s Dr. Mary Crowell to you, punk! Dr. Crowell is a piano, composition, music theory, and music appreciation professor from Alabama, a four-time Pegasus winner (including once with Play It with Moxie, see above) with another dozen-plus nominations, has two albums and major parts on several more, and is one of filk’s roving accompanists; she can provide a piano backing on the fly.

Faerieworlds: A music festival in Oregon, which has featured a number of filk musicians, including S.J. Tucker and Alexander James Adams (see above) both individually and as Tricky Pixie (also see above).

Brony boys: A lot of fandom subcultures develop their own filk; Harry Potter has Wizard Rock, Doctor Who has Time Lord Rock, and yes, My Little Pony has its own filk. (Note: This was written before “Brony” stopped being considered anything except a warning sign of the Sad Puppies and the like. Look that one up yourself if you want, this is long enough as is.)

Wicked Girls: The fourth album of filker and author Seanan McGuire, six-time Pegasus Award winner. Wicked Girls was the first single-artist filk album to be nominated for a Hugo Award (To Touch the Stars, see above, did it earlier but was multi-artist), for Best Related Work in 2012. “Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves,” shortened to “Wicked Girls,” is also the central track of the album.

Britain’s Talis Kimberley: Talis Kimberley, UK filker and activist, has been nominated for 32 Pegasus Awards and won 9, released over a dozen albums, and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2014.

Seanan’s Kellis-Amberlee: Under her open pseudonym of Mira Grant, Seanan McGuire (see above) wrote the Newsflesh series, in which a manmade virus called Kellis-Amberlee causes zombification upon death.  (The similarity to the sound of Talis’s name is a coincidence.)

Doubleclicks: A nerd-rock duo--they they don’t self-identify as filkers, but they’re well regarded and friends with many Pacific Northwest filkers.

Browncoats: The organized fandom for Firefly, densely populated with filkers.

Cats: One of the most common subjects of filksongs that aren’t actually about fantasy or science fiction.

FuMP: The Funny Music Project, a loose affiliation of comedy musicians that has considerable overlap with the filk community (including Tom Smith and the Great Luke Ski, among others).

Toy Boat: Toyboat, a hard-rock filk band from the Midwest.

Release the Cello: An album by filker and cellist Betsy Tinney (see above).

Sasquon: Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention, which was the current con when this song was written.

Thor: The God of Thunder, Mighty Thor! This probably refers more to the Leslie Fish song, though--she was doing that sort of thing before the Marvel Cinematic Universe made that version a household name.

Pass another Tullamore: Tullamore Dew (see above).

for the longest bardic: At filksings, “bardic” refers to a style of turn-taking in which the opportunity to sing and/or play (or, in some variations, request a song of someone else) progresses around the circle in order.  This contrasts with “chaotic”, a style in which there are no set turns and anybody can request to perform next.

[pheebsterhopewell]

Suspended

ean x Daughter!Reader

Summary: You’re Dean’s daughter and Dean has to pick you up after school. Turns out you have been suspeneded for getting into a fight with another student, then into a shouting session with a teacher. 

“You’re suspended Miss Winchester”

Shit.

“And your Father will be notified to pick you up.”

Shit! 

You sat in the Head’s office waiting to be let out of school. It was 3:30pm and school ended 15 minutes ago... You knew that your Dad was going to be furious, but in your defense it wasn’t your fault. Yes, you punched a girl in the face but then she slipped and fell down the stairs... Totally all her fault.

You heard a knock on the door and instantly tried to curl up into a ball of shame when you heard your Dad walk into the room with a huff. The Head-Master welcomed him to sit down next to you. Your Dad sat silently, never glancing your way.

“Why is my daughter here?”  Your Dad’s voice was irritated and intimidating, you could tell he was annoyed with everyone right now.

“{Y\N} has been suspended for punching and then pushing another student down the stairs. After this perdicament she decided that it would be acceptable to argue with a teacher and have a one sided slanning match. The words your daughter knows and used, Mr.Winchester, was completely unaccetable.” The Head-Master of your school tried to remain as calm as possible, but as he spoke his face seemed to turn slowly from red to purple. Trying not to laugh, you looked towards the ground.   

“And why did my daughter get into a fight?” Dean’s voice stayed low and quite. You were very suprised at how serious your Father’s voice was.

“Maybe you should ask her.”

They both turned to face you qiuckly, waiting for you to tell your story.

“I was walking down the corridor, books in hand, going to lesson. Then she tried to push me to the floor...but failed. I picked up my books laughing because I found it funny, as did the other people in the corridor. What happened after was all her fault Dad. She was talking trash about you, Uncle Sam and Uncle Cas. The audacity that she had, to think that she could go slander my family’s name and get away with it! She diserved to get punched, her Mother would’ve gotten her a nose job if it was broken.” Dad looked in agreement with you before changing his tone again.

“Well it looks like the little lady deserved what she got. Now I am going to take my daughter home. She will be back at school next week thank you and goodbye.” And with that your Dad walked out of the office, you close behind.

“{Y/N} Winchester... you’re are not leaving the bunker till next week... But I do have one question... Did it hurt your hand?”

“It hurt like hell!”