#UNIONS LITERALLY UNITE PEOPLE

[bisonofyesterday]

I've been reading a lot of conspiracy theories lately for fun and it's wild, sure, a glimpse into the mind of an insane person, but honestly it does kinda get boring after a while once you recognize all of the tropes

It's a real thing that happens and it was a fear for me at first but now? I genuinely don't get how "conspiracy reading for fun" could act as a pipeline to being a conspiracy theorist, like are you stupid?? Were you already susceptible to this brand of thought??? Literally all of these are either odd interpretations of economics, wishful thinking, reboots of antisemitism, or just plain regular bullshit, and like it's really easy to see that, like all of this is dumb, people who believe this are dumb, it's absurd

Fantastic fiction though, these could be good books or games or movies, and like that's what they are and that's their primary audience, people who want to pretend they're the protagonist of a movie, of a grand plot, every bad thing doesn't just happen or are perpetrated some random disturbed people! It's an organized movement at the top of everything responsible for every bad thing ever to keep us in line! It can be a kind of anti-religion in that sense, malevolent gods are better than none

There HAS to be gods at the top of it all, who put ridiculous references to themselves in everything and monolithically control the entire world, because if no one is in control, then that'd be terrifying

[bedlund]

2, 12, 20 :)

2. Who is your least favorite character?

12. If you read fanfiction, recommend a fic you love.

i haven’t read riverdale fanfic yet😔 but i’ll start with jughead’s weird fantasy tomorrow

20. What is your favorite quote?

Tabitha: Unions literally unite people, and united people are more difficult to control. And Percival, as we know, is all about control

Cheryl: And tweed.

riverdale ask game

[witchthewriter]

𝐁𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐢𝐜𝐨𝐭'𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞

⤷ female, Valyrian blood (dragon rider), and any size reader. Requests are open, thank you for reading!

a/n: APPARENTLY THIS IS A GUY NAMED DAVOS BLACKWOOD. But he literally IS Bloody Ben. So he's staying Bloody Ben.

P.s. I'm ageing Benjicot up so he's around 24 or whatever age you want him to be that's over 18 <3

ᴹᵃˢᵗᵉʳˡᶤˢᵗ | ᴹᵃˢᵗᵉʳˡᶤˢᵗ ᴵᴵ

𝑺𝑭𝑾🌿

・It wasn't an arranged marriaged. No, not by any means.

・You had been sent by your Queen to remind the Houses of Westeros their pledge to her. And Rhaenyra had chosen you to go to the Blackwoods.

"I expect you will be welcomed warmly," her Grace said with a warm smile.

You bowed your head and returned the smile.

・You always felt safe around Rhaenyra, she was someone very close to you. Someone who you would fight to the death for.

・The first time Benji saw you, his heart stopped...which was a very fair reaction as you were atop your fearsome dragon, The Cannibal.

・You bonded with the wild dragon when you were 13 - it was the first day of your periods and you were sick and tired of being without a dragon.

・It was in your blood. And you were done waiting.

・Your first flight with Cannibal was difficult - although the blood magic seemed to be strong between the two of you.

・You were the exact person he was waiting for.

・So when your duty came to aid Queen Rhaenyra; she did asked for you to unite with a House through marriage

・That was heavy - a big duty that you did not think would need to happen, since you bonded with Cannibal. Wouldn't you be put on the front lines straight away? Her answer was no.

・But you knew the realities of war and faced your duty head on (you know Cannibal will always defend you)

・Your marriage was a significant one. All the Blackwoods were invited, and Rhaenyra was there to oversee the ceremony.

・However, having all of your family there would have been another Red Wedding, so only a few choice people from your side could be invited.

・Nonetheless, it was absolutely beautiful.

・Dragonfire lit the skies, chasing away the dark. Even Cannibal was having a good time. There were tributes made to him - sheep, cow, goats galore. You swore you saw him smiling.

・What you absolutely weren't expecting was Benji to INTERACT with Cannibal...

・He brought up a bull from the biggest hoard they had. Benji watched as the dragon practically gulped the animal down. However, he wasn't scared - he was impressed. And intrigued.

・You were absolutely moved by Benji's act. Truly. Because it showed his bravery. His daring. And of course his caring. You knew, you could feel the way Cannibal was feeling - and he trusted this Blackwood.

・So you decided to give him a wedding present. A fly.

・By doing so, you broke down every single one of Benji's walls and he knew you were the one for him. His wife. His firt and only one.

・After a tough day, and you both go to your chambers; he'll grab your arm and kiss your wrist. A physical way of saying "I'm so glad you're alive and mine."

・Learns High Valyrian for you. He wanted to surprise you with it. And surprise you he did.

・You call each other: Ñuha jorrāelagon (my love), Ñuha prūmia (my heart),

・ A very particular sentence that Benji says a lot is: Nyke pendagon nūmāzma ao everyday (I think about you everyday)

・Of course he knows you can protect yourself; but that doesn't stop him from defending you. You're his world now. You mean so much to him.

・No body thought this union would work as well as it had.

・So, Bloody Ben & The Rider of Cannibal became a formidabble pair that made men tremble wherever they went.

𝑹𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒔

Like Calls To Like

The Gomez & Morticia Adams

"Think they'll try us?" x "Fuck I hope so."

𝑹𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒄 𝑷𝒍𝒐𝒕 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆

Unbreakable Bond

Growth through Adversity

Bickering and Banter

𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒆 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒈

Please Please Please by Sabrina Carpenter

The Politics & The Life by Daniel Pemberton

O Verona by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra

𝑁𝑆𝐹𝑊 🔞 No one under the age of 18 past this point, makes me feel weird if you read it.

・Gives you complete and utter respect both in and out of the bedroom.

・Has never and will never push you to do anything you don't want to do

・The first time you were together, it felt like your bodies were on fire. Meant to burn together. The words kept replaying over and over in your head as he touched you. A deep yearning overtook you and suddenly time stopped.

・His lips were warm, his hands cold but when he took off his clothes, you couldn't help but grin.

・There's such desire between you two that even your mount can sense it.

・Your sex life is very active - at least once a day. Maybe you're in your Honeymoon period, but you cannot keep your hands off one another when you're alone

・And when you're at feasts, Benji's hands find their way down your thigh, and slowing inching inbetween them.

"Really, here? Now?" You asked n a hushed tone, trying not to draw any attention to either of you.

"Yes. Here, now. Or we can go into the hallway and I will ravish you there. Upto you, wife."

[colin-becher-death-countdown]

okay so I paused the podcast as soon as I heard Colin's voice and started writing down my thoughts

COLIN BECHER WILLINGLY MAKING A PHONE CALL?? AGHHHHH YES CMMMONN DIE DIE DIE!!!!

oh my god please that'd be so heartbreaking if he died rn with that final message, that would literally be a dream come true if that was how he died, like no mess, no statement, just a sorry to bother you, I'm not as important as whatever you're dealing with rn

Goodbye Alice from Colin and now a Goodbye Gwen from Lena, very circular I like it, one dead (presumed he's dead to me) one alive

Oh Gwen you've got a big storm coming

"Even if it was on the train. Which we can't be sure of" HMMMM IF ONLY THERE WAS A WAY YOU COULD FIND OUT THAT INFORMATION, IF ONLY THERE WAS A WOMAN DESPERATELY CALLING YOU TO RELAY THIS INFORMATION, IF ONLY

"WE WANT YOUR TEETH"!!!!!!

Celia channeling Joshua Gillespie and Sam channeling Jonathan Sims, and only one of those people got killed by a unicycle so not looking good for you Sam

The Dark namedrop

"I try not to see these days." Melanie King be like

That old woman was actually Agnes Montague chillin (I mean she would be in her 70's soooo)

The Custodian needs to join a union

that is not what I meant by joining a union

17 missed calls from Alice in unit 17 okay I hear you

IT'S THE LAW OF EQUIVALENT EXCHANGE!!

Hmm I wonder if Celia knows the apocalypse was reverted in the other world.

"SLICED MY WHO FROM ME" CELIA DID YOUR WHO GET TURNED BLOODY FROM YOUR WHAT TOO???

A Bouchard in charge ain't that just the way, balance truly is restored

Oh Sam and the Archivist are gone, perhaps they are in the Magnus Archives world now, the Archivist has a recorder to keep them on track, or maybe they will also Unionise

[necronomeconomicism]

Voting in the United States is unintuitive, often undemocratic, and painful. The natural emotional reaction with being asked to support vile people at the ballot box is disgust and avoidance. For leftists it doesn't help either when dominant narratives about voting put it on a pedestal as something patriotic system-serving citizens do.

But voting doesn't have to mean declaring personal support or belief in anyone, and there is a lot more to vote on than the presidency. Still, there's no bubble to fill in that says "Gay luxury space communism immediately!" so what do we do with the ballot?

There are two kinds of things you might get to vote on. Representatives and Propositions(or Measures). Representatives are those politicians the news is always abuzz about. Propositions are US America's cute attempt at direct democracy and can be a breath of fresh air to vote on when they're not trying to con you. Most are "citizen-initiated" so this is where you'll find most non centrist political actions. As I understand it 24 states do not have citizen-initiated propositions and of them some don't seem to have propositions at all. If you live in one of those I'm sorry.

Your mental energy should be prioritized in this order.

Propositions -> Local Representatives -> State Representatives -> Federal Representatives -> Presidency

UNLESS you live in a swing state, the list of which can vary depending on the election. In that case you'll have to think about the presidency first. I'm sorry. The electoral college is stupid.

I live in California, so we'll be going through part of the 2024 California ballot. Before we get into this know there is nothing wrong with using a voting guide that just tells you what to vote for. That is, only if the guide is good, which is uncommon. Most guides are either horrible or don't cover everything on the ballot. Before using a voting guide check who is funding it. If it has any holes consider researching those propositions or elected positions yourself.

California has 11 propositions on the ballot. I'm only going to go over one in detail, but I do want to bring up some more straightforward ones to illustrate a point

Prop 3 enshrines gay marriage in the California constitution Prop 6 bans forced prison labor in the state Prop 32 raises the minimum wage to $18 Prop 33 allows local governments to enact stronger rent control

Propositions like these, if they are available, leave decent leftists no excuse not to vote. No matter how much you detest the presidential candidates, no matter how revolutionary you aspire to be, no matter how much you hate American "democracy" propositions like these can have immense positive impacts on people's lives when they pass. You cannot allow yourself to be thoroughly terrified of the ballot box when these exist. And on the other hand

Prop 36 makes drug possession a felony and makes theft under $950 a felony after multiple violations

You cannot just do nothing and let something that monstrous pass. And it fucking might! And all that good stuff might not! There are more than twice as many millions of dollars in advertisements pushing prop 36 than against it right now. Forget the presidency for a moment, if you live in California, you get to decide if literal slavery is allowed in prisons or not.

As for representatives I'm not going to say exactly what city I live in, but I can say there are multiple elected positions that aren't even divided along party lines. There are also multiple state, district, and county representatives that aren't just horrible people. Many of them backed by unions rather than corporate money.

There's also sneaky shit on the ballot. I mentioned earlier propositions made to con you. This season's example is Prop 34 which, "requires certain healthcare providers to spend 98% of the revenues from the federal discount prescription drug program on direct patient care." Sounds maybe like a neat healthcare bill, but it says "certain" and that's a tricky word on the ballot. In this case Prop 34 specifies it only applies to healthcare providers that own housing. Only one healthcare provider in California does that, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. A non profit that has put its weight behind affordable housing including support for Prop 33.

Without people doing the research on things like Prop 34, bills like this can easily pass and enable all sorts of chicanery.

So go vote! Do some research and make some changes to the world! Don't let it be the only thing you do either. Voting only happens every two years. Contact your local political groups and volunteer your time or even just listen. Talk to your friends about what you're doing. Exercise your political muscles! Exercise your organizational muscles! Solidarity can be hard, but we have to be up for it. Your leftism has to affect the world around you or it will rot in the prison that is your skull.

[lem0nademouth]

thinking about how fucking resilient Jews are.

thinking about my great grandparents in romania, raised in a land colonized by the same empire that sent them to the balkans, still working as tailors and butchers like their ancestors had for generations.

thinking about them stowing away on ships to america so their children could live to see adulthood.

thinking about how many other five foot two bookworms have been in my family. i know i’m not the first, and i certainly hope i won’t be the last.

thinking about how many seders my family has held throughout history, how many “next year in jerusalem”s were shouted. it hasn’t happened yet, but maybe it will.

thinking about the women who passed down kabbalah to their children while witches burned in the next village over. how many mothers kept literal magic alive.

thinking about how every single person that lived before me, every branch of my family tree, had to choose to survive. living has always been in the present progressive for Jews; every breath they took was a choice to fight just a little longer.

i come from people who survived the spanish inquisition, the soviet union, the Shoah, the judeo-roman wars, ottoman imperialism, the rise and fall of so many empires i cannot name them all, and the only uniting factor is them. they taught their toddlers the sh’ma and lit candles and read books and sewed clothes and spun linen and cured meat and davened and smiled and laughed and they did that for two thousand years. ten years ago i became the first bat mitzvah in my family line. the first woman in my family to read from the torah.

i hope they’re proud. i hope i was worth it for them.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Fuck off commie, anyway people in droves have fled places like the Soviet Union, The Eastern Bloc,Cuba, North Korea and the POS PRC. So communism being successful is a farce. That being said I also hat communism because I don't want to be "equal" to those inferior to me.

I already knew you were a bigot, you made that clear in your last ask.

If you want to talk about "fleeing in droves", we can also talk about how the US and West Germany literally bribed people to cross over with the direct intent to cause economic instability and decline.

A persecuted American political dissident left the US to seek asylum in Cuba, Assata Shakur, and she's still living there today. She prefers it to the US. Donald Trump undid Obama's efforts to thaw relations with Cuba using their refusal to return her to the US for trial as one of his excuses.

When exactly were people fleeing the USSR or China outside of wartime or famine early on in their history? By the time the nations had stabilized and recovered, living conditions had vastly improved. The USSR from the 50s onward had a similar net migration rate to the United Kingdom or Denmark at the time, with a net positive NMR from the 70s all the way up to 1991 when emigration jumped massively due to the collapse of the USSR.

China has also had a very stable NMR outside of the period of famine, and most of the people who left during the famine returned to the country once the famine ended.

As for North Korea, you might want to watch this video:

If the DPRK is hell on earth, why would anyone who left be fighting for so many years to return to their home? Why would the ROK need to trick people into leaving and bribe them to spout lies about the country? Why would the ROK work to censor "defectors" who don't parrot the government's narrative regarding the DPRK? If the DPRK government is incompetent, why would the West need to sabotage them?

[snowsonlylove]

Partition (Inspired by Beyonce & Ana Huang)

Pairing: President!Coriolanus Snow x Wife!Reader

Summary: Frustrated from her arranged husband’s lack of attention towards her, Y/N Y/L/N bursts in a plathora of words spewed to her arranged husband and elected President of Panem, Coriolanus Snow about his lack of care and affection towards his own wife despite Coriolanus literally being married to Y/N. Both parties being frustrated with no means to give their stances up, explode in a world of dirty, nasty sex in their limo on the way to former president’s son Felix Ravinstill’s dinner. 

Fic Type: Smut (NSFW) 18+ with angst, Arranged Marriage trope

Warnings: infidelity, cum licking, heavy kiss, degrading but also lots of praise, lmk if there’s anything I missed but this is vvv nasty 

Word Count: 2.6k

Inspo: Heavily inspired by Chapter 27 of King of Wrath by Ana Huang (my FAVORITE book of all time) from the Kings of Sin Series and the song Partition by Beyonce (an absolute GEM of a song). 

Disclaimer: About 90% of the sex scenes are directly from said chapter, so credits and the idea itself all go to Ana Huang and her team. The blowjob and first sex scene was from Ana Huang’s book and the last scene was a slightly altered version from me. This is basically an altered version of Ana Huang’s book idea turned into a version for Coriolanus and Y/N if they were in an arranged marriage. 

I do not own Coriolanus Snow or Y/N Y/L/N (cuz it’s you, boo). All credits go to Suzanne Collins and her team. Song credits also go to Beyonce and her team. 

I do not allow my works to be republished or translated under any circumstances. Any instances of this happening and YOU WILL BE BLOCKEDDD. 

Also, ageless and empty blogs will be BLOCKED as this is a 18+ fic. Report my fics and you’re blocked cuz if u don’t like it, LEAVEEEE.

Y/D/N = Your Dad’s Name (so sorry to anyone with daddy issues cuz me too)

The marriage of Y/N Y/L/N and Coriolanus Snow was not one born out of love. Their fathers, Y/D/N Y/L/N and Crassus Snow planned for their union before fighting in the war to strengthen and unite the families in a pursuit for higher power. Both Y/N and Coriolanus grew up around similar environments, both being in the same friend group, meeting each other in birthday parties, visiting each other’s penthouses for playdates and as of late, running into each other in the Academy as they receive their degrees during graduation.

Now that both Y/N and Coriolanus are of marriage age, their fathers immediately drew up the arranged marriage with a contract, binding the two young adults for life, their families growing stronger as a result of their agreement. Coriolanus and Y/N have never disliked nor liked each other as they each had their own squad of people to hang out with, Y/N always being around Arachne Crane and Clemensia Dovecote while Coriolanus was closer with Felix Ravinstill and Festus Creed, to each their own being disgusted with the opposite sex in fear of cooties as that was common with young children, which was not a surprise in the way the two supposed love birds navigate their marriage in a meaningless way behind closed doors when it was the absolute opposite in public.

Y/N Y/L/N never felt that Coriolanus’s indifference was a severe one until he started to bring home mistresses not long after they’ve moved in during the late wave of his candidacy. He started to fuck his way through his female staff as Y/N was tortured with hearing the sound of his groans and the moaning of the women he summoned as a means to relieve his stress. Y/N was heartbroken as she felt that they had this mutual understanding that they would always be loyal to one another even through the circumstances of their relationship, Coriolanus clearly did not feel the same.

The couple usually kept their interactions minimal in their household as they live in seperate bedrooms, only to come down to eat dinner, choosing to have the rest of their meals seperate during the day. As Coriolanus’s relationship with these women grew to be more common, Y/N did not have the appetite to cater to Coriolanus’s ego further as she skipped her meals with him, instructing the staff to send her meals to her room instead as she laid on her large queen bed, heart breaking and face puffy with tears streaking down her face over his infidelity. Even though she did not exactly feel for him, she at least cared enough about him as a trusted partner throughout their arrangement. 

The atmosphere between the two grew more and more tense each day as Y/N sobbed behind closed doors, trying her best to muffle her cries as Coriolanus worked next door. Coriolanus, oblivious to his wife’s muffled crying, doesn’t notice her strange behavior until that night where Y/N left her bedroom door ajar and Coriolanus was finally able to see how hurt Y/N had been over his infidelity. Coriolanus was shocked to see for himself how miserable his wife had been over his actions, him originally choosing to bring in mistresses to encourage her to confront him. He moved away, however, ensure of what to do next as he left her alone.

The next day, one of Y/N’s female staff, particularly one of Coriolanus’s women, had informed Y/N of an event she needed to attend that day, former president’s son Felix Ravinstill’s dinner. With her puffy face, she nodded as she started to get ready. Y/N felt dejected as she got ready, feeling as if she was going through the motions as several maids filed in to help her with her makeup and dress. Y/N wore a sullen frown on her face as she stared into the distance of her reflection in the vanity, wondering how and why she agreed to this marriage in the first place. “I will get out of this place once and for all…” she thought as she started to navigate a plan to be free of the ruse of a marriage. 

Coriolanus waited for Y/N outside of their mansion as Y/N appeared, her eyes still puffy although covered with the power of makeup. He extended his arm as she took it with caution, both of them stepping in the limo silently. Once they got in, Y/N stared off to the window of the limo as they drove away from the mansion. Coriolanus, apprehensive over his wife’s indifference, suddenly speaks “You know, you could smile a little?” he said with a timid one of his own. Y/N’s mood suddenly darkened as she responded in an even more dejected and hoarse voice “How could I? Please, dear husband, demonstrate how I could smile when my only other partner in this joke of a marriage brings home other women and fucks them for me to hear.” 

Coriolanus, taken aback by how dejected his wife’s voice was, responded, “Well I’m sorry if you feel offended by my lack of attention towards you as of late. We were never exclusive in the first place, our fathers planned this for us.” Y/N looked incredulously at her husband, “Exclusive?! What part of an arranged marriage and a contract doesn’t speak not exclusive?! Are you joking right now, Coriolanus? Because if you are, no ones laughing.” Y/N sighed, “I though you were smarter than this, Snow. I truly never imagined that my presence dissatisfies you so much that you had to turn to other women to satify your needs.” Y/N said as her eyes started to tear up again. She felt so exasperated, “There’s no point in crying now.. He clearly doesn’t care about me.” She thought as Coriolanus examines her face.

Coriolanus felt horrible that his wife felt like this towards him. He truly did not mean to go this far, only planning to give her a little push. He turned towards his wife, and suddenly grabbed both of her hands in his own, stroking them in a delicate way, as someone would with a precious porcelain doll. “I’ve never hated you, wife. I merely wanted to give you a push in this arrangement since we both did not agree to this. I wanted to encourage you to be closer to me, but how could I when you seem so distant all the time?” Coriolanus sighed before continuing, “I’ve loved you ever since I met you, but I’ve never been.. brave enough to confess that to you.” 

Y/N was left astonished as she looked at Coriolanus, “Perhaps.. I’ve also fallen for you during our arrangement, yet I’ve been in denial of my own feelings for a while. I’ve always thought you were quiet handsome, husband.” Y/N said with a small smile of her own. Coriolanus looked at her, surprised by her confession, before Y/N suddenly pressed her lips to his in a rough, desperate kiss that had both of them clinging to each other for dear life. Coriolanus’s hands were soon entangled in her hair as Y/N clutched her hands on his blazer. Their mouths fought desperately against each other, teeth clashing and theirs tongues molding together like a perfect puzzle. 

Their heavy makeout session resumed as the limo came to a stop. Traffic in the Capitol was not uncommon, but at this pace, they might as well reach Felix Ravinstill’s mansion at a time where cows are able to fly. The couple broke off after a while, Coriolanus staring down at Y/N’s V-cut dress as she straddled him and kissed his jaw before rising to give him a deep kiss. As they broke off from their kiss, Y/N’s hand trailed down Coriolanus’s stomach as she made her way towards his groin.

Coriolanus groaned as Y/N’s hand lightly touched his aching erection. Y/N continued to kiss his neck as she freed his erection from his pants. His cock was huge and hard, dripping with pre-cum and begging to be touched. Y/N slid off of her seat down to her knees, where she started to lick around the head of his cock while gripping the base with both her hands, working towards kneading his huge, hard balls. 

As she gripped the base of his cock, she slid his dick down her throat until her mouth hit the point where her eyes watered. Her eyes started to tear up as Coriolanus stroked her head, encouraging her to go on. Even with her mouth engulfing his cock with desperate need, there was still a good two to three inches between her mouth and the base of his cock.

Coriolanus’s groans began to sound louder as Y/N tasted the salty sweetness of his pre-cum as she adjusted to a slow and steady pace. In and out. Slowly becoming faster, harder as she sucked and bobbed her head up and down his enormous length. 

Coriolanus’s hand gripped her hair as the limo went over a bump in the road, forcing his cock to go deeper down her throat. Y/N spluttered as her chokes and gurgles filled the car’s sex driven atmosphere as her noises fluttered with his groans perfectly, creating a sex induced symphony. 

“Fuck, Y/N.” Coriolanus groaned as Y/N looked up, her eyes blurry with tears from taking him so deep, “That feels so good.” Pride rushed through Y/N as she looked up to see Coriolanus’s face etched with pleasure.

As she looked up towards him, his eyes were closed as his head tipped back with pleasure, the column of his throat exposing one of the most sexy Adam’s apple she’s ever seen. His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths, his breathing shuddering as Y/N’s head bobbed up and down his dick faster. His hands buried in her hair as her tongue swept the underside of his cock.

She increased her pace, and just as she thought he was about to come, Coriolanus pulled her hair back and lifted her onto his lap as he crushed his mouth onto hers, their tongues clashing together in a never ending battle of sexual tension broken in a dam of hot, heavy sex. 

As their mouths dominated against each other, his arousal met hers as she ground against it, desperate for more. Harsh groans echoed from the both of them, each groan vibrating down each other’s spine in a sex-induced fuel. “You’re going to be the death of me,” Coriolanus heaved as his mouth trailed a line of passionate kisses down Y/N’s neck.

He clenched his teeth on the strap of her dress and he gently pulled it down, exposing her chest as he then raised her hips so he could push her underwear to the side. Y/N didn’t have time to catch her breath as Coriolanus was inside her, filling her to the brim with only one thrust.

Y/N only had a few seconds to adjust before Coriolanus gripped her hips and slammed her down again on his cock, hard, as he drove into her like a beast in heat, slamming in and out of her, up and down. Again and again, faster and harder, until her toes curled, her knuckles white from how hard she was holding him to stay steady as the pressure built inside her and neared its breaking point.

She clung to him, her head thrown back in ecstasy as she trembled while trying to match his rhythm. Y/N bounced up and down, grinding her clit against him on every stroke.

“Just like that,” Coriolanus growled harshly as his teeth grazed across Y/N’s nipple, his breath making her shudder as it created goosebumps on her skin. “Bounce on that dick like the good girl I know you are.”

A loud moan emerged from Y/N’s throat as Coriolanus’s mouth closed on her pebbled nipple and sucked. A huge slick of wetness gushed around them as their arousal dripped everywhere, around her thighs, his leg, and onto the seat of the limo.

“You’re making such a big mess, darling.” Coriolanus groaned while looking at his wife with a lovestruck smile, tugging at her nipple with his teeth after. “Should I make you clean it up, hmm? Have you lick your own cum off the seat like a desperate little whore while I fuck you from behind?”

The fucking happening between them could only be described as rough and depraved, the two exploring each other ravenously as the tension between them exploded into a passionate cocoon of chambered sex in the limo.

His words triggered something inside her as Y/N felt her orgasm hit her a second later with a fiery velocity, making her back arch the highest it could go and her mouth to fall open with a silent scream.

Y/N was trembling from her previous orgasm as she heard her husband let out a chuckle, the sound vibrating throughout her skin as he laid little kisses across her shoulder. “Here I thought you were so prim and proper when I first met you.”

She felt too euphoric to care as his words didn’t really register in her mind when he suddenly moved her into a different position. One second, she was on his lap, and the next, she was facing the seat as he put her on all fours and tugged her hair into a makeshift ponytail and pulled her hair so that her back collided with his chest.

They shared a passionate, fiery kiss as he started thrusting into her with slow movements, pulling away until almost all of him was out before thrusting every inch of his cock into her tight, wet pussy. As she was enjoying the pleasure he was giving him, he suddenly said with a hoarse voice, “Clean up your mess, Y/N.”

She wanted to say no, she truly did but something about that moment made her want to please her husband as she started licking the seat clean while he watched her with a heated glance. “Good girl, Y/N. Such a good girl.” He groaned as she finished licking before he started fucking her again, this time more rough, hard and simply brutal as he pushed his cock in and out of her extremely wet pussy.

The only sound heard around the vehicle was the loud sound of skin slapping as the smell of sweat and sex mixed together beautifully along with her moans and his ravenous groans. As she got closer and closer to her second orgasm, he reached around and pinched her clit as he muttered, “You wanna cum, darling? Show me what a good girl you are and cum hard for me.” 

Her moans were the loudest it’s ever been since he said that as her second orgasm hit her like a tidal wave as he loudly groaned while coming inside her sweet pussy.

Both Y/N and Coriolanus calmed down as they catched her breath, their faces close together as Coriolanus turned her back towards the seat and kissed her with all his might as they revelled in their love for each other. 

“I love you.”, Y/N said as she gazed up at her husband with a dazed but content expression. Coriolanus looked down at her while heaving a huge sigh, “I love you too, sweetheart. So much, I hope you know that.” He said as he closed the gap between them as the limo arrived near the Ravinstill residence. 

[heavenlymorals]

Dutch Van Der Linde: An Outdated Progressive

(Warning: This post contains period typical attitudes such as racism and sexism as well as spoilers for RDR2. This retrospective is also pretty damn long too.)

I love Dutch Van Der Linde. Honestly, he is one of my favorite characters ever and just the whole concept of his character and the philosophy of his character as well is something that just sticks with you.

He is charming, intelligent, cultured, charismatic, a right Messiah, and a right bastard all the same time.

But the thing that I believe people most remember about Dutch Van Der Linde is his romantic image. What I mean by this is the things he stood for and the things he wanted to change.

This makes Dutch have a positive image pretty quickly from the very start. In the first scene with him, he's encouraging people, rallying them up, and giving them hope in such an awful situation. He saves Sadie from a terrible fate and asks Hosea to send someone to bury her husband. Arthur and Charles talk fondly of him. He makes it clear in the train robbery that he despises the systems that keep men rich whilst most people starve.

Whether or not Dutch was always cracked, to the characters in the game, he was a great man because of his beliefs and because of his empathy/sympathy.

But what gets me is that a lot of people in this fandom misconstrue Dutch's character into being what we see today as a progressive. I see people saying things like "Bill shouldn't be racist, he's with Dutch's gang" or "why is Micah in the gang" and other similar things as to where people get confused as to why characters with immoral belief systems are respected and active heavy hitters in the gang.

This isn't saying that Dutch isn't progressive because he IS. For his time period, he was VERY progressive.

However, before I get into that, I want to establish some context in terms of the time period that we are talking about.

Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He once had dinner with African American leader Booker T. Washington. This one singular act of simply eating with one another as a white man and black man was so scandalous that it became an outrage to many politicians that the PRESIDENT, the literal face of America, was having dinner with a black American leader.

Teddy later put out this response: “The only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each Black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have."

A lot of people would take this event and try to say that Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive equivalent to our time when that is simply not true. Roosevelt was racist to many groups in his personal writings and he believed in the racial hierarchy, even though he had respect for any self made man.

Was Roosevelt a progressive? Yes. For his time, he was a progressive. He was pro union, anti monopoly, and created many government departments like the FDA. He also believed in the merits of a man. But the thing about historical progressives is that their standard of progression doesn't fit in with our criteria anymore.

Dutch is the same. Is he a progressive? Yeah, of course he is. But is he a true progressive in our standards? No. Not really.

This is why the gang allows racist gang members. That is also why the only repercussion to such racism is if the victim of it is willing to dish something out like Charles slamming Micah on the ground or Javier pulling a knife on Bill. It is also why the gang is pretty traditional and rigid in their gender roles. It's also why queer people (ie. Bill) are casually mocked within the gang too.

Another thing too- Dutch is a romantic. People misconstrue that with being a progressive when that really isn't the case. Romantacism is a philosophy that was a rejection of the realism of the Enlightment. It focused on Idealism. The thing with Romantacism, though, is that it was a super white-washed philosophy. It was made to mould into white cultures and belief systems specifically for white men. Dutch could say all men are equal and he may believe that, but it's clear that he doesn't see equality in the same way that we see equality today.

What I mean by this is that any man is equal but if told otherwise, that man is the one who has to prove them wrong. It's his business and he should be the one to deal with it. That's why other gang members don't back up Charles or Javier if they find themselves in a situation with another gang member who is racist. It's their responsibility to deal with their own beefs. It wouldn't be like today where we all publically shun racism.

Remember when Dutch, Arthur, and Micah come back from Sadie's cabin? Micah says something about not wanting to share a room with Bill and POC, to which Dutch can hear and doesn't say anything and Hosea only says "Get yourself to bed" instead of calling Micah on what he said. Same goes for Arthur too. He may condemn and do something about violent racism, like how when he helps the doctor in Rhodes get his wagon back, but he doesn't really say anything when Micah or Bill say racist things to Charles, Javier, or Lenny. That's their business, so to speak, and they should be the ones handling it.

Also note the poc's characters relationship with Dutch. Javier likes Dutch because of the revolutionary ideals that he believes in. Charles likes Dutch because he treats him fair. Lenny likes Dutch because Dutch is far more progressive than other white men, but he also calls out Dutch's romantic philosophy because it doesn't really include POC or their struggles. Dutch sympathizes with their struggles, but he cannot emphasize, which is the problem with his romantic philosophy. It's a culture that is a house to white people, but POC are only guests in it in terms of its European and American tradition. Yes, Dutch hates what the Europeans did to the natives, but given the context beforehand and the things he says, he hates less the violence and more the upheaval of the lifestyle that he wants, which is one that is connected to nature and earth. I also find it interesting how the only person Dutch kinda defends from racism is Lenny, the same boy who calls him out for reading too much into Miller and not into reality. It could very much be Dutch unconsciously trying to prove Lenny wrong.

And the thing with Dutch is that he isn't squeaky clean when it comes to racism either. He's racist too, but he's racist to groups that we don't see as marginalized anymore and this goes for Hosea as well. The biggest example of this is with Italians, who weren't considered white at the time, same with the Irish.

We have this conversation between him and Hosea:

"Have you ever met an Italian strongman before?"

"Not outside the circus."

I shouldn't have to explain that.

And there is also when Bronte set them up.

"That greasy son of a bitch, he set us up!"

It doesn't sound strange at first but context matters a lot. Though 'greaser' is a slur that we see thrown at Javier for being a Mexican multiple times in the gang, that slur was also used against Italians. So Dutch saying that is him still purposing that slur but in a different way.

Another thing that I noticed is that whenever Dutch wants to speak with someone who isn't white or wasn't deemed white at the time, he would dumb down or slow down his speech first before the person he's speaking to shows that they know English, in which then he talks normally. He doesn't automatically consider that hey, these are people who are intelligent and understand English.

Here are two examples:

This is Dutch to Bronte.

"Why do you take his son?"

"Excuse me?"

"I said why DID you take his son."

He fixes the way he talks as soon as he realizes that Bronte speaks english.

And then to Eagle Flies.

"How do you DO?" (In the game, he slows down his speech and emphasizes the do.)

"Not well, sir."

"I can see that."

This is such a subtle detail but it shows that even subconsciously, Dutch isn't as admirable as we sometimes like to make him out to be in terms of OUR time period and that we shouldn't be surprised when other gang members or Dutch himself do or say things that aren't cool.

And of course, there is the sexism of the gang and that Dutch is shown to be sexist multiple times in the game.

"There are two theories about arguing with women and neither of them work."

"Good Lord, a few more like her and we can take over the whole world." (This was a sarcastic dig at Sadie)

And given the rigidness of the gender roles in camp and that the girls are barely in any missions and are mostly just doing house work, Dutch supports this system because just like how political Romantacism wasn't really for POC, it wasn't really for women either.

He can also be religiously prejudiced as well, though this shows up only once in the game. When you get into Saint Denis, Dutch says this:

"Here we are in this strange land of Papists and rapists."

Papists is another word for Catholic and given how he connects them with rapists, it makes it quite clear that he doesn't like them all that much, which makes sense given that Dutch is some form of Protestant and the general disgust regarding Catholics at the time. There is also the fact that a lot of reasons why Italians, Irish, and Hispanic people dealt with discrimination is because of the Catholic background in many of their cultures.

Again, it's a small detail, but when you look at the time period he says that in, it opens up many doors to many other social issues that were there at the time and how Dutch, despite being better than many, is also still a man of his time and this idea that the gang is this beacon of prosperity and progression is generally overemphasized to something that it is not.

Again, I love Dutch's character and he was a progressive but it isn't surprising to see these negative equalities come out from him and from the gang as an extension. They all have their flaws, even if those flaws are especially jarring at points.

Historical people almost always have historical attitudes, guys. It's just the unfortunate truth.

In any case, this is already way too damn long and I hate proof reading so bye 😃

[kvetchlandia]

OK...

I'm more or less back. I can't say I've recovered from the shock of the hell the people of the United States have inflicted upon themselves and and upon the rest of the world. I mean, who recovers from the knowledge that people actually chose to put themselves under the governance of a bloated pig who promises to use the military to go after his political rivals (including, for fuck sake, Liz Cheney, an arch conservative); who's been responsible for the removal of women's legal right to control their own bodies, already resulting in completely preventable deaths; who in no uncertain terms has made public his desire to be a dictator; who is a man that has been convicted of multiple felonies and has been found civilly liable for sexually assaulting one woman and who bragged on television, in a tape seen by virtually everyone on the planet, of assaulting others; and on and on and on. I could detail so much more about the planned assaults on civil liberties, on civil society and on the environment by this repugnant shmuck but there's little point to that. All I'll accomplish should I do that is another night of bashing my head against the wall or of sticking my head in the electric oven and yet again singeing my poor eyebrows. So, I guess I'll return to my lame posts. They're a way of killing a bit of time and some of you guys even occasionally like the crap I put up on my page, which always thrills me and for which I'm eternally grateful.

I'm ancient by Bumblr standards. I am what's known in the jargon as a "red diaper baby," the child of parents who had been in the Communist Party. Because of this, I've been going to demonstrations quite literally since before I was born. I've continued the family tradition of being politically active and over many years have taken part in more demos than I care to count. All I can say is that, come the inauguration of this monster in January, quite possibly the last inauguration of a president in this country, if Trump is to be believed, I'll be back in the streets once again, wearing my red union tee shirt and carrying one sign or another. We have the capacity to make the streets ours and to use that power to change things for the better. Will we develop the leadership and the organization necessary to accomplish that? I don't want to be pessimistic (or honest, as the case may be), so I'll just say, that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, back to silliness.

[daenerystargaryen06]

"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return." -A Game of Thrones - Daenerys III

Here we have a passage of a story Doreah tells Daenerys, a tale of two moons in the sky. One wandered too close to the sun, and it cracked from the heat, resulting in dragons. And that one day, the second moon will 'kiss' the sun.

Notice G.R.R.M's play on words here. In this story, the first time one of the moons cracks, it "wandered" too close to the sun. And for the second, it is said that the second moon will "kiss" the sun. This is deliberate.

"You should look behind you, Lord Snow. The moon has kissed you and etched your shadow upon the ice twenty feet tall." Jon glanced over his shoulder. The shadow was there, just as she had said, etched in moonlight against the Wall." -A Dance with Dragons - Jon VI

Notice the same phrase of wording used here in Jon's passage. He has been "kissed" by the moon, etching his shadow along the Wall.

As I've stated in my post here, I believe that while Daenerys is the main focal point for her role as AA/TPTWP, she would be joined by others in this task. One of those people being Jon. He will be one of the three heads to join her side for the coming war against the Others. To unite the realm against the cold, and the dark.

"One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return." -A Game of Thrones - Daenerys III

"You should look behind you, Lord Snow. The moon has kissed you and etched your shadow upon the ice twenty feet tall." -A Dance with Dragons - Jon VI

As for these two passages- let's believe they are to be taken literally. It happens for Dany and Drogo the first time around: Drogo is the sun, Dany the moon. Dany "wanders" too close to the sun, Drogo, in his funeral pyre, and thus her dragons hatch.

Now how could this relate to Jon?

I believe Jon being "kissed" by the moon, is in reference to Jon and Daenerys' eventual future romance and union together. We have evidence for this, provided from me here and here. More quotes providing into Jon being Daenerys' last romantic interest and husband:

". . . three heads has the dragon . . . the ghost chorus yammered inside her skull with never a lip moving, never a breath stirring the still blue air. . . . mother of dragons . . . child of storm . . . The whispers became a swirling song. . . . three fires must you light . . . one for life and one for death and one to love. . . Her own heart was beating in unison to the one that floated before her, blue and corrupt. . . three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love. . . The voices were growing louder, she realized, and it seemed her heart was slowing, and even her breath. . . . three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . . ." --A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV

"I don't . . ." Her voice was no more than a whisper, almost as faint as theirs. What was happening to her? "I don't understand," she said, more loudly. Why was it so hard to talk here? "Help me. Show me." . . . help her . . . the whispers mocked. . . . show her . . . Then phantoms shivered through the murk, images in indigo. Viserys screamed as the molten gold ran down his cheeks and filled his mouth. A tall lord with copper skin and silver-gold hair stood beneath the banner of a fiery stallion, a burning city behind him. Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman's name. . . . mother of dragons, daughter of death . . . Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies . . . Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . . ." -A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV

Notice that each prophecy given to Dany in the HOTU was given to her in three, each one ending in love. When asked to be shown what it meant, Dany is given visions. Two connecting her to Jon, both ending in three, as her prophecies for love:

"Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman's name" - this is clearly Rhaegar, Jon's father, dying upon the Trident. It is believed he is whispering Lyanna's name, Jon's mother.

"A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness" - Dany is seeing Jon at the Wall, through the metaphor of a blue flower (connecting him to Lyanna- blue winter roses). The air is full with sweetness- a metaphor to love, and sweetness- something Dany likes (also maybe this hints to Dany joining Jon at the Wall, giving him the three dragons he wishes for in another passage).

Dany will be the moon, who kisses Jon, her second sun. A reference to their love and union.

Now- how does this bring dragons into play? Who knows. The wording is a bit tricky here. The passage states that when the second moon kisses the sun, dragons will return. And yet dragons have already returned- Dany hatches her children the first time she "wanders" too close to the sun. So how do dragons come into play with her and Jon's union regarding this text?

Well, perhaps it may not be so literal. Maybe the return of dragons from Dany and Jon's union is that Jon will gain a dragon. Maybe Jon will discover ice dragons. Maybe they will find more dragon eggs at Winterfell or somewhere else. Maybe Dany's own dragons will breed and begin a second hatching of eggs, thus "returning" dragons once more with Dany and Jon's union. There are different possibilities for this.

Jon's resurrection can also lean more into him being the second sun to Dany, as he would be a wight of fire.

"Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze. "Snow," an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders. Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist. As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again. He slew a greybeard and a beardless boy, a giant, a gaunt man with filed teeth, a girl with thick red hair. Too late he recognized Ygritte. She was gone as quick as she'd appeared." -A Dance with Dragons - Jon XII

"That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper's rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened." -A Storm of Swords - Daenerys III

"And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. "The last dragon," Ser Jorah's voice whispered faintly. "The last, the last." Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own." -A Game of Thrones - Daenerys IX

Both Jon and Dany experience dreams of fighting the Others.

-Both are wearing black armor and both are wielding fire; Dany with her dragons, Jon with a sword.

And while their dreams share similarities, they also bear differences:

-Jon is battling the Others upon the Wall, whereas Dany is battling them within the Trident.

-Jon sees Ygritte and realizes too late he's killed her (a person he views with grief and regret), Dany however believes herself to be Rhaegar (a person she sees as a fierce warrior and protector).

Both are also viewed by other people as the chosen ones, AA/TPTWP:

"On Braavos, it had seemed possible that Aemon might recover. Xhondo's talk of dragons had almost seemed to restore the old man to himself. That night he ate every bite Sam put before him. "No one ever looked for a girl," he said. "It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. Rhaegar, I thought . . . the smoke was from the fire that devoured Summerhall on the day of his birth, the salt from the tears shed for those who died. He shared my belief when he was young, but later he became persuaded that it was his own son who fulfilled the prophecy, for a comet had been seen above King's Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, and Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet. What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it." Just talking of her seemed to make him stronger. "I must go to her. I must. Would that I was even ten years younger." -A Feast for Crows - Samwell V

"Daenerys is the only hope," he concluded. "Aemon said the Citadel must send her a maester at once, to bring her home to Westeros before it is too late." -A Feast for Crows - Samwell V

"Skulls. A thousand skulls, and the bastard boy again. Jon Snow. Whenever she was asked what she saw within her fires, Melisandre would answer, "Much and more," but seeing was never as simple as those words suggested. It was an art, and like all arts it demanded mastery, discipline, study. Pain. That too. R'hllor spoke to his chosen ones through blessed fire, in a language of ash and cinder and twisting flame that only a god could truly grasp. Melisandre had practiced her art for years beyond count, and she had paid the price. There was no one, even in her order, who had her skill at seeing the secrets half-revealed and half-concealed within the sacred flames. Yet now she could not even seem to find her king. I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R'hllor shows me only Snow. "Devan," she called, "a drink." Her throat was raw and parched." -A Dance with Dragons - Melisandre I

Jon and Daenerys both have arcs of leadership. In which both have to make hard decisions that they believe is best. Both have the qualities of strong leaders, military strategists, and unifiers. It might turn out that Jon will wind up helping Dany in the books gather the people to face against the Others and fight against the cold and the dark. Perhaps even coming into acceptance of his true parentage and relation to Dany as well.

Both Jon and Dany are also known to have cultivated into, lived with, loved, and learned the humanity of the Freefolk and the Dothraki- two factions many view as "savage" and "barbaric", and yet I believe that the Freefolk and the Dothraki will come into a big play for both Jon and Dany against the war of the Others. The culmination of their work and efforts into unifying people to work together against one common enemy.

[fatehbaz]

Hmm. Alarming trend in mass incarceration in Central America.

Also: Very disingenuous wordplay here.

Where do we begin?

-- Very disingenuous for multiple outlets to run with "the West”. Though this initial AP article does specify that this refers to the Western Hemisphere, the choice to run headlines with “West” kinda implies that there are no other island prisons in “The West” (as in the European Union, the United States, Australia, etc.).

-- One of the most infamous incarceration schemes on the planet is Australia’s “Pacific Solution,” a “solution” to refugee migration centered on the imprisonment of asylum seekers on island prisons, including the infamous prisons at Nauru and Manus, both opened initially in 2001, and re-fortified after 2012. (Nauru is extremely isolated, in the South Pacific, 3000 kilometers away from the Australian coast; the Manus detention centre is far away off the northeast coast of Papua.) Since 2012, over 3,125 people have been sent to Nauru while over 4,180 people have been sent to Manus. (The “last refugee held on the Pacific island of Nauru under Australia’s offshore detention policy” was “evacuated” to mainland Australia only on 24 June 2023, not even a month prior to this headline.)

-- Obviously the EU incarcerates refugees on Mediterranean islands, notoriously at Moria on Lesbos, whose international reputation as the home of Sappho has been supplanted by its reputation as a de facto prison for asylum seekers. In October 2015, over 10,000 people landed on Lesbos in just one day. In 2017, the island averaged 2,500 arrivals per month. By 2019, humanitarian investigations showed that over 10,000 people were being held in a facility with a maximum capacity of 3,000. In 2020, fires left over 12,000 refugees on the island without shelter. By December 2021, Doctors Without Borders raised alarm that over 2,200 refugees were living in “dire” conditions on the island. As of early 2023, Lesbos (along with Kos, Leros, Chios, and Samos) is hosting over 4,500 people who are stuck in “reception and identification centers.”

-- And in the Western Hemisphere? The US prison at Guantanomo, also on the coast of an island in this same sea.

-- One of the most notorious island prisons was the early twentieth century French penal colony on the periphery of the Caribbean region at Guiana (run by a France, a “Western” power, in the Western Hemisphere), known internationally as “Devil’s Island.”

-- The federal government says the prison will be built “in harmony with nature.”

-- A prison ... in harmony with nature.

-- An island prison in the Caribbean, a region fundamentally and intimately connected to centuries of imprisonment, plantations, Indigenous genocide, antiBlackness, racial castes, and chattel slavery, all achieved and enforced through the bounded, isolated geographic containment structure allowed by islands.

-- And this is extra-worrying, because it seems it’s a regional trend, evidently for Honduras, El Salvador, and Colombia.

-- Merely a few days before this headline about Honduras, international outlets were profiling Honduras’s direct neighbor, El Salvador, with headlines like “Inside El Salvador’s new ‘mega prison’” (Al Jazeera) and, within the past couple months, headlines like “Prisoners are being tortured to death in El Salvador’s prisons” (VICE News).

-- From less than a week before this AP headline, we have BBC: “El Salvador’s secretive mega-jail.”

-- Don’t forget nearby Tapachula’s detention of asylum seekers.

Still discussing implementation of literal island prisons despite our collective familiarity with carceral archipelagoes.

[metamatar]

i switched off reblogs on that post but the reason i said 'so called communist parties' in india is bc they do have power and they are not meaningfully communist. trying for electoral political power means opportunism, not merely the reformist failure state. have we forgotten nandigram? these party cadres literally beat up peasants and workers who didn't want to be displaced by a tata car factory. in kerala they announce how much they love public private partnerships. i forgot i was talking to people who don't know about india, but i was not bragging about how there's communist movements in the global south i was comparing what leftist activation looks like in its defanged, retrenched state under threat of local fascisms in both the us and india and how it doesn't really have much to do with ideology.

also someone asked me to source the claim that most left energy in india goes through the marxist leninist and maoist parties and not anarchists and like... this is very obvious ok? its like saying there's more democrats in the united states than psl members. anyways i still sourced it.

so cpim has 1 million members, cpi has about 650k, cpiml about the same on their wikipedia page. they also have various million plus affiliated trade unions like aicctu, aituc and citu. this is also obviously excluding the various deeply illegal naxalite maoists waging war in bastar.

there's a few famous indian writers who get claimed for anarchism - gandhi (a trad conservative), bhagat singh (an admirer of lenin) and mpt acharya and har deen dayal. since independence though, there aren't any with cultural cachet esp given india's non hostile relationship with the soviet union, not a lot of communist energy happened outside of communist parties.

here's jean dreze analysing why he thinks anarchism has little cachet in india.

[typewritingyip]

The Arcturus Missions

Part Two - To the Stars

Part One

———

When people speak about cultural differences, they expect some language barriers and mishaps because of how you were raised. Sticking four people of not only different cultures but different age groups on a rocket not destined to return to Earth might not have been the brightest of ideas, but they were some of the best pilots that Earth had to offer and the ones with the least attachments. Both those combined made it seem like the perfect idea, differences be damned.

Hound was originally from California but was a military brat, so he spent the better part of his life in the culture of the US military, enlisting himself at eighteen and not looking back. When the pilot program came around, he set himself on the long list of volunteers to see if he’d be compatible with Mecha or not. When he eventually was found compatible, he was shipped off to the research center to work on a special Mecha, one that was made more to confuse the alien than to destroy it, perfect illusions and the perfect decoy. That was back when everyone still thought we had a fighting chance. He’d had his suit for years and its overhaul for space fairing was just par for the course of how his career had gone. Pilot 1124; divorced, no children, mother deceased, and father career military. Near perfect candidate for Arcturus mission.

Breakdown was from what is once again Ukraine, growing up behind the iron curtain left him at a slight disadvantage when it came to understanding the Mecha Suits. He was initially pulled into the Soviet program while under mandatory conscription, it was just a few months before his two years were up, but when he was found to be compatible with a recently vacated suit there was no questions on who would fill it. The solitude of working in a suit appealed to him, cause when you’re in the suit and turn down radio communications, it’s like it’s just you and the enemy you’re tearing apart. Very fitting for him. His suit has gone through many renditions both before and after the fall of the curtain, even its adjustments by Mecha, on semi-permanent loan; were normal. He just tried to make sure his cockpit remained the same, it was the environment he became the most familiar with, even more than his apartment in Kiev. Pilot 1457; no wife, no children, mother and father reside in Kiev, Ukraine; siblings vary. Non-perfect candidate, cooperation with former Soviet Union mandatory. Candidate for Arcturus mission.

Sunsteaker and Sideswipe were civilians from Florida, no previous family enlistments of record, no prior record of draft selection. These two came about later in the program, hand selected by Mecha for military training and transfer to the primary facility. When the boss saw their shining personalities at a not-so-legal street race, it was practically love at first sight. Being younger when the aliens first attacked had left both with scars in both literal and figurative senses, being compatible with vacated suits that often worked in tandem made them the right choices for the selection. Neither suit was particularly powerful, but both were considered abnormally fast. With limited options in their previous region of residence and mutual desire to make a difference, candidacy was the only feasible option. They more often than not work together and are currently heading towards the record of most take downs by tandem units. Overhaul was limited, newer suits without much need for adjustment. Pilot 2450 and 2451; no wives, no children, mother deceased, father deceased, siblings enlisted together, perfect candidates for Arcturus mission.

For a mission that wasn’t meant to go well, picking the right candidates was key. For each of the missions, three of them were already planned out of course. The work on the Mecha needed to be started as soon as the first batch were done, they didn’t to be able to sustain a human life for at least a year in space plus more intense gravity that what existed on earth, as a precaution. You didn’t know where these things could or would crash once a pilot was dead inside, if recovery efforts could be made in a hand full of decades for the suits that saved the earth, that could turn a major profit in a hand full of years. Limited or no connections for these pilots was important. It was bad enough that Jazz had some family that needed paying off and he was meant to come back with data for the Arcturus missions, he was meant to go back up on Arcturus One. Well, there wasn’t much use in looking at the past, not when there was an enemy to annihilate.

The day of the launch was the first time in several years that when suiting up for a mission, none of the pilots put on the assistant suits, but flight suits for the shuttle. Each was still colored in the tones of their corresponding Mecha, helmets on to hide a majority of their features and numbers sat right below their name badges. It was the wait that was practically killing them, sat inside a giant warehouse with nothing to keep their mind off the endless expanses of space. No one could be bothered with trying to face them, for those who didn’t pilot a suit they could never understand the sacrifice and those that did were being kept away. Life and death, the state of the world as they knew it could lay on their shoulders and the data that their suits would collected and send back to earth while they hurdled towards their potential doom.

“Do you think Jazz felt like this? His last night before bugging out?” Sideswipes voice was both muffled and painfully loud, coming through their helmets while being muffled in the echoing space.

“It’s possible, but he didn’t have to deal with the fan fair of the last few weeks, so maybe not. He might have gotten a decent night sleep and woke up, ready to face the stars.” Hound leans his head back to stare at the glass ceiling, the sky was almost too blue out there. The type of day when those things would attack without mercy, he shudders slightly.

“You think the others will be able to handle the fight while we’re gone?” Now Sunstreaker was asking the dumb questions, leaning forwards and resting his elbows on his needs, helmet in hands, “Losing four of us is a lot.”

“They will be fine Kid, losing four for a specific region is easier to cover than four deaths spastically.” Breakdown’s voice was the very stereotypical, learning English from movies, that tone that actors of the seventies and eighties had when over exaggerating their words. His ankles were crossed and he was leaned back comfortably in the chair, eyes closed though hidden by the helmet.

There was silence for a few seconds, before Hound cleared his throat, “Besides, if any of us kicked the bucket in our mechs, half of ours are outdated and would be out of commission for a while and the other half are far to specialized to get compatible pilots for straight off the list.” Rubbing his shoulder, he shrugs a bit. Sideswipe looks over, “Everyone said the same thing about First Aid’s mech, that freak of nature seems to not want to let go of that guy.” In some manner, they all hum, nodding or grunting, “Sometimes the suit just knows when it has the right pilot.” Breakdown’s tone was final, meaning that the conversation should end there.

“You think we’ll find him though, right? We’re heading on the same flight path.” Sunstreaker looks to Hound, fingertips lightly grasping the bottom edge of his helmet, “I don’t know. We can only hope.” Then they fell to silence again, they’d have enough time to talk each others ear off for the rest of their lives, no matter how long that would take, they’d have the rest of them together now whether they liked it or not. Sideswipe lightly grasps Sunstreaker’s shoulder, Hound goes back to staring and frowning at the sky, while Breakdown stares at his boots.

—

It took a while for them to get called to their action places, as if this was a film set and not a launch pad. There was nothing for miles out here, but the sheer number of camera’s recording their last steps on earth was part of the plan. Plan for funding, plan for advancement, and plan for god knows what else. The boss with his dazzling smile stayed away, watching from afar, leaned against a car far nicer than any pilot would be able to afford even with their insane salaries. The warehouse with its glass roof wasn’t far from the specially crafted launch pad, that was supposedly brand new but already covered in scorch marks from Jazz’s under the rug mission. None of the pilots said anything though, the money that was just minutes away from hitting the bank accounts of those they cared about most was to important. And those without loved ones, well they didn’t want to take it away from the other pilots and their families.

Walking in a line, they didn’t say anything, staring at the shuttle with the slightly folded Mecha attached to it, the cone on the front to cover them all making it appear like a giant umbrella was covering them from a non-existent rain storm. The launch pad was recessed into the ground, to prevent some of the damaging fuels from leaching or spreading onto the nearby land. If there was one thing Mecha was trying to seem, it was conscious of the planet they protected. The lift was just big enough for the four of them and an operator to fit on it, that and a camera trying to get their closeups perfect. Hound lightly shoved the hovering camera robot, trying to stay focused. Sideswipe chuckled lightly, adjusting his flight suit a bit, Sunstreaker shoves him slightly and shakes his head. It was starting to feel normal, the prep for this mission, at least this part was not dissimilar to going out in a suit for a fight. The lift jars to a stop, sending them stumbling lightly as the gate opens to the gantry, the ship’s primary door standing open and waiting. Looking at each other, they step put and to the ship.

Each seat was marked with their call sign, designating their set position, the in cabin cameras rolling for the launch. A airlock to the cargo bay was blocking the view of the specially made gangways into the suits, designed to attach to the alerted entranced into their piloting stations. No longer would the suits slip open to take in a pilot, now only had one entrance and exit; when shut it was hard to tell there was an entrance to the suits at all. The last thing Mecha wanted was whatever this enemy was plucking their pilots out of the cockpits in space, it was bad enough they were figuring that out planet side. Strapping into their seats, the airlock was closed by the lift operator with a whispered ‘good luck’. Pilots stuck together even through the stupidest moments. Like taking the fight into unfamiliar territory that had already claimed on of their own.

Before the microphones were turned on, there were quiet murmured prayers and declarations of revenge, Jazz’s name on all their lips for a moment before Hound turned the switch to activate the microphones. Calling out flight preparations and getting the shuttle ready to launch itself, four mech suits, and pilots into the vastness of space; was almost intimidating.

It was like any other mission to space, whenever astronauts were heading to the ISS, it was almost like that. Only they weren’t stopping in orbit and were going farther than almost any human had before, it would be easy, or so said the boss. God he was awful. The engined ignited with a roar and a harsh tug as gravity attempts to keep the rocked tethered to the planet. Each pilot was watching their given system, no longer worried about the cameras or those listening, focused on each other and the mission. With the pull and the radio traffic, the assent into space would become a blur for all of them, not bothering staring out the windows and focused entirely on their equipment. Space and the fight of a life time laid in front of them.

—

A loss of contact was expected, planned even, it was usual on the other side of the moon. They could speak freely, though their instruments were still the priority, “Did any of you think about the fact we’re going to be stuck together for, who knows how long? Cause that just occurred to me.” Sideswipe was now staring out the window as the lunar surface that none of them would get to touch, frowning slightly as the tinted shield of his helmet was clearing away from the harsh sunlight of the southern sky they’d been in, now hours ago. His brother turned to look at him, “I reminded you what this mission was, several times, over the last year and it’s just now occurring to you?” The tone was one of almost hate, the kind of hate you could only have when your sibling was being an absolute moron, “Well, yeah. I didn’t really listen to your rants.” The first thing thrown in zero-g was an iPod, still hitting Sideswipes helmet but not as harshly as Sunstreaker would have preferred.

Breakdown felt like putting his helmeted head through the console in front of his, “This is going to be the longest mission ever.” Removing his helmet, he rubs his face, looking to Hound who’d already taken his off, “You can say that twice.” As a helmet was thrown across the cockpit of the shuttle, “A very, very long mission.” Both the older men glanced back at the bickering twins, who had now unstrapped from their seats and tumbled back towards the main hold and their suits where artificial gravity would help them fight each other better. The loss of contact was normal, primarily because they knew that this first stretch of the mission would either succeed or fail. Data was still getting sent back to earth, slowing in its response the further away they got from the planet. It was normal, it was totally fine, things would be fine. At least, they kept telling themselves that.

The view out the front glass was of infinite space, Jazz’s last coordinates logged into their system for a potential recovery of his mech and a hopeful anticipation of finding wherever those aliens called home. Or even just their own launch point, since no one knew where or how they kept coming to earth, to many questions with even fewer answers.

A loss of contact was normal. They lost contact with Jazz and his mech after two weeks of him in space. It would be way harder to lose contact with a shuttle and four mech’s, right?

———

A/N:

Wow, thank you so much for enjoying the first part! I promise that part 3 is going to follow. I don’t know how many of these I am going to write, or where it’s exactly going, but the four people aboard the shuttle are out for revenge. On who? They aren’t entirely sure, but whoever is holding Jazz is likely it, right?

Anyways, next part will probably dive more into their mission, and likely the loss of contact with Earth. Who knows how they get to Cybertron, hehehe. All the boss knows is that Arcturus One merch is selling like hot cakes, they can fake contact for a little while with the tech they possess, plus Arcturus Two takes off in less than a year! So they got to get ready for that.

Hope you all enjoyed.

Specifically want to tag @lunarlei68 & @whirlywhirlygig for re-blogging the first post. If you haven’t read it, it’s linked.

Thank you @keferon for inspiring us all with this.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

i’d never even considered how the civil war would affect alfred during ww1, that’s a really interesting idea. would you mind expanding a bit more if you haven’t already?

fuck yes I can expand on that. TW for historic nastiness.

Okay to prelude— I don't typically do 1:1 state/gov to character but considering the cession of the south into a separate state and the US itself is the Union, my boy is in blue. In this blog's universe there is no schizophrenia or split personality or Doppelgänger or any other representation of the south. It gutted him and he lost feeling in a lot of his usual area and it severely weakened him but he represented the United States and that means union blue. And considering the north really doesn't have all that much moral leverage on the south especially in matters of racism, it's not much of a jump. If you aren't crazy about that, look away now.

So. Trench warfare. It's as old as humans bashing each other's heads in. Defensive ditches are an archaeological feature across the applicable world. But it's the American Civil War that might hold the gold medal for largest gap between how technology designed to kill had advanced spectacularly over any innovation that might save lives. I won't say deadliest because you do have the Taiping Rebellion around the same time but a lot of that was sièges and counter sieges and river based naval engagements. But anyway— rifled artillery and direct fire techniques had changed the game and soldiers were driven underground behind parapets and sandbags. Around Petersburg especially. And it's towards the end of the war when the Confederacy is increasingly desperate and hand to hand fighting is getting more common and more brutal. Entire regiments were lost in hand to hand mêlée. And if a soldier didn't die instantly, it was off to a field hospital. Guts ripped open by iron shells, lungs hanging from the tips of bayonets, wounds so infected they glowed, limbs hacked off by a surgeon who hadn't washed his hands in six days and sepsis rot so foul someone can taste it on the air even with the mouth closed. Malaria and typhoid so fucking bad the army cots would literally shake apart from how bad men shivered when the chills aspect of the fever cycle hit. I know it's fashionable right now especially on vintage fashion YouTube to say people in history weren't disgusting but like, I've been in archives for years. Yeah it fucken was. Never was medicine so far behind the ability to kill.

So Alfred's probably died a solid dozen times half of which from shitting himself because he's probably riddled with parasites. He's been shot, stabbed, slashed. Shaken, rattled and absolutely steam rolled. And the final part of his almighty trauma is this is happening just up the river from where he was born in Jamestown. Alfred is on his belly in the earth beneath the feet of the people that bore him and then rejected him, begging his Protestant God and any of his own people listening and the very earth itself to protect him, to keep him alive as shell after shell lands around him.

When every battle is over, the dead rot in piles across the fields and trenches. The famous photos of the Antietam and Gettysburg dead are days old, you can see some of the bodies had been looted. There were so many dead and so many dying that upon its tardy entrance into world war one, the US had a more coherent body management and disposal program than any other of the entente powers. Who had already been at war for nearly four years.

So yeah, in my opinion he got ten steps into a front line trench where the British and especially the French were just causally walking on bodies, he vomited so hard New York felt California rattling around in there and said fuck it. My boy was either off to cleaner pastures like Belleau Wood or the air corps. It was too much too soon and he just couldn't keep it together in those conditions. They knew what bacteria were by WW1 and he was a burgeoning world power. So he probably only went full himbo with dysentery twice in France so it wasn't as bad as his civil war flop era but oof. That smell, the screams, pressing himself into soil that is not his own yet again is too recent and too vulnerable. He can't do it again so soon.

[killkaramazov]

This will be my worst post but fuck it. If you’re absolutely DETERMINED to take it there then Smerdy/Ivan absolutely BODIES Alyosha/Ivan in terms of narrative/characterization/dynamic/motif and theme/basically everything else that matters. But it is really not about that for the vast majority of people who are deadass about shipping yaoi from a Russian novel published in 1879. All the IvanYosha stuff seems like it’s really more about getting your rocks off on AO3 and drawing two conventionally attractive anime twinks kissing. To which I wonder why you wouldn’t pick literally any two characters from any media for that unless you’re just into incest or something. 

I really love the Grand Inquisitor kiss! And I don’t like seeing it interpreted that way! 

On the other hand something that drives me insane about my personal interpretation of the book is the juxtaposition between the Alyosha Ivan kiss vs Ivan’s general disgust for Smerdyakov. Why is Alyosha kissing Ivan a pure, innocent expression of Christian love for all humanity but Smerdyakov’s gesture of love (killing Fyodor) is something so perverse and horrifying? It shows us something about their station of life through the roles and the acts that are even allowed to them in the narrative.

As far as SmerdyIvan goes I am reminded of the JSTOR article I read (that I now cannot fucking find) where the author mentioned an idea that all of Dostoevsky’s novels center around or contain one central taboo that is so unspeakable that it is scarcely even outright mentioned, and that the central taboo in question in TBK is that Smerdyakov is the fourth brother.

Incest is already gotten into in canon and much has been written about this, especially regarding Dmitry and Fyodor’s rivalry over Grushenka, but also with Ivan falling in love with Dmitry’s ex. So even though we are going far afield from authorial intent, it is really not that much of a jump to start looking at emotional incest from other angles within the family, as we already know literally every other type of abuse was already occurring within that (entirely fractured) family unit. As far as I am concerned regarding authorial intent, any claim you want to make about a work of fiction is fair game as long as you can justify it with evidence from the text, and people have been writing academic articles and essays making wild inferences from this text for the last 150 years, so I defend my right to make this interpretation. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if Freud can diagnose Dostoevsky as bisexual we can say whatever we want about this book.

We know from the canon indisputably that Smerdyakov is unhealthily attached to Ivan, and we know that some vague thing about Smerdyakov sets Ivan’s Geiger counter for rancid horrific disgusting vibes to 10 immediately, anytime they are on the page together. So we can infer a lot from that.

Smerdyakov was literally born of sexual violence, and is a pariah in terms of his gender expression and sexuality, so him taking on the role of someone with a warped sexuality in the narrative just sort of… follows, in terms of the novels concern with the idea of inherited sin. 

There is something compelling to me about the idea that Smerdyakov would seek entrance into the Karamazov family in another, weirder way psychologically through attaching highly inappropriate feelings to Ivan. (‘If you think of me and my feelings toward you as incestuous, then that means you have acknowledged me as a family member’) 

And regardless of what I literally just said about authorial intent, Dostoevsky outright tells us how gay Smerdyakov is like every single time he’s on page. So there is also that.

Their relationship appeals to me greatly insofar as it is utterly disgusting and that’s my jam. There is lots to explore in this dynamic but one indisputable thing baked into the text between them is that it’s literally impossible to imagine any truly romantic union between them simply because of the way they both are. They repulse each other far too much for any expression of that sort. The actualization of their inappropriate relationship is not a culmination through an even vaguely romantic or sexual encounter, instead, it is the fulfilling a murder pact. 

They are like two oppositely charged magnets or something, in turns attracting and repulsing one another, pushing and pulling on each other’s gravitational pulls. Regarding the Tchermashnya-Moscow conversation, the way that their conversations are in doublespeak, with words said out loud and then literally entire other sentences written out in thought and illustrated through description of physicality, is incredibly fascinating to me. They seem to be literally communicating telepathically.  I am reminded of another JSTOR article I read that mentions the Dostoevskian doubles “exerting influence over one other that cannot be explained in any literal sense.”  The only reason they can communicate like this is because they are doubles, and this doublism is reinforced again in the narrative by their being fake twins, the same age but born to different mothers. 

They are each other’s shadows, they share a consciousness on some level, or access each other’s consciousnesses at different times through this shared plot in a way that seems incomprehensible to both of them. And Smerdyakov, in my own interpretation and opinion, as someone who is completely starved for any kind of positive regard, takes this for love. Whether that’s familial or otherwise or both. 

They engage in this mutual seduction towards an ultimate goal or realization: Ivan presents the idea, that “all is permitted” and that perhaps it would be for the better if Fyodor were dead, and Smerdyakov takes his lead from this and in turn pulls Ivan into the murder plot. Their relationship is romantic insofar as they are seducing one another in turn towards this unspeakable and forbidden act that they both desire: the murder.

They deny it right to each others faces, only Ivan’s is an earnest denial, to himself first and foremost, and to Smerdyakov it’s just sort of… foreplay. Like, “we’re just two clever people who are only saying this because we have to, and we get it, and you’re in this with me.” 

There is something really compelling too in the fact that Ivan is on board with the murder plot in one scene on a subconscious level, but later will utterly deny that any of this ever happened or that he ever felt that way. He has expressed and betrayed a desire that is so deviant, so forbidden, and so distressing to him that he has a psychological break over denying that that could have truly been something he wanted. Ivan expresses overwhelming disgust and disdain through the entire book, mostly towards Smerdyakov, but finally towards himself when he is forced to the realization of the role he has played as the idealogical murderer. Whereas Smerdyakov, the more active pursuer in their relationship, is not ashamed of his desires and is the one who ultimately has the lack of inhibition required to carry out The Forbidden Act. 

Ivan is attracted by Smerdyakov initially, despite himself, for reasons he can’t understand, like one is drawn to a cataclysmic disaster of fate in a Greek tragedy or something, and ultimately it descends into complete loathing on both sides, kills Smerdyakov, and mocks Ivan’s entire character by undermining his self concept and his entire value system and laying utterly bare his fatal flaws as a human being. Utterly doomed and hopeless relationship in every single way! 

Alas, no one wants to match my freak about this and that is definitely for the better. If I had to see ship art of them kissing anime style I would kms. Whatever the fuck they had going on is way better.