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co-mixed · 3 months ago

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Mark Waid’s Fantastic Four

It’s rare that a writer perfectly fits the character but when it’s Mark Waid and Fantastic Four, this is exactly the case. This was the first time when I was genuinely excited to read every new issue, and this is the book that’s finally made me like the characters. Well, not too much because Reed is still there (ugh). But you know what I mean.

Anyway, if you haven’t read it, I very much recommend that, and if you have and want to relive it, go ahead and read the rest!

The new look

Waid’s run starts with a meta-story that quickly points out what we’d been getting wrong all these years about the Fantastic Four. They were never superheroes, they were adventurers. And suddenly, right there everything falls into place. ‘A group of adventurers’ becomes the leitmotif of the whole run. In a way, this definition is a culmination of everything that came before – journeys through space, time, and the Negative zone, occasionally interspersed with supervillain encounters. But this is also a way to refresh the book by letting us view it in a slightly altered manner. I’d say that’s something the book needed desperately.

It’s also immediately obvious how the book mixes the classic lighthearted tone with a more mature one. It’s ready to explore serious issues, which isn’t new for the FF, but it wants to keep things bright and colorful. That’s where Wieringo’s art works perfectly in unison with Waid’s stories. And such stories we get!

FF is for family

During Claremont’s run, I said that FF started to feel like a family. But everything before still had them as Reed, Ben, and two supporting characters. Even when each of them faced their own stories, and they confronted them together, they never felt like people who had known each other their whole lives. Waid gives them small interactions that remind you how close they all truly are. And it’s not just banter between Johnny and Ben, it’s the way Sue interacts with Reed, admiring his genius and mocking his poor social skills and the way they both interact with their children. The children, by the way, they play a role too. They are very delicately written into the stories, even becoming their center, but never serving as a plot device. I’m gonna go back and talk a little more about Franklin later.

Waid allows the characters to interact effortlessly, and naturally, so they don’t feel like strangers.

Call for four

The main four people in this graphic play are of course Sue, Reed, Ben, and Johnny. Here, for the first time ever I can say that I got to know them all. It’s both ironic and sad that it took 41 years for them to finally be portrayed as people, who you kinda want to hang out with (even though you’ll always be an outsider because ‘family’)

I very much liked Susan here. She is shown as a genuinely happy woman, a strong hero, a great adventurer, a caring mother, and a wife. I’m not saying “good wife” because her not having left Reed years ago makes her either a legend or someone who needs serious saving. A legend if we go off this run. She still gets her jealousy moments that are not entirely justified. Sue gets jealous of Alyssa, obviously because Reed neglected to disclose the nature of their past relationship to Sue. But similarly, she goes as far as purchasing a statue of Namor to make Reed jealous. This isn’t how a healthy marriage works, Susan. And it makes me feel bad for Namor. His arrogant ass doesn’t deserve this.

But it’s great to see her happy and joking, and spending time with her family while still trying to raise her good-for-nothing brother.

Speaking of Johnny, Waid probably felt just like we all did - Johnny hadn’t gone through much growth before that. Yes he’d been married, and he’d saved the world, but when it came to living in it, he wasn’t very well-adjusted. Waid changed that by putting him in charge of the FF company (say it with me: nepotism!). Not just that, but we got to see Johnny navigate the business world, and face pretty unfortunate obstacles. I have to say, I felt real bad for him when Sue went off and blamed him for the stolen sample of unstable molecules. But it all worked out in the end. This is how this run started, by reassuring you that the FF has everything under control.

We’ll get to Reed (ugh!) and everything that went wrong later.

Back to Johnny though, he has a tough time losing popularity, he even seeks the help of Spidey to learn how to be unpopular with the masses. It leads to a funny arc that honestly, leads me to believe that Johnny’s success with women is just it - his fame as a superhero because he has zero game otherwise.

Again, not a secret - I never liked the lovable blue-eyed Thing. He’d been quite whiny and manipulative, and from everything I’d seen so far, it was really hard for me to relate to his issues. Waid changes that too, he lets us see why the others like and appreciate Ben, which is not because of him continuously reminding them that he’s lovable, and certainly not for his textbook heroic actions that again, to me often came off as ingenuine.

He has a sense of humor here, when he bashes good-for-nothing Johnny, his jokes really stick the landing. When he connects to Franklin, he is being 100% transparent and helpful. In fact, I think he’s one of the characters that have the truest understanding of what the kid is going through, and he doesn’t waste a second in telling him that. He is also ready to sacrifice himself and not make it a big theatrical act. And after building up that side of his character, when he dies in Latveria, it… well, it doesn’t stick, this is still comics, but it certainly affects you as much as it does his family. Waid doesn’t let us sit with this emotion but he doesn’t rush through it, showing exactly how deeply it had touched everyone. Especially probably Johnny, who conjured an imaginary version of his friend. And here, Wieringo comes back after a short break and delivers a stunning difference between Johnny’s daydreaming and real life.

I already mentioned that Franklin stops being a prop and becomes a character. Waid makes him face the good old older child problem - sibling rivalry. When all attention immediately goes to baby Valeria, Franklin misses his quality time with his parents, especially his dad. And that gets you to see him as a little human who is going through his own set of issues. That becomes even more obvious when he is sent to hell by Doom and is traumatized by the event so much, he can’t speak. Waid showed us the toll it took on Franklin’s psyche, and he did it through the adult characters around him, without trying to imagine how it would be, and without making the kid sound wise beyond his years.

Doom politics

I’m gonna get to Reed but first, we need to talk about Doom. Because if I had to pick, I’d say this is where you can truly see the nature and the cause of the Reed-Doom war. First of all, different writers view Doom differently, and while some attempt to justify and redeem him, others go out of their way to remind you how evil he is. Waid is not a Doom apologist. He immediately shows us how ruthless he can be when he kills the real Valeria to gain mystical power and then shows us that the prosperity in Latveria is a smoke screen that’s hiding a small guillotine-equipped human disposal system. So after all the debate, Doom is still a dictator who disappears his critics to silence them and forces people to trade freedom for stability.

Waid also does to Doom the same thing he does to Lex Luthor in Superman: Birthright. Now they both lose potential friends over a misunderstanding. Only in Doom’s case, he thought Reed had messed with the controls on his machine, which ultimately resulted in him hiding behind a mask. It’s not his arrogance now, but the jealousy he thought Reed felt toward him, that drives Doom.

This time though, In his evil endeavors, Doom goes further than ever before: he uses baby Valeria to get to the FF, then imprisons Franklin in hell, and tortures the rest of them. He likes Valeria though, that’s kinda sweet.

Needless to say, when the team finally defeats Doom, and even temporarily sends him to hell (but not before he disfigures Reed’s face).

Reed (Ugh!)

Here’s the thing, this run didn’t make me like Reed any more than before. Sure, he gets his redeeming qualities, plenty of them in fact, but he keeps messing up big. He even gets mixed up in international politics, which I gotta say was written very well. As soon as Doom disappears, multiple countries (including neighbors like Hungary and Serbia, as well as the US, Russia, and China) are preparing to make a move on Latveria. Meanwhile, in an attempt to deDoomify Latveria, Reed moves his whole family there and takes over the country. That’s a terrible decision on his side, and one that he’s tried to pull off before. My question is, when is Reed Richards going to realize that he’s not a politician or a monarch and stop trying to enforce his vision upon everyone?

Essentially, there isn’t much difference between what he and Doom are doing. They are both consumed by their own vengeance, and both believe they are making peoples’ lives better out of the goodness of their hearts. Either way, it’s the Latverians who end up suffering. Reed didn’t even make any kind of address to them, before raising his shirt as a flag above Castle Doom and pretending everyone was now free. He needlessly endangered them to prove the FF wasn’t there to hurt them and then invited everyone to loot the castle. Happy 1917, I suppose?

The visuals in this arc are a little darker. I don’t know the process behind the decision, but this is where we temporarily say goodbye to the larger-than-life bright art of Wieringo and say hello to Howard Porter’s more realistic approach. He especially focuses on Reed’s Two-Face appearance, highlighting the more fitting side for each one of his statements.

Just like the first time around, Reed can’t seem to take over Latveria without a shadow of Doom looming over him. The first time, he was possessed by the armor, the second, however, it was all Reed, only with a physical scar left by Doom. Everyone else (except for Franklin who was in hell, after all) shook it off. But Reed didn’t. He was hell-bent on destroying everything Doom had and built just to make sure he would never return. Ultimately, it led to him imprisoning Doom (and causing his escape because when does it ever work out?)

He also shoots (and kills) Doom-possessed Ben to save Johnny.

Yeah if anyone was hoping this run would make me like Reed, they were wrong.

Reed reminds me of Buffy. Everything does but hear me out: as the leader of the FF he drags them into wild adventures and some of them inevitably end in disaster. Then it takes writer magic to make everything work out and pretend that all the issues and idiosyncrasies don’t really matter. But they do, everything he’d done up to the end, everything he said be it in service of a bigger goal or not, still matters. He keeps making mistakes that go unnoticed when he comes out on top.

As a reader, you can like the team and hate the person. And this run has absolutely made me like the team.

Bag of tricks

Waid utilizes so many narrative tricks like the team meeting the Kirby-god to restore the status quo. Once again, ironic meta-stories allow to push the story forward.

Another trick was kicking the FF out of their comfort zone of being rich and popular. And that is a great callback to the first issue, in which Reed confesses to Valeria that he worked relentlessly to make sure the FF is popular and beloved to compensate for the cosmic rays incident. Because… imagine them having to live like mutants (and blame Reed for that).

Waid forces Reed to come face to face with the one thing he can’t understand - magic.

The dysfunctional Frightful Four’s family dynamics are juxtaposed with those of the original FF, and we see why one works while another keeps failing.

As the herald of Galactus, Johnny encounters a world of sentient ants, making us look back at the first FF-Galactus encounter.

Then the team meets the person behind Galactus, someone who in all honesty, is nothing more than an unimpressed hater. So… nothing shocking about him going around eating worlds after all.

And there is a moment when the team loses powers only to get them back because they can’t imagine being without them now.

All that draws these characters, lets you see them for who they are, good and bad, and leaves you wanting more.

Final thoughts

Waid’s run is enjoyable in every possible way. It’s very 00s in terms of visuals - cartoonish and bright, with just the right amount of nostalgia especially if that’s your introduction to the comics era. Narratively, it turned out to be deeper than I expected, all the while maintaining that connection to the original Lee/Kirby era. I’ve noticed that this is a trend with Waid’s books, he tries to at least partially return the characters to their starting point, make them recognizable, and rediscover their roots. For the Fantastic Four, it works incredibly well.

If we ever get a Disney Fantastic Four cartoon, I would like it to be based on this run since it’s done a marvelous job of flashing out each person behind the uniform.

#marvel #marvel comics #comics #comic books #marvel universe #long reads #comics reviews #fantastic four #reed richards #susan storm #johnny storm #ben grimm #victor von doom

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juliakristeva · 4 months ago

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What are your thoughts on Mary Gaitskill?👀👀👀

ive been meaning to read more of her work because as of now i've only read secretary, which im linking here because i recommend it so much, as well as her sequel (of sorts) minority report (yes, i should read everything in bad behaviour- i just want a hard copy and haven't been able to buy it yet). both of these have, quite genuinely, haunted my perceptions, my reading, my analysis of literature and my experiences as a young woman, and my own writing since i read them. because she's a subtle writer: you don't notice the blade stuck in until you look down and notice the hilt. she captures something very rare and brutal about womanhood. in 2021/2022 i noticed a lot of the same people who were reading ottessa moshfegh picking up bad behaviour and touting them as capturing a similar feminine ethos but i don't particularly agree, because gaitskill writes with teeth and iron in a way that many women writers of later generations- myself included- do not. roughly i'd place her proximally to kathy acker- less experimental, obviously, but she certainly writes with eroticism and audacity. if acker likes to break the boundaries of gender and call attention to their absurdity, gaitskill stays within them to achieve a similar effect. she's very underrated as an absurdist.

i do want to read her longform fiction though: do you have recommendations for what to start with? i've been leaning towards two girls, fat and thin.

#replies #thank you for this ask i think one of her novels might be my next read

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bunglegaydogs · 2 years ago

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Hiiii I'm just sending an ask because they're all different posts (read : I'm lazy) so please don't mind me lol

First and foremost, YOU ARE AMAZING AT EXPRESSING YOUR THOUGHTS AND YOUR ESSAYS ARE ALWAYS SO NUANCED?? SO YOU SAYING THAT WAS A HUGE COMPLIMENT OMG- I love reading your bsd essays so much and it's just now that I realised that they're all your essays abaammw some of the best in the fandom really. I'm always baffled when in the middle of an essay you go "I may not be articulating my thoughts right" or "this is kind of just put together" because girl you're amazing! Never stop writing these please ajajahsbw ALSO! Hearing your little thoughts and feelings pop up in the middle of an essay makes it so endearing to me. Like, that's a whole ass person writing these many words just to express how much they like this show and they're so adorable! (So sorry if that's offensive idk if calling someone adorable is)

Also, completely unrelated lol but this is exactly why I prefer to ask people questions instead of googling! Knowing that the person explaining is a human has their own opinions and hearing their feelings and experiences is so much more better and relatable than reading stuff off a Google website. Also your pfp is the cutest everyone has cute pfps nowadays 😭 anyways yes cute pfp :D

Actually getting to the point now:

1) yes yes Oda and Dazai's relationship is so dear to me I love them sm and I adore seeing Atsushi all caring for his mentor 😭 he's basically Dazai's emotional support cat!! Dazai let the boy in please I'm begging you he can purr probably and it would melt away your stress pls pls (Maybe everyone in the ADA sees Atsushi as their emotional support cat...)

2) Mori is a piece a shit, and you should be allowed to say it. I'm never biased in my writing but I loathe that guy with my very being and the whole people who like Mori thing really got me reconsidering...was *I* the bad guy for not liking a character when I actively liked a character very similar to him? Then I realised, I completely respect and treat equally all the people who don't like/hate Dazai. I don't treat them any different just because they don't like a character. And that's what I should expect too!

There's no post defending Dazai, and yet I still like him because I accept his wrongdoings and want him to keep getting better, like Oda told him to. Yknow, the argument would be MUCH different if Dazai was a woman and not a man, imagine bashing someone for liking a teen girl and not liking the guy who groomed her to be his heir. Yeah, really puts things into perspective. I'm not sexist, I treat (respectful) men and women equally, but Mori is just. No.

3) I haven't see it before in any canon source material but I feel like it's definitely true. It's clear that Dazai WANTS to want to keep living, but he can't bring himself to want it because of all the pain he's endured. He literally said in dark era that the reason he joined the mafia was to try and seek meaning in life by being close to death and violence. It's ironic, Dazai feels the most alive when he's about to LOSE that privilege. It could also mean that Dazai only realises the "value" in living when he's about to lose it. Perhaps he thinks of things he could've done, things he'll regret, and that helps him to stop before he actually does it. But in my opinion? I don't think he finds anything of worth in that time. He just convinces himself that he does. This is a personal hc but it's probably likely to be the case.

If you've listened to the song My R, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.(totally recommend btw!).The girl in the song speaks to herself about her woes and the 'other' version of her comforts her telling her about all the things that she DOES have, but by the end of the song, she has lost everything of meaning and she can't comfort the "girl". It is only revealed that the girls she comforted are different versions of HERSELF that she stopped from jumping.

Anyways, in conclusion, SOMEBODY PLEASE GIVE THIS BOY A HUG HE DESERVES IT

oh my god oh my god oh my god

i am sat here on the verge of TEARS in my goddamn chuuya cosplay

okay okay give me a second i need to collect myself

you are singlehandedly the SWEETEST person ever im sobbing

literally i cant- thank you so fucking much! you dont understand how much this all means to me WOWOWOWOW <33333333

literally, my brain doesnt let me consume my content positively and so i always think that theyre quite bad or that im the only person who thinks that or that im saying all the wrong things lol

i have so many words and thoughts floating around in my little brain that i just cant find the words for, so thats honestly what those rants are, my delusional 4am thought processes when i deep things too much

and YOU THINK??? genuinely, thank you!!! i love reading people's essays and thoughts, so hearing you say that genuinely just warms my absolute heart <3

and yes yes i do get quite sidetracked very often and start just rambling and adding my own personal twists- genuinely i thought that was annoying for people to read, but you're just putting a big smile on my face right now :) and PLS DONT THINK CALLING ME ADORABLE IS OFFENSIVE I LITERALLY GIGGLED READING THAT SHIT FR. <333

i like to add personal experiences and thoughts into it, just to get my point across, put it into an irl perspective and let people also relate and see what im getting at. (unfortunately) i have the same experiences as most of these characters, and so that is why they're so dear to me and why i get very defensive and passionate writing about them!

and yes! getting your answers and stuff from irl people instead of strange irrelevant responses is much more preferred lol. it's more raw and in depth and definitely a lot more personal! and thank you so much!!! it's genuinely one of my favourite dazai panels istg hes such a pretty mf

1.) i love love LOVE their dynamic, i think it's one of my favourites in the show along with skk and ranpo and yosano. it really fucking hits hard, as all family dynamics do with me fr, idk what it is about them, they just get me. and yes!!! i love when atsushi shows that he cares for dazai it MAKES ME FEEL NICE <3 and that's so real oh my god hes a tiger please PLEASE he can fucking PURR (there was a tumblr post i saw, i can try and find it but it made me actually cry laughing)

THIS ONE i was fucking howling but yes! their relationship is also one that really really gets to me! and yes, he is just the ada's support cat, it's canon, i'm ranpo's sweets

2.) thank you thank you THANK YOU mori is an actual degenerate human being. he's not made to be liked or appreciated or revered, it's just fucking AEUGH. i'm not going to demonise the people who enjoy him as a character, but seriously, it's a big red flag to overlook the canon pedophilia. i saw someone make a defense against him saying "yes, but he's never actually touched kids, so that doesn't mean anything" SORRY? they also went on to say that he "restrains himself" from having pedophilic thoughts with elise, and basically praised him for that. needless to say, it got me feeling fucking icky. and yes! i feel exactly the same. i always think that "oh, maybe i'm the awful one for not liking him? am i bad?" even though, no, i'm perfectly fine thinking that way and i am allowed to think that way. and exactly again! dazai is my favourite character, but i recognise his flaws and his mistakes and don't forgive them. but he's actively trying to "be a better person" (i say this in quotation marks because dazai sees everything he does as inevitably pointless, but still wishes to uphold oda's dying words. i am definitely going to make a post about this in the near future lol) and i dont make my analyses biased towards him, and i stay on neutral ground UNLESS personal opinion comes up, to which i then say that it's my personal opinion, not fact, and that it's anybody's choice to think however they want. if somebody doesn't like dazai; okay! i'm interested in talking with them, and we can both talk about things we're very passionate about and have healthy conversations! unlike some people i have seen on reddit, goddamn. but no, we're not the bad people for hating that knobhead fr. we should all treat and be treated the same as any other fan in the fandom and get along, and i wish we could ALL do that in non-toxic ways. 99% of this fandom are the loveliest people ever, but that 1% just needs to get a grip like omg. we should treat others how we want to be treated, regardless of who favours what ship and who likes what character. and real!!! if gender roles were reversed for dazai, this would be much more problematic, and that's upsetting! dw dw, i dont think its sexist, i think its putting things into perspective bc, either way, its shitty how he was treated. i fucking hate mori. whenever i see people defending him to like, the bone, like not getting into a decent discussion and being civil but instead bashing everyone who says otherwise and completely overlooking the abuse, manipulation, grooming, pedophilia and just him as a sick and twisted person in general, it just really irks me. as someone who has in fact had to deal with separate strands of abuse including many fucking counts of sexual abuse and pedophilia, it disgusts me seeing people overlooking it and it makes me feel fucking sick. that shit is not just something to be overlooked because of the fact that you enjoy mori as a character, he's not supposed to be a character that's consumed positively, he's a bad guy. a lot of characters in bsd are morally grey, but mori is just fucking morally black. he's downright evil.

(TW for suicide and self harm next btw :) )

3.) yes yes yessss!!! again, bringing personal stuff into it, i deal heavily with the whole topic of suicide and self harm. i've attempted twice and still deal with thoughts of it every single day, as well as self harm. so, this is one of my main reasons of dazai being my absolute favourite character, because of the representation and actual presentation of these topics. at first, we're shown them in a whimsical and whacky way, then it gets so much darker once we get into the dark era. it's a complete tonal shift, and it really sets in the gravity of the situation for him. and, as you said, he wants to have that ability to want to keep going and living, and he wants to be able to put the effort in, but he can't/ he physically cannot. as much as he would want to try, he can't. and yes, when he said that it fucking BROKE me fr. just at the chance that he's not able to keep living on anymore as a human is the one thing that keeps him alive, i fucking love asagiri's writing, it's so complex and beautiful. and its so so so real!!! youre literally right idc lmao. youve so eloquently said it im crying, youre putting all my thoughts into words <3

and yes!!! i have listened to the song, i absolutely LOVE it! and i never fail to think of dazai whenever i listen to it </3 and, i also think it's very very much like dazai, because of the multiple different versions we see of him too. chuuya hasn't exactly changed much, but he has gone through some very very complex and deep character developments, such as in fifteen and stormbringer. hes a lot more "tame" and respectful now, and a lot more mature. (except with dazai lmao) aku, we see he's changed slightly thanks to atsushi, but still no major character fucking flip arounds. all these characters we've watched slowly become better and more complex throughout the series. dazai? he just does 180s every single fucking year. hes different at 14 and 15 than he is at 18. hes different at 18 than he is at 20-22. and the different faces he puts on for each and every person, all his masks that he has. there's much variety to dazai; you never know what you'll get. there's so many different sides to him, because he doesn't know who he is. as odasaku saw him, "a lost child crying out". no matter the age, no matter the state, dazai is always going to be harbouring that broken child with him, trying to hide it and build up walls around it, because the only time he's ever shown it, he's gotten hurt or betrayed and lost some key figures in his life. trust issues much?

anyways i am sorry i am sorry i rambled too much lmao

in conclusion, YES, GIVE HIM A FUCKING HUG OH MY GOD PLEASE I JUST NEED SOMEONE TO HUG HIM PLS GOD LET ATSUSHI GIVE HIM A BIG HUG WHEN HE COMES OUT OF MEURSAULT I SWEAR-

thank you so so so SO much for your kind words!!! sweetest person EVER fr <333333

thank you my love!!! /p have a lovely day/night :) <3

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plebeiangoth · 1 year ago

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Have some Halloween movies in no particular order

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is a great time, if you can find it. It's a love letter to so-bad-it's-good horror movies from the 50's and 60's which were all ambition and no talent e.g. Plan 9 from Outer Space and Manos The Hands of Fate. One of the funniest and most quotable movies I've ever seen!

House is as gorgeous as it is spooky and goofy! If you've not seen it, you're missing out. It's made by a director who made advertisements and a lot of the special effects are what would have been common in Japanese ads at the time.

Martyrs goes on the list for that one asshole who needs something extreme. Not that it's a bad movie, of course. But if you're that asshole and have yet to see it, have fun! If you don't know what I'm talking about, this film is not for the faint of heart and I mean it! Look up "French extremism" if you're curious. Again, if you've not seen it and don't like lots of blood and gore and little left to the imagination, this is absolutely not for you.

Valerie and her Week of Wonders is a gorgeous example of Czech new-wave, about a girl becoming a woman in a village of vampires! Strongly recommend this one if you like House, it's super colorful and whimsical!

Tetsuo the Iron Man is my idea of a more fun kind of extreme film. This is one of those movies I've seen several times and can't seem to remember the story, but suffice to say it's a wild ride about a metal fetishist who becomes sort of a metal monster in a similar fashion to Tetsuo in Akira becoming a giant flesh monster. It's got a very goofy tone and is shockingly wet for a movie about rebar.

The Thing is never not fun. I'm sorry to say I don't know my Carpenter as well as I should, I'm just too stuck on how much I love The thing and may never move forward. Yes I've seen Halloween, just I like The Thing better.

The Devils is a movie you can't watch in your home in a legal capacity, Warner Bros is never releasing this one on home video. Rest assured you can find it. It's a Ken Russell film about a whole convent of nuns (the Mother Superior played by Vanessa Redgrave) are so in lust with this priest, played by Oliver Reed, that they all fein demon possession to evade persecution. The complete version of the movie includes a scene in which all the nuns bang a crucifix. It's one of those movies I say the production team went to "the cool face store", because wow there's a lot of cool looking faces!

The Rocky Horror Picture Show, because there will always be virgins

Young Frankenstein was Mel Brooks's only funny movie. Fight me! (men in tights was okay i guess)

Bram Stoker's Dracula. What more need I say?

I can't easily pick any one Jan Svankmajer film, so this is the Svankmajer portion of the list. For the uninitiated, he was a Czech stop-motion animator who made these hyper realistic claymation films, often with a dark context. My favorite feature length films of his are Alice (a telling of Alice in Wonderland), Faust, and Otesanek (his final film and magnum opus, aka Little Otik aka Greedy Guts, based on the fairy tale Otesanek about tree-root baby turned vore-monster). His films aren't necessarily scary, just very unsettling and disturbing.

Hellraiser 2 because I haven't seen it yet and people keep telling me it's the good one, as if the first one wasn't delightfully generous????

The Witches is a movie that upset my very Christian grandmother one time when I was a kid, watching it on TV at her house. I don't think she understood the point that the witches aren't the good guys. I know it's irrelevant, I just thought it was funny. I miss you, Nana.

The Worst Witch. Can someone tell me where to watch this? I never saw it before and I wanna see some tacky Tim Curry schlock

eXistenZ is a movie which I only saw for the first, second, third, and fourth time ever one week last year and I'm ashamed as a Cronenberg fan that it took me so long! Not necessarily his most Halloween-y movie (I'd argue that would be The Fly), it's just a lot of fun.

Think I'll stop there, that's a good sized list.

Add your own recs! What do you watch this time of year?

#halloween #movie rec list #movie recommendation #horror films #spooky movies

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salomeslashes · 1 year ago

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hiii i saw you mentioned being a librarian into horror and was wondering if you had any recs for gothic or haunted house books? i dont need a lot of action i just want a superbly eerie vibe.

Yes absolutely! I feel like two of my favorite recent haunted house books have a considerable amount of action but I will mention them anyway, just...down at the bottom for you to ignore if you want. Eerie vibes incoming!

The Stradivarius (by Rae Knowles) - A woman moves with her new husband into the house she inherited from her father, who was murdered when she was a child, and spooky things begin to happen right away. Is her house haunted, or is something more sinister going on? And what happened to her father's priceless violin, which hasn't been seen since his death? Vibes everywhere!

Mexican Gothic (by Silvia Moreno-Garcia) - It's been a little bit since I read this one, so the plot is slightly less fresh, but I remember every bit about how it made me feel. The world of this story is so rich and the characters are absolutely fascinating. I highly recommend it for that gothic vibe, especially if you (like me) want to read more stories by and about people of color.

You Should Have Left (by Daniel Kehlmann) - This one is perfect for people who love House of Leaves in theory but not in practice. Short and told in a style that's almost stream-of-consciousness, the narrator of the story is a writer who is staying in a remote cabin with his wife and young daughter...but something is just...off about the house. Hard to explain much more without giving it all away, but it's so creepy and so cool. Also, very short. I read this in an hour.

A Guest in the House (by Emily Carroll) - This one is a graphic novel, which I hope is fine! I loved this one. The art was gorgeous and it was legitimately so haunting. Aching and ambiguously supernatural. I screamed about this one from the rooftops when I read it.

The more intense stuff:

How to Sell a Haunted House (by Grady Hendrix) - Terrifying, but also heartbreaking. I loved this one a lot, and the second I finished it I sent an ebook copy to my brother. Lots of family feels, and some really horrifying puppets. Hendrix consistently kills it as far as horror with heart. I highly recommend it.

Tell Me I'm Worthless (by Alison Rumfitt) - I cannot stress enough how brutal and hard to read this book is (the author included a content warning at the start and I highly recommend heeding it), but it's also (somewhat ironically) deeply worth it, if you ask me. This is a haunted house story, yes, but the ghost in the house is fascism. As a trans person, as a queer person, as a human being, this book wrecked me.

#salome speaks #salome answers #salome recommends #horror books #horror fiction #anonymous #librarian superpowers activate!

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happy-ramm · 1 year ago

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Hi!

First of all: Thank you very much, I really appreciate all of your input on the current rammstein situation and I’d totally say I agree!

The situation is fucked.

I just want to add some of my thoughts about all of this, if that’s ok:

Let’s start with: I hate it here.

I hate what this debate does to the bigger image of the band: they are in the process of becoming a tool to express hate towards women and the general idea of feminism. There are misogynists, fans of this red pill ideology ‘defending’ Till by simply calling the women who came forward with allegations slurs. And there are fanaccounts sharing these videos like “go watch it, big recommendation” … you’re like ten seconds in and the dude in the video calls a woman “bitch”/“hoe” because he has ‘evidence’ that she might be lying? Shut up, Sherlock and maybe let some professional investigator do their job?

Who do they think they’re helping with that? It’s ridiculous, really embarrassing and not helpful at all imho.

This antifa-incident now also gives a lot of rather right winged people (Nazis lol) the opportunity to slide in the comment section of posts about it and spread hate of the political left as a whole and force their ideas of “the lefts being the new facists” on everyone. This connection is also very nice for all those journalists out there who love discussing rammstein as nazis! And also veeeery nice for the current political situation in Germany! much wow. I’m so done. (Also quick advice to all the activists out there: if you feel like vandalism, maybe rather write ‘no stage for Nazis’ on some buildings that are owned by ‘Alternative für Deutschland’?)

(These right winged accounts also really often show their homophobia - which I find quite ironic given the fact that rammstein eg waved pride flags in poland and their guitarists kissing on stage like every concert now but ok)

Id def consider myself somewhere on the spectrum of the political left and I also think that one can (and should) read rammsteins appearance in their political songs in this context.

My point being: there are now a lot of people interested in rammstein who seem to actually have nothing in common with their world view? It just makes me really uncomfortable and I hope that once this is over they’ll loose their interest in the band again.

I’ve been to three rammstein concerts and one of Lindemanns shows - until now everything was ok and we met some nice people. (Even tho the Lindemann Show was a rather weird, unique experience in general but that’s sth different) .. all in all I’d say my (female passing) friends and I were having a good time and everything was ok.

But with all of this, with the chance that the amount of these kinds of really bad people being interested in rammstein and as a result maybe also attending the concerts is growing - I might be afraid of going to another one (if there will be another tour?) and no, not because of Till Lindemann.

Sorry for the late repsonse Anon! I was moving house!

In general, though, I share a lot of your concerns. Situations such as this one are tricky because what is ultimately the dealings between two people and their own feelings/experiences of the matter gets submitted to the greater public for their judgement. Politics, laws, personal morals and agendas all get dumped in one big pot to boil over and eventually fester. It is all very confusing...and then out pops something nasty. In this case, the misogynistic right wing.

Frankly, I am not surprised that the right-wing has found a little nest within the Rammstein fandom. I do not say that because I believe Rammstein harbours any sympathies with that ideology - I like you firmly believe them to be a left-leaning band - but simply because people's media literacy skills are in general....ah, how to say this politely?....ah yes, they are fuckin' shit.

Rammstein is a band that rewards those willing to look deeper; those who love satire and those who simply have a good sense of humour. Unfortunately, they also appeal to those who really like when things go BANG.

Now, I also like when things go bang, don't get me wrong - pure sensation can never be underrated in terms of art. However, its a matter of aesthetics versus text. A reasonable person would conclude that these can't be separated: their interaction, whether it be complimentary or contrasting, creates the meaning. In the case of Rammstein, however, there exists a neat line, formed due to the language barrier between the band and the general audience.

This barrier has benefitted Rammstein - I believe they would not have gotten so far if their content was in English, for instance, but it means there are too many who only see "the picture".

The hardness. The hypermasculinity. The violence. The sexual imagery. The stoicism. The evocation of fascism. And all without the crucial framing of the lyrics.

Even when the satire should be self-evident, many miss the cue. Take Links 234 as an example: a song which functions as a politically rally for the left, specifically against the right, and was constructed in response to a reactionary media who sought controversy and not understanding, has ended up as a right-wing marching song in many minds.

It is very frustrating

Even more frustrating is deciding how to deal with this....

Argue with every idiot you see on the internet? Now, that's a Sisyphean task.

Leave the fandom altogether? Well, that feels like a different kind of defeat.

Realistically speaking, there is no silver bullet. One decides what is best for themselves. Personally, I feel no fear participating in the fandom as a queer AFAB person. Reality is different from the online spaces and I have never felt uncomfortable at their concerts, and when online, the block button is a blessing. I have no idea how this recent controversy is going to change the demographic of the Rammstein fandom, but I know I ain't going to fuckin budge to leave space for some Nazi twat. All I can say is, I hope this situation is resolved quickly, and I hope all Nazis die in a fuckin' fire.

That is all.

#rammstein #anon ask

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zuckarr · 2 years ago

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1 year as a vegan 🌱 an honest overview

I'm a 30 year old woman, and I decided to go vegan in April 2022. I was never a vegetarian. I switched from an omnivorous diet to a plant-based diet overnight, and I have strictly adhered to the latter, with the only few exceptions being accidents.

I would like to write down how my journey as a vegan has been so far, what pros and cons I encountered and how my overall health was impacted. I intend to talk with my heart on my sleeve about everything and I am totally open to questions or clarifications. This post is nothing more than my own subjective, unique experience as a relatively new vegan person. However I won't be talking about the morality of veganism, nor the reasons why I decided to go vegan. I want to give voice to the bodily and mental changes I am going through instead, plus a few personal final thoughts.

I'd like to begin by stating that:

I have been taking several blood tests during the last year in order to keep track of the changes.

I have been taking vitamin B12 supplements as strongly recommended by every single doctor and veganism related website/source.

I have no prior sickness of any kind.

HEADACHES.

Headaches used to permeate my days before going vegan - so much that I had stopped noticing them (when bearable). During my first week as a vegan, the sudden disappearance of my headaches felt like a miracle. I would've never anticipated how life-changing that was. I was so used to my head pounding that the absence of the pain couldn't have gone unnoticed. I figured out I am intolerant to dairy, as countless others are, and yet I used to munch on cheese as my go-to comfort food... as countless others do.

BLOATING.

Bloating was probably also caused by my daily ingestion of dairy products, and was one of my body's cries for help. I did not feel bloated anymore once I started eating plant-based. The skin on my belly was softer at the touch and not as tense as before. People around me began asking if I had lost weight. I hadn't. It was just me deflating, lol.

SLEEP.

This is one of the most unexpected changes: I noticed I've been sleeping less, but better. I started waking up an hour or two earlier than usual, feeling well rested. Thanks to that, my days got longer, my mind got clearer, and my mood improved almost instantly.

ENERGY.

During the first weeks, I felt very energised. Must've been all of the vitamins suddenly filling my body! Who needs to get high when you can get the iron rush from a bunch of spinach, like good old Popeye taught us? Nevertheless, the energy sort of dissipated over time and I've been feeling pretty normal ever since.

POOP.

Oh no, it's poop talk! Fend yourselves, because I am not scared of being descriptive here. Long story short, I used to have frequent diarrhea before going vegan. Once again, my dairy intolerance most likely contributed to creating funny looking brown stuff. If I asked you how's your poop looking, what would you answer (assuming you wouldn't slap me)? And would you know what a healthy poop is supposed to look like? Welp, let's just say I've been proud of my toilet appointments since going vegan, because all I see are Pacha meme worthy sausages. Going to the loo is a happy time now, in comparison to the long minutes of agony spent with stomachache and funky smells.

FLATULENCE.

Can't have booty talk without mentioning the #1 cause of laughter among kids since the beginning of time! Farting is funny, but it is first and foremost the sign of a healthy gut. It takes a quick Google search to find out what farts truly are and why our bodies need to produce them. I confirm one of the most innocent prejudices against vegans - yes, we fart more than usual! But if you read into it, you'll only wish to do the same. Still, it is a largely acceptable change, and has not caused me any discomfort or unfortunate situations whatsoever.

CHOLESTEROL, IRON, PROTEIN, ETC.

Before going vegan, I had high cholesterol, high fibrinogen, low hemoglobin, low albumin, and a few other things that weren't importantly unbalanced. As aforementioned, I've taken several blood tests during the last year which showed ALL of the highs & lows quickly going back to normal. When I saw my cholesterol lower for the first time, I cried. I haven't had normal cholesterol for years, so, seeing that was nothing less than a miracle for me. As for my iron and protein, they increased! My fibrinogen was REALLY high, which could've resulted in a heart attack due to a vascular occlusion, but I don't risk that anymore. I cannot express how ecstatic I am to be considered medically healthy now. I wish somebody had told me earlier about the health benefits of a plant-based diet.

COOKING AND GROCERY SHOPPING.

I was never a big fan of cooking, because I was mostly just hungry all the time and I couldn't be bothered to prep meals or to even chop up vegetables. As a vegan though, I was kind of forced to look at recipes in the beginning - I was pretty lost and didn't know what to cook! Well, vegan cooking turned out to be much easier than I thought. I remember my first vegan grocery shopping experience: a whole new world opened up in the mall. I had never looked at the veggies and fruits and legumes and seeds and cereals section properly before! It was ENORMOUS! Boxes and bags and baskets of wonderfully colored food, most of it really cheap (especially legumes); with half of the money that I used to spend on cheese and meat, I had double the amount of food in my shopping cart and I was so ready to start cooking. The more I cooked, the quicker my cooking skills drastically improved and I have so much fucking fun in the kitchen now! I made countless vegan meals and cakes, loved by everybody (non-vegans asked for recipes more than once!), even by my mother! She used to slaughter chickens and had never baked a cake without eggs before, and yet, she admitted that this way of eating is fantastic and convenient. After a few months, she praised my hair and skin because it looks brighter and healthier. As a matter of fact, I feel nourished and full most of the time. Most importantly, I began to feel grateful and to think of food as a way of loving myself and nurturing my body, rather than a mere matter of taste.

SOCIETY.

The problem with being a vegan in a human society is... other people. It is always, undoubtedly other people who will come @ me with their weird, uncalled for, and rude anti-vegan claims as soon as somebody ELSE reveals that I am a vegan. I swear to god. I have no idea where we picked up the scenario of the 'annoying vegan' because the truth is actually the opposite... it is others who annoy ME... whenever they asked questions, I was happy to answer and explain stuff, because I genuinely thought that they were interested and would have liked learning something new, just like I would've felt if they had talked to me about something that they are passionate about. But nope, the real reason why most people asked me questions was to 'debunk' what I would say and feel like they won the argument. Even though it wasn't an argument at all. It wasn't long before I started noticing the patterns, the same old questions asked, the same rebuttals, over and over, in an endless cycle of going nowhere. So I simply learned how to differentiate the 'gotchas' from the rare, decent people who truly want to know more about veganism. As for going out and eating out, it wasn't as hard nor as expensive as I anticipated. We now live in a very vegan friendly time, there are vegan alternatives to basically everything. I feel extremely lucky to be a vegan now, because I can't even begin to imagine how hard it would've been years before.

PEACE OF MIND.

There is a duck pond nearby and I often take walks through it. Sometimes I sit on a bench, look at the beautiful birds and their dreamy plumage, and I... appreciate them. Not for their meat, like I used to. I can't even fathom seeing those creatures as food now. I appreciate them as individuals, who dream, love, dance, think, sleep, bond with their kin... I feel at peace with animals and nature on a whole other level. I realized how wrong it felt to eat a steak and then pet my dog. I learned so much about animal agriculture, nutrition, human rights, environmentalism… and I have so much more to learn yet. It takes one heartfelt glance into an animal's eyes, to be reminded that we are all the same. I am honored to get to choose not to be cruel to them.

#vegan #veganism #go vegan #use your hearts and brains #be kind to all kinds #veg 🌱#personal

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cleoenfaserum · 2 years ago

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The Strange Death of the Twin Gynecologists. A patient’s notes. (By Linda Wolfe)

PART 1 OF 3

Editor’s note: New York’s issue of September 8, 1975 included a cover story about two gynecologist twin brothers who had died under strange circumstances on the Upper East Side. The brothers’ story eventually inspired a novel, Twins, by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, and a film adaptation, Dead Ringers, directed by David Cronenberg and starring Jeremy Irons in both roles. In April 2023, Dead Ringers was remade as a Prime Video TV series, this time with Rachel Weisz as the doctors.

LISTEN or READ or LISTEN&READ

Lke so many other people I spoke with this summer, I found myself uncharacteristically haunted by the deaths of Stewart and Cyril Marcus, the twin gynecologists found gaunt and already partially decayed in their East 63rd Street apartment amidst a litter of garbage and pharmaceuticals. The story of their deaths had, for me, even in its barest bones, that element of stupefying reality that Philip Roth calls an “embarrassment” to the writer’s imagination; here was a reality that could make the capabilities of even the most imaginative writer seem meager.

Several aspects of the deaths contributed to my stupefaction. One was the very fact of the men’s twinship, the doubleness which had given them a mutual birth date and now a mutual death date as well. Another was the men’s prominence. When beggars die in a state of bizarre deterioration in New York, there are no comets seen; when two doctors still on the staff of a mighty New York hospital die in a state of bizarre deterioration, the heavens themselves blaze forth questions of responsibility. Had these men actually been seeing patients — perhaps even performing operations — while already on their route to disintegration? (Such was the case, as it turned out.)

Had none of their learned colleagues noticed, if not a mental alteration then at least the clear signs of physical change that had come over them? (They had, and, in fact, New York Hospital decided to dismiss the Marcuses — but only weeks before their deaths.).

But I had a special personal reason for curiosity about the deaths of the Marcuses, for I had once been a patient of Stewart’s. At least, it was Stewart whom I called for appointments and whose name appeared on the bills I received, although the friend who had recommended him to me told me she sometimes had her doubts about which twin she was actually getting. Yes, they were that much alike. She was convinced that from time to time they had played classic twin jokes, one substituting for the other. Another woman with whom I spoke had had the same impression recently, and said, “Of course, they never told the patients they were doing this. But I got so I could tell which was which. Stewart’s neck was thicker.” Other patients could tell which twin was which because they detected a difference not in anatomy but in personality. Their doctor, kindly on one visit, would be strangely inaccessible on the next. Thus, the story grew that one was a “good twin,” the other a “bad twin.” But there was widespread disagreement as to which was the good one, which the bad. And it was never quite clear whether the personality change was a result of the twins’ pinch-hitting for each other, or whether because within each twin there was a split and ranging personality. I tended toward the latter belief, and was convinced I always saw the same doctor, but that he had dark and darker moods.

Eventually I left off seeing him. This was about eight years ago. I had found him/them distant, remote, incapable of or unwilling to engage in discussion or explanation. Hardly what one wants in a doctor. His/their reputations were good. They were among the few surgeons to have perfected the “purse string,” an operation that helped women who had difficulty carrying a fetus to full term. They were said, also, to be the best gynecologists in town — in those days — at inserting with a minimum of pain the then still new IUD’s — intrauterine devices. But communication with him/them was so often difficult that I finally realized that reputation was, for me, less important than responsiveness.

Perhaps because of having felt so strongly my Dr. Marcus’s distance from life, I wasn’t really surprised when I read of his and his brother’s deaths. The initial police reaction was that they were victims of a suicide pact. There were no signs of anyone’s having forced entry into their apartment; no signs of external violence to either body. Stewart was found face up on the floor, nude except for his socks; Cyril was found dressed in his shorts and face down on a big double bed. Stewart had died several days before Cyril. There was no note — the usual accompaniment to suicide — although according to Bill Terrell, the building repairman who called the police and, with them, was the first to enter the apartment, there was a piece of paper in a typewriter with the name and address of the woman whom Cyril had married and divorced.

More mysterious than the question of whether their deaths had been intentional or accidental was the fact that the cause of death remained unknown for days. Despite the fact that Cyril, a man close to six feet tall, had weighed just over 100 pounds at the time of his death, and Stewart had been gaunt as well, no sign of serious physical illness was found in either man. No cancer: no heart condition.

Ultimately, extensive tests conducted by the Medical Examiner revealed that drugs — barbiturates — had caused their deaths, but not because they had suddenly taken a large quantity. Rather, they had been taking large quantities for a long period of time, and it was when they stopped — and had the fatal convulsions typical of barbiturate withdrawal — that they had died.

It is not easy to portray the Marcuses. The relatives are loath to talk about them, for obvious reasons. The wife from whom Cyril was divorced has children whom he sired. She feels an enormous, brooding compassion for her ex-husband. Colleagues of the Marcuses and those in an administrative capacity at New York Hospital were even less willing to talk, although three weeks after all my attempts at interviewing them had been defensively rejected, the Times was able to shame them into finally addressing the press. Because of these difficulties, I had to follow another direction and it took me closer to a resolution of the personal questions troubling me.

I went first to the building in which the Marcuses had been found dead. Cyril had lived there — in apartment 10H at 1161 York Avenue — for some five years, apparently since the time he had separated from his wife and children; Stewart had moved in with him sometime in the last few months. To the doormen and building employees, the two doctors were always distant, remote, too arrogant for a “Good morning” or even a “Hot weather, isn’t it?”

Because the two doctors eschewed small talk. no one talked to them much after a while. Thus it was that on a Tuesday, the Tuesday on which, presumably, the second twin was to die, his brother having done so several days earlier, doorman George Sich — who had worked in the building for 25 years — saw one of the twins leave the building sick and depleted and yet was unsure about how far to carry an offer of help. The twin — we now know it was Cyril — neared a table in the lobby on which packages were occasionally placed and began to stagger a bit. “I thought he looked ill,” says the doorman: “I thought he was going to faint, and I hurried over to help him.” But when Sich reached his side, the twin recovered his balance and said in an icy tone. “I’m all right.”

Inside the apartment that day, the other brother — Stewart — already lay dead. He had become just another part of the debris and decaying organic matter that had been collecting around the twins for a lengthy period of time. The newspapers described the apartment in which the bodies were found as “messy.” Stronger words were used by building employees and policemen who went into the rooms. In the room in which Cyril died there was no inch of floor space that was not covered with litter and garbage, not just in a single layer, but almost a foot and a half high. Bits of unfinished TV dinners and chicken bones, paper bags and sandwich wrappers from Gristede’s were heaped around the bed, a collection of plastic wraps from the dry cleaner’s entirely filled one closet, and human feces rotted in a handsome leather armchair of the type so many doctors favor.

Bill Terrell, the building repairman, says that he knew from the first that there was a dead body within. Neighbors had been complaining for two days that there was a smell emanating from 10H. Terrell says, “I knew what the smell meant. I was in combat, you see. The real conflict.”

But Terrell had reasons beyond the nose on his face to suspect that there was a dead man — or two dead men — in the apartment. Once before he had been called upon to break open the door to 10H. It is his story of this event that makes the death of the Marcuses seem not just a sudden inexplicable tragedy but a tragedy with long, concealed roots. That other time, about three years ago, Terrell had been passing by 10H on his way from a repair job in a nearby apartment when he heard a buzzing sound within. It sounded like a phone off the hook. He thought nothing of it until, several hours later, he had cause to be on the tenth floor once again, passed 10H, and once again heard the buzzing. This time he rang the doorbell and began to pound loudly on the door. When no one answered his noises, Terrell says, he got the phone number of Cyril’s brother Stewart and telephoned him at his office. Terrell said to Stewart, “There’s something not quite kosher at your brother’s place. I think your brother needs help.”

What happened next amazed and intrigued Terrell. There was, he says, a long silence. He got the feeling that Stewart was somehow consulting the air waves, communing with his brother, because he said nothing for a long, long time and then, quite abruptly, said, “Yes, You’re right. He does need help. I’ll be right over.” In Stewart’s presence, Terrell took apart the door lock. When they entered the apartment, they saw Cyril lying unconscious in the foyer. Stewart turned pale. Terrell said, “Give him artificial respiration.” “I can’t touch my brother. You do it.” “I can’t,” said Terrell. “You’re the doctor. You do it.”

PART 2

PART 3

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darka-art · 2 years ago

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Kabal of the Blood Diamonds- Act ch1

The Kabal of blood Diamond : Act 1

The Gladiator from DownWegg.

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Note: Plz note that I havn't planed to publish the full story, but I plan to write at last 3-5 chapter. If people seems interested enought, I may end up continuting at last the full arc.

The Kabal of blood Diamond : Act 1

The Gladiator from DownWegg.

•⁚⁛PLZ BEWARE : The fic contains gore, killing in very crude way, swore and sexuall theme. It is not a lecture for younger viewer and I recommend that you perhaps should read something els if these theme make you uncomfortable.⁛ ⁚ •

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The loft that had been given to the Scourge and her team was pathetically colored. The ceiling was relatively low, and none of the furniture were made of human leather, but of dark metal. Although luxurious, the apartment was too dated. Shame in Cormmorragh.

But oh well. El-Shay would go with it. And at least each member of her team had their own apartment, except Veex who insisted on staying in a room full of computers and strange devices that she didn't really understand.

Evra and her husband Haemonculi, Berbeduale, had built a little corner near the Torture wing. As usual, Berbedual was well organized and had already installed his surgical instruments in the room.

Savyle was a slightly messier young assassin. No sooner had she settled into the room near Veex that she had already transformed the place into a barracks filled with weapons and armor that covered the floor. She was a somewhat chaotic young woman, but she shouldn't be underestimated.

And El-Shay was there, in the big room far back, where even those big windows seemed closed away from the rest of the world.

It was perfect like that. She liked to have a quiet room away from the others where she could watch them. She had been Arkon of the prestigious Blood Diamond Kabal for years. She knew very well that anyone could become… Jealous.

However this time the jealousy came from outside. Indeed, dozens of her precious cargo ships that made the glory of her Kabal had been attacked or simply disappeared overnight, and it had started to titillate the Scourge’s business.

After an investigation led by his right hand, Evra, the face of the prime suspect had finally come to light: Evisive Lekk. An arena master renowned for his gladiator slaves and lavish parties that entertained the great Elites of the Dark city.

And that's where she was.

In a building attached to the home of this great arena master, quietly setting up this little spy mission with his 4 henchmen on the bus quietly showing this bastard that he shouldn't have attacked the Kabal blood diamonds. The Scourge was so close to its prey.

On the other hand, she still had to be patient: Murdering such a popular Noble would have to require a lot of discretion so as not to attract too much attention. Commorragh was merciless.

Before she could gut that idiot, she had to wait a bit and used a lot of manipulation skills.

But it was fine.

She was very good at playing blood chess.

Suddenly, someone knocked on her bedroom door, snapping her out of her conspiratorial thoughts.

"It's Evra, may I come in ma'am?" I have heard from our contact.”

Oh. That, she hoped, was good news.

" Yes. The Scourge replied.

Evra entered with her beautiful pale blue hair. His long bat wings were still quite straight. Her round porcelain face still gave her an innocent look, but El-Shay knew her too well to let that fool her.

Evra was patient and smart. That's why she made the Scourge her right hand.

The blue-haired Scourge walked over to her mistress and sat down on a chair she had provided for her.

"Lerro arrived a little early and therefore decided to go and have fun in a bar with two or three newly acquired slaves..."

And shit. This Reaver was an excellent hunter of information, but he could never help wasting his time in glasses and blade competitions.

The Arkon sighed and clenched her iron claws.

Her black wings had tensed.

“I am surrounded by fools. When's that paunchy idiot bringing his butt here? »

Eve sighed. " Tomorrow morning. If you want my opinion, maybe around noon if he doesn't have too many injuries. And I have a very bad feeling about all this."

She always shay that, but this time, El-shay shared her feelings.

El-Shay got up fiercely from his chair to serve a drink on one of the cabinets in front of his bed. She opened a bottle filled with red liquid then filled her glass.

"If he doesn't hurry up, I'm the one who will hurt him. She said, drinking the red liquid in her glass.

___________

Lerro had just finished half his bottle. He already didn't remember when he walked into that bar. The smell of narcotics didn't help. He just remembered that he had sold one of his slaves. It was... What was it called, the all blue? Ah! Yes, a T'au. This one had allowed him to enter this chic little club.

Small was maybe a little weak as words: In the background there stood three Reaver who had fun ripping off a human's finger with a knife, in the center a player was playing his instrument made of human organ and Eldar and at the bar, of the Succubi spoke of their murderous exploit on civilians whom they had killed while they slept.

His last slave was a young human also with him at the counter. He was shaking.

The pale, thin face turned towards his master. He looked at him with his big brown eyes which were already beginning to lose their colors.

The human was terrified. Lerro turned his eyes slightly toward his slaves. He smirked.

"And why would I do that, Mon-kheig?" he said in an amused tone.

"Please... I have two children waiting for me... Please, I'm afraid for them and..."

"Oh, but it's true that it's all very sad." he said, slowly approaching the chained human.

"...too bad I don't give a fuck."

He took the bottle and smashed it in his slave's face. This one fell on the ground and this mis wept. The Blood Diamond spy couldn't help but laugh a good laugh.

The Waitress didn't seem to have so much fun.

“I hope you will pay for the bottle. By the way, you still haven't paid for the two bottles... I have an idea: pay now as well as the bottle you just broke, and you can order a new bottle. »

"Oh LADY, give another bottle for an old mercenary..."

She held up a bottle. She shook it like a toy you shake in front of a baby. He raised a hand to grab the bottle, but the waitress lifted it higher so he couldn't reach it.

She looked at him with a big smile on her lips.

“He, he, he, pay first!” She said with a wavering voice.

Lerro looked at her darkly. Nobody had the right to make fun of him like that.

He stood up looking her straight in the eyes.

He took the chair where his slave was sitting. Lerro tried to hit the waitress with it, but she dodged the chair which instead hit the back of one of the Succubi. The victim of the chair fell to the ground and her friends were obviously unhappy that their discussions were uninterrupted.

They threw themselves at him, and by reflex, he used his slave as a shield of flesh.

The warriors threw themselves on the slave, and with their sharp knives, covered him with wounds and cut off his limbs while he was still breathing. The poor human was only the first victim of the decadence that continues in this small bar.

The three Reavers who were in the background had rushed to the center and fought with the crowd, the player who just a moment earlier had been playing on top of everyone, was now on the ground, a knife in his throat.

The Succubis were fighting against one of the bar waiters.

Three Kabalists had entered armed with their guns to participate in the bloodbath and the manager of the bar sent his henchmen to try to regain control of his establishment.

Lerro came out behind an overturned table, crawling. He was only a short walk from the exit.

But he just had to wait for one of the Kabalists to walk away.

Whoever was blocking his exit fired a few shots.

The warrior turned his head slightly in the direction of where Lerro was hiding. The Blood Diamonds spy stayed hidden, hoping not to be seen.

The Kabalist remained motionless, then headed into the center to find a new victim. This was the moment Lerro had been waiting for.

He then crawled.

A freshly severed hand fell on his face. He almost screamed in surprise, but he restrained himself. He was too close to fail.

He was only a few centimeters away… and YES! He successfully passed through the exit door and finally came out alive.

He turned his head to see the bar which was now chaotic, and gave a good laugh.

As he turned to run, his smile disappeared: The waitress at the table stood in front of him, a gun in her hand.

She smiled and then exclaimed, "It's time to pay your debts." Then she pulled the trigger.

And just like that, the Kabal of the Blood Diamonds lost Lerro as well as the valuable information he held.

_______

⛔

Characters belong to me and @rowscara

#warhammer40k #warhammer 40k #drukhari #dark eldar #scourge #commorragh #dark city #fanfic #original character

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mornyavie · 20 days ago

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Explanations for the losing topics under the cut. And yes you CAN talk to me about any of these that pique your interest. I will be so happy to talk about them.

You may recognize the phrase The Riddle of Steel from old Conan the Barbarian stuff, but it was coopted for a TTRPG written in the early 2000s. The writers were avid reenactment/swordfighting fans, and their goal with it was to make a sword-and-sorcery game with big emphasis on the "sword" part of that - hence getting one of their martial arts organizations to put their stamp on it!

It has an incredibly complex and expressive system for melee duels; it really forces you to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your weapons and training. When it's good, it's really good, and I've had some of my favorite experiences at the table with it. But it was also written by a couple European-history nerds in 2000 who were eventually scammed by their shady publisher, and it shows on all accounts; the editing ranges from bad to atrocious, and the included setting from boring to offensive. I can't really recommend anyone play it, but the bones are good enough to inspire a community-driven rewrite after the publishers screwed them over; I haven't checked out Blade of the Iron Throne, but maybe do if this sounds interesting.

Lord of the Changing Winds has the distinction that no one I've recommended it to has ever finished it. Uh. I'll just go find a blurb.

Little ever happens in the quiet villages of peaceful Feierabiand. The course of Kes' life seems set: she'll grow up to be an herb-woman and healer for the village of Minas Ford, never quite fitting in but always more or less accepted. And she's content with that path -- or she thinks she is. Until the day the griffins come down from the mountains, bringing with them the fiery wind of their desert and a desperate need for a healer. But what the griffins need is a healer who is not quite human . . . or a healer who can be made into something not quite human.

What to say, what to say. It hits a lot of unusual points in the emotional and interpersonal journeys of the protagonists, and as someone frequently accused of unusual emotional and interpersonal behavior (<- aromantic) I like it a lot. And also there's griffins. Genuinely fresh and thought out magic system. Thoughtful portrayals of people with genuinely different priorities. It's good.

Look Moonscars is objectively, like, fine, but it's also on sale on Steam right now! So what's to lose!

You'll find more involved and challenging combat elsewhere, but the smooth, creative animations make for a very satisfying experience, and the story is fun to unravel, and the visuals are super pretty unless you're opposed to stylistic monochromaticism.

For some reason the community reviews used to tend to have a lot of hate, much of which I find undeserved, though it seems to have turned around a bit these days. Some people think it's too easy, others think it's unfairly difficult, a lot of people think it should be Hollow Knight instead (read: more platforming). I've run into a lot of that trying to find places to talk about the game, so I often wish I had more people to talk about it positively with.

So the universe is made of atoms, right?

And atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. You may also have heard that protons and neutrons are both made of quarks.

Electricity and magnetism come with positive or negative charge. A magnet has two sides, and depending on their orientation two magnets can either attract or repel each other. Protons are positively charged, so they're attracted to electrons, which are negative.

Quarks have a more complicated force system going on with *three* charges that can attract or repel each other, in addition to their negative versions. For lack of a better idea, they're referred to as colors - more or less in analogy with the idea of mixing primary colors together. Since there's three colors, protons (and neutrons) are made of three quarks each - one of each color.

like this

Color -> chromo -> chromodynamics. Large-N chromodynamics is when you pretend that instead of three colors there are a lot of them. It turns out that "a lot" is a much easier number to deal with than "three," so this can be used to learn some useful ideas about how collections of quarks should behave.

Look there's a lot of wierd and bad supplement books in the D&D Third Edition Ecosystem. Magic of Incarnum has the probablem that it tries to introduce an entirely new mechanic to the game - essentia - which means that it interfaces poorly with other material and has whacky balance. The esoteric vocabulary cements its place as a minor meme. You can sometimes invoke it to complete unexpected character ideas, but there's no way your DM will let you do it unless you are, for some reason, already playing with the roles from this single obscure supplement, so it's fun to joke about.

You use your essentia to shape soulmelds and bind them to your chakras.

(yes, it uses the word chakra for this)

Translation; basically, you get a pool of points you can use to either power racial/class features or make yourself temporary magic items. The magic item body slots are inexplicably recast as chakras, and if you bind one of these special "magic items" to that body slot you can't wear a magic item there, but you get extra benefits.

In addition to the whole chakra thing, it's a woefully underpowered supplement; if you use one of the provided base classes, it's basically pouring all of your class features into getting yourself magic items - leaving you with magic items basically equivalent to those of a normal character, and no class benefits. Ever wanted to be a wizard with no choice but to do kinda shitty melee? Now's your chance!

But you can pull a few neat tricks with it, like using the jump boots to get yourself evasion, which is otherwise tricky to do without rogue or rogue-like levels.

niche joke. ADHD cleric who can't cast abstinence spells because their ritalin counts as a stimulant-

post cancelled I just checked and according to the vow of abstinence feat caffeine DOES count as a stimulant. Unrelatedly ADHD cleric who can't cast Channel Celestial because they ate a chocolate bar yesterday.

#polls

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life-as-a-lesbian · 2 years ago

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Alright, so now I knew I didn’t only like boys, but how did I figure out I didn’t like boys at all? There were a lot of signs for that too. I mean, I mentioned a lot of them in my last post (like getting physically sick when being intimate with my boyfriend), but even after I knew I liked girls I couldn’t quite accept I didn’t like boys. It’s still really hard for me to accept honestly, which I will talk about later.

To a lot of people, labels don’t matter. That is totally awesome. To me, labels mean a lot. When I first told my friends I was in love with K, along with “yeah we know, finally”, they asked “so, you’re bi then?”. And for some reason, I couldn’t tell them yes. I had been with boys in the past, I was actually pretty boy crazy all throughout high school, and now I liked a girl, so bi made sense, but it didn’t feel right.

I had a friend, whom I am no longer friends with, who insisted on calling me bi. I don’t remember why or how we got on the topic, but she literally told me I was bi. Very directly, without hesitation I said “no, I’m not. Don’t call me that”. She couldn’t wrap her head around that. I still thought boys were cute, I had dated boys before; I must be bi. But bi never felt right, neither did pan, and I refused to use a label I didn’t feel comfortable with. Using a label that didn’t fit me felt disrespectful to the people who do identify with it and to myself. For a while, I identified only as queer, and I do still feel comfortable using that label.

On one of K’s and I’s off periods, I downloaded all the typical dating apps. On each one, it asked the “who are you attracted to” question. At the time, I thought I was attracted to men, women, and non-binary folks. So, I set my preferences to everyone. I matched with a lot of people, talked with a few, and I met up with two. The first person I met up with is the one we’re going to talk about, we’ll call him S.

S was an old coworker of mine, we only worked like two shifts together, but he used to come into the store regularly, even after he quit. We never really talked, but I always thought he was cute and polite. Ironically, we matched. After a few days texting and a 4 hour phone call, we decided to meet up. The first date was awkward to say the least. We went to a park and sat on the bench for an hour or so, just talking. I was telling him about my grades, which, while above average, are not that impressive, except to him apparently they were impressive enough to lean in and kiss me pretty aggressively. When we separated, he told me “sorry, was that okay? It was just so hot hearing you talk about how smart you are, I couldn’t resist”. I did not tell him it wasn’t okay, so he kissed me more throughout the night. Each time, I couldn’t help but think about how much I did not want to be kissing him. I thought that maybe he was just a bad kisser though. I convinced myself I could make him better and that it would be fine. He was cute and totally into me, I could make it work.

If you haven’t ever seen the movie Two Night Stand; one, I totally recommend it, and two I am totally going to spoil it. Basically, a woman tries to have a one night stand with a man and it turns into a two night stand because of a giant blizzard. And the whole movie you’re thinking, “there’s no way this would ever happen in real life. There is a weather app on everyone’s phone, the news is playing in the background of places all the time, there would be a weather alert text”. To be fair, the movie took place in like 2013 when smart phones weren’t huge yet, but let me tell you that even in the modern age of IPhone 11’s, this is not as unlikely a scenario as one might think considering, you guessed it; it happened to me. Not quite like the movie, considering I was not trying to have a one night stand and the guy did not get the girl in the end, but weather did trap S and I in a very small apartment together on our second and last date.

For our official second date, we went out to a local arcade. We played games and he tried to make out with me in the Photo Booth. Then, we went back to my apartment. On the way back, it looked like it was going to rain and I had checked the weather that day so I knew that rain was in the forecast. I, however, did not know that it wasn’t just rain forecasted, it was a severe thunderstorm. We hung out in my room for a bit and then after another set of uncomfortable kisses, I asked him to go. I walked him to the door and when I opened it, it was pouring. It wasn’t just a heavy rainfall. It was raining so hard we couldn’t see the cars on the street from my balcony. He obviously didn’t want to try to drive home in the storm considering he didn’t live in town (fair enough), so he asked if he could stay. I didn’t want him to get in a wreck, so I told him he could. One huge problem though, I didn’t have anywhere for him to sleep… except… in bed… with me. My couches weren’t couches at all, one was a chair and one was a loveseat and he was pushing 6”; my roommates room was off limits. Looking back, I guess I could’ve made him sleep on the floor, but I didn’t. We slept in my bed together.

He was perfectly respectful. We didn’t have sex and he didn’t try, we just slept. And still, the next morning, I woke up feeling like I needed to rip my skin off. I barely spoke a word to him that morning and I never texted him again. The moment I got home from work, I took the hottest shower I have ever taken in my life and scrubbed my skin until it was blotchy red. I immediately bleached my sheets, my pillowcases, my blankets, and the clothes I slept in. I was nauseous the next two days. That’s when it clicked. H, if you can’t share a bed, PLATONICALLY, with a perfectly nice and handsome man is there any way you could share a bed romantically with one?

That’s when I changed the preferences on my dating apps to show me women only.

#gaylife #girls who like girls #lgbtpeople #lgbtq community #lgbtqa #lgbtqplus #wlw community #wlw pride #life as a lesbian #pride #lgbt representation #lgbtqia #lgbtq story #coming out #sexuality #lesbian #lesbianpride

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chandajaan · 2 years ago

Note

hi chanda, please feel free to ignore this if you want to, but i was wondering if you could talk a bit about what your adhd diagnosis process was like? i was told to get tested by a therapist at my college but the process sounds so stressful, especially if youre an adult and a woman

hi!!! id love to talk about it! the short answer is yes it can be stressful, but not enough that it's worth putting off if you need the diagnosis to receive support. In my personal experience being an adult woman, while limiting my research to online papers it did not at all affect the service and support I got from healthcare providers.

I hope nothing here puts you off seeking a diagnosis but I am being as honest as I can, so contextually it is important to note that the biggest factor in getting diagnosed is the healthcare system in your country, I'm Australian and despite the free healthcare system here I did rely at least in some part on private healthcare to help speed up and prioritize my diagnosis and hopefully my treatment. overall I would say I spent 800 on getting diagnosed, I could have gotten this for free but it would have taken much longer and in my opinion a slightly lower quality of care.

The first time i suspected i had ADHD was at 15 when i actually did some research about it, and i just got diagnosed at 23. the thing that finally pushed me was getting over my own self-doubt, and that was pushed a lot by having a good support system. my parents while loving, weren't the support system i needed, my husband was the one who really pushed me to go out and do the work to help get my process started. so having people actively motivated to get help is something I needed, it says I got a lot of support from Facebook and tumble groups, the more local the better as they provided great advice and recommendation for services.

you have to learn to be persistent with doctors and health care, make sure all your appointments are booked and be fast because wait times are inevitable on more than one occasion I had to follow up with someone I had waited 3 months to see only to find out they had taken my money and not booked the appointment (I still got my appointment on time but I would have missed it if I hadn't spotted their mistake) I did not face any microaggressions or hostility for being an adult woman seeking treatment and everyone i spoke to was very supportive. this isn't the experience that everyone's had but it was mine.

the attending appointments and booking and money, which is more of a waiting game. everything else is pretty much self-documentation. document and research your symptoms as much as you can, focus on what the DSM-5 needs to diagnose you and have personal examples and possibly childhood reports if you have them always helps. i had an on-hand list of all my symptoms and the way it impacted my life. being organised ironically is important, luckily the wait gave me enough time to make sure I had all my symptoms listed.

anyway sorry, this is so long but I thought id cast a wide net so if you need anything specific let me know!

#adhd #adhd mood #anon #chandatalks

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green-socks · 3 years ago

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The Art of Stealing

Pairing: The Thief x F!reader

Summary: You spent one night with him five years ago. It changed your life, and now you get a chance to see him again.

Words: 1,833

Warnings: Mentions of sex (nothing super explicit, still +18 though), language. The thief isn't the nicest. Reader does crime. Alcohol mention (obvs lol). Something else? lmk!

Notes: Yes, I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Mama I'm in love with a criminal etc. This fic is sort of my version of what I think could have happened after @kesskirata's brilliant fic The Greatest Thief in the World. My fic is what that fic + watching the commercial inspired. This fic is separate from her work and you don't have to have read it to understand this, but I recommend you read it anyway!! I didn't use Spanish here, other than mentions of the nickname the thief gave reader in Kes' fic, because I don't speak it and didn't want anything sounding weird.

Canon is literally a wine commercial so this is just meant to be a fun little story. :D Also, as a person who refuses to even jaywalk, writing about thieves is quite something.

MASTERLIST

He had fucked you once.

It had been the best night of your life; no one else before or after that had compared to him. And you didn’t even know his name.

It wasn’t even just because of the fact that it had been the most thrilling, mind-blowing sex you’d ever had - it was the way he had made you feel completely free for the first time in your life. Free of your father’s iron grip control, free of expectations and constant judgement. Instead, he had made you feel free to act how you wanted - to be your own person.

He had judged you for being a daddy’s little princess, a spoiled rich girl with no real problems. But you hated your father, hated the lifestyle and arrogance and all the expectations that came with having a rich, high-profile man for a father. He didn’t care for you, he just wanted to control you, to make you fit his image.

That night with the thief had been a breath of fresh air for you. Sleeping with the man who had robbed your father’s safe and then fucked you against it (and on the office desk) had been the first push for you to start getting back at your father and wriggle out from beneath his thumb.

And even though the thief had told you not to think about him when he had left you, you did, like you had said you would. You thought of him when you touched yourself, thought of him every time your father and his associates got on your nerves…

And it was the thought of him that made you get into his line of business yourself.

You started small. Nicking an earring here, a bracelet there, moving up to wallets and necklaces. It was easy to do in all the events your father took you to, and you found that they were much more fun now that you had this new little mission to entertain you.

Eventually you started gaining confidence and skill, and even found yourself a mentor; an older woman called Ida who lived a very comfortable life by marrying rich people and stealing from them.

Ida taught you the basics of breaking into both apartments and safes, how to avoid and neutralize alarms, guards, and security cameras, how to plan in case something goes wrong, how to talk yourself in and out of situations. She obviously couldn’t hold a candle to the world’s greatest thief, but who could? She could, however, teach you valuable skills and lessons, and how to hone them and constantly keep getting better. You had even discovered that your youth as a gymnast wasn’t wasted, since your strength, coordination, and flexibility helped you a great deal when sneaking around.

No one learned the craft overnight, and it took you a long time to get to know the ins and outs, both with and without the help of your mentor. But after a while you started to really focus on certain targets instead of just nicking small items from whoever was convenient. You chose targets who had done terrible things with their money; awful, mean people, some of whom you had disliked since you were a little girl.

These marks you took were abusers and bigots who got away with their wrongdoings because they were rich. You despised them all and stealing from them was your way of righting their wrongs. You donated most of the money to different charities, especially to causes they were against, and it helped to give you a small sense of victory.

You didn’t need to keep much of your profits for yourself since you still had your father’s money - not that you didn’t steal from him, too, occasionally. But even with how much you disliked your father, you needed his connections; it was thanks to him you got into all the fancy events around the globe and knew who to target. You got the inner circle dirt on all of them and knew where to strike.

And you dreamed you would see the world’s greatest thief again someday, somewhere. You had not expected that to happen at a masquerade ball in Chile.

You were there as a guest, even though you had never met the hosts, because that was how things worked in these circles. You approached the event as a possibility to scout new targets, or new projects, as you liked to call them.

Maybe if you hadn’t spent the last five years dreaming about him you wouldn’t even have recognized him. But you still recalled the feeling of that soft hair in your fingertips, and the patchy beard visible beneath his mask. There was a bit more grey in his hair and beard, but it was unmistakably him.

This was interesting. Maybe now you could finally find out more about him.

“Excuse me, do you know who that man is?” you asked a local girl sitting next to you.

“Oh, him in the red velvet jacket? I don’t think anyone really knows him, but he owns a local wine business. Very popular.”

No way.

He owns a wine business? What the hell does he steal for then? He didn’t seem the type to be doing it to donate his winnings like you did.

Oh, you definitely needed to find out more now. But you needed to be discreet and careful to not raise suspicions. You counted on the fact that he wouldn’t recognize you with your mask on, seeing as you had changed a bit since he last saw you. And it had been years… Maybe he wouldn’t have remembered anyway. You tried not to let that get you down you too much. You had things to do.

And you did manage to find out more information. Valuable information indeed.

It was all too easy to get rich people to blab. Flirting, flattery, and flutes of champagne did the trick in many cases, and you learned that according to rumors he is quite wealthy and lives in a secluded mansion. No one was able to confirm these rumors, but you thought it fit his character at least.

So you went back to your hotel room that night with one thought. Finding that mansion. You wanted to see where he lived and what he did. Maybe even pay him a visit.

You had the means to do that now.

Lucky for you, it was easy to get information out of poor people, too. A few bribes and a couple of favors from trusted contacts, and you were pretty sure you had gotten the whereabouts of the mansion. Your contacts and scouting had been done through local cleaning businesses because you knew that if he really lived in a giant mansion, he would not be able to manage it all by himself - there had to be staff. You had a good laugh thinking about him mopping the floors of some big ballroom by himself.

You couldn’t check your hypothesis on the exact location of his mansion because it was nowhere to be seen on Google Earth. That didn’t discourage you, however. You thought it likely he had paid people to hide it.

You devised a plan to go and scout the place, and if you found it, you would try to get in.

The mansion was bigger than you had thought. And you had seen plenty of impressive mansions in your life.

The place was surrounded by trees, providing a very secluded and an oddly calming feeling. There was light streaming from the tall windows of the top floor, which suited you perfectly; it was likely that he was upstairs and wouldn’t notice you sneaking in through the kitchen entrance. The door was locked of course, but you had no trouble picking it open.

He should really update his security, you thought, as you crept quietly along a hallway out of the kitchens. There were no guards to be seen anywhere, and you didn’t spot any security cameras either, although you still moved very carefully and tried to avoid points where security cameras could be hidden.

There was a door ajar on your left, piquing your interest. As carefully as you could, you entered the room.

It looked like a sitting room, with couches and a couple of bookshelves, a telescope next to a window, and a big, beautiful fireplace. He seemed to really like art - there were paintings, sculptures, and other pretty things everywhere. You walked forward to a liquor cabinet that had two wine glasses and a bottle on top of it. You smirked as you grabbed the bottle, recognizing it as your favorite chardonnay, and thought you’d have a drink on the house. How fun would that be, drinking a glass of wine in front of the fireplace in the thief’s house without him even knowing you were there. It was thrilling and exciting you; worth breaking in even just for that.

You were just about to take a sip when you heard a voice behind you.

“You would dare steal from the devil, bebita?”

You froze, your breath caught in your throat.

“Did you really believe you could go around snooping on me without me knowing? I am the greatest thief in the world, I am not easily fooled. I saw you at the ball.”

Your breath stuttered. He had noticed you? Why hadn’t he said something?

You felt the wall of him close behind you now, felt his breath in your ear as his hand - this time ungloved - snaked its way up to your throat. Not squeezing, just holding.

“You seem to have learned some new tricks since we last saw each other. But you still have ways to go, bebita,” he murmured in your ear.

“I’m not your bebita anymore,” you whispered.

“Oh? Perhaps not. But I bet you still get wet for me. That hasn’t changed, has it?”

You swallowed hard. You could hear the cocky little smirk in his voice.

He turned you around so you were face to face, and you couldn’t help it; his voice, his touch, and his eyes were all making your head swim just like they did five years ago. You know your lust-blown pupils gave you away even before his hand reached to cup your pussy.

“See, I can feel you even through your pants, dirty girl. You were hoping to get caught, weren’t you? That’s why you did this little performance of breaking in? You were that desperate for my cock again?”

You were panting hard. Maybe that was what you had been doing all along. Hoping he would notice you, catch you… Punish you.

“Don’t worry, my naughty little thief, you will get what you desire. But first, I will show you what happens when you break into the devil’s lair,” he whispered as cupped your jaw to keep your eyes on him.

“Now, where shall we start?”

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tagsies (you can totally ignore this if this isn't your thing though): @writeforfandoms @starlightmornings @lorecraft @niki-xie

#the thief x reader #the thief #casillero del diablo #wine commercial #i had to #sorry not sorry #i accidentally wrote something #i still don't know what i'm doing #the thief fic

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theconstantsidekick · 3 years ago

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The Avengers ft. Static (1) | s.r

Pairings: Steve Rogers x Stark!Reader, Past Steve Rogers x Peggy Carter (briefly mentioned)

Genre: Fluff I guess.

Summary: Steve's finally awake from his hibernation. And as expected, he doesn't get his moment of calm cause someone is here to recruit him to go fight another war... with ALIENS.

(These scenes incorporate y/n, codename—Static, into the pre-existing story as a character without making drastic changes to the plot or mythos. All the major plot points from the MCU remain in place with the addition of the reader as Static, who is not only a Stark but also enhanced. Whatever events from the canon aren’t mentioned, take place without much change.)

Warnings: Swearing.

a/n: read Age of Ultron (ft. Static) to get a better backstory. Not necessary but recommended.

sidenote: here’s the pinterest board and spotify playlist if you’re interested.

“What did that poor punching bag ever do to you?” A voice rings out from a couple feet to his left.

When he turns to look at the owner of said voice, it’s a woman. Probably one of the most beautiful women he’s seen since—

She’s standing at the entrance of the gym, at the wide-open caged door. She’s staring at the punching bag Steve just hit hard enough to not just burst open spilling its contents but also fly off into the hinges… literally. Her face is contorted in something akin to curiosity while she stands there exuding a sense of ease and confidence, Steve himself still hasn’t been able to master.

Her ensemble of a navy blue pantsuit with a shiny grey tie, adds to her air of eerie calm surrounding her.

She’s a small little thing compared to him, most people are. Yet she seems… more prominent than he has ever managed to feel.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but do I know you?” He asks, head cocking to the side.

“Ehhh,” she makes a face that resembles assent before adding, “well… during our last encounter you were quite… frozen. So no. Not consciously at least.” She begins walking towards him.

Oh.

Of course.

People like her don’t seem so sure of themselves unless they really are that sure of themselves.

And she holds herself like someone who is very sure of herself. So Steve guesses—

“You work for S.H.I.E.L.D.?” He asks, beginning to walk towards the bench next to him, matching her pace.

“Reluctantly,” she replies, with a scoff. “But yes… Having trouble sleeping?”

He begins unwrapping the kumpur off his hands. “I slept for seventy years, ma’am. I think I’ve had my fill.”

She tsks at him, clicking her tongue. “Please don’t call me ma’am,” she dismisses him. “But if sleeping’s not your thing… maybe you should try looking for someone to sleep with,” she adds with a small smirk.

And all Steve has as a response is stunned silence.

What the hell happened when he was on ice?

She chuckles lightly at his wide eyes, waving her hand and brushing him off. “As a celebration, I mean… Or maybe go out? See the world?”

He’s finally able to move again from whatever paralysis that comment had put him under. He pushes the soft white fabric of his kumpur into the bag that rests at the edge of the bench. “I went under, the world was at war, I wake up, they say we won. They didn't say what we lost.”

Her slow measured steps bring her to a stop to his right. Her hands finally come out from behind her revealing a file, as she says, “Well, unfortunately, Captain, that kind of righteousness went out of business a long time ago.”

“Maybe that’s the whole problem,” he retorts.

Her smile doesn’t falter at his biting tone, only grows. “Maybe that’s why I’m here.”

“You here with a mission, ma’am?” He asks.

“Again, Captain… Please. Don’t call me ‘ma'am,” she looks genuinely annoyed at the use of the word, “you really make me feel my age..” Did you forget who you’re talking to? He thinks, a little amused, as she opens the folder in her hand, extending it towards him. “And yes.”

“Fury’s way of getting me back into the world?” Steve asks, accepting it and sitting down.

“Well… he’d tell you it’s his way to save it.” The way she says it makes it sound like she doesn’t believe it.

As his eyes scan the document, he feels a horrible churning feeling in his stomach. ‘Cause apparently his sacrifice be damned; this stupid cube will not leave him alone. “Hydra's secret weapon.”

“Howard fished it out of the ocean when he was in there looking for you,” she says, ever so casually. It almost sounds like she knew him. He can’t help but look at her intently as the words escape her pretty mouth. Steven! Shut up. He looks back down at the file. “Fury will tell you it could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy or some such.” She moves her head in annoyed indignation. “I have a tendency of tuning him out when he’s spewing bullshit.”

He looks at her curiously.

Back in his day, agents didn’t usually talk about their Directors with this much disdain, this publicly. But then again, his days were a long, long time ago.

“Anyway, it’s been taken now,” she says jovially, running a hand through her hair. She seems almost uninterested in this whole thing.

“By whom?” He asks, handing the folder back to her.

She accepts it easily. “This stupid alien dude, Loki…” AN ALIEN? Really? What? Men with Red Skulls wasn’t weird enough? “You’ve got a lot to catch up on. World’s been getting a lot stranger since you decided to make your debut…” she pauses for a cunning smile, “and well, your swift exit.”

Ouch.

He might have been frozen but his heart’s not.

“At this point, I doubt anything could surprise me,” he throws back, getting up and picking up his bag.

“Ten bucks says you’re wrong,” she says as he picks up a punching bag over his shoulder. “There’s a debriefing packet waiting for you back at your apartment.”

“And what, you just expect me to jump back in? I gave everything up for this world once already. What makes you think I’ll do it again?” He asks as he begins to walk away.

There’s a slight pause and then, “...Peggy Carter.” And the moment she says it, Steve’s steps halt. “Based on the stories she told about you—if the world’s in danger, you come running.”

He drops the punching bag off his shoulder, resting it on his side as he turns back to look at her. “You knew Pe—”

She cuts him off, walking in his direction. “Maybe I did,” she shrugs, “Or maybe I’m lying to get to see the disastrously gorgeous man smile.” She smiles at him sweetly, as she walks by. His body turns to follow her motions with his gaze. “Who knows? Why don’t you come find out?”

“Will you at least give me a name?” He yells out.

“You’re going to have to earn it, Captain.”

And with that, she’s gone.

Read the next part here. Find other static verse works here. Find her origin story here.

tag list: @freeflyingphoenix @aryksworld @jakey-stan @arikarapli @justab-eautifulmess @agent-laufeyson @agentmstark @ceo-of-daichi @eccentricxem @asimovethroughthisworld @paintballkid711 @fairlygothparents @starkleila @heyitsmereading @jn-wolf

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sineala · 3 years ago

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Tony Stark and Arthuriana

Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!

I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.

(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)

Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.

We've got:

Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1

A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187

Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest

What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?

Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4

Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest

Civil War: The Confession

Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side

In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.

The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."

The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!

(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)

This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)

But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.

The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.

As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.

Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)

Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.

So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)

So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.

IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.

They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.

We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.

Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.

The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.

So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!

Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.

Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)

Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.

So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"

The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.

This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.

Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.

He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.

So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.

So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.

Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.

Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.

Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.

Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.

So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?

Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.

It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.

The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.

Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.

Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.

Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.

Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.

They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.

Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.

(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)

Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)

At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.

I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.

Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.

Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.

(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)

(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)

Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!

Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.

It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!

Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.

That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.

"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.

"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."

Then Tony gets it.

So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.

So that's a thing that happens.

And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.

We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.

Whew.

Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.

But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.

(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)

Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."

The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.

The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.

Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.

The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!

So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.

Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)

So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.

"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"

Clint speaks the truth, clearly.

Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.

The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good.

Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.

But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference.

(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)

In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.

And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.

I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?

As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.

You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.

So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.

This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.

So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.

Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.

Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.

And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.

There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.

If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.

So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.

The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!

#posts i actually wrote

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