#a/pi month 2021

[burn-before-reading]

Long Ways Away

Bucky Barnes x Reader

connection, reconnection, and a small miscommunication. Bucky will travel however far if it means making you smile

wordcount: 4k

a/n: This was originally written AGES ago (2021) for @wkemeup ‘s 9k writing prompts. I had a different blog and posted one or two fics then ACCIDENTALLY DELETED THE WHOLE BLOG. oops 🤷. remade this one and now im back into writing a bunch again so figured i might as well respost it. i had some other bucky fics i never finished writing so who knowsss i might go back and finish them :p

based on the prompt:

Character A calls Character B in the middle of the night crying - something they’ve never done before. They’re several states away. [B] gets in the car without hesitation and drives to wherever they are.

Bucky found himself on the balcony, looking out into the busy New York nightlife. Cars driving through the busy streets. He felt it matched the energy inside the Tower. If he looked behind he would have found Tony chatting away, creating a spectacle and being the center of attention as usual. Sam was playing pool against Scott. Accusing him of cheating by using ants to move the balls around when he wasn’t looking. Steve and Natasha were in the corner chatting away about the last mission. Steve was always a little too focused on work, even when these get-togethers were planned to distract the team from just that.

It was why Bucky needed a break, that's what he would say at least. The reason for this whole party, as much as he hated the whole spectacle. A break from the team. A break from missions. He just needed an out, for now.

It’s at least what he was telling himself.

“Hey Stranger. Found your hiding spot.” He glanced behind and saw you there. Relaxed and leaning against the doorway, a half empty drink in your hand. Smiling like there wasn’t a reason for you to be sad. He smiled back for a second, like he was still going to be here tomorrow.

He would miss you the most.

______

You hadn’t called yet.

He wasn’t too worried at first, the last he heard from you, you had said Steve was planning a mission and you probably would be gone for a while. You didn’t specify what kind of mission. You never did. He hated that.

In all honesty taking this break, full on Move-Into-a-subburb-in-Indiana kinda break, was killing him. It was one of those things he thought he would be fine with. The neighbors were nice. A sweet old lady who was always baking and bringing him cookies and pies. The other was your typical nuclear family. Maybe that was something Bucky would have wanted back in the 40s. Now he’s not so sure.

Bucky’s so called retirement wasn’t that exactly. He wasn’t off the team. It was a break. A long break. A break for some undetermined amount of time, but had currently lasted for almost six months. Time away from the hustle and bustle of city life. Of Avenger life. Steve had suggested it after Bucky had one too many sleepless nights. Giving him time to try and live a life not fighting for something. Somewhere peaceful. He would’ve considered it sooner, if it weren’t for you.

He didn’t know how it had started. The friendship between the two of you. He knows you were the one to first initiate the conversation. It had taken him a while to warm up to you. He’s almost mad at himself that he didn’t keep track of all your interactions. Everytime he heard you laugh. Everytime you sat next to him during a movie night. When Your friendship started bleeding into something else. He felt like the two of you skipped a step somewhere. A line between friends and… something else, something better, started to blur.

You would slip into his room at night right before the nightmares could start. Running your hands through his hair as you softly sung lullabies and old songs. You spent the night more often than not. Fast asleep with your arms wrapped around him. His head delicately tucked into the crook of your neck, arms wrapped around your waist. You both waking up in each other's arms, tangled together in a peaceful bliss.

He knows what ended it. It was his fault. He pushed away.

But Damnit, Bucky did miss you.

At least you called every once in a while. Giving him updates about everything going on at the tower. It was like clockwork, almost. A call springing up at the end of almost every week, updating him on every little detail of Steve's extremely long Disney Movie Marathon. Last update you gave was he just finished the Renaissance era. Swearing on your life that you managed to catch him singing along to The Little Mermaid.

Another time you called just to complain about how bad your sparring session with Nat was.

“I swear someone must’ve pissed her off before it because now I have a stupid bruise on my back and it just hurts all over” you groaned over the phone. he could imagine you lying on the floor in your room. Blankets thrown about and laptop angled so you could still watch Netflix. The thought made him laugh which caused you to respond “Don’t laugh at my misery!”

If it wasn’t a call, you would text, but that was rare. You had confessed early on that you hated texting, but you couldn’t help but send him pictures and videos of the group hanging out. You, Wanda, and Natasha in the lounge watching horror movies. Sneaky photos of Steve asleep in the common area. His favorite had to be when you send a video of Sam spacing out and crashing into a window while flying. He sent back laughing emojis and saved the video.

He never said much about his time away. He got a cat. A little white furball he named Alpine. He sent you a handful of pictures that you absolutely adored.

He would say that the time away has been helping. Less chaos, more calm. He always tried to make it sound like he was enjoying his time away. The neighbors were nice. The place was quiet. He was getting sleep. Enjoying his break.

He was starting to miss the chaos. He was missing you.

He always looked forward to your calls, even though they always seemed to interrupt him meditating, like today. It had been over a month since your last call.

You had changed your ringtone to some upbeat song he honestly couldn’t stand at first but grew on him over time. It couldn’t even finish its first verse before he picked up the phone and spoke with a smile on his face.

“Hey, Y/N. You back from your mission?” He only heard silence back at first, and it scared him. “Doll, are you there?” More silence before he could barely pick up the faint sniffling. “Y/N, are you okay?”

More silence. More sniffling. He was getting ready to call Steve or text him or Something before he heard your voice speak up. A fragile, tear-filled response. It broke his heart.

“I’m Sorry Bucky. I shouldn’t have called.”

Then the line goes dead.

______

“You should go back inside y/n. Go enjoy the party.”

“What's the point of it if the person it's for isn’t even there?” you walk over and lean against the railing so your back is to the view. You stared at the inside for a second before looking at him again. “Excited for retirement?” He rolled his eyes at your half assed joke.

“Its not retirement. Its just, a break.” That made you laugh a little. Your nose scrunched up the tiniest amount and is made Bucky smile. He would miss your laugh.

“It feels like retirement, you bought a house and everything. In Indiana right?”

“Yeah.”

“Kinda far from the tower, don’t you think?” you finished up what was left in your glass and set it on the small standing table to the side of you before focusing your attention back to him.

“That was kind of the point. Somewhere quiet, or well, quieter than here.” He gestured to the city, but part of you felt he meant the team.

______

He doesn’t care that the drive is eleven hours. He doesn’t care that he had to stick his now grumpy cat in a carrier and put her in the front seat. Be doesn’t care that he’s rushed out of his house at three in the afternoon with nothing but the desire to check on you.

He does care that you haven’t answered or returned any of his calls yet and Bucky swears on his life he is going to murder Steve if he doesn’t pick up either. He hears it ring three times before he answers.

“Hey, Buck. Whats up?” Steve says into the phone nonchalantly. It's starting to piss him off.

“What happened Steve.” His voice was cold and his grip on the steering wheel tightened with each second. What happened, what happened.

“Wait what do you mean.”

“Y/N Steve! What happened to her on her mission.” his voice cracked a bit as he tried to keep it together. Something was wrong and he didn’t know what.

“Y/n’s mission? It went fine she got back a while ago and… wait did she call you?” He seemed surprised.

“Yes! Y/N was crying and she just hung up suddenly and…what happened Steve.”

“Nothing. She’s been fine this whole time. It happened a while ago so I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Wait how long has she been back from her mission.”

“Two weeks.”

“Well how was I supposed to know that!” He was getting antsy, wishing this car of his would go any faster.

“I assumed she had already called you. She usually did after every mission but… I’ll go check up on her for you if you want. Let her know you called.”

“I’m already on my way over. Just let me know if she does anything else.”

______

He doesn’t remember how long he stayed out there talking to you. It was more you talking to him. How training went that day, A new movie that had come out that week, Peter coming to you for advice on asking someone out. A dream you had.

He couldn’t help but glance at your arm as you talked. Covered with long sleeves but he knew the scar was still there. Long and jagged, running from your forearm to your wrist. Slowly fading but still ever present. He felt your hand lift his chin up to meet your eyes again.

“Don’t even think of feeling guilty right now.” You teased, but your face showed nothing but sincerity. He gripped the railing tightly and it looked like he wanted to say something, but the words weren’t coming out.

He couldn’t. Not that.

“Do you remember the first time you stayed the night?” You took your hand away and watched him stare off into the distance. “ I felt trapped in my own head, in my memories. I wasn't leaving my room.”

“We share a wall. I could always hear when your nightmares got bad, but Steve was always there for you. But he was gone one day and I… I couldn’t just leave you to deal with that on your own.” Your voice turned to a whisper. Reminiscing on what you two once had. The quiet moments together. Why he stopped them, you only somewhat understood.

______

An hour felt like ten, and the full drive felt like an eternity later. When he reached the tower the sky was now dark, but he didn’t care. It had been far too long since he had been back.

He had Steve talk him through what could have happened.

“It must have been something that happened on her mission, but I can’t pick out anything weird, besides the fact that she insisted on taking this one alone.”

It was a stakeout. Suspicions of an arms deal going on. The plan was for you to just find out who was involved. Collect any information you can. You always sounded bored whenever you talked about it and gave Steve updates.

“Wait, why did she insist on going alone. Those take forever and I doubt she got a reasonable amount of sleep if she was by herself.” Bucky at this point was thinking the worst.

“Nothing happened Buck. She gave updates the whole time. I gave her permission to call you, but from the sound of it she never did.” A realization hit him then and there. The first mission he went on with you alone was a stakeout.

He doesn’t remember what the mission was about. All he remembers is two weeks alone with you. The two of you in a hotel room, spying on… he isn’t even sure anymore. All he took away from that time is he was absolutely in love with you. The way you would talk about Wanda’s crush on Vision at the time and how you kept bugging her to say something. Everytime you tried (and failed) to throw popcorn into your mouth.

By the time Bucky arrives at the tower it's almost three in the morning. Alpine sleeping soundly in the passenger seat. Steve is waiting for him in the parking garage. A concerned look on his face.

“She’s locked herself in her room. She won’t talk to me.” Bucky moves Alpine from the carrier to his jacket, and walks with Steve to the elevators to get to the living quarters.

“Is she even still awake? I got here pretty late.” He glanced at the pajama bottoms Steve was wearing.

“Last time I passed by I heard a show playing, she still might have fallen asleep though. Your room is empty if you wanna get some rest.”

“No.” the Elevator opens up to the all too familiar hallway that now you currently reside in. “I wanna see her now, if I can.” if she lets me. Steve simply pats him on the back.

“You planning on staying a while?”

“I guess we’ll see..” The doors close leaving Bucky alone in the dark hallway. He feels stuck in place. It has been so long since he’d seen the tower. He’d forgotten how much he’d miss this place.

He hesitated knocking on your door. The familiar notch in the wood from when you tried to fire one of Clint's bows. He could hear what sounded like a nature documentary softly playing from the other side of the door.

“Friday?” He whispered.

“Welcome back Sergeant Barnes.” The AI called out.

“Is she awake?”

“Agent Y/N is awake at the moment. Would you like me to let her know you’re here?”

“No, no its alright.” Bucky responded. “I can talk to her.”

He continued to just stare at the door, unsure how to start. He looked down to Alpine who simply meowed at him. Her way of saying to ‘get on with it, I’m tired!’

“Alright, alright.” He nervously chuckled before lifting his right hand up. Three delicate knocks rang through the door.

“I’m fine Steve.” He heard your voice for the first time in person again. Muffled and clearly annoyed, but still perfectly you.

“ Y/n? It's Bucky. Can you please open the door.” The documentary paused. He heard the slight squeaking of a bed and footsteps padding over to the door, till he heard your voice loud and clear.

“What are you doing here, shouldn’t you be in Indiana.” He was surprised by the coldness in your voice.

“What’s going on with you. You called and I got worried. Can you please open the door?” He pressed his forehead against the door, trying to get as close to you as possible.

“I never meant to bother you. Please, Bucky, just go home.” There was pain in your voice and your words. Calling somewhere that wasn’t here his home.

“I’m not leaving till you explain what’s going on. What happened that made you call.”

“...I needed to stop relying on you to fix my problems.” You sighed. Maybe you could tell he wouldn’t leave you alone with just that. “It was a nightmare, okay? That’s all. I can deal with those on my own now.”

“ Please let me in. You know I can help with those.” He whispered through the door. He didn’t know you even got nightmares. “How long have they been happening?”

“Why does it matter to you.” You spat. “I’m not letting you in so you can just… go home”

hesitation…. Bucky thought for a moment.

“I have Alpine. You said you wanted to meet her.”

A moment of silence, and then he hears the lock click open.

______

“I’ll miss you. You know that right?”

You stared at the night sky and he couldn’t help but notice how the lights danced in your eyes.

“You can always call.” he replied.

“Do you know… when you’ll come back?” the hesitation in your voice made him suspect you were going to say “if”. The fear he may never come back.

“I’ll be back, doll. If you ever need me just call and I’ll come running.” The idea got both of you to smile.

“I’d never have you do that for me, but I appreciate the thought.” You laughed before turning your head and staring straight into his eyes. ��Just promise me. You’ll come back.”

“I promise.”

Both of your feet took control and suddenly you were now facing each other. In both of your eyes you could see a million words trying to escape. Each of you wanting to say something you didn’t think the other would want.

Stay here

Tell me to Stay

Let me spend one last night with you

Please don’t leave me alone

I love you

I love you

Just let me love you

It felt like you were inches apart. Miles away from the rest of the world. Your hand rose to rest softly on his cheek. He leaned into your touch and closed his eyes. The pad of your thumb gliding across his cheek, the scratchy stubble, till it rested right under his bottom lip. His hands resisted the urge to touch you, the fear of somehow hurting you again, but your touch he relished in. He savoured this moment between the two of you, almost too hesitant to take it any further. Those million words slowly bubbling up to the surface. Falling from his eyes to the tip of his tongue. They tasted like salt. You raised your hand up to swipe something from his face.

Tears. No words. Just tears.

You could taste your own words as well.

“Hey Ms. Y/N - oh Sorry!” The sheepish voice that belonged to Peter spoke out and caused the two of you to draw away from each other. The timeless moment broken. Words gone. Words buried once again. You could tell he felt bad for interrupting what seemed to be a private moment between the two of you.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No, it's fine. You didn’t interrupt anything. Did you need something kiddo?” You wiped your eyes and tried to look cheerful. Bucky never understood why you had such a soft spot for peter. He talked too much for his liking.

“Tony said you were out here and… He needed to talk to you about something I didn’t really ask uh.” Peter kept glancing at the now brooding man next to you. “happy retirement Mr. Bucky, Sergeant Barnes sir.”

“It's just Bucky,” He grumbled, “And it's not a retirement. It's just… Tony just started calling it that because i'm old.” You noticed the stiffness in his voice so you decided to break the tension.

“Tell Tony I’ll be inside in a second, okay Peter?” He nervously nodded and shuffled back inside. You turned back to face Bucky. He looked down and away from you now.

Miles apart.

“Gotta go back inside, I guess. Don’t stay out too long okay?”

In a brief second of courage you lifted your hand back to his face, and turned to place a quick kiss on his cheek before walking away and leaving him alone again on the balcony. The feeling of your lips lingered on his skin.

You didn’t see him when he left the next morning.

______

You looked just as beautiful as he remembered. Unbrushed hair and wrinkly t-shirt thrown together with an old pair of sweats. He wanted to wrap himself up in your touch, in your scent, but your eyes gave off a tired and standoffish look. Eyebrows scrunched together. This wasn’t the time, yet.

“Where is she.” You asked. Bucky unzipped his jacket slightly and peeled away one side to reveal a little puff of fur. The door opened wider and you stepped aside to let him in. He took a seat on your bed and let Alpine out to walk around. You sat down and alpine walked over and rubbed her face on your hand.

“Cute..”

“Yeah, she is. There's no cat food in the tower, right? I left in a rush and-”

“Bucky.” you raised a brow at him.

“Right, sorry.” He studied your expression, waiting for you to start.

“Can I ask you something, Bucky?”

“Anything.”

“Am I the reason you left?” Your question left him bewildered.

“Where’d you get that idea?”

“It's just,” you started, “we were so close, and I know I pushed your boundaries a little more than the others, but you seemed okay with it. You even pushed things further so I thought we were on the same page. But after-” you turn your arm to show what's now only a faint line running down your arm, “ -this I, I don’t know. You didn’t just step back, you pushed away. You didn’t even look at me for weeks and then suddenly you say that you're leaving and I-”

Tears spring from your eyes. The million words too much. Bucky grabs your hands and uses his thumbs to rub small circles into your wrists.

The night was one clearly neither of you had forgotten. You had just come back from a mission with Steve and went to Bucky’s room to surprise him, only to find he was having another nightmare. You attempted to wake him up, were met with a sharp pain in your arm. The both of you were too stunned by each other's actions to immediately notice the knife in Bucky’s hand and the stream of blood gushing down your arm and staining his sheets.

You never held it against him, but he clearly did.

“It was a rash decision.” He says, “ I care about you so much, you know that… or I hope you do, but after,” he felt his million words bubbling to the surface again, “After I hurt you, I got scared. I was afraid of making things worse and I didn’t even realize I already had. I left to try and figure myself out. After the first week I knew it wasn’t my thing. I was honestly gonna come right back, but you sounded so happy when you called and, I started to think you’d be better off without me.” His voice grew softer with every word.

“What about your neighbors, meditation. You said you were getting better sleep.”

“Mostly lies. The Nightmares just have become more manageable with time, and I don’t need to leave just to sit on the floor in silence. The only good thing to come from this is Alpine.” he admitted and you released a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

“At the party, before you left. You said to ask and you’d come back. There were so many times I thought about it, but you’d talk about how much better you were doing-”

“All lies, doll. Sorry.”

“ - I thought you were better off without me.” he tugs you forward and you let yourself fall into his embrace. You feel each other relax in each other's touch. He rested his chin on the top of your head for a second before placing a kiss on your forehead.

“I’m so sorry I made you feel this way.” You feel his lips move against your skin. “But I’m not leaving you again. Not ever.” You pulled away just to see his face.

“You’re not going back?” He tucked his head into your hair to muffle his laugh.

“Indiana sucks, I’m here to stay, promise. Besides, you said you had nightmares, right. I’m not just gonna leave you to deal with that on your own.”

He leaned over to kiss your tears away causing you to laugh at the feeling. You lifted your head to meet his lips with your own, and for a second the two of you forget the rest of the world exists. You can taste salt from each other’s tears and he feels himself smiling into the kiss, hands going up to cradle your face when suddenly you both hear a Meow.

Pulling away the two of you watch Alpine nudge your thigh as if to say ‘It's my turn for attention!’ The two of you smiling and crying and holding in a fit of giggles as your stare at the little puff of fur meowing at you and clawing at the sheets.

As the laughter and meowing died down, so did your energy, and the two of you settled into bed. It was almost as it was before. His arms wrapped around you. your head delicately tucked into the crook of his neck, arms wrapped around his waist. A small fur ball settled at the foot of the bed. With the promise of a million more words, and a million more nights together.

[symbiotic-slime]

comparing malevolent and venom (or: why private eyes and symbrock are the same ship in different fonts)

spoilers ahead for the venom movies, various venom comics, and s1 of malevolent!!

Arthur is a PI, Eddie is an investigative journalist. Both of them ran into their body mates through their investigations (specifically movies!Eddie, comics!Eddie does not share this origin)

The Entity takes the name John through experiences with Arthur. When Arthur is in a coma for a month, the nurses don’t know his name and refer to him as John Doe. The Entity notices this and finds solace in it. When Arthur wakes, the Entity tells Arthur to refer to him as John. In the Venom comics, their collective name “Venom” came from Eddie being deranged about losing his job as a reporter. He tells Peter to call them Venom, because that’s what he’s paid to write at the shitty tabloids he’s employed at.

(from Amazing Spider-Man #300 [1963])

Though the Venom Symbiote has a name from its home world, many characters throughout the comics refer to it as Venom, implying they kept the name Eddie gave them.

In episode 9, John and Arthur argue until they give each other the silent treatment, leading to them getting caught by the police because John did not warn him there were officers. After realizing they need to work together, John and Arthur escape from the officers (and the supernatural lake monster). Towards the end of that episode, John tells Arthur that “you and I are one, and I need to begin to see us as one.” In Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Venom and Eddie have a rather dramatic break up that ends with them separating from each other. Eddie then gets arrested and brought in as a suspect in Cletus Kassidy’s escape. Venom, in Anne’s body, comes back and breaks Eddie out of police custody. After some apologies from Eddie (though if you ask me Venom also should’ve been apologizing but alas) they bond with each other again. Later through the power of love symbiosis, Venom and Eddie acting as one are able to defeat Carnage.

In episode 12, it’s revealed that John is a fragment of The King In Yellow. The cult gives the King the ability to fully realize itself and take over Arthur’s body, but the King is unable to. The part of itself, John, has become so entangled with Arthur that it cannot fully erase Arthur from itself. In the Venom 2018-2021 run (I know, I’m drawing on Cates. i cannot believe I’m using him to prove a point), the King in Black, Knull, is trying to take over Earth. It corrupts symbiotes, makes them nothing more than servants for it. Knull was unable to corrupt the Venom symbiote specifically because it could not burn the light (Eddie) out of it.

(from Venom 2018 issue 3; 5)

Other smaller similarities between Malevolent and Venom (some of which I only noticed because I’m insane):

guy named Eddie

Arthur chokes someone out while not in control of his left hand (episode 2); Venom chokes Dan after taking control of Eddie’s left hand (Venom 2018).

both John and Arthur and Eddie and Venom bicker like old married couples

Arthur and movies!Eddie are just,,,, such pathetic wet cats of men

[tripleace-unofficial]

Original caption (2021-09-18):

If Triple Ace was an otome dating sim with a Fiestas Patrias episode. Who would you pick 🤭? #triplenacional

Cultural Notes

This little gag is based on Chile's national holidays. Let me explain what the characters are referencing

Fiestas Patrias / 18 de Septiembre / Dieciocho

Literally translated as "Patriotic Celebration", also called September 18th or just "Dieciocho" (The 18th; no matter the time of the year, if someone talks about the 18th they're talking about September). Marks the date of the First Government Body (18th) and Day of the Glories of the Army (19th). Not our independance? Well, that's in February, which is summer over here, so it was decided it would be a waste to have a holiday on a time of year where people already rest. Having our biggest holiday during winter let's us have a break we can look forward to while we work. Remember the end of year Holidays also fall in Summer here.

The actual holidays last two days, but depending on when it falls in the week, we might also get the 17th or 20th off. On top of that, celebrations don't start on the official calendar holiday but at the very start of September and going strong until the last day (be it the 19th or 20th), after which we spend the rest of the month hung-over resting from all the celebrations. If you're thinking about visiting Chile, this is, in my opinion, the best time to soak in the culture and have fun.

Fonda

A fonda is a traditional gathering done during September as a way to celebrate our culture. They take place in the open (though they often charge an entrance fee) and have different activities to pass the time: food booths (the main attraction, very meat focused), traditional games, music and dance, and rodeos (though the younger population has been calling for them to be banned since they rely on animal cruelty for entertainment).

Terremotos

An alcholic drink made with low quality white wine, grenadine and pineapple ice cream. The name literally translates to 'earthquake' because it leaves you shakey and dizzy like an earthquake (we would know ;)).

Cueca

Our national dance. Traditionally composed of pairs of men and women, though same sex pairs aren't frowned upon. It's inspired by the mating rituals of chickens.

One pie de cueca (cueca foot) is a short one minute song that follows a defined dance pattern. A complete dance is three pies de cueca.

[haztobegood]

⭐️ Annual Writing Self-Evaluation 2023 ⭐️

I love doing this every year. (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022) I can't believe I've been writing for six years now! I looked through my past annual posts and got a bit emotional, it's amazing to see how much I've grown and changed.

1. Number of stories posted to AO3: 7

2. Word count posted for the year: 11,572

3. Fandoms I wrote for: One Direction, Music RPF (The Snuts)

4. Pairings: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Louis Tomlinson/Jack Cochrane, Louis Tomlinson/Bodyguard

5. Story with the most: Kudos: No (Birth) Control Bookmarks: No (Birth) Control Comments: Good Dogs Don’t Bark

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why): Chaos is a 100 word drabble that I'm very proud of. I tried for months to write a Louis/Bodyguard fic for the Louis Rare Pair fest and it just wasn't coming together. Putting a hard limit on the word count was a fun little challenge that helped me get the idea down on paper. At first I didn't know if I could build a steamy plot in so few words, but it worked out in the end and I couldn't be happier with it!

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why): Of the stuff posted this year, I'm not unhappy with anything, but if I had to rank everything, chapter 2 of Good Dogs Don’t Bark is at the bottom of the pack. I was in a weird mood writing-wise when I wrote that chapter and it reminds me of that time whenever I think of it.

8. Share or describe a favorite review you received: @allwaswell16 read Chaos on her podcast! I dedicated the drabble to her for inspiring and encouraging me all year when writing has been a struggle, and for being such a supportive mod for @louisrarepairfest!

9. A time when writing was really, really hard: All year! This is the least I've ever written since I started. Life has been full of big changes and it threw off my writing habits. I've also been very stuck in my head about certain aspects of writing that I never used to think twice about. I'm hoping now that life has settled and I've got somewhat of a new routine figured out, I can set some intentions and build up my habit again, because I really miss writing.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: This scene from Baking Memories made me burst out laughing when it came to me:

Looking down at his six little pies, Louis is starting to feel like a proper baker. Jack finishes up his last and says, “Alright, let’s top ‘em.” “I bet that’s your favourite part,” Louis jokes raising his eyebrows teasingly. “At least these don’t talk back when I’m topping.” “Oi!”

More under the cut.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing: From No (Birth) Control

He picked up another potato. Twisting the paring knife expertly around the spud, the thin brown peel sliced away from the white flesh in smooth, practiced movements. It was easy for Harry to get lost in the meditative efforts of slicing, dicing, and peeling. Just two potatoes remained when Harry caught Louis’ piquant scent through the open window. Harry paused his singing and peeling as he breathed in deeply. His sense of smell was always attuned to his alpha, but this close to heat the pull was even stronger. The back door opened. The scent enveloped him, stronger than the savoury aroma of the roast, as Louis wrapped his arms around Harry’s middle, hugging him from behind. Harry melted back into his touch, forgetting about the half-peeled potato in his hand. “Hi baby.” Louis said, leaning in to drag his nose along the curve of Harry’s neck in tender greeting. “Alpha,” Harry sighed, tension he didn’t know he’d been holding meting away. He could stay like this, content in his alpha’s arms, forever. Louis licked up the side of his neck. The blatant scent marking sent shivers up Harry’s spine, and a light nip of sharp teeth over his bondmark started to make him wet. He would be half-tempted to bend over the counter, if it weren’t for the roast cooking in the oven and the twins playing in the yard. Harry bit back a whimper. “Lou, no,” he groaned. “I need to finish dinner.” With all his resolve, Harry gripped the paring knife tighter and focused his attention on peeling the remaining potatoes.

12. How did you grow as a writer this year: I've learned to be patient with myself. I have a lot of wips that I've started in 2019 or 2020 that aren't even close to being finished. I used to be so frustrated that I couldn't finish them, but now I've learned that sometimes the wip needs to sit in the dark cavern of the drafts folder to age like fine wine.

13. How do you hope to grow next year: I want to be more intentional about setting time to write. I miss having a regular writing time and want to be able to work on some of the exciting ideas I have.

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc): @allwaswell16 and @himynameiszayn are the most supportive friends, they were always around to offer advice, help me think of words, and cheer me on when writing was hard. I don't think I would have written half the amount of words I posted if it wasn't for them.

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year: I listened to The Snuts so much this year after seeing them play during FITFWT, so it was only natural for me to write a fic featuring Jack. I love the silly Christmas video the band shared a few years ago and knew it was perfect idea for the fic that became Baking Memories!

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers: I touched on it a bit above, but sometimes taking a pause on a wip you're struggling with is a good thing. Give yourself grace to move on when an idea isn't coming together the way you want. It doesn't mean you need to give up on the story completely, it might just be the wrong time.

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year: I am looking forward to writing something for @wankersday again, and I am getting closer to finishing my alien!Harry fic that's been 5 years in the making!

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read.

I tag @banaanipoika9 @louandhazaf @hazzabeeforlou @beelou anyone else that wants to do this!

[homosexuhauls]

By Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska

June 14, 2023

WARSAW, June 14 (Reuters) - Abortion rights supporters marched through several cities in Poland on Wednesday after the death of a pregnant woman whose family believe she could have survived if she had been offered a termination.

Protesters chanted "stop killing us" as they marched through the capital Warsaw towards the health ministry headquarters, some carrying placards that said "We want doctors, not missionaries" and "Hell for women," a common slogan used to convey how the measure affects those who are carrying an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy.

Poland's anti-abortion laws, among the strictest in Europe, have provoked mass protests in recent years and the death of the 33-year-old named as Dorota in May has stoked anti-government sentiment among many liberal Poles ahead of elections due in October or November.

In 2021, the nationalist government of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki put into effect a constitutional court decision banning terminations of pregnancies with foetal defects, as conservative policies increasingly take root in one of Europe's most devout Catholic countries.

Abortion rights activists have said that there were at least five cases of pregnant women dying whose families came out to the media, blaming the restrictions on abortion for their deaths.

Last month, Dorota died of septic shock in a hospital after her water broke in the 20th week of pregnancy. Her husband said nobody informed them of the option to induce a miscarriage, even though the child had very low chances of survival.

In 2021, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy, named Izabela, also died of septic shock after doctors waited for her unborn baby's heart to stop beating.

"We've had enough ... we protested when we found out about the death of Izabela almost two years ago and at the time we shouted 'not one more,'" Agnieszka Czerederecka, a founder of the Women's Strike movement in Warsaw, told Reuters. She added that there were protests in around 80 cities.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party leader said that by law women could have abortions if there was any threat to their life or health.

"There is no such issue. It's been made up," he said in response to journalists' questions on Wednesday, accusing critics of the policy of "propaganda" and creating an "imaginary reality."

However, critics say that since the Constitutional Tribunal ruling, doctors have been more reluctant to perform terminations even in such cases.

A poll by IBRiS for private Radio Zet showed this week over 70% of Poles believe the strict abortion rules constitute a potential threat to women's life and health.

"I hope the law will change and I will not be afraid to get pregnant in Poland," said Joanna Jędrasiak, 36, an economist.

"I would like to have children very much, and to experience pregnancy, give birth to a healthy child, without the kind of problems that a few women have had and whom we commemorate here today."

Reporting by Karol Badohal, Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Aurora Ellis

[frankenstein-ate-my-left-shoe]

just keepin' track of my fave tumblr holidays, don't mind me

miscellaneous:

any thursday the 20th (this one too)/thursday the 4/20th

yesterday was tuesday, but today is tuesday too

will the wise wednesday

february

3rd: VANILLA SWEEP (2023)

13th: galentine's day

14th: dean and cas' wedding anniversary (2021)

also 14th: nick valentine's day

march

10th: mario day

14th: pi day

15th: the ides of march

27th: that one post that says 'tomorrow's halloween!', ''it's'tomorrow is march 28th', 'TOMORROW'S HALLOWEEN', then has that gif of ben wyatt getting hit with a skeleton

31st: i didn't think march 31st existed

april

1st: mishapocalypse (2013), boop day (2024)

2nd: dashcon announcement post (2013)

13th: neil banging out the tunes (2006)

also the 13th: homestuck day (2009)

25th: the perfect date

30th: it's gonna be may

may

4th: star wars day

5th: revenge of the fifth

june

16th: those are his hooves you bitch (2014)

19th: don't hug me i'm scared

july

2nd: tumblr code (2012)

12th-13th: dashcon heritage posting (2014)

august

all month: start of spookyposting

1st: spn end!verse/croatoan date (2014)

september

all month: slightly more spooky/fallposting

18th: castieliversary (2008)

21st: do you remember?

27th: someone sewed a fried egg to a t-shirt

october

all month: halloween!!!

3rd: "on october third, he asked me what day it was" (mean girls) and 'don't forget 3.oct.11' (fma:b)

9th: happy leif erikson day!

13th: TREAT YO' SELF (2011)

19th: none pizza, left beef-iversary (2007)

21st: the day marty mcfly goes to the future (2015)

24th: the day frodo wakes up in rivendell (10 am)

november

1st: "there's only 365 days left 'till next halloween!", "364!"

5th: destiel is canon (destielputinelection day, 2020)

also the 5th: remember, remember

11th: barack obama signs 'thanks, i stole them from the president' into law (2012)

december:

21st: the day the would should have ended (2012)

24th: 'cause there's only one more sleep 'till christmas

[danpuff-ao3]

Ending Mutuals March on a very special note. PI, @perverse-idyll, my longtime writing crush, and now my friend.

It was love at first sight when The White Road was first posted. I can't remember when I first read it, but it was around the time it was posted for sure. And I've read that fic every year since. At least once a year, if not more. By the time I read When the Rose and the Fire Are One I knew it was true love!

PI's stories have been deeply meaningful to me for a long time. And I have always admired her skill. Prose? Gorgeous, stunning, perfect. With great knowledge and great passion she strings words into gorgeous treasures. Raw stones left to their rough glory, or shaped and shined as needed. Not only a gifted wordsmith, but a wise and empathetic person who understands the human condition, and the complexities of emotion. Someone with great love for beloved characters, but also great understanding. Love born of understanding, which is everything I long for!

We love the same characters, and the same OTP. She does such justice to these characters, and their dynamic. She's always written Snarry exactly how I needed it. I have treasured her works for many years, and they have been my favorites for many years. Of course, in those earlier days I was much too shy to let her know just what her works meant to me.

Then, in recent years, I had my first interaction with PI. On Reddit, of places. I recced one of her fics and she responded to it which blew my mind a bit, since her Reddit name isn't perverse_idyll, lol! So...I tried to be chill, which if you know me, you know how hard that is! Me, but an overenthusiastic fangirl trying not to scare off her faves, haha! If I remember correctly, I finally set about drafting a comment on The White Road not long after that. Long overdue that one!

Then...time went on. During a very rough period with an old fandom group, I turned to PI's works for comfort. And in November 2021, the same month I left that old fandom group, PI's episode on @fanficmaverickpodcast (Ep. 25 interview) was released!

I was over the moon excited to listen to it! But the sort of excited that meant I couldn't dive in right away. I had to run around and squeal a bit and settle myself down in order to listen. It is a long episode, two and a half hours long, but well worth it! The host, ChaosBlue, is a dear friend of mine now, and a very professional and charming host. And perverse_idyll was a fantastic guest, with so much insight and enthusiasm for fandom and for writing. 10/10 recommend it. I ran around and shared the episode everywhere I could.

And then...Reddit. PI shared the episode on Reddit, with encouragement for others to reach out to ChaosBlue to do their own episode. And...I did! God, that's a whole other post in of itself and how amazing ChaosBlue is, but basically...I felt pretty audacious! I had to work myself up quite a bit to reach out. And as hard as it was to reach out, I don't think I'd have found the courage to even think about it without PI's little note. It both inspired and comforted me. And doing my own interview for the podcast was such a great (and terrifying!) experience that I'm glad I did. (See: ep. 32 Interview)

From there...it came over time. PI was so kind and supportive about my interview. I found the bravery to reach out to her directly at some point. And though she is quite the busy lady, she is always so giving of her time and energy in responding when she can! PI is such an encouraging, generous, compassionate, supportive spirit. One I feel very blessed to know. She has so much clear respect and admiration for other creators. So much love and dedication to fandom, however busy or wild life may be.

Other fandom experiences reminded me of why they say to never meet your heroes. But PI spared me from being too wary of folk. PI is an excellent reminder that, sometimes, the creators we admire are even better humans.

PI's works were so meaningful to me for so long. And PI as a person has just as much impact! Thank you for being my friend, PI. Thank you for everything that you do. Thank you for all that you give to fandom; for all that you create, and all the support you give. And thank you most of all for being there for me. And showing such kindness and gentleness in times I needed it most, whether you knew it or not.

Here's to you, my friend. Time for me to wipe my eyes and drop some recs! Maybe by the end we'll have forgotten what an emotional mess I am LOL.

The Afterlight

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Work in progress. Background case. Mutual pining. Friends with benefits. Denial of feelings. Angst. Hurt/comfort. Eventual happy ending.

Y'all cannot know how thrilled I was when PI posted a new fic. This one! And though it's only just begun, I already feel in my bones it will be a new favorite! PI as ever provides Snarry exactly the way I love it!

After surviving the Battle of Hogwarts, a long convalescence, and a short trial, Snape walks free and promptly vanishes from Wizarding society. Six years pass before he shows his face again. A lot can change in six years, and a romantically disillusioned and inebriated Harry hits Snape up for a friends-with-benefits arrangement. After all, they share an experience most people have never had: they both know what it's like to be dead. Their liaison works surprisingly well until Harry's reckless behaviour as an Auror leads to unethical practices and personal calamities, and things start to fall apart.

Candles Lit Against the Dark

Minerva/Wilhelmina. Minor Harry/Severus. Rated: G. Words: 13,585. Old friends. Postwar. Heavy drinking. Fond bickering. Snapecase 2023.

Many feelings. Very realistic and bittersweet. With all of the realism of life, for all of its rough edges, uneven paths, and the love found along the way.

It's been a few months since Minerva's retirement, and she'd promised Wil a dinner out. Before she knows it, friends start turning up on her doorstep and then at the pub, not least among them a certain spy who came in from the cold.

In Infinite Remorse of Soul | And Mine the Gall

Albus/Severus. Harry/Severus. Revenge. Obsession. D/s undertones. Afterlife. Incest (ish.) Dub-con. Twisted love.

I am obsessed. This is dark and fucky and weird and wonderful and gorgeous. The sequel, And Mine the Gall, features one of the lines that has most haunted out of every fic I've read. Love it love it love it!

Albus Dumbledore never makes the same mistake twice. Certainly not in love.

No Room for the Weak

Eileen POV. Rated: T. Words: 10,444. Dysfunctional family. Mindfuck. Pre-Snarry.

Love love love love love this. Some Snape family history. Eileen is great. Very fascinating look at the woman who bore and raised Severus.

There's a Boy Who Lived and a boy who didn't, and even a mother can't always tell them apart.

The Son

Regulus POV. Rated: T. Words: 5,422. Unhappy families.

First there were two sons. Then there was one.

Warm

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 11,323. PWP. Fluff & smut.

PWP feels wrong for this. So much sensuality and tenderness and good god the LOVE here. Also, I'm sorry, but Harry and Severus existing as themselves basically is plot, but I digress....PI says it's PWP so it's PWP. I'm not going to argue with her!

Severus still suffers the after-effects of Nagini's venom, especially in winter. Harry knows just how to warm him up.

When the Rose and the Fire Are One

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 81.619. Confinement. Dysfunctional Relationships. Spinner's End. Dubious consent. Sex magic.

Cool magic stuff. The best OC I've ever met (Odile, my beloved.) Ideas of Spinner's End and Eileen Snape that have lived in my head ever since. Big angst and fuckery. Great characters. Great relationship development. Everything is just...A+, chef's kiss, amazing.

Harry's haunted by guilt. Snape's warded by roses. Each must free the other in order to free himself.

The White Road

Lily POV. Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 47,877. Afterlife. Romance. Redemption. Voyeurism. Incestuous vibes.

Longtime favorite. One of the first fics that fully blew me away. I read this and thought "this does not belong on the internet, this belongs on a bookshelf."

One day, comfortably set up in the afterlife, Lily Evans Potter switches on the telly and gets hooked on the Harry Potter show.

for an explanation about Mutuals March, or to figure out why i wrote you a thing, please check out this post.

[laiqualaurelote]

Three-Legged Puppy Fics

List five of your least-popular fics, as well as when/why you wrote them.

we don't print retractions: Hamilton (Angelica Schuyler/John Barker Church, Alexander Hamilton/Eliza Schuyler, 2021)

This is a Hamilton AU where everyone works in journalism (except Peggy. Peggy works in marketing). It came to me because of the line from Washington On My Side - "we smack each other in the press and we don't print retractions" - and then I thought, what if they were the press? and also there really isn't enough good Angelica POV in this fandom when she is competent and ambitious and yes she and Hamilton have chemistry but what if they were also colleagues on the same footing, competing for the same front page? and so is Burr, while dying slowly of FOMO? Thomas Jefferson as the news editor from hell who probably once was a very good reporter but should absolutely not have been allowed to supervise other people? Eliza as the world's sweetest copyed? You just know Alexander would go ham if he got his own podcast. I have thought of journalism AUs for every fandom I have been in, it's just a question of fruition.

ain't practical, a world you can't touch: The English (Cornelia/Eli, 2022)

This was a Pushing Daisies AU prompted by a throwaway line in @sagiow's fic about Cornelia baking pies with her son. Many of my fic premises also come from taking things people say in shows literally and so when Eli said, "Ain't practical, a world you can't touch," a lightbulb went off in my head and then it became a way of giving them something better while taking away something else, an exchange that for me is necessary in any attempted fix-it for The English.

The Seven People You Meet In Mexico: The Sandman/Once Upon A Time In Mexico crossover (AO3 timestamp for this is 2013, which is when I got my account, but I'm gonna say 2007? 2008?)

When I was a teenager I had a Robert Rodriguez phase and a Johnny Depp phase (the latter has aged poorly) and the two dovetailed spectacularly in Once Upon A Time In Mexico. I honestly can't remember how this fic came about - maybe because it occurred to me that Sands probably was already acquainted with Delirium, and then it was just a question of him and El Mariachi meeting all the other Endless. It's been really strange revisiting this bit of juvenilia, especially after the Sandman Netflix.

Solving Your Life One Problem At A Time: Inglourious Basterds (Donny Donowitz/Smithson Utivich, 2010)

I also had a Tarantino phase as a teenager, and spent a heady few months in the Inglourious Basterds LiveJournal community (never been in a fandom with so much Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, ground was positively littered with them). This is a canon-divergent AU in which Operation Kino does not happen and nearly all the Basterds survive WWII; what would these completely deranged people do after the war in a civilian context? I have been thinking about Inglourious Basterds again recently because I am trying to learn Italian but I feel like Brad Pitt saying "Buongiorno" in the most godawful accent.

The Happiness Of Having Her With Me Unto Death: Great Expectations (one-sided Pip/Estella Havisham, 2009)

As part of my A-level revision I decided to write zombie apocalypse AUs for all of my literature texts. I managed Great Expectations and Proof (the David Auburn play about mathematics) but could not make zombie!Hamlet work.

I have always been obsessed with Estella Havisham. Someday I will write the AU where she arranges the "accidental" death of her abusive husband and teams up with Éponine Thénardier from Les Misérables and Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss, who have both survived their respective novels, to run a criminal empire. Estella is the Face, Maggie is the Brains and 'Ponine, she knows her way around. They blackmail Jaggers into helping them dodge the law. By the time Estella meets Pip again she is queen of the London underworld. She has finally, truly become her father's daughter.

Thank you @leupagus for the tag forever ago! Tagging - anyone who would like to give their rare fics some love. While we are at it I should add that @leupagus is one of the loveliest people I've had the good fortune to meet through fandom, she has been so kind to me even though she has no idea who I am, I could be a mermaid in a cistern for all she knows.

[onemaebee]

wtf, 2023.

-grandpa has a little fall friday morning, my parents take donuts and coffee over to support my gma while she decides if he needs to go to the hospital. he's a little wobbly so yes. find out he has a brain bleed from a fall a couple weeks ago where he did hit his head, and in the whirlwind that follows he is put in a medical coma and does not wake up. he does wait until only my grandma is in the room before passing (my mom was urging gma to go to the bathroom and she refused, so my mama said fine i'll go and show you it's safe). we'd discovered he had prostate cancer that spread to the rest of him last month, and he's been rapidly going downhill with dementia for the last 15 years, but thankfully he wasn't mean but instead a big kid. he had no idea who we were but was happy vibing.

-my toddler had several laughing fits at what was later revealed to be key times. he was belly laughing to tears at nothing. he only did that when my grandpa made silly faces at him-- he loved all the small children and babies and they adored him, even if neither party had any idea who the other was, lol. the consensus is that grandpa's angel was checking in on his great grandkids and doing what he loved.

-rotavirus started ravaging the household sunday night. i have never done so much laundry. missed the funeral yesterday because it hit husband, and if i spread this to my gma or any of the babies i'd never forgive myself.

-i'm actually okay emotionally, so fucking thankful he's whole again because the old pictures really drove home how Not There he was.

-the completionist (youtuber) that we've watched for over a decade and donated to his charity for dementia research and victims… hasn't donated a cent. still no resolution on that, but it's upsetting.

-the polymega console we ordered in early 2021 is going to ship????

-still sick so no thanksgiving visit to gma's and canceled on bff M coming over (first thanksgiving since divorcing her pos toxic ex)

-bff K has a boyfriend for the first time at 42, and he treats her like mr. mae treats me, and after having been her confidante for the past 4+ years as she tried online dating this is the only guy i think could be The One she ends up with. god knows she deserves it.

-i finally nailed the chex mix recipe 8)

-these homemade mashed potatoes are going to be better than the bob evan's brand, which i didn't think was possible because that's already perfection

-i got to drop off mini pb pies to the kids' friends (whose parents are kind of my friends too now woah), sent one home with gma, gave one to bff M (promised her the whole feast but at least she gets an entire pie to herself, no judgement), and still have a whole big one to dig into later

-tomorrow i get to go start on christmas shopping which is my FAVORITE eeeeee i love giving, the looks of joy on their FACES is GREAT

-tomorrow we put up the tree and it's gonna be a lil nutty with a toddler around again but it'll also be super fun

-i've got. so much erasermic new stuff saved in my phone tabs that once i have the chance to breathe it'll be THERE and i know how much joy they bring me, it's so heartening to have that waiting for me <3

i'm not as active as i want to be, barely at all tbh, but i will be eventually. things just gotta calm tf down.

who knows what 2024 is gonna bring?

[tea-with-evan-and-me]

Frances is looking happier than she has in a very long time. Maybe her movie has her happy, maybe her friendships, who knows? She seems to have finally moved past the break-up angst. I noticed in her last IG Live she said she had been depressed for the past year and a half and the PI in me noted that means she was depressed from about December 2021 and she was "seen" with Evan through August of 2022, which means she is classifying part of her "down and depressed" time as happening during the last months of her time with Evan...

i really do not follow frances closely to know much about her mental state. but either way, i genuinely hope that she is on the path to becoming a better and less inflammatory person, or perhaps abandoning that internet persona altogether.

[narelleart]

I haven't posted here in a long time. It's because my doctoral studies took a nose dive - my PI I was so excited about stepped down as my advisor for discriminatory reasons. (He was consistently harsh and discriminatory from winter 2021 onwards, but he was the one to decide to drop me as a student. I would have stuck it out.)

I'm mastering out here under a different advisor, and having to start a project from scratch on a short deadline to do so. When I'm done I will have to start over on a PhD elsewhere. (The PI I was working with was the only one at this institution with the expertise I came here to learn, so I will be applying to other schools to join other labs that can teach me what I was looking for.)

I talk about being sick here, but I am much sicker than I let on to people, especially the people around me in my day to day life. I have chronic pain and an episodic illness - my conditions are invisible, all anyone sees is that I'm absent a lot but seem fine, "normal" in between episodes.

It's a balancing act of trying to seem sick enough to get people to actually give me the disability accommodations I'm legally entitled to while not seeming so sick that they try to decide for me what I'm capable of and hold me back from opportunities. (The reality being that I am sicker than I ever show but just push my body to do what I want anyways - which should be up to me to decide to do.) My previous PI both decided I wasn't sick enough to accept that my sick time wasn't me blowing off work for leisure and also decided that I was too much of a liability to be allowed into the field. Worst of both sides. It lead to me scrambling to work every waking moment I wasn't actively ill, with few opportunities to rest, and my health declining from overdoing it for months straight.

He drove my mental health into the ground on top of all this, which is why I've been absent here and in other spaces some of you might see me frequent.

Being sick is enough of a hurdle on its own, but on top of that people like me have to go through long difficult processes to get diagnoses and get formal accommodations, just for people around us to still decide to be discriminitory. And in academia, there's little avenue to fight this without sinking your own career in the process.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

SUPERHERO CHOOSINESS

It’s strongly being suggested that the superhero movie bubble is bursting…

There’s the more mixed critical reception of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s remarkably stuffed but hasty Phase Four, and then there’s the equally fast Phases Five and Six… whose ending feature AVENGERS: SECRET WARS is still set to open in the summer of 2026… Meaning that this Multiverse Saga only will last five years, compared to the eleven year span from IRON MAN to SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME… Like, wow!

And not only are there a lot of movies, but there were plenty of shows. So many from 2021-2022 alone: WANDAVISION, THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER, LOKI Season One, WHAT IF…? Season One, HAWKEYE, MOON KNIGHT, MS. MARVEL, and SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW. In addition to those, you had the “Special Presentation” featurettes WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY HOLIDAY SPECIAL.

For me, it was starting to become homework to keep up with what was going on. And this is coming from someone who has seen all but two Marvel Cinematic Universe movies in a theater. The two that I missed were THE INCREDIBLE HULK, and BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER.

Then of course you have the DC movie-verse, which is being hard-reset in a few years under the new leadership of James Gunn and Peter Safran. Prior to that, it was an always-changing mess of visions and intentions. Faithfuls kept up with the series, some left afterwards because of these changes, general audiences seemed to stick around for most of the movies. It’s a clustercuss of its own, and further discussing that will likely get me into hot waters… But what happened with The Rock and his apparent strong-arming of the DC movie-verse with his BLACK ADAM project and plans really shows just what kind of directionless mess the whole thing was for ten years…

So we’re now left with a few movies that were locked and ready to go before the Gunn/Safran take-over, the first of which, SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS… Opened with roughly $30m. A pretty blah take, and well below the $53m take the first SHAZAM! took in back in 2019. It’s been said before, but the whole “these won’t matter in the long run” attitude has probably deflated attendance… But many other things do as well… People being choosier with movies, ticket and concession prices being absurdly high… A statistic in 2014 stated that the average American family hits the flicks four times a year. I believe it. I’ve been working at a movie theater since August of 2015, and I see what I charge my customers… Both movies and for snacks… Yeah, I do not wonder why… Especially in the pandemic era, that people are choosier with movies. I feel we see the same thing with animated movies as well. Those are also usually four-quadrant family titles... And then around the corner, them being on streaming. Be it Disney+ for an MCU movie, or HBO Max for a DCU movie.

A month earlier, ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA opened pretty great with $106m. That was way above ANT-MAN AND THE WASP’s mid-70s opening weekend haul, and an overall fine opening for an MCU movie... but the legs? Abysmal so far. It looks to barely score a 2x multiplier, which is pretty bad… It might be the first MCU movie to completely miss that. I don't even know if I'll make time for it, myself. (I've missed a lot of movies in theaters lately because of other lifestuff going on at the moment.)

What does this all tell me?

Is it truly superhero movie fatigue? Are audiences catching on to the perceived problems of these big budget shared universe movies?

Here’s what I think is happening…

Choosiness...

I, in true form, am going to relate this to animated movies… And I mean “animated movies”, because let’s face it… There’s lots of animation in your average MCU or DCU movie. QUANTUMANIA, from the looks of it, is an animated movie with some real people in it. Much like GRAVITY, AVATAR and its sequel, Jon Favreau’s THE JUNGLE BOOK, LIFE OF PI, etc. etc.

Once upon a time... $100m at the domestic box office was a magic number for an animated feature film. And I mean a $100m gross on the film's first ever theatrical release, not $100m via the original release and added theatrical re-issue totals (like classic pre-Renaissance Disney films, like SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS and 101 DALMATIANS)...

Only Disney scored $100m domestic totals for their animated movies. Hybrid WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, released through Disney's Touchstone banner, broke the barrier first and grossed $156m in the summer of 1988. Then, an all-animated movie broke the barrier nearly four years later in early 1992... That was Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, which got to its high total through strong word-of-mouth and legs throughout the holiday and post-holiday season. It was slow to start in November 1991, because back then... Theater-to-video release windows were longer. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was released in American movie theaters in November 1991, and the videocassette and LaserDisc release wouldn't be until... October 1992!

So, an unreachable number for everyone else. Don Bluth, former Disney animator and hot competitor, seemingly peaked with AN AMERICAN TAIL and THE LAND BEFORE TIME, both of which collected in the upper-40s at the domestic box office. His last box office hurrah, the 20th Century Fox-released ANASTASIA (now owned by Disney), grossed $57m by the end of its run in early 1998. Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes hybrid movie SPACE JAM came very close with $90m, two years prior. BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA put up a decent fight, with over $60m in 1996/97. That was a record high for a TV-to-movie animated adaptation back then, beating out A GOOFY MOVIE, JETSON: THE MOVIE, DUCKTALES - THE MOVIE: TREASURE OF THE LOST LAMP, and plenty of others.

In fact, Disney *themselves* missed $100m on occasion. HERCULES, made up at Feature Animation, the mainline studio, just missed it with a $99m domestic gross in 1997/98. The Disney MovieToons GOOF TROOP movie, A GOOFY MOVIE, made less than $40m stateside. THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS made an impressive $50m back in the day, and became a massive cult classic through video and TV. Hybrid JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, which was also a Henry Selick-Tim Burton Skellington Productions joint, missed $30m.

Then there was a little movie called TOY STORY... The first-ever all-digital animated feature film.

By the end of its theatrical run in early 1996, TOY STORY grossed $191m domestically... No doubt helped by being a Disney release and being the first of its kind, and a genuinely really good movie that audiences loved. So in a way, the only movies to make $100m domestically *before* TOY STORY were Disney Feature Animation movies (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, ALADDIN, THE LION KING, and POCAHONTAS), and a hybrid movie made by Amblin and Richard Williams Animation but released by Disney...

So Disney still had $100m under lock and key, and TOY STORY was their first non-Feature Animation endeavor since ROGER RABBIT to get it...

Believe it or not, the first-ever animated movie that was a NOT a Disney release, to score $100m domestically... Was... THE RUGRATS MOVIE. No doubt getting there off of the show's sheer popularity at the time. Despite first airing on Nickelodeon in 1991, some seven years earlier, RUGRATS seemed to be at the peak of its popularity in the late 1990s, after the show was renewed for more seasons following highly successful re-runs and the few specials that Nick and studio Klasky-Csupo did after the show's early seasons. I was there. I was 6 when THE RUGRATS MOVIE came out, and I felt the hype. Everybody I knew back then watched and liked the show, I watched it frequently with my sister back in the day. RUGRATS was one of those cartoons that everyone knew and everyone watched. Almost as ubiquitous as THE SIMPSONS, I'd argue. Paramount released THE RUGRATS MOVIE, and it broke that barrier, in addition to being the highest grossing TV-to-movie adaptation animated movie... By a country kilometer.

THE RUGRATS MOVIE came out in November 1998, just one month before DreamWorks rolled out THE PRINCE OF EGYPT, the second animated movie to cross $100m domestically... Two months prior... ANTZ came out, and grossed an impressive $90m. Pixar's sophomore feature A BUG'S LIFE opened, infamously, amidst this four-movie fall shakedown, and won the race with $163m.

So two not-Disneys made $100m domestically, and two not-Disney Feature Animation movies made $100m domestically... This was a turning point in theatrical feature animation, and it would come to benefit - for a brief while - all CGI animated movies.

We'll focus on those now...

1999 saw the release of Pixar's TOY STORY 2, which broke $245m. That was above every Disney animated movie *except* THE LION KING. Wow!

In 2000, Disney released their hybrid live-action/CG feature DINOSAUR, which has been counted as a Walt Disney Animation Studios canon movie since 2008... While that movie didn't make enough money to justify a sequel or to keep the collaboration studio behind it (The Secret Lab) alive, it still broke $100m domestically.

2001... DreamWorks' SHREK and Pixar's MONSTERS, INC. break past $250m domestically. Paramount/Nickelodeon's pilot movie JIMMY NEUTRON: BOY GENIUS takes in a respectable $80m. 2002... Newcomer Blue Sky's ICE AGE makes over $175m domestically. By this point in time, several hand-drawn animated movies... From all the studios: Disney, DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, Columbia, etc. Largely losing money theatrically, with few exceptions in between. Many of them are missing the titan $100m threshold. For context, only Disney Feature's LILO & STITCH broke that barrier in mid-2002. CGI movies seemed foolproof. Guaranteed blockbusters...

2003 brought Pixar's FINDING NEMO, which became the highest grossing animated movie of all-time, unseating THE LION KING... Then SHREK 2 came out the year after, made that record look like nothing, becoming the first animated movie to break **$400m** domestically. In addition to SHREK 2, 2004 saw the release of DreamWorks' other CG hit SHARK TALE ($160m+), Pixar's THE INCREDIBLES ($260m+), and Warner Bros.' motion-capture pic THE POLAR EXPRESS ($160m+). In 2005, DreamWorks' MADAGASCAR came super-close to $200m, Blue Sky's ROBOTS cleared $120m...

So, unstoppable, right?

The one exception seemed to be the 2001 release FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN, a mocap feature based on the game series of the same name. That one puttered out at $32m domestically, and fell well below its hefty budget with all the worldwide take factored in... But this seemed like an anomaly more so than anything. You also had a few super-limited releases of foreign CG films, like KAENA: THE PROPHECY, which was a French film.

2005 was when it all seemed to be up... VALIANT, a British animated movie distributed stateside by Disney, performed quite badly... Despite it being a CGI movie and touting "producer of SHREK" cred. Disney Feature's first all-CG feature, CHICKEN LITTLE, managed to make more than $100m domestically, but its worldwide total didn't measure up to the budget. HOODWINKED!, an independent venture that only cost $8m to make, was released by The Weinstein Co. at the end of 2005. It made less than $60m domestically.

Then... 2006 happened...

The features that crossed $200m domestically: Pixar's CARS, and only CARS. ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN and Warner Bros.' HAPPT FEET came very close. ICE AGE 2 won the race worldwide.

The features that crossed $100m domestically: DreamWorks' OVER THE HEDGE.

Everything else... Missed $100m. Some movies got by on being lower budget, like Sony Animation's debut picture OPEN SEASON, and the Nickelodeon TV show launcher BARNYARD. But some of the big flops included DreamWorks/Aardman's FLUSHED AWAY, the Disney-released Canadian feature THE WILD, and Warner Bros.' THE ANT BULLY. CGI and celebrity casts and talky scripts couldn't save them. Then you had movies that just did abysmally, like Fox's EVERYONE'S HERO, and DOOGAL: the Weinsteinized version of THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT.

For a little while, computer animated movies were a novelty for audiences. No one had seen anything like TOY STORY when it first came out in Thanksgiving 1995. Like, this wasn't an episode of REBOOT or a glossy production company ident... This was over 70 minutes of fully animated 3D characters in convincing 3D environments, that stayed watchable the whole time, and on top of that... It was really well-written! Lots of people tend to make remarks about TOY STORY's more, dated, visual qualities... But it remains a classic because of the passion that went into it. And despite some of the aspects that didn't age well, it still *looks* appealing and watchable. Woody and Buzz and the rest of the gang have pretty much kept the same designs over the sequels and shorts/specials, only the human characters have seen slight design changes that matched the much-better rendering over time. (It's already a big difference with Andy and his mum from TOY STORY 1 to 2.)

But enough about that. My point is, audiences ate CGI up circa 1995-2005. Big time. It was the future, it was the **way** to make animated movies. Even with CG incorporated into them, hand-drawn movies failed to keep up. Whether the movies did actually appeal to audiences (TARZAN, LILO & STITCH) or not (TITAN A.E., TREASURE PLANET)... It just wasn't enough. $171m from TARZAN just didn't compare to, say, SHREK's $267m haul. When even your best isn't enough...

Capitalism, ya know?

But soon, audiences began choosing what computer-animated family movies they'd go to see, not seeing all of them each and every calendar year. In 2007, for every RATATOUILLE, there was a HAPPILY N'EVER AFTER. Even a good film like SURF'S UP that year had trouble. Release that movie in 2002, it would've made **bank**... In 2007, it had a hard time appealing to audiences. Let's apply this to 2008 as well. WALL-E and KUNG FU PANDA do great, THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX - a book adaptation - makes $50m and fails to double its budget. So every year, there are the family-friendly CGI movies that do pretty great! And then the ones that lose money.

And eventually, it caught to everybody. Even the heavies.

Pixar saw their first money-loser in 2015 with THE GOOD DINOSAUR, breaking an astounding 15-film hit streak.

Disney Feature Animation's CHICKEN LITTLE did so-so, MEET THE ROBINSONS two years later outright lost money. BOLT did so-so as well. They wouldn't have a genuine CGI flop until STRANGE WORLD, because we gotta mulligan RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON and ENCANTO. Ya know, COVID and release strategies and such.

DreamWorks suffered badly in the mid-2010s, with money-losers like RISE OF THE GUARDIANS, TURBO, and MR. PEABODY & SHERMAN... It was to the point where it seemed like the lights would go out.

Blue Sky's final film, SPIES IN DISGUISE, lost money. After a streak of successes (the ICE AGE sequels) and respectable hits (FERDINAND). That likely played a big part in its shuttering, after Disney had bought 21st Century Fox's film and TV assets.

Sony Pictures Animation had some financial losses, too. The aforementioned SURF'S UP was one such flop, and there was also their Aardman collaboration ARTHUR CHRISTMAS.

So much, like a good hand-drawn animated movie, a competently-made CG film wasn't gonna cut it every single time... Even from a big studio. That's why many of those studios got smart with budgets... Especially Sony Animation and DreamWorks.

Now... Superhero movies...

Superhero movies have been around for a while. Serials, yes, all the way back to the Golden Age of Hollywood. Max Fleischer's SUPERMAN cartoons from 1941-42, every modern superhero movie owes it to those in particular. Long-form superhero movies, I believe, really got their start with the 1978 SUPERMAN movie... But you'd get a big superhero movie every once in a while, or a comic book action hero movie if you will. In the 1980s, you had SUPERMAN II - starting off the decade, and then Tim Burton's BATMAN ending the decade with a blockbuster gross. A big phenomenon. What else was in-between? Well, there was Lucasfilm's infamous adaptation of Marvel's HOWARD THE DUCK that tanked hard. You did see a brief boom in this kind of movie in the 1990s because of BATMAN '89, but plenty of those movies actually went belly-up. DC adaptation STEEL did poorly, movies like THE PHANTOM didn't make much of a mark, but you did have the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES movie doing quite well, ditto BATMAN RETURNS and BATMAN FOREVER. BATMAN & ROBIN's not-so-great performance in 1997 put the Caped Crusader's theatrical future in limbo. SUPERMAN puttered out back in 1987 with a badly-received fourth movie. So, this was a bit of a false start, if you will? Batman, Ninja Turtles, maybe something else that did okay-ish at best... That was about it, circa 1999.

Then along came BLADE in 1998, which would be the first Marvel movie to do pretty well. HOWARD THE DUCK bombed back in 1986, and the 1989 PUNISHER and 1990 CAPAIN AMERICA went straight to video in the states.

Then, X-MEN came out in 2000, that did even better.

Then, SPIDER-MAN came out in 2002, made a **gargantuan** amount of money...

After the release of X-MEN and SPIDER-MAN, both Marvel adaptations, you saw **some** action going on. More Marvel movies came along. HULK, an ambitious film from Ang Lee, opened big in summer 2003 but had trouble staying afloat. FANTASTIC FOUR did okay in 2005 despite poor reception. GHOST RIDER did okay in 2007. SPIDER-MAN 2 and SPIDER-MAN 3 made biiiig money, and there was also a FANTASTIC FOUR sequel that also did okay. The next Batman-inspired DC movie, CATWOMAN, came about in 2004 and bombed quite badly. The year after CATWOMAN came BATMAN BEGINS, Christopher Nolan's then-bold new take on the Caped Crusader *and* the superhero movie in general. It did pretty well, a sleeper hit that relied on strong word-of-mouth. Then in 2006, a year later, you had an attempt to reboot SUPERMAN with SUPERMAN RETURNS. While it made money, it wasn't enough to cover its then-titanic budget, so it seemed like a non-starter. The other DC adaptation released amidst this was CONSTANTINE, whch did pretty well (and is finally getting a sequel after all these years). Funnily enough, amidst these Marvel and DC movies, you had Pixar's THE INCREDIBLES... A then *rare* animated superhero movie, and it did great business. There was also HELLBOY, too. Non-Marvels and non-DCs had their time to do pretty okay, too. So, superheroes had a healthier time in the early-to-mid 2000s...

But where it really all took off was in 2008...

IRON MAN started the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a BANG! in May of that year, and BATMAN BEGINS sequel THE DARK KNIGHT - no doubt accelerated by the tragic passing of Heath Ledger, who gave his iconic performance as The Joker - was **massive**. It was the first movie since TITANIC to clear $500m at the domestic box office, and make the then-magic $1b worldwide... Only TITANIC, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST made that amount of money... Nowadays, it seems like there's one billion-dollar smash every year, excepting 2020 of course... Back in 2008, though? Magic number. Very few movies did **that** well...

And from there... Lots of hits. The MCU had barely a stumble, and their highest highs at the box office went very high. They had no trouble getting audiences to come out in big numbers for... Checks notes... Movies based on THOR, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, and ANT-MAN. Warner Bros. had tried very hard to keep a consistently successful DC movie-verse going, but despite the valleys (JUSTICE LEAGUE, BIRDS OF PREY), they too saw some big peaks: WONDER WOMAN and AQUAMAN. BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE and SUICIDE SQUAD made a lot of money, too, despite not meeting particular expectations. Animated superheroes brought home bacon, too! BIG HERO 6, INCREDIBLES 2, SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, need I say more? Sony's own Spider-Man villain movies VENOM and its sequel did very well, too! Almost everybody was winning the superhero sweepstakes post-2008, with very few actual losers in-between.

But now... Well, with so many of them around, and both cinematic universes from the heavies... Again, Marvel and DC. Known commodities... We don't see any movie-verse for, say, Image Comics, no do we? Well, again, money is tight, theater visits are costly, and the movies aren't always delivering satisfying experiences when other endeavors are next door...

Last year, we saw TOP GUN: MAVERICK, a legacy sequel to a 1986 blockbuster that isn't a superhero movie in any way, mop the floor - domestically and even worldwide - with both Marvel and DC's most anticipated movies. AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER was in second place domestically, top dog worldwide. We're starting to see other movies have a say again, and smaller movies are having their fun again, too. ELVIS and NOPE did very well, as did BULLET TRAIN and THE LOST CITY. Bread-n-butter movies that used to fill up the yearly box office charts quite nicely. We see that nowadays in the form of things like WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, THE BLACK PHONE, THE WOMAN KING, TICKET TO PARADISE, BARBARIAN, SMILE, VIOLENT NIGHT, A MAN CALLED OTTO, M3GAN, CREED III, etc.

So... With QUANTUMANIA and SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS past us... Here's what I think... Much like in 2006, where some computer animated family movies did great and others not-so-much... That'll happen with this year's crop of superhero movies.

I think the guaranteed hits are GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 and SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE. The former? Well, those two movies functioned well as a standalone story not connected to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Like you had some things here and there, like an Infinity Stone or the presence of Thanos, but they're both self-contained, VOL 2 even more-so. They're genuinely good space adventure movies that audiences actually quite dig, the characters are so likeable, and the movies have director James Gunn's authorship all over them. That's a night and day difference from many of the other MCUs... SPIDER-VERSE... Need I say more? The original is beloved, it was a passion project for everyone involved. It was not just a great Marvel or great superhero movie, it was a great movie, period. Rian Johnson himself described it as "The Velvet Underground of superhero movies." That is *high praise*.

Those are both poised, I feel, to make beaucoup bucks.

Everything else? Well... The DC movies coming out this year are much like FURY OF THE GODS. They don't really matter, because the hard reset is coming up with SUPERMAN: LEGACY two years from now. I suppose THE FLASH could do well because of Michael Keaton **and** Ben Affleck's Batman returning, in a sort of NO WAY HOME-esque manner. I don't think much of the general public is in tune with star Ezra Miller's controversies and wrongdoing, so I think this one's appeal hinges on whether fans/audiences see it as pointless or not. I think the novelty of both Batmen being back, alongside some other DC faces (such as Michael Shannon's go at General Zod from MAN OF STEEL), could help it a bit. BLUE BEETLE? I couldn't tell ya, it'll probably come and go. AQUAMAN made over a billion back in 2018/19, and is the highest-earning DC film ever... But will fans and audiences be back for, again, a movie that seems pointless in the long run? Also at the end of the year comes the MCU film THE MARVELS, the sequel to CAPTAIN MARVEL and also a follow-up to the MS. MARVEL TV series... Plus you have Monica Rambeau in it as well, who - as an adult - was a major character in WANDAVISION. That all could help it, but I'm starting to think it falls quite short of CAPTAIN MARVEL's impressive take in 2019. CAPTAIN MARVEL had the benefit of opening right before AVENGERS: ENDGAME, the penultimate episode to the big climactic event... THE MARVELS is just, well, the sequel... With two other faces. I think it'll do pretty well, but not excellently. Disney and Marvel Studios were smart to delay the film from July to November after the CEO-switcheroo with Bob Iger this past autumn. I can only hope they delay all of the other movies, too. Like, two a year is fine, guys. AVENGERS: THE KANG DYNASTY and AVENGERS: SECRET WARS can wait. They don't need to come out in 2-3 years from now, in addition to like 10 other movies and 10-20 other Disney+ shows...

And next year, I think, will show as well where this is all going... Like, I don't see the likes of CAPTAIN AMERICA 4, THUNDERBOLTS, DEADPOOL 3, and BLADE hogging up the top slots anymore. I forgot to point out that these movies seem a lot more frontloaded. Big fans and those who were always going to be there *will* be there on opening weekend, but it collapses after that, as OTHER audiences save their money for other things that they'd rather see... Maybe the JOKER sequel, not really a superhero movie but still based on a DC villain that's tied to one of their most well-known superheroes, could repeat the massive surprise success of the original. Maybe not. BEYOND THE SPIDER-VERSE should do pretty great... I think other biggies are what's gonna surprise this year and next year, and take the Top 3 slots... A new INDIANA JONES movie, a MARIO movie, a two-part MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE epic, AVATAR 3, maybe even something like GLADIATOR 2. 2025 is when the DC hard-reset comes, so it'll be interesting to see how SUPERMAN: LEGACY does, in addition to whatever Marvel movies end up coming out that year. KANG DYNASTY or no KANG DYNASTY...

If anything, the budgeting should be smarter from here on out. Then these movies can come and go, make adequate amounts of money, give *other* kinds of movies the Top 3-5 for once, and then the wheels will spin. Something new will come along and spam up the top slots, even. Maybe we're in for an area of legacy-quels following TOP GUN 2's massive success. I really do think INDY 5 has the chance to somewhat repeat that, and GLADIATOR 2 even. How long till, say, another sequel to a beloved '80s or '90s movie drops? And then too many of those happen and they get tiresome?

All a cycle in Hollywood...

But yeah, I do see the parallels between superhero movies now and CG animated family movies circa 2006...

[dansnaturepictures]

26/10/23-Winchester, Lakeside and home

Pictures taken in this set are of: 1. A view with nice autumn leaves at Winchester Cathedral with St. Thomas Church in the background and the King's Royal Rifle Corps War Memorial looking on. It was great to take in warm and rich colourful autumnal scenes including in the sun today in a strong week I've had for autumnal colour. 2. Berries by the River Itchen. 3. A Peregrine on St. Thomas Church on the way home this evening. With today my last scheduled office working day in Winchester this month I had thought my run of photographing a Peregrine in Winchester in every month since November 2021 might come to an end with not many sightings this month but I was over the moon to spot this one on the church tower at the last minute. A beautiful view of this regal bird kissed by the evening sun, a thrilling moment. 4 and 10. One of the Mute Swans on the River Itchen I've been seeing a lot of lately, it was great to have a chance to take a camera photo of one today. 5 and 7. More beautiful views at Winchester Cathedral. 6. A stunning moon that I enjoyed seeing shining extremely brightly as I got in and when in this evening. 8. Cylamen at Winchester Cathedral. 9. Stinking iris berries this evening, a key sight this week.

I was serenaded by Robins including the same one probably in a berry laden bush as I passed Lakeside this morning and evening, a beautiful sight and sound, a great welcome to the first week walking north of the site and permanently not cutting through Lakeside on my commutes with it muddy now and it'll be dark in the evenings from next week and it was good to see mushrooms and House Sparrows in the hedge adjoining the allotments too. I was very pleased to see two Buzzards I believe soaring over St. Thomas Church at lunch time, another special raptor which I love watching and it was nice to see and hear bouncy Pied Wagtails atop the tall Winchester Cathedral. Feral Pigeon, Magpie, white deadnettle and bindweed near Lakeside this morning, vervain and yellow fumitory were other highlights.

[mariacallous]

WARSAW, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Poland's opposition parties led by Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition (KO) prepared for coalition talks on Tuesday after official results from Sunday's election showed they had won enough seats to oust the ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party.

A new government led by pro-EU centrists will mark a massive shift in Poland after eight years of conflict between PiS and Brussels over democratic standards, media freedom, minority rights and migration.

"In the coming days, after the (final) results are announced, we will talk," said Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, a leader of the centre-right Third Way, which along with the New Left is expected to join a KO-led coalition.

The Electoral Commission confirmed on Tuesday that PiS remained the largest party in the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, after winning 35.38% of the vote. This would give it around 190 seats in the 460-seat chamber.

Tusk's KO won 30.70% of the vote. Third Way took third place with 14.40% and the New Left had 8.61%, the Commission said. The far-right Confederation won 7.16% of the vote.

KO, the Third Way and the New Left, combined, will have around 250 seats, the results suggested, enough for them to form a stable coalition government.

However, that prospect could still be weeks, if not months, away. President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, said before the vote that he would give the first shot at forming a cabinet to the group or party that won most ballots.

With no party indicating a willingness to join a PiS-led government, the nationalist party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski seems unlikely to be able to secure a third term at the helm of the European Union's largest eastern member state.

"Evil has prevailed in Poland, temporarily," Marek Suski, a senior PiS official, told public broadcaster TVP. "PiS is likely moving into a really democratic opposition."

MASS MOBILISATION

Turnout in Sunday's election exceeded 74%, the highest in Poland since the collapse of communism in 1989, after the parties managed to galvanise large numbers of especially younger voters for the first time.

But the election campaign was marred by harsh, divisive rhetoric, reflecting deep polarisation within Polish society.

Vowing to protect Polish borders and sovereignty, PiS cast the vote as a fight against unfettered migration and against unwarranted interference in national life by remote, unelected EU bureaucrats.

Opposition leaders including Tusk, a former European Council president, said PiS would take Poland out of the EU if it won a third term - a charge denied by the ruling party despite its constant legal and political feuds with Brussels.

The opposition parties have yet to name a candidate for the post of prime minister but Tusk, 66, is widely expected to be their nominee. He served as premier from 2007 to 2014.

"Nobody doubts today that without Donald Tusk's energy and determination, change in Poland would not have been possible," Marcin Kierwinski, a senior KO official, told Polsat News broadcaster.

Still, the three parties are likely to face complex talks over issues such as abortion and LGBT rights.

On abortion, Kosiniak-Kamysz of Third Way said on Tuesday his party would support reversing a 2021 near-total ban on terminations by reinstating the right to abortion in cases of fetal defects, but would not agree upfront to further liberalisation.

KO and the New Left also want to allow abortions up to 12 weeks without limitations. Third Way wants Poles to decide the matter in a referendum.

"No ideological issues can be part of any coalition agreement," Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

[coochiequeens]

Reduxx has learned that a website endorsed by the Norwegian Government which promotes the medical transitioning of children is owned by a twice-convicted pimp. 

Transhjelpen provides resources related to the ‘transitioning’ of children and teens. The site’s online shop offers breast binders for teen girls, ‘tucking’ undergarments for young boys, prosthetic breasts and penises, and a variety of sex toys and lubricants.

The Transhjelpen website also offers advice aimed at quelling the concerns of parents and teachers regarding childhood gender identity. It asserts that “children as young as four or five” may “claim they were born in the wrong body,” and recommends caretakers begin socially transitioning children by changing names and pronouns used to address them.

Medical interventions are also recommended by Transhjelpen. Drugs which are euphemistically referred to as ‘puberty blockers’ are described as “a completely safe way to pause or postpone changes that would have given the child more gender dysphoria… Should it be found that the child is not trans, the blockers are stopped and puberty will continue as normal.”

But Reduxx has learned that the youth-focused website is registered by Erotismen, an “affirming” fetish community focused on sexual activity as a lifestyle founded by Tom Ketil Krogstad. Krogstad has been convicted of pimping on two occasions.

Erotismen is described as a “lifestance community that empowers the individual, works for increased understanding and respect for others, and a better world for all,” according to the organization’s website. 

“The basic idea of Erotismen arose from the acknowledgement that many people can’t live the life they want, because of cultural or religious limitations. Erotismen was developed further on the acknowledgement that people that are part of a community where they can be themselves experience an improvement of their own quality of life.”

Krogstad heavily implies that Erotismen is a religious organization, and as “it is illegal to be a member of multiple religious or lifestance-communities in Norway,” he encourages new members to withdraw from other religious affiliations before registering.

The idea for the group came to Krogstad after public scrutiny for activities at his former sex-centered organization. “It came as a reaction to the resistance and stigma that establishing Club4 was met by. Club4 was established as a sanctuary where people could be themselves and live out their sexual fantasies and desires with like-minded people. Unfortunately, there are those that don’t approve of people being themselves.”

Club4, a sex club in Trondheim founded by Krogstad in 2000, made headlines after he was convicted on charges related to pimping through the venue on two separate occasions — first in 2001 and again in 2021.

Though Krogstad was convicted of pimping, illegally serving alcohol, and showing pornographic films at Club4 in 2001, he was not sent to prison until 2003, where he served a sentence of 14 months. He was subsequently released in 2005. During court proceedings, he called himself an “erotic martyr.” During this time, Club4 was shut down, but in 2013, Krogstad opened the venue again.

In 2007, Krogstad was questioned by Swedish police on the “sexual preferences” of a man charged with the violent murder of his partner. The suspect had visited Club4 prior to drugging and killing a 31-year-old woman in a camping cabin in Östersund. The victim was found with “extensive cuts” to her lower abdomen and groin.

Krogstad was again discovered to be illegally selling women in the prostitution trade at Club4 in 2020 after he was reported by radical feminist collective Kvinnegruppa Ottar. 

“The National Board of the Women’s Group Ottar has today reported Krogstad for pimping, and expects him to be investigated for violations of the Criminal Code Section 315 first paragraph letter a and b which deals with pimping and brothel activities,” said the Women’s Group in a press release.

In the basement of the Club4 shop, a number of men were found to have paid NOK 300 (approx. $30USD) each to participate in “gangbangs” after two young women came forward to describe their ordeal.

The Trøndelag District Court found Krogstad guilty of mediated contact between prostitutes and sex buyers from 2016 to 2019, and sentenced him to eight months in prison.

Krogstad’s Transhjelpen website claims to work in partnership with Norway’s Patient Organization for Gender Incongruence (Pasientorganisasjonen for Kjønnsinkongruens – PKI). The group, as its name suggests, works to connect individuals seeking medical interventions with gender clinicians. In particular, PKI targets potential patients who are rejected by the National Treatment Center for Transsexualism (NBTS) at Oslo University Hospital Rikshospitalet for puberty-blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones following a psychiatric assessment.

PKI has made statements supporting the medical transitioning of youth, and most recently defended a private clinician who had his medical license revoked by health authorities after a third investigation into his practice. Dr. Esben Benestad, Norway’s most well-known trans-identifying male and gender clinician, has repeatedly circumvented national protocols in regards to prescribing puberty-blocking drugs and hormones to minors, and has advocated for the recognition of ‘eunuch’ as a gender identity.

Transhjelpen similarly endorses alternative clinics to the National Treatment Service for Transsexualism (NBTS) at Rikshospitalet Hospital (NBTK). According to Transhjelpen, the hospital, which does not recommend medical interventions for every patient, has “outdated and old-fashioned attitudes to gender roles.”

Responding to news that Benestad’s medical license had been revoked by the Norwegian Health Authorities, Transhjelpen posted a notice to Instagram addressed to “all patients of Benestad who are unable to renew their prescription” which urges any individual who is refused hormones or puberty blockers to “complain,” and links through to both PKI and the nation’s leading trans activist organization Foreningen (FRI).

The Transhjelpen account is mutually connected with FRI on social media, where the organization is also advocating for the former doctor Benestad. On February 3, FRI and their supporters took part in a demonstration in Oslo for “dignified health care for trans people and the loudest trans cry of all time – for Esben Esther.”

Last year, Reduxx exposed one of FRI’s previous representatives as the operator of a castration fetish website called the Eunuch Maker. 

Marius Gustavson was arrested along with six other men in February 2022 for performing clandestine castration surgeries in his home. Shortly after his arrest, he told The Independent in an interview that he had carried the operation out on 58 other men. He stated that he had his own genitals surgically removed because he wanted to “look like a Ken doll with nothing down there.”

Benestad himself has advocated a theory of a “eunuch gender,” a concept which he wrote about in a 2010 paper titled, From gender dysphoria to gender euphoria: An assisted journey. In the paper, Benestad claims to have met members of the “eunuch gender” and cites a website called the Eunuch Archive as being a source for his research. The Eunuch Archive hosts and produces fantasy materials that center around children having their puberty halted, either chemically or surgically, as part of a pedophilic sexual fetish.

In the two years since Transhjelpen was launched, the organization has gained the support of leading figures working in the field of sexology in Norway. The site’s Instagram account is followed by multiple LGBT organizations and notable sexologists, including Tore Holte Follestad, who is the head of the Norwegian Society for Clinical Sexology (Norsk Forening for Klinisk Sexologi– NFKS), which frequently promotes BDSM. Follestad is a sexual counselor specializing in “gender incongruence” as well as “sexual fetishes.”

In 2022, a site run by the Norwegian Ministry of Children, Youth, and Family Affairs (Bufdir) responded to a question ostensibly posed by a 14-year-old teen by recommending they visit Krogstad’s site Transhjelpen in order to secretly obtain a breast binder without their parents’ knowledge. The site is aimed at children and youth aged 13 to 20 and provides information on sexuality and gender identity and receives upwards of 1 million monthly visits. 

“I’m non-binary, but I’m not out to my parents and I really want to buy a chest binder,” the comment reads. “It’s being sent from the U.S. and I’m terrified of what might happen if my parents find the package, I don’t think they will support me and my choice,” the response read. “As for the chest binder, you can buy it from Norway. On the Transhjelpen website can you buy chest binders in Norway. You don’t have to buy it in the US. Then it’s also easy to send it back if it doesn’t fit.”

The government ministry previously came under scrutiny in 2020 after one of its representatives recommended that a 16-year-old girl visit a plastic surgeon to have her breasts surgically removed.

The teen told Bufdir that she “hated having breasts” and wondered if she could have them removed “without having to change gender.”

An unnamed sexologist responded, saying, “Unfortunately, it is not possible (as of today) to have your breasts removed at the state’s expense, if you do not at the same time experience having been assigned the wrong gender at birth. If your desire persists, I would recommend that you contact a plastic surgeon who works in the private sector. There it is possible to have this type of operation performed.”

By Genevieve Gluck Genevieve is the Co-Founder of Reduxx, and the outlet's Chief Investigative Journalist with a focused interest in pornography, sexual predators, and fetish subcultures. She is the creator of the podcast Women's Voices, which features news commentary and interviews regarding women's rights.

[inkofamethyst]

March 27, 2023

I swear it, one of these days I’m going to have something to talk about other than admissions and while we’re getting close, today is not yet that day.

I really need to get this out and release this some of this negative energy because it’s beginning to gnaw at me.  When I was admitted to my undergrad institution, I took all the things they said about other undergrads during my interview day personally.  I had a rough first semester because I was so focused on whether I was going to be able to live up to the high standard of a select few scholarship recipients who were highlighted on my interview day months prior.  Fulbright fellows, Rhodes scholars, Churchill scholars, public health activists, entrepreneurs, high-impact undergraduate researchers... and I felt like I had to prove my worth to my university, prove that I was worthy of the distinction, of the investment, by reaching those same heights.  And I couldn’t imagine reaching that level when I was struggling (read: unable to get As on lab reports and exams) in my first semester gen chem lab.  Before the interview at my Choice B... no, before I stood by my poster last year at the conference, the first semester of my freshman year was the last time I’d felt such intense academic imposter syndrome, and it’s the only time that it has lasted for longer than a few hours.  The Covid-19 pandemic was awful for me personally in a lot of ways, but separating me physically from school and allowing me to focus exclusively on myself was probably instrumental in tearing down that imposter syndrome, that need to prove myself and my worth.  Ultimately, I didn’t need to prove anything, I realized.  I just needed to focus on myself and finding a personally fulfilling career path, and I did.  And I’ve been so much happier for it (the two semesters where I considered “dropping out” (read: wondered whether I wanted to keep doing school after graduating), I was taking physics, and that explains that).

Should I choose to attend my Choice E (which becomes more and more likely by the day)... I am legitimately worried about those feelings returning and hitting hard.  Attending one of the most well-regarded institutions in the world, being considered the top most desired applicant of my respective pool even if I’m not awarded the ~special fellowship~, being told from multiple people that the PI is really looking forward to me joining the lab... I know I am a good student.  (I also know that being a Black woman in STEM, in anthropology, is part of what makes me desirable, and there’s no skirting around the fact that I will be “helping” my program’s reputation just as they’re helping mine, albeit to a lesser extent.)  I know I can rise to nearly any level with a bit of sweat and determination.  But I feel way out of my depth right now.  And due to the lack of explicit expectations, I am imagining ones into being that may not be reachable, realistically.

Maybe being aware of the potential for imposter syndrome will help mitigate the brunt of it.

[edit 2, an hour later: I have remembered what time of the month I’m getting close to and think that might account for at least some of these feelings]

Remember how I wanted to go on one of the outdoor adventure thingies my uni offers?  Remember how I wanted to go kayaking??  Well, I found a trip I liked and woke up at 5:55 am to register for one of the spots when the portal opened at six because apparently the spots go quick and ALL NINE SPOTS WERE GONE WITHIN A MINUTE.  This time there wasn’t a cute guy leading it who I wanted to get to know better and try/practice flirting on tbh (ahem, September 27, 2021), so I’m not overly upset about losing out, but I couldn’t manage to return to sleep before getting up an hour later which was unfortunate.

WAIT HOLD ON BACK TO THE ORIGINAL TOPIC: The admitted cohort at my Choice E was just sent a cute lil group email from the department and naturally I snooped into their LinkedIn profiles and uh... a few notes.  First of all, half of us are already affiliated with the university.  Take a step back and think on that for a second before we continue.  Okay.  (And I’m not going to pretend like I didn’t have my own advantages in this process, but still.)  Another went to undergrad at an Ivy, the other worked for a time at an Ivy-adjacent.  I can’t claim any of that.  Secondly, I am almost certainly the youngest of the bunch here.  None of them are undergrads currently.  Third, I do not feel nearly as accomplished as some of these folks, ha.  And I know, I know, I know, PhD acceptances are also about “potential” and “investment” and maybe being an undergrad during covid limited my opportunities to some extent or whatever but I still feel like I wasn’t that fantastic of an investment for my undergrad uni regardless of how thankful I am to be debt free.  And that’s the my cold hard truth (admittedly, representing my university as the sole student from that university at a national conference last year is probably a sizeable accomplishment).

But I can’t go to this event like a child among adults.  I can’t go to this event already quaking in my boots with imposter syndrome.  I haven’t even accepted the offer yet.  Now I’m really glad I didn’t do the LinkedIn snoop when my Choice D sent that group email.  It only would’ve psyched me out.  If I’m going to have any chance in academia I’m going to have to either get thicker skin or learn to hide my emotions better.  I think... I think I want to apply for more things.  I think I need to experience more rejection.  And it’s also the only way to pad up that resume with those really really impressive things.  

Dunno why but I wasn’t really feelin the vibes in rehearsal today.  Felt kinda dead.  Might be because I’ve been braiding every free second for the past three days and I still haven’t finished and I still have so much for school to do by tomorrow (technically due tomorrow night but I’d rather get it all out of the way) but I can’t travel with a half-braided head but I don’t want to go to bed late tonight :(  AND I STILL GOTTA PACK AGH

Maybe I will sacrifice tonight and just go to bed way early tomorrow :(  I’ll finish one assignment, do enough of my hair to hide the unfinished sections in a ponytail or something (I have twenty-one parts left and the only person I can blame for having so many (AND IT’S NOT LIKE THEY’RE TINY) is myself, unfortunately) then finish braiding at home tomorrow [edit, like two second later: but I gotta admit Imma look so good with them once they’re done???  my first time doing color 4, they’re a hot 26″.. whew], take a shower and hope my sections don’t poof up, “pack” (throw clothes in a suitcase and fold them neater at home), do/draft one more assignment, then go to bed.  Maybe not in that exact order, but those are the goals.  Four hours-ish max if I start now.  I can do this.  

Today I’m thankful that the weather was nice outside today even if I didn’t really get to enjoy much of it.  It’s Spring again~