#bain appears!

[commence-screaming]

hiii its me again!!!

anyways idea for bain angst:in your fics bain’s coping mechanism for being kidnapped is to daydream about his crew. when hes finally rescued, hes not convinced this isnt a dream, but hes terrified of waking up alone in that cell. so he refuses to sleep because of that fear which worries the hell out of everyone. eventually he collapses due to exhaustion and when he wakes back up again he finds hes still in the safe house and that everything was real

IT’S YOU AGAIN

I wrote an entire response to this and then tumblr ate it. This happens when the internet is spotty but I’m still mad about it

There’s actually a fic already existing with this concept, part 3 of torture fic miniseries :) the gang is worried about bain in the background… heheheh is a dream

The ending of the fic was up to the reader to decide ♥️ I was gonna have a sequel to it, a dual POV where there’s both Bain in his cell and Bain waking up in the Safe House. A few paragraphs like this

…and a few like this

It was supposed to be a metaphor for mirroring and about how Bain feels like he’s in both places at once sometimes because of his trauma. Bro got constantly shocked and it would’ve turned a normal human’s brain into sludge

I had a whole summary of it I wrote for an ex friend of mine. it’s too painful to go through everything again so I won’t be doing that. I did try, though. It was too hard to find

I think it was supposed to have Bain realizing that it was real and he acted like an idiot the previous day 😭 he tries to pull away but Dallas assures him that he won’t make fun of him and that it’s okay to stick around. Bain stays and slowly relaxes when the OG 4 walks in on them cuddling and Bain is 😳⁉️

They start teasing this man relentlessly. I also think I didn’t want to write it because it would have tw romance tag AND tw (self harm among other things)

Looking through my old drafts I can see a bunch of things I never finished haha

That first one is from the unfinished second chapter of that bartender fic! The second was from a fic featuring this OC that a server I’m in contributed to and made :) the third one is from an eldritch AU. I’m never gonna finish it for personal reasons, but I’ve always liked this one bit.

There’s a lot of stuff I started last year but I lost motivation for everything because. You know. Anyway it’s not like I haven’t been writing (SECRET SANTA AAAAAA) but it’s been hard man 😔

[mariocki]

New Scotland Yard: The Palais Romeo (1.4, LWT, 1972)

"We haven't had a PM yet. We haven't gone over the suspect's possessions, we haven't got the results from the trunk. We haven't seen this man Sawyer yet, the man who helped him carry it. There are five hundred things we haven't had time to examine. How can you make an arrest? You said yourself: a conclusion is a conclusion established when all the facts have been brought to light."

[twisty-the-freak]

I approve of this message.

ranking of david's characters that is absolutely factual and completely correct

[luludeluluramblings]

Hi so I was having some brainrot regarding your small-town-neglected-meta reader and I wanted to share them with you!

One thing I've been thinking about alot is the way readers powers work and what kinds of weather they're likely to create, etc. One thing I specifically thought about is that readers powers definitely have to come from her mom's side. Bruce and no else in Bruce's biological line have powers so readers mom has to have the meta gene. I was thinking that maybe readers mom also controlled the weather a bit, maybe not as strong as reader can but still had some powers.

Like creating little drizzles, maybe some dustdevils, and little snow storms. Because her powers were so weak she never really used them for much, maybe to help out her own parents on the farm but that's about it(using her rain powers to easily water the crops)

In that same line of thinking I also wondered if readers little brother also has superpowers. Maybe the way his powers work or appear are bit different than readers because of they have different dads(I imagine Bruce has really strong genetics. If Damian is any proof of that lol)

One little crank in this little headcanon though is that Nana and Gramps would also have to have superpowers. But then I reread the first chapter and thought about One of the phrases you used to describe how reader got in Bruce's hands.

"but blood is thicker than water in the eyes of the court."

That specifically makes me think that Nana and Gramps are actually readers little brother biological grandparents and not theirs.(what happened to their bio grandparents 🤔)

But anyway, one last thing I wanted mention is how badly I want to see reader using their powers more freely when they're back in small town. Like they aren't afraid to use their powers to make it super windy and have fun with their little brother up on the sky. Or causing a blizzard just so they can have a snowball fight and make snow-men with their little brother. Or even accidently cause a power outage because someone pissed them off! No more suppressed emotions just freedom. (Also reader crying in the middle of the rain they made in front of their parents graves(they wanted to be buried in their hometown) would be so tragically fantasic.)

Anyway I know this is a lot to read and I'm sorry if I seem a bit scrambled but I wanted to send this to you just cause I had so many ideas floating up in my brain I couldn't stop thinking about it all. Thank you for listening to me ramble, I hope your doing amazing🩷

Your call this bain-rot, Imma call it fertilizer. This is long as mess, but I think I addressed everything. Lots of Smalltown!Reader lore and I made a Family Tree to help explain if needed.

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

Smalltown!Reader's Family Tree:

Complicated little bugger, ain't it? I didn't add Stephanie or Barbara because Bruce technically never adopted them or fostered them. This isn't an official thing, I made this and it was composed of little bits of information I found online. So some of this stuff might not be lore accurate.

Also, while I was researching I found out that Bruce's middle name was apparently Patrick, after his grandfather at one point.

Now, time for the pseudo science.

I consider the meta gene to be a genetic trait carried down by a parent. That would be Momma/Adeline, in this case. She carries the gene. Now, the meta gene does not always activate even if one has it. So, no, Momma was not making mini storms for us. She was, however, very encouraging of Reader using their abilities. It takes an event, usually a traumatic one, to activate the gene. (Little Brother could be getting power's in the next chapter, though.)

As for Nana and Grand Daddy we have this:

They don't have the gene, so they don't have abilities. (Which doesn't me their harmless.) They are Reader's Step-Grandparents, but they've grown to love them all the same. Now, in court, it is preferred for a child to go to the nearest blood relative after their parents die. Or, at least, that's what I roughly know from what the court in my state is like. I'm not from Louisiana or New Jersey, where Gotham's located, so maybe it's different. But, this is fiction. This is why Nana and Grand Daddy didn't get custody of Reader, though. Plus Bruce is rich with a bunch of adopted kids, on paper he looks like the best option.

☁︎☁︎☁︎☁︎☁︎☁︎☁︎☁︎☁︎☁︎☁︎

I really love the thought of Reader using their abilities for silly little things while back in Smalltown, at least before things absolutely go to hell in a hand basket. So I'll probably include a bit. (They used to do things like that before moving to Gotham, definitely.) Something I want to mention is that Reader likes to make it rain when their happy. It's their favorite weather, they love it. So a grave scene might be a bit different. (I have to include that now. Thank you for that idea! Frick, Part Eight about to be long af.)

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

If your curious about Reader's other grandparents, they just died from old age and health problems. I like to think that Reader had a close relationship with them. Calling them MawMaw and Gab for their nicknames and having spent a lot of time with Reader and their Little Brother before they died. (I'm sorely tempted to just commit to rewriting this with the OC I based Reader off of so I can include all this backstory to highlight how different their life in Gotham is compared to what it used to be, but I best finish what I started first.)

(Side Note: It's very common in the American south for people to give their grandparents nicknames. I have some for my southern grandparents, while I call my northern grandparents just plain Grandma and Grandpa. The nickname can vary and is usually what ever the first grandchild comes up with.)

Thank you for sending me this ask! Stuff like this actually inspires me so this was wonderful. Hopefully this helps. (Now to get back to work on my writing, I've been draggin' my feet again.)

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 11: Hephaestus, God Of Fire]

A/N: Only 1 chapter left!!! 🥰💜

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.4k

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Here is our final interlude. Do you have the patience?

President Lyndon Baines Johnson has halted all U.S. attacks on North Vietnam: no bombs from the air, no infantry on the ground, no artillery shells launched by destroyers cruising in the South China Sea. The election will determine what happens next. If Nixon wins, military operations will resume until the South Vietnamese are in a sufficiently advantageous position to defend themselves from the communists. If Aemond is the victor, troop withdrawals will begin shortly after he is inaugurated on January 20th.

Regardless, it will not be until almost a full year from now, in October of 1969, that it becomes illegal for employers to reserve positions for men; the common practice of refusing to hire women with preschool-aged children will not be outlawed until 1971. Unmarried people will not be guaranteed access to contraception until 1972. Abortion will not be legalized across all fifty states until 1973. Women will not have a right to their own bank accounts or credit cards until 1974. It will not be illegal to exclude women from juries until 1975. The first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, will be appointed in 1981. There will be no female president of the United States, not for at least half a century after our story ends.

Each night on CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite recaps the latest poll numbers. Nixon appears to have a slight advantage, due in large part to pulling ahead in Florida, Illinois, Ohio, and his home state of California. Aemond has comfortable leads in Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. George Wallace will likely sweep the Deep South: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. From their hovels, the racists rejoice. From her grave, Lurleen Wallace rests uneasily, scratching at the lid of her coffin with the bones of her fingers, entombed in dark oblivion like all the rest of the world’s discarded wives.

~~~~~~~~~~

You go for the door, but Aemond is faster; he catches you just as your hand is twisting the handle and the hinges creak. He throws you against the wall so hard the paintings rattle: replicas of Monets and Warhols, Almond Blossoms, The Birth of Venus. You fight, clawing at him, ripping off the eyepatch that Alys must have at last convinced him was no defeat to wear. The hollow, gore-colored abyss of his left eye socket beckons you to fall in and be burned: Hestia’s eternal hearth, the volcanic forge of Hephaestus. He’s fire all the way down, hunger and fury, bones charred black and brittle. You think of the uninhabitable furnace of Jupiter’s moon Io, lethal radiation, poisoned air, lava bubbling up like blood through a bullet wound.

“You can’t hit me,” you gasp. “You need me for photos—”

His knuckles are in your belly, crosshairs made of scar tissue. The air collapses out of your lungs; your vision dims like twilight, like an eclipse. You’re on the floor and trying to crawl away from him. Aemond’s fingers hook into the fabric of your robe; it matches the silk nightgown you wear beneath, a pale anemic pink, something soft and young and desireless, something eternally at others’ mercy, something to be guarded or gutted. He’s dragging you towards him.

He’s going to hit me again, he might even kill me.

“Stop, stop,” you plead, still struggling to breathe. “What if I’m pregnant?!”

You almost certainly can’t be, but Aemond doesn’t know that. Yet his lone eye glints like metal, like coins, no weak mortal compassion. “I would have no way of being sure it was mine.” And then he tries to cover your mouth as you scream for help. You bite at his fingers; your bare feet kick the wall. Your hair, long and loose and wild, flows around you like a bride’s veil.

Too late, Aemond realizes that the door is still open a crack from when you grabbed the handle. There are footsteps and a voice that crescendos as it approaches: “What on earth is going on in here…?” Fosco appears in the threshold, yellow tweed jacket, tight olive green trousers. He stares thunderstruck down at where you and Aemond are entangled on the floor.

You beg: “Fosco, help me.”

“No, no, no,” Fosco says, jolting from his paralysis and holding a hand out towards Aemond. “No, you cannot do this, whatever has happened, you cannot touch her like—”

“She’s not your wife,” Aemond says. She’s not your property. Fosco hesitates; his large dark eyes shifting between the two of you from behind his glasses.

“Aemond, brother, listen to—”

“Get out.” Aemond’s voice is low, searing, malignant.

“Fosco, please don’t leave me,” you whimper. You try to pry Aemond’s fingers off your robe; they dig in deeper, bruising the flesh underneath. “Don’t leave me, don’t let him hurt me.”

Abruptly, Fosco turns and sprints out of the room.

“No!” you shout after him before Aemond grabs your face, his hand like a claw, fingernails leaving half-moon indents in your cheeks, crushing pressure on your jaw.

“You’re trying to sabotage this campaign.”

“I didn’t see the reporters, I swear to God.”

He knocks the back of your skull against the wall so hard that you see momentary flashes like stars, that all the words vanish from your throat, that words cease to exist at all. “You’re a traitor. Do you know the penalty for treason? The U.S. Army would have you executed by firing squad. Zeus would chain you to a rock so your liver could be carved out.”

“You betrayed me first,” you hiss through clenched teeth, your head pounding hot and maroon.

“I have been working for this since before you were born. You can’t take it away from me. I won’t let you.”

“I did everything right and you still couldn’t love me.” You swing at Aemond and he catches your wounded hand, squeezes it, digs his thumb into the spot where the doctors stitched you closed. The pain is excruciating, incapacitating. You wail as scarlet flowers bloom through the white of your bandaged palm.

Now the door flies open again and Aegon collides with Aemond, sends him sprawling, crouches over you. He’s screaming something at Aemond, gripping your shoulder to keep you under him, his too-long hair hanging in his face, black turtleneck sweater, one of Daeron’s frayed army jackets thrown over it, ripped jeans, bare feet. Aemond grabs his brother by the lapel of his army jacket and draws back his fist. His golden wedding ring flashes in the grey November sunlight that streams in through the windows. Aegon doesn’t flinch. He’s taken knuckles to the face before; you remember cleaning blood off his skin under a streetlight in Biloxi, you remember not wanting to wash him away.

“Don’t you see what it will look like?!” Fosco is saying, trying to coax Aemond to relent. “If he is photographed with a busted face after that story comes out? If she has bruises or a black eye? By harming them you are confirming what your enemies have printed, and the voters will believe it is the truth.”

“They already know it’s true!” Aemond snatches the Wall Street Journal off the table and hurls it at Fosco. Then he paces back and forth through the room, glaring at where you are still crumpled on the floor, sobbing, cradling your bleeding hand to your chest. “It’s right there, three goddamn photographs, and that’s all it will take to bring down a lifetime of work!”

Fosco studies the pictures again, shaking his head, one hand covering his mouth. At last he offers weakly: “It could be worse, Aemond.”

“How could it be worse?!”

Aegon scrambles to Fosco to rip the newspaper out of his hands, then returns to you. He hasn’t seen the front-page story yet. He skims it frantically. “This? This is what you’re losing your mind over? It’s dark, it’s blurry, they can’t even see what’s going on!”

“I have one fucking eye and I can see it!”

“So come up with another explanation, this doesn’t prove anything.”

“If she costs me the election—”

“If you lose, it won’t be because of her!” Aegon roars back. “It will be because the Democrats have held the White House for eight years and the world has gone to hell on our watch, it will be because of Kennedy, and Johnson, and Vietnam and the riots and the hippies and the drugs and the assassinations, it will be because Nixon is promising law and order in a time when nobody is safe, it will be because you just weren’t good enough. But she has given more to your cause than anyone. You hit her and you’ll lose your other eye.”

“They were in conversation,” Fosco says, meaning the photos. The four of you know that’s not true; it is a lie for the rest of the world, it is hope for Aemond’s campaign. “On the beach. They were whispering, comforting each other. Because of Mimi. That is all.”

Aemond scoffs, his remaining eye fierce and wrathful as it lands on you again. Aegon grips your shoulder, still crouching over you, still shielding you. “You bitch. I should have left you at that party in Manhattan to be the dope-smoking whore you were when I found you.”

“I shouldn’t have helped save your life in Palm Beach.”

And Aemond blinks at you, not hurt but bewildered, like he doesn’t understand your words, like what you said is impossible. He doesn’t believe you saved him. He believes it was God’s will.

Otto storms into the hotel room and takes in the scene: you and Aegon on the floor, Aemond pacing furiously, Fosco attempting to mediate. “Nobody says anything,” Otto commands, deep booming voice, black suit like he’s going to a funeral. “The Wall Street Journal hates Aemond. Everyone knows that, they’re probably the only national publication that would run the story. Our newspapers are already pushing the counternarrative, that this was a shameful, deceitful, desperate attempt to discredit Aemond right before the election. Our supporters will insist upon an innocent explanation. Nixon’s will use the photos as evidence of our degeneracy, our amorality, us immigrants with our strange faith and our progressive politics. Everyone else in the country will be warring over this headline. We will say nothing. We will conduct business as usual. The best thing we can do now is go out there and keep our schedule as planned.” He looks meaningfully at Aemond. “And your wife must be at your side. Smiling, unscathed, devoted.”

“I lost my composure,” Aemond says to you, more collected now, businesslike. He is smoothing any wrinkles out of his suit jacket. “I was wrong to put my hands on you. I apologize for that. It was beneath me.”

You reply: “Very little is beneath you, I’ve learned.”

“You have been.” A trace of a grin, crooked and cruel. “Plenty of times. And you will be again.”

Aegon is watching is brother, seething but terrified, sheltering you with power that is only illusory, never real. It is a mirage that Aemond or Otto could punch through at any moment. It is glass that would shatter into crystalline dust.

“If I win, you will beg on your knees for forgiveness,” Aemond tells you. “You will beg in private, you will be perfection in public, and I will magnanimously overlook this indiscretion in which you were taken advantage of by my notoriously dissolute brother. There was no affair. There was a fleeting moment of weakness on your part and depravity on Aegon’s. We will put it in the past. I will be the president of the United States and you will be my first lady. You will spend every second of your existence in service of my career, my country, and my legacy. You will give me children. You will obey me entirely. And you and Aegon will never be in a room alone together for the rest of your lives.”

“You can’t keep me away from her,” Aegon says.

“I just did. I make the rules here, I am the heir to this empire. If you wanted that responsibility, you should have seized it. You squandered it, you cursed it. It’s mine now.”

A whisper: “Aemond, it’ll kill me.”

“Then have the dignity to die quietly. It will be the most useful thing you’ve ever done.”

“Aegon must be seen in public too,” Fosco says, trying to sound like he isn’t defending him. “If you appear to be punishing or excluding him, it will be used as evidence of his guilt.”

Aemond nods, then turns to his brother. “As soon as the election is called, whichever way it goes, I want you gone. I don’t care where you go. I don’t care what happens to you once you’re there. You will disappear. We will say it was your choice, and if you comply you can keep your children and receive a modest amount of severance pay to get you started. And as long as you abide by my terms, my wife will not be harmed.”

Aegon doesn’t reply. His large Atlantic-blue eyes glisten, his lips tremble, his hand is still on your shoulder. You think through the throbbing pain of your bleeding palm: Is this the last time he’ll ever touch me?

Otto grabs Aegon, wrenches him away from you, drags him yowling and clawing at the carpet through the doorway.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your hand is freshly bandaged, pristine white gauze that people in the crowd jostle to touch like the relic of a saint, to pray over, to kiss. Men tell you how brave you are to bear the pain without weeping. Women give you komboskini, stained not with their husband’s blood but with only the clean, colorless ether of hope, faith, reverence, love.

Fosco and Helaena have been dispatched to accompany the children on a tour of the Franklin Institute, one of the oldest centers of science education in the nation. Aemond is giving a speech in front of the Liberty Bell at Independence Hall. You and the others are arranged around him like a starving crescent moon. You are standing immediately on Aemond’s left side, Aegon placed at his right. He looks drunk, he looks drugged; you aren’t sure if anyone else can tell, but you can. His cheeks are flushed. His eyes are pools of murky, desolate indigo like the night sky between stars. A few attendees give the two of you curious glances, but no mention is made of the accusations in the Wall Street Journal. You get the sense that if someone took it upon themselves to ask a question on the subject, they would be jeered, reviled, banished like President Johnson, who is currently besieged in the White House by the ghosts of Vietnam.

When you look to Aemond, you see his scar, his prosthetic eye, fierce and stoic determination in the lines of his face. He is quoting the inscription on the bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof…” The bronze metal has a crack in it like one of Zeus’s lightning bolts. The smile on your face is frozen, demure, humble. Aegon’s eyes accidentally catch on yours—a childlike vulnerability, a deep raw woundedness—and then swiftly dart away.

“America is the Land of Opportunity, but some have forgotten that,” Aemond says into the microphone, and vengeance creeps into his voice like a spider up a wall. “Unfortunately, for as long as new communities have arrived at our shores, vile and prejudiced lies have been used to demonize them. Greek immigrants have been crossing the Atlantic for over a century. In 1909, rioters violently expelled them from Omaha, Nebraska. In 1922, an anti-Greek initiative was launched by the Ku Klux Klan. In 1924, Congress drastically restricted my people’s entry in favor of migrants from Northwestern European nations like Britain and Germany. Greeks have been condemned as unintelligent, immoral, and unworthy of the glorious opportunities of this country. We have been barred from jobs and universities, we have been used as cannon fodder in the World Wars. Discrimination against any group is antithetical to the American Dream. I have given an eye for this nation, my wife has bled for it, my brother has—even in the midst of personal tragedy—uprooted his life and the lives of his children to fight alongside me for a better America, and I will not stand by silently as the Targaryen name is tarnished by bigoted falsehoods…”

Now you can no longer hear him over the thunder of the applause, and you remember all the other faces in all those other cities, their eyes illuminated as if by fire, as if by the sun. You imagine devotees of the Greek gods bowing low in temples of white marble and flickering torches, bringing offerings of gold and livestock, grain and blood, murmuring prayers, bargaining for miracles. Did the gods hear them? Do the gods love anyone but themselves?

Alicent and Criston are watching you and Aegon with the same eyes: large, dark, shimmering, a curious combination of horror and profound sympathy. You can feel yourself becoming a ghost, a legend, a myth. One day people will read about you in textbooks and academic journals, in plaques erected at Aemond’s alma mater, Columbia University, and your own, Manhattanville College; and they will know only the fabled version of you. Who you really were will fade into nothingness like Echo, like Icarus into the waves, like Eurydice when her lover Orpheus dared to glimpse back at her.

That night in your penthouse suite at the Ritz-Carlton, you get out of the bathtub—dewy with steam, donning your pink robe—and then go to your side of the king-sized bed and slide open the top drawer of the nightstand. The card Aegon gave you at Mount Sinai isn’t there. Your heartbeat quickens; your stomach lurches.

“What…?”

You get down on your knees to reach into the back of the drawer, to see if the card has snagged somewhere. You hear footsteps and whirl to see Aemond standing in the doorway between the bedroom and the living room. He is holding the card. The cartoon cow beams jubilantly at you. You recall what Aegon wrote inside after crossing out the manufacturer’s message: I thought this was blank…congrats on the new calf! As your eyes widen, Aemond rips the card down the middle.

“Don’t!” you scream, rushing for him. “Please don’t, it’s all I have from—!”

Aemond shoves you back and then, with a grin more like a wolf baring its teeth, tears through the remnants again and again until the card is nothing but shreds. He opens the sliding glass door that leads out onto the balcony and throws them into the cold night wind, where they scatter in a flurry like snowflakes, like bones turned to splinters by cluster bombs in the swamps of Vietnam.

The paper fragments spiral down thirty stories towards the zooming headlights on South Broad Street, and you think about following them. Then Aemond pulls you into his arms as frigid air blows through you and whispers: “You don’t need Aegon anymore. You just need me.”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Monday, November 4th, and you are walking alongside Ludwika on Broadway in Astoria, Queens, the part of New York City known as Greektown. She chats about the modelling jobs she did here before meeting Otto, her Louis Vuitton stilettos clicking on the sidewalk, her Camel cigarettes smudged with red Yardley lipstick. It is an act of kindness; she is trying to distract you. A few yards away, Fosco is telling Aegon about how he just won $500 by betting on the NASCAR Peach State 200, held at Jefco Speedway in Georgia. Aegon nods along, preoccupied, miserable. He has dark shadows around his eyes and is smoking one of his Lucky Strikes. He is wearing a green knit cap, windblown curls of his blonde hair escaping from underneath. You’re not supposed to stare at Aegon, but sometimes you can’t help it. You miss him. You’re worried about him.

The Targaryens have suites reserved at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, where the family will stay through Election Day to witness the results as they are tallied on the evening news. The children are there now, enjoying pizza from Little Italy with Helaena and the nannies. But you and the other adults are being photographed by flocks of journalists as you head for lunch at one of the oldest Greek diners in the United States, paying homage to Aemond’s ancestry. The candidate himself is locked in a fraught conversation with Otto and Criston: polls gaining here, polls slipping there, Nixon inching further ahead in Florida, the state you were supposed to help Aemond win.

“What should I order?” Ludwika asks you. “Not spinach pie, oh, horrible, worse than Hitler. Something else. Why can’t we go to a Polish restaurant for once? I will take you sometime. You will see. You will try a pierogi and never look back. We invented bagels, you know.”

“Beagles?” Fosco says. “What an accomplishment! They are so cute!”

“Bagels, stupido.”

“Do not bully me. I am suffering too. I should be back at the hotel eating a prosciutto pizza.”

As you pass an electronics shop with stacks of televisions in the windows, all turned to NBC news, the journalists begin to gasp and chatter excitedly amongst themselves. The flashbulbs strobe madly, shutters clicking and reporters shouting for Aemond to give them a comment. The youngest Targaryen brother has appeared on the screens, bruised and gaunt and missing teeth. He looks twenty years older than he is. His once-golden hair is turning white.

Otto sputters: “What…what the hell is that?!”

“Oh my God, Daeron!” Alicent howls, and then bursts into the shop so she can hear what her lost son is saying. The rest of you hurry after her, locking the front door behind you so the journalists can’t follow. Through the windows, they take photographs until Fosco and Ludwika lower the blinds.

Inside the maze of electronics, three adolescent employees gawk at the presidential candidate and his retinue. “Out,” Otto instructs them, and then, when they are too stunned to immediately vacate the premises: “I said, get out!” The teenagers scurry into the backroom and slam the door.

“Daeron,” Alicent moans in front of a Zenith color television. Tears flow torrentially from her huge, horrified eyes. Criston holds her, arms circling, his cheek pressed to hers, and you are reminded of how Aegon touched you in your hotel room in Houston, in his basement at Asteria, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

Daeron is saying: “The United States has committed war crimes in Vietnam. I am ashamed of the actions my country has taken here. We have burned children with napalm, executed innocent civilians, and interfered in matters that we have no legitimate jurisdiction over…”

“He is reading from a script,” Fosco says. “You can see his eyes following the words.”

“Shh,” Otto snaps.

Daeron continues: “The only honorable course of action now is to immediately withdrawal all American soldiers from Vietnam…”

“I think this will help us, actually,” Otto says. “People will know he’s being forced to make propaganda for the communists, and they will have sympathy for him and the family. They’ll want to rescue him and all the other servicemen too. He’s obviously…under duress.”

Aegon drops to his knees and puts his palm against the screen over Daeron’s face, just like the shadows of your fingers once fell over Ari as he fought for his life in an incubator in Mount Sinai Hospital. “Do you see what they’re doing to him?” He turns to Aemond with tears in his eyes. “What you did to him? You left him there, you abandoned him, and now he’s being tortured.”

Alicent looks to Aemond, puzzled, petrified. “You tried to get him out, didn’t you?” Aemond doesn’t answer. Otto averts his gaze, counting the tiles on the floor.

“Dear lord,” Ludwika mutters, lighting a fresh Camel cigarette and puffing on it anxiously.

“Was it worth it?” Aegon demands. “Selling your soul?”

Aemond is steely, resolved. “It’s almost over.”

“You were all right.” Aegon stands, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his green-striped sweater. “I don’t have what it takes to win the presidency. I couldn’t do something like this. Me, the perennial fuckup. Me, the godless degenerate.”

“Aegon,” Alicent whispers. “Please…please don’t…”

He turns to his mother, insurmountably sad. “Mom, I tried to stop him.” Alicent sobs and covers her face with both hands as Criston embraces her. She can’t even look at Aemond. She can’t believe what he’s become. Her long coppery hair flows like blood.

You reach for Aegon, your fingertips brushing his ruddy cheek, and immediately he folds into you, burying his face in the curve of your neck, breathing in your warmth as you inhale his smoke and rum and pain and terror. “Daeron will be home soon,” you say, not knowing if it’s true. Your bandaged hand aches; your throat burns.

“I should have gone instead. It should have been me.”

“No, Aegon. Your children need you, I need you. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

Then Aemond yanks you away, his grip on your wrist like an anchor, like chains.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Dad, play us something,” Orion says; and it is the first time you can remember him calling Aegon that. Aegon smiles. He’s sitting on one of the couches in the penthouse suite you share with Aemond, the Gibson guitar he bought back in July lying across his lap as he strums it absentmindedly. The television is on and turned to CBS News. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, November 5th, Election Day. The children are thrilled. It’s the one night they’re allowed to stay up as late as they’re physically able to. This allowance is not purely altruistic; Aemond wants them awake and ready for photographs as soon as the winner is announced.

“What should I play?”

“Frank Sinatra,” Fosco says. He is beside Aegon on the couch, smoking a cigar and flipping through the Sports section of the New York Times, which he’s not really reading.

“Marvin Gaye,” Ludwika suggests. They are both on your side of the room. Aemond, Otto, Sargent Shriver, and a number of campaign staffers are huddled around the television, transfixed by the ever-updating vote totals. Alicent and Criston are between your factions, murmuring back and forth to each other, flutes of golden champagne in their hands. Helaena is on the floor entertaining Violeta, Daphne, and Neaera with Crayolas and coloring books full of scenes from gardens. You recall how eerily calm Helaena had been the night Aemond was shot in Palm Beach, like she somehow already knew he’d survive. Now she is nervous, looking fretfully around the room, wringing her hands, filling outlines of butterflies with ten different shades of blue.

“The Beatles,” Orion tells Aegon, casting Fosco and Ludwika a judgmental teenage glance.

“Any particular song?”

“You can pick.”

Aegon sips at his rum, ice cubes clinking in the glass. He looks over to the coffee table, where you are embroiled in a game of Battleship with Cosmo. He’s getting better; he’s genuinely sunk your destroyer and submarine so far. Then Aegon’s eyes drop to his guitar strings and he plucks the opening notes of In My Life. His voice is soft and low, almost secretive.

“There are places I’ll remember

All my life, though some have changed

Some forever, not for better

Some have gone and some remain…”

Cosmo turns to watch his father. Orion, Spiro, Thaddeus, and Evangelos are gathered around Aegon’s feet, gazing up at him with admiration, with love.

“All these places had their moments

With lovers and friends, I still can recall

Some are dead and some are living

In my life, I’ve loved them all...”

Cheers erupt over by the television; Aemond has just won Michigan. But then tense, indistinct deliberations follow. Florida is still too close to call, a bad omen. You wonder where Alys is as she watches the results come in. There must be some part of her—however small, however smothered—that fears Aemond will win. If he captures the presidency, she could be separated from the man she loves for the better part of a decade. You drink your Pink Squirrel, wishing it was stronger. You think of sea sponge divers down in the depths and imagine what that first gulp of air tastes like when they resurface, when they shed their rubber suits and brass helmets and step back into sunlight, warmth, freedom like Persephone returning from the Underworld each spring.

“But of all these friends and lovers

There is no one compares with you

And these memories lose their meaning

When I think of love as something new…”

You wear a sapphire-colored gown that Aemond chose for you, strings of silver around your wrist and throat, diamond teardrops hanging from your ears. Your hair is up, your fingernails painted a tasteful opalescent shade, the aching of your bandaged hand dulled by booze and Vicodin.

“Though I know I’ll never lose affection

For people and things that went before

I know I’ll often stop and think about them

In my life, I love you more.”

More triumphant shouts and applause across the room by the television: Aemond has won Washington state. From his own suite at the St. Regis Hotel a few blocks south on 5th Avenue, Nixon’s people must be celebrating that he just secured Ohio’s 26 electoral votes. He needs 270 to be the next president of the United States.

Florida, you think. If Nixon can take Florida, I think he’ll win the whole thing.

As Aemond and Otto are distracted, as Fosco and Ludwika watch with pitying, knowing eyes, Aegon sets his guitar aside and walks by you with his rum in hand, taps your shoulder, disappears onto the balcony. You wait a few minutes—Cosmo wins Battleship and goes to color on the floor with Helaena—and then follow Aegon.

Outside the night sky is moonless, starless, thick with clouds. Rain is beginning to fall, soft hushed pattering. Far below taxis and limousines are still rushing and blowing their horns on West 59th Street. You can see the vast forested shadow of Central Park and streetlights like constellations. In apartments and office buildings, windows are illuminated as Americans sit numbing their fears with beer, wine, shots of liquor, smoldering hand-rolled joints.

Aegon is cross-legged at the ledge, one hand on the iron bars of the railing, staring out at the nightscape of Manhattan. His hair lashes in the cold November wind. His nose is pink, his eyes wet and faraway. He passes his Lucky Strike cigarette to you as you join him and says: “I don’t think Aemond can win without Florida.”

“No,” you agree, taking a drag.

Aegon snatches a rattling orange bottle from the pocket of his olive green army jacket, pops it open, and swallows three pills with a swig of straight rum, dark amber poison.

“Don’t do that,” you say, you plead.

“I need it, babe.”

“I want you to still be alive in ten years.”

Aegon smiles and reaches over to pat your cheek twice. “I think that ship might have sailed, little Io.” Can decades of self-destruction be undone, uninflicted, nullified like Heracles becoming immortal? Can the Underworld be escaped? “Come with me. No matter what happens tonight.”

“Aegon, I can’t.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“If I leave, he’ll hurt you. He’ll hurt me worse.”

“It’s not fair,” Aegon says, his voice breaking.

“Nothing is.”

There is an uproar inside the hotel room, screams that could be horror or triumph, realized dreams, breaking bones, bullets through flesh. You and Aegon are on your feet, hauling the balcony door open, stepping through the threshold into the rest of your lives.

Glasses are being toasted until champagne rains down onto the carpet. The telephone is ringing so Nixon can concede. On CBS News, Walter Cronkite is reporting that Aemond has won Florida and thereby accumulated 270 electoral votes. The blue text on the screen reads: Senator Targaryen will be the 37th president of the United States.

[queer-ragnelle]

All three! Apologies. I want to learn as much as I can about him.

You got it!

The first text that Galahad appears in is the Vulgate. His predecessors and legacy are first described in The History of the Grail; then he’s conceived, born, and raised during the Lancelot books; finally in Post-Vulgate he’s a knight on Grail Quest where he achieves his life’s purpose and passes away. Additionally, here’s A Companion to The Lancelot-Grail Cycle which may help you navigate the text.

Another book I suggest for your Galahad research is The Legend of the Grail by Nigel Bryant and Norris J. Lacy. It’s got a lengthy introduction about the history of the Grail story and touches on all the characters who’ve achieved it throughout Arthurian literary history including Perceval, Gawain, and of course, Galahad. Each chapter is taken from a different text and newly translated by Nigel Bryant for this publication. It’ll give you an idea of the progression of the Grail story which eventually led to Galahad and introduce you to some adjacent texts that may be of interest.

The next medieval text that includes Galahad is La Tavola Ritonda. It’s mostly a Prose Tristan story, but does cover the whole Grail Quest with a fun Italian Galahad named Galeazzo/Galasso. I enjoy this one a lot! Regarding Galasso specifically, it’s an interesting take on the character—he’s described as very gracious and he wields a cool named sword. Plus his purity grants him necromancy powers—at one point he convenes with the dead and doesn’t bat an eye. Just keeps on adventuring. Focused. In his lane. Pretty neat!

After that comes probably the best known Arthurian text, Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. I’ve attached the version of this story abridged by Keith Baines. It’s much easier to read with proper formatting to add quotation marks to dialogue and tighten up the prose. This one also comes with A Companion to Malory which I found exceedingly helpful in breaking down the sometimes convoluted plot threads and character dynamics present in Malory’s story. Many of the essays I’ve attached below relate to this text specifically.

Lastly I would be remiss to exclude The Arthurian Handbook by the goats Norris J. Lacy and Geoffrey Ashe. This volume not only covers medieval texts, but much of the art history that goes hand in hand with Arthurian literature too. There are many paintings, tapestries, stained glass windows, and murals featuring Galahad highlighted in this book. It also includes family trees, heraldry, and maps which can help you conceptualize things detailed in writing throughout the Vulgate.

Now I’m going to list essays without descriptions since there are so many and the titles are pretty self explanatory.

Absent Fathers, Unexpected Sons: Paternity in Malory’s Morte Darthur by Cory Rushton

Born-Again Virgins and Holy Bastards: Bors and Elyne and Lancelot and Galahad by Karen Cherwatuk

Constructing Spiritual Hierarchy through Mass Attendance in the Morte Darthur by David Eugene Clark

Disarming Lancelot by Elizabeth Scala

Galahad, Percival, and Bors: Grail Knights and the Quest for Spiritual Friendship by Richard Sévère

'A Mayde, and Last of Youre Blood': Galahad's Asexuality and its Significance in Le Morte Darthur by Megan Arkenberg

Gender and the Grail by Maureen Fries

Malory and Rape by Catherine Batt

Mothers in the Grail Quest: Desire, Pleasure, and Conception by Peggy McCracken

Seeing Is Believing and Achieving: Viewing the Eucharist in Malory's 'Sankgreal' by Sarah B. Rude

Wounded Masculinity: Injury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte Darthur" by Kenneth Hodges

And that about covers it! This should give you plenty to work with. Beyond these, we’re left with literature outside the medieval era, which is a different conversation. No doubt Alfred Lord Tennyson had a huge influence on how Galahad is perceived today, but that’s irrelevant to a discussion regarding medieval source material, and a topic for another time. Hope this helps you out and you learn all you want to about Galahad!

Take care!

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Scottish actor John (Hunter) Bell born 20th October 1997 in Paisley.

John got his first break in acting when he was eight years old through a Blue Peter competition to be in Doctor Who. He was a huge Doctor Who fan at the time and was doing drama classes, so when his parents heard about the competition, they entered him and he ended up winning. fellow Paisley actor David Tennant! And before anyone corrects me I know Tennant was born in Bathgate, but he moved to Paisley and was educated there!

Without that part in Doctor Who, John says he may not have pursued acting as a career. In fact, he nearly gave up on it altogether as a teenager.

In March 2008, he was the lead singing boy in a promotional trailer for the BBC 1 talent show ‘I’d Do Anything’, since then he has had some great acting roles, the most high profile must have been when he portrayed Bain, son of Bard the Bowman in two of the three epic Hobbit films. He also put in an appearance as Young Spud in T2 Trainspotting.

His TV work, for a 25 year old, is quite extensive, as well as Dr Who other shows have included Life of Riley, Tracey Beaker Returns, Hatfield & McCoys and Into the Badlands.

Of course young John is arguably most well known to the audience of the hit Starz show Outlander.

From season three onward he has been a recurring character, Jamie’s nephew, i.e “Young” Ian Murray, I enjoyed seeing him return to the fold, complete with Mohawk in the last season of the show.

In January 2022 John began his theatrical career in the a one-man show, The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me at Wimbledons New Theatre. John commented at the time;

“It was an opportunity to play somebody gay, and I’d never done that before in my career, even though I am gay. On Outlander, I’m playing a straight character, a guy who’s very different to me, so it was nice".

In a recent interview John admited that 2 weeks before his Young Ian audition he was ready to give up acting. Opening up to Flip Your Wig, Bell explained: “I’ve been in acting since I was eight so I’ve done a lot of big things that have had huge impacts.

“But there was a moment in my career when I was about 16,17, when you’re trying to make that transition from a child to an adult actor, that I wasn’t getting any work.

“I thought I was going to have to give everything up.

“I was ready to go to university and do something else so Outlander came about two, three weeks before I was supposed to start university and I got the audition and I got it.”

According to his IMDb profile, Bell also has another project in the works called The Man In The Box, a drama currently in production.

[mostlyblues]

In honour of his birthday, I'm going to rant about some of my favourite roles of the global treasure (yes, I'm promoting him from the ‘national’ status), David Tennant. Feel free to add your own.💙

Fourteen Doctor: This might seem like an odd choice to start with when there are popular choices like the Tenth Doctor and Crowley, but this character holds a very special place in my heart. I've been a fan of DT for about 6 years now and it started with Doctor Who. I love Ten but Fourteen is just more dear to me. Mostly because he made me excited again for one of my favourite TV shows. As a character, he has all the trademark qualities of the Doctor - the genius level intellect, endless compassion, and love for new adventures. But he is somehow more mature and softer, and I loved this development. Also, that blue coat and that (1) button - you know what I'm talking about.

Phileas Fogg: Such an underrated TV show. The chemistry of the trio, the adventures, the title sequence music - there's so much to love about this. And Fogg is such a real character. So far from perfect, this man will often appear as aloof, vain, self-absorbed and even a coward. But I think Phileas is one of the best roles ever played by Tennant. Yes, he's flawed but he's also intelligent, so incredibly kind, and yes, even brave. If you haven't watched this show, I highly recommend it.

Alec Hardy: So different from most other charming roles of DT, Hardy is a sad wet cat. He's grumpy, not nice, and just really tired of the world (who can't relate though?). His reluctant friendship with Ellie is one of the best parts of the grim show. And the fanfic lover in me can't stop screaming about how whumpable he is.

Crowley: I was going for the top three kind of ranking but the thin dark duke slithered his way over. And how can you not love Anthony J. Crowley? From this pure delightful joy while creating stars and nebulae (I can't get over David's face and the happy noises he makes in this scene) to his reluctant and vast love for his Angel and the earth, Crowley is very easy to fall in love with (take notes, Aziraphale. I know you love him but please use your words. Crowley, at least, tried). 

I wanted to add more characters, especially the Shakespearean ones (I love Hamlet, but Benedick has my heart), but the list won't simply ever end then. So, I'm just going to say name all the ones I love and end it here - Simon Yates (There She Goes), Dave Tyler (Single Father), Campbell Bain (Takin' over the Asylum), Harry Watling aka The Sexy Vicar (Inside Man, this show was so freaking stressful but I loved David's character), every single Shakespearean character he ever played (even the ones I haven't or probably won't ever get the chance to see - cries in Macbeth), and, of course, Scrooge McDuck (DuckTales).

So, thank you DT for gifting the world with some of the best, most adorable, wholesome, gender-enviable characters to ever exist. (Except for the creeps, freaks, and ruthless murderers, which we kind of love as well). Happy Birthday! 💙

[craigpetersennz]

A sneak-peek of a brand new Yori: Hidden artwork, created by me, that will appear in the Always zine by @cindymorganzine! In my latest piece, get ready for a surprise guest! My previous Yori: Hidden art will also be presented in the zine, so it's a great way to see all the Yori: Hidden art in one place! You can download the zine on itch.io this Friday 19 April! All donations will go towards Girls Who Code. The zine will contain Cindy Morgan, Yori, Lora Baines and Ma3a inspired art and stories. I can't wait to see what everyone else has created to celebrate Cindy's life. It's going to be great to see how Cindy, and the characters she portrayed, affected us!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

John Darków, Columbia Missourian

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 10, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 11, 2024

Hurricane Milton made landfall yesterday evening as a Category 3 storm just south of Sarasota, Florida. Before the hurricane hit, thirty-eight tornadoes swept across thirteen counties in the state, putting about 1.26 million people under a tornado advisory. With the hurricane came high winds and water, including ten to twenty inches of rain in the Tampa area. And, although it was not the worst-case scenario people feared, eleven people are dead and about three million are without power because of the storm. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been on the ground since before the storm hit. 

In election news, today, The Atlantic endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. This is only the fifth time since its founding in 1857 that The Atlantic has endorsed a presidential candidate. It is the third time it has endorsed Trump’s opponent. It also endorsed Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 when he ran against extremist Arizona senator Barry Goldwater. And in 1860 it endorsed Abraham Lincoln. 

The Atlantic’s endorsement of Harris echoes its earlier endorsement of Lincoln, not only in its thorough dislike of Trump as “one of the most personally malignant and politically dangerous candidates in American history”—an echo of its 1860 warning that this election “is a turning-point in our history”—but because both endorsements show a new press challenging an older system.

In Public Notice today, Noah Berlatsky listed the many articles claiming that Harris is avoiding the press, including most recently a social media post from Politico’s Playbook that read: “After avoiding the media for neigh [sic] on her whole campaign, Kamala Harris is…still largely avoiding the media.” Berlatsky pointed out that Harris has taken questions from reporters as she campaigns and has sat down with the National Association of Black Journalists, CNN, Spanish language radio station Uforia, and Action News in Pennsylvania, and did a presidential debate with ABC News. Earlier this week, she appeared on 60 Minutes.

With Trump refusing to participate in another presidential debate, Vice President Harris today accepted CNN’s invitation to a live, televised town hall on October 23 in Pennsylvania. In the announcement, Harris-Walz campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon noted that Trump has confined his recent appearances to conservative media.

Indeed, Trump backed out of a 60 Minutes interview and has appeared only on the shows of loyalists. And yet, Berlatsky points out, he is not receiving similar criticism. Indeed, observers note that Trump has tended to get far more favorable coverage than his mental slips, open embrace of Nazi racism, fantastical lies, and criminal indictments deserve. 

In a piece today, Matt Gertz of the media watchdog Media Matters reports that five major newspapers—the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post—produced nearly four times as many articles about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s email server in 2016 in the week after then–FBI director James Comey announced new developments in the story than they did about the unsealing of a new filing in Trump’s federal criminal indictment for alleged crimes related to the January 6 insurrection earlier this month. 

“None of the papers ran even half as many Trump indictment stories as they did on Clinton’s server,” Gertz wrote. “Indeed, every paper ran more front-page stories that mentioned Clinton’s server [than] they did total stories that referenced Trump’s indictment.” “The former president continues to benefit from news outlets grading him on a massive curve,” Gertz wrote, “resulting in relatively muted coverage for his nakedly authoritarian, unfathomably racist, and allegedly criminal behavior.”

On Tuesday, October 8, Ian Bassin and Maximillian Potter of the Columbia Journalism Review outlined Trump’s longstanding attack on the U.S. media as “fake news,” an attack that is ongoing and obvious. (Just today, he threatened CBS and “all other Broadcast Licenses, because they are just as corrupt as CBS—and maybe even WORSE!”)

Bassin and Potter note that in his attacks on the media, Trump is following the pattern of authoritarians like Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who attacked media critics with audits, investigations, and harassment until he “drove independent media from the field.” They also note the observation of Timothy Snyder, a scholar of authoritarianism, that power is often freely given to an authoritarian in anticipation of punishment, what Snyder calls “anticipatory obedience.” 

And yet, in the past in the U.S., when the media has appeared to become captive to established interests, new media have begun to give a voice to the opposition. In the 1850s, when elite enslavers stopped the circulation of newspapers and books calling for abolition, they prompted an explosion of new media that expressed the sentiments of those opposed to the expansion of human enslavement. Editor Horace Greeley led the way with the New-York Tribune in the 1840s. He was keenly aware of the importance of the new press and, as an early convert to the Republican Party, led his paper to become the anchor of a string of new Republican newspapers across the North—including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times—that spread the party’s ideology. 

The Atlantic Monthly’s endorsement of Lincoln in 1860 was part of that movement, and poet James Russell Lowell, who wrote the endorsement, mocked the idea that the press should avoid causing trouble. “We are gravely requested to have no opinion, or, having one, to suppress it, on the one topic that has occupied caucuses, newspapers, Presidents’ messages, and congress, for the last dozen years, lest we endanger the safety of the Union…. In a democracy it is the duty of every citizen to think.”

Harris has nodded to established media, but as Berlatsky points out, there is very little payoff for her in focusing on those venues, since those audiences are generally already quite attuned to politics and are looking for new developments and scandals. In contrast, winning in 2024 means turning out new voters by finding new venues that offer them a political voice. Harris has recognized that media shift by focusing her media appearances on podcasts like Call Her Daddy, radio shows like Howard Stern’s, and television shows like The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The View. 

Campaign staffer Victor Shi noted that, based on averages, Harris’s appearance on Call Her Daddy reached 5 million people, The View, 2.45 million; Howard Stern, 10 million; and Stephen Colbert, 3.2 million—in all, 25 million or more people that traditional media do not reach. (Shi also called attention to the fact that on October 9, the campaign live streamed an Arizona rally by Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz on the World of Warcraft Twitch stream.)  

The Atlantic nodded to the free thought on which the magazine was founded in 1857 when it came out strongly for Harris today. It is endorsing Harris, it said, because she “respects the law and the Constitution. She believes in the freedom, equality, and dignity of all Americans. She’s untainted by corruption, let alone a felony record or a history of sexual assault. She doesn’t embarrass her compatriots with her language and behavior, or pit them against one another. She doesn’t curry favor with dictators. She won’t abuse the power of the highest office in order to keep it. She believes in democracy. These, and not any specific policy positions, are the reasons The Atlantic is endorsing her.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[commence-screaming]

having such a fun time imagining in-universe bain fanfics rn. they would sooooo make him a tumblr sexyman

blond haired green eyed 24 year old named dave and he’s a hot model

Sometimes they theorize that he has a voice changer and they draw him as a sexy lady which is just a female version of Dave

Bain never gets on social media again

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

Hollywood heartthrob James McAvoy is making the rounds in Glasgow -Credit: The Mega Agency

Posted 30th October 2024

Glasgow Times

James McAvoy is currently in cinemas starring in “Speak No Evil”, but the actor is also preparing to step behind the camera with his directorial debut, California Schemin’.

California Schemin': How Two Lads from Scotland Conned the Music Industry, is based on the true story of two Scottish friends Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd who pretended to be a California rap duo, Silibil N' Brains, in a hip-hop hoax based on Bain's autobiography. Two Scottish lads from Dundee conned the music industry by pretending to be an established Californian rap duo, appearing on MTV and bagging a record deal until their scam unravelled.

'California Schemin' will star Séamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley. James McAvoy's directorial debut California Schemin about a hip-hop hoax has presold to StudioCanal for the U.K. and Ireland and a range of other international markets.

California Schemin' is currently in pre-production and begins filming next month.

#californiaschemin #jamesmacavoy #director @seamusrOss @sam_bottomley #StudioCanal

[saibugslegacy]

Meet My Tavs: Idris Baines

Idris is a case where the lore does what I say it does and timelines ware whatever is most convenient for me, for instance the fact that they exist in the same universe as one of my Durges, Kieran. So!

Idris is a Sorcerer, as in they are born with a capacity fir magic but they get into bardic magic really early, so they assume it's just the bardic magic. Essentially that inate magic just makes them an insanely powerful bard.

Idris is born in Eltûrel to their two moms (one of whom is technically their step mom because them and their brother are children born of a deal made by their mama and Mephistopheles). They also have an older brother Eryx who's surprisingly plot relevant.

But when Eltûrel is dragged to and back from Avernus Idris is just a kid and was separated from their family, leaving them to wander the world in search of them. They pick up more bardic talents on the way for survival.

They grow up on the streets of Faerûn, hopping from village to city to village to city, hoping to find any sign of their family or to make a big enough impression as a Bard that they start making enough money to fund a much better search.

On the way they run into the very same group of refugees they find in Act 1, and stick with the refugees for a while, even dating Rolan. But they find a lead on their parents and disappear to follow it, leaving them all behind.

The lead takes them weeks to follow but eventually leads to Baldur's Gate. While there they manage to secure a gig that could be their big break, but on the way they're snatched by the Nautaloid.

The last detail that I won't expand upon here but I feel the need to mention: The Emperor takes on the appearance of Eryx.

[saibug1022]

The colors of pride and their meanings as my Baldur's Gate Couples

I wanted to make this with all my BG3 couples to try and drive home that all relationships with queer people ARE queer, no matter how they present, in that conscience, the sexualities and genders of my Tavs

In Order Of Appearance:

Julius Harlow - Bisexual

Kieran Baines - Agender, omnisexual

Emrys Reydan - Genderfluid, pansexual

Vesper Sterling - Omnisexual

Atlas Heretic - Transmasc, Uranic

Idris Baines - Nonbinary, bisexual

Also, full credit of this idea goes to @laiostoudenn who very graciously let me create a moodboard version of their idea

[todaysdocument]

Panoramic Sketch of the D-Day Beaches

Record Group 331: Records of Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War IISeries: Geographic Intelligence Maps

large, centered on top]: COAST FROM TRANSPORT AREA [top left, column]: Page 6 [continue column, top left]: "With maximum visibility, the coast should be seen from bridge height in the center of the Transport Area (20,000 yards off shore) from GRANDCAMP-LES-BAINS on the right to COURSEULLES on the left, with PORT-EN-BESSIN due south. The coast should appear to be practically level, with a maximum height to the right of PORT-EN-BESSIN, tapering slightly to the POINTE DU HOE on the right and to ARROMANCHES on the left. The 4 1/4 mile stretch of cliff from Exit D1 (VIERVILLE) to POINTE DU HOE should be distinguishable. The Exit valleys D1, D3, E1 and E3 are much less likely to show. On the left of the OMAHA Beach Area, to the left of FOX" [misspelling? should be POINTE DU HOC and not 'POINTE DU HOE'?] [top of column on top right, Page 5] [column, top right, continuation of left column]: "GREEN Beach, the ten-mile stretch of cliff broken by valleys should be distinguishable as far as ARROMANCHES. The only man-made objects which may be discernible in the assault area are the spires of VIERVILLE and COLLEVILLE, as well as the houses on the shore at LES MOULINS, PORT-EN-BESSIN and ARROMANCHES should be distinguishable as towns. The chances are against such visibility. At dawn the coast form ARROMANCHES to the gap at PORT-EN-BESSIN should be the most discernible section, being nearest the east." [two stamps bottom right of top right column: first stamp "DECLASSIFIED per authorities in [illegible other than "C"]. Project 84-(either "515" or "010"). Date [handwritten on line, illegible] by [handwritten initials on line, "JAD"?, followed by another illegible word]; second stamp, in red, just below the first: "APPENDIX 1 TO ANNEX A to OPERATION ORDER BB-44 (crossed out by hand, "TOP-SECRET") - NEPTUNE] [the coastline as described above is depicted horizontally across the page, with two places labeled above their location, "PORT-EN-BESSIN" and "COLLEVILLE"; underneath the coastline depiction "FOX GREEN" and "EASY RED" are labeled and highlighted in their respective colors of green and red] [full transcription at link]

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The Importance of Dr. Lora Baines

This is the short article I wrote for the @losttalestronzine! This zine is now in production! It was a lot of fun to work on and I hope you enjoy this article!

Even though Lora does not make her appearance until the thirteenth minute of the film, her first scene immediately stakes her as a major character. She sits at the computer bay in one of ENCOM’s research labs, which already implies her importance in the field of computer research. This implication is further evidenced by her name tag, which when paused at 15:30 reads: “Dr. Lora [S.?] Baines”. This puts her at the same level of Gibbs (whose tag reads “Dr. Walter Gibbs”) and Alan (“Dr. Alan Bradley”) in terms of education and possible importance.

The franchise that many people have grown to love is built on the bonds between a world of humans and a world of their programs. These tales of heroes and villains across multiple pieces of media, and the exploration of ethics in these worlds would not exist without this connection. This connection would not exist if not for a young Dr. Lora Baines in 1982, who allowed Kevin Flynn to sit down at the computer in front of that laser.