#based on the heart thumbs up meme

[bluebunnysart]

Yippee!! I'm done! Now I can finally say I've made Mesmerizer fanart! 👍♥ Time lapse (and mild rambling) under the cut.

You know, out of all the Mesmerizer fanart I've seen, I don't think I saw a lot of people drawing the thumbs up-heart meme, which surprises me. xD I feel like these two are perfect for that idea. I've had this idea for like maybe 2 months now, so I'm glad I could finally draw it. c:

The date is one day off (it was actually 9/13 but I didn't realize; my schedule is wack so my bad lmao) and it's not like it took me 10 days to make this or anything. The total time elapsed is probably closer to 8-15 hours or something. An hour or two spent on the traditional drawing I think and the rest of it is lining them over and over again until I'm satisfied. I really like neat lineart and last time I skipped a stage, so this time I wanted to push through lol.

The nice thing about Mesmerizer is it's that flat color look that I like, so I can just focus on the lineart and making things neat. Which is great because if I had to shade/color properly, this would take 2x as long. 😂😂😂😂 (is an impatient person)

Anyway, I'm not gonna yap each time I make a drawing or anything. xD I just wanted to 'cuz I cooked. I cooked and delivered!!!! Hooorayyy !! Right now I wanna make meme drawings, so I will be drawing these two (Mesmerizer version) again. Like, three more times. Idk if in succession 😂

Just like last time, you can use my art as long as you credit me and you don't use it to train AI and don't do weird things with it like repost it and pretend it's yours. Thanks! :D

[leighsartworks216]

You Are Mine. Never Forget It.

Ascended Astarion x gn!Spawn!Tav/Reader

This is my first ever Ascended Astarion fic and of course it's spicy. If it's OOC idc

Based on Astarion's new kiss

SPICE BELOW THE CUT

Warnings: ascended Astarion, dom/sub, obedience/controlling, blood, blood drinking

Word Count: 616

Main Masterlist

First Baldur's Gate 3 Masterlist - Second Baldur's Gate 3 Masterlist

AO3

Tag List Form <- Fill this out if you want to be tagged

You sat in the middle of the bed on your knees, hands folded in your lap. You'd been waiting here for so long, but it was all worth it when the door opened and he came sauntering in.

Astarion smirked wickedly as he circled the bed. Dark crimson eyes dragged over your deliciously nude body, drinking you in. His lovely little pet.

"How long have you been waiting here, little thing?" he purred.

You swallowed, keeping your eyes forward as he bed dipped beside you. If your heart still beat, it would have been pounding against your ribcage. "An hour."

"Is that so?"

His nose brushed your skin as he leaned his face down to your shoulder, lips ghosting by but never lingering. A hand slid along your side, thumbing a nipple before it glided between your legs. You bit back a whimper.

His lips grazed your ear as he spoke. "And you've been thinking about me this whole time?"

You nodded and he growled.

"Use your words, pet. I want to hear you say it."

You nearly moaned out, "Yes." Of course you'd been thinking about him this whole time. You fantasized about how he'd react when he found you, what he'd do to you until you were begging for release or mercy - or both. You shivered just thinking about it.

"Hm, perhaps I should reward you for being so patient." His fingers deftly, teasingly, slid along your sex, all the while he studied your face. You fought not to give in to the minimal pleasure, to be a good little thing while he played with you. "What would you like for your reward, my treasure? Just say the word, and it's yours."

You swallowed again, digging a nail into your thigh just to keep you grounded. Softly, almost embarrassed to request it, you asked, "A kiss?"

He chuckled low against your ear. "Is that all, pet?" He nipped your earlobe with his fang, drawing out a little drop of blood. It tasted like fire on his tongue. "As you wish."

His hand left your sex and trailed up your stomach before grabbing your chin. He was met with no resistance when he turned your face toward him. Your eyes tried to stay locked on his, but you couldn't stop looking at his lips, which curled in a smirk.

He tugged you forward and captured your mouth. He seemed to turn utterly ravenous as he bit and sucked your lips, tongue pressing into your mouth and claiming ever inch he could reach for himself. Every gasp and whimper and moan was swallowed up by him. And all too soon it was over.

Roughly pulling you away with his hold on your chin, he looked down at you with eyes darkened by lust. You always had this effect on him. Just your smell was enough to drive him into a frenzy, until he was satisfied he'd claimed you over and over and over again. You were his. You'd never forget it.

He tilted your head side to side, studying the planes of your face, though he couldn't begin to look away from your kiss-swollen lips, slowly starting to bruise. He thrilled thinking about you draining some pathetic whelp, about the blood rushing through your system and flushing you all pretty and deepening the bruises he left behind. Oh, how he would relish that.

"I'm going to have you," he said lowly, trailing his lips along your cheek, "in every single way I can imagine." You whimpered involuntarily, and he rewarded it with a nip along your jaw. "Until you can't stand, can't think, can't speak - is that understood, pet?"

"Yes," you gasped.

He grinned roguishly. "Good."

---

Tag List:

@satelliteapotheosis @hypopxia @flsalazar @beverlybeav @angelofthorr @emiemiemiii @marina-and-the-memes @aurasyn @furblrwurblr @cappsikle @mjmygd @thegirlsadventuresinwonderland @kindadolly @bloopthebat @pandimoostuff @chesb0red @black-star1472 @sessils @puppyg1rl666 @maruichio @cyber-dump-171 @katharynmarie @twinkliker3000 @cherifrog @catching-fire-in-the-wind @phantoms-fandom-blog @thespectacularspaceace @lynnlovesthestars @ashrio20 @bambamwolf87 @astarion-imagine-archive @thistrashisreadytobash @rosxtinted @bongwaterflavoredgatorade

[bugsysaboy]

Kite Headcanons <3

ALRIGHT THIS ONE IS FOR MY FELLOW KITE STANS!!! all 5 of us!!!!

No content warnings, sfw

-has the worst appetite known to man /hj

-he usually just eats soup

-he can easily be thrown off by the texture of certain foods (certified jello hater!)

-although, honestly, if he's hungry enough he'll eat anything.

-autism be damned, my boy can work a grill campfire.

-anxious as FUCK in restaurants. He's too awkward to order and will just s t a r e for too long unintentionally at the waitstaff.

-also will be awkward about starting his meal and will just hork it down when no one is looking. (Look, he grew up on the streets, eating fast so no one takes his food is just a hold over.)

-REALLY GOOD CANDID PHOTOS BUT DO NOT ASK THIS MAN TO POSE! HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HE'S DOING!

-you know that meme that's the person doing the half a heart with their hand and the other person has a thumbs up? ...yeah.

-ACTUALLY THAT BEING SAID he's really handsome when caught off guard, but when he's actually engaging in conversation with someone he's kinda funny looking? Like he'll suddenly be aware of how he's carrying himself and maintaining eye contact and he will over correct.

-This man has no game!!! This man can neither pull nor flirt! 29 years old and even the idea of holding hands gets him flustered.

-on top of this if he's romantically interested in someone he's really prone to just avoiding them.

-KITE AND CRAZY SLOTS IS JUST MANZAI! KITE IS THE STRAIGHT MAN AND CRAZY SLOTS IS THE FUNNY MAN! KITE SAYING "ah, bad roll" AND GRIPING ABOUT CRAZY SLOTS IS JUST A BIT TO HIM! HE THINKS IT'S HILARIOUS BUT NOBODY SEES THIS.

-dad jokes and puns all day everyday

-also he can actually be pretty chatty, like don't get me wrong when he's really focused he'll probably just shut up but during downtime? Around a campfire? He loves to spin a yarn or talk about his work.

-He also loves to hear about what others are passionate about!

-gets a general feel for people really quickly- he'll open up to people he gets good vibes off of pretty fast, but others he's more iffy on he may keep things cordial. This can, however, lead to snap judgements about people that might not be always correct.

-excellent pickpocket, now that he has a stable income through being a hunter he won't use this ability often...

-okay might do it to prank someone

-...or humble them.

-Met Ging when he was 15 and Ging was 18

-if he sets an alarm he somehow always manages to wake up just before it goes off

-hammock conoisseur 😌

-if he was in the real world he'd be Russian. (This is literally just based off of vibes and some edit an artist made of Kite running to Russian hardbass.)

-thinks it's really funny to say "have you considered..." to someone and when they ask him to elaborate he just says "...just... have you considered."

-loves sunflowers, loves sunflower seeds

-likes to keep a spare scarf handy in case someone needs it

-makes the crazy slots noise when he's really trying to concentrate

-favorite candy is saltwater taffy

-I like to imagine that he got the idea for crazy slots because of a boardwalk carnival in the town he grew up in. The carnies knew that Kite could win any of the games they had, no matter how rigged, it was uncanny.

-...probably used the plushies he won as pillows, maybe with the smaller ones he'd let his dogs play with.

-AND YES, HIS DOGS ALL HAD NAMES. ALEXEI, BORIS, SERGEI, PUSHKIN, FYODOR JUST TO NAME A FEW

-Favorite author is Dovstoevsky

-legitimately does not remember where he got his hat from, it's just kinda always been there, you know?

-he's not super focused on material goods and he doesnt really like receiving gifts (exceptions are made for anything handmade or a really cool rock.)

-...call him pretty and he'll fold

[theslotherin18]

Ok, so quick question fellow HH fans. What is Velvet supposed to be based off exactly, like her theme? Yes, I know she was a maid cosplayer in her earlier design but they kinda got rid of that.

Edit: I saw someone say she is a clown/jester which I think is pretty cool ngl.

Valentino is very clearly based off a moth with his fluff and wings and its obvious he is the porn overlord with his pimp fit. The moth theme is quite clever given how irl moths emit pheromones during sex to make it more inticing. His red and white color pallet gets this across as well.

Vox likewise has a tv head and Wi-Fi symbols, blatantly signalling what he has power over along with an electric themed color pallet. The more subtle shark theming with his lair and coat tail shape is a nod to the sin of greed given how shark demons come from the greed ring(helluva boss). His wardrobe being a parallel to Alastor (which I made a post about) and theming makes it clear what he is all about even if it’s nor 100% original (if it ain’t broke don’t fix it)

The character designs, despite all the bashing from haters of Vivzies art style get their point across which is the most important role of character design.

Velvet on the other hand, I am not so sure. If she is based off an animal, idk what she is. Looking at her upfront, you can get the idea that she is an edgy bitch. The only thing she kinda has to play into her social media stuff is the hearts on her vest(?) and the constantly changing hairstyle and scene kid outfit. If I had no prior info, I would think she was Valentinos evil assistant with the repeating heart theme or Val and Vox’s love child incarnate. She doesn’t give Social Media overlord on her own.

I did notice she had a line that is perpendicular to her lips that gives her a doll like appearance which could play into the social media perfection angle but nothing else from her current design seems to go along with this theme.

Now, I have my gripes with a certain genre of character redesigns(the ones who in bad faith trash the originals and try to “fix it” by making the exact same mistakes in their improved one) but if I had to redesign her, I would give her a clear theme.

You could lean into an ocean theme based off internet lingo like “surfing the net” and how the Envy ring in helluva boss is speculated to have a deep sea theme and be ruled over by leviathan(if you like the theory that sinner’s demon form takes inspo from the native born demons that originated from the ring of hell their corresponding vice they most indulged in their earthly life was.). Or perhaps a cat theme given how ubiquitous they are in the early internet, social media and memes.

Perhaps instead of hearts, Vivzie could of used thumbs up, which on social media is an almost universally understood symbol. Maybe more phone or app based iconagraphy(copyright free of course)

Maybe a color pallet that looks less like a blend of Vox and Val’s color pallet that could stand on its own. I think keeping red would be a good call given how vox and Val also have that color, which would unify them as a trio. She has a tendency to blend into the background given how her pallet is both muted(the reddish looking color) and neutral (white and grey)

Idk, I am not expert on this stuff but that’s just what I see.

[slenderofthejoker]

UPDATED INTRO THINGY MA JIGGER!!!! Ace is helping with making it not look like shit like my last one! I'm simply here to keep things organized so Wildcard doesn't get distracted, apologies for the intrusion.

=General information=

Aliases: Wildcard, idiot, dumbass, Wc, ne m'oublie pas fleur (BY ACE!), eldest sib. I don't think the insults need to be included. THEY'RE ENDEARMENTS ACE!

NEVER USE: Joker, don't use that name anymore f!@#ers! Slurs should also be avoided please.

Pronouns: She/he/they, card/cards, dice/dice's, luck/luck's, chaotic/chaotic's. Whatever the f!@# else no preference any and all these are just the main shit.

A 9ft tall (MINUS HEELS) land shark based slenderbeing with a cool as shit fashion sense! Please get more clothes dear....you can not just wear that once outfit. Watch me!

Trans masc, pangender, aroace (maybe cupio f@#$ if I know and apothi) demi-queerplatonic and grayplatonic. Platonic partners with Ace! (I am generally referred to as Pink, but hello.) and eldest sibling to the suits!

I F@#$ING LOVE GIFTS AND TRINKETS GIVE EM HERE!!! Cards and dice and shiny shit! I will take anything you f!@#ers give me!

Hey f!@#ers! I'm the f!@#ing WILDCARD!!

Mess with the sibs or those I give a shit about, you mess with me.

Former dealer at THE suits casino, I like to shake it up every now and again, everything in life's a f@#$ing gamble, all in the cards.

So....what d'ya say?

Wanna make a bet with a Wildcard Doll?

OOC Mod status: SLOW.

OOC under cut.

This blog is a slendlr roleplay blog.

General rules and info:

Mod is not a minor but would appreciate asks be nothing more then suggestive, flirting is allowed with Wildcard but luck is as dense as a rock.

Mod uses pink/pinks/pinkself and xe/xem/xyr pronouns.

Magic anons are allowed. General rule of thumb, be nice, don't be bigoted and any hate will be deleted

(You are allowed to be mean to Wildcard and to bother them within reason as long as it's clear its for in character and not just to be a jerk to people like Mod or others. It is in fact encouraged you snark Wildcard its amusing.)

Shipping is also allowed.

If something is said or done in character that makes you uncomfortable or is too much during an interaction PLEASE let me know.

Blog may sometimes cover topics such as violence, death, cannibalism, threats, biting, and censored swearing (and probably other things...). Things will be tagged as needed.

Fun stuff and mentioned Characters above outside this blog:

100 faces meme list (For doodles, Wildcard and Pink are both options for this)

A03 where mod sometimes puts slendlr oneshots and lore snippets

Wc's Voice (Attempt)

Ace/Pink - @/pinkslenderman

THE SUITS

Hearts - (who is not available anymore I believe) @/slenderofhearts

Diamond - @/slenderofdiamonds

Spade - @/slenderofspades

Club - @/slenderofclubs

Tags list:

slendlr - general fandom tag

the wildcard - general tag

friend of the wildcard (used for an interlude when Pink was a messenger for Wildcard and anytime ey post on here) - general tag

make a bet - ask tag

ooc post/mod post - out of character posting by mod

mod answers - out of character ask answered by mod

(Additional tags for when Mod remembers to use them....will be edited in later for older posts))

ace - tag for asks/start of interactions with Pink in chara

the suits - tags for asks/start of interactions with wildcards sibs in chara

Lore events are sometimes also tagged with set tags but i do not remember them all (usually under the influence of magic anons ex. cheesed wildcard, etc)

[teslacoils-and-hubris]

If in the modern age, what tf2 characters do you think would use tiktok? Sorry im trying to think of an epic question but thats all i can imagine

don't apologize because i clearly had too much fun with this

scout without a doubt. im Not on tiktok so all i know about it from watching commentary youtubers talk about shit i dont care about in the background while i do other stuff, but he would absolutely get sucked into that weird NPC trend. I can see him watching it for hours, then deciding he'd be suuuuper popular if he did it. He does get super popular but its only because people make a game of getting him to break character which is super easy and happens constantly. he's constantly getting into fights with people and is only popular because he becomes this big punching bag laughing stock. Scout of course has no idea about this and thinks he's Finally Made It as an influencer until admin finds out he's been livestreaming from the base and has him shot live on stream and has all traces of his account scrubbed (though some people still got screen recordings) and it becomes this sort of internet true crime obsession for years.

I think Pyro downloaded it to play with filters and got sad when they didn't work on the gas mask. i could see them having a 'does it burn' type channel where the ending clip no matter what it started with or how small it was is always a massive inferno with their thumbs up in the corner and people go wild for it

I think medic would have fun doing tiktok dances and pretending to be a real doctor while telling people that actually *extremely dangerous health hazard* is not only completely safe but really good for you actually!! doing surgery on yourself is all a part of healthy curiosity and totally safe to remove your own heart for fun and profit!

i don't think any of the others would be on tiktok. heavy has a facebook but its all just minion memes and pictures of his guns and hasn't been updated in like 5 years. Spy and Sniper don't touch social media with a ten foot pole. Spy for spy reasons and sniper is a technologically inept hermit who has never had anything fancier than a nokia.

[locallibrarylover]

happy pride everyone

id: a digital drawing based on the "i see no difference love is love" meme format. there are four squares. in the first is Alphonse Berg and Vera Rostova embracing as if they are about to kiss. the square is labeled "regular couple". in the second square is Nikolai Rostov holding a framed photo of Alexander I. there is a heart beside Nikolai's head and the square is labeled "yaoi couple". in the third square is Natasha Rostova and Marya Bolkonskaya. Marya rests her head on Natasha's shoulder and Natasha has an arm around Marya's neck. the square is labeled "yuri couple". in the fourth square is Ilya Rostov, who is winking and holding up his thumb up. text over the square reads "i see no difference love is love". the background is dark blue. end id

[fantasticallyfruity4]

I posted 908 times in 2022

That's 908 more posts than 2021!

240 posts created (26%)

668 posts reblogged (74%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@babyboymunson

@fantasticallyfruity4

@star-x-shine

@memes-saved-me

@depressedstressedlemonzest

I tagged 174 of my posts in 2022

#steddie - 85 posts

#elumax - 15 posts

#stranger things - 14 posts

#eddie munson - 11 posts

#steddissy - 10 posts

#harringrove - 10 posts

#future steddie - 9 posts

#elmax - 9 posts

#mungrove - 9 posts

#wayne munson - 8 posts

Longest Tag: 73 characters

#hopefully y’all will get to marvel level comfort with multi shipping soon

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Someone: ugh, wives am I right?

Steve: no? You’re not? I love my spouse he’s the best person ever he’s my favorite person. Idk what your problem is with your wife but my husband is AWESOME.

Someone: just wait till the honeymoon phase is over. You’ll get it.

Steve: we’ve been together for 15 years

2,260 notes - Posted September 24, 2022

#4

Steve: nice guys finish last is such bullshit YK how many people I let hit just cus they were nice to me? I’m a SLUT for nice. I started fucking Eddie because he called me a good dude like once in the upside down and now we’re practically married.

Robin: Steve that’s because you have a praise kink. Yes, you literally are a slut for nice.

2,310 notes - Posted September 22, 2022

#3

When they’re grown ups ™ Eddie wants to open his own music store.

And Steve supports him, sure, wtf else is he gonna do with this business degree his dad made him get. This will make you feel fulfilled? Then let’s do it babe.

They settle in Brooklyn, it’s perfect really, it’s a nice place to make a home as an alt gay and his bi lover. Maybe one day they settle down in jersey or Long Island with a couple nuggets, but for now it’s home. And they open their alt music shop. It becomes a big deal on the scene, too. A kind of home base. Everyone knows them as a famous infamous shop, and they adore the charismatic, big hearted, kind owner Eddie. People come to him for advice, help. Music and personal. Like a community dad.

And of corse Steves there. Steve runs the store with him, just more of the back office side. Stock, books. Marketing. Sure Steve has his side income, he owns a strip mall, or plays the market. Something to give them a safety net, god forbid. But he does work the store sometimes. And when he does he sticks out like a sore thumb. Some regulars know him, or Atleast know of him as Eddie’s partner but most customers really don’t.

One day it’s very busy, and Eddie much prefers customer servicing on the floor so Steve offers to watch the register, of corse. Hell do anything to get to watch eddie being so animated and happy.

And he’s the out of touch awkward dad he is with all the customers. But he’s still so nice, so supportive (“oh good choice everyone’s snatching this one up. Is this what you kids are groovin to these days?”) and he’s mostly well liked as ‘normie Steve’. Or some shit like that. No one gets his presence but they like him enough.

One day some kids are snickering, “yo whose dad is that behind the register oh my god”

“That’s the owner” one of the kids friends deadpans.

“No, I know Eddie that’s not eddie”

“No, numb nuts that’s Steve. Eddies partner”

“His business partner?”

“Life partner. Like gay husband.”. There is a look of shock on the kids face. They just don’t go together.

Mr polo and khakis over here, is married to Mr hair metal goth rings hand made denim jackets?

But when Eddie in grinning ear to ear, hands on the counter leaning into Steve’s personal space and Steve is returning the love sick flirty look, the two teasing or bantering back and forth by the looks of it. And oh, it make sence. Look at that chemistry. These two, maybe a little confusingly, are so so in love.

6,060 notes - Posted September 22, 2022

#2

Steve is ABSOLUTELY the “drug dealers girlfriend whose the passenger seat princess ™” and just liked going on little adventures when Eddie goes to sell. Is more than thrilled that date night is stopping by a couple parties and a few dudes houses, 7-11 runs, and eventually making out by lovers lake. Give this boy a hickie and a slurpee and its a fucking movie as far as he’s concerned.

Eddie is the plug whose always in a rush bc “I left the boyfriend in the car man what do you want make up your mind”. The “takes Stevie everywhere like a little dog”. The “babe you got me a slurpee 🥺 a-and a red velvet cookie?🥺” the “making out with Steve at the mouth of someone’s driveway”.

12,322 notes - Posted October 4, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Corroded coffin, 80s and 90s metal legend band is seeing a wild resurgence of popularity due to a tik tok trend/ a song of theirs being in a movie/ etc.

This means young people are obsessed with Eddie again. Young people, his og fans. His name is trending on Twitter again. Steve is so happy for him.

One tweet, had 4 photos of Steve and Eddie. One old photo Steve had posted for their 35 year (who could believe that!) anniversary on Facebook of the two of them back in ‘86, one of them in ‘95 from the Grammys, one of them from ‘11 from their wedding, and one of them from a few weeks ago from robins Instagram which Eddie had shared to his story.

The caption reads “who was going to tell me that THIS is who EDDIE MUNSON is married to? He’s literally JUST SOME GUY oh my god this is hilarious this dude could be my English teacher how the fuck did these two even meet” and Eddie thinks it’s so funny, so he retweets it with the caption “high school sweethearts-ish. He’s a social worker BTW, close enough :)”

13,829 notes - Posted September 23, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[orexias]

the infiniteness of the lady of hunger's bedchambers is, in some ways, comforting and, in some ways, frightening. the luxury of the halls of consumption have been to many a place of hedonism and indulgence - those who reside within permanently are no exception, though in the absence of a party, gala, orgy, or feast, they perpetuate that consumption. and here they are: tangled amongst scarlet bedsheets, the peeks of candlelight glowing over the sheen of their flesh. nesta, propped up against the back of the bed, her fingers (long, clawed, painted black) grazing over the supple scaling of raheta's thigh. 

❝ stay with me a while, will you? day will come all too soon. ❞

her voice reaches the ears of the indulgent ascendant, and nesta goes so far as to chuckle, setting down her wine on the sidetable. it is joined by several bowls of fruit and chocolate - some consumed prior to the tangling of their bodies, the needs and cries and whimpering moans of flesh trapped 'twixt some kind of ecstasy. some was consumed during, the multi-sensory hedonism tithed to the lord of indulgence. now, in the afterglow, nesta sips of wine and bites of mango as raheta speaks. 

from the sidetable now, nesta produces a long, slender pipe, which is passed briefly to her draconic lover, where it is lit for nesta to take a few drags of the sweet tobacco, the haze mixing with the incense to create topnotes of tobacco, patchouli, and musk, base notes of the fruit half-consumed and the scent of their sex.

" it's you that leaves, though, isn't it? " she asks, tilting her head down as she pushes blonde hair back behind her lover's face, a thumb stroking her cheek. it passes over her nose, over the top lip, then the bottom, taking her lower lip down just a bit before letting it go. another drag of the pipe, an inhale that seems to fill the full body, softening herself as she exhales. it is exhausting to host the threefold prophecy in one's heart, especially when the world cannot keep being saved by those who should not be expected to save it.

the eldritch rapture will do faerun some good, nesta thinks; those who deem themselves heroes put out of work, those who need some semblance of morality left to find their own paths. the hand that holds the pipe rests on her own stomach; her actions delay faerun of that fate, but she will not accept anything less than perfection. " you must, when the sword coast claims to need you. mm. no matter, though - i will be here so long as the night persists, so long as the morning comes... and so long as you ask me to be here. "

she leans down, a kiss pressed to raheta's head, and she chuckles. " get some rest, pet. i turned you inside out and then some tonight. " / @gildedthrns , from the baldur's gate 3 ask meme. currently accepting.

[kammartinez]

By Owen Matthews

Is the invasion of Ukraine Vladimir Putin’s war or Russia’s war? How has the Kremlin managed to convince such an apparently large swathe of Russians that its aggression against Kyiv is right and just – and maintain that support despite sanctions, setbacks and massacres? These are the questions posed by Ian Garner and Jade McGlynn in their urgently relevant, highly readable studies.

Garner’s Z Generation: Into the heart of Russia’s fascist youth is a brilliantly detailed portrait of the ideological and cultural atmosphere engineered by the Russian state, media and Church – the “unholy trinity” that underpins Putin’s “messianic, apocalyptic, and spiritual goals of Eurasian domination”. It is a chilling and essential book, based on hundreds of online conversations with young people, both those involved in the new wave of Kremlin-sponsored patriotic youth movements and the depressingly small number opposed to them. Garner’s account opens with a pen portrait of the nineteen-year-old Alina, whose “life before the invasion could have belonged to any American or European teenager who loved their phone and fancied big-city life over provincial tedium”. Unlike most of her western counterparts, however, her social media feeds are filled with viciously nationalist and anti-Ukrainian memes. “How did Alina, a seemingly Westernized, Hollywood-loving and carefree teen with dreams of a modern career in the buzzing and cosmopolitan hub of Moscow, turn into an online fascist, seemingly overnight?” the author asks. “And what next for Russia and for the world if a generation of furious, fascist Alinas grows up to take charge of the world’s biggest nuclear power?”

The answer to the first question is simple: the Kremlin’s propaganda machine consists not just of hysterical pundits on television, but also of a nexus of social media and youth organizations of fiendish sophistication and effectiveness. “Attached to ironic internet memes, the warmongering world of the Youth Army is transformed into something familiar, fun, and even fascinating”, Garner writes. “This is the language of fascist youth groups – collectivity, physicality, war, and the future – delivered using the aesthetic forms and fandoms of twenty-first-century social media.”

The frontline messengers of Putinism, then, are distinguishable from western youth influencers only in the content of their message, not in its form. Nikita Nagornyy is the Olympic gold-winning gymnast who heads Putin’s Youth Army, “a paramilitary group for the digital generation”. His feed to his 1.3 million TikTok followers is “indistinguishable from that of any other young fitness influencer”. Yet alongside “inspirational videos, snippets of his intense gym sessions, behind-the-scenes lifestyle shots, exchanges and selfies with other athletes, and training and workout advice” one finds images of Nagornyy in uniform with his followers, whom he praises as “ordered rows of tunics” marching through Red Square. For Russia’s Z Generation, named for the white Z symbol painted on Russian tanks, “the fascist rally – glittering, alluring, ordering – is always accessible with the stroke of a thumb across a smartphone screen”. Never mind that the actual message is, as Garner puts it, an ahistorical “bricolage” of tsarist, Soviet, Christian and nationalist themes, a “nonsensical ideology that combines contradictory elements of the Soviet past, apocalyptical spirituality, [and] material spread directly by propagandists”. Its effectiveness is in its “fast-paced postmodern” presentation. “That’s fascism today”, Garner writes. “It churns up and spits out memes, tropes, and other transitory ideas.”

The second element of the Kremlin’s devastatingly successful battle for the hearts and minds of Russia’s youth has been a huge and well-organized plethora of online groups and youth clubs to suit every personality. These include REAL Ukraine, Antiterror Z, Z for Victory, The Russian Spring, Ztrength in Truth, Victory Volunteers and the Christian group Sorok Sorokov, or Forty Forties. But the largest one is Nagornyy’s Youth Army, which has a $200 million annual Kremlin-funded budget and more than 1,000 offices around the country; it aims to have 3.25 million members by 2030. Members of the Youth Army wear distinctive khaki uniforms with red berets and engage in military parades and weapons training. At the same time kindergartens, schools, colleges and universities have been ordered to teach a new “patriotic” curriculum, corral their children into Z shapes for photo shoots and encourage them to join the Kremlin’s youth groups. “The state is rampaging though childhood, militarizing every aspect of youth”, writes Garner. “Anything and everything is being rewritten to fit the fascist narrative” – including the much-loved Soviet cartoon character Cheburashka, who has been turned into a Z-uniformed soldier.

Garner’s account is also a sharply observed cultural history of Putin-era Russia, tracing the evolution of themes and images in films such as Alexei Balabanov’s film Brother 2 (2000), with its cynical, macho world-view, via Vitaly Lukin’s Breakthrough (2006), a war movie set in Chechnya that was one of the first to glorify the modern Russian military, to Fyodor Bondarchuk’s film Stalingrad (2013), which overtly linked the legacy of the Second World War to contemporary Russian youth. Importantly, Garner also outlines the convoluted path by which Russia in 2022 came to “embody the darkest elements of twentieth-century fascism … a place where an array of ahistorical and quasi-religious thinking, imagery, and myths support a total militarization of the state and a mission to wipe out a racial enemy – the Ukrainian people – and reconquer a lost empire.” Before 2012 the radical, Orthodox nationalist ideas of thinkers such as Alexander Dugin had been confined to the fringes of political discourse. But as Putin faced the challenge of mass demonstrations following his return to the presidency that year, the Kremlin reached out not only to Dugin, but also to nationalist groups such as Spartak Moscow’s Fratria, a gang of violent football fans. “As the state was inviting extremists into organized youth groups and into the apparatus of government, it was also cultivating a far more extreme form of nationalist violence that spiraled from Moscow’s streets onto the internet and back again.”

Both Garner and Jade McGlynn know Putin’s Russia too well to offer a rosy outlook. Garner’s most optimistic scenario is that the Ukraine war is “built on fragile myths” – and that military failure could breed disillusionment in Putin’s “shoddy, incompetent government”. Russia in 2022 was “closer to the USSR of 1989 than the Germany of 1939”, he writes. But McGlynn, in her thoughtful Russia’s War, warns that “while the war is over or about Ukraine it cannot be solved in Ukraine because its roots lie in the Russian political and societal imagination of what their own country is and what it must be”. Even after military disappointment or the death of Putin, the resentment and anti-western paranoia that shape the Putinist world-view will live on.

Russia’s War is an account of how the Kremlin weaponized the politics of memory to create something more than mere propaganda. Orwell-style, Putin’s people have managed to mould both the past and the future through the control of the present. McGlynn points out that the objects of the Kremlin’s propaganda participate actively in their own brainwashing. The 80 per cent of Russians who say they support Putin believe in large part, she avers, because they want to believe. Propaganda “doesn’t work by persuading [people] that this or that event is true because of this or that fact”, she writes. “It works by reinforcing people’s emotions and prejudices; confusing them so they think there is no truth and just fall back on what they do know, or instinctively feel is true; making them think everyone has a point so they should just stick with their side; or that there is absolutely no point in saying anything as the propaganda is everywhere and you are the odd one out.”

The phenomenon of a large constituency of self-deluding believers fuelled by historical fantasies and resentment of various aspects of modernity and globalization is by no means confined to modern Russia. But in Russia the formula has proved unusually successful. This is not, McGlynn argues, because of “some genetic Russian exceptionalism”, but because of the lack of a widespread culture of critical thinking. Russian society is historically based on belonging and social conformity, and the decade of poverty and national humiliation that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union left a deep scar not only on Putin personally, but on the whole generation that lived through it. The result is the deadly cocktail of “ressentiment, resentment and desensitisation that underpin[s] Russia’s especially aggressive form of patriotism, denigratory attitudes towards Ukrainians, inferiority complex towards the West, refusal to acknowledge historical realities, and conflation of victims with perpetrators in the past and present”.

These feelings existed well before Putin came to power, as regular polls by the independent Levada Center in the 1990s clearly showed. But as McGlynn argues, the not-so-secret secret sauce that allowed the Kremlin to transform these aggrieved opinions into a mobilized, war-worshipping society in the run-up to the 2022 invasion was the addition of a vivid cast of external enemies.

So who is Russia fighting then? The West or Ukraine? Yes, them, both of them. And lots of other people besides: satanists; drug addicts; liberal fascist cancel culture; pagans; Russians’ own unerring sense of nobility; LGBTQ+ parades; migratory birds carrying genetic bioweapons; NATO; militant Baltic gays. Such a variegated list of enemies has given rise to a similarly incoherent set of aims. Reading Russian media, you understand that the Russian Army will give Ukrainians life by killing them.

The key to the success of the Kremlin’s propaganda message lies in its unleashing of dozens of narratives at once. The intent is precisely to bamboozle and overwhelm – and to assert that, in a threatening and confusing world, all that Russians can really rely on are the familiar tropes of national identity and greatness, historical memory and, of course, the protective power of the Putin regime.

Whereas Garner and McGlynn ground their books in deeply rooted reporting on Russia itself, Alexandar Mihailovic and Alexander Etkind use the Russia-Ukraine war as a kind of Rorschach blot on which to project their respective theories. Mihailovic’s Illiberal Vanguard: Populist elitism in the United States and Russia explores the manipulation of myths and resentments by ambitious political classes in both countries. Etkind’s main thesis in Russia Against Modernity is that Putin’s war is an “operation against the modern world of climate awareness, energy transition and digital labor”.

Illiberal Vanguard defines “popular elitism” as “both a distinct ideology and the legacy of empires”, an ideology that glorifies the “singular state” as “the only institution that can stand against the nightmare of modernity’”. The central villains of Mihailovic’s book are, on the American side, Donald Trump and the protesters who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, and, on the Russian one, Putin and his political apparatus. What these “acolytes of populist elitism” share is that they “have always been open about who they are. They are people who possess the gift of bodying forth into language the feelings of the common folk”. This popular touch is undoubtedly a skill common to Trump and Putin. But it was also shared by Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Napoleon. Historically, every popularly supported elite – from Robespierre’s revolutionaries to Mussolini’s Blackshirts – has considered itself in some way the voice of the people.

Mihailovic offers a thoughtful comparison of America’s Proud Boys, France’s Rassemblement National, Italy’s Lega Nord, Hungary’s Fidesz, Poland’s Law and Justice party, India’s Bharatiya Janata Party and Putin’s United Russia, focusing on their shared narratives of historical grievance, their communal identification as bulwarks against a globalized world and their generalized resentment of socially liberal cultural values. But he also has an unfortunate tendency to conflate people or groups whose differences exceed their similarities. While Alexander Dugin, Eduard Limonov and Olga Skabeyeva have Putin in common, they occupy very distinct parts of Russia’s propaganda ecosystem. Dugin is a mystical Christian fundamentalist, Limonov was a punk libertarian ultranationalist writer and Skabeyeva is a paid TV propagandist who says whatever her producers tell her to. The Kremlin’s conversion to outright mystical ultranationalism was neither gradual nor inevitable, but an abrupt shift in the wake of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Prior to that rightward lurch Putin’s spin doctors had wavered through a succession of syncretic ideologies composed according to the dictates of political expediency. Unlike the truly committed fascists of the twentieth century, Putin is an ideological chameleon.

Etkind describes Russia Against Modernity as “a lean book about lean modernity and its pompous archaic enemies”. His book casts the current conflict in Ukraine as a clash between two civilizational trends: “paleomodernity”, which defines “progress in terms of the expanding use of nature: the more resources were used and the more energy consumed, the higher was a civilisation”; and “gaiamodernity” (his own concept), which argues that “the further advancement of humanity requires less energy used and less matter consumed per every new unit of work and pleasure”. This thesis is not wrong – insofar as Putin is a prominent climate sceptic and the Russian economy is firmly founded on the export of hydrocarbons. Etkind is also correct that dependence on oil wealth has, for Russia and all other petrol-dependent countries, proved politically and socially poisonous. “Economic growth in the exporting petrostates went hand in hand with the incompetence of the ruling elite, who consolidated their power in order to amass even more wealth”, he writes.

Etkind argues that the Russian elite “perceived the advance of history as an existential threat [that] would damage the oil and gas trade, depriving Russia of its main source of income”. However, to identify climate change as a root cause of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine is eccentric, to say the least. Putin’s elite see the threat posed by the West first and foremost in unabashedly nineteenth-century terms as a battle for spheres of influence, the positioning of armies and the overthrow of regimes. The West may be striving to reduce its consumption of hydrocarbons, but Russia’s customers in the developing world are increasing theirs.

The book is also full of wrong-headed assertions. “When Russia launched its all-out war, the Europeans said goodbye to Russian oil, Putin’s officials to their yachts, and Moscow hipsters to their smoothies”, says Etkind. Not true: European imports of Russian oil products, especially diesel, actually increased in 2022 through trade via third countries, especially India. A few oligarchs’ yachts were seized; the vast majority were not. And Moscow hipsters are still very well supplied with smoothies, as anyone who has been to the city in the past year could confirm. Moreover, the “biggest protest Russia saw during the 2010s” was certainly not “sparked by a plan to ship millions of tonnes of residential waste from Moscow to the pine forests of the Arkhangelsk region”, but by Putin’s return to power in 2012. By 2017 Russia’s stabilization fund had not “lost a half of its assets”, and in 2022 “most” of the money remaining in it was not, as Etkind claims, “seized by sanctions”. The EU is not a “composite state” but a confederation.

The book reaches its strangest flowering in the final chapter. “I am not calling for the collapse of the Russian Federation”, Etkind states. “I am predicting it”. Writing in the past tense after a notional total defeat of Russia, the author foretells that Russia’s “rulers had to move on. But first they had to pay for the colossal damage they had done to their neighbor, and this used up all the reserves they had not already wasted … [Russia] would never sell oil again either: people abroad had somehow learned to live without oil.” Both are attractive fancies, but hardly likely or immediate ones – especially because Etkind appears to have forgotten that Russia possesses more nukes than any other country in the world. “A peace conference was held, modeled after the Paris Peace Conference [1919–20].” In Etkind’s fantasy it dismembers Russia. “The new countries remembered their long period of subservience to the Federation with contempt. Above all, they were grateful to the country that had defeated the Federation in the war.” It is as if Etkind has entirely misremembered the actual effects of the Treaty of Versailles.

Such ill-grounded dreams may comfort some. But others – such as Ian Garner, Jade McGlynn and their readers – can be under no illusion that Russia’s anger and aggression will disappear quickly. Putin’s regime has proved to be devastatingly effective at replacing its future with a perverse vision of Russia’s – and Europe’s – darkest past. Defeating it is a civilizational problem for the whole free world.

[kamreadsandrecs]

By Owen Matthews

Is the invasion of Ukraine Vladimir Putin’s war or Russia’s war? How has the Kremlin managed to convince such an apparently large swathe of Russians that its aggression against Kyiv is right and just – and maintain that support despite sanctions, setbacks and massacres? These are the questions posed by Ian Garner and Jade McGlynn in their urgently relevant, highly readable studies.

Garner’s Z Generation: Into the heart of Russia’s fascist youth is a brilliantly detailed portrait of the ideological and cultural atmosphere engineered by the Russian state, media and Church – the “unholy trinity” that underpins Putin’s “messianic, apocalyptic, and spiritual goals of Eurasian domination”. It is a chilling and essential book, based on hundreds of online conversations with young people, both those involved in the new wave of Kremlin-sponsored patriotic youth movements and the depressingly small number opposed to them. Garner’s account opens with a pen portrait of the nineteen-year-old Alina, whose “life before the invasion could have belonged to any American or European teenager who loved their phone and fancied big-city life over provincial tedium”. Unlike most of her western counterparts, however, her social media feeds are filled with viciously nationalist and anti-Ukrainian memes. “How did Alina, a seemingly Westernized, Hollywood-loving and carefree teen with dreams of a modern career in the buzzing and cosmopolitan hub of Moscow, turn into an online fascist, seemingly overnight?” the author asks. “And what next for Russia and for the world if a generation of furious, fascist Alinas grows up to take charge of the world’s biggest nuclear power?”

The answer to the first question is simple: the Kremlin’s propaganda machine consists not just of hysterical pundits on television, but also of a nexus of social media and youth organizations of fiendish sophistication and effectiveness. “Attached to ironic internet memes, the warmongering world of the Youth Army is transformed into something familiar, fun, and even fascinating”, Garner writes. “This is the language of fascist youth groups – collectivity, physicality, war, and the future – delivered using the aesthetic forms and fandoms of twenty-first-century social media.”

The frontline messengers of Putinism, then, are distinguishable from western youth influencers only in the content of their message, not in its form. Nikita Nagornyy is the Olympic gold-winning gymnast who heads Putin’s Youth Army, “a paramilitary group for the digital generation”. His feed to his 1.3 million TikTok followers is “indistinguishable from that of any other young fitness influencer”. Yet alongside “inspirational videos, snippets of his intense gym sessions, behind-the-scenes lifestyle shots, exchanges and selfies with other athletes, and training and workout advice” one finds images of Nagornyy in uniform with his followers, whom he praises as “ordered rows of tunics” marching through Red Square. For Russia’s Z Generation, named for the white Z symbol painted on Russian tanks, “the fascist rally – glittering, alluring, ordering – is always accessible with the stroke of a thumb across a smartphone screen”. Never mind that the actual message is, as Garner puts it, an ahistorical “bricolage” of tsarist, Soviet, Christian and nationalist themes, a “nonsensical ideology that combines contradictory elements of the Soviet past, apocalyptical spirituality, [and] material spread directly by propagandists”. Its effectiveness is in its “fast-paced postmodern” presentation. “That’s fascism today”, Garner writes. “It churns up and spits out memes, tropes, and other transitory ideas.”

The second element of the Kremlin’s devastatingly successful battle for the hearts and minds of Russia’s youth has been a huge and well-organized plethora of online groups and youth clubs to suit every personality. These include REAL Ukraine, Antiterror Z, Z for Victory, The Russian Spring, Ztrength in Truth, Victory Volunteers and the Christian group Sorok Sorokov, or Forty Forties. But the largest one is Nagornyy’s Youth Army, which has a $200 million annual Kremlin-funded budget and more than 1,000 offices around the country; it aims to have 3.25 million members by 2030. Members of the Youth Army wear distinctive khaki uniforms with red berets and engage in military parades and weapons training. At the same time kindergartens, schools, colleges and universities have been ordered to teach a new “patriotic” curriculum, corral their children into Z shapes for photo shoots and encourage them to join the Kremlin’s youth groups. “The state is rampaging though childhood, militarizing every aspect of youth”, writes Garner. “Anything and everything is being rewritten to fit the fascist narrative” – including the much-loved Soviet cartoon character Cheburashka, who has been turned into a Z-uniformed soldier.

Garner’s account is also a sharply observed cultural history of Putin-era Russia, tracing the evolution of themes and images in films such as Alexei Balabanov’s film Brother 2 (2000), with its cynical, macho world-view, via Vitaly Lukin’s Breakthrough (2006), a war movie set in Chechnya that was one of the first to glorify the modern Russian military, to Fyodor Bondarchuk’s film Stalingrad (2013), which overtly linked the legacy of the Second World War to contemporary Russian youth. Importantly, Garner also outlines the convoluted path by which Russia in 2022 came to “embody the darkest elements of twentieth-century fascism … a place where an array of ahistorical and quasi-religious thinking, imagery, and myths support a total militarization of the state and a mission to wipe out a racial enemy – the Ukrainian people – and reconquer a lost empire.” Before 2012 the radical, Orthodox nationalist ideas of thinkers such as Alexander Dugin had been confined to the fringes of political discourse. But as Putin faced the challenge of mass demonstrations following his return to the presidency that year, the Kremlin reached out not only to Dugin, but also to nationalist groups such as Spartak Moscow’s Fratria, a gang of violent football fans. “As the state was inviting extremists into organized youth groups and into the apparatus of government, it was also cultivating a far more extreme form of nationalist violence that spiraled from Moscow’s streets onto the internet and back again.”

Both Garner and Jade McGlynn know Putin’s Russia too well to offer a rosy outlook. Garner’s most optimistic scenario is that the Ukraine war is “built on fragile myths” – and that military failure could breed disillusionment in Putin’s “shoddy, incompetent government”. Russia in 2022 was “closer to the USSR of 1989 than the Germany of 1939”, he writes. But McGlynn, in her thoughtful Russia’s War, warns that “while the war is over or about Ukraine it cannot be solved in Ukraine because its roots lie in the Russian political and societal imagination of what their own country is and what it must be”. Even after military disappointment or the death of Putin, the resentment and anti-western paranoia that shape the Putinist world-view will live on.

Russia’s War is an account of how the Kremlin weaponized the politics of memory to create something more than mere propaganda. Orwell-style, Putin’s people have managed to mould both the past and the future through the control of the present. McGlynn points out that the objects of the Kremlin’s propaganda participate actively in their own brainwashing. The 80 per cent of Russians who say they support Putin believe in large part, she avers, because they want to believe. Propaganda “doesn’t work by persuading [people] that this or that event is true because of this or that fact”, she writes. “It works by reinforcing people’s emotions and prejudices; confusing them so they think there is no truth and just fall back on what they do know, or instinctively feel is true; making them think everyone has a point so they should just stick with their side; or that there is absolutely no point in saying anything as the propaganda is everywhere and you are the odd one out.”

The phenomenon of a large constituency of self-deluding believers fuelled by historical fantasies and resentment of various aspects of modernity and globalization is by no means confined to modern Russia. But in Russia the formula has proved unusually successful. This is not, McGlynn argues, because of “some genetic Russian exceptionalism”, but because of the lack of a widespread culture of critical thinking. Russian society is historically based on belonging and social conformity, and the decade of poverty and national humiliation that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union left a deep scar not only on Putin personally, but on the whole generation that lived through it. The result is the deadly cocktail of “ressentiment, resentment and desensitisation that underpin[s] Russia’s especially aggressive form of patriotism, denigratory attitudes towards Ukrainians, inferiority complex towards the West, refusal to acknowledge historical realities, and conflation of victims with perpetrators in the past and present”.

These feelings existed well before Putin came to power, as regular polls by the independent Levada Center in the 1990s clearly showed. But as McGlynn argues, the not-so-secret secret sauce that allowed the Kremlin to transform these aggrieved opinions into a mobilized, war-worshipping society in the run-up to the 2022 invasion was the addition of a vivid cast of external enemies.

So who is Russia fighting then? The West or Ukraine? Yes, them, both of them. And lots of other people besides: satanists; drug addicts; liberal fascist cancel culture; pagans; Russians’ own unerring sense of nobility; LGBTQ+ parades; migratory birds carrying genetic bioweapons; NATO; militant Baltic gays. Such a variegated list of enemies has given rise to a similarly incoherent set of aims. Reading Russian media, you understand that the Russian Army will give Ukrainians life by killing them.

The key to the success of the Kremlin’s propaganda message lies in its unleashing of dozens of narratives at once. The intent is precisely to bamboozle and overwhelm – and to assert that, in a threatening and confusing world, all that Russians can really rely on are the familiar tropes of national identity and greatness, historical memory and, of course, the protective power of the Putin regime.

Whereas Garner and McGlynn ground their books in deeply rooted reporting on Russia itself, Alexandar Mihailovic and Alexander Etkind use the Russia-Ukraine war as a kind of Rorschach blot on which to project their respective theories. Mihailovic’s Illiberal Vanguard: Populist elitism in the United States and Russia explores the manipulation of myths and resentments by ambitious political classes in both countries. Etkind’s main thesis in Russia Against Modernity is that Putin’s war is an “operation against the modern world of climate awareness, energy transition and digital labor”.

Illiberal Vanguard defines “popular elitism” as “both a distinct ideology and the legacy of empires”, an ideology that glorifies the “singular state” as “the only institution that can stand against the nightmare of modernity’”. The central villains of Mihailovic’s book are, on the American side, Donald Trump and the protesters who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, and, on the Russian one, Putin and his political apparatus. What these “acolytes of populist elitism” share is that they “have always been open about who they are. They are people who possess the gift of bodying forth into language the feelings of the common folk”. This popular touch is undoubtedly a skill common to Trump and Putin. But it was also shared by Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Napoleon. Historically, every popularly supported elite – from Robespierre’s revolutionaries to Mussolini’s Blackshirts – has considered itself in some way the voice of the people.

Mihailovic offers a thoughtful comparison of America’s Proud Boys, France’s Rassemblement National, Italy’s Lega Nord, Hungary’s Fidesz, Poland’s Law and Justice party, India’s Bharatiya Janata Party and Putin’s United Russia, focusing on their shared narratives of historical grievance, their communal identification as bulwarks against a globalized world and their generalized resentment of socially liberal cultural values. But he also has an unfortunate tendency to conflate people or groups whose differences exceed their similarities. While Alexander Dugin, Eduard Limonov and Olga Skabeyeva have Putin in common, they occupy very distinct parts of Russia’s propaganda ecosystem. Dugin is a mystical Christian fundamentalist, Limonov was a punk libertarian ultranationalist writer and Skabeyeva is a paid TV propagandist who says whatever her producers tell her to. The Kremlin’s conversion to outright mystical ultranationalism was neither gradual nor inevitable, but an abrupt shift in the wake of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Prior to that rightward lurch Putin’s spin doctors had wavered through a succession of syncretic ideologies composed according to the dictates of political expediency. Unlike the truly committed fascists of the twentieth century, Putin is an ideological chameleon.

Etkind describes Russia Against Modernity as “a lean book about lean modernity and its pompous archaic enemies”. His book casts the current conflict in Ukraine as a clash between two civilizational trends: “paleomodernity”, which defines “progress in terms of the expanding use of nature: the more resources were used and the more energy consumed, the higher was a civilisation”; and “gaiamodernity” (his own concept), which argues that “the further advancement of humanity requires less energy used and less matter consumed per every new unit of work and pleasure”. This thesis is not wrong – insofar as Putin is a prominent climate sceptic and the Russian economy is firmly founded on the export of hydrocarbons. Etkind is also correct that dependence on oil wealth has, for Russia and all other petrol-dependent countries, proved politically and socially poisonous. “Economic growth in the exporting petrostates went hand in hand with the incompetence of the ruling elite, who consolidated their power in order to amass even more wealth”, he writes.

Etkind argues that the Russian elite “perceived the advance of history as an existential threat [that] would damage the oil and gas trade, depriving Russia of its main source of income”. However, to identify climate change as a root cause of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine is eccentric, to say the least. Putin’s elite see the threat posed by the West first and foremost in unabashedly nineteenth-century terms as a battle for spheres of influence, the positioning of armies and the overthrow of regimes. The West may be striving to reduce its consumption of hydrocarbons, but Russia’s customers in the developing world are increasing theirs.

The book is also full of wrong-headed assertions. “When Russia launched its all-out war, the Europeans said goodbye to Russian oil, Putin’s officials to their yachts, and Moscow hipsters to their smoothies”, says Etkind. Not true: European imports of Russian oil products, especially diesel, actually increased in 2022 through trade via third countries, especially India. A few oligarchs’ yachts were seized; the vast majority were not. And Moscow hipsters are still very well supplied with smoothies, as anyone who has been to the city in the past year could confirm. Moreover, the “biggest protest Russia saw during the 2010s” was certainly not “sparked by a plan to ship millions of tonnes of residential waste from Moscow to the pine forests of the Arkhangelsk region”, but by Putin’s return to power in 2012. By 2017 Russia’s stabilization fund had not “lost a half of its assets”, and in 2022 “most” of the money remaining in it was not, as Etkind claims, “seized by sanctions”. The EU is not a “composite state” but a confederation.

The book reaches its strangest flowering in the final chapter. “I am not calling for the collapse of the Russian Federation”, Etkind states. “I am predicting it”. Writing in the past tense after a notional total defeat of Russia, the author foretells that Russia’s “rulers had to move on. But first they had to pay for the colossal damage they had done to their neighbor, and this used up all the reserves they had not already wasted … [Russia] would never sell oil again either: people abroad had somehow learned to live without oil.” Both are attractive fancies, but hardly likely or immediate ones – especially because Etkind appears to have forgotten that Russia possesses more nukes than any other country in the world. “A peace conference was held, modeled after the Paris Peace Conference [1919–20].” In Etkind’s fantasy it dismembers Russia. “The new countries remembered their long period of subservience to the Federation with contempt. Above all, they were grateful to the country that had defeated the Federation in the war.” It is as if Etkind has entirely misremembered the actual effects of the Treaty of Versailles.

Such ill-grounded dreams may comfort some. But others – such as Ian Garner, Jade McGlynn and their readers – can be under no illusion that Russia’s anger and aggression will disappear quickly. Putin’s regime has proved to be devastatingly effective at replacing its future with a perverse vision of Russia’s – and Europe’s – darkest past. Defeating it is a civilizational problem for the whole free world.

[cybervigilante]

he appears in a crackle of electricity, thin, wispy residues of borrowed speedforce charge gone just as quickly. the silence after such a flashy arrival is always deafening, as lackluster as his subsequent ' hi ' spoken quietly between a single labored breath at the heel of their bed. his mouth splits into a lopsided grin, amused, as always, by the way Linda's groggy confusion gives way to unbridled emotion. he pulls down his cowl as she scrambles across the length of their bed to wrap her arms around his center and squeeze. Wally laughs brightly, cacophonous amidst nocturnal serenity, infinitely delighted and in love. she would have scolded him for it under other circumstances, warry excuses riddled with fears of waking the children, yet she seems too invested in rejoicing upon his return to do so now. her head presses against the base of his abdomen as his rugged palm runs over her hair, thumb running up and down the base of her neck.

“    it was only three weeks.     “ he teases in a hushed drawl, making reference to his extended stay away from her on the JLA watchtower. @lightsped pulls away from him slightly, head tilting as her eyes peel as if to say ' you think that's short ? ' it makes him snort out another muffled laugh, knowing well time between them functioned differently than with anyone else. three weeks apart could feel like eternity, and eternity could feel like a second; what stood most important was that they'd wait all that and more for the chance to be together again.

Wally's palm gently cups the back of her head, keeping her eyes on him as he kneels down with a gruff sigh. his body ached with the soreness of inaction after constant movement, yet it could not deter him from admiring her ⸻ a beauty singular to him, whetting his every appetite and whim in ways no other being could. his nose nudges up against the tip of her own, drawing a tittering laugh from Linda as her arms, freed from his waist, now drape around his neck. he draws in languidly, pressing a peck against her petaled lips before covering her mouth with his own in an ‘ i  missed  you ’  kiss.

he holds her face close up against his own after they've parted, hands sliding forth and resting against her cheeks to encase her face with the tenderness afforded only to precious things. they look at each other adoringly for the span of minutes, time passing gently before Linda wakens completely, nose scrunching as she dismisses him with a loving, yet brutally honest; “    honey, you stink.     “ Wally withdraws with a shuddering laugh, heart fluttering still despite her frankness.

KISSING  MEME / NOT ACCEPTING

[myrablurple]

You have just opened Pandora’s Box /j

Anyways, so my AU focused around a human teenage girl from our world where she and two twins, cause this AU is lowkey based off a dream I had, are now in the DBZ verse pre-Dragon Ball and under Frieza’s thumb since he wanted the girl to tell him everything lmfao.

The long story short of it is: it’s basically the girl maturing and adapting to the new world around her, a look into characters’ psyches, an attempt at the whole Good Vs Evil thing since my OC grew up to respect and be kind to others but the Frieza Force is anything but that.

My main cast literally is like my OC, and then characters like Appule. Raspberry. Sūi. I didn’t focus hardly anything on the Saiyans cause there’s already a shit ton of fanfics revolving around them and I’m sorry, but they don’t interest me as much with the amount of headcanoning and world building I did for the lower level grunts.

Overall, I wanted to see what would happen if Frieza basically took over the Galaxy thanks to his cheat sheet but a lot on how the dark world around my OC affects her and changes aspects of her while her kind hearted nature influences those around her and actively start becoming “better” people.

Which I can make it feel more alive with them actively exchanging memes, music, etc.

Oh I have her shipped with Cui too. That’s a whole other level of fun writing there

i wonder if the frieza force had like. memes. space memes. like really really awful memes made by really really awful people.

like a planet gets blown up by someone or other and all around the murder cafeteria you hear people saying "did you hear planet xlaxor exploded?" "someone blew it up?" "no it just did that"

[kyopmi]

♡ — PLACEHOLDER

“you're not just a temporary guest to fill in the vacant spot until he can find a long-term occupant.”

・❥・pairing suna rintarou x gn!reader

・❥・content angst + 0.83k words + loosely based on ‘milk teeth’ by niki

・❥・notes this is my submission for @taintedsorrcw & @mamsvi 's somnum extererri collab! thank you for hosting~

“TIME WAS ALWAYS A MEASUREMENT OF THIS RELATIONSHIP AND WE FINALLY RAN OUT.”

the thirteen words printed in bold, black letters against a contrasting white background stare at you mockingly from the screen of your phone as you glare back at it. you internally scoff at the instagram post you happened upon on your explore page, swiftly scrolling away with a flick of your thumb.

but, deep down, you know the quote only managed to stir your emotions because it hit a little too close to home.

since the beginning of your relationship with suna rintaro, it has always been painfully obvious that you were infatuated with him. most of the time, you would be the one to text him first, to greet him cheerfully as you pass each other in the hallways, to ask if he'd like to have lunch together.

to an outsider, it might even seem pathetic or pitiful, the way you would pine after the man like a lovesick puppy when he barely made half the effort you were giving. but you didn't care – you were – are constantly chasing that high when suna would text back with a silly meme or smiley face, when he would smile back at you, when the two of you would converse about the latest happenings over a warm meal. the way he would laugh at your jokes, or casually throw a cheesy pick up line your way never fails to make your heart flutter.

and whenever he reciprocates your advances, it shoots a glimmer of hope straight to your heart, thinking maybe all your friends were wrong about him, that he's just as in love with you and that he's not going to just up and leave one day the moment he finds someone else.

that you're not just a temporary guest to fill in the vacant spot until he can find a long-term occupant.

it hasn't even been a year since you started officially dating suna, but the reality you've been denying for so long is beginning to unravel at your feet.

the familiar alarm blaring from his phone pulls you out of your sleep. the sun has barely risen and the room is still dark, but you can still make out his figure sitting up on the other side of the bed, the light from his phone screen illuminating his face. you follow suit, letting the blankets slip from your shoulders and land on your lap as you shuffle closer to him.

“rin,” you mumble out, stifling back a yawn as you try to rub the sleepy haze from your eyes.

suna briefly glances at you from over his shoulder. “y/n. you're awake,” he points out the obvious, voice scratchier than usual. “sorry. you should go back to sleep.”

you shake your head. “s'okay. i don't mind.”

suna nods without saying anything else, opting to leave for the bathroom to get ready for his day without sparing you a second look.

meanwhile, as you watch his back disappear from your sight, you force yourself to bite back a sigh despite the tug in your heart, throwing the blankets off of you and making your way to the kitchen.

suna appears in the doorway, already clad in his jacket and his bag slung over his shoulder, just as you place the last pancake on top of the wobbly stack. your eyes meet momentarily, making the two of you pause in your steps.

“rin,” you call out, offering a soft smile to him, “you should eat before you go. i got your favorite syrup at the store yesterday.”

your boyfriend awkwardly scratches the back of his neck. “oh, uh, i can't today,” he admits, “the team's going out for breakfast before practice today.”

it's impossible for him not to pick up the sudden change in your emotions no matter how much you try to hide them, evident by how fast the corners of your lips fall and your brows furrow.

then again, it would also be impossible for him to be unaware of how he has been, and still is, leading you on.

suna takes three large strides towards you and stands in front of you, taking your hands in his as he leans in to press a chaste kiss on your forehead. “sorry, babe,” his apologies are murmured. “it was a spur of the moment plan. we can have eat some other time, yeah?”

you hate the way your heart skips a beat at his bare-minimum offer.

how you still put on a smile for suna as he closes the door behind him without another thought and you're left alone in the empty apartment once again.

and in your heart, you know it's inevitable — the sand in your hourglass is quickly trickling out and it's only a matter of time until either one of you decide to stop pretending this love's not meant to be, and you were never the one meant to reside in his heart.

until then, you think you're fine being a placeholder.

sorry to suna rintaro for this, ik you're actually a very sweet dork🫶

[sleepybeanmal]

Okay hear me out tho: TWST Boys as Songs in my YouTube Music Shuffle

Note: This is just what I associate them with, partially based on headcanons, but there’s not much rhyme or reason to it so no need to get upset if you don’t think the choice makes sense

HEARTSLABYUL

- Riddle- GRRRLS, AViVA

- Trey- Dear Hearts and Gentle People, Bob Crosby and the Bobcats

- Cater- Thumbs Up, MOMOLAND

- Ace- God Save the Queen, The Sex Pistols

- Deuce- Love Me As Though There Were No Tomorrow, Nat King Cole

- BONUS: ADeuce- Dancing With Myself, Generation X

SAVANACLAW

- Leona- Tear You Apart, She Wants Revenge

- Ruggie- Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked, Cage the Elephant

- Jack- Mister Sandman, The Chordettes

OCTAVINELLE

- Azul- Beyond the Sea, Bobby Darin

- Jade- Brass Devil, Parov Stelar

- Floyd- Crab Rave, Noisestorm

SCARABIA

- Kalim- Jump in the Line, Harry Belafonte

- Jamil- Snake Charmer, Parov Stelar and Kovacs

POMEFIORE

- Vil- POP/STARS, K/DA

- Rook- Vampire, The Orion Experience

- Epel- Kingslayer(feat. BABYMETAL), Bring Me the Horizon

IGNIHYDE

- Idia- Me!Me!Me!, Teddyloid (feat. Daoko)

- Ortho- Doom Crossing: Eternal Horizons, The Chalkeaters

DIASOMNIA

- Malleus- Carnival of the Animals/ XIII, The Swan, Camille Saint-Saëns OR Clair de Lune, Claude Debussy

- Lilia- Hooked on a Feeling, Björn Skiffs OR Take On Me, A-ha OR Never Gonna Give You Up, Rick Astley(Honestly just pick a song and that’s got some memes attached to it and bingo)

- Sebek- Stand By Your Man, Tammy Wynette(Sidenote:This song gets really funny in the context of Sebek as Malleus’s guard/personal retainer and watching Malleus just behave like an absolute crackhead with MC but is otherwise kind of fucked up in the irl context😅)

- Silver- Home(from UNDERTALE, feat. FamilyJules), Adriana Figueroa OR Mountain Hymn, Rhiannon Giddens

[134340am]

hi again! this is the previous anon. Thanks for responding quickly, i just needed to make sure i wont make u uncomfy with my request. Number 19 on the kiss list reminded me of that meme wherein one dude sat on his friends shoulder to kiss their significant other on the window (am not sure if ur familiar with it!) so i thought i’d request that particular concept but its the reader with their bnha girlie besties going to the boy’s windows instead… maybe with Shouto? Just because i think he’ll probs be so adorable about it 🤤🌸🤤

19. "if we’re caught kissing we’re most likely dead but let’s risk it"

todoroki shouto x gn!reader, 0.8k words, sfw

perhaps it was the post-midterm restlessness. perhaps it was the fact that it was a friday evening and there weren’t any more exams to study for next week. or perhaps it was because the ever-responsible, ever-diligent class president iida had matters outside of school to attend to, that led to this – half the class being banned from using their quirk for three days for participating in a water fight in the dorms.

and with your weather-based quirk that soaked everyone to the bone with a fridge-sized rain cloud you summoned up, you were definitely not exempted from this punishment, leaving you with a sticky and unsightly quirk-nullifying patch slapped onto your arm by aizawa-sensei and an order to stay in your rooms for the next three days.

well, you guess it could be worse. your patch, about the size of a bottle cap and patterned with pastel blue and yellow stripes, was certainly easier on the eyes than bakugou’s hot pink patch dotted with sleeping kittens. (you expect aizawa-sensei plays favourites, not that you care – seeing bakugou get mad at a little hot pink sticker on his arm was pretty darn funny.)

what wasn’t funny was the alarming text you got from shouto as you were getting ready for bed. as you were reaching over your nightstand to switch off your lamp, your phone pings with a distinct text tone – a light, tinkling sound that your boyfriend picked out himself. and you’re almost embarrassed at the way you dived for your phone at the foot of your bed.

you’ve spoilt me – i can’t sleep without a goodnight kiss. what should i do? reads the text. you smile at the simplicity and sincerity embedded in the message.

but your initial excitement was quickly overcome with guilt; because it’s true – you have spoilt him with goodnight hugs and kisses, and it’s your own foolishness that will have shouto staying up late tonight. and given how you probably won’t be able to sleep without having your own share of goodnight kisses too, you suppose you won’t be falling asleep anytime soon.

but what can you do? blow him a kiss over the phone and ask for one back? send him some smiley, kissy emojis and call it a day? hit record and send over a video? (the thought of it makes you cringe. sure, you loved shouto dearly, but you would rather eat a sock.)

another loud ping breaks your train of thought.

i’m going to try to sleep now. goodnight, love. sleep well!

oh. now your heart hurts. you know you have to do something. and lucky for you, you know just the right person who’d be happy to help…

so you call your ever-reliable neighbour. ochako picks up almost immediately, still sounding energetic and lively despite it being late.

“what’s up, babe?”

“listen – you’re the only person on this floor that hasn’t gotten a quirk ban from aizawa-sensei, so i need your help. and you have to promise me you won’t utter a word of this to anyone else.”

a minute later, you find yourself on your balcony (and ochako on hers) going over the plan one more time. when ready, you two high five, causing you to float upwards.

with ochako’s help, you manage to float onto shouto’s balcony, gripping the edge as tightly as you can to stop yourself from floating away into the next hemisphere. a thumbs up lets ochako know to let you down, and you find yourself flopping clumsily onto the floor of his balcony.

as promised, shouto’s gone to sleep: the light under his curtains has gone out. but you knock anyway and pray that he’ll respond.

a moment passes before you hear the shhhhhhick of his screen door sliding open. enter: one sleepy shouto rubbing his eyes, confused, while the hair at the back of his head sticks up adorably.

“how did you get up here? and what are you doing here, love?”

“i’m here to give you your goodnight kiss, of course.”

so with adrenaline flooding your veins and the cool night air kissing your heated skin, you pull him in and meet his lips. shouto melts into you immediately, love-struck and relieved to have you in his arms one last time before the day ends. a cold hand – must be his right one – slips behind your head to massage at your neck, and all the leftover stress from midterms dissipates immediately.

the kiss is relatively chaste and sweet, the two of you simply content with being near each other. eventually, shouto pulls away to look at you, thumb swiping over your bottom lip as an amused smile stretches across his pink lips. “you know, we’d be dead if someone catches us up here.”

you can’t help but smile back.

“worth.”

(series masterlist) (masterlist)