#first the nazi gold

[treesthatarepeachy]

i just learned that women couldn’t vote in Switzerland until 1971.... wtf

[pochapal]

mystery number Another One to do with the gold: where it was and where it's been moved. i hate to say it but i think george's point here is actually worth considering a little. like if kinzo bought rokkenjima using the gold that was already on rokkenjima what does that actually mean.

[kwanisms]

Kinktober 「10:01」 — x.minghao

» seventeen menu | the8 menu | kinktober masterlist «

➮ half-dragon!Minghao × fem!Reader wc: 7.3k summary: After inheriting an estate deep in the Bavarian Alps from his maternal grandfather, Minghao arrives to find the estate has survived the war unscathed and that deep underground is a vault full of historic and old art dating back to the 8th century. He decides to hire an appraiser to inspect the collection but becomes enamored with her. genres/themes/au: angst/fluff/smut; supernatural, horror, thriller, historical; non idol au, monster idol au, historical au, post-ww2 au warnings: adult dialogue, female reader, mentions of: food & alcohol consumption, supernatural & horror themes, post ww2 in Europe, allusions to the Nazi party; sexual content (18+ mdni), see smut warnings under the cut! taglist has been moved to reblogs join my taglist! taglist for kinktober is CLOSED. Strikethrough means I cannot tag you. MINORS WILL BE BLACKLISTED & BLOCKED. AGELESS BLOGS WILL ALSO BE BLOCKED.

a/n: this was a rough time to get started and i have to restart twice, once after completely redoing the plot. it was difficult but once i changed the plot, things flowed so much more naturally! but here we are baybee! kicking off Kinktober 2024 with dragon!Minghao in the 1940's post WW2! i did minimal research on this cause I'm a stickler for world building but I hope you all enjoy the first part of Kinktober. one day, 30 to go! as always, this is a work of fiction and all characters are not reflective of their respective irl counterparts. for entertainment purposes only.

smut warnings: teratophilia (aka monsterfucking), mirror sex, sex photos, unprotected sex (don’t do this lol), use of pet names (bao bei, beibei, sweetheart, etc.), oral (f receiving, m receiving), fingering (f receiving), and that should be all but let me know if I missed some! kinks: mirror sex + sex photos dialogue prompt: ❛❛ Don’t cover your mouth, I want everyone to know how good I make you feel. ❜❜

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Whether it was the scenery itselves or the dragon blood in him, Minghao loved the serenity and peace that seemed to accompany traveling through the mountains. This drive was a vaguely familiar one though he hadn’t been on this road since he was a young child.

He looked out the window as the car climbed higher, the trees on one side giving way to the view of the valley below. It was a picturesque scene, a beautiful lake at the base of the mountains surrounded by a forest of oranges, reds, yellows, and greens. He turned his gaze away as the car turned, following the curve of the road as the mountain flattened out.

The road was lined on either side with trees, providing cover from the cloudy, gray skies as the car drove along. Minghao caught a glimpse of the manor through the tunnel of trees, intrigued to see what state it was in since the hospitalization and death of his grandfather.

He hadn’t been to this estate since he was a young child, visiting with his mother until he threw a fit about going again. Since then, he had not stepped foot on the grounds, preferring to spend the holidays with his mother instead in their ancestral home.

Now he was in his late twenties and returning to the vacation home of his maternal line after being bequeathed the estate in his grandfather’s will. The car broke through the line of trees, taking a slight curve, forest on one side and a stone wall that dropped into a lower valley on the other.

The manor was just as he remembered, imposing and gray with gothic overtones and the facade made almost entirely out of stone. The angled roofs curved at the base and sharp spires at the ridges along the roofs. The majority of the stone was limestone, edged with a darker color of stone.

As the car pulled up, a light wind blew, the mix of orange gold, and brown leaves blowing across the stone, hitting the wall overlooking the valley. Minghao settled back in his seat, looking up at the imposing mansion, wondering the state of the interior. Outside, the place looked well kept but the inside could be an entirely different story.

The car pulled to a stop, the engine cutting and silence falling over the interior as the driver got out. He made to open the door himself but the driver beat him to it. Minghao got out, buttoning his coat as he looked up at the manor, thanking the driver. Up close, the estate looked almost immaculate. The windows had the curtains drawn, not allowing him to see inside the house.

The front door opened and a rather serious and proper looking man exited the house, followed by an equally serious and proper looking woman. They waited as Minghao turned to look at the driver unhooking the luggage from the back rack. Minghao walked over to greet the couple.

“Good afternoon,” the woman said, curtseying while the man bowed his head. “You must be Minghao,” the man asked to which Minghao nodded. “Yes,” he said softly. “You’ve grown quite a bit since we last saw you,” the woman spoke. “I used to attend to you when you were a child,” she continued. 

“Your bags will be brought into the red room,” the man interjected. “It’s the only renovated room.” Minghao nodded. “And you two are?” Minghao asked. “I’m Klaus,” the man introduced before gesturing to the woman. “And this is Renate.”

The woman nodded, giving Minghao a kind smile. “Please, come this way,” Renate said, gesturing to the house. They walked in silence to the house, up the steps and into the foyer. Minghao looked around, taking in his surroundings with an impressed air.

The foyer was small but spacious enough with a small coat room off to the left and to the right was the library, the door opened. “That library was your grandfather’s favorite place in the house,” Renate said, noticing Minghao’s wavering attention. “How many bedrooms does this place have?” Minghao asked, changing the subject.

“Ten,” Renate answered as the driver and one of the staff started bringing in his trunks. “Right, this way,” Klaus said, gesturing to them to follow him, leading them through the foyer and entrance hall and disappearing through an open doorway.

“Shall I give you the tour or would you like to rest?” Renate asked. Minghao looked around once more before turning to look at her. “I think a tour would be nice,” he said. “Will give me an idea of the condition and state of the house,” he continued, looking around once more. “Yes. I think a tour is in order.”

Renate took him around the house, showing him the different rooms. From what he could see, only a handful of the rooms were in need of renovations and a few could use upgrades but were not in dire need. The kitchen was functional and cozy with a large dining room attached.

Also off the kitchen and next to the dining room but not attached, was a decent sized sun room. On the opposite side of the house from these rooms was a guest suite where his things had been brought. “I had this room made up for you since it’s the only guest suite on the main floor,” Renate said as Minghao looked around. “It’s also the only one that has been renovated.”

Minghao stopped and turned to look at her. “It’s perfect,” he replied. “I think I’ll freshen up before dinner,” he continued, crossing the room to where she stood in the doorway. “If you could please produce a set of keys for me, I would appreciate it,” he added. Renate’s smile fell. “Why?” she asked.

“Because I’m the owner of the estate now,” Minghao answered. “I don’t want to have to seek you out to unlock doors in my own home.” Renate nodded, clearing her throat. “I shall see if I can’t locate the other keys. I’m sure they’re around here somewhere,” she replied. “Dinner will be in an hour.”

She left, closing the door behind her and allowing Minghao his much needed privacy. He moved over to his luggage and opened the top trunk, finding some of his clothes. He would unpack later, first he would explore the guest suite and see what he could find and if there were any secrets.

The guest suite was large, a massive four poster bed stood in the middle of the room, the headboard pushed against the outside wall. Thick, velvet drapes hung from the intricately carved wooden frame. Standing at the foot of the bed was an ornate bench carved, stained, and lacquered just like the rest of the furniture. Minghao walked over to a small seating area past two pocket doors that shut to close off the area from the bedroom.

On the opposite side of the bed from the sitting room was the entrance to a private ensuite bathroom with marble floors, two pedestal sinks sat under golden framed mirrors. A massive soaker tub with golden clawed feet stood opposite the sinks. A pipe protruded from the wall above the tub, curving downward and providing a shower head.

Minghao returned to the bedroom area and walked over to the bed, falling onto it and staring up at the drapes. Though he vaguely remembered this house from his childhood, nothing about it had seemed familiar since entering and he wondered how much had changed from when he was a child.

A knock at the door interrupted his train of thoughts and he sat up as the door opened, a young maid poking her head into the room. “Begging your pardon, sir,” she said softly. “I’ve come to unpack your luggage.” Minghao relaxed. “I see,” he said simply. He had assumed, incorrectly, that he might be allowed to unpack his own luggage but he was proven wrong again and again.

“Knock yourself out,” he replied, gesturing to the collection of trunks waiting at the end of his bed. The maid opened the door and Minghao realized it was not one but two maids. “We’ll work quickly and when we’re done, we can show you where everything is,” the first maid offered. Minghao nodded and got up as they started to get to work. “I’ll just get out of your way,” he said, walking towards the door and slinking out of the room.

He still had time before dinner would be ready so he decided to explore the first floor a bit more. As he walked past the foyer, he noticed a door with a round window and walked over, peering into the window only to see nothing but darkness. “The elevator,” a voice said, making Minghao jump. “Your grandfather lost a lot of mobility before he was hospitalized so he had this installed to make getting from the ground floor to the top floors easier.”

Minghao turned to look at the door once more. “Does it only go up?” he asked. “Sir?” Klaus asked. Minghao looked at him. “Does it go downstairs, too?” he asked. Klaus nodded, grimacing. “Indeed it does but there isn’t much down there except storage and cobwebs.” Minghao snorted and turned back to the elevator door. “Does this even work?” he asked, reaching for the door.

“Don’t!” Klaus snapped, making Minghao retract his hand quickly, almost as if he had been burned. “My apologies,” Klaus said, regaining his composure. “The elevator is turned off and very dangerous when not operated properly.” Minghao nodded, wide eyed. “Duly noted,” he said. “Is there another way downstairs then?” Minghao asked. Klaus gave him a surprised look.

“I’d like to see everything,” Minghao added. Klaus nodded. “I’m sure, sir,” he explained. “But you have more than a day to do so,” he continued. “How about you focus on relaxing today and tomorrow you can tackle the basement?” Minghao stared at Klaus but conceded. “I suppose the basement could wait,” he said softly. “Good. Dinner should be ready soon,” Klaus added, giving Minghao a nod and turning on his heel in the direction of the kitchens.

Dinner was a private affair as Minghao sat at the formal dining room alone. After eating, he returned to his room where the maids showed him exactly where they stored everything and even packed his luggage away. He thanked them and called it a night, getting ready for and settling down into the oversized bed.

Falling asleep in a new environment was always difficult no matter how comfortable things seemed and only after tossing and turning for hours did Minghao finally manage to drift into a dreamless slumber.

The following morning, he was woken by Renate. He cleaned up, dressed, and had dinner before he decided to explore the rest of the house, starting with the upper floors. He made a mental note of which rooms he wanted to renovate before finally being given a set of keys; a skeleton key for all the interior doors, a key for the exterior doors, a key to the storage sheds and garages, and a key for the attic which coincidentally also worked for the basement.

Minghao was more than pleased to be allowed to finally inspect the basement and Klaus had been right. It was a storage place for old furniture, all coated in a thick layer of dust, with cobwebs in every corner. As Minghao worked with some of the estate workers to shift the furniture aside he discovered something no one had mentioned to him. A massive vault door.

When asked, Klaus and Renate admitted they knew of the existence of the vault but that they didn’t know what was inside it. Neither also claimed to have knowledge of a combination. Minghao stood in front of the door for hours, trying to figure out the combination, trying several different ones but none of them seemed to work.

Days passed by and he grew more and more restless at not being able to open the vault. While inspecting the library for a book to occupy his time, he found a bright blue book, a copy of On Blue Water by Edmondo de Amicis. It was placed amongst a shelf of brown bindings and looked oddly out of place. Minghao walked over, inspecting the book and carefully removing it from the shelf.

He flipped through the pages, finding blue ink circling parts in the book. Starting from the first instance, he saw the number eighty-seven. The next was forty-two, followed by seven, ninety-nine, sixty-three, and finally four. He walked over to the desk, grabbing a pen from the stand and a blank piece of paper as he wrote the numbers down, taking into consideration the arrows drawn below each number.

When he was done, he returned the book to the shelf he found it and quickly made his way downstairs to the vault door. He followed the combination, hoping it would be correct and when he heard the click, he nearly cheered in relief. He lifted the handle, releasing the mechanism holding the door shut and pulled it open. Whatever he had been prepared to find beyond the metal door, it was not this.

Inside the vast vault was a collection unlike anything he’d seen. A collection of art. As he realized what he’d stumbled upon, he shut the door quickly and headed upstairs to seek out either Klaus or Renate. He needed to make a long distance call.

When you received the call from Germany, you could hardly believe it. A colleague of yours called to explain he had suggested your name to a potential client. Someone had just unearthed a rather large collection in an estate in the Bavarian Alps and needed an expert eye to evaluate and appraise the pieces. They were willing to pay handsomely as well as fund your trip from Portugal, where you currently called home.

You jumped at the chance to set your own price and also for travel to the remote location in Germany. The trip was long, arduous and by the end, you wanted nothing more than to never step foot on a train or ship again. You arrived in Innsbruck, Austria after taking train after train in Italy and that was only after taking a ship from Lisbon through the strait of Gibraltar into the mediterranean and to the Italian capital of Rome. You still had a drive from Innsbruck to the remote estate in the mountains but a car ride where you could sleep off your trip was more than welcome.

You woke up as the sun was setting, the car climbing into the mountains and you could see the valley below was bathed in shadow from the sun setting behind the crest of the mountains behind you as the car turned, following the curve in the road. A tunnel of trees lined the road, wind starting to whip violently as the car drove on and soon the forest opened up to show a massive mansion nestled in the mountains.

It was impressive with the dark storm clouds looming overhead, the light from the sun blocked by the mountain to your left yet golden rays of light hit the clouds behind the estate, making them look ever so darker as the car pulled up next to a blue Roadmaster.

You opened your door, refusing to wait any longer. A bed inside the estate was yours and you were ready to collapse into it and sleep off your travel. The driver unpacked your things, setting them down by the back of the car as the front door opened. A stern looking older woman greeted you, introducing herself as Renate. She had one of the young men from the garage carrying your things and welcomed you to the estate, guiding you inside.

The foyer was grand and dark with white tile flooring. The door to your right was open, displaying a few coats hanging up in what you surmised was the coat room. The door to your right was shut. As the door closed behind you with a loud click, you walked further into the house. “Your rooms have been drawn for you upstairs,” Renate said, guiding you towards the stairs.

You followed her up the sweeping staircase, looking overhead and taking in the details of the intricate and massive chandelier that hung from the ceiling. Once on the landing, you followed her down one of the halls to a door which she opened for you. “This will be your room for the duration of your stay,” Renate explained. “Your things will be brought up to your room and the maids will unpack your things,” she explained. “I will take you to meet the owner of the house now.”

You followed her back down the hall to the stairs as a door opened, revealing an elevator and the driver bringing your luggage upstairs. You continued down the steps to the ground floor and followed Renate through another hallway to a door where she knocked before opening it. “Sir, there’s a Miss Y/N here. She’s just arrived,” she announced, stepping aside and gesturing for you to enter.

Inside the room was a dark parlor decorated and furnished in the Victorian style. It was a cozy room, a massive fireplace with a roaring fire took up a great deal of wall space with built-in shelves on either side of the fireplace. Sitting in front of the fireplace was a seating area, two couches facing one another with a low table between them. Perched on one of the couches was a young man.

He had reddish brown hair, a slender build and was currently immersed in a book he held. At the mention of your name, he looked up and your breath caught in your throat when his gaze met yours. His eyes were red and orange, like fire. The pupils in the middle were vertical slits. “Perfect,” he said, snapping the book shut and setting it down on the table.

Renate gave a curtsey before exiting the room and shutting the door, leaving you alone with the man who now stood before you. He had his hands tucked into his pockets. He wore a simple black turtleneck under a thicker sweater with a v-neck. His trousers were a medium brown and made of what looked to be tweed. He wore simple brown plain toe derby shoes to complete the look. 

“Based on Renate’s introduction, I can assume you are Y/F/N Y/L/N?” he asked, a neutral expression on his face. You nodded slowly. “And you are?” you asked, walking forward, intent on shaking his hand. “Minghao,” he answered as you held out your hand. Xu Minghao,” he added, taking your hand and shaking it briefly. “I assume you know why you’re here?” he asked and you nodded once more.

“For my expertise,” you answered. “I doubt you’d  invite me here based on my good looks,” you joked. Minghao let out a chuckle, returning his hand to his pocket. “So,” you said, looking around the room. “Where is this collection?” Minghao smiled again, gesturing for you to take a seat on the couch across from him. You did so as he sat back down.

“Before we get into the thick of it so to speak, I’d like to set your payment, something you agree is fair and we can sign off on,” he explained. You nodded, narrowing your eyes. “My usual rate is a twenty percent cut of the collection, were you to sell it,” you explained. “Only twenty?” Minghao asked, tilting his head. “The more priceless a collection, the more money I get,” you added.

“If your collection is only worth a million, I would get two-hundred thousand. That’s a pretty fair price for evaluating and appraising the pieces. Especially with the amount of research I end up doing,” you said as Minghao nodded along. “I understand that,” he explained, leaning back against the couch. “I think what you do is worth more,” he added. “I’m willing to go up to thirty percent.”

Your brows rose, eyes widening. “Thirty percent? Goodness, you’re generous,” you said, your lips pulling back into a smirk. Minghao mirrored your expression. “So we’re in agreement?” he asked. “Thirty percent?” You nodded in response. “Sounds reasonable to me,” you answered. “Good,” Minghao replied. “Dinner should be ready,” he added. “How about you get changed and join me?”

You returned to your room, changing out of your clothes and into something more appropriate for dinner. You returned downstairs to the foyer where you were greeted by a stern looking man you had yet to meet. “I’m Klaus,” he introduced himself with a small bow. “Dinner is being served and Mr. Xu has asked me to escort you to the dining room.”

You followed him through the halls until you reached a door which he then opened and gestured for you to enter. Inside was a large dining room with a table large enough to seat 12. Sitting at the head of the table was Minghao. When you entered, he stood up quickly as Klaus exited, shutting the door behind him. “Please,” Minghao said, gesturing to the seat adjacent to him.

You walked over, thanking him and moved to sit. Minghao was quick to pull the chair for you and move it again when you sat down before returning to his chair. You thanked him as the door behind you opened and a small service staff entered, setting a few platters down on the table in front of you and Minghao. “I asked them to make something new,” he explained as they removed the lids, showing a vast array of dishes that all looked amazing.

“Something with goat,” he added as he inspected the dishes. “Please,” he continued, gesturing to the food. “Help yourself to whatever you’d like.” You thanked him, digging into the food in front of you, not realizing that you were ravenous until the food was in front of you.

Silence fell over the room as you ate, no conversation was being had until Minghao spoke up. “So you traveled from Portugal?” he asked as he cut his meat. You nodded, wiping your mouth before speaking. “Yes,” you answered. “I had an apartment just outside Lisbon.” Minghao looked up at you.

“Had?” he asked, picking up on your use of past tense. “Yes,” you answered. “I travel for work and often only rent places for as long as I’m there,” you explained. “The job in Lisbon lasted for almost a year,” you continued. “The collection I was tasked with evaluating was massive and ended up being worth a whopping eighty-seven million pounds,” you added. Minghao’s eyes widened. “Eighty-seven million pounds? Good gracious,” he said softly. “And you got twenty percent of that?”

You smiled, picking up your glass of wine. “It’s not a bad business to be in,” you explained. “It certainly isn’t,” Minghao said with a chuckle as you took a sip of wine. “My father was an appraiser,” you said suddenly. But he never made it a lucrative business like I did. We struggled a lot and he would disappear for months on end, never so much as sending a letter or calling,” you continued.

“My mother, God rest her soul, worked 12 hour shifts at the local textile factory just to make sure we had food on the table.” Minghao kept his eyes on you as you spoke. “As soon as I was able, I started working. Mainly bookkeeping and typing,” you continued. “I was able to put myself through college with a combination of working and scholarships,” you said with a smile. “I immediately made a name for myself, assessing art collections left and right in America until my first overseas assignment in London.” 

Minghao couldn’t help but smile. It was clear you took great pride in your work. Your smile, nostalgic, slowly fell as a memory came into the forefront of your mind. “That’s where I was living when the war broke out,” you said, a bitter tone in your voice. 

Minghao couldn’t help but feel a similar anger and hatred towards the war. He’d been living in China at the time, deep in a remote area and away from the cities for protection. The war hadn’t hit him but you, living in London, he could only imagine how it affected you. The destruction and danger lurking around every corner.

“I worked as an air raid warden during the first few years but in the last couple, I was promoted to evacuation officer,” you explained. “It was stressful, being in the midst of all the bombings and trying to keep my cool and help direct evacuees,” you continued. “But I learned a lot about the world and myself in those years.” Minghao took a sip of his wine. “I can only imagine what you went through,” he said softly, making you look towards him.

“I was hidden away in China,” he continued. “We didn’t see much war where we were,” he added. You smiled sadly. “China is a pretty big place,” you replied. “I’m sure places like Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong saw most of the action,” you added. Minghao nodded. “I’m sure they did. I’m sorry you had to go through that. Especially so far from home.”

You shook your head. “Home is wherever I rest my head,” you replied. “My family is all gone now. It’s just me.” Minghao felt his heart sink slightly. He knew what it was like to be alone in a sense but he still had family that was alive, he was just estranged from them so it wasn’t entirely the same feeling. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied but you smiled, dismissing his apology. “It’s all right now,” you answered.

“Less to worry about,” you added as you picked up your utensils. “Dinner is delicious by the way,” you added, changing the subject. Though you maintained this calm, unbothered air, Minghao could see right through it. One of his many talents as a draconian descendant.

He wouldn’t push it though. It wasn’t his place. If you wanted to talk about it, you would.

The next couple days, Minghao showed you the house so you could familiarize yourself with the layout. On the third day, he finally took you to the basement, opening the vault and showing you the contents. As you entered, carefully examining the works with gloves, you cataloged things slowly.

“So,” you said, returning to Minghao who was standing outside the vault. “I have good news,” you said softly, lowering your clipboard. “Everything is labeled and there is a box full of documents, which I can only assume are the auction and purchase records. Whoever owned this collection took great care in keeping records which makes my job much easier,” you said with a smile.

“Lunch is almost ready,” Minghao replied. “Shall we eat first and then you can go over the records after?” You nodded, smiling at him. “Sounds superb.”

After a quick lunch of soup and sandwiches, you returned to work, pulling out the record boxes and going through them, matching the papers to the items. “This is incredible,” you breathed, pouring over the records. “Not only are the dates of purchases listed but the prices are also listed. This is an incredibly well documented collection.” Minghao smiled as you flipped through page after page.

It took a few days but you finally had a partial appraisal for the ceramics. “Two hundred thousand?” Minghao asked when you showed him your numbers. “Two hundred and forty-three thousand, six-hundred and fifty-seven to be precise,” you answered. Minghao let out a laugh. “And that’s just the ceramics?” he asked to which you nodded. “I expect that to be the lowest number of this collection,” you answered.

Your assumption was proven to be correct when you came back with the values for the other categories.

Minghao stood, reading over your numbers as you sipped whiskey from a crystal glass. “Are these numbers accurate?” Minghao asked. You nodded. “I’m nothing if not accurate,” you replied. “Are they lower than your projection?” you asked, suddenly worried about his response.

During your time at the estate, you’d taken a liking to Minghao, something you normally never allowed to happen with clients. It was easy to like him. He was handsome, charming, well-spoken, intelligent, and incredibly witty. He was good company during your meals and late at night when you were working on your estimates. You’d become very close with him, especially after he told you about his parentage and his nature as a half dragon. You’d never met someone like him before.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re higher,” he added. “I expected a much lower number.” You smiled at him, setting your glass down and getting up to join him, taking the paper from him. “A great number of these items date back as far as the 8th century,” you explained. 

“Like this one,” you said, pointing to an item on the list. “A silk print from eighth century China,” you said. “Or this one. A nineteenth century watercolor. There’s only one of these in existence. And this thirteenth century oil painting? The art community thought this was lost forever.”

“A lot of these items are worth even more because of the war,” you continued, handing the paper back to him and picking up your glass, downing the rest of the amber liquid. “A lot of art was lost, destroyed by the Third Reich. The Nazi stole a lot of art and we’re still trying to recover it. Most of the stolen art may never be recovered,” you continued.

Minghao held the paper in his hands but his eyes were on you. “A lot goes into appraising,” you explained. “Condition, rarity, age, authenticity, subject matter, and size are a few of the things I look at when appraising art collections. Many of these items are unique and only a few versions of them exist,” you continued, moving to the bar cart to pour yourself another drink.

“And every single one of these artists or sculptors are dead,” you continued, popping the top off the decanter and pouring more liquid into your glass. “Which makes these even more valuable. They can never be replicated by the original artist.” You placed the lid back and turned to face Minghao, holding the glass in your hand. He was still staring at you, a look of something you couldn’t place in his eyes.

He set the paper down and stalked forward slowly to where you stood until he had you caged in against the bar cart. “You know,” he said softly, eyes dipping down to look at your lips. “You’re incredibly sexy when you talk about this,” he said, tilting his head to the side. You swallowed nervously. “When I talk about art?” you asked, feeling a heat settling in the pit of your stomach.

“No,” he replied, taking your glass and drinking it in one go before setting the empty glass on the cart. “When you talk about something you’re passionate about.” He leaned in closer, lips inches from yours. You felt a shiver run up your spine, desire mixing with the sexual tension that hung in the air.

“I’m passionate about a lot of things,” you said, one of your hands moving up his arm to rest on his bicep. “Oh?” Minghao asked. “Like what?” He was teasing you now, the smirk on his face gave it away. He wanted to see how far he could take this. How far he could push you before you gave into him.

“Art, cuisine, fashion,” you said softly. “Photography, travel… sex.” 

The next moment, Minhao closed the distance, his lips crashing against yours as his hands moved to your waist. You kissed him back with as much hunger, hand grabbing him desperately. Your lips parted, his tongue slipping into your mouth.

You moaned into the kiss as you felt one of his hands move down, cupping your ass and squeezing. Minghao pulled back, looking into your eyes, breathless as he spoke. “Maybe we should—”

“Take this somewhere else?” you asked, hopefully finishing his sentence. He nodded, pulling you into another kiss. “Your room or mine?” you asked as he left a trail of kisses down your neck. “Mine’s closer,” he murmured, his long fingers swiftly undoing the tie at the top of your blouse..

“Lead the way,” you said, pushing him back playfully. Minghao’s fingers instead closed around your wrist, pulling you from the bar cart and dragging you from the parlor, across the foyer to a pair of double doors you’d seen and knew was probably his room. When he parted the doors, he quickly pulled you into the room before shutting the doors.

You only got a brief look around the room before he was on you, kissing you and pulling at the buckle of your skirt belt, quickly undoing it and unzipping the skirt, letting it fall to the floor in a pool at your feet. You stepped out of the mess of fabric, letting him pull your green blouse off and tossing it to the floor with your skirt leaving you in your lingerie.

You felt slightly self conscious under his gaze as his eyes wandered, taking in your figure. You slowly moved back, taking a seat on the edge of the bed still in your heels. Minghao moved over, leaning over to press a soft kiss to your cheek, lips trailing down your neck to your chest. He glanced up, meeting your gaze before he started kissing his way down your stomach as he slowly knelt down.

He worked slowly, removing your shoes, one by one. You glanced up, eyes widening as you caught sight of your reflection in a massive mirror that stood across from where you sat. “My, that’s quite a mirror,” you said softly as Minghao continued to remove your shoes, humming in response.

Once your shoes were dealt with, Minghao’s hand slid up your legs, undoing the clips of your garter belt and then sliding your stockings down your legs, dropping both of them on the floor with your shoes before he got back up, climbing onto the bed over you as you scooted back. He captured your lips in a searing kiss, hands moving to slide your garter belt off along with your panties.

You let out a gasp as you felt two of his fingers spread your lips, finding your clit and muttering softly under his breath about how wet you felt. You tried to say something, to bite back, but your words failed you as he drew his finger in a languid circle around the sensitive nub.

You whined, hips bucking as he took his time, teasing you with long, drawn out massages. He chuckled, kissing down your chest and stomach again. He settled between your thighs, moving his fingers and pushing them into you slowly as his tongue descended onto your clit, tasting you with a groan.

Your thighs tried to close on his head but he pulled back, lightly smacking the inside of your thigh with his free hand. “Keep them open,” he growled before going right back into it. You moaned loudly, unrestrained, quickly reaching up to cover your mouth. Minghao reached up, grabbing your wrist and pulled your hand from your face.

“Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t cover your mouth. I want everyone to hear how good I make you feel.” You nodded slowly, moving your hand down to the sheets and gripping them as Minghao returned his attention to your clit, his fingers moving inside you. He pumped them at a steady pace, stopping to curl them up and making your back arch as you moaned again and again.

“That’s it,” he said softly, watching as your chest rose and fell with each labored breath. “Does it feel good?” he asked. You nodded with a whimper. “Yes,” you breathed. “F-feels so good!” Minghao smirked as he continued to curl his fingers, coaxing you closer and closer to the edge. “You gonna be good and come for me, sweetheart?” he asked. Your thighs had started to tremble, the tension in your body ready to snap at any moment. You whined in response.

“I need to hear you say it, bao bei,” he murmured, drawing out his motions, making them as slow as possible. “Yes!” you cried. “M’gonna cum!” Minghao resumed the same quick pace, rubbing against your walls as he drove you over the edge and your orgasm crashed down on you. You gasped, spewing out a slew of curses mixed with his name as he helped you ride out your high.

“Good,” he said softly. “Good girl.” You attempted to push his hand away when it became too much and sensing what you were silently asking for, Minghao removed his fingers, giving you a break. He cleaned his fingers, getting up from the bed. You heard him move around the room but were too exhausted to open your eyes and see what he was doing.

He returned to the foot of the bed and when nothing else happened, you finally opened your eyes and saw him standing at the foot of the bed. He held something in his hands. “I’d like to ask your permission for something,” he started.

You looked at the item in his hands and noticed it was a camera. You looked up to meet his fiery gaze. “I’d like to photograph you,” he continued. “Like this,” he added, gesturing at your posture. You pushed yourself up. “You want to photograph me naked?” you asked, slightly amused. Minghao chuckled, lowering his gaze to his camera. “No,” he replied, shaking his head before looking back up.

“I want to photograph you in the middle of sex.”

To say you were surprised was an understatement but you weren’t entirely turned off the idea. “And these would be for your eyes only?” you asked softly. Minghao nodded as he prepared the camera. “I plan on turning one of the bedrooms into a dark room,” he explained, raising the camera to look through the viewfinder and pressing the shutter button, before lowering it and smiling at you.

You leaned back, spreading your legs. “How do you want me?” you asked playfully as he raised the camera again, snapping another picture. You laughed and sat up, moving to the edge of the bed and grabbing at his belt loops, pulling him closer to undo his pants, starting with his belt. You unzipped his pants, pulling them down enough to pull his cock free from the confines of his underwear.

You wasted no time in taking the head into your mouth, surprising him into letting out a groan, his head falling back, exposing his long neck. You took more of him in your mouth, keeping your tongue flat against the underside as you took him further. You heard the snap of the camera and pulled back until just the tip was in your mouth, tongue swirling around the head.

You heard another snap followed by the automatic wind of the camera and kept going, each time taking him further and further into your mouth as you drew him to his full length and hardness. “Fuck, just like that, sweetheart,” you heard him groan, snapping another photo. You pulled back, moving your hand up and down the shaft and looked up at him.

“You gonna fuck me already?” you asked mischievously. Minghao tossed the camera onto the bed and pulled his sweater over his head, discarding it on the floor before pulling off his shirt and adding it to the growing pile. You scooted back to the middle of the bed, removing your bra and tossing it aside as he climbed onto the bed, trailing wet kisses up your stomach, stopping to nip at the skin under your breast. His tongue brushed over your nipple, swirling around it before he continued up your chest, running his tongue over your skin.

At the junction of your neck and shoulder, he sank his teeth into your skin, making you cry out and your body jerk suddenly. He used your movement against you, moving closer and taking his cock in his hand. He guided the head to your folds, rutting against your for a moment before pushing into you, letting out a growl as your warm walls enveloped him.

He grabbed the camera from its resting spot and sat back, holding it up to snap a photograph, aiming the lens at the place where your bodies met. “Oh fuck,” you gasped as he thrusted into you, bottoming out and his cock nestling against your cervix. He snapped another picture of your nude body before tossing the camera aside once more and grabbing your hips.

He neither eased you into it or warned you but started a rough, brutal pace immediately, hips snapping forward and burying his cock into your cunt repeatedly. You cried out in both shock and pleasure at the intensity at which he started right away. Your fingers curled into the sheets, thighs spreading more as he pounded into you. “You’ll cum if you go too fast,” you mused, eyes fluttering shut as you felt him throb inside you.

He chuckled, a breathy sound as his grip on you tightened. “I have more stamina than that, beibei,” he said softly. He gave you another harsh thrust, enjoying the way your breasts bounced with each snap of his hips. The room was full of the sound of skin against skin and your moans. It almost drowned out the sound of the rain outside. Almost. 

Minghao slowed his pace before pulling out of you. You protested but he simply grabbed your hand and pulled you up as he shifted behind you, pushing you on to your hands and knees as he re-entered you from behind. You moaned, head dropping as he grabbed your hips, resuming that same merciless pace only now he was hitting even deeper.

“Look up,” he murmured in your ear. You did as he said, raising your head until you met the gaze of your own reflection. “Oh shit,” you gasped, walls clenching around him. He grabbed your chin, pressing his chest against your back as he leaned over you. “I want you to watch me fuck you,” he growled into your ear. “Watch yourself cum.” You moaned but maintained eye contact with him through the mirror. In the darkness of the room, his eyes glowed and he seemed even more dragon-like than before.

You pushed back, meeting his hips and thrusts with as much force as you could muster but you were getting weaker with each snap of his hips against your ass. His cock seemed to swell inside you or maybe it was your walls clamping down and not wanting to let go but he filled you so deliciously and with each rut, you were pushed closer and closer to your climax.

“That’s it,” Minghao said, his breath hot against your skin. “Cum for me, sweetheart. Be a good girl and let go.” His freehand moved from your hip to between your thighs, working your clit in time with his thrusts as he propelled you over the edge. You came with a scream as a loud clap of thunder shook the house and the very mountain it stood on.

Minghao fucked you through it, chasing his own high as he finally released inside you, painting your walls in his hot thick cum. There was more of it than you could initially comprehend, filling your walls and no doubt every crevice of your womb. Pregnancy was the last thing on your mind and you moaned, pushing back onto him, milking him for every bit of cum he had.

“Careful sweetheart,” Minghao purred into your ear, moving his hand to your throat and holding it firmly but not squeezing. “We have all night,” he continued.  “I’m not done with you just yet.

©️ kwanisms 2024 | all works on this blog are protected under copyright. Do not repost, continue, or translate my works. All graphics made by me.

[komsomolka]

Fritz Schmenkel was the only German national who became a Hero of the Soviet Union for his actions during WWII.

Fritz Schmenkel was born in Stettin (today Szczecin, Poland) in 1916. His father, Paul Krause, a brickyard worker and communist, was murdered by Stormtroopers in 1932. This caused Fritz to join the Young Communist League of Germany to fight his father's Nazi murderers.

In December 1938, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht but refused to serve citing illness and other excuses. He was imprisoned for evading conscription. In July 1941, after the beginning of Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, Schmenkel volunteered to fight on the Eastern Front so he was released. His true intention was always deserting which he did in November 1941. But he couldn't hide in Belarusian forests forever so there was a dilemma. How not to get killed on spot by comrades because of his German uniform and communicate without knowing Russian language? The shivering and hungry Shmenkel knocked on the doors of local village residents, using a simple set of words: "Lenin, Stalin, Thälmann" - and the doors opened. In exchange for help in a simple peasant household, Fritz received food, a place to sleep, and moved on.

One day Shmenkel came across a patrol of German military police and was arrested. Fortunately for the deserter, fighters from the partisan detachment "Death to Fascism" descended on Germans some time later. After a short but stubborn battle, the garrison was routed, and the partisans learned from local residents about the strange German. Not having time for serious investigation, the fighters simply took him with them. That's how Shmenkel ended up in the partisan detachment.

Of course, at first Soviets were very wary of Fritz, they feared that he was a Nazi spy. But they still decided not to act rashly and give him a chance. And soon such an opportunity presented itself. In one of the villages, the partisans came across German detachment. A fight ensued. Shmenkel did not take part in it - he had no weapon. Since there were too many Germans, the fate of the partisans seemed to be predetermined. Fritz asked for a rifle. Realizing that they have nothing to lose and an extra fighter was now worth its weight in gold, the unit commander took a risk. And he was right. Shmenkel started successfully shooting at Germans. The partisans won that battle. Fritz was then accepted as a member of the partisans. He quickly gained the respect and affection of his unit, his comrades started nicknaming him Ivan Ivanovich jokingly adding "Why call a good person Fritz?".

Schmenkel led German military units into ambushes arranged by the partisans. This helped the partisans capture entire units of Wehrmacht soldiers, as well as ammunition and food. Schmenkel quickly rose through the ranks of the partisans. In March 1943, he traveled to Moscow at the behest of the Red Army, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and received further military training. He was appointed deputy commander of a special operations (sabotage and intelligence) unit that operated in a German-occupied area north of the city of Orsha.

Germans put a reward on Schmenkel's head - 8 hectares of land, a house, a cow, and two thousand German marks. Later, the reward was raised to an astronomical sum for those times - 25 thousand marks.

At the end of 1943, contact with Fritz Schmenkel was lost. Only after the war did it become known that he had been captured and tortured by the Gestapo, but Fritz had not changed his views. He was sentenced to death and executed in occupied Minsk in February 1944.

His last wish was to send a letter to his wife Erna Schäfer. He wrote: "Forgive me for the troubles I have caused you by going my way to the end. I did not renounce my views even in the last hours of my life. I am boldly going to my execution because I am dying for my convictions." He left behind three children in Germany.

By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 6 October 1964, Fritz Schmenkel was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union "for active participation in the partisan movement, exemplary fulfillment of command assignments during the Great Patriotic War and the heroism and courage displayed in doing so."

The memory of Fritz Schmenkel is immortalized in the names of streets in the cities of Nelidovo and Bely in the Tver region. And in Minsk, a memorial plaque is dedicated to him. One of the streets in East Berlin also bore the name of Shmenkel. However, it was renamed in 1992.

[batboyblog]

https://www.tumblr.com/batboyblog/763234650399424512/the-recent-chappell-roan-thing-is-why-i-absolutely

I frankly also get the impression that a lot of these people genuinely think another Trump term will just be “business as usual” or “it’ll only hurt the people who deserve to suffer” and that they’ll just be able to hide away from the consequences for four years before someone comes along and fixes the mess for them and they get to benefit.

I don’t think they have any realization of just how bad this is gonna get the second time around, because the first time Trump was metaphorically behind a chained fence and held back by strong rope. This time he’s being let loose alongside his fascist theocratic friends.

I've puzzled about this for some time, because like do people honestly not remember what it was like? what those 4 years were like? the fear, the chaos, the national embarrassment. Every day waking up and going "oh god! what did he DO! while I was asleep!" and how often you'd wake up to some story that he'd tweeted something scary and dangerous at 4am. I believe him threatening to nuke North Korea (the "Fire and Fury" tweet) was one of those very early AM specials that we all woke up to.

I mean for people like Chappell, its hard to remember, but Trump has been the more or less national main character for 9 years, since the fall of 2015. I mean an 18 year old first time voter could have been 8 years old when Trump came down the gold escalators told us all that Mexicans were rapists and he was running for President. So for anyone under 30, Trump is normal since every election they've been able to vote in, he's been the Republican nominee. I've spent 9 years of my life, across 5 elections fighting Trump directly or indirectly. Depressing thought that.

but past that there's been a national effort to gaslight us all into thinking "yeah no it was normal" I mean I remember the media coverage of 2017, the first year or so of Trump's Presidency, every few weeks or so there'd be some "is it time for the 25th amendment now?" story about if Trump's weird behavior this time for his cabinet to step it and remove him. (A quick google turned up CNN Oct 2017, New York Times May 2017, The Guardian July 2017, and Vox February 2017) compare that to coverage today? The term "Sane-washing" has been coined where when Trump says something bonkers it gets characterized as "sometimes meandering" rather than "incomprehensible" and "worrying"

figures in the media have gone so far as to claim there's just no point to covering new Trump scandals because "they won't move the needle" which really should not be a journalist standard. And we see that they do, take North Carolina's Mark Robinson. Caught in a massive scandal, involving sex, porn, and being a Nazi, he's now down massively in the polls after nation wide coverage. Trump just had new court documents opened that showed he wanted a riot on January 6th, that his reaction to a mob threatening the life of his Vice-President was "so what?" and they he knew full well that he had lost but was going to "fight like hell" any ways. And its not much of a story, indeed I'm seeing more news about a NY Republican Congress having worn black face (new story today) than Trump's effort to over throw the government and kill Mike Pence.

past the media's gaslighting of course there's been a major and on-going campaign to effect how we see reality. I know that sounds very woo-woo, but to step back for second, most of what we know about the world is stuff people tell us, so you know Joe Biden is the President because other people have said so, most likely you've never met him or even seen him in person. Well as more and more people turn away from traditional media, and traditional media turns more and more to making of money by confirming the bias of people, it becomes easier and easier to slip things that are not real into "facts we are told". So for example "Joe Biden is President, and also in decline" there's never been any real evidence of that, but if on social media you are bombarded with it 4,000 times a day... you start to take it as understood wisdom.

people are also getting worse and worse at not just taking what they're told if it confirms biases they already have. Former Vice-President Al Gore wrote a book nearly 20 years ago now, called "The Assault on Reason" which had a ton of very interest neuroscience about the ways that moving images, TV he was talking about, by-pass the logic centers of the mind, the way we relate and trust someone talking to us in a way the written word does not. I can't help but reflect on that with the rise of TikTok and short form video as a "source of information" (lol)

any ways this is a long winded way of saying bad faith players, Republicans, left wing grifters, and agents of chaos, have been very good at flooding the zone all through the Biden Presidency with stuff "student loan debt" remember when that was SO! important SO big and Biden "not doing anything" (untrue) was the biggest deal? well yesterday his newest plan got unlocked in court and 3 out of every 4 people with loan debt will get relief.... oh you're just now hearing about that from me? huh... funny... I thought it was the number one issue and reason we should never trust Biden and the Democrats... weird....

but there have been other issues pushed up as THE! issue, its all misdirection, its all meant to get natural Democratic voters to feel frustrated, upset, and hopeless, and not to vote their interest. The world is a big complex multi moving machine, and anyone telling you that one issue either fixes every other issue or totally totally outweighs everything else and should for everyone, is most likely BSing you and doesn't have your best interests at heart.

and lets be clear, Trump is a Rapist he's a lot of things, traitor, racist, scumbag, criminal, scab, tax cheat, fraud, etc but for me any ways, I'm not gonna vote for a rapist to be President and if other people aren't gonna do everything they can to stop a rapist from being the President I don't want to hear how much they care about progressive issues.

[morbidology]

The haunting question "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?" has perplexed and fascinated the public since 1943, when the skeletal remains of an unidentified woman were discovered inside a hollow tree in Hagley Wood, Worcestershire, England.

On April 18, 1943, four young boys—Bob Farmer, Fred Payne, Thomas Willetts, and Bob Hart—were exploring Hagley Wood, part of the Hagley Hall estate owned by Lord Cobham. In the course of their exploration, the boys came across a large wych elm tree. Curiosity led one of them to peer inside the hollow trunk, where he discovered what appeared to be a human skull, complete with some strands of hair and teeth.

Frightened by their grisly find, the boys initially kept the discovery to themselves, fearing they would get into trouble for trespassing. However, the secret proved too heavy to bear, and one of the boys eventually confided in his parents, who contacted the police.

When authorities arrived at the scene, they retrieved the nearly complete skeleton of a woman, along with fragments of clothing, a shoe, and a gold wedding ring. The woman’s right hand was missing, later found buried nearby. The skeletal remains were sent to Professor James Webster, a forensic pathologist, who estimated that the woman had been dead for about 18 months, placing her death around October 1941.

Professor Webster's examination revealed that the woman was around 35 years old, 5 feet tall, with irregular teeth, including a distinctive dental feature—a missing front tooth. He suggested that she had been dead for approximately 18 months before her discovery and that she had likely been placed in the tree shortly after her death, as the small hollow would have made it difficult to fit her body after rigor mortis had set in.

The cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation, possibly due to being suffocated or strangled, although the exact circumstances remained unclear. Despite extensive investigations, the police were unable to identify the woman. Missing person reports were checked, dental records were examined, but no match was found.

The case took an strange turn in late 1943, when graffiti began appearing in the West Midlands area. The first message, written in chalk on a wall in Upper Dean Street, Birmingham, read: "Who put Luebella down the wych-elm?" Subsequent messages shortened and refined the name to "Bella," and variations of the phrase "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?" began appearing on walls and buildings across the region.

The identity of the graffiti artist remains unknown, but the messages suggested that someone knew more about the woman’s identity or her fate than they had revealed.

Over the years, numerous theories have emerged regarding the identity of "Bella" and the circumstances of her death. Some of the most prominent theories include:

Witchcraft: One theory suggests that Bella may have been killed as part of a black magic ritual. The removal of her hand, a practice known as the "Hand of Glory" in folklore, lent some credence to this idea. The Hand of Glory was believed to possess magical powers, often associated with witchcraft and sorcery. However, there is little concrete evidence to support this theory.

Espionage: Another theory posits that Bella was a spy during World War II. This idea gained traction in the 1950s, when Margaret Murray, an anthropologist and archaeologist, suggested that Bella could have been involved in espionage, possibly as a Nazi spy. Some speculated that she might have been a German cabaret singer and spy named Clara Bauerle, who had parachuted into the area during the war and was killed after her cover was blown. However, no concrete evidence has been found to confirm this theory, and Clara Bauerle's records suggest she died in Berlin in 1942.

Romani Connections: Some researchers have suggested that Bella might have been part of a Romani group or a traveler community. This theory is based on the fact that many Romani people lived in the area during the 1940s, and some witnesses reported seeing gypsies in Hagley Wood around the time of Bella's presumed death. However, like the other theories, this remains speculative.

Local Knowledge: There are suggestions that the graffiti artist had local knowledge and possibly knew more about the case than the police were able to uncover. The use of the name "Bella" might indicate that someone in the community recognized her, but chose to remain anonymous.

Despite extensive investigations, the true identity of Bella and the circumstances surrounding her death remain unknown. The case was reopened several times, and modern forensic techniques have been suggested to re-examine the remains and the evidence, but so far, these efforts have not provided definitive answers.

[vexwerewolf]

I always figured the Imperials were the good guys.

Nnnnnngh… no. Imperials are the better of two bad options, and it's really muddied because Bethesda lost its good writers years before Skyrim came out. I can feel a hyperfixation coming on, so a quick TL;DR: the Empire is an Empire so it's still bad, the Stormcloaks are just racist saboteurs led by a Manchurian agent and Tiber Septim is a gigantic piece of shit who ruined everything.

Okay, so the Empire functionally lost its equivalent of the Mandate of Heaven when Martin Septim died heirless at the end of Oblivion. His sacrifice forged a new compact to end the Daedric incursions, but by that point Imperial infrastructure throughout Tamriel had been so badly damaged that it could no longer maintain order. By the time the Mede dynasty got its feet under it, several provinces had either risen in revolt against the Empire or and were busy violently settling bitter generational rivalries with each other.

Most notably, this included the Thalmor, who are openly and proudly an Altmer supremacist movement. Their primary goal is to end the dominion of Men on Tamriel and institute a second Merethic Era dominated by them. This is the most obvious reason for why they want to ban Talos worship - the idea that a Man could become Divine is grossly incompatible with their worldview. (I must note that there's also a much-discussed fan theory stating that they intend to unmake creation in its current form and destroying Talos worship is part of that, but it's partially based on sources whose canonicity is in doubt, so I'm not going to discuss it further at this time.) The Thalmor are pretty much explicitly Elf Nazis, right down to invading foreign countries and rounding up their religious minorities.

It should be considered, however, that Tiber Septim was an UNBELIEVABLY MASSIVE PIECE OF SHIT. There's credible evidence that during his mortal life he assassinated the Cyrodillian monarch to whom he had sworn fealty and then seized his throne. He had a dalliance with Berenziah that ended up getting her pregnant, then forcibly abducted her and had the child aborted without her consent. After gaining Numidium from a treaty with the Tribunal of Morrowind, he discovered that they hadn't given them its power source (Lorkhan's Heart - understandable, since it was the source of their false divinity), and so he created a new one, the Mantella, by tearing the souls out of Ysmir and Zurin Arctus, two of his most loyal companions. He used Numidium to brutally conquer the rest of Tamriel and then turned it on all the noble families in Cyrodil who hadn't supported him. His empire - as all empires are - was built entirely on murder, pillage and rape. And - as all emperors do - he rewrote his own history because nobody dared openly oppose it. If the Aedra truly did award him a seat amongst them after this (and the fact that his bloody armor counts as "the blood of a divine" in Oblivion suggests that they did), it's questionable whether any of them are worthy of worship.

Nonetheless, worship of Talos was of extreme cultural importance to the Nords, because he was considered by history to have been a Nord, and indeed born in Atmora, the mythic first homeland of the Nords (although, again, it's likely he was just fucking lying - heterodox historical accounts suggest he was born in High Rock and never saw Atmora in his life). The White-Gold Concordat was formulated specifically to provoke division between the remaining provinces of the Empire - the Thalmor correctly predicted that the Nords would never tolerate being stripped of their right to worship Talos, and would rise in revolt against an Empire that mandated it.

The specific cause of the Stormcloak Rebellion is also… dubious. During the war with the Thalmor, the Imperial Legion had all but pulled out of Skyrim. This allowed an uprising by the Reachmen, an ethnic minority within southwestern Skyrim who, notably, had been brutally disenfranchised and stripped of their land by… Tiber Septim! Thanks, Talos, you continue to be a gigantic piece of shit! Anyway, they seized control of Markarth and held it for two years, during which by most accounts they ruled it as an independent kingdom that was making overtures towards being recognised by the Empire. After the signing of the White-Gold Concordat, Ulfric Stormcloak raised an army to retake it, and was promised by the Jarl of the Reach (and, allegedly, the Empire itself) that worship of Talos would be freely allowed in Markarth. Ulfric Stormcloak then proceeded to lay siege to the city and butcher it, ethnically cleansing the city of every last Reachman down to the women and children, slaughtering any Nord who had collaborated with them and allegedly even killing those citizens of Markarth who hadn't answered his call to arms.

Inevitably, the Thalmor found out about the Talos worship anyway and the Jarl was forced to sell out Ulfric and his men. This is generally considered to be the betrayal that sparked the civil war, but at this point we must examine who Ulfric is.

Ulfric was trained in the Thu'um from an early age by the Greybeards, but abandoned his tutelage to fight in the Great War. We know little of his performance other than that he was captured by the Thalmor, tortured extensively, and falsely made to believe that the information he had given under torture was instrumental in the fall of the Imperial City. His father, the Jarl of Windhelm, died while he was in prison, and he was forced to deliver a eulogy via a letter that he had smuggled out of the prison. He claims he escaped from captivity, while Thalmor records claim that they let him go intentionally; neither source is particularly reliable.

From a sociopolitical standpoint, Ulfric is a staunch Nordic traditionalist who openly states that he doesn't believe Skyrim has had a "true" High King for centuries, considering recent monarchs to simply be puppets installed by the Empire. He also seems to be deeply racist: in contrast to his father, he banned Argonians from entering Windhelm proper, confining them to the Assemblage on the docks, and he's allowed racist sentiments towards the Dunmer residents of the Grey Quarter to worsen. Even citizens of Windhelm who support the rebellion comment that isn't doing very much governing, since the civil war eats up most of his attention.

One point I will give to Ulfric is that establishing Skyrim as an independent kingdom that can actively resist the Thalmor isn't actually as far-fetched as it seems. After the White-Gold Concordat ceded half of Hammerfell to the Thalmor, Hammefell said "how about fuck you," broke from the Empire entirely, and smacked the Thalmor down so hard they had to sign the Second Treaty of Stros M'Kai and retreat from Hammerfell entirely. This rendered the nation a haven for those opposed to the Thalmor, and they're in such a strong position that the Alik'r can actively hunt Thalmor collaborators like Saadia in other nations. Hammerfell is in a better position than Skyrim, and it did it without any Imperial aid.

(A hilarious fact about the Hammerfell situation is that the Thalmor tried the exact same thing there - inciting a civil war between the Crowns and the Forebears, two factions that have hated one another for generations. Unfortunately, they fucked it up so badly that it actually managed to end the rivalry and unite both of them against the Thalmor.)

But this is where Bethesda's inability to actually capitalize on the good parts of their writing really gets to me.

The Empire in Skyrim… sucks. Like, from your perspective as a player, the first experience you have of the Empire is "okay, so you were at the border alongside this guy and we're executing him today so I guess you get to die too." The only decent Imperial you meet is Hadvar, who makes a lukewarm plea for your life but doesn't press the issue.

All of the Imperial Jarls except for Balgruuf and Idgrod Ravencrone are dogshit. Elisif is a naive, incompetent teenager. Siddgeir is an arrogant, incompetent ponce. Igmund is a spineless Thalmor toady reigning over stolen land, having broken a promise he made to Ulfric and thus being partially responsible for the civil war. The replacement Jarls you get if you side with the Empire and conquer territories the Stormcloaks hold at the start of the game fall into two categories: "who?" and "oh fuck not you." If I say the names Brina Merilis or Kraldar, I bet you won't even remember who I'm talking about. Brunwulf Free-Winter, the replacement for Ulfric Stormcloak, has ONE personality feature and it's "I'm slightly less racist than Ulfric." But when you capture Riften for the Empire, the new Jarl is MAVEN FUCKING BLACK-BRIAR, THE SECOND-WORST PERSON IN SKYRIM.

But the Stormcloaks suck worse. Laila-Law Giver is a puppet for the Black-Briar crime family. Skald the Elder is a grumpy, hidebound old man. Korir might as well not be ruling anything at all. If you side with them, you have to sell out Balgruuf when the matter of Whiterun comes up - a man who has never been anything but helpful, supportive, trusting and forthright with you. Oh, and let's not forget that if you take the Reach for the Stormcloaks, the new Jarl is THONGVOR SILVER-BLOOD, LITERAL SLAVEOWNER AND WORST PERSON IN SKYRIM.

(There is an absolutely cursed timeline wherein during the "territory trade" at the peace talks you can hold during the main quest if you haven't finished the civil war quest yet where Maven gets the Rift and Thongor gets the Reach, meaning you have just installed the two most powerful crime families in the country into positions of executive power.)

This isn't just a case of "of course both sides aren't perfect and have issues." This is just "both sides fucking suck." A better game would allow you to make some headway in resolving the massive issues that face Skyrim, but I've already written like nine billion words here so maybe I should go into that at a different time.

[jewish-sideblog]

During last year’s Chanukkah, I toured Yad Vashem. My tour guide ended with a story that will probably stick with me for the rest of my life.

A Jewish father and his son are held prisoner in Auschwitz— they are lucky, all things considered. Most Jews were gassed upon arrival. The Nazi guards instruct the prisoners that they have to dig mass graves for their fellow Jews every day. The father is appalled by this, of course, but he doesn’t have much choice. A week goes by, and the father and the son are subjected to horrors they could not have imagined before. The first Friday evening in Auschwitz, the father goes to his son and says, “I cannot work on Shabbat. I will not dig graves for Jews on Shabbat. For all my other reservations, I cannot do it, because the Talmud forbids it.” The son is barely fourteen, but he knows that if his father refuses to work, then his father will die. So he goes to meet another prisoner, a former Rabbi. The son pleads with the Rabbi to help his father see sense, and so the Rabbi and the son go together to meet with the father.

“The Talmud forbids us to work on Shabbat,” the Rabbi says, “but pikuach nefesh overrides Talmudic law when a life is in danger. Your life is in danger. Your son’s life is in danger. You are allowed to work on Shabbat.” The father begrudgingly agrees, and he saves his family’s life by digging mass graves on the day of rest.

A few months go by, and the Nazis are running low on food, so they start grinding pig hooves and guts into the slop that gets fed to the prisoners at Auschwitz. The father finds out about this and begins to starve himself. “G-d commands in the Torah us not to eat pork,” he says. The son, out of concern for his father, gets the Rabbi again. “Pikuach nefesh overrides the Torah as well as the Talmud. You must eat, for your life and for your son’s sake. Eat what is given to you. G-d will overlook violating kosher if it means surviving in a place like this.” So the father starts to eat what he is given.

Miraculously, the father and the son survive until winter. There’s never enough food for all the prisoners in Auschwitz to eat, and so there are frequent fights over scraps, but the most valuable thing in the slop is fat. Fat can keep you warmer in the winter, and it can be used to cover up and heal small injuries. If the Nazi guards noticed so much as a scratch on you, they would send you to the gas chambers that same day. Fat was gold in Auschwitz. At some point, the son noticed that the father had been ignoring food and collecting fat. He wasn’t trading it for scraps or favors, he was just keeping it. And he was starving to keep it. So once again, the son and the Rabbi approached the father.

“I’m turning it into a candle,” he said, “for Channukah.” The son and the Rabbi were appalled. The Rabbi said, “Channukah is a cultural holiday. It is not ordained by G-d. Neither the Torah nor the Talmud command you to celebrate it. Why in G-ds name would you sacrifice your food for that?” The father replied,

“You can live three days without water. You can live three weeks without food. But you cannot live three minutes without hope.”

The son and the Rabbi helped the father fashion wicks from rags and clothes, and helped steal small bits metal of metal off corpses and guards to make a spark. They lit Channukah candles in the middle of a Nazi concentration camp. The father and the son survived off of hope for the rest of that year, and they both lived to see the liberation of Auschwitz. The father died soon afterwards, but the son, Hugo Gryn, went on to become a Rabbi himself. In fact, the Rabbi of West London Synangoue, and the leader of the British Reform movement. He was described as the most beloved Rabbi in the country. He never lost sight of hope.

[frasier-crane-style]

Why The Last Jedi doesn't work as subversion is that it continuously requires the characters to act like they KNOW they're characters in Star Wars and not LIVING the Star Wars.

I'll give you an example. Rey. In TFA, her parents are simply missing and she's waiting for them to come back. In TLJ, she suddenly thinks they're an important secret for Kylo to reveal to her because she's pathologically suppressed the truth that they're drunks who sold her for alcohol money (or, you know, blue milk money, whatever).

But why would she ever think that she had an important family or heritage unless she knew she was the protagonist of a space epic and having an important family or heritage is something that happens to those?

Or DJ. The Benecio del Toro character is supposed to be a subversion of the rogue with a heart of gold trope. But why would Finn and Bangs ever think he's a rogue with a heart of gold that's implicitly trustworthy? They find him in a prison cell and have no reason to think he has any loyalty to the Resistance--he even gives a speech about how he considers the First Order and the Resistance to be equally bad!

In ANH, both Luke and Obi-Wan treated Han like exactly what he was, a mercenary, who had to be cajoled into helping out until finally he showed his true colors by attacking the Death Star. They didn't know they were characters going through a story arc. The Sequel Trilogy characters act like they do, until Rian Johnson pranks them by twisting the story arc they had no reason to think they were participating in.

And the entire Luke storyline is a subversion of the entire idea of mentorship. Luke doesn't teach Rey anything. She doesn't need to be taught anything. It's unclear why she even thinks she does, given that she already beat down Kylo Ren with ease, but, again, character in a story. She thinks she needs a training montage, Rian says "she doesn't get a training montage!", and scene.

It's all very meta and post-modern and taken at face value, it doesn't make any sense once you ask obvious questions like "Why shouldn't Poe know that there is a plan to save the fleet?" Defenders of TLJ dismiss those obvious questions because they see them as unimportant next to the post-modern gamesmanship the movie is really concerned with, but Star Wars doesn't work like a Scream movie, where the characters are largely obsessed with horror movies and then, ironically, placed inside a horror movie.

That's a kind of cynicism that doesn't really work for Star Wars; you can't do a sincere narrative about the triumph of good over evil when the characters are mostly convinced there's no big difference between Good or Evil winning.

To go back to ANH, Obi-Wan is emphatic about how wonderful the Jedi were, how tragic it was that they were wiped out, how awful it is to live under the Empire, and how important it is to fight to restore the Republic. That's the baseline of sincerity that this kind of primordial mythmaking needs to work.

With TLJ, most every character on both sides are cynical, foolish, corrupt, power-tripping, shrill, pompous... most of all, incompetent. It seems less like an epic battle between the noble and the venal--more like two competing cliques of sitcom characters, only one of them is inexplicably Nazi-themed. You're left pretty much adrift, with no characters to sympathize with and no conflicts to become invested in, just visuals and 'themes'.

But children can't get invested in themes or subversion. Neither can most people. It's the province of the elitist to care about subtext over story--the sick doldrums of modern art--and Star Wars isn't for them. It's for the people.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

1939 MSG Nazi rally

+

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 27, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 28, 2024

I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way. 

It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight. 

There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas. 

Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.  

Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024. 

On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump. 

Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.  

Meanwhile, the decision of the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post not to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have sparked a backlash. As Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, “in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.”

Early on October 26, the Washington Post itself went after Trump backer billionaire Elon Musk with a major story highlighting the information that Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, had worked illegally when he started his career in the U.S. Musk “did not have the legal right to work” in the U.S. when he started his first successful company. As part of the Trump campaign, Musk has emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigrants.

The New York Times has tended to downplay Trump’s outrageous statements, but on Saturday it ran a round-up of Trump’s threats in the center of the front page, above the fold. It noted that Trump has vowed to expand presidential power, prosecute his political opponents, and crack down on immigration with mass deportations and detention camps. It went on to list his determination to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), use the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels “in potential violation of international law,” and use federal troops against U.S. citizens. It added that he plans to “upend trade” with sweeping new tariffs that will raise consumer prices, and to rein in regulatory agencies. 

“To help achieve these and other goals,” the paper concluded, “his advisers are vetting lawyers seen as more likely to embrace aggressive legal theories about the scope of his power.” 

On Sunday the front page of the New York Times opinion section read, in giant capital letters: “DONALD TRUMP/ SAYS HE WILL PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES/ ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS/ USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS/ ABANDON ALLIES/ PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS/ BELIEVE HIM.” And then, inside the section, the paper provided the receipts: Trump’s own words outlining his fascist plans. “BELIEVE HIM,” the paper said. 

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, host Jake Tapper refused to permit Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, to gaslight viewers. Vance angrily denied that Trump has repeatedly called for using the U.S. military against Americans, but Tapper came with receipts that proved the very things Vance denied. 

Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden began in the early afternoon. The hateful performances of the early participants set the tone for the rally. Early on, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, delivered a steamingly racist set. He said, for example: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” He went on: “And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.” Hinchcliffe also talked about Black people carving watermelons instead of pumpkins. 

The speakers who followed Hinchcliffe called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” They called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a b*tch,” and they railed against “f*cking illegals.” They insulted Latinos generally, Black Americans, Palestinians and Jews. Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s claim that “America is for Americans and Americans only” directly echoed the statement of Adolf Hitler that "Germany is for Germans and Germans only.” 

Trump took the stage about two hours late, prompting people to stream toward the exits before he finished speaking. He hit his usual highlights, notably undermining Vance’s argument from earlier in the day by saying that, indeed, he believes fellow Americans are “the enemy within.”  

But Trump perhaps gave away the game with his inflammatory language and with an aside, seemingly aimed at House speaker Johnson. “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said. 

It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote.

Since he has made virtually no effort to win votes in 2024, this seems his likely plan. 

But to do that, he needs at least a plausibly close election, or at least to convince his supporters that the election has been stolen from him. Tonight’s rally badly hurt that plan. 

As Hinchcliffe was talking about Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris was at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia talking about her plan to spread her opportunity economy to Puerto Rico. She has called for strengthening Puerto Rico’s energy grid and making it easier to get permits to build there. 

After the “floating island of garbage” comment, Puerto Rican superstar musician Bad Bunny, who has more than 45 million followers on Instagram, posted Harris’s plan for Puerto Rico, and his spokesperson said he is endorsing Harris. 

Puerto Rican singer and actor Ricky Martin shared a clip from Hinchcliffe’s set with his 16 million followers. His caption read: “This is what they think of us.” Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who has 250 million Instagram followers, posted Harris’s plan. Later, singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande posted that she had voted for Harris. Grande has 376 million followers on Instagram. Singer Luis Fonsi, who has 16 million followers, also called out the “constant hate.”

The headlines were brutal. “MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump's MSG rally,” read Axios. Politico wrote: “Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks.” “Racist Remarks and Insults Mark Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally,” the New York Times announced. “Speakers at Trump rally make racist comments, hurl insults,” read CNN.

But the biggest sign of the damage the rally did was the frantic backpedaling from Republicans in tight elections, who distanced themselves as fast as they could from the insults against Puerto Ricans, especially. The Trump campaign itself tried to distance itself from the “floating island of garbage” quotation, only to be met with comments pointing out that Hinchcliffe’s set had been vetted and uploaded to the teleprompters. 

As the clips spread like wildfire, political writer Charlotte Clymer pointed out that almost 6 million Puerto Ricans live in the states—about a million in Florida, half a million in Pennsylvania, 100,000 in Georgia, 100,000 in Michigan, 100,000 in North Carolina, 45,000 in Arizona, and 40,000 in Nevada—and that over half of them voted in 2020. 

In 1939, as about 18,000 American Nazis rallied inside Madison Square Garden, newspapers reported that a crowd of about 100,000 anti-Nazis gathered outside to protest. It took 1,700 police officers, the largest number of officers ever before detailed for a single event, to hold them back from storming the venue.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[tobiasdrake]

God, Magneto's Nazi manhunt is so fucking good.

This movie leans in hard on Magneto being a Holocaust victim. Previous movies had referenced it for poignancy with his charismatic speeches, but his plot in First Class is about the shadow of that genocide and its effects on him.

When we first meet Adult Xavier, he's using his rich boy education to flirt with women.

When we first meet Adult Magneto, he's on a bloody warpath.

He's got a conspiracy wall of targets and he's looking to put a little more iron in the blood of the Nazi who killed his mum.

And he has a sense of fucking poetry about it.

"This gold was torn from the teeth of my people," he says, moments before forcing Schmidt's banker to surrender his location by. Uh.

I love this about First Class's Magneto. He is such a scenery-chewing showman. Michael Fassbender had the unfortunate task of needing to follow Ian McKellen in this role, and these opening scenes are truly promising.

He's just.

He is so fucking smooth while positively glowing with impending retaliatory violence and I want to have his fucking babies oh my god. Magneto, you magnificent bastard, I'm so sorry that your solo film was cancelled because Barakapool sucked.

I actually wonder if Magneto's hunt for Schmidt in this film is actually the leftover remnant from the script for X-Men Origins: Magneto.

[cobragardens]

Red & Yellow Can Hurt a Fellow:

Color Symbolism in 1941 (Part 1)

(Plus Bonus Sundry 1941 Observations)

"Nazi Zombie Flesheaters" is such an interesting title, isn't it? You don't need to say flesheaters if you've already got zombie: it's redundant. It's like the title was chosen by someone unfamiliar with very basic zombie tropes. Also fwiw "Nazi zombie" is an anachronism: zombies did not exist in the popular consciousness before George Romero's Night of the Living Dead in 1968. I feel like maybe an angel titled this minisode. There is evidence both that the Metatron fucks with the story and that the flashbacks are Aziraphale's memories, so my guess is it's one of them.

***

In "The Colors of Crowley" I make an effort to evidence that crimson red is both the the color that symbolizes Crowley to Crowley and also the color that symbolizes passionate romantic love.

In light of that, here is this tiny beautiful moment:

As they did to each other in 1793, Crowley is sending a message here to Aziraphale with his clothes, so let us dwell on it.

Crowley's tie has Aziraphale's colors on it--white and blue-- in a design that connects two points (through a larger, dark point between them), one above and one below.

And Crowley opens his jacket with a flourish and shows Aziraphale the tie.

So first we we get this beautiful gesture of opening a covering and exposing a hidden, brighter, truer self beneath it, along with the metaphorical implications of exposing the heart and the guts, the snake showing its vulnerable red belly. Then the tie says, I like you. I'm wearing your colors. I want to be connected to you. And Crowley doesn't just display that message by opening his jacket, he then calls attention to it by straightening the tie.

Aziraphale gives no outward sign he has received this message. But.

There is so much red in this bookshop tonight.

The bookshop structure is brown and tan, with bright yellow in the back rooms (just as Aziraphale always has fear in the back rooms of his mind). But in this flashback there's a red carpet on the steps in front of the door, a red carpet on the floor in front of that, a display of red books on the circular tiered stand, a pile of red books in the corner, more red books on the windowsill behind Crowley's head, and the red velvet chair that Crowley's sitting on.

Here's the other side of that room, i.e., what Crowley is facing:

The walls of the bookshop are, again, brown and tan, but there's a red rug, red brocade on the front panel of the cashier's table, two red-upholstered chairs, and a red-stained chest of drawers Aziraphale is mostly blocking, plus another red thing in the right corner behind the stepladder that I can't even identify but that looks like the same velvet as the chairs. That's a determined effort to cram in as much red into a brown space as possible without actually taking a paintbrush to anything.

There are other metas showing how Aziraphale takes pains to make the bookshop into a welcoming place for Crowley [link if I find them again]. Just as likely imo his love of red and gold in soft furnishings is to remind himself of Crowley because they don't get to see each other very often.

But the books Aziraphale would be constantly rearranging, and buying more of, and possibly even occasionally selling when it can't be avoided; and bibliophiles do not generally organize their books by color. I therefore suggest two things are happening simultaneously here: on the Doylean (authorial) level, the set dressers are using the red notes in these backgrounds to symbolize the passionate romantic love Aziraphale has just realized he feels for Crowley; on the Watsonian (intra-story narrator) level, Aziraphale's feelings are "coloring" his memories.

This red as symbolic of Aziraphale's feelings for Crowley is not subtle. It starts immediately after his epiphany about those feelings--I mean literal sparks fly--

--and it does. not. let. up.

Note the other colors in the (brick red) dressing room besides red: blue, white, and off-white, Aziraphale's colors. There are even white and off-white feathers, indicating these are the angel's feelings we're being shown.

Brief digression. I've listened to this line several times now and for the life of me can't hear the final -s. I suspect Crowley may in fact say "Chalk up a win for the side of the angel," i.e., Aziraphale, which definitely makes Aziraphale's reaction of giddy delight track well, but I don't have a decent pair of headphones, so if someone would be willing to verify whether I've caught a Moment or just have romance on the brain, I'd be very grateful. [Update: I've got one confirmation so far that Crowley says "angels."]

Anyway. Note the splashes of blue and off-white surrounding Crowley, indicating all this red (he's sitting on a red velvet chaise btw) continues to be linked to Aziraphale's feelings for him. This whole narrative is drenched in Aziraphale's passionate romantic love.

Until this moment:

Now something really interesting happens. For the first time in the scene (I went back and checked), a bright spot of canary yellow suddenly becomes visible in the frame.

It's a jar of ostrich feathers, dyed bright yellow, on one of the dressing tables. How do we know it's meant to represent fear?

Because it already has done.

And remember how yellow is specifically fear of the head offices?

Look who shows up.

Now suddenly the camera shoots Aziraphale from a different angle, and yellow appears in the frame here, too--more fear.

The yellow feathers remain visible between Aziraphale and Furfur for the remainder of the scene.

So that's one gif and 18 stills I've shown you thus far in this essay about how the use of red in and yellow in this minisode is consistent with the use of red and yellow throughout Show Omens and is being used in a symbolically meaningful way, right? I mean they come down pretty hard on it.

So it's very interesting, in terms of colors, how the minisode ends.

Which I will talk about in Part 2!

[aimeedaisies]

Princess Anne reading the memoirs of her husbands uncle, Sub-Lieutenant Keith Symons, who at aged 20 was in command of three landing crafts at gold beach on the first wave of D-Day, at the Commonwealth War Graves Commissions ‘Great Vigil’ at Bayeux War Cemetery in France on 5th June 2024.

The full speech:

At 04.15 hours on 5th June 1944, General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Forces, took the momentous decision to launch Operation overlord - what we now call D-Day - the largest sea and airborne invasion the world has ever seen. After 5 years of war, all that time training and waiting, who knows what those Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen felt. 80 years ago today, charged with storming the Normandy coastline and beginning the campaign to free Western Europe from Nazi tyranny.

One of those sailors was my husband's uncle, Sub-Lieutenant Keith Symons who, at the age of 20 was in command of three landing craft at Gold Beach in the first wave on D-Day.

Recalling in his memoirs the evening of 5th June he wrote:

"At last it was time for our briefing. Our confidence was dented by predictions that casualties in the first wave were likely to be heavy. Everyone was quite subdued, but it was all very matter-of-fact. They were in those days. After supper we sat around making light conversation and listening to the chaplain playing his violin.

My cabin companion was a Captain in the Green Howards, a charming man who had been a solicitor before the war. We talked about what we would do when the war was over. Sadly he was killed in France only a few weeks later."

Bayeux was close to the landing beaches and it was the first city to be liberated by the British on 7th June. The City's hospitals were soon full of the wounded from the surrounding battlefield. For those who could not be saved, this was their final resting place.

It is the largest Commonwealth cemetery of the Second World War in France and contains four thousand one hundred and forty allied graves. It is my honour as President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to continue to protect their legacy.

The epitaphs on the headstones here capture the grief of those who loved these men. One mother's words are:

"HE IS NOT DEAD WHOSE MEMORY LIVES IN HEARTS THAT KNOW AND LOVED HIM."

80 years on, let their memory still live on in our hearts.

[viking-raider]

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (review)

9.5/10 would recommend!

I loved this movie, it was great! It has Guy Richie all over it and such a brilliant way. I'm not giving it the full ten, cause you know the historian in me, there are a couple points that were "that didn't happen" but let's forget that!

Alan as Lassen, oh my GoSH! As a Swede, I have the straight giggles with his accent (and Henry's attempted at the start of the film) But Lassen is such an adorable little Nazi stabber xD I got halfway through the movie when I was like, why aren't they not nicknaming him Legolas! Lassen and Gus's relationship is humorous, school boys. How Lassen just flirts with the boys. I just got the feels for Lassen, and Alan.

Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Henry Golding are great together. Fredrick's fire pyro ways really get the boys out of trouble, when they get themselves neck deep in it. He's really quite good with an explosive with such a calm, unless he can't blow something up xD Hayes's an excellent sailor, but give him a Gatling gun and he will rip through Nazis like Freddy can blow them up.

Appleyard is amazing at plans, especially when the first four have gone to shite.

Now, Gus. Mmm, man is missing a screw or two, but with what screws he has left, he's great at using them. With a lively laugh, sense of humor and a wagging tongue. If he can't have something or sees something he likes, he'll just take it. But he, like the rest of his crew, has a heart of gold.

What I find interesting about this film is, despite being a film of stopping Nazis, and killing dozens of them, you see little of their actual agenda and infection. You just see the boys having fun, creative ways of killing them and them trying to execute the mission they were sent on by M and Churchill.

It was a wild ride that I rather enjoyed. I suppose that's why, as I write this, I'm (yet again) fifteen minutes deep into a re-watch. xD

[rei-ismyname]

The (first) Trial of Magneto

Starting with the aftermath - a very straight chat between two old friends after dickhead Nazis attacked the courthouse. But how did we get here? TW Nazis and antisemitism.

Way back in the day when Chuck and Magnus first met in Israel, Baron Von Strucker attacked a camp survivor hospital to kidnap Gabrielle Haller. Charles both sides'd the conflict while sleeping with a patient in his care - and Magnus killed a lot of Nazis and bounced with their gold. He also gave Chuck a tongue lashing.

Much later, after many supervillain schemes and slick retcons, Magnus (now Magneto) came to believe he was doing more harm than good and surrendered to human justice. The X-Men were also there, sent by Loki of all people.

Mags had his say, with Haller as his counsel in front of a pretty reasonable judge. He looked extra AF, as is his wont. Because it's comics, the fact that he'd been turned into a baby since those crimes was a big factor in his acquittal. Other complications loomed.

There were a lot of riots and counter riots, tempers were hot.

He's got the gift of the gab, a silver fox with a silver tongue.

Unfortunately, Strucker had two kids, who followed him into the family business. They've got a real Cersei and Jaime Lannister vibe and they attack. Needless to say, most of this drama is their doing, ironically affording Mags the opportunity to protect the court dwellers and stomp some Nazis.

Though the X-Men do assist, kinda.

Told you the judge was pretty reasonable, slapping the shit out of the prosecutor who's super racist and a dick. Needless to say, all the threats are neutralized and Mags is more or less free to go...

KISS! KISS! KISS!

...At the cost of his old friend being gravely injured (don't worry, his bird imperialist gf whisks him away to be her pet. WOOF!) Before that, however, he asks Mags to take his place. He does so under the name Michael Xavier, to mixed results. He was actually pretty great, but trust issues poisoned the well somewhat (Plus the Hellfire Club interferes, mainly Emma Frost.)

[taliadoesrpgs]

I’m a professional Game Master, and I've got my July lineup of games ready.

For July, I’m offering:

- Dragon Heist for D&D 5th Ed

- Fate of the Galaxy, a space opera in Fate

- Solstice Rain, an introductory Lancer campaign

- The Summer Valor Build An OVA Workshop

- Slayers Detention, an Occult Punk Valor OVA

All of my games are $25/3 hour session and meet biweekly. Sign-up and is handled through the third party site Startplaying.Games - Descriptions and sign-up links below!

First off, having completed Dragon Heist for one group, I’m running it again for new D&D players - or those new to the campaign! Will you outsmart five crime lords and grab the treasure hidden in Waterdeep, worth half a million Gold Dragons?

Second, I have Fate of the Galaxy, a rollicking space opera adventure in the vein of Wars, DUNC (the slams must jam!), Nine Sols and Outlaw Star!

Join us to unleash psychic powers, make daring raids on Imperial bases, find alien allies and punch a Space Nazi!

Third, I’m bringing back Lancer with its introductory campaign, Solstice Rain. Become an elite mecha-jock for the benevolent Union as you intervene in an invasion. Save as many civilian lives as you can! Are you a bad enough pilot to rescue your captain?

Last but not least is a tradition of mine - the Original Valor Adventure Workshop! I’ll help your crew come up with a self-contained anime premise and characters, then do a short and sweet minicampaign - self contained, like an OVA series!

And, of course, we’re continuing the campaign created in the Spring OVA Workshop, Slayer’s Detention! There’s still room for two more punk teenagers who dare to fight spiritual and criminal corruption with gutter magic and street fighting!