#going against my uncle

[backpackingspace]

Okay I know Athena praying to Poseidon is just part of her disguise as mentor. however I cannot stop thinking about the meta of it.

Like gods praying to gods how does that work? Is it just a message system? Do godly prayers /feel/ different. Is it a power dynamic thing? And that's not even taking into account Athena and Poseidon's rivalry.

[froginmygarden]

Got a little brain worm on the way home and have a need to write it down. Just a drabble because I'm not good at writing.

DC x DP Just a (clone) couple

Joung Adult!Team Phantom for some reason end up in the DC universe. For reasons, there aren't any equivalents of them here. Danny and Sam are together and Danny and Dani have a familiar relationship. Whatever the reasons they stay in this universe.

So Sam, Danny and Dani start making a life together as a family, Tucker goes on to make a "small business" involving VPN's and tech in general (finds an anthropomorphic girlfriend on the way or something), Jazz goes to uni (JL members city of choice, although I advise against Gotham or Metropolis, because that would make this too short).

For some MORE reasons unknown, although they might be by the making of our favourite clock-man, the DP people's DNA has by default markings of being clones in DC (I don't know if this is canon or fanon but Connor had something like that ╮⁠(⁠＾⁠▽⁠＾⁠)⁠╭). The thing is here Jack = Bruce, Maddy = Alexander and Jeremy = Clark, Pamela = Lois! Do you see my vision here??

So *JL member from the perspective city* meets the Fenton/Manson/Nightingale?? family accidentally when they are visiting Jazz, and has a sweet deja vu moment. Some time passes and the off handedly mention it to someone in the JL.

Batman being the paranoid bastard that he is goes on to check this thing out, because he can smell the fish from a mile away. Thinks the couple are clones, gets very paranoid again and starts making plans, plans get found by his kids, kids tell the JL and friends. So starts the collective discussions of what should they do, some say that they should get rid of the clones, some others that they don't have proof for anything nefarious and shouldn't do anything at all, someone points out that they have literally showed up out of nowhere and that it is reasonable to be suspicious. And Connor is also there.

Meanwhile Team Phantom is going about their lives like normal, but with a "I know that you know" mindset, and don't really bother with hiding themselves.

In my opinion the part that has to be the most glaringly noticeable about them should be that Danny (Batman's clone apparently) should wear a lot of flannel and have a "Midwestern Nice" personality" (the stuff of legends I have only heard about in passing) and over all should resemble Clark in fashion sense. For Sam (Superman's clone apparently) the exact opposite - she can put the GOTH in Gotham.

And all JL angst/drama/confusion happens in the background as we follow Connor Kent's/Superboy's POV and him dealing with having two half siblings and the half siblings being together and them having a child and this is too much for him oooooooooo noooooooo nononoonononoonononononno what in the sweeet home Alabama whhhhhyyyyyyyy!??!

So it's like a metronome tick's between the POVs of fluffy new life/potential threat to the JL I mean the child of Bruce/Lex and child Clark/Luis having potential super-smart, super-powered (potentially evil??) children. But overall it's crack.

Maybe I'll plan it out and actually try to write it, but meanwhile you can enjoy my half-ill/fever induced brain worms and play in the brown dirt puddle I call my creative thinking.

To who ever finished reading this

Good night! ;P

[pocchi-poket]

Reigen is, like, the definition of "Never let them know your next move"

[steampunk-raven]

do you ever think about the fact that han mi was *at most* 13 when her mom was killed?

do you ever think about the fact that there's a non-zero chance han got her first period while hiding with her parents, given her general age range was the average time people first start menstruating?

do you ever think about the fact that, if she did get her first period, her parents likely wouldn't have enough resources to help her through it? They wouldn't have been expecting her to get it, not like how han's mother would have (probably) prepared enough supplies for herself.

do you ever think about the fact han mi's mother died buying tampons?

do you think she blames herself?

[set-phasers-to-whump]

racing the clock

prompt: race against the clock

whumpee: illya kuryakin

fandom: the man from uncle

hi everyone and welcome to my sixth year of whumptober!! i am so excited to be doing this again and i hope you like this first fic! it can be read as gen or ot3 or pre-ot3, whatever you feel like.

There’s a terrible noise in Napoleon’s head, a tick, tick, tick that counts down in time with the bumping of the car down the gravel road. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes and then Illya’s body will start shutting itself off irreparably. Thirty minutes. Tick. Tick. Tick. 

It has been five minutes and forty-three seconds from the time they’d found him strapped to that chair, struggling against iron restraints with the ferocity, the desperation, of one who knows that the clock is ticking. 

“Two minutes. Sixteen seconds,” the report from Illya on how long it had been since a man in a lab coat had stuck a needle into his arm and pushed the plunger. 

Napoleon had immediately taken up the count. 

They are miles away from the city, from medical help. Napoleon had radioed Waverly as soon as they’d flung themselves into the car. The earliest evacuation time is two hours too late. 

Gaby is driving as fast as she can. She isn’t counting time. Can’t afford to, isn’t built to. All of her focus is on driving the beat-up little Renault down a road neither it nor she especially wants to be on. Her right foot is glued to the gas pedal, the wheel merely an extension of her arms. She’s in top gear, has been since she’d gone smoking out of the flattened patch of grass she’d parked on. 

She isn’t thinking. It is her and the car and the road, and nothing else exists. 

Nothing else can exist, or she will not be able to work. 

In the backseat, Napoleon is still counting. Tick. Tick. Tick. Nine minutes. Twenty seconds. God knows how far there is still to go. 

Illya is by necessity pressed up to his side in the cramped seat. Heat radiates off him, and Napoleon doesn’t know if this is normal and he’s just noticing everything now, or whether it’s some effect of the drug.  

He thinks. About the worst, mostly. About what he is going to do if they’re not in time, if Illya starts dying. If Illya loses himself. If they lose him. 

It’s difficult to think these things through when Illya’s body is a heavy weight beside him, when Illya’s breathing—slightly irregular—is as loud as the ticking in his head, as the gravel on the road. 

He doesn’t dare speak. Doesn’t want to risk losing count. Instead he blindly reaches for Illya’s sweaty hand, squeezes. 

Illya leans into him more heavily, his head coming to rest on Napoleon’s shoulder. This close, the shaking is impossible to ignore. 

“Я хочу—,” Illya whispers, voice unsteady and afraid, but before he can say what it is he wants, they’re both thrown to the side as Gaby executes a screaming turn, and suddenly the horrible noise beneath the wheels drops away. 

Asphalt. A proper road. 

Fourteen minutes, forty-eight seconds. 

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

Illya is silent. Napoleon’s heartbeat is thumping in his ears, but it has no hope of drowning out the clock. 

Gaby navigates through rapidly rising buildings, trying not to let relief overwhelm her. She still has to find a hospital. They still have to explain what’s wrong to a bunch of Portuguese doctors, and none of them speak Portuguese. 

Stop that. Drive. 

She’d seen signs for a hospital yesterday, driving through the city. She searches for familiar landmarks, finds none. Except—

There. A spire, rising up from behind a dreary apartment block that looks like it belongs back home. She knows where she’s going. A map forms itself in her mind. Fifteen minutes at the current speed limit. 

She’ll do it in ten, or maybe less. 

Napoleon does not let the increasingly more familiar cityscape outside calm him. Any number of things might still go wrong. Plus, getting to the hospital itself is hardly enough. It isn’t like Illya will magically be healed simply by virtue of being in the building. 

Please, he lets himself think, addressing no one and nothing in particular. Let us have time. 

His hand is still wrapped around Illya’s hand, and he’s squeezing every few seconds to make sure Illya’s still there. He gets weak squeezes in return, tappings of fingers, but they’re less and less sure every time. 

The hospital jumps into view as Gaby careens around a corner. Napoleon jostles Illya, directs his attention out the window so he knows what’s coming. 

Twenty-four minutes, six seconds. 

They screech to a halt outside the emergency entrance. Before Gaby’s gotten out of gear, Napoleon’s already half out of the car, pulling Illya along behind him. 

The next few minutes pass in a chaotic haze. Half dragging Illya into the hospital, Gaby hot on his heels. The frantic search for help, a doctor running up, “English?,” frantic explanations, reassurances, Illya being whisked away. 

And then it’s just them, standing in a waiting room with several Portuguese people eyeing them with a combination of confusion and interest. 

They both sort of collapse into each other. The clock in Napoleon’s head has gone silent in the chaos and without it he feels off-kilter, like he is missing something important. 

Gaby is thinking for the first time since she’d slid behind the wheel. Thoughts enter her mind too quickly to be processed in any semblance of order, emotions crashing over her in force. 

She’s shaking, she realizes, leaning into Napoleon. Or maybe it’s him. 

--

They wait. The doctor comes back out, and Napoleon has to forcibly restrain Gaby from jumping at him when he says he can’t say anything definite yet. She’s shaking, he thinks. It might be him, though. 

Finally, they’re given information. Illya is fine. No permanent damage. He needs rest, and they want to keep him for the night, for observation. 

They both start protesting at once. They can care for him. It’s what they do. And they should get out of here as soon as possible. Who knows how long it’ll take for someone to track them down, or to realize they’re not who they say they are. 

The nurse who’d delivered this information puts his hands up in surrender. They both slow down, turning to each other for mutual confirmation, comfort. 

Their evacuation will arrive in about an hour, Napoleon realizes, looking at his watch. They can contact the medical team, let them communicate with the hospital staff. 

He goes out to the car to relay this decision—well, technically it’s a suggestion, but he knows Waverly will agree. He finds it very illegally parked in much the same spot as they originally stopped in, which does not surprise him in the slightest. 

He pulls the car into an actual parking space, then calls up Waverly. He agrees, just as Napoleon had known he would. 

Back inside, Gaby sits in a chair beside Illya’s still, silent form. She’d been able to persuade the nurse to let her see him, and she isn’t sure what she’d been expecting. 

Not this. Illya is so small and pale lying in the hospital bed, IV in his arm, eyes closed. She wants him to wake up, to pull the needle from his skin, swing his long legs out from under the sheets and walk out the door as if nothing at all is the matter. 

Except he’d nearly died. That’s what the nurse had told her. Nearly died. 

But he hadn’t. He’s alive, albeit asleep, hurt, but he’s still here. No lasting damage. 

She slips her hand into his, careful not to jostle the IV. She squeezes, but his hand remains limp. 

Napoleon enters the room a few moments later, and she knows from his expression that Waverly had agreed to their proposal. She watches him take in Illya’s body, sees the pain in his eyes, the relief, the dregs of fear. 

He sits down opposite her and takes up Illya’s other hand, and they wait, the three of them, together.

thanks for reading!! fun fact in an unprecedented and shocking turn of events i have managed to write a substantial amount of fics ahead of time this year (including this one!!) wow ahh ooh

[hauntingblue]

Stampede aka another episode of luffy turning haters into dick riders just with his kind and big heart

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Maybe the truth at the heart of Shadowstruck is the importance of family. Because the most compelling stories in this universe are about what happens when you tell parents that some of their children have no right to their love, care, and protection. It destroys what should be the strongest and most natural bonds of love, and that simple horrible thing leads to all the complicated problems in their oppressive society.

[kashilascorner]

What were the prose Tristan authors eating for lunch when they wrote Mark and Tristan's dynamics seriously it's so toxic but also like they keep hanging around each other? Toxic exes except family instead of lovers

[windor-truffle]

I remembered Major Victoria not really playing much of a role in the story but I thought I had just forgotten some of her dialogue... nope, she only has 5 lines of very generic dialogue during the coup at Barona Castle 😭 canon did you so dirty girl imma try to give you some relevancy okay???

[randomnameless]

@awayfromdiscourse replied to your post “Supporting England just because their euro is as,...”:

I like they beat us, won't have to listen to Dutch nationalistic bullshit anymore

​Don't worry, football fans are the same everywhere.

I'm glad not to be in England* right now to hear about how great the team is, and how the country deserves to win a cup bcs they play the best football in the world - everyone knows the premier league! - and the last one was in 1966, aka, before we walked on the Moon.

*granted it's half a joke, the most obnoxious fans and supporters of the English team I've ever met were, not surprisingly, not living in england themselves lol

[rigginsstreet]

My dogs such a little shit every time my uncle brings his dogs over and they jump on the couches she starts barking at them cuz that’s her couch bitch 😂

[highdensityrabbitsituation]

told my mom that I wasn't going to North Carolina to visit her family next weekend. vibes are gonna be so bad this week

[pimento-playing-hopscotch]

Sharing this from a family text chain, because my uncle is one of those with unlimited crazy currency, and I want someone else to venture a guess what the fuck this means-

[dumbdiscodragon]

So I have been cyberstalking my dad which is a super-healthy pasttime for sure. And it's kinda funny and kinda sad... but mostly super fucking embarassing. Like he is really out here on the internet in a fucking fedora on a form called "It's ok to be white" patting white ppl on the back for having their feelings hurt by people like... acknowledging racism or something. like I really wish to God this was fake!!

[veone]

I don’t like you and you have me blocked, I don’t own you anything at all.

[lilhawkeye3]

A Crash Course to Kendrick's Super Bowl Performance, from a Black Woman

Note: this does NOT go in depth into all of the song's lyrics. I don't have time to recount two decades of his discography. This is just a summary of the performance itself.

Let's start with the first visual we get:

UNCLE SAM - most notably recognized from WWII American wartime propaganda, Uncle Sam is the personification of American patriotism and freedom. The term "uncle" is also evocative of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom's Cabin, an abolitionist book that aided in inciting the Civil War. Uncle is also a very common term (both endearment and derogatory) towards Black men (eg. "unc"). Samuel L Jackson was fantastic. (Edit: and please look up his history of civil rights activism, he was on the FBI watchlist and even a pallbearer at MLKJr’s funeral.)

Uncle Sam also resembles a circus ringleader, notable for my next point:

THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME - no, not Super Bowl. The GAG is us the people being pitted against each other: through late-stage capitalism, through the culture war, through class warfare, through being built of the backs of slaves. We are all players in the GAG because none of us on this site were the oligarchs seated at the inauguration.

This is also seen as Kendrick's stage was a Play Station controller. Not only did it remind of circus rings visually, but it was a game battle stage. The Great American Game is a battle royale of the commoners for the amusement of the rich whites.

Remember the foods / Them color was tin and brown / But now they 100 and blue - For this I'll just say, look what the last election said about lowering the price of eggs... and look at the prices now.

The revolution about to be televised / You picked the right time / But the wrong guy - Election 2024 once more. *Edit to add, the first part of this lyric is in reference to the Black Liberation Song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron. Thanks to everyone who mentioned that.

THE FLAG DANCERS - yes, the dancers formed the US flag... off of the backs of Black people. Not a single white person in sight, and that's true of the cotton pickers in the fields. Plantations are part of how the US came to economic prominence after being a "backwater" colony. Remember tobacco? Cotton? Our bloodlines do. *Edit to add: they also all piled out of a clown car. The US flag in a clown car? Brilliant.

The red and blue dancers are also notable for representing the Crips and Bloods, two infamous street gangs. The dance in Not Like Us is the Crip Walk. I recommend researching more on your own time about them, but just know they are a large part of the stereotype of Black people being "ghetto."

TOO LOUD, TOO RECKLESS, TOO GHETTO. Do you really know how to play the game? - This is exactly what Black people, especially Black men, get told all the time. It's why we change our names on resumes if they sound "too Black." It's why we codeswitch in non-Black company. This is especially rich considering how non-Black people love our culture and love to make money off of us, as the latter part of the quote points to. And it's even more profound during the Super Bowl-- the NFL is majority Black players.

STREET LIGHT A CAPELLA -- "thug" stereotype dancers to counteract the a capella connotations, with Uncle Sam then saying that Kendrick figured out "bringing other street guys around being a culture cheat code." Yes, this is a direct hit at Drake (listen to "Not Like Us") but also politically. Look up "model minority". Notably I would point to Candace Owens, or the Miami Venezuelan political group that's been in the news recently, especially as this directly led to Kendrick being surrounded by...

DANCERS IN WHITE -- it's white America. That's... that's the allegory.

NOT LIKE US TEASER -- Kendrick says "Not Like Us" is "their favorite song." -> he means white people specifically here. It comes after he's surrounded by all white dancers, the women around him who are his call and response are also in white (my opinion, they represent the industry). He's saying "Not Like Us" is the favorite of yts because it is about BLACK MEN FIGHTING. This again is reflected in the video game stage and ringleader Uncle Sam.

SZA -- instead of giving what they want, we see SZA. She's one of Drake's exes and Kendrick has always supported her.

ALL THE STARS -- This was in the first Black Panther movie, which I recommend you watch. Rest in Power Chadwick. Notably, this movie was incredibly mainstream as a major Marvel movie, and then we have Uncle Sam say...

"THAT'S WHAT AMERICA WANTS: NICE AND CALM. DON'T MESS THIS UP" -- translation: Marvel (the industry, America, etc.) wanted a safe, semi-pop song because white American likes safe pop songs, not Kendrick's usual heavy rap style about his life as a Black man! Don't mess up what you've got going mainstream for having this "Black rap feud" with Drake, who is an R&B model minority to white people because he's safe.

So what does Kendrick say?

IT'S A CULTURAL DIVIDE / IMMA GET IT ON THE FLOOR -- He was warned not to be political or apologetically Black for this Super Bowl performance, but he is using this big stage opportunity to speak out.

40 ACRES AND A MULE / THIS IS BIGGER THAN THE MUSIC -- 40 acres and a mule are what the freed slaves were promised. Instead, this land went to white sharecroppers. Research Jim Crow laws.

THEY TRIED TO RIG THE GAME / BUT YOU CAN'T FAKE INFLUENCE -- rig the election, rig the industry like with model minority Drake, rig the Great American Game with culture war to distract from active class warfare.

NOT LIKE US -- the only thing I'll mention because it made me holler is Serena Williams crip walking on Drake's metaphorical grave. She's another one of his exes (read: Drake harassed the hell out of her). *Edit: she was also fined at the 2012 Olympics for crip walking in celebration at Wimbledon.

TURN THE TV OFF -- exactly like he said! The TV is a distraction, the Super Bowl is a distraction, the mainstream news is often a distraction. Turn it off and get with your people!

GAME OVER — could not see this on my stream but at the end of the performance, the lights in the stadium spelled this out. The world is watching, America…

In conclusion, Kendrick Lamar is a visionary and thank you for coming to my TED Talk.