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prey-to-go · 4 years ago

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Ate we going to get a first-customer fic with Peter? Also, I swear, these are some of the best things I've ever read!

Oh whoops- I forgot to post it here! But yes! Peter's first order was luckily Tony! Also thank you so much!???? That is super kind!!! T♡T))

Tony had been ordering from Prey to Go for years. All to satisfy the deep urge all demons had. It stopped him from having to eat souls and always left him feeling full days after. He hadn't found his favorite snack quite yet so sadly he had to keep ordering random selections.

He hums softly as he speed dials the number, grinning widely when he heard the little jingle. He had gone a bit to long this time, the hunger for a soul gnawing at him the whole time.

“Hello, this is Tony Stark, I’d like to place an order.”

Usually he’d just order online but it took so long and they always asked him to be specific with ages, tallness, size, god the list went on.

“Oh Tony! A randomized order with a 12 inch size presume?”

Tony hums softly. He was just thankful the place basically knew him at this point. He didn’t have to argue about specifics he could just get his meal and be satisfied with that.

“Yes, as soon as you can. Thank you.” He says before hanging up. Now all that was left was to wait. He could do that, just a few more minutes.

When he heard the elevators door open he was already salivating at the thought of having a soul inside of him. Tony shidders excitedly, looking over to see what his randomized order looked like. He was young, a little pudge which just added to his cuteness. He couldn’t help but grin, his stomach growling anxiously as the kid stepped inside.

“I-I’m Peter, y-you’re um, prey for to-tonight.”

Tony’s smile drops instantly when he notices the tears streaking down the kid’s face. Oh no. He could not deal with tears, especially when it came to kids. Despite being a demon he surprisingly had strong parental instinct, which got annoying at times.

He grimaces slightly and kneels next to the kid. Peter was the same height as all his orders, around a foot tall, which just made his heart twist even more.

“Hey kid, what’s with the tears?” He murmurs softly. He wasn’t surprised when the kid jolted back, things must have been jaring at that height. Peter seemed like a sweet kid, he wasn’t sure why the kid was working with a company that literally gave predators the meals they needed.

“M’ s-sorry. I-I’ve never d-done this before.” Peter managed to hiccup out between quiet sobs. Tony sighs slightly, gently wiping tears from the child's face. Of course the one time he needed a quick meal he wouldn't get it. That's alright. He couldn't get mad at the kid, he was just frightened, no worries.

"Hey, look at me kiddo. We don't have to do this if it's really that scary for you." Tony murmurs softly, offering a warm smile. Besides the kid was a bit on the young side, he could see why this would be frightening to him.

"M-m' okay now y-you can do..do..it now." Peter whimpers, rubbing his eyes. Tony sighs again shaking his head.

"I'm not going to eat you when you're crying kiddo." He says tiredly. No matter how hungry he was he wasn't just going to ignore the fact that the poor thing was terrified. It honestly killed his appetite.

"Come on, deep breaths." He says softly. He smiles slightly wiping some tears away as the kid struggled to listen to him.

After a few minutes of him shushing the kid, and Peter letting soft hiccuping sobs put he managed to calm his little snack down enough so that he wasn't crying. At this point he was sitting on the ground with Peter's face buried in his side like an exhausted child. The moment was almost peaceful, well except for his stomach loudly complaining about its lack of a meal.

"S-sorry I..I should probably do my job- right?" Peter asks hesitantly, glancing up at Tony nervously. This kid was one of the most sensitive prey he'd ever had.

"I don't want to sound pushy but this is it. You can walk out now, but I need to know in the next ten seconds kid." Tony says with a tired sigh. He was starving, ravenous actually, for a decent soul, and if Peter needed to walk out he'd have to place another order as soon as possible.

Peter, bless the kid, shifted slightly before taking a shaky breath in and nodded. Obviously mentally preparing himself for his decision.

"I..I can do this."

Well he wasn't expecting that. The kid was really dedicated to his job then. He was so terrified and yet here he was standing determinedly in front of him.

"Close your eyes, it'll help." Tony murmurs softly gently running a hand through Peter's curls. He smiles a bit when the kid nods and squeezes his eyes shut tightly, the poor things heart rate picked up as he got closer.

Peter grimaces slightly waiting anxiously with his eyes shut tight. Letting a quiet whimper out when he felt warmth wash over his face. Despite the sharp teeth he knew Mr.Stark had he didn't feel any of them as he was gently eased inside the demon's mouth.

He trembles he felt the demon's tongue carefully coat him with salvia, the slick muscle twitching firmly against his chest as he was squished down into Mr.Stark's throat.

It was hot and tight and he had no idea what was happening at this point. He yelps slightly when he jolts forward at a thick and sudden swallow, his heart beating nervously when he was pushed further down.

Peter felt hands on his legs and waist, his face scrunching up in mild confusion until he felt Mr.Stark tilt his head back, the hands guiding him as he slid easily down the demons throat. It shouldn't have been that easy, a small part of his brain demanded that he fight, scream, put up a fuss or something but he couldn't shake his fear away long enough to react.

Several thick swallows dragged him out of his blind panic, grimacing as his head squished down into a slightly larger chamber. It groaned and gurgled excitedly as he slowly started slipping inside, his face pressing into the soft slick flesh as he tried getting somewhat upright. Thankfully the more Mr.Stark swallowed the more he could somewhat position himself.

He was completely encased in warmth, and with a few more swallows he felt his feet joining him in the extremely tight area. He wasn't sure how this was comfortable for the pred.

"Doing alright kid?"

Peter jolts slightly at how weird the voice sounded. Tony's voice was deeper and came from everywhere which was slightly comforting and freaky at the same time. The muscle groaned around him, following his movements as he tried to right himself.

"Y-yeah I'm alright!" Peter says sheepishly. He didn't mean to move around so much, but this was the first time he had actually gotten eaten. It was a bit weird and he wasn't used to the feeling at all. It was like getting smothered with soft slimy sheets honestly.

"Mm, good. You got a few more hours, so try to get comfy."

Peter shudders slightly, but nods instinctually, flushing when he realized that Tony couldn't see him.

"Y-yeah gotcha." He says quietly. He didn't try to move very much considering he still didn't know what was comfortable for the demon and didn't want to test that.

Peter could do this, it was for May after all. He sighs shakily and shifts slightly flinching at the soft gurgles the muscle around him let out. Yeah this wasn't too bad.

#soft vore #avengers vore #prey to go au #ill probably post a peter view too

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neon-junkie · 4 years ago

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unpopular opinion: Micah is terrible but he shows instances of having real, human emotions and completely erasing those moments to paint him as a 100% monster is a disservice for the fandom.

arrrrkajslkfjdsglk okay I'm gonna break Micah down and explain why I like him, just bc of everything going on and cause you've summed that up perfectly. Let's make one thing clear - I don't stan his actions, I never have, I never will. A lot of ppl seem to keep ignoring that lmfao. AND we all know that Micah is a fucking piece of shit. He's the devil. We know. Like the list goes on and on and on when it comes down to why Micah's garbage, but I guarantee you, there is NOBODY out there who actually *stans* him. He's a villain and damn good one. Now. Relating to what you've said, this man has just as much emotion as everybody else. I think the people who view him as an emotionless monster have either never seen ANY camp interactions with him, or they just choose to ignore them. For whatever reason. Idk. It is VERY obvious that Micah has 100% been abused by his father, probably physically as well as mentally and emotionally. He openly talks about the monster that his father is, and he KNOWS that he is just like his father. Now, Amos (his bro), on the other hand, has managed to break away from that lifestyle, straighten his ways, and settled down. Micah is so obviously jealous and even takes the time to write to his brother, probably to try and rekindle their sibling friendship or whatever you wanna call it. Amos basically goes 'NO' and slaps that idea right out of Micah's head, so I do feel bad that Micah was rejected. Amos makes it clear that he will only rekindle that if Micah changes, but he doubts Micah is able to change. So now his only 'role models' are gone - his father and Amos - Micah has nothing left to lose. He has no family, friends that encourage his chaos rather than help fix him, and no partner. He's a loose cannon, and without guidance, Micah will only continue to fire. That's why he sucks up to Dutch so much, because he STILL needs acceptance, praise, and guidance, and Dutch gives him all of that. Yeah, it's creepy to see, but that man must be dying inside if he'll literally lick Dutch's shoes just for a bit of acceptance. Micah clearly does try, like his approach to making friends is so cringe, but he's clearly never ever done this before, and he's only following the ways his father taught him. I mean, we see him still try to befriend Arthur at the start of the game, but Arthur barely looks at him and just continues to shoot him down. I know Arthur is probably following his gut, but people can't say that Micah didn't try. And we see him try it on with the women of the camp, he's clearly desperate to at least find a partner, and probably secretly jealous that his brother has that and a family. And if his brother can do it, then maybe he can too? and we do see him try. But Micah's no rapist, and it makes me cringe when ppl say that. There's a good post about it (here) that I won't go into detail, u can just read that for urself. So - Micah has nothing to lose. The camp doesn't want him there, so it's no sweat off his nose if he rats them out. Obviously, I don't agree with it and I think Micah should have just left, but then that'd be a very boring game lmfao. There's nobody stopping him from causing chaos, and he's just going to continue to do what he was taught to do - be a fucking piece of shit. But to say he has no emotions? You sure about that? It's SO obvious that Micah still craves acceptance in any form, whether it's from a friend, a partner, his mentor, etc. He NEEDS acceptance and he seems very lost without it. And it's so clear that Micahs past trauma still controls his actions, and he clearly has no idea how to even begin accepting and moving past his trauma. That man just needs a therapist asap. Peter Blomquist said it himself, that Micah is essentially just misunderstood. (here) And well, if his own actors said that then why the hell do people continue to ignore it? Because they just want to hate Micah. They view him as an evil and racist piece of shit and just want to hate that, which everybody does cause yanno, it's bad. But they continue to ignore that Micah, like Bill, suffers from a lot of mental trauma and issues, and his past has resulted in the person that he is today. I’ll say this AGAIN, I’m not condoning his actions, far from it, I’ve said many times before that Micah is fucking garbage, we just find him interesting. Honestly, I think if the gang was accepting, or if Micah had someone to shove him in the right direction, then he would have redeemed himself and fixed his ways. Things like racism are taught, and if you can teach it, then you can unteach it, just like Bill begins to learn. Micah is a villain and that's why I like him. Again, I don't support or stan his actions, but it's just so refreshing to see someone so chaotic and loose. People saying that you shouldn't like Micah because he's racist, also choose to ignore the fact that Abigails abusive, so why do y'all still stan her when we see the way she speaks to John? or the way she physically abuses him? So abuse is fine but racism isn't? hmm. But if we shouldn't like Micah because he's bad then why the hell do we like characters like Darth Vader or all the fucking Disney villains? Have you seen how much merch those criminals have? But a bunch of strangers on the internet having a wank over the ratman is bad? We're allowed to enjoy those but not Micah? big sigh. Peter also said that there's nothing wrong with liking Micah. You're allowed to enjoy villains, it's not a fucking crime, and it doesn't mean you support their actions, it never has done.

PLUS, this is a game full of mass murderers?!?! Arthur does a LOT that is considered questionable, such as beating a terminally ill man into his grave, but people choose to draw the line at Micah. You’re free to enjoy whatever fiction you want, but there’s no line you can draw. Well, you can draw a line for yourself, but you can’t rule what others can and cannot enjoy.

It's just SO tiring (personally) to constantly see happy endings and pure, wholesome, golden characters. I'm a sucker for bad guys and seeing them win, so when I played RDR I was like 'oh yeah, this is what I need' and that's probably why Micah's my fave lmao. It's so refreshing to see, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying it. Some people just enjoy villains, big whoop. We need to stop expecting characters to be pure cause that's just so unrealistic. Everybody has flaws of all different kinds, and that's what makes these characters human. Like, are we just choosing to ignore the fact that Arthur is the most wanted out of the gang, who has probably murdered the most people? Do we just wanna sweep his kill count under the rug and choose to hate Micah based on the one fact of him being racist? The whole fucking gang are outlaws, they're all essentially villains, even the babies like Kieran!! Micah is just as complex as every other character in this stinky game, and people who refuse to acknowledge his layers and just portray him as a monster are whack as shit. And remember, those who tell you what you can and can't enjoy are just as bad as Micah Bell himself. Especially the ones who abuse you over FICTION.

#RANT ASLJFSLKDGJSLKJGS #micah bell #Anonymous #vent post #vent #rdr

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gardenofkore · 4 years ago

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“Sicily’s women have always been shadowy figures, crouched quietly in doorways or gazing down the crowded streets from balustraded or shuttered windows. For most of the medieval period they have left no direct record of themselves, since, with a few exceptions, they could neither read nor write - and even the possession of literacy, for those few lucky enough to enjoy it, did not give one the right to act or speak independently. As a consequence, very few records survive to shed light on their activities, and virtually none of the records we have present the women in their own voices. In the intensely conservative society of Sicily, women lived their lives under tight constraints; the traditional roles that society gave them gravely limited their freedom to act and ours to behold. Local customs, in general, were designed to isolate and protect women from the outside world, to keep them safely ensconced in their fathers’ homes until they could be safely and just as absolutely ensconced in their husbands’ homes, or, for the devout and dowry-less, dedicated to God in a nunnery. Not until the Vespers era - an era inaugurated with a rebellion sparked by an Angevin outrage against a native woman - do Sicily’s women come into view with any meaningful detail of focus. Our view of them is still partial and imperfect, given the limitations of even this improved documentation. But the extant evidence holds a few surprises.The most visible figures belong of course to the aristocracy. After 1282, and as a result of it, Sicily’s queens played important roles in society. The Catalan dynasty placed the bulk of its claim to the throne on its marriage link with Constance, the last of the Hohenstaufens. Consequently, the right to inherit title and property through the female line was well established. Frederick’s and James’s father, although he had conquered the realm and had received the acclamation of the Communitas Sicilie, consistently emphasized his right to rule through his marriage to Constance; and Frederick too, as we saw earlier, asserted his inheritance of Constance’s patrimony, rather than his election by parliament, as the chief legitimation of his kingship. As queen, Constance began the practice of sitting in the MRC and taking her place in the king’s inner circle of advisers. Extant records show her working to reconcile the church to the new dynasty, to foster greater unity of action among Sicily’s contending factions and regions, and to educate the new ruling caste to Sicilian customs. When Peter left the island in order to tend to matters in Catalonia, Constance headed the lieutenancy council that governed the realm in his absence; and she continued to advise the throne during James’s reign. As late as 1296 her aid was still sought by those who wanted to influence decisions at court, although the extent of her influence by that time had clearly waned.Frederick’s wife Eleanor likewise was a member of the council and exerted a fair share of influence. As with Constance, this influence had more to do with economics than ideology. As independent ruler of the camera reginale, the queen controlled a large segment of the vital Val di Noto, the most important city in which was Siracusa, with a steady population of nearly 8,000 throughout the reign. Adding the other sites that made up the apanage, she ruled a population of some 20,000 individuals. Her camera was the site of two of the most important trade fairs - at Siracusa, beginning on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, and at Lentini, at the Feast of the Ascension - and represented as well a significant venue for wine, grain, and salt exports. Siracusa itself, in fact, held a monopoly on all exports from the confines of the city northward through all the coastal territory of the Gulf of Augusta. So important had the city become as a trading center, especially for the eastern and southern trade routes connecting Sicily with Greece, Egypt, and Malta, that the Siracusan salma was made the standard measure for all agricultural produce in the eastern half of the kingdom. In 1299 the government awarded the city a toll franchise that freed its produce of the inland duties levied upon other domestic trade; the franchise was to be lost, however, if the land under the city’s control was alienated or enfeoffed. This resulted in a rather static social structure, since land seldom changed hands. In later years, when the queen wanted to reward anyone or felt the need to make additional grants in order to purchase loyalty, she circumnavigated the prohibition of alienating the land by granting instead various rights (pasturage, herbage, water access, etc.) over the land, but not the land itself. The general strength of the commercial economy, however, made Siracusa, and the entire camera, for that matter, an attractive site for the thousands who fled the decay and poverty of the Val di Mazara. It was the sole region in the kingdom that experienced an increase in its population, in absolute numbers, during Frederick’s reign.Eleanor held full powers of criminal and civil jurisdiction over the district, and, through her hired agents, administered an independent machinery of tax collection. Few records survive from her administration. But what evidence we have indicates that she took her responsibilities seriously, even though she did not always choose well in appointing her officials. A personal favorite whom she introduced at court in 1307 and to whom she entrusted some minor diplomatic errands, Pere Ferrandis de Vergua, proved to be a flatterer and opportunist, a corrupt official who wooed and wedded a series of wealthy widows and young heiresses. On Eleanor’s recommendation, the MRC appointed Pere Ferrandis royal tax collector for Caltavuturo, where his flagrant abuse of his position led to vehement popular protests and ultimately to his impeachment; and when Pere later was found to have forged a number of documents - most notably his first wife’s will, arranging a bequest of 2,000.00.00 to himself - he was banished from the realm. Ultimately, he conspired to murder Frederick, whom he blamed for his failure to win the position in society that he felt he deserved.Eleanor was intensely pious. From the day of her arrival in Sicily - she married Frederick as a stipulation in the Caltabellotta treaty - she threw her considerable energy into rebuilding thekingdom's shattered churches and monasteries, and to raising new houses, hospitals, and evangelical schools. She funded the construction of Castrogiovanni's duomo in 1307, according totradition, by selling the entire collection of her royal jewels. She generously endowed any number of religious houses, within her camera and without. In the area around Paterno, for example, shegranted lands, curial rights, and cash to the monastery of S. Maria di Licodia, in return for the monks' prayers on behalf of the royal family. The gift was prescient, in its way, since Frederick died inPaterno while en route to Castrogiovanni. Her advocacy for religious houses continued well after their founding and endowment. Especially in the case of nunneries, Eleanor remained involved in their daily lives by observing elections to abbacies, the recruitment of nuns, the regularity of their worship, and their treatment of relics. She visited nunneries throughout the realm, often with her children in tow, and regularly participated in their worship, showing an early preference for Franciscan houses.Above everything else, she seems to have considered it her fundamental responsibility to promote religious observance and moral reform. Although overt, specific evidence about her relationship with the evangelical movement is lacking, a number of clues survive that show her to have been an enthusiast for the Spirituals. We have seen already that she took seriously Arnau deVilanova's injunction that she and her handmaidens should perform public rituals in every duomo and hospital in every city they visited, dressed as personifications of Faith and Hope, "so that inthis way the people may have a vision [like that] of the Mother of God entering a place of misery to comfort those who are there." It was probably in such garb that she led the procession of the relics of St. Agatha around the confines of Catania, during the eruption of Mount Etna. She not only held vernacular readings of the Scriptures on Sundays and feast days, but she further commissioned a vernacular translation of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, for the edification of the royal children, one of the few substantial texts in Sicilian dialect that survives from Frederick's reign. Even in a mundane duty like appointing a new bailiff to preside over her territory at Paterno her concern for the spiritual life of the community dominated all other considerations. When she appointed Ruggero Gala to be bailiff, in 1311, at the height of Sicily's flirtation with Arnau's prophesies of the kingdom's apocalyptic role, she specified that his first and foremost duty was "that he should take diligent care, if he should find anyone blaspheming against God, the Blessed Virgin, or the saints, or anyone speaking ill of the Royal Majesty, that he should take no sureties [i.e. promises to appear in court as summoned] from them, but should immediately seize their persons and take them captive to the justiciar of the province." Under Sicilian law, most accused criminals had the right to post bail and remain free until their trial; but the passionate atmosphere of the evangelical realm would permit no such freedom to those who were even rumored to be guilty of blasphemy. In lock-step with Arnau's teachings and the Ordinationes generates, the queen directed her bailiffs also to arrest anyone caught playing at dice or cards. But Eleanor, for as much as she helped to establish a general atmosphere of family concern and reformist piety, was merely one woman, and hardly representative of the majority.”

Clifford R. Backman, The Decline and Fall of Medieval Sicily. Politics, religion, and economy in the reign of Frederick III, 1296-1337, p. 285-290.

#history #women #history of women #women in history #historical women #aragonese-spanish sicily #Constance II of Sicily #eleanor of naples #myedit #historyedit #people of sicily #women of sicily #frederick iii of sicily

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halothenthehorns · 3 years ago

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All in the Family

Chapter 144: Hermione's Helping Hand

The room was a very dangerous landing, each of them got a book to the head no matter where they landed. Frank was on a flaming red comforter on the bed with a dog eared copy, the title so faded he hadn't a hope of recognizing it until he flipped through a few pages, and even then did not follow the Muggle story.* Alice had a heavy tomb smash so hard against her forehead she saw stars, and it was over a copy of some muggle thing to do with the human anatomy a Healer would struggle to follow.

Lily groaned miserably as she removed a book on alchemy from her face, and Potter's glasses had broken where he'd faced planted a window with an interesting view of a Muggle neighborhood and still had a book on the windowsill crack a lens he couldn't even read the title of now.

Peter had to pull himself out from a whole pile of books, on top of which was Defensive Magical Theory, by Wilbert Slinkhard, and Regulus even found one on teeth he had to dislodge from his own.

Remus landed painfully on a desk, the book losing its place as the bookmark toppled out of sight he felt bad for, and Sirius even found a copy of Quidditch Through the Ages to his distaste for the first time in his life as he pulled it from where it had whacked his ear.

The silver book itself they were all supposed to be here for sat in the middle of the room with the air of innocence. For once.

"As if we haven't been traumatized by enough books already," James sighed as he tapped his glasses to fix them.

"If this room isn't Hermione's, then I'll kiss a centaur," Sirius happily informed the room at large.

"Brilliant deduction there," Lily rolled her eyes, but there was only amusement in her voice. "Did you figure that out before or after this?" She was holding a picture of Hermione in this very room, a still image of her sitting at this very desk with Crookshank's in her lap, the sun just visible on the horizon from the window.

The walls didn't house much decoration, it was simple yet charming to see so much of her personality packed into the comfortably sized room.

"The best part is, I bet this is only a quarter of the ones she owns," James grinned. "She takes most of them with her to school!"

Sirius laughed and Lily found herself smiling in agreement as Lupin tried the door, which mercifully opened. The others scattered about the house, some for the loo, some for the kitchen. Sirius made to do the latter, but lingered in the door jam to watch in fascination as Prongs hesitated, and then turned back to Evans.

There was a reluctance in him he'd seen a few times now, and he had a very good guess why James was suddenly so hesitant to engage with her. He'd been devastated by the news of Sirius' death, arguably more than him even, and it wasn't hard to follow his logic if he had to change something to keep it from happening it would be taking Harry out of the equation via her. He wished his brother wouldn't think like that, but he'd never liked Evans much himself to understand his fascination with her and so wasn't even sure how to urge him back.

When James turned back holding in whatever he'd been about to say though, Lily startled them both by asking, "so, do you know what a dentist is?" The tone was mild, maybe a little mocking, but she was now holding the book Regulus had spat out with a curious smile.

He would have expected James, as usual, to not actually know how to respond to her when she spoke like a normal human being. Instead he hesitated with an odd smile in place and said casually, "not really, but I got the idea. Teeth and such, Muggles need them cared for without a spell."

Prongs hesitated again, some torn expression lingering, before he softly asked as if speaking of her ill coming death, "how come you never took Care of Magical Creatures?"

Sirius snorted fantastically, earning a dirty look from both of them. He raised his hands in surrender and took a step back into the hall, where Remus came up and pulled on him out of sight. James turned back to watching her, still unsure if he should have asked. She'd gotten assurances on their first day from McGonagall, Flitwick, and Slughorn all the creatures came to no harm for their classes to commence. He'd watched her love of animals long after that, she'd taken to cuddling with every cat in the common room and watched the birds deliver post every morning despite receiving none of her own long after other Muggle-borns grew used to it, but that look of awe and longing lingered in her.

Just because he'd given up on the idea of her didn't mean he couldn't still learn more about her, right? It was something he'd wanted to know for years but obviously she'd never have answered before. Maybe if he tried without the flirting he'd get a better result.

And, it worked. She went a little red, but answered casually, "I was trying to prove something, to my parents, to Snape, myself. Taking Arithmancy and Runes, the harder and more difficult classes. I regret it a bit now."

Potter watched her, absolutely fascinated by her little speech it seemed. She kept waiting for that to wear off now that she was actually trying to talk to him on a regular basis, but it didn't seem to be happening.

"You can take it come NEWT year if you want," he told her, that damnable cheerful smile creeping back now as they managed the first casual conversation of their life. "Remus will lend you his notes for the OWL's next week if you want."

She laughed in surprise, then realized he wasn't joking. He really thought she was that smart she could take a class she hadn't been in for two years? "I'll, ah, take that into consideration," she tried to shrug.

He hesitated, seemed to decide he'd pushed her enough, and then finally left. He'd gotten her to laugh, that was more of an accomplishment he'd managed in his life already! He glanced the way two of his friends went, rolled his eyes, and called towards the kitchen, "hey Alice, want to show me how a muggle stove works!"

Lily blanched in fear of him burning the house down and snatched up the actual needed book, not bothering to pretend to herself she was smiling as she followed along and cracked it open, but paused to take in the rest.

The hallway was littered with cheerful hallmark signs such as 'Love, Life, Live,' and several more of Hermione through the years, but Lily kept watching the muggle photos despite the fact that they weren't moving in mild curiosity for several moments before it occurred to her why they seemed a little odd. Hermione was alone in each of them, smiling brightly, but the only one in focus. Not only no friends hanging off her arm in her primary years as she held up spelling awards and science fair projects, but her parents didn't seem in any of them either. One particularly telling one was a candid shot of a very young Hermione sitting in an empty waiting room, reading a book far too big for her lap. Only when she got to the very end of most recent photos hinted at who could have been there all these years, and it was an extremely elder lady, possibly her grandmother or even a nanny, the photo at such an angle it was clearly taken by her as well as she stood shoulder to shoulder with Hermione. The tender look of love in the older woman's eyes only leveled with the weary exhaustion in the folds of her skin. Beneath that was a hand drawn calligraphy plaque with the year and date, but no other sort of explanation except her socially awkward behavior from back at the first book.

The kitchen seemed to double as a study, there were heavy journals on multiple surfaces, Frank was flipping curiously through one that was ear marked with dates, names, and what the appointment was going to be for, another that Regulus was prodding his wand along curiously through every page seemed to house lots of studies and practices on how Hermione's parents could improve their work. She doubted he followed a word, even she probably couldn't.

The chapter title itself was unsurprising, and she went through it still laughing it was all about Harry's first act as Captain sorting out members of his team, indeed with Hermione's help. Wasn't this just a day of surprises.

Potter continued to rank highest of all in that regards. The look on his face when he found out what Hermione did was priceless.

The reason behind it she misunderstood.

"She cheated? On Quidditch! I'd expect this girl to snog Snape before I heard her do something like this!"

"She did set Snape on fire once during a game." Alice happily reminded as she swatted his hand away from the hot surface, again. He seemed to keep forgetting despite the red light and heat waves coming up from the innocent black circle. "Guess her bar goes out the window during sports," she finished with a giggle.

His flummoxed expression still seemed at war if he should be impressed or agitated at this, while Regulus was snickering relentlessly for the show as well as he said, "I thought it was brilliant, as if I want to sit around hearing about that McLaggen's temper for the games, he'll ruin what little fun we've been getting out of these."

His eyes tracked curiously as he seemed to realize his brother wasn't in here to give his opinion, but seemed distracted enough when Peter spoke, "think of it this way, you or Padfoot would have done it to some arse in the hallway if he was really saying half that shite. Does the location matter that much?"

"I mean, yes," he pouted, but if anything he looked more confused. "Quidditch shouldn't be trifled with," he finished with a hint of defiance, but eventually sighed and turned back to turning the stove on and off with the odd switch and all the numbers while she finished.

Remus let his fingers brush against Sirius' and subtly pulled his fingers before letting go. Sirius needed no further prompting before following him out of the room into what must be Hermione's parents room. Remus didn't care as he locked the door and then hugged Sirius.

He laughed in delight, immediately returning it as he said quietly into his neck, "I'm getting whiplash from you."

"I just wanted to make sure you know I'm grateful," Remus told him as he pulled back, having to remind himself not to let his hands linger. "For not beating Frank's face into a pulp, back in the apothecary," he elaborated.

The fact that Sirius never held his mood swings against him or even ever accused him of being moody because of the full moon made him wish he could snog his face off right about now. Merlin, James had barely been involved and he'd called him on being an emotional ass!

"Oh," Sirius' face did not settle into a promising expression, barely concealed anger still there, but he made such a valiant effort to push it back away Remus had to fight back the urge to kiss him again. "Right, you're welcome. If he had done it on purpose though, I can't say I'd have been able to stop myself." Moony and Prongs had made a valid point, better Longbottom occasionally forget the dangers than continue being a racist arse, but his point still stood there was a middle ground that wouldn't put Remus in pain! The Marauders all knew it, couldn't he?!

Remus really couldn't resist and let his hand brush along his cheek and settle down on his neck as he gazed into his eyes. Sirius hummed as always at the physical affection. Remus could have hugged him back in the apothecary and not been an arse about this too! This really would just have to be enough for him, he could never ask for better friends. He reluctantly let his hand drop back away with one more whispered thanks.

Sirius looked hurt though, to Remus' confusion. "Why do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what?" He denied, he really hadn't thought Sirius would realize he was starting to back off yet, as much else as he was dealing with.

"Remus, you've barely looked at me since the polyjuice prank," Sirius finally called his crap. "So if you're not mad at me, would you please say so?"

"I'm not," Remus instantly promised. Merlin if he was mad at Sirius for every stupid prank he'd never not be enraged at this one. "I'm, mad at myself." He finally reluctantly admitted.

Sirius' face clouded with concern. Even on top of dealing with James, Peter, and Regulus at once Padfoot hadn't once tried to cope a field on him for some fun away from them while in this room, and a traitorous bubble of hope still lingered in Remus' chest this could mean more to Sirius. They were just friends with benefits, he instantly reminded himself. Friends! Of course he cares, you know he does.

"Anything I can do to help?" Sirius was even the one to reach for his hand, their fingers naturally intertwining.

"It's, Harry," he finally gave a half truth, which was still a truth that the book provided. He couldn't believe he'd only been back in Prongs's kids life once so far this year with Sirius out of the picture. "Not even writing to him, I'm just, this future- I don't want to stop-" He stopped himself quickly before something stupid came out. 'Being there for you,' probably sounded way too intimate to Padfoot. Maybe if he'd actually been around Sirius during that awful Ministry fight he would have come back out of it and none of this would be thrown in their face so repeatedly!

What kind of heartless monster couldn't do the bare minimum to look after one of his best friends kids anyways? And he was complaining Sirius wasn't ready for more, he clearly wasn't capable of it either.

Sirius had such a beautiful smile, and one he so rarely showed anyone. A smirk, his teasing grin were all anyone but the Marauders ever got to see, and Remus drank his fill in now as Padfoot squeezed his fingers while mimicking as well, tracing his cheek before letting his hand rest on his neck as they naturally mirrored each other. Remus wouldn't dream of denying he instantly felt warm and assured as he leaned into the touch even before Sirius told, "this future's a mess Moony. Don't kick yourself about this poor kids life we have no control over. We'll find a way to fix this."

He spoke with such assurance it's like they should have heard the very words Evans was reading change to match. Remus was convinced Sirius could hypnotize the moon to never be full again in that moment as he leaned in and kissed him.

It was just sweet, and gentle. There was no randiness in either of them, just a silent promise as Remus leaned back that no matter what, his words would be true.

HPHPHPHP

*Let me know what you think Hermione's favorite book is. I personally always thought it was Sherlock Holmes.

#Harry Potter #fanfiction #reading the books #Hermione's Home #HP #HBP #Marauders #Wolfstar #Jilly #James Potter #Remus Lupin #Sirius Black #Lily Evans #Peter Pettigrew #Regulus Black #Frank Longbottom #Alice Smith

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skysybil · 5 years ago

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Penumbra Superlatives: Most Likely To Be A Dark Matters NPC

The people demanded it, and I am indeed a magnanimous conspiracy theory machine, so here is my incredibly ridiculous reasoning behind my “who is in the dark matters simulation and who is fake” ranking, found here. Thank you to my partner for listening to me yell about this for 24 hours straight now. Man, I am gonna look like an idiot if this isn’t a Dark Matters induced simulation or dream in the end with how all-in I’ve been going with this.

Also, if you guys ever want me to lay out every fucking tiny detail I’ve seen that I think points to it being a simulation, I’ll do that too. Please validate me.

This is insanely long, it’s like two to three paragraphs for every member of the space family. This is kind of shameful, I almost feel bad. I’ll be your best friend forever if you read it all. Also, I’m putting it below the cut for everyone’s sanity. Anyway, let’s go lesbians, let’s go!

First, in the “definitely an active participant” category: Rrrrrita!

I’ll admit, it’s genuinely really hard to tell what discrepancies in the story are suspicious simulation details and what is just Rita being a particularly unreliable narrator. However, my first general point towards Rita being an active participant/player/whatever you want to call it is the fact that we’re experiencing this through her perspective! I think it would be really cool to tell the story from the perspective of a caricature puppeted by Dark Matters, but I feel like it would be way more obvious in gaps in her thinking patterns if she was fake. Honestly, I personally think it would be impossible to run it from the perspective of one of these NPCs (as i’m calling them) anyway, because... you know, they probably don’t have much in the way of thoughts in the first place.

Plus, out of everyone in the group, she is most likely to be plucked out of a group of criminals by Dark Matters to recruit. Sasha knows her (or at least knows of her) and how good she is at her job. I’m sure she’s got a target on her back as someone that’s too powerful (seriously, I pray for the universe the day Rita realizes just how quickly she could take over the world--see: my THEIA Rita AU that i came up with this morning which I might post about later), but I’m also pretty sure killing Rita would be seen as a wasted opportunity. This could just be another test, just like Day That Wouldn’t Die but in an even more controlled environment. The perfect trap, the perfect test--hopefully for perfect results. And with how she tends to get caught up in glamour and drama or get distracted so easily, she’s one of the easiest members of the group to trick into not questioning the little discrepancies that comes from living in a lie.

---

Next, Vespa. Love of my life and the only other member of the Carte Blanche crew that I’m almost totally sure is sharing space in this simulation.

She’s in a similar position that she’s a valuable asset for Dark Matters to try and take on--especially if they can use her past debts as blackmail or something along those lines. She’s a damn good assassin and they tend to specialize in making people disappear. Why wouldn’t they seize the opportunity to test her and see if she could truly work for them? Dark Matters also seems to lack an ethical core, to say the least, and if they consider her past trauma and her illness to be an issue, I’m sure they wouldn’t be against trying to “fix” her in their horribly scummy ways just so she could be a better killer for their organization. It could also be related to her skills as a doctor with the crew, to be fair--while Rita is off building robots and trying to break into a super secret base, Vespa is repairing the entire medical wing, an incredibly suspicious task when apparently enough of the ship survived that Rita’s computers are okay, the entire crew is unscathed, and the Ruby isn’t a warped hunk of metal.

Though she is also very likely to be nabbed by Dark Matters as an opportunity, the main condemning thing against Vespa being an NPC is the conversation we overhear with Buddy. No one else knows that Vespa considered or decided on leaving the crew. We can’t say that’s a part of Rita’s mind affecting the simulation around her because Rita doesn’t know, and it’s not information that could be hacked, either. It was just in her mind. Unless Dark Matters has their hands on new mind reading technology (oh god, not this shit again), there’s no way that the scene with Vespa and Buddy could exist unless Vespa is also inhabiting the simulation. Every scene they choose to include is deliberate. To rule Vespa out of the plan, all it would’ve taken was likely just Vespa being her normal defensive self. Why would they include a scene with a look into that vulnerability if it didn’t matter?

Speaking of the Vespa and Buddy scene--but why would Vespa snap at Rita that badly if she’s real, you might ask. You’re right, Vespa is aggressive but not that aggressive normally, and it stood out in the few interactions we saw. In Vespa’s defense, if she is participating in this simulation, she is understandably freaked the fuck out. Vespa spends every day of her life hyperaware of what might be real and what might be fake around her. She’s most likely to figure out that something is very wrong first simply because of that trait. How much of her mind is Dark Matters manipulating? Would DM have to simulate her hallucinations, or would that come naturally along with her mind being stuck in this simulation? I imagine that for every discrepancy we’ve picked up on, she’s picked up on six--but she no longer has the explanation of it being a hallucination. I imagine it’s frustrating and terrifying for her. I’d be on edge, too!

---

Moving into our next category: “probably in the simulation”, with our only candidate Buddy.

Buddy is my question mark character. We barely interacted with her this episode. From what I can tell, most of what we saw from her seems in character, and she had some wicked fucking lines. I’m sorry, I refuse to give Dark Matters credit for the line “If you imagine all that could go wrong, all you’ve done is drag yourself through a thousand disasters. And even in the worst-case scenario, you will only need to live through one.” Because it genuinely made me feel better in real life, goddammit.

Buddy is mostly in this category for lack of evidence, both with the lack of interaction and with how Rita kind of glazed over the family meeting with her distractions. So, it’s hard to say. I’d love to hear others’ theories on Buddy’s place in this.

---

Now, we cross the threshold into those that are probably not in the simulation, or are acting incredibly suspicious: the “on thin fucking ice” category. First, Peter.

Can this bastard decide on his personality for two whole minutes so I can get a handle on the little intricacies of the new Ransom persona? No? Goddammit. It’s hard to tell how much of the way he acted was genuinely suspicious and how much of it is the mask he’s put on for Peter Ransom. While he’s adopted the old name, he hasn’t adopted his old personality, so it’s near impossible to get good points of comparison on this new view. We’ve seen inside his head with this persona, sure, but we can’t compare the way he spoke and acted in his head with how he holds himself in front of Rita--he’s always going to choose his level of vulnerability based off of the least trusted person in the room. He’s not to that place with Rita yet. He’s going to have walls and facades up that he won’t have in front of Juno, or in front of himself. He can’t make it easy on him.

But that does not mean I can’t be suspicious of him, because I am. Fuck you, Nureyev, I’m still coming for you. Mainly, I’m squinting at his reaction to Rita’s plans and his lack of reaction to her openly talking about the two of them in an established relationship. We know damn well that Peter and Juno are not at that place yet. Why, do you ask? Because I trust that Sophie and Kevin wouldn’t take that moment from us. We’ve had three and a half years of slowburn buildup on Jupeter! We would not skip from “tentatively talking and trying to learn communication through ‘’’’’’poetry’’’’’’ and shit” to “established lovey dovey relationship” without being let in on it. I doubt Peter would let comments like the ones Rita made really slide in front of Juno--after all, the last time he admitted he was in love, Juno fucking left, and I bet there’s a lot of reluctance or trauma surrounding that. Yet he let it slide anyway.

Still, because Peter is a wild card, there’s still a possibility that his non-reaction was a defense mechanism or part of the Ransom facade (after all, he had to pretend he was in better standing with Juno than he actually was at first to keep his place in the family). The most suspicious thing he did in that conversation, in my opinion, was agree not to let anyone else know about the plan. He knows damn well that he is on thin ice with everyone in the crew except for Juno and Rita. Trust is in short supply for him and keeping his position in the family is incredibly important to him, both so he can find a way to pay off his debts and so he can pursue this shaky relationship he’s started to piece back together with Juno. Yet he hops right in with barely any pushback when it comes to keeping this Incredibly Vital And Important Plan a complete secret. Plus, you know, he supposedly couldn’t even stand, yet walked all the way to the computer cave. Sure, maybe Juno carried him, but I’d fully expect something like Juno picking him up to be a joke written into the script. I feel like it was deliberately left out.

Still, the only real glimpse of Peter that Dark Matters has ever had was of Rex Glass, and Peter definitely isn’t acting like his Rex persona, so how would they really know to get his personality around the Aurinko family to where it is? I suppose that could be attributed to Rita, Vespa, and/or Buddy shaping the simulation around them.

Tl;dr on the Peter section: He’s almost definitely an NPC but nothing is certain with a man whose entire sense of self is based off of an elaborate web of lies and inconsistencies.

---

Also probably an NPC, but I’m not sure, thus on thin fucking ice: Jet.

You cannot tell me for one fucking second that Jet doesn’t know the Ruby 7 inside and out. That car is his baby. He’s torn the car apart and repaired it more than anyone else, and you’re telling me he doesn’t understand the core functions of the car--the engine, the fuel tank? No fucking way. I don’t have 3.5 paragraphs of speculation for Jet, I’m just so hung up on the fucking car thing. His personality fits well, which is the one string I’m holding onto that makes him maybe possibly an actual human being, but I feel like Dark Matters fucked up by trying to fill in the blanks on the Ruby 7. That’s where I think the issue comes from--the reason there’s a part in the Ruby that Jet doesn’t understand is because DM doesn’t know how the Ruby works, and they tried to put in what they imagined could power it or fuzz over the details. But I will cry if the Ruby was actually destroyed in the crash, there’s no recovering from that.

---

And finally, if you’ve made it this far and not left after whispering to yourself holy shit, she’s insane, she’s absolutely insane, how much does this woman talk, we have the final category: unfortunately an NPC. And holy shit, is Juno 100% not in this simulation or being almost entirely puppeted by Dark Matters.

I genuinely can’t get into all my reasoning behind Juno being a puppet here without going on forever and doubling the length of this post, and I’ve put you through so much already. But every inch of Juno is suspicious, down to his tone of voice. Look, I’m happy to see him happy. But it just seems like a jump--just like as I discussed in the Peter section with the Jupeter relationship. It feels like we skipped something, or missed something. This is my theory: Juno has been crafted based off of how Sasha Wire knew him when she saw him last. He doesn’t have reactions that are quite right to the computers, to Peter, to anyone, really. Everything felt just a little off--until he got frustrated. Then he became more realistically Juno. I think this might be because Sasha is basing a comfortable and happy Juno (the one she assumes he must be around the people on the ship, especially Peter if she knows they’re romantically involved) off of the Juno she interacted with when they were younger, which is just off in comparison to the Juno we know now. She can build a more three dimensional Juno in the situations she’s familiar with, like a bored Juno, a frustrated Juno, or an angry Juno. She’s got the one-liners down, I’ll give her that.

I’m also just in general not surprised if Sasha is just keeping him separate from the rest of them. Possibly to try and talk him out of the family, get him untangled from the Dark Matters mess? Plus, he’s incredibly perceptive, and might be considered a risk to the simulation if he was in it.

Also, the out-of-universe evidence: I am 100% convinced that the reason the episode script came out late is because it had to be edited to remove some of the directions, possibly suspicious things like “too cheery”. Specifically, I think one of Juno’s significant directions is missing. It’s hard to put exactly what kind of direction is missing into words because I don’t know anything about script writing, but I just... I have a feeling. Trust me on this. I’ve seen other people on Twitter talk about it too, I’m not the only one. I stand by it.

---

Anyway, since I want to keep my Juno-specific speculation as short as possible, that’s all, folks. If you stayed this long, genuinely I love you so much and I would give my life for you, message me or mention it in the tags that you made it all the way and maybe we could be mutuals or friends!! I love to ramble about this kind of thing. Follow me for more aimless speculation, hopefully not 2.5k words next time. If you have any questions or other stuff to discuss also mention it and I might post about it later!

Update: If you’re interested in the simulation theory, here’s the link to a post I just made laying out all my conspiracy theory evidence for it.

#holy shit i am SO SORRY this is so long #this is a lesson in being careful what you wish for #tpp #the penumbra podcast #tpp spoilers #tpp s3 #tpp s3 spoilers #s3 spoilers #tpp junoverse #simulation theory

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marvelmando · 5 years ago

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the first breath [p.parker x reader]

notes: hi! i... actually love this. i’m a sucker for soulmate! au’s, so naturally this was somewhat easy to write. this is just a small break from my tempest series, ill continue posting tomorrow (bc it’s my birthday!). tomorrow as in the eleventh, just in case it’s already daytime wherever you’re reading this!

contains: soulmate! au, some swearing

pairing: peter parker + reader

word count: 3.6k

“Hey!”

Peter’s heart thumped hard in his chest. Looking around for the person, he saw a girl greeting a friend, and Peter sighed, unconsciously massaging the band covering his left wrist.

No matter how many times Peter had heard the word, it never failed to send a spike of panic in him. It was just a word, an unfairly common greeting phrase in America, but to Peter, it meant infinitely more.

“Stupid Soulmark,” Peter grumbled to himself as he walked the halls of Midtown High.

For as long as humans could tell, each individual was born with a word or phrase inked into the skin of their nondominant forearm. The Marks could say anything, but they belonged to the first words spoken to you by your soulmate.

Soulmarks were considered sacred by most of the world, and like most sacred things, they were hidden from public view. Soulbands were a staple in almost every culture, meant to only be taken off in front of your soulmate. Although modern times saw the general acceptance of most controversial topics that were shunned in the past, Soulbands seemed to never grow out of popularity. It was also a sense of security, to make sure that they couldn’t be said by the wrong person.

Some had easily-identifiable Marks. Where there was little room for doubt that the words spoken belonged to your soulmate. Others, like Peter, had simple, one-word Marks.

For as long as he could remember, Peter lived in a near-constant state of anxiety over the word. What would normally be an off-hand remark or a polite greeting made Peter’s heart skip and his knees grow weak.

Whenever greeted with the word, Peter would tense, and respond with a stiff, “Um, hi?” and watch as the person gave him a weird or blank look in return. There had been several instances - none of which he was particularly proud of - where Peter ran away rather than face the sting of false hope.

Most religions viewed Soulmarks as divine intervention, a sign that humans were blessed by the gods. A lot of the time, Peter wanted to curse whatever gods forced them into the arranged couplings.

Failing at keeping the scowl at bay, Peter stopped at his locker, twisting the lock and opening it to return his books.

“Hey, Peter,” a voice said from behind, and he instantly recognized it as Ned Leeds, his best (and only, really) friend. Peter turned only his head, unsurprised to find Betty Brant, Ned’s soulmate, at his side.

Like most matched individuals, Ned seemed to glow with happiness in the presence of their soulmate. Sometimes the dopey smile on Ned’s face was too much for Peter. Whether it was from envy or discomfort, feeling the never-ending, unadulterated joy exuding from him made Peter’s stomach turn and twist uncomfortably.

“Hey, Ned. Betty,” Peter nodded as a greeting, stacking his textbooks in his locker.

“Are you planning on going to the... internship, today?” Ned whispered, his inability for subtly flaring to life. Though Betty had been Ned’s match long enough to know Peter’s secret, it was a good thing the halls had pretty much been deserted at that point, as the school day had been over for more than ten minutes.

“Yeah,” Peter shut his locker, heaving his significantly lighter backpack over his shoulder. “Just neighborhood stuff, though.”

Ned nodded enthusiastically. Despite how preoccupied he was with Betty, Ned had always been Peter’s go-to Spider-Man guy. Ned called himself “The Guy in The Chair”, but Peter refused to say it out loud unless absolutely necessary.

They parted ways at the train station, where Peter went to find a secluded alley to change into his suit.

You had no idea what possessed your parents to up and move the family to New York.

You’d lived your entire life in a small, cozy town in the middle of nowhere. You’d enjoyed that life. Then suddenly, your father called you down one day earlier that summer to announce that in a few months, you’d be packing and moving to the heart of Queens.

Despite having been in the bustling city for weeks now, you still hadn’t gotten used to walking through the crowded streets. People were rude here; though, with the craziness of the city, you weren’t really sure you could blame them. Still, it filled you with frustration when you tried to weave through the streets, only to be knocked roughly in the shoulder and subsequently cursed out for no damn reason.

On the bright side - the only bright side, if you were being honest - was the exponential increase in the possibility that you would finally meet your soulmate.

Your hometown was lovely and quaint, but the general teenage population left a lot to be desired. It didn’t help that there were only fifty other people in your graduating class, or that you’d met and exchanged first words with every single of them already.

That being said, of all the people you’d met at Midtown so far, none of them had said the words branded on your right wrist. But to be fair, there weren’t many opportunities where someone had to yell, “I swear I wasn’t aiming at you!”

You didn’t have to worry about the possibility of danger in your old town, but in New York, you were vaguely concerned that the words would be uttered during a mugging.

Unfortunately, you were quite right to be concerned.

“All right, Karen, what do we got?”

Peter watched as the screen flashed, images of satellite footage and recordings of police radio calls popping up and disappearing again as Karen flipped through potential threats.

“The city is quiet today,” Karen’s robotic voice remarked. Distantly, Peter wondered how the voice was created, and if it was recorded, who the person was behind the voice. It was distinctly human, after all, without the awkward pauses and emphases that Siri usually had. “There have been no reports of any robberies or shootings.”

Peter sighed, bored and disappointed. He’d long gotten over the guilt of wanting some danger in the city.

Suddenly, before Karen could notify him, he heard a voice cry, “Stop that guy!”

Immediately swinging into action, Peter noticed a man in his mid-twenties sprinting down the sidewalk, shoving himself through the crowd. The woman who’d yelled for help was young, in her thirties, but still wasn’t fast enough to keep up.

Peter swung overhead, gaining distance and landing directly in the guy’s path. The thief skidded to a halt, his eyes widening in obvious fear at the sight of Spider-Man. He clutched a purse to his chest.

“It’s not nice to steal!” Peter yelled, moving to shoot a web at the purse. But the thief was quick, and he ducked under his web, making a run for it.

Peter was faster though and lunged to bodyslam him, sending him into the wall of a nearby building. The impact knocked the purse from his grasp, and it spilled to the ground as the man struggled to get back up. Peter webbed him to the wall and notified Karen to call the police.

Satisfied with his handiwork, Peter was about to leap onto the roof when an aggravated noise caught his attention instead.

He turned to see you growling, your splayed hand webbed to a streetlamp. The web the thief dodged must’ve hit you instead. Catching sight of him noticing you, you yelled out, “Hey!”

For once in his life, the word didn’t seem to register. He was, for lack of a better word, enchanted by you. Even with furious indignation twisting your face, he couldn’t stop staring at the depth of your eyes and the slope of your nose. Blinking, he said without thinking, “I swear I wasn’t aiming for you!”

It was a stupid response, admittedly. Of course, he wasn’t aiming for you. You’d probably noticed the thief and could probably make the connection.

However, Peter didn’t have time to think about the pointlessness of the protest, because he was too busy registering what you’d said. The word. His word.

Cheeks flaming under his mask, Peter braced himself for the rejection. But it never came.

Your eyes went impossibly wide, and you immediately stopped yanking against the web. Peter watched as you gaped at him, and thanks to the mechanics of the suit, he noticed that your heart rate increased significantly.

Almost in a trance, Peter stepped toward you. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

Your mouth closed, and you visibly swallowed. “Depends,” your voice was tight, anxious. “How often do you accidentally shoot your webs at innocent bystanders?”

You flushed as you registered the double meaning behind the words. Peter watched in amusement as your cheeks flushed and you stammered to correct yourself.

“I-I just mean that -”

“It’s okay, I -”

Peter started to placate you, feeling the blood rushing through his veins like soda, popping and fizzing under his skin. But he was cut off by the sound of Karen’s voice, though distant, but urgent enough to draw his attention away from you.

“Peter, there’s a hostage situation that was just called in happening thirteen blocks away,” the AI announced, causing Peter to falter in his steps.

“I-I gotta go,” he told you, hurrying to free your trapped hand from the lamppost, and backing away reluctantly. “I’ll find you, I promise!”

He could see the disappointment on your face as you watched him scuttle off, and every cell in his body protested the distance he forced between him and his soulmate, but he knew he had to go.

“If you were anyone else, that’d be super creepy!” You yelled as Peter swung away. He smiled widely under his mask.

Your skin was still tingling and your cheeks were sore from smiling so much when you finally reached your apartment.

All you had to do was look at your mother for her to tell that you had met your soulmate. After spending an hour at the kitchen table being interrogated by your parents, you were finally released to your room to process.

You closed the door gently behind you and slid your back against the wood until your bottom rested on the ground. You tilted your head back, barely feeling the thunk as it collided with the door. Every time you tried to relax your face into a neutral expression, you remembered the way Spider-Man’s eyes widened as he took in the sight of you, and how your heart skipped several beats as he said the words you knew so well, and your lips crawled back into a giddy smile once more.

Even in your hometown in the middle of nowhere, you had known about Spider-Man. The superhero wasn’t nearly as popular as he seemed to be in the city he protected, but you still remembered the passing of phones and newspapers whenever Spider-Man saved another day or stopped another robbery. Even your high school had a day dedicated to him after a particularly miraculous defeat of the notorious Green Goblin, who’d terrorized the borough for weeks before he was stopped.

Spider-Man was a national - if not global - phenomenon. And he just so happened to be your soulmate.

You’d just reached for your phone to call your best friend from home when a knock on your window startled you.

You jumped, scrambling to your feet. Your apartment was on the eighth story, there was no way a burglar would have climbed all this way to rob you. A burglar wouldn’t knock either, you scoffed internally.

Tiptoeing to the window, you peered through the glass. Even under the dark cover of the late hour, you could distinctly make out the identity of the figure. You hurried to unlatch and open the pane, stepping back nervously when the figure climbed through, rather clumsily for how graceful he normally was.

Spider-Man was polite enough to close the window behind him, cutting off the brisk gust of wind that caused goosebumps to appear on your arms. You crossed them, rubbing them to warm yourself up.

When he straightened and faced you once more, you couldn’t help but stare back. You bit your lip anxiously, suddenly very aware of how messy your room was. You had, after all, just moved in, and most of your stuff was either still in boxes or strewn haphazardly about the room.

“I’m sorry for the mess,” you blurted, unable to help yourself. “We just moved here a couple weeks ago, and... well, y’know.” You gestured unhelpfully around the room.

Every cell in your body seemed as though they were vibrating. The muscles in your chest twitched and your bones ached to close the distance between the two of you. It was as though you and your soulmate were opposite ends of a magnet, and the field around you was pulling your bodies together.

“It-It’s okay,” Spider-Man stuttered, and you realized that he’d turned off his voice modulator. You hadn’t even realized earlier that he was using one, but you now recognized the difference. His voice was higher than before, not as robotic and crackly. “I don’t mind.”

You nodded awkwardly. Spider-Man shifted his balance between his feet, as if he too was fighting the urge to get closer.

“Uh, how did you find me, anyway?” You couldn’t help but ask.

“Well, there’s this intelligence system installed in my suit, and I had her look up your address,” the eyes of his suit narrowed sharply as if he was wincing, probably at how creepy it sounded. “I hope that’s not too creepy, because it sounds pretty creepy. I didn’t - I mean, I wasn’t stalking you or anything.”

You smiled. Spider-Man rambled adorably, and though the thought of him looking up your address should have been terrifying, you found that you didn’t mind at all. You weren’t sure if it was because he was your soulmate, or if it was because he was a superhero. Either way, you placated him. “It’s alright, I don’t mind.”

Despite your insistence that it was fine, Spider-Man still held himself back, hesitant to move forward with the conversation. To cut through the awkward tension, you said the first thing that came to mind.

“I like your suit,” you said, cringing immediately after. While true, that wasn’t exactly what you meant to say.

With the mask, you couldn’t decipher Spider-Man’s reaction. Though, after a brief moment, he chuckled.

“Thanks,” he giggled. You felt yourself relax. “I like your shirt.”

You looked down. It was an old band shirt that you bought at a thrift store a few years ago and was well-worn, the ink faded and several holes stretching the neck out. “Uh, thanks.” You smiled nonetheless because it seemed that Spider-Man was just as nervous as you were, which inexplicably made you feel much better.

“My name’s Y/N, by the way,” you smiled, holding out your hand. “But if you know my address, you probably know my name, too.”

You thought you could see Spider-Man smiling under the mask. It shifted over his face as he accepted the handshake, wrapping his hand around yours. Even through the fabric of his suit, his skin burned like a furnace. From anyone else, it may have been stifling. But from him, the warmth was cozy, a calming heat rushing through your hand and up your arm, wrapping around your heart like a security blanket.

“I do,” he said, and you could hear the smile in his voice. It took you a second to connect what he meant.

The seconds passed and your hands were no longer shaking, but neither of you dropped the hold. You found yourself drifting closer toward Spider-Man, and it took all of your energy not to fall into his chest and wrap your arms around his waist.

“I’m guessing that your real name’s not Spider-Man,” you cocked your head. “And I feel like it’s only fair that I know my soulmate’s name, too.”

Your breath hitched. You heard him inhale sharply, too. It was the first time you’d directly acknowledged to each other what you were, and it suddenly was too real for you.

You jerked your hand back, embarrassed. Your hand was startlingly cold now, suddenly bereft of Spider-Man’s touch. You flexed it subconsciously, yearning to reach out and grab his hand again.

“I - I...” you tried to explain yourself, but the wide, questioning eyes of his suit made you falter. You averted your eyes as you took an anxious step back, fighting against an overwhelming urge to flee.

“No, wait -” Spider-Man said, and reached up and yanked his mask off in one swift motion.

Your eyes immediately found his, as if they were pulled instinctively to each other. His soft almond-shaped eyes were filled with worry and caution, the warm brown irises gleaming in the darkness of your room. The lights of the ever-glowing city were the only light filtering in your room, and the shadows cut angles against Spider-Man’s cheekbones, carving his jowls and accentuating his slim mouth. Even in the darkness, you could make out the light smattering of freckles across the slightly crooked bridge of his nose, and the endearing flick of his left eyebrow, emphasized by their worried arch.

The chestnut curls piled on top of his head were tousled from the mask and flipped haphazardly over his forehead. His ears stuck out from his head, but instead of looking awkward, they fit his face nicely, softening the sharp edges of his high cheekbones. They were what made his already stunning face heartbreakingly adorable, and you fought the need to run your fingers over the shell of them.

Though the shadowy bags under his eyes conveyed a sense of exhaustion too severe for his apparent age, Spider-Man was younger than you thought. If you were to hazard a guess, Spider-Man was about your age, give or take a couple years.

“My name’s Peter,” he breathed, looking slightly panicked as you studied him. “Peter Parker.”

“Peter Parker,” you whispered, testing out the name on your tongue. The words were gentle but the pounding in your chest was overwhelming. The tension that grew since being in his presence while pulling yourself away made you feel as if you were drowning, gasping for breath. There was a bursting sensation in your stomach, then a warm, satisfying weight that spoke of absolute certainty that Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, was your soulmate.

You felt your body inch toward his, and the relief flooding his face was palpable. You stepped closer to him, relishing in the way your body hummed in delight at the closeness.

Peter looked down at you, his gaze sweet and caring as he searched your face. There was a moment of content examination spent in comfortable silence as you both memorized every little detail of each other’s faces.

It should have been awkward, looking and saying nothing, but the longer you spent staring into each other’s eyes, the farther you seemed to fall. It was completely ridiculous and entirely premature, but you were certain that Peter was someone you could fall madly in love with.

“Hi,” you whispered, grinning shyly.

“Hi,” Peter responded just as softly, a mirroring smile stretching his lips.

Suddenly realizing something, you moved back just enough to bring your hand up. Peter backed away slightly, though it seemed to pain him.

You grabbed at the band covering your forearm, watching Peter’s expression as you unwound it. His eyes went wide, shifting from your arm to your eyes, then back to your arm as the band fell away and exposed your Mark.

Eyes meeting yours for permission, he tenderly took your proffered arm. His eyes roved over the Mark, before he brought his own hand to his mouth, grabbing the middle finger of his glove and yanking it off.

With his bared hand, he reverently ghosted his fingers over the inked letters. The look on his face was pure awe. “I really wasn’t aiming for you.”

He winced as though the words weren’t meant to escape. You chuckled. “I know.”

The light caressing of his fingertips against the sacred Mark shot spikes of pleasure through your body. It was a heady feeling, seeing your life partner touching the place meant for only the two of you.

When he looked back up at you, his face was split in an achingly loving smile. He pulled away, and yanked on the sleeve, revealing his own band.

It was simpler than yours, designed to fit slimly to the skin under his suit. It only took a simple click of his finger for it to release. On the dip of the inside of his wrist was the word, “hey!” written in your handwriting. With gentle movements, you traced the lines with your fingers. Peter visibly shuddered, watching you soak in the Mark.

Though you could’ve stared at it forever, you finally tore your eyes away. You met Peter’s gaze, finding the weight of it easier to handle than you thought.

With your thumb pressed to the Mark, and his hand wrapped around yours, the universe nudged you together. You and Peter fell into each other, lips meeting and melding as your bodies and souls collided like two exploding stars; fate and gravity and destiny crashing into each other and settling happily between you and your soulmate.

Your Mark burned and your lips ached with the pressure of your shared kisses. Reality forced your bodies apart, foreheads resting against one another as you caught your breath, but all at once, your soul felt grounded - you hadn’t even realized how empty it was until it found Peter’s.

In the safety of his arms, you breached the surface and took your first full breath.

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grumpygreenwitch · 4 years ago

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Summer Gardening.

So it’s been a while, and for that I apologize to the... 200+ people who follow me. I’m sure y’all are here for the cat pics and the nekked men, but TOO BAD. Today you get to suffer through pics of my green children. Also, I do share seed. My seed list link will be up later in the year. To begin with, the summer flowers are out en force:

Echinacea Purpurea, the original echinacea. I do save yearly seed from these guys, although it’s an incredibly pointy, stabby and bleed-y job.

Mountain Phlox. Unfortunately, all of it around the house is afflicted with powdery mildew, so I will not share seed. But it’s still pretty to look at, and the clearwings (hummingbird moths) love it. Not pictured is the white variant, who grows on the other side of the house. Look, it was hot and I was already melting.

Peppermint Balsam. This thing is basically indestructible, for an annual. It will reseed freely (to truly Lovecraftian levels) and blooms continuously from late spring until mid-fall, when the seed-pods set. There is a dormant genetic in it for double flowers, but when it pops up it’s always been sterile. It just pops up occasionally from the peppermint seed.

I may give the roommate hell over the hostas (I hate them. They’re so useful to protect toads and control weeds, but I hate them), but they do put out pretty flowers. There are several variants around the house - white-edged, blue and green, but hostas in general are very, very hard to start from seed. I will save it on request, only. We were also incredibly lucky to have a Moth Mullein sprout in our porch bed, along with some Variegated Solomon’s Seal.The SS doesn’t put out seeds, and I don’t have enough to share bulbs (yet), but the mullein has been exceptionally generous with seed pods, and it repels bugs. It repels ROACHES. It’s going everywhere. And I may be convinced to part with some seed.

Onward!

A view from a hill. Can you see the garden? That’s OK, I can’t either. Those are peach trees, on the side of the orchard closest to the house. Unfortunately a freak storm during early spring killed all the blossoms. Also, don’t mistake ‘orchard’ for ‘organized’. There’s a pear, some apples, a plum, some nectarines? And front and center are two walnuts. I’ll probably be plunking my laurel there to see if it survives winter. And someday when I have a job and money again, I would like to drop a few Chicago Hardy figs, and maybe a kiwi trellis.

This is the big garden (and fortunately not my responsibility, or I would cry). The guys are ‘handling’ it. The weeds say otherwise.

The jasmine tree and the roommate’s garden. Because of a bad back injury that refuses to heal, I’ve been helping them on and off with it. And if you thought jasmine was supposed to stay a delightful little bush, AHAHAHAHAH. Yes, that’s a light-post next to it. For size comparison.

MY CHILDREN. Please ignore the dead soccer ball. That’d be a dog toy.

Lemon balm, amaranth, and a new bed that I’ll be finishing off during fall, for use next year. The lemon balm is a permanent row - it will overwinter just fine, and it will even keep growing through the mildest part of December. Mine didn’t die back until a few solid days of sleet in January. Unfortunately the weed fabric under the amaranth turned out to be an old roll, and fell apart on me (no big, the whole point is for it to fall apart eventually), so the weeds have kinda eaten it alive.

Unfortunately, both cucumber beetles and blister beetles love the amaranth. Fortunately, it does not seem to give a damn. It’s an incredibly resilient plant, not minding weeds, bugs, flood or drought. We’ll see what the grain actually tastes like, but so far it’s looking like a good candidate for continuous growing.

The lemon balm is lemon-balming. Planted on a lark, it’s proven to be a fantastic wind-breaker - because it grows so early and so quick, it keeps the colder winds that come down through the hollow from my more fragile seedlings, like the lettuce, dill and cilantro. You can see here where the spent flower-heads are dying but there’s new growth underneath; I really have to get in there and behead it. It makes nice hot tea, meh cold tea, and hanging fresh bunches of it around the balcony keeps the skeeters off. It also seems to be a decoy for cabbage moths.

Canary Zinnia. The seed was sent to me as a gift with one of my seed orders, and this is my first year growing it. -If- I can save some, I’ll definitely be sharing and growing again. It’s a lovely plant, very sturdy, and the bees love it.

Dwarf Castor Oil. I don’t think there’s anything dwarf about it, but then I’m a short green witch myself, so maybe it’s all about perspective. Don’t let the pods lie to you, until they dry the spikes are relatively soft. However, it being castor oil, I don’t recommend it to anyone with ducks, chickens, goats, or anything that might accidentally try talking a nibble or pecking at the beans. I do, however, recommend them from jewelry if you know how to pierce things and so on. They are a gorgeous tiger-stripe pattern.

Say hello to the chard! Say goodbye to the chard! Nothing else, absolutely nothing else since the limas, has given me so much trouble. The deer love getting into my chard bed and destroying it (ergo all the forks). And once I managed to chase those off, the blister beetles showed up in force. This will be the last year I grow it - we just don’t eat enough of it to make it worth my while, and it only occasionally sold at the Farmers’ Market.

Red lettuce - Merlot and Lollo Vino, a combination of bought and saved seed. I planted a red romaine of some sort, too, but unsurprisingly it bolted in the heat. The darker reds of my favorites, though, keep bugs off them, keep deer from noticing them, and keep them from bolting. It’s just now threatening to, and at this point its kind of allowed. I need more seed for next year. Seed for this will likely be shared by the teaspoon-ful.

Calendula! I searched for a long time to find the plain ol’ calendula officinalis ancestor, rather than a cultivar where I would have no way of knowing if the medicinal principles would have been sacrificed for looks. It’s supposed to work well as poor man’s saffron (color, no taste), and I’m going to be soaking the heck outta my feet on it during winter. The plant is... not pretty. It gets leggy and the leaves get grotty very quickly. But it’s very sturdy and as long as you cut the flowerheads off as fast as you can, it’ll keep blooming until well into winter. I usually leave it to go to seed around late September.

Green cilantro seeds. You pick ‘em when they’re brown, but before they drop off the plant. Or you pick ‘em when they’re brown-ing, and put them in a paper bag so they’ll finish ripening there and you don’t end up with fifty wild cilantro plants in your garden >_> Most of the row is already gone, and I’ll be putting in a late dill crop in its place. No such thing as too much dill!

Don’t let lemongrass lie to you. Unless you tie it up, it will not grow up neat and tidy, as most grass does. Instead it will sprawl like a dramatic wilting Elizabethan lady and do its best to end up under your feet so you’ll feel bad about it. I just tie it up with a half-blade of grass; it dries up and withers away before it can hurt the plant.

I ordered pennyroyal seed because... Well, because it’s something one should have on hand, considering the way the world is going. What I got was Creeping Pennyroyal, which doesn’t care if you step on it (mint family), smells absolutely delightful, and has the most adorable, tiny purple flowers. I plan on harvesting, drying and sprinkling it everywhere in the crawlspace under the house. Making war on cave crickets, wood roaches, and other such sundries, me.

The thyme and Spicy Oregano took a beating in the heat, but they’re slowly bouncing back. The bed behind them is more pennyroyal, desperately in need of weeding, but there’s only one of me, y’know.

SIGH. Just. You absolute, ill-mannered monster of a creature. That would be horseradish, gloriously happy to be alive, as horseradish should be. Also, NOT IN ITS BASKET. Because never mind the rules, I guess.

I don’t even know how I’m gonna dig that up come winter. With some construction equipment, I GUESS.

Decorative gourd! It’s the only one producing so far, but being the seed was 10+ years old, I’m very pleased.

And an apple gourd (I think?), from a mixture of drying gourds that was only slightly less ancient. Snake, apple and birdhouse gourds. There’s a bunch of them competing in the basket at this point, we’ll see what we will see.

And this, I think, is a great use of a dead canopy frame (the dogs ate the canopy. No, I’m not making it up.) I hope to coax the gourds to grow me a lil’ roof so I can sit in shade, surrounded by pennyroyal anti-skeeter barriers, eating my maters.

My Peter Peppers (nrehehehehe) aren’t producing yet - it takes them a while. But my Chinese 5-Color are getting started. It’s a lovely pepper, both edible and ornamental, with (so I’m told) about four times the heat of a Jalapeno. They’re tiny, with deep purple undertones to the plant. They’ll go purple-white-yellow-orange-red.

The bullhorns, on the other hand, are fairly sizable SWEET peppers on very tiny plants, and I honestly suggest staking them while they’re young so they grow a sturdy trunk, else you might end up with all of them growing at a slant.They’re just now beginning to turn colors. Keeping in mind I’m virulently allergic to peppers (less so sweet than hot, but allergic to all of them), the roommate loves ‘em.

It’s a small pepper bed - mainly to refresh my seed on the hots, and to grow sweets for the roommate. Pardon the nekked bed, the autumn lettuce hasn’t sprouted yet. And yes, that’s a mixed basil/dill bed next to it. My basil grew in patchy holes (NEVER buying from those seed people again), so I filled the holes with dill. Unfortunately, dill seed heads are so fine that they’re hard to photograph well.

The tomato row. After arguing with them for this long, I went the extra mile. Every plant has a metal stake. There’s also a double line growing at the top supporting the stakes so they don’t fall over. And they still fell over. Because why not, you unruly children, why not.

Green, white, pink and brown cherry tomatoes. Delicious!

Two kinds of cucumbers, some of the only decent shots of the dill seed-heads, and a special guest hiding in the shade. I usually plant dill as soon as the cucumber sprouts, to keep cucumber beetles off it. Otherwise I’d have no cucumbers and a lot of fat beetles.

The Muncher is a small cucumber, somewhat delicate. It’s very sensitive to temperature changes, and it’s candy to cucumber beetles - basically, it’s impossible to grow it without a heavy curtain of dill, or a heavy duty decoy. This year I got lucky enough to have both. It’s also delicious pickled, keeping its crunch and getting a good ooomph in flavor.

The Japanese Long is, as the name implies, long. It’s also incredibly bitey, and absolutely scrumptious. It’s sweet! And unlike the average cucumber, it does not go metallic when salted.

And now for the SPECIAL CHILD OF MY HEART. Seriously. I have been lusting after Blue Tea Peas since I first saw them offered, and every single time they’d be sold out pretty much the day of. This year I finally got some and... remember me mentioning that freak freeze that killed the peach blossoms? Yeah. Guess what it also killed. But two plants soldiered on. I have them heavily shielded by the cucumbers, dill and chamomile, and really I have no words for the blue. Pics don’t do it justice. I won’t have the tea this year, I’m saving as much seed as I can, but I am so pleased to have it at all!

Last, but not least, and it’s a poor shot of it, the chamomile. I cannot drink chamomile to sleep - it does put me to sleep, but it also gives me bad dreams. I plan on using it as a skin wash for all the bug bites, along with the calendula, and to give me some respite from dry skin during winter.

Stay green! See you in fall! Now back to our normal schedule of frogs, cats and nekked men!

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bi-dazai · 5 years ago

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a summary of the whole contrapoints thing from someone who has been spending most of her time on twitter and seen it first-hand throughout

(im using screenshots, some ive downloaded from trusted twitter mutuals and some ive made myself. since i have the shinigami eyes extension and many of my twitter mutuals dont, some scs will be inconsistent. i have checked each downloaded sced tweet to make sure theyre real.)

please dont try to start an argument on this post, im just summarising whats happened. ive already argued myself out over on my twitter and whatever point youre trying to make has literally already been said 20 times before.

Basically in late august/september natalie said some inflammatory shit about pronouns and nbs and “binary transes” which she’d said stuff along the lines of in the past. both nb and binary trans folks have criticised her lightly for this kind of attitude in the past as well. she has a pattern of behaviour (including being very...lenient towards terfs) but the stuff she was saying and the bad takes were tolerable, if incorrect and a little ignorant. what she said this time was basically “asking for pronouns in trans spaces is good i guess but it hurts passing/semi-passing transes like me” which is a take that makes no goddamn sense and is extremely ignorant towards both nb folks and trans folks who do not have the luxury of even trying to pass. she exaggerates the actual effect it has on her as well. basically the entire tweet reads really badly (the discussion was about asking for pronouns in trans spaces):

peter coffin made some batshit crazy takes (as usual) including inventing the term “enby cultural capital” which he refused to actually evaluate on past asking people to read a book (if you cant clarify your point on your own then you have an issue). he started tweeting like a madman and making it painfully clear how hard he will go to bats for natalie despite him being nb himself (many people joked/suspected that its because he wants to fuck her, same with philosophytube, and honestly looking at how they see her that isnt hard to believe).

natalie went off twitter for a while, eventually leaving an apology that was actually alright and made me and several others believe she would return a little more understanding of trans intra-community issues, especially in terms of class because she has always had an issue with ignorance from that angle. she said she had a friend called gwen taking over (nobody knows who this is nor had they ever heard of this friend, leaving some people suspicious that she may have made her up. im not going to confirm or deny this because i have no clue.)

idk what peter coffin was up to because at this point i and most ppl had officially stopped listening to him but i believe he was angrily tweeting about cancel culture. a lot of people were as well, even though the bulk of the criticisms of natalie had been written and expressed in a mature, appropriate way. some of my twitter mutuals who had been involved in discussing natalie’s past trends with these issues as well as her lack of class consciousness and (probably) accidental antisemitism began to get messages from what was very clearly alt-right trolls trying to doxx natalie. it was real information, which is extremely concerning, but no person published it and her criticisers that got those dms were vocal about not bullying or doxxing natalie. natalie wasn’t pushed away because of “cancel culture”, and “cancel culture” really isnt a real thing and many contra fans believed this too until she came under criticism, which highlights a pretty weird mentality but whatever.

anyway, she came back this week with a new video titled “opulence” which i dont care for watching so i just read about it from my twitter mutuals who did. since i didnt watch it ill only summarise its criticisms very basically.

to put it simply the main criticisms of the video were that she conflated trans aesthetic with literal opulence and class again, which people weren’t a fan of. she talked about her experience over the last few weeks, spinning it her way because how else would she spin it, thats to be expected. it was mostly just the usual contra, flawed takes and a bit of class ignorance...except for one blaring massive issue which is absolutely undeniable proof for where she’s heading with her politics and her content.

on that video, natalie invited infamous transmed, the guy who outed lana wachowski for money, buck angel, to collab with her. this guy is infamous in the trans community for being a cis bootlicking bigot. he makes kalvin garrah look like a lovely guy. he’s been around for a very long time and he’s very famous for being a massive asshole. heres just a taste of the kind of attitude he carries:

contra has previously spoken up about why you shouldn’t platform bigots. so her platforming a bigot has some very very obvious implications.

needless to say, people were and are pretty mad and very disappointed. a large majority of her fans have been against this.

when oliver (philosophytube) promoted the video on his twitter many replies to his quote tweet were his fans begging him to be even mildly critical of contra.

on contra’s subreddit (for clarification, natalie isnt a mod there and im not sure about how involved she is on the sub) there was even a thread created in which MANY of her fans on there expressed criticism of contra’s views. the mods then locked the post, deleted comments, and banned the use of the word “truscum” because it was offensive i guess? it was a move very close to “terf is a slur” territory

furthermore, some pretty infamous transphobes have been in support of her and buck angel in the past, including ian miles cheong which is...wow. some of these are scs from a twitter mutual, but the ones with red names are from me - i have the shinigami eyes extension, so basically any person with a red name is a known transphobe (im surprised buck isnt marked yet lol).

finally, ill put some threads here that give a pretty good analysis and view of the situation imo

#long post #contrapoints

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fernsandsunflowers · 5 years ago

Note

Your knowledge of Harry Potter is like a rotten apple with worms in it!

Expressive! thanks for voicing your opinion.

I really hope this is in regard to the Snape post (x) I made years and years ago and has resurfaced recently and not JKR is a terf and can fuck off this planet please and thank you posts I’ve reblogged.

If it’s about Snape, I’ve seen most of the comments, I haven’t taken the time to read it all but general opinion seems to be two-sided there are those who agree whole-heartedly with my post, and those who do not. Most in the do not agree category has pointed out that heroism is not a competition. This is absolutely right, the story itself should have taught me that long ago, like when little Neville stood up to the trio in book 1. I apologize, sincerely, for comparing their acts of bravery. They both did amazing things and I hope, if it ever comes down to it, god forbid, I find in myself the same strength and bravery. The post itself was poorly worded. My goal was to ask that we show the same love and respect to Lupin as we do for Snape. That clearly didn’t come across, instead I got carried away and had written a post that ended up elevating Lupin’s acts of bravery while putting down Snape’s. Regardless of their background they both did heroic things and in the end gave their lives to save others. These acts of bravery deserve to be honoured and respected.

However, I stand by my statement that Lupin is the better man. I have seen a lot of comments that admit to Snape’s wrongs but use the excuse of unprocessed childhood trauma and mental illness. I will not accept this ‘white man’ excuse. I will admit, again, here that Sirius, James and Remus were wrong to have bullied Snape. Sirius, in fact, was still a bit of a dick after he returned from Azkaban. But why can we excuse Snape’s faults as the product of childhood and later life trauma but not Sirius’? Why do you continue to condemn Sirius for his bullying while at Hogwarts but make up excuses for Snape’s reprehensible behaviour towards his students?

Yes there were no systems in place for Snape to process his trauma (he did have one positive influence, Lily, but this was clearly not enough), that is a grievous institutional error. This exists in our world and is something that needs to be rectified immediately, in every country. There were no systems in place for Harry, Neville, Remus, Sirius and Regulus to process theirs either. In Regulus’ case he didn’t have the benefit of a positive environment too. But your argument is that everyone processes differently. My argument is that, Snape’s trauma doesn’t negate his negative actions in the same way that Voldemort’s trauma doesn’t negate his. If you are excusing Snape for being complicit in the murder of so many muggles and muggleborns because he was abused as a child and grew up in poverty, then you must also excuse Voldemort for murdering people based on his trauma from growing up in a shit-hole orphanage, in poverty and being hated and rejected by his father. I genuinely don’t know if Snape has killed anyone before Dumbledore, I vaguely remember a scene in the Prince’s Tale chapter where Dumbledore says something along the lines, you must have done it before? and Snape implying that he has not. I don’t have my book with me or I would check. It does not matter, aiding and abetting is still a crime. Why do we say ACAB? Complicit is still guilty.

I have no patience or place in my heart for anyone that chooses to join the side of racists and fascists, knowing full well what it meant. That’s what he did. You cannot deny that Snape was extremely capable of critical thought and was intelligent enough to see plainly what Voldemort rising to power meant to his supposed love. Or to thousands of innocent people. But he joined anyway, for power. Do you think I will be forgiven by my friends, or even you all, if I actively supported Trump, or ISIS, or an example from my own country (Sri Lanka), the extremist ‘Buddhist’ organisation called BBS that stands against Tamil and Muslim people (I put Buddhist in quotation marks as people who believe these ideologies are no longer Buddhist), or even my own father in his anti-muslim stance? He had Lily, who he loved, yet still joined an organisation that was murdering her people and posed a fatal threat to her as well. I do not have patience for that and I will not be shamed for it. If you’ve chosen to forgive Snape for willingly joining the wizard equivalent of Nazi’s and Neo-Nazi’s then fine, that’s your prerogative. I have chosen to forgive James, Sirius and Remus for bullying Snape when they were kids. That’s my prerogative. If you’ve chosen to forgive Snape for bullying children under his care to the point of terror and psychological trauma, because he himself had experienced trauma, I guess that’s your right as well (though I admit it infuriates me).

Also because I’m on a roll now, I will not stand to be asked to care about and include Peter Pettigrew in anything related to the Marauders. I understand that he was a part of the Marauders and I understand he was afraid for his life. Amongst the countless things I don’t have patience for, is disloyalty. The fidelius charm cannot be forced out of you, or bewitched, or tortured out. It must be shared willingly. Peter was already working for Voldemort since before he was made secret keeper. The Order knew there was a spy in their midst. Systematic racism within the wizarding world led them to believe that Remus was the Spy. Sirius was probably the first to believe it. Peter obviously felt some regret over it, but eventually divulged the information to Voldemort the first chance he got. I cannot and will not forgive that. If Peter was really a good person and was afraid for his life or for the life of his parents, or whatever, he would not have run back and actively looked for and revived Voldemort after he was ousted. He could have just left the country and hidden somewhere else where he would probably not have been recognised. He had an ounce of regret over James’ death that led to his own death, but in the theme of this post, it doesn’t negate his crimes.

To better help you understand why I am against Snape but support several others who have done wrong in their lives here’s an example. Someone who joined the Death Eaters willingly that I do forgive is Regulus Black. I believe he didn’t know any better, he grew up in a household where the only voices and opinions he heard was that of his racist af parents who applauded Voldemort. The impact of this influence is reflected in the way that Kreacher responds to muggleborns and their allies. This is an intelligent species to whom blood status of wizards should not matter. In the same way that countries colonized by Europeans that should not have anything against black communities are racist towards them. Because all they’ve heard about Black People comes from our colonizers - also, the power of representation comes up here, after gaining independence, the racist concepts that European colonization left against ourselves, other poc’s and black people were reaffirmed by the negative stereotypes presented in white media, which unfortunately is broadcast worldwide. But that’s a whole other can of worms. Kreacher is later taught, and experiences differently. He begins to show respect to Hermione and fights against Voldemort - the man his masters supported so thoroughly. I forgive Kreacher too for the part he played in Sirius’ death, here is someone who’s trauma and upbringing really does excuse their actions. He comes to understand that he made a mistake, learns and changes. Regulus wanted to make his parents proud, they supported Voldemort. Sirius, I don’t believe, helped Regulus understand any differently and rebuffed and berated him for parroting their parents views (this is never the right thing to do), thereby pushing him away.

We of course also know that Regulus had a kind and understanding nature, this shows in the way he treated Kreacher. He joined the Death Eaters when he left Hogwarts thinking he was doing the right thing. And immediately realised his parents had been wrong to support Voldemort, he tried to leave and couldn’t. In the end he actively tried to bring down Voldemort and his movement. As soon as he gained some substantial information on Voldemort he acted, giving his life to do so. Snape remained with the Death Eaters even as they killed countless muggles and muggleborns. He reported to Voldemort the prophecy he heard - if Regulus had been in Snape’s place here what do you think he would have done? reported to Voldemort? No, he would have kept it to himself, or taken the opportunity even to tell Dumbledore he would like to join their side. Snape, on the other hand, would have seen to it that Voldemort succeeded in ending this threat if it weren’t for one thing: Lily. This is NOT a redeeming quality.

Do you understand what it is I’m trying to explain? I’m not as eloquent as most of you here, so I’m sorry if I’m botching this up. Snape’s childhood should not have stopped him from seeing what Voldemort was doing. It should have been enough that he had Lily, a ‘mudblood’, to show him that Voldemort targeting muggleborn’s and muggles was wrong. Regulus had no one he loved who was a muggleborn. Neither did Kreacher. Sirius didn’t either but learned before he met Lily or any muggleborns that Voldemort’s and his parents views were wrong. So did so many others. Shit, even a lot of you must have been taught racism and unlearned it later when you were exposed to the truth. I know I had to as a child. Harry Potter played a key role in my own unlearning. Snape, knowing all this, joined Voldemort. That is why I do not support or forgive him. He continued to stay in Voldemort’s employ, rising in rank to the point of being accepted into Voldemort’s inner circle and being granted the Dark Mark. May be he was uncomfortable, but this did not stop him from following orders and committing crimes against humanity. He only stopped when the one muggleborn he thought was actually OK was being hunted by Voldemort.

Some of you have said in the comments that Snape was working against Voldemort since before the prophecy and threat on Lily. Where do you get this idea? Please tell me I genuinely want to know how you know this. Because in the Half Blood Prince, Trelawney’s drunken rant let’s Harry know that it was Snape who had heard the prophecy and told Voldemort about it. When confronted, Dumbledore tells Harry,

‘Professor Snape made a terrible mistake, he was still in Lord Voldemort’s employ on the night he heard the first half of Professor Trelawney’s prophecy, naturally, he hastened to tell his master what he had heard for it concerned his master most deeply. But he did not know, he had no possibly way of knowing which boy Voldemort would hunt from then onward or that the parents he would destroy in his murderous quest were people that Professor Snape knew. That they were your mother and father.’

- HBP, Chapter 25: the Seer Overheard.

Harry goes on to laugh at this statement referring to Snape’s hate of his father. Dumbledore responds to this with,

‘you have no idea of the remorse Professor Snape felt when he realised how Lord Voldemort had interpreted the prophecy, Harry.

It’s pretty easy to read between the lines here. Snape only turned from Voldemort’s side when he realised that Voldemort had interpreted the prophecy to mean Lily and James’ son, meaning Voldemort now posed an undeniably direct threat to Lily herself. If I can go a little further here, I believe Dumbledore’s empathy towards Snape stems from the part he himself played in helping Grindelwald’s plans for world domination and his own attempts to reconcile with his guilt over the matter. For me, this choosing to turn only when Lily was threatened does not redeem him because he either did not understand or care for the damage he was inflicting to others. If he had not been in love with Lily, he would have just let it happen and continued supporting Voldemort, how is that right? ‘It is the thought that counts’, this thought doesn’t sit right with me.

He never tried to redeem himself for joining Voldemort, only the part he played in Lily’s death. In my eyes he acted out of guilt, he was sorry for Lily’s death but not for joining a side that murdered thousands of innocent lives. He later chastised anyone who used the word Mudblood in his (private) presence but I interpret this as a reaction to the word reminding him of his and Lily’s fallout. I don’t believe it had anything to do with him actually understanding the damage behind its use. In death, he may have felt he redeemed himself, and Harry apparently felt the same. Washing his hands of Lily’s blood may have been enough for him, Dumbledore, Harry and you but it is not for me. His actions in later life did not, in my opinion, redeem him from willingly joining Voldemort and bullying children.

I apologize for comparing Lupin’s and Snape’s acts of bravery that was unreasonable. Snape’s actions certainly led to the downfall of Voldemort he acted heroically, but for me, he did not redeem himself entirely. It’s as simple as that. I respect that some of you believe he did. That’s fine. But please don’t gloss over the fact that he did work for Voldemort of his own free will, any negative influence he had that led him to believe that muggles and muggleborns deserved to be killed, dominated and enslaved (which is what Voldemort stood for) should have been countered by knowing Lily.

I love the complex character that he is, but I do not agree with his actions in early life, or the motivation behind his actions in later life. And that’s allowed so please stop breathing down my neck.

If this was about JKR being a terf, then maybe this will help: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/trevor-support-center/a-guide-to-being-an-ally-to-transgender-and-nonbinary-youth/

Sorry this was meant to be short but I am physically incapable of keeping things short. This is also the last post I will ever make with regard to my feelings on Snape because well, I’ve been doing it for years and I don’t really care anymore. You do you.

#harry potter #hp #severus snape #anti snape #marauders #jily #anti snily #my post

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atsixesandcevans · 5 years ago

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my only wish (this year)

Summary: The world is different after the events of the snap, and that causes both you and Steve to make major changes in your respective lives, unknowingly pushing yourselves towards each other.

Both unlucky in love, and both longing for something fundamentally missing in your lives, what happens when you – quite literally – crash land into each others’ lives?

Pairing: Steve Rogers/Reader

Word Count: 2.1k

Warnings: none

A/N: this was written for @capcountdownchristmas‘s challenge with the prompt of the song My Only Wish (This Year) by Britney Spears, though it ended up being only loosely based on that hahaha!

set post-endgame, except everyone’s alive and nobody’s sad :)

this will be a small series, I’m not sure how many parts there’ll be or when they’ll be posted but they are in the works, so please feel free to send me an ask if you’d like to be tagged in this or any other of my works :)

Read on AO3 || Masterlist

November 2023

The disappearances – people had started calling it the snap, though you weren’t entirely sure why – had changed you. Changed everyone, really, in one way or the other. Every single person in the world either lost someone to the whims of the mad titan, or had been lost themselves.

You had been walking through Central Park when the screaming started. Panicked shouts of names, people disintegrating before your eyes. Your confusion morphed into dizziness, stumbling on your feet a little as you slowed to a stop. A gasp was caught in your throat as you looked down at your body that was half-gone already, fear swelling in your chest before everything went black.

When you woke up what felt like five minutes later, you were still in the park, but it felt… different, somehow. The sky seemed darker, the trees less vibrant. All around you, people were on the ground, matching confused expressions as they sat up, passers by rushing to help people up. Someone came and held your hand, pulling you to your feet, and you stuttered out a strained “what happened?”

The stranger’s confused but hopeful eyes scanned you for injuries, while they replied, “you’re not gonna believe me.”

Five years. They told you it had been five years since Thanos – whatever the hell that was – wiped out half the planet. You found it near impossible to fathom that half a decade had passed without you – without 50 percent of the world’s population.

Just like the rest of the world, you went on with your life as usual. At least, you tried to. You really did try, but each time you got up and went to the boring office job you hated, making the same small talk with co-workers you didn’t care to be friends with, every time you came home to your drab, empty apartment, you couldn’t shake the feeling that something was fundamentally missing.

It seemed that the snap had put things in perspective for a lot of people; walking home at the end of the day, surrounded by couples holding hands, going on dates. Even your friends were in love; two of them had had a romantic epiphany in the midst of the grief surrounding the snap, and had been in a happy relationship ever since. You were happy for them, of course, but you couldn’t help the surge of jealousy that you felt whenever you saw them kiss or be romantic around you. You longed for what they had; someone for you to love, who loved you in return. Another person to share your little corner of the world with, someone to celebrate the highs and commiserate the lows of life with. You yearned for it, and held out hope that you’d have that someday, and yet every year that went by, every birthday, every Christmas spent alone made that hope dwindle further and further.

You were stood in front of the coffee machine in the break room at work a month or so after the snap was fixed when you had what you could only describe as a moment of clarity. It dawned on you that the only way your life was going to change was if you changed it yourself. It was then that you decided that you would live your life the way you wanted to, no exceptions.

So, the next morning, you handed your two-weeks’ notice to your boss, and started looking for a house in Brooklyn, where you grew up.

Luck was on your side, it seemed, because you quickly found a small, reasonably priced (for Brooklyn) brownstone house in the Clinton Hill neighbourhood. After a viewing, you used your savings to buy the place, and within a month you were all moved in, with a part-time job lined up at a nearby art gallery to keep on top of your finances while you pursue your passion for art.

You still felt the absence of deep human connection, but you could only hope that the changes you had made would only bring more good things your way.

Steve had been staying upstate in Tony’s house since the defeat of Thanos and he had returned the stones to their rightful places in their respective timelines. Upon his return, Steve passed his shield on to Sam, who he knew would do a great job in the role of Captain America, officially hanging up his suit and finally allowing himself to just exist, without the responsibility that being in the Avengers had brought.

For two months, Steve had been helping Tony with the rebuild of the compound, as well as figuring out what role everyone would play in the new Avengers. It was quickly decided that Tony, like Steve, would be retiring, to spend time with his family and watch Morgan grow up. Bucky and Sam would lead the team, with Wanda and Peter working alongside them to tackle the evils of the world. Natasha decided to finally put aside the Black Widow title, though she would remain at the compound as an agent, leading the training of the new recruits for both S.H.I.E.L.D and the Avengers, as well as acting as a kind of logistics support for missions. And Bruce would continue as he always did; conducting experiments and continuing to use science and technology to make the world a better place.

With everyone settling into their roles, Steve found himself feeling almost restless. He had agreed to remain a semi-active member of the team, offering advice and support to the active members, but ultimately decided that he would move back into his house in Brooklyn and rediscover who Steve Rogers was outside of the Captain America image.

And so, he made the move back to Brooklyn, with the minimal belongings he had with him upstate stashed in a duffel bag, and the motorcycle that was almost an exact replica of his old one that Tony somehow had hidden away at the back of his garage. He had handed him the keys with a shrug and a non-committal “let’s just call it a little retirement present, from me to you.” Steve still often found himself baffled by his friend, but he couldn’t deny the genuine affection that had developed between them over the years.

As Steve re-entered the city, he was reminded of just how much he loved living here; sure, it could be loud and dirty and crowded at times, and there were definitely too many hipster coffee shops around… but it was home. Despite the changes that had inevitably happened in the 80 years or so since he grew up there, there was still the same feel to the place, the old brownstone buildings lining the streets reminding him of the apartment where he lived with his mother, the kids that often played in the streets reminding him of all the times he was ill and wishing that he could be out there with them. His memories of this place were good and bad, sure, but for the first time in a while he found himself thankful for the body given to him by the serum; he finally had the physical wellness and the free time to able to go out and enjoy his city in a way he never had been before.

Steve walked with his hands shoved deep into his pockets as he made the walk from where he parked his bike to his front door. There were more cars about now than there were last time he was here, so he ended up having to park almost half a block away. As he passed the house next to his, he noticed that the small garden that was overgrown and messy was now neat and tidy, and there were potted plants on the stoop, as well as heavy curtains that replaced the tattered blinds that once covered the windows.

He was so preoccupied looking at the clearly now inhabited house and wondering who it was who had finally bought the place, that he didn’t notice you coming from the other direction, eyes glued to your phone screen as you read through an email from your boss.

The two of you collided, and Steve tripped on uneven ground, sending him falling backwards, landing on his back. In your attempt to remain on your feet, you ended up tripping over the same bit of ground, and landed on what you could feel was an incredibly defined chest, both of you releasing a soft grunt at the impact. Glancing up towards his face, ready to apologise, you were taken aback and your words caught in your throat at the sight of easily the most beautiful man you had ever seen; strong features, soft beard spread across what you could tell was an angular jaw, and long lashes framing eyes the prettiest shade of periwinkle blue.

You suddenly became very aware of how close your face was to his, and immediately felt a blush creep onto your face as you hastily moved to push yourself up and off him, rattling off a litany of oh god I’m so sorry and I wasn’t looking where I was going. The stranger smiled almost shyly at you, cheeks tinted pink, probably from the cold evening air, as he shook his head and got back on his feet, insisting “please, it’s my fault entirely, I should have been paying more attention. Are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?”

You couldn’t help the way your heart swelled at his thoughtfulness; he was the one who had landed flat on his back with a whole other person on top of him, and he was asking you if you were okay?

Realising that he was still waiting for an answer, you cleared your throat before replying with a chuckle, “apart from a couple bruises to my dignity, I think I’m okay.”

His laugh shook his whole body, his face scrunching up in the most adorable way, and an inexplicable warmth spread through your chest at the sound, finding yourself desperate to hear it again.

You bit your lip to suppress a grin as he held out his hand in greeting. “I’m Steve, by the way.”

Taking hold of his hand, you noticed just how warm it was, despite being bare in the cold winter air, and introduced yourself, adding “I promise I don’t make a habit out of literally running into strangers outside my house.”

Steve cocked his head to one side, confusion across his face. “Your house?”

“Yeah, I live just there,” you said, pointing to the house he had just passed – the one that he was busy thinking about when he bumped into you.

A wave of understanding crossed his face before he let out a surprised laugh, nodding to the house next door, the one you had been passing not five minutes earlier. “I live next door.”

It was your turn to be confused. “You do? I’ve never seen anyone go in or out of that house in the two weeks I’ve been living here.”

Steve chuckled wryly. “Yeah, I’ve had some… business to deal with upstate, so I was gone for a few months.” He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t completely open about being an Avenger – or, ex-Avenger, now – but subconsciously, a part of him wanted to live as Steve Rogers from Brooklyn, instead of the persona he had been presented as for many years… and that same part of him wanted you to know him only as that version of him.

You nodded, though the expression on your face told him you were unconvinced by his bending of the truth. The two of you stood in silence for several moments, looking at each other with soft smiles on your faces, until you finally broke the silence. “Well, I um… I should probably head inside, it’s getting late.”

Steve nodded, though he couldn’t help the inkling of disappointment he felt. You both shared a soft goodnight with a smile before you moved past him and through the wrought-iron gate leading up to your door. It was as you were unlocking the door that you heard him call your name and you turned towards where he stood at the bottom of his own stoop steps. “Yeah, Steve?”

He looked oddly nervous, a shy smile on his lips as he fiddled with his keys, an almost imperceptible pink tinge to his cheeks. “I don’t suppose you’d want to grab a coffee with me sometime, would you? I’d love to make it up to you for knocking you over, and it’d be nice to get to know my new neighbour a little.”

His voice was hopeful, and you couldn’t help the smile that spread across your face. “Sure, I’d love to. But there’s really nothing to make up for, I was the one who knocked into you.”

Steve smiled wide, though he shook his head a little, getting the feeling that he wouldn’t win the fight with you about who bumped into who. “How does 11 o’clock Friday sound?”

You mentally checked your availability before grinning brightly at him. “Sounds perfect.”

#captain America countdown to christmas #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers/reader #steve rogers fanfic #steve rogers fanfiction #marvel cinematic universe #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #captain america #captain america fanfic #captain america fanfiction #steve rogers/you #christmas #fluff #beth writes

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years ago

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‘The Absent Father and Spider-Man’s Unfulfilled Potential’: Rebuttal Part 1: Introduction

Master Post

Back in 2012 I read a very interesting book called ‘Webslinger: Unauthorized Essays on your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’.

As the title suggests it was an anthology book made up of several different essays about Spidey (and edited by Gerry Conway himself).

The essays are an interesting read, though there are questionable points made and some inaccuracies.

Today though I’d like to debunk some points made in the essay titled ‘The Absent Father and Spider-Man’s Unfulfilled Potential’.

The reason for my desire to debunk parts of this essay is partially due to my inherent instinct to debunk problematic or misinformed stuff surrounding Spider-Man generally. However it’s also partially due to the author, J.R. Fettinger.

Fettinger is the creator and author of the essays found on ‘Spideykicksbutt.com’ and a regular panellist on the Spider-Man Crawlspace podcast. I respect both and the content they provide though there have been times I’ve disagreed with both and other times where quite frankly I think they’ve put forward statements that are outright wrong.

Fettinger and his work was the inspiration to an extent for me even choosing to write so much about Spider-Man, helped bring me back into fandom and his work helped me reconcile some things that I had felt made me an uninformed minority within fandom.

However, there have been times, more and more as the years move forward, wherein my eyes have narrowed at Fettinger’s statements regarding Spider-Man.

He once said something to the effect of ‘alcoholics are just stupid people doing stupid things through no fault but their own’.

He has repeatedly attested that it is morally wrong for Spider-Man and Batman to not simply murder characters like Joker or Carnage.

He has said that Otto’s actions towards Peter in Superior Spider-Man render him the worst enemy Peter has. This is in spite of him being a huge Norman Osborn fan.

He has essentially stated criminal killers like Shriek or Vermin (who suffer from severe mental disorders) deserve no sympathy.

He has said Kraven’s Last Hunt was flawed (to put it more delicately than he did) because Peter ‘never settled his score’ with Kraven.

He has even said that whenever DeMatteis gets into the psychological aspects of the characters he ‘goes off the deep-end’.

These views are most especially chronicled in his on-going segment of the podcast ‘Spider-History’ wherein he takes a month’s worth of (usually 616 Peter Parker) Spider-Man comics from a bygone month decades ago, recaps them and analyses the stories.

However, what is so frustrating to me about these segments as time has gone by is that Fettinger is overly critical and incredibly cynical. He has put forward his opinions as fact with little analysis or consideration of an alternative point of view.

To be blunt with relatively few exceptions he surmises each month in this section as mediocre-bad unless it contained something by Marv Wolfman or Roger Stern, two of his personal favourite runs.

Even then he puts across reductive summaries of the events of the book, in particular phrasing things to make certain characters (like Spider-Man himself) come across as worse than they actually are in the stories in question.

This is particularly a problem in my view because Fettinger’s status as a long read, knowledgeable and analytical fan confers onto him a certain degree of authority in regards to his statements about Spider-Man.

And you know what? It should.

He really does know A LOT about Spider-Man and he has made some incredible assessments about stories and characters related to the wall-crawler.

I cannot recommend you check out his website Spideykicksbutt enough.

But here is the thing...I do not advocate blind trust in his word, or anyone’s for that matter. Not even my own. I know A LOT about Spider-Man but I’m far from infallible.

Think for yourselves, do your own research, present your own arguments and counterpoints.

It’s what I do and why Fettinger frustrates me. Because he’s so belligerent to changing his views, most of which are adamantly cynical and judgemental.

Some people I’ve spoken to about this attribute this to his age. Most of his writing and podcast work has been produced when he was in his 40s or 50s.

It is often said that everyone becomes more cynical, grumpier and more stuck in their ways as they age.

I disagree with that in so far as not everyone becomes like that. And 40-60 is not a point when you are ‘done’ becoming who you are going to be and beyond changing.

It is the prerogative of old men to speak their minds but the WISE men are not adverse to changing them.

This is the root of my problems with Fettinger and his cynicism. Not to mention, I find cynicism simply lazy and foolish under most circumstances. Much as I find Fettinger’s ‘kill all criminals’ mentality to crime to be lazy and foolish.

These thoughts struck me when I re-read his essay from Webslinger. I read the essay upon first discovering his work but I apparently have changed in 6 years as I find much of it ill-considered, cynical, judgemental and problem riddled.

Hence my desire now to debunk it.

The gist of the essay is Fettinger talking about how Spider-Man has lots of unfulfilled potential and attributing this to the loss of his father figure Uncle Ben. He goes on to list off different father figures Peter has had and what the end result of their roles in his life might have been. For context this was written around the time of Civil War 2006.

My first and probably biggest bone of contention lies in how Fettinger frames Peter’s ‘unfulfilled potential’.

It’s here where you start to see his overly cynical and judgemental side.

I will not quote him word for word here because it’d take too long. But early on he writes that Spider-Man’s powers come at the price of his happiness, peace of mind and the normalcy that we all take for granted.

This is partially true but still misinformed.

Peter’s mind is most definitely not peaceful most of the time and his life not normal. But there is that key phrase ‘most of the time’. Not all of the time.

Even during his career Peter has had several moments of grace. Most of the stories transpiring in the immediate aftermath of Mary Jane’s return to his life in ASM v2 #50 come to mind issue #51 even calls out that nothing bad has really happened to get in the way of Peter and MJ’s reconciliation.

This oversight is particularly egregious since that period had only been a few years before the writing of this essay.

But it’s not as egregious as the other thing Fettinger said. That being Spider-Man has cost Peter his happiness.

Er....no.

There have been many things that have made Peter unhappy in the course of his superhero career but as ASM #500 clearly confirmed for us Peter, in spite of all that, is ultimately happy. Which was a big deal as Peter had just relived all his old battles at once.

The omission of ASM #500’s ending is telling because Fettinger actively dislikes the story and the scene with Uncle Ben particularly. He’s labelled it as ‘banal’ and essentially said if he could talk with his own deceased father the conversation would’ve gone very differently. Problem is the the story was not about him and his family but about Spider-Man and HIS family!

Fettinger then asks if when Peter dies he’d be labelled as someone who fell short of his potential. He illustrates the point by comparing 15 year old Spider-Man to adult Spider-Man circa 2006.

He claims Peter made few adjustments to his fighting skills. Not true. The older Spider-Man beyond the Silver Age did in fact adjust some of his fighting skills, noticeably in regards to ramping up his speed during combat.

He also took martial arts lessons from Captain America in FNSM v1 #1, putting the techniques he learned from that into practice in the very same issue. That issue was published just a year before Fettinger’s essay by the way.

Granted these do not seem particularly significant.

But let’s flip the script a little bit. Let us presume Fettinger to be correct, Spider-Man between 1962-2006 had never evolved his fighting style significantly.

Is that really an example of Peter doing himself a disservice, of not fulfilling his full potential...or is it that the fighting style he had was not only adequate for the life he lived but in fact optimum?

Spider-Man after all has an incredibly effective and sophisticated fighting style. It is impossible to truly replicate by anyone exempting those of similar powersets to himself.

His immense strength allows him to plant himself on the ground and exchange simple punches, kicks, etc. with a lot of power behind them.

But with more room to manoeuvre his speed, wall crawling, web-slinging and agility allows him to augment that raw power to deliver a lot of hits in a short space of time from a near 360 degree axis. See his battle with Firelord above)for proof of this.

His webs can be used concussively, to distract, to incapacitate and can even act as a defensive shield.

(I know the Spider-Girl image isn’t 616 but it might as well be if you know the contex behind the story)

And then there is his ace in the hole, the Spider Sense. This ability is linked to his reflexes and intuitively enables him to know an attack is coming. It almost automatically makes him adjust his movements accordingly in conjunction with his immense reaction speed and agility.

This fighting style had been enabling him to defeat a wide variety of foes across what was then 44 years of published stories.

So was it really that Peter was slacking off in not evolving it? Or was it more that he early on developed something extremely effective that didn’t need any real reinvention?

Moreover isn’t it impressive (rather than a point of condemnation) that Spider-Man essentially figured out the best way to fight with zero instruction or training when he was just a teenager. That’s incredible so it’s far from something to chastise him for simply because he hadn’t radically altered it.

What’s worse is Fettinger claimed that Peter ‘continued’ to rely upon sheer strength, raw intelligence, dumb luck and the stupidity/lack of imagination of his foes to win the day.

Let’s put aside for the moment how Peter has whipped up gadgets or chemicals when needs be.

Let’s also ignore how his foes even upon trying new tricks have more often than not met with defeat anyway.

Let’s also entertain the idea that Peter truly does rely upon his foes stupidity and dumb luck in battle. Let’s do that even though he absolutely doesn’t, he’s very rarely just presumed he can win because a villain is dumb, but he has exploited that fact when presented with it; see 99% of Rhino fights. Hell let’s even ignore how Spider-Man uses his speed, and agility and webbing and spider sense in battle as much as his strength.

What exactly is Spider-Man supposed to rely on besides his sheer strength and raw intelligence?

Fettinger is calling Spidey out for relying upon his raw physical powers and his intelligence.

Like...what is an MMA or boxer supposed to rely on besides their muscle and their mind to strategize before and after a fight?

Fettinger continues to point out that exempting his Iron Spider outfit or his alien costume Peter has continued to rely on his ‘wash n’ wear red and blue pajamas’.

There are two waysto view this statement. Either Fettinger is being critical that Spider-Man has not opted to alter his costume aesthetically ever or else never opted to alter it in terms of being functional. That is to say it’s still just a piece of cheap cloth.

Both arguments are invalid criticisms.

Peter has changed his look more than once throughout the years, noticeably he wore a cloth version of his black suit, used two rubber insulated outfits to fight Electro, made an armoured costume in Web of Spider-Man #100 and used four different costumes when he adopted four new identities for himself, all of which were used for different functions.

The black costume however served no function beyond enhanced stealth and Peter retired it due to him and his wife not liking how it reminded them of Venom, a notorious publically known homicidal maniac.

The Armoured suit was only created with access to ESU’s scientific resources, was destroyed on its first mission and realistically was compromising to Spidey’s fighting skills (hence Slott’s version was redesigned). It was also impractical as it was composed of a new hardened version of Peter’s webbing meaning it was never going to last anyway.

His rubber suits were similarly impractical for continual use and severely damaged during battles with Electro. They could not be worn as casually as his standard suit, realistically would’ve impeded mobility to a certain extent and were designed for one specific foe anyway. In fact Spidey usually ran into Electro by chance or else with limited time to intervene in his crimes. Meaning he’d not have the time to locate the rubber suit anyway. Besides...he usually managed to beat Electro without it anyway. After all rubber gloves would be a fairly effective defence and his webbing was itself an insulator. That was his go to in Electro’s debut in ASM v1 #9 and brought up in New Avengers v1 #4.

True Spider-Man trashed his original rubber suit for seemingly no good reason, but since this so aggressively makes no sense I think it’d be safe to presume Peter’s rationale was that the suit itself was ineffective (it didn’t provide full insulation) and was literally held together by glue. The suit was likely unusable after the battle hence why Spidey trashed it.

The four new identities he created though are the hardest to defend. It really doesn’t make much sense for him to have retired those identities beyond the simple fact that, well...the book is called Spider-Man not Hornet/Ricochet/Dusk/Prodigy. I suppose you could go so far as to say pretending to be other people and not using his web-shooters compromised his fighting abilities as he had to consciously move and talk differently as well as use different weapons and tactics. Also maybe he heard about how well multiple alter egos went for Moon Knight. The costumes were to be fair stolen from him and used by other people meaning he’d have had to come up with entirely new identities for himself and ultimately Peter would prefer being Spider-Man having come to see it (for all it’s burdens) as part of who he is.

So contrary to Fettinger’s criticisms, Peter HAS changed his costume, but from a practical/functional point of view there really is little reason for him to permanently make any changes. Or else when he has done so extenuating factors have compromised his attempts.

Meaning all that’s left is Fettinger’s complaint that Spidey never changed the outward aesthetic. Which is not a legitimate complaint about his ‘unfulfilled’ potential. I’ve kept the same posters in my room for many, many years. It doesn’t mean I’ve failed in my potential. It just means I can’t be bothered to change them/I have grown attached to them.

Fettinger continues his train of thought by talking about how Spider-Man’s webbing and web-shooters have not significantly changed since his early days barring his adoption of organic webbing.

I will give Fettinger some leeway here. He never said the webbing/webshooters have remained totally unchanged, just that they’ve mostly remained unchanged. So stuff like Peter equipping a spider tracer trigger to his web-shooters, sedative stingers, impact webbing, an LED light to tell him when he’s low on ammo and adjusting the design and formula of the webbing over time I am lumping all under ‘mostly not changed’.

Even though objectively by 2006 the web-shooters had changed.

But again why does this demonstrate unfulfilled potential?

Spider-Man’s web-shooters are a brilliant feat of scientific engineering/chemistry and have served him well across the decades.

They didn’t need to be radically re-invented.

True, Ben Reilly found ways to improve upon them which Peter later incorporated. Does this not prove Peter was slacking off, of failing to live up to his potential?

Yes and no.

Yes because there WERE improvements he could have made.

But no because Ben had access to Seward Trainer’s scientific resources, less social responsibilities, a lot more time on his hands and was in many ways far less stressed out. As such he was better able to spend time dreaming up those improvements.

Said improvements by the way equated to wearing the web-shooters on the outside of the wrists, sedative stingers and impact webbing and he had FIVE years to dream all that up.

So you know...hardly him re-inventing the wheel.

The truth is if Peter had been in a similar position to Ben, he would’ve likely dreamed up the same improvements.

But he evidently didn’t need to since the web-shooters worked just fine. Ben himself didn’t spam the stingers or impact webbing during his career as Scarlet Spider or Spider-Man. Nor did Peter in the years after he integrated most of Ben’s adjustments into his own web-shooters.

And he did just fine most of the time.

Any further upgrading to his web-shooters, like the kind we saw in Parker Industries, would’ve required access to resources Peter simply didn’t have.

Fettinger continues that Peter’s relationship with the public he serves is tenuous at best.

Again, this is not an example of unfulfilled potential. This is the result of Spider-Man’s reputation being slandered by Jameson and the wider press getting in on the act. This was proven in ASM v2 #39 wherein Aunt May, decades after Spidey began his heroic career, attempted to find a newspaper that didn’t have a negative bias towards her nephew and struggled to do so.

In New Avengers v1 #15 the Avengers attempt to win Jameson over due to Spider-Man’s involvement with the team only for him to turn on the team collectively.

Combine that with:

a) The numerous times Spider-Man has been framed for crimes he was guiltless of

b) The instances where he was deliberately painted in a negative light, such as when he assaulted a seemingly innocent Norman Osborn in Spectacular Spider-Man #250

And it was summarily not Spider-Man’s fault that in his 15 year history his public relations had never been great. Nor was it a negative reflection upon him that he’d been unable to improve them in that time

The public have been fed a particularly strong and buzz worthy narrative for so long that it’d be difficult for him to ever rehabilitate his public reputation without working for the authorities legitimately, being pardoned for any real/perceived crimes he’s been accused of and unmasking publically. Even then it’d be no guarantee.

Not to mention (though Fettinger could be forgiven for not taking this into account from a 2006 perspective) in the world we live in today it’s sadly apparent that news stories about how bad things are simply sell much more than stories about something positive.

Fettinger continues to say that in spite of Spider-Man’s dalliances with team membership his stubborn independence and feelings of inadequacies ensure he remains a loner and at times a fugitive with many heroes regarding him as poorly as the villains he fights.

This for me was possibly the greatest ‘what the fuck’ moment in this essay.

Stubborn independence. Okay, maybe? Although the message of his role in the then current ‘Civil War’ storyline was that surrendering his independence was a bad thing! By unmasking, surrendering some of his independence to Iron Man and working for the government Peter found himself in an inevitable position. He was trapped from doing the most good by a corrupt system. A system that was actively demanding he help do bad things by rounding up fellow heroes and removing their civil liberties. And in the process he made his friends, family, colleagues, students and general acquaintances targets!

Fettinger didn’t know this at the time, but in truth when you follow the chain of events, joining the Avengers is what led to One More Day.

If Peter hadn’t joined the Avengers and let them know his identity, Charlie Wiederman wouldn’t have gotten approval for his experiments from Iron Man.

If he hadn’t performed his experiments he’d have never become a freak.

If he hadn’t become a freak he wouldn’t have eventually burned down the Parkers’ homes.

If they hadn’t been homeless Iron Man wouldn’t have offered them Avengers HQ to stay at.

If they hadn’t been living there Tony wouldn’t have taken Peter under his wing.

If Tony hadn’t done that, if the Parkers weren’t beholden to him for the roof over their heads and if Tony didn’t know who Peter was, there’d have never been an issue about Peter unmasking publicly in support of the Super Human Registration Act.

If Peter hadn’t unmasked publicly Kingpin wouldn’t have put a hit out on his family.

If Kingpin hadn’t put the hit out Aunt May would never have been critically injured.

If Aunt May hadn’t been critically injured there’d have been no need for a deal with Mephisto to save her life.

Joining a team led to one of Spider-Man’s darkest hours and ultimately his greatest defeat.

So you know…maybe there is something to be said for ‘stubborn independence’.

Moving on…feelings of inadequacy? That’s heavily debatable. Again, see ASM #500. Peter was an ultimately happy person. He had a firm sense of pride throughout his life as much as he’d beat himself up. His inadequacies always came in the form of ‘I could/should have done more to help’.

Typically inadequacies manifest as ‘I’m just not worth it’. Even if you disagree and argue they are more like ‘I’m not good enough’ the context is still different. Whenever someone laments ‘not being good enough’, it’s almost always coming from a selfish mindset. Peter in AF #15 was frustrated about his inadequacies before going off on a power trip. But the older Peter’s frustrations were about his inability to do more for others! Superficially they might be called the same thing, but the internal psychology behind them is very different. Fettinger is attributing the former mindset to the latter iteration of the character.

It didn’t even really apply in the early years of the character. After all his problem in ASM #1 when he tried joining the Fantastic Four was about being too cocky (understandable given his age and experience as a performer) than about feeling himself to be somehow ‘not good enough’ for the team.

But then you get to the part here Fettinger claims these inadequacies and independent streak ensure Peter will at times be viewed as a fugitive. And that’s the point where I began to question near damn everything Fettinger has ever said about the character.

That’s not about Peter.

That’s the result of Jameson and super villains. If he wasn’t so independent or felt so ‘inadequate’ then I fail to see how that’d change his situation beyond other heroes disbelieving the news and vouching for him. But his various friends in the superhero community for many years never fully believed such slander anyway, especially since some of them had been victims of similar stuff themselves.

For instance, circa 1996 (let alone 2006) I find it fundamentally unbelievable that Daredevil or the Human Torch of all people would ever honestly entertain the idea that Spider-Man simply assaulted an innocent man in Spec #250 or (beginning in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #88) that he actually murdered low rent thug Joey Z (a crime Osborn framed him for).

More mind boggling though is Fettinger’s assertion that Spider-Man was (and always had been) a loner precisely due to his independence and inadequacy. This is utterly inaccurate because by 2006 Spider-Man was (to much consternation within the fandom) a member of the Avengers!

He’d been one for 1-2 years at the time of this essay’s writing and it’d been a MASSIVE deal. With hindsight we know that to some extent Spider-Man more or less held some form of Avenger’s status up until 2019, around 15 years after he first joined.

The idea of Spidey always being a loner was also aggressively contradicted by Spectacular Spider-Man #75-100. In those issues Peter and his girlfriend the Black Cat formed a crime fighting partnership. Yes they were lovers but the point is Peter was more than capable of accepting an on-going team arrangement. True their team fell apart with the end of their romance, but that had little to do with his independence or his feelings of inadequacy. Peter broke up with Felicia because she’d lied to him and didn’t value him beyond his Spider-Man identity.

That doesn’t touch on his independence at all and more importantly is an example of Peter doing something because he had too much self-respect to continue to be with someone who didn’t value him properly. Which is the opposite of things failing because he had issues of inadequacy.

Heck Spidey at one point tried to form his own superhero team, the Outlaws.

What’s worse is that Fettinger himself wrote a detailed essay about Spidey’s history as a team player.

I’ll leave it there for now. We’ll continue covering the introduction next time.

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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 5 years ago

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The Not-So-Amazing Mary Jane Part 3: The Birth of Mysterio

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Before we dive into specifics of Amazing Mary Jane, there is a large chunk of context we need to establish about Mysterio’s history. Specifically who he is and some of the crimes he’s committed over the years. I will generally be emphasising stuff that Mary Jane would likely or definitely be aware of; or at least could easily learn about with a little research. This is important to bear in mind when we look at MJ’s attitude to Beck in AMJ.

For starters, let’s consider how and why Beck ventured into a life of crime in the first place.

Life before Mysterio

Quentin Beck before he became a criminal had a college education to some extent and had major technical and chemical skills at his disposal. He became an accomplished special effects artists and stuntman and had regular employment. Long story short, he got bored and after failing to transition into acting (though he obviously had some acting talent) he was inspired to get involved with costume villainy.

Due to retcons in BND, it was established that he went back to work in Hollywood. However, he later got blacklisted when one of his effects injured someone. As originally presented and intended though, he basically turned to villainy out of boredom and frustration.

After being blacklisted Beck undertook his first major campaign against Spider-Man, whom (due to other retcons) he resented for foiling some of his crimes during his first foray into villainy.

Whether you look at him as originally presented or in the wake of all these retcons it’s clear that Beck didn’t get pushed into crime. It was a pure ego trip for him. Even with the retcon in mind realistically his skills and intelligence would garner him legitimate work elsewhere. In fact in the ‘Guardian Devil’ arc of Daredevil it’s established he was instrumental in developing certain technologies and processes that made advances in film making possible.

In short Quentin Beck became a criminal because he LIKED it. He is 100% not a tragic figure like the Lizard. He is not someone who’s environment made it difficult for him to be anything but a criminal, as is often the case for people in poverty stricken parts of the world. He wasn’t even someone like Doc Ock or Norman Osborn whose minds were (arguably) inadvertently affected by some kind of extenuating circumstance. Nor is he someone diagnosed with some kind of anti-social personality disorder like Cletus Kasady or Eddie Brock.

Regardless of whether you feel such mental conditions mitigate those villains, my point is Beck DEFINIETLY cannot be excused for his choice of becoming a criminal.

Virtually every crime he ever committed were the actions of a sane, rationale and intelligent person who happened to also be selfish, egotistical, greedy and often nasty. Maybe not nasty the way Carnage or the Green Goblin are, but nasty nevertheless.

I’m saying he’s not just ‘a villain’ but also an outright bad person.

And he’s been a bad person since basically the start of Spider-Man’s superhero career. That’s anywhere from 10-25 years, depending upon whose math you want to use.

The 1960s: Making an Entrance

Were we to take retcons into account, Mysterio’s first crime was his involvement with the Tinkerer way back in ASM #2, circa 1964! This was literally the fifth ever Spider-Man story to be created.

However, retcons not withstanding Mysterio’s first major crime was impersonating and framing Spider-Man, back in ASM #13.

He then went on to bill himself as a hero and defeated Spider-Man.

These events were a huge news story at the time and thus it’s not unbelievable that MJ would know about them via osmosis. Granted, there is leeway on that because MJ was not living in NYC at this time but she was making sporadic trips there and had taken a casual interest in Spider-Man’s adventures; this was partially because she knew Peter was Spider-Man.

However, one would imagine that it’d likely come up in conversation with Peter over the years given how this was his first (known) encounter with Mysterio and MJ was present for several consequent ones. It’d also be believable given that it’s just common sense for Peter to inform MJ of any enemies who could possibly impersonate him. Forewarned is forearmed (as arguably Gwen’s death proved) so knowing about Mysterio could help MJ ensure the safety of herself and her loved ones; for example MJ’s Aunt Anna and cousin Kristy.

Furthermore it is important to note that Mysterio’s very first major solo effort was a form of identity theft (there is probably a more accurate descriptor but I don’t know of one). The crime was intentionally designed so that he could build up his own reputation off the back of someone else’s. Does this perhaps remind you of another time Mysterio might’ve tried to selfishly benefit at the expense of another person’s reputation, not caring if he damaged it along the way? Like for example any female-led comic books released in 2019 for example?

The next time Mysterio duelled Spidey he used highly convincing robot duplicates of the (3 of the original 5) X-Men.

So, Mysterio is an expert in robotics and can create loyal and dangerous robotic servants. These robots can also trick people into thinking they are a real person, including Mysterio himself. Thus it’s very possible for Beck to convince someone he’s in one place when he’s actually in another, or alternatively get his robots to do something on his behalf when he’s otherwise indisposed.

Mary Jane 100% knows about these robot duplicates because versions of them (plus Iceman and Jean Grey) appear in Amazing Mary Jane #1.

It would suuuuuuuuure be illogical for MJ to just presume Mysterio would definitely NEVER misuse such robots for any nefarious schemes, or use them to slip under the noses of the press monitoring the movie. Or if he or his crew maybe used them to violate/evade justice somehow…

Also, just for the record, Mysterio was potentially risking damaging the reputation of the X-Men/mutants in general by creating duplicates of them. Yet another example of Mysterio is selfishly cavalier with someone else’s reputation.

Arguably (because I’m not an X-Men expert) this was especially awful because of how the general public already hated and feared mutants, who were of course chiefly allegorical to African Americans back in the 1960s. In this sense Mysterio could be viewed as exploiting societal bigotry or at least caring so little about it he doesn’t realise he’s potentially going to make it far worse. *

Mysterio’s third major encounter with Spidey was in a lot of ways one of his most twisted efforts.

His plan was to learn Spider-Man’s identity by convincing him that he was mentally ill…yeah…

Posing as psychiatrist Doctor Ludwig Rinehart, he convinced Jameson to publish an article claiming Spider-Man was heading for a major mental breakdown.

To make this more convincing he used his illusions to make Spider-Man believe he was seeing things that weren’t really there. His efforts bore fruit as Peter genuinely began to doubt his own sanity.

Beck’s endgame was for Spider-Man to seek out treatment from ‘Rinehart’ and in his vulnerable state divulge his secret identity. It was only through Jameson’s inadvertent intervention that Peter’s secret (and loved ones) remained safe.

I’m not suggesting Mary Jane necessarily knows about this incident; though it’s possible Peter told her. It’s more relevant because it illustrates what a twisted person Mysterio is to try and get to Spider-Man in such a way. It also illustrates the distress his illusionary skills can cause to people, both mentally and emotionally. This is a fact that Mary Jane need not have studied psychology to grasp; it’s just common sense. She knows Mysterio’s M.O. is tricking people into believing things that aren’t real and she’d know how believing something uncomfortable or frightening (even if it isn’t real) can be a dangerous and unhealthy thing. Her friend Harry Osborn had mental health problems that caused him to believe things that weren’t true and (for a time anyway) it destroyed him and harmed his family.

If you still think this is a concept MJ wouldn’t have grasped, then Mysterio’s next exploit would’ve likely convinced her.

During the course of Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man #1-2 Mysterio intentionally attacked the mind of MJ’s acquaintance J. Jonah Jameson. He did this by tricking Jonah into believing he’d been killed and gone to Hell. Simultaneously he also framed Spidey for Jameson’s alleged murder.

Events from this story formed part of the screenplay for Mysterio’s biopic. Proof of this can be found in ASM v5 #29 wherein Peter and MJ are rehearsing Mysterio’s script and the dialogue is almost verbatim from the Webspinners story in question.

As such it is very possible that MJ would know about what Beck did to Jameson. One would imagine Peter would at least tell her about that in the course of rehearsing with her.

We are skipping ahead a bit, but another instance of Mysterio using his illusions to cause terror can be found in ASM #66. In the issue he hijacks TV airwaves and essentially delivers a terrorist message to the city at large. He depicts scenes of New York decimated and threatens to make them a reality unless Spidey confronts him. The incident upsets Aunt May (a woman with an underlying heart condition) and realistically would’ve distressed other people too. This might’ve included MJ’s Aunt Anna who was living with May at the time.

Given the public nature of this broadcast and the distress it caused Aunt Anna’s roommate, the chances are MJ would be aware of it. Even if she failed to catch it initially she’d have heard about it via sheer osmosis.

Even if you disagree, it’s yet another example of Mysterio selfishly and callously causing distress to people for his own ends. If one buys into Marvel’s sliding timescale these events also pack more of a punch since they would've happened post 9/11.

The 1970s: Scamming Seniors

We’re skipping ahead again all the way into the 1970s.

In ASM #141 Betty Brant and Ned Leeds inform Peter that Mysterio died a year earlier in prison. This horrifies Peter because he fought Mysterio earlier that very night.

This was public knowledge meaning there is a chance MJ would’ve heard about it in the news. But even if it wasn’t widely reported or if she just missed it, she’d have still likely heard about it. After all she was dating Peter at the time and was also very friendly with Betty (even serving as her Maid of Honour not too long after this). This is important to remember for the next section.

As it turns out he actually battled a new Mysterio, Danny Berkhart. Berkhart believed himself Beck’s friend and inherited some of his equipment after the latter’s death. He decided to take down Spider-Man out of respect for Beck.**

Much later it was revealed that Beck hadn’t really died, he’d merely used Berkhart to fake his own death. In the guise of Doctor Reinhardt he took over a nursing home. Consequently he swindled vulnerable elderly people out of their life savings, amassing almost $8 million. According to this inflation calculator, in 2019 that’d be about $40,780,313.20.

My, what a sympathetic individual…

This scheme snowballed into Beck faking Aunt May’s death on behalf of the burglar who killed Uncle Ben.

To be fair to him, The Burglar was threatening his life. However given Mysterio’s technology and intelligence it’s highly unbelievable that he couldn’t have taken the Burglar down if he wanted to. He does exactly this in ASM #198 once he’s learned the Burglar was after a fortune hidden in Aunt May’s old home, opting to seek out the fortune himself (see above).

It goes without saying how devastating it was for Peter and May’s friends (chiefly Aunt Anna) to believe she’d passed away.

It beguiles belief that, between MJ’s closeness to Peter, their mutual friends (like Harry and Flash), Aunt May and Aunt Anna, that MJ wouldn’t at some point have learned about May’s ‘death’. By extension she would’ve learned of the circumstances of it being faked and surely have been at least miffed about it! Thus she’d have deduced that Beck had faked his death, as she’d likely have heard about his alleged death in prison.

Even if MJ didn’t hear about any of this during the incident itself, considering that this was all a matter of public record and would’ve been reflected in May’s medical history MJ realistically would have learned about this at some point. This would especially be the case because May’s death was faked a further two times; and that was when MJ married to Peter.

After all, if it was public record that May’s death had been faked before then her consequent ‘death’ (it was actually an imposter) in ASM #400 would require a degree of verification that’d go beyond most patients.*** And it’s highly unlikely that Peter and MJ wouldn’t have been informed about this process. ; or that they themselves didn’t inform the doctors that they should triple check given May’s history. This is literally the reason the actress impersonating her in ASM #400 was specified as being ‘genetically altered’ so her DNA would read as Aunt May’s.

All this means that there is simply NO WAY MJ wouldn’t know Mysterio caused this kind of harm to two of the people she loved most in the world (Peter and May).

The 1980s: Old Tricks

We skip ahead again all the way into the 2010s, albeit an untold tale set circa the 1980s. In Symbiote Spider-Man #1 Mysterio’s attempts to rob a bank inadvertently led to an innocent woman (with kids no less) being shot and killed.

Now to be fair, this wasn’t intentional and he felt bad about it. But it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t committed a crime in the first place. He also wasn’t exactly turning himself in due to remorse or giving up a life of crime. MJ might not have known about this but it’s the first time (to my recollection) Beck was involved with someone actually dying. So you know, he’s definitely a killer and is unwilling to face the consequences of his crime. Real sympathetic right?

I will admit this is something of a contentious example as this series doesn’t exactly fit into continuity and so could be arguably discounted. Nevertheless it definitely offers food for thought. An insight into how Mysterio likely would act under these circumstances.

Jumping back to the 1980s proper, in a much later encounter with Spidey Mysterio once again attacked Peter’s mind. This time he tricked him into believing that an innocent person had died on his watch.

MJ again definitely knew about this because a guilt-ridden Peter talked to her about it before he learned the truth. Later she tried to talk him out of his guilt ridden state.

I think I will leave it there for now. We’ll continue our look at Mysterio in the next post as we enter the 21st century.

*I’ve got no place for this in future instalments so I’ll just say put it here as an aside.

MJ to my recollection has no experience with the X-Men (sans Wolverine), but she is definitely no anti-mutant bigot. Wouldn’t it be logical for her to be wary or at least conscious about how Beck is playing with the optics of the X-Men/mutants in general in his vanity project?

Not to mention their inclusion I’d imagine would be in reference to ASM Annual #1 where he tried to use them to kill her boyfriend. She has no qualms about the guy responsible for that recreating that event on film in an effort to glorify him self?

On the other hand we don’t know exactly how they are being used in the movie so I’ll let that slide.

**Berkhart isn’t all that relevant at the moment but he will be in the next instalment, so bear him in mind.

***Alternatively one would imagine in a world where the fantastical is a matter of fact, death would be checked to a greater degree than practiced in real life.

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#Amazing Mary Jane #Mysterio #Quentin Beck #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #Spider-Man #MJ Watson #peter parker #Symbiote Spider-Man #Betty Brant #Ned Leeds #Tinkerer #Brand New Day #Marvel #Marvel Comics

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