#like what was the point of all the reproduction based horror. what was the point it was trying to make

[butchladymaria]

It's definitely a topic that gets even more tangled up with bloodbornes overall themes of femininity and motherhood, explored further if you've seen the Viscerally Feminine video on youtube. It's entirely possible that the Great Ones even *do* align with femininity, but in a way that's kind of twisted. (Great Ones, surrogates, blah blah blah, parentage isn't necessarily related to gender but bb seems to have Stuff Going On) (I am very tired fkshsjsh)

i have watched that video, i thought it was amazing!!! bloodborne has such insanely complex commentary on womanhood. i genuinely think the themes of womanhood, menstruation, childbirth, and the visceral transformation of the flesh are crucial to why it’s been such an enduringly frightening classic.

my take on the great ones and womanhood has always been that it’s something humans assigned to them. they saw a Thing which had a child (kos) and designated her a “mother” because to them, mothers are the ones who bear children. they saw a Thing guarding a baby that didn’t belong to it and named her “wetnurse” because in their minds, women are the nurses of babies. equally, in Oedon they saw a Thing which was capable of impregnating people against their will and decided it was a “he”, because in their minds, men are the ones who sire children in others.

i’ve always loved this reading, because it is very catholic of the church to look at things they don’t understand and try to forcibly assimilate them into existing hierarchies instead of understand them without. like, in my mind, oedon isn’t really a “he”, oedon acts a lot more like a parasite does in nature by forcing other animals to take care of its offspring. kos may not have been a mother at all — male seahorses are the ones who carry children after all. my point in saying all this is that nature is messy, and the great ones are flesh just as any other part of nature might be — but the church has tried to force the great ones into their tidy little boxes of gender binary in order to reinforce the hierarchy which lends them their power.

all that to say — i agree that the great ones do align with femininity in a “twisted” way, and the above is my thoughts on why that might be!

as for women being more “in tune” with the great ones — it’s fascinating for sure! i’ve always thought that the blood saints did require some sort of treatment by the church to gain that property — possibly by having the blood of the great ones imbued into them directly? — but it’s nebulous at best what the process of “grooming” a blood saint looks like. of course, we also have arianna and annalise — but as probable descendants of the pthumerians, it may be that connection which grants them “kinship” of sorts with the great ones, and since they’re the only survivors of cainhurst… well, it’s not as though we’ve got much of a sample size. regardless, however, the fact of the matter is that many women we meet over the course of bloodborne are closely tied to the great ones (adella, adeline, arianna, annalise, fauxsefka, rom, etc…) i truly do wonder if the game overall was drawing on the idea of the “monstrous feminine” by having human women and great ones connected the way they are?

i love this game because there’s so many fascinating readings you can come away with!!! all of this is totally just ad-libbed, i hope it makes sense! and thank you so much for your thoughts!!!

[ilovepersephoneprice]

Periods/menstrual cycles in Panem

recently I've been wondering about how periods and menstrual cycles as a whole are treated and spoke about in Panem.

Katniss never mentions a period to my memory which would make sense because she was malnourished and under mass amounts of stress (both things that can effect menstruation and cycle health) but obviously Mrs Everdeen has had periods as she gave birth to Prim and Katniss. They aren't just non existent by Panem's existence. Do they learn about them in school? it is implied that their education is lacking out in the districts so maybe not.

I wonder if they are taboo. I think that would be another great example of the hypocrisy Suzanne highlights throughout the series. Like how they are broadcasting kids slaughtering one another every year, but Johanna swears and they bleep it. Or how they are sending real, alive, sentient children to kill each other in the arena, but katniss is supposedly carrying a fetus and suddenly it's an issue. They'll plaster kids forced to murder other children everywhere and force you to watch it, but speaking about how we are all created and born is too graphic.

I think about how much different characters would know, like would the higher ups in districts know more about such than say a random boy? mostly likely. That would be a great commentary about withheld education and quality of education based off your privilege.

Jumping to the Capitol, mostly during the ballad of songbirds and snakes age, how much would've they known? I saw someone say how tbosas' time period aligns most with the 1940s. With many husbands dead from the war, many women were working for their families and for the economy still recovering, certain customs and traditions resembling ones of the 40s, I think such would be an accurate estimate. If so, would the ideas and stigma around menstrual cycles be the same? Once again, it would be another great representation of that hypocrisy if it was because they've just lived through a war. People had their friends and family die in front of them, were starved to the bone, corpses littered the streets, horrors were their reality yet, female anatomy is too dirty.

(Not to go on too much of a preachy rant here but once again, just to reaffirm, periods and cycles, as much as they suck sometimes, really are beautiful in their nature. People with periods can create and carry life in their bodies, more than their own and that's incredible! And even if there are issues in that realm, isn't bitching about our periods such a unifying moment everyone with a period can engage in?)

I'm very fascinated by Coriolanus' character (Suzanne Collins, you're a genius!) and would be interested to see how much he knew/didn't know about menstruation. He didn't growing up with many close men in his life, especially not in his household, and I know many men with sisters speak about how all they know about periods come from their sisters informing them. I wonder if him and Tigris had a similar dynamic. I would also care to see how Coriolanus thought of them. As we see, he carries what happens to his mother with him, so I'd be interested to learn how the experience of losing his mother to a hemorrhage she suffered during birth would taint his view on a reproductive cycle. I can only imagine Tigris bleeding through and him panicking that she's going to bleed out and die. Or when one of his friends' mothers fell pregnant, worrying for his friends that they'd lose their mother like he lost his. Would he be empathetic or avoidant and detached to the whole thing?

He despised Livia but I can't help but wonder if he felt a twinge for her when she was pregnant (maybe just in worry for his own ill fate if they copied his parents lives) or maybe that moment could demonstrate how uncaring and heartless he had become by that point.

I don't know this is just something I was pondering, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[g1deonthefirst]

cw for reproductive coercion and violence: i feel like we should talk more about the implications surrounding reproductive coercion re the heirs: in a no lyctor trials au, i feel like pal & ianthe & maybe harrow would really be pushed into having kids to keep those necromantic lines going

(i say ianthe and not coronabeth here b/c it's probably less likely that corona would have a necromantic child/she needs to run ida, which a pregnancy would make much harder) but we know that there are at least a few ppl on the sixth who pal is genetically compatible with

YES ANON!! ugh this is SUCH a good point. my thing is like, i don't understand how people can argue that the nine houses are post-sexism, post-homophobia, post-gender roles, etc. when you have seven of eight houses relying on a hereditary system of governance that by definition values heirs based on their reproductive capacity. the scene where harrow uses her father's corpse to shoot down the suggestion that she marry and have kids with ortus is honestly horrifying. regardless of whether she's even attracted to men (something nobody seems to care about), she's a child in that scene and already the adults around her are discussing her reproductive capacity. not to mention ortus is, what, eighteen? years older than her. in a world where harrow's parents killed 200 children for one necromantic heir, there is no way all the scions aren't being forced to reproduce whether they like it or not. considering how the themes of the horror of pregnancy/birth and reproductive violence come up again and again, i can't see this detail as anything but intentional, either.

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

One day I will cry long enough to make you feel so sorry for me you will write that meta about heteronormativity of marines

aw, you don’t have to cry! asking nicely is all it takes.

so, when i say the marines are a rigid, heteronormative institution, what do i mean by that?

they work in the service of a heteronormative government and society—the world government, and the world nobles, who consider themselves superior to the rest of the world because of their bloodlines

they have heteronormative values—among them strictly defined gender roles and prioritizing relationships based in blood/deprioritizing all others

they use those values to dictate how the ‘civilized’ world should behave and assume that everyone shares those values, marking those who do not as uncivilized, criminal, and rebellious

more details below the cut.

any kind of royalty or nobility that defines itself as superior to the masses because of their bloodline, ancestors, etc. is going to be particular about having proof of that blood connection. if you think your blood makes you better, you better have documentation of it, family trees going back eight hundred years so no latecomers can doubt your importance.

they’re also going to care deeply about the “sanctity of marriage”—not because it’s actually sacred, but because if wives are cheating on their husbands then you can’t trust your family tree. and if your family tree is a lie, then maybe you aren’t actually superior to all of those dirty, common masses. the horror!

lastly, they have to care deeply about children. because, until someone develops some kind of immortality elixir, the only way to keep your very important family going (and it has to keep going, or what’s the point of any of this?) is to have children. and you’re going to prioritize biological children over any other, because if the child doesn’t have your blood, they aren’t really superior to the masses.

(the exception: note that the child sabo’s parents adopt when he runs away is chosen for his aptitude in school and his higher status biological family. bringing fresh blood into your family that improves your status is always beneficial, whether it’s through marriage or adoption.)

so. special bloodlines, preserved by marriages that produce biological children. until someone develops alternate methods of reproduction—which is not out of the question in one piece—all of that requires heterosexual relationships. they have to be the priority, in order for the superior bloodlines to persist.

thus, the prioritization and normalization of heterosexuality by the world nobles—and therefore the world government that serves them—and therefore the marines that serve them.

.

what about those heteronormative values?

well, look at female marines. there aren’t many of them; even if you’re only thinking about named marines, women are outnumbered nearly ten to one. and the unnamed background guys are always guys, so actually it’s an even greater disparity. why? because a woman’s place is in the home. she should be a homemaker and mother, because continuing the family line is the point of a woman, according to the nobility’s heteronormative view of the world. going against that is to set yourself up for a struggle. and a number of these ladies do struggle.

bell-mère had to leave the marines to keep her kids, taking on a job with a highly variable income that left her nearly starving at times; men in the marines have no such trouble, though whether that’s because of narratively invisible wives or these men not caring if they raise their children well is unclear.

tashigi has an enormous complex over being treated differently because she’s a woman, and it’s not a complex that comes out of nowhere—she is treated differently. most of her opponents beat her easily and then let her live for no good reason; as a captain she’s idolized, not respected, by her crew.

then there’s characters like hina and tsuru, whose presence high up in the military structure is acceptable because they have powers that put their opponents into submissive, humiliating positions. you don’t see a female marine with one of those elemental devil fruits; no, they have to have a fruit with a power play component to it. because god forbid women hold positions of power if they don’t have a bit of a dominatrix energy to them. (actually it’s because they’re being subversive in service to the state and the status quo, which makes them acceptably quirky rather than rebellious, not unlike members of SWORD, or our single female warlord.)

.

and then there’s the prioritization of bloodlines.

we see that value most clearly in the paramount war, where ace is executed not because he’s the second division commander of the whitebeard pirates, not because of any crimes he’s committed, but because of who his father is. a man who died long before ace was born, a man ace hates because of the awful opinion the civilized world has of him (and therefore his kin), a man who had no influence on ace in any way but blood. that’s enough reason to kill a man, by the marines’ logic.

and the man ace does call father, who embraced ace and gave him a loving family? well, that man, as far as the marines are concerned, only took ace in to put him on the throne of the pirate king, making himself the power behind the throne. (because naturally a king’s son should inherit his throne! never mind that whitebeard’s power far outstrips ace’s—surely pirates would only bow down before their king’s rightful, blood heir—and the marines can’t allow for the pirates to unify under one man’s leadership like that.) to the marines, ace only has value as roger’s heir, and so they expect that to be all the value he has to anyone.

and this backfires on them. the betrayal from within the whitebeard fleet (which the marines orchestrated) operates on the assumption that whitebeard will prioritize ace over the rest of his fleet. but all of the whitebeard pirates are his children, and he makes that clear when he gives them an out, allowing them to abandon him to his death if they so choose. the marines wanted to show the world that even this benevolent father figure of a pirate captain was a monster deep down, but they couldn’t pull it off. they don’t believe whitebeard is sincere in his affections for his ‘sons,’ and that costs them the narrative they wanted for the paramount war.

.

there’s also this one-off line that i rediscovered while rereading impel down/marineford to prep for this post, which in retrospect explains garp’s manic insistence on his grandson becoming a marine.

in chapter 530, hearing that luffy’s broken into impel down, sengoku shouts, “if you weren’t called ‘the navy’s hero,’ i’d make you pay for the sins of your entire family, garp!” as a counterpart to it being just and lawful to kill people for the crime of being related to a sufficiently dangerous criminal, garp and others like him believe that if you serve the state well enough, you can be forgiven for the crime of being related to a criminal.

if luffy (and ace) had just become a marine, garp thinks, then the identity of luffy’s father wouldn’t matter.

which strikes me as very naive. of course it would still matter; blood is the only thing that matters to these people.

[eye-of-yelough]

there was a post i saw ages ago saying that since there are underwater communities, and durge is supposed to kill everyone Ever, then durge being able to breathe underwater is entirely plausible. likely, even.

anyway. githyanki seamonster Aeryn wins again.

uhh this got a little long and it’s also. horrible. so. oc lore dump ramble including what i can only describe as trans horror and gortash being his usual awful sadistic scientist self below. 👇

i think bhaal may have used githyanki as a base for aeryn for the psionic abilities and all that, but ultimately built him with the plan of him mothering (eugh) a whole new race of monstrous amphibious bhaalspawn (Pure bhaalspawn because asexual reproduction) i don’t think aeryn was ever actually intended to take over and wreak ruin, but to birth the children that will. which makes me sick to my stomach.

i think this works better with aeryn’s personality being the way it is, yknow, “kind”, “compassionate”, all that. nurturing. of course, nothing went to plan. Bhaal wanted to wait until Aeryn hit 30 to start. yknow. sending him eggs. and by that point Gortash was already in the picture, already had his hooks in him. egg thievery ensues. gort does a lotta weird shit to them i can tell you that much. eats some, sure, but mostly experimentation. noting how many are duds, seeing how susceptible they are to genetic manipulation, hypothesising on a way to force them into stasis without access to the Astral Plane, so they could all hatch at the same time when we wishes, (illithid tadpole prototype)

a few years down the line, he let’s one live, in the most perfect conditions he can make, to see how long it takes to hatch. and in a moment of sadism mercy, decides to let it live for a while, the cute little runt. he’d always wondered what aeryn looked like as a hatchling. bathes it, wraps it up, and takes it to the balcony. shows it the rising sun, his city. keeps it around for a few days, maybe weeks, tracking its progress, running tests, snipping its vocal cords so it stops crying, until Aeryn’s next visit. introduces him to his baby he didn’t even know he had, and tells him about his grand plans, how they can raise it as their own, raise them all as their own, their perfect killer offspring army. forces him to hold it, and smiles as he kills it to save it from that fate.

and then he cooks it and serves it to him for breakfast the next morning :)

[talenlee]

The Silent Hill Wiki Circumcision Incident

Oh you don’t want a fun one? C’mon, here, this is a fun one.

Content Warning: I do talk about circumcision and some ‘mens rights’ topics in this one like male suicide, but it’s glancing mentions.

I am coming to have the opinion that one of the things I have come to use this blog for is to provide a complete history of whatever petty internet nonsense thing that ran across my attention on any given day is. When I wound up writing up a full explainer for The Sodafunk Swindle which was spurred on by someone inappropriately describing a Sound! Euphonium character’s thighs as being thicc I had to realise that there was no depth to just how petty I could be about internet detritus, especially when it was about answering questions of: Why Are People Weird About Things?

Why are people weird about things is also, coincidentally, one of the central motifs of the long-running series of critically acclaimed game, Silent Hill. The Silent Hill Franchise, which is basically Resident Evil for people who read (nobody read this to a Resident Evil fan, what they don’t know won’t hurt them), comes from Japan and is generally held up as a common touchstone for Interesting Creepy Horror Games that are enjoyable despite being hard to play and obtuse and kind of, now, a neverending chain of poor marketing decisions. It’s generaly treated as deeply affecting horror and part of how it achieves that is through its use of vivid, cruelly unsettling imagery and an unwillingness to offer clean and clear explanations of what things mean and what they are.

As with any property that invites the audience to ask questions and provide their own answers, we as a body collective made a wiki, in which we attempted to catalogue all those answers to find the Best Way To Be A Right Fan. That’s how there’s a Silent Hill Wiki .

Okay, now we have our pieces set up. What’s the Circumcision Incident?

Well, around 2015, at one point, one of the moderators and contributors of this venerable wiki decided that a personal pet theory about Walter Sullivan was worth adding to the page’s main entries, adding a new Possible Male Circumcision Victim section. This addition was around 800 words long, or about as long as this blog post is, give or take the introduction or conclusion, depending on if you want to cut things off near the base or at the tip, as it were.

Now, I need to underscore: This is not anything to do with what was in the game. There’s a lot of what we consider unsourced claims, in wikispeak, about how maybe this game’s antagonist was motivated by trauma related to an involuntary circumcision or being excluded from women’s health shelters. This character, for what it’s worth, was abandoned by his parents who were cult members and thinks that his mother is a haunted room.

These additions to the posts included a lot of let’s say disconnected ideas. Involuntary penis circumcision is a thing, it absolutely happens and it can cause medical problems later in life. If you’re one of the kinds of people who think that this doesn’t matter in and of itself, and need the recruitment of someone you can point to as obviously more marginalised than me to accept it, consider the long history of the United States doing medically unnecessary reproductive surgeries on black people as a sort of eugenics for poverty in the name of welfare, and that trans women who needed that building material for something else. Involuntary penis circumcision isn’t a bad thing to care about, certainly not in and of itself! Similarly, a lack of support for men’s mental health is not a bad thing to have an opinion on either!

But.

In much the same way that men will often bring up men’s mental health crisis as a way to move the topic of conversation away from things like misogyny, transphobia and gendered violence and instead onto themselves, you have to ask why and when these things are being brought up. If we’re talking about pay gaps, it’s questionably motivated for you to suddenly try and make this conversation about men’s suicide rates, and if we’re talking about where to find the tombstone in Silent Hill 2 with Walter Sullivan’s grave, it’s really questionably motivated for you to provide a short essay on whether or not he has his foreskin.

The conversation quickly broke down, and by that I mean it was never a conversation. The editor of the wiki, who had some degree of power thanks to long time presence on the wiki, fought with people who reverted the edits, and wound up getting into fights where people were kinda, unsurprisingly, assholes. In this time, the editor made more edits over more parts of the wiki to show that actually, this theme he asserted was all over the franchise, and that was in turn, met with disagreement

A large portion of The Internet in general turned their attention to this, people Made Content Out Of It (like this post, in a way), and then stopped caring because it stopped being interesting. Whatever Happened To The Circumcision Theory Havers Of Yesteryear, one might wonder?

So why is this a fun one?

At its heart, this is an incident where someone with (probably, no business of mine) some personal trauma, a rough mental state, and a very practiced skill of typing words had what amounts to a hypergraphia attack on a publically revertable wall. If you wanna go follow it up, good news, he has a FAQ section on the wiki that is eight thousand words long explaining everything he thinks he needs to in a way that I will generously say is rambling.

The thing is: He’s fine. He made a bunch of weird edits to a wiki, he had an episode, and he got made fun of for a week or so, but if you were there for it, if you were around for it, chances are you only remember the incident as a thing that happened and not like you need to track this figure who had some weird bad opinions about something that he – and several others! – find very genuinely upsetting. It’s a lasting incident, a weekend of people making jokes like ‘there’s got to be a cutoff point for this kind of thing,‘ and then… that’s it.

I didn’t mention his name in this article.

Do you know it?

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[biglisbonnews]

Ana de Armas Reflects on 'Blonde' Backlash One of the most polarizing films of 2022 was Blonde, the NC-17-rated biographical psychological drama that tells the story of Marilyn Monroe's life. Criticized for its graphic depictions of violence and surreal choices that blur the line between speculation and reality, its star Ana de Armas earned the film most of its acclaim. Now, she's ready to get into the nitty-gritty of how she felt about the film.In an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter, de Armas remembers her reaction to reading the film's script for the first time. "It was shocking," she recalls. "I remember telling Andrew when we met after I’d read the script that it felt like a horror movie to me."Recognizing her reaction, de Armas decided to use her Cuban heritage as a way to separate herself from the initial shock. She tells THR: "I think one thing that I had that helped me was actually not being American. All this information that people have of Marilyn, [they] just have a very specific narrative about her life and who she was. I didn’t have all that. [Blonde] is a shocking way of telling her side of the story. I thought it was really interesting and real. I have watched movies about Marilyn before, and they’ve always felt in the same tone — repetitive, following the things that we already know [about] her as a movie star. That intimacy, that private, deeper side of her in her psychology, or trauma, which is what Blonde is about, that was missing for me."Related | Courtney Stodden Calls For Boycott of Netflix's 'Blonde'Likewise, the celebrated actress noticed the difference in audience reception when she went overseas. "When we premiered the movie in Venice, or San Sebastián, [the reaction was much warmer than the reception was in the U.S.]," de Armas said. "Of course, the reaction that gets the most attention is the one in the U.S., but that wasn’t the whole experience."Blonde featured a number of things that made critics give it the side-eye. One of the strangest scenes was one in which a CGI fetus spoke to Monroe to shame her for having an abortion in the past. It's to be noted that it was never confirmed that Monroe had one. Reproductive rights activists criticized the film for being "anti-abortion propaganda" because the fetus was portrayed as a fully grown baby. Monroe historians have said that she did have several miscarriages, and the actress desperately wanted to have children.The film was also criticized for its graphic depictions of sexual abuse, notably a scene in which she is assaulted by a film producer believed to be based off of Darryl Zanuck. Monroe has previously written in her memoir about meeting predators in the industry. Blonde is based on Joyce Carol Oates' novel of the same name. Oates used publicly known and available information about Monroe and offered a more complex, speculative look at her tragic life. The book, which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, was intended to be taken entirely as fiction. Oates approved of the adaptation, calling it "feminist." Likewise, de Armas believed the film did not slander Monroe. "I don’t think the movie speaks badly about her a bit. I think it’s the opposite," she said. "I think it speaks badly about the environment and the industry, and that’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes for other people in the business."As for the most important takeaway of de Armas' enlightening interview, she hones in on the most important part of the film: "I feel like the movie also makes the audience feel like participants. We contributed at the time, and we still contribute, in the exploitation of actors, people in the public eye. We, the audience, do this. And I feel like it’s possible that some people have felt like [someone] pointed a finger at [them]."Photo courtesy of Kyle Goldberg/BFA https://www.papermag.com/ana-de-armas-blonde-2659491810.html

[thelambliesdown1974]

MINION DISSERTATION

This is true and I’m hearing you however as we know minions are immortal and therefore have no need to reproduce. Does this mean intraminion relationships are an anomaly? From a friendship point of view, no. Tons of animals have social connections outside of mating, with what we consider a human relationship structure pretty common in other mammals, maybe most notably chimpanzees. Like chimps and people, minions clearly have close friends within a tribe and distribute their time with others based on the level of intimacy — Kevin designates a lot more social time to Bob than to Mel for example, not only because Mel sucks and has a receding minion hairline (see the prison break in Despicable Me 3), but because Kevin views himself as a defacto parental figure.

Assuming minions are on par with if not exceeding humans evolutionarily (they survived the Jurassic era and Nixon’s presidency), friendship, both within and outside their own species, is beneficial to survival. Being aquatinted with the top of the food chain in any given era guarantees protection considering minions have basically no defense mechanisms other than the fact it’s impossible to hang them (see the torture chamber scene in Minions 2015). So forming connections outside of their tribe is biologically advantageous. However this still doesn’t explain why they think Lucy’s so hot in Despicable Me 2 or why Stuart has the minion equivalent of a threesome with two fire hydrants in the Minion Movie. From an evolutionary standpoint, why do romantic relationships exist in the minion-sphere if they have no way of mating?

Or do they — this is where things get mifficult (minion difficult). Until now it’s been assumed minions do not reproduce at all, even asexually, because the tribe population has been a steady 10,400 since at least 2013 (see the official Despicable Me 2 Facebook page). Romantic relationships can be interpreted as a higher form of social bonding. But at one point in their development minions must have had some sort mitosis-esque duplication while they were still ocean-dwelling unicellular organisms as shown in Minions 2015, which stopped sometime between 3.5 billion (when life emerged onto land) and 90 million (when the T-Rex first appeared) years ago. Like the gay penguins, relationships more intimate than typical social ones would’ve been beneficial for coparenting. However, their current form, there has only been one instance of minion reproduction — Stuarts chicken baby.

In Minions: Rise of Gru we see Stuart transformed into a chicken via body horror ray, which then lays an egg, hatching a half minion half chicken baby. This is where the original question comes back into play. If chicken Stewart was a hen, is original Stuart the minion equivalent of biologically female? My team theorizes that all minions are intersex in terms of secondary characteristics, a trait left over from their ability to asexually reproduce millions if not billions of years ago in a way similar to the recently discovered Komodo dragon parthenogenesis.

So minions have no primary sex characteristics, are hormonally intersex, but display physical features induced by testosterone like reducing hairlines and deeper voices (by minion standards). According to Pierre Coffin, they unanimously identify as male, though that could be only in relation to other gendered species around them. Okay so are the minions gay. While with interspecies relationships they tend to show more interest in adult women (i.e. Gru’s hot wife), in terms of intraspecies relationships this appears to be true. Romantic associations between members of the tribe seem to be left-over from the need to coparent an early form of minion offspring, now serving as a tool for social bonding.

CITATIONS

Despicable Me 2. Directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud , Universal Pictures, 3 July 2013.

Despicable Me 3. Directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, Universal Pictures, 30 June 2017.

Escribano, Diego, et al. “Chimpanzees Organize Their Social Relationships like Humans.” Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, 5 Oct. 2022, p. 16641, www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-20672-z, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-20672-z.

Lee, Benjamin. “Minions Creator: They’re All Male Because They’re “Dumb and Stupid” | Minions | the Guardian.” Amp.theguardian.com, 21 July 2015, amp.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/21/minions-creator-theyre-all-male-because-theyre-dumb-and-stupid. Accessed 23 July 2024.

Minions. Directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, Universal Pictures , 10 July 2015.

Minions: Rise of Gru. Directed by Kyle Balda, Universal Pictures, 1 July 2022.

Yam, Philip. “Strange but True: Komodo Dragons Show That “Virgin Births” Are Possible.” Scientific American, 28 Dec. 2006, www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-komodo-d/.

Where’s the gay minions

[freedomseeker91]

The Choices We Make....

Chapter: One-Shot Based In The More Than Good Enough Universe

Title: The Choices We Make

Summary: As the Supreme Court overturns Roe -v- Wade, Beca finds herself reliving a painful memory from her past

Rating: T for Angst.

Warning: This one-shot deals with the topic of abortion. Please proceed with care.

Author Note: I’ve tried to be as sensitive as possible with this topic and apologise in advance if anyone takes any kind of offence. It is not my intention.

Beca literally felt the ground beneath her feet move as the news filtered out from the tv screen. It felt like a scene from a horror movie. How could this possibly be 2022 when it felt like the world around her was moving backwards? The Supreme Court had overturned Roe -v- Wade and all Beca could think about was the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. The gnawing in the back of her mind as she felt ghosts from the past begin to creep to the forefront.

Her emotions were all over the place, understandably considering she had just given birth a week and a half ago and was currently recovering from an emergency c-section, but this, this was a different type of tidal wave. It was a tsunami of emotions Beca had somehow managed to repress for most of her adult life.

She stood there stoically facing the tv, watching as camera links projected images of gatherings of men and women across the US. Some ecstatic at the decision, their American flags waving proudly, but others were outraged. How could a seemingly modern society take such a monumental step backwards?

The right to choose had always been a contentious topic, it was to be expected in a country that consisted of so many staunchly conservative Christians on one side and liberal progressives on the other. It was a constant push and pull, back and forth, one upmanship. Basic human rights were tossed about as political currency and subjected to scrutiny based on religious or social beliefs.

Too often the actual core point of it all was lost in debates designed to skew narratives. But the reality of Roe -v- Wade was that there were no winners or losers irrespective of its place in society. Abortion was not something to be politicised nor should it ever be used to emotionally manipulate. The humanity of the process was often lost in a game of whose rights are more important.

The right of the father, who shared 50% of his DNA? The right of the unborn? Was it something that should be legally considered based on religious beliefs?

It seemed everyone else’s rights and opinions mattered, except for those of the woman. The person who was mentally, emotionally and physically responsible for carrying the child? The one whose reproductive health was dependent on standards that didn’t seem to take female reproduction all that seriously.

What, you’re expected to bleed throughout most of your life and be taxed for products designed to help? Expected to be the most responsible with regards to contraception and the expense attached. The pill, the coil, the bar, the morning after pill. On and on and on. Expected to reproduce and raise children in a society that wasn’t cost effective for people who lived below a certain wage line. That provided little help in the way of relief with regards to food, rent, formula, clothing, medical care.

People often talked about Pro-Life but Beca couldn’t exactly see how that was possible when there was seemingly no interest in helping to protect that life post birth.

Beca was so caught up in her internal musings, she failed to hear the sound of the front door opening, nor the sound of Chloe, her parents and Aubrey entering into the living room, Chloe pushing a stroller ahead of her.

“Hey babe, did you have a good nap?” Chloe asked as she removed her handbag and placed it on the couch.

Gazing at her wife, Chloe noticed that she seemed to be locked on whatever was on the screen. Suddenly everyone was watching, exasperated expressions on their faces. Chloe glanced towards her wife and could see the anguish hidden behind her eyes.

“Bec,” she whispered, not wanting to draw attention to her.

Just then, AJ began to stir and Chloe had never been more grateful for her daughters timing.

“Hey Mom, could you give AJ a bottle. There’s plenty of expressed milk. I just need to help Beca clean her incision before we grab lunch,’ Chloe said, her mother more than happy to get to spend time with her granddaughter.

Lacing her hand with her wife’s, Chloe guided her out of the living room and down the hall towards their master bedroom, Aubrey watching them out of curiosity sensing something was up. Stepping inside, Chloe closed the bedroom door shut behind her and when she turned around Beca was sitting on the edge of their bed, head in her hand the faint sound of a sob wrenching free from her chest.

Chloe instantly eliminated the distance between them and sat down next to her, her arm wrapping around her wife’s shoulders as she pressed her lips to the side of Beca’s head.

“Oh Bec’s” Chloe cooed as Beca wiped at her tears.

“I’m so- I’m sorry,” Beca wept as she inhaled a couple of deep breaths to try and regulate herself.

Chloe just shook her head peppering kisses against her wife’s head.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Chloe said, squeezing and rubbing her wife’s shoulder for good measure.

The topic of abortion had always been a sensitive one to Beca, because to her, the subject wasn’t something trivial, it had been her reality.

Even now she could still remember being that same scared, barely 17 year old girl crippled with shame. Having struggled with the passing of her mother, and dealing with a fractured relationship with her father, she had found herself desperately lost. And within that darkness she had found herself making reckless decisions. The kind that you only understood the consequences of with the benefit of hindsight.

Beca hadn’t expected a drunken night out at a high school party to turn into a one-night stand that, looking back on it Beca wasn’t even fully sure she was comfortable with even then. But this was back in a time when the lines of consent were still often blurred, misconceived and even violated with the excuse being ‘you were totally into it.’

Back in a time when Beca didn’t realise that no could mean no and not just be considered a negotiation tactic for guys to navigate around. That wasn’t to say the guy she had been with had completely taken advantage of her, but had she been in possession of her full senses, she probably wouldn’t have gone through with it.

But years of internalised pain had built up within her and messed with her head. She had made a mistake, a big one with massive consequences that she was ill prepared to deal with. Beca was in no way ready for a baby, she couldn’t even take care of herself.

Eventually, she had gone to her dad and stepmother and revealed all. Her father had been understandably upset, but it was Beca’s stepmother who had actually been the one to defuse the situation. She had seen how much the young woman had been hurting and that her actions weren’t some frivolous mistake for a bit of fun.

When Beca ultimately decided that she didn’t want to continue the pregnancy, they supported her, but they had also been adamant that she went to counselling to deal with her problems.

Having an abortion was not an experience Beca would ever wish on anyone. Contrary to ignorant belief, it wasn’t just a quickie procedure to fix a mistake that people bounced back from. It had been painful and emotionally draining and even with counselling, Beca always lived with the shame it instilled within her and often times found herself wondering, what if?

Ultimately Beca knew she wasn’t ready to be a parent at 17, she had to do what was right for her and she still had so much she wanted to accomplish at that time. Things she felt she would end up missing out on. She also knew that mentally she wasn’t fit to be a parent. How could she possibly raise a child when she could barely find it within herself to get out of bed in the morning and keep living.

But even though she didn’t regret choosing to have an abortion she would be lying if she said the stigma didn’t still sting.

When Beca had eventually opened up Chloe about it a couple of years later when they were getting serious, the redhead couldn’t have been more supportive or caring. She never judged Beca, never considered her selfish. She understood that everyone’s decisions, needs and circumstance were individual to them and that they couldn’t be boxed into a one size fits all mentality.

It was a deeply complex and personal decision, one that woman should feel they have the right to navigate themselves however they so choose. If anything, Chloe had been grateful for the fact that Beca had been in a position to be able to make that choice.

Chloe knew Beca still lived with the impact of her decision, and that while she was ultimately happy with how her life turned out, that one moment in time would be something that would always stick with her.

And as she sat there allowing Beca to work through her grief for the countless women who would be affected by this ruling, she couldn’t help but lay her own thoughts bare.

“You know the one thing I regret in life, is that I didn’t know you then,” Chloe said as she stroked Beca’s hair, the brunette turning her head to face her, a questioning look in her eye as Chloe gently stroked her cheek, softly wiping away her tears.

“I wish I could’ve been there to hold your hand, to comfort you, to tell you that everything would be okay,” Chloe sighed, before gently smiling.

“But we have an incredible life now Bec’s. You made one of the hardest and bravest decisions anyone should ever have to make and because of it we’re here now, together, living our dreams and raising our beautiful daughter. You did what you had to do to get here now and be the amazing mom that you are. And I know that no matter what, we’ll both make sure that AJ grows up with all the love and support she could ever need.”

Beca reached up her hand and cupped it around Chloe’s neck, pulling her in as close as she could for a hug whilst being conscious of her own still healing belly and buried her face in the crook of her wife’s neck.

“I love you so much,” Beca mumbled against Chloe’s neck. And the redhead beamed as she stroked her hand up and down her wife’s back.

“Unconditionally,” Chloe replied, echoing back to Beca the words from the brunettes’ own vows. A promise to love and care deeply, no matter what, without restrictions or limits.

Pulling back, Chloe tucked a strand of hair behind Beca’s ear and noticed how emotionally drained she looked and took the initiative in that moment to put her own family first.

“Why don’t I send everyone home and we just veg out on the couch today. You, me and AJ. We can do lunch another day,” Chloe said.

Beca nodded her agreement, more than grateful that Chloe was so attuned to her emotions. With everything else going on Beca didn’t feel much like socialising, not when her mind was drifting in and out between a peaceful and mentally blurred state of being.

Chloe pressed a kiss to her forehead and disappeared out of the room and down the hall, as Beca decided to take a quick shower and change into some more comfortable maternity sweats and a flannel shirt. She needed to wash off the lingering feeling of shame that had embedded itself in her skin.

By the time she arrived out of the ensuite, Chloe was already laying on their bed propped up by some pillows, a mountain of snacks and, drinks and sandwiches on a tray at the foot of the bed and AJ laying against her bent knees. Beca beamed at the sight as Chloe cradled her daughters tiny hands in her own and chatted away with her baby daughter as if AJ was verbally responding to her. In that moment, Beca suddenly felt the weight in her chest lift as she realised that sometimes difficult decisions did in fact pave the way for brighter days.

She would never know what could’ve been had she made a different decision all those years ago, but what she did know, was that the choice she made led her to this, and gazing at her wife and daughter she realised, there was no where else she would rather be.

[gallpall]

canaan bubble redux as a womb for story/character arcs

I’m sure most of this has been posted about before but: ever since my initial read I’ve been obsessed with the gross bodily/gorey stuff in the Canaan redux and I wanted to organize some of my constant+chaotic thoughts!!

TM has said that a lot of the motifs/events in the bubbles are actually “Silent Hill stand-ins” for story elements and she hopes we pick up on stuff, so here’s my Attempt!

At the same time that Harrow’s mind is being made a tomb for Gideon Nav Wake’s subconscious is pulled in to act as a womb for certain plot elements right alongside it. The chronology/time period of HtN mimics a full nine-month gestation. There’s a lot of very literal imagery here (which is below the cut), but I also think we’re meant to see it as metaphorical: we’re able to glean some things about character arcs based on how everything in the bubble goes down.

I’m particularly interested right now in those ‘side’ characters in the bubble who aren’t actually dead, who barely appear in the bubble at all except to get summarily offed, all in very distinctive ways. Judith, Camilla, Palamedes, and Coronabeth.

(cw below cut for some pregnancy/insemination imagery, canonical body horror and gruesome bubble deaths rehashed)

First of all just some quotes showing some of the imagery that I’ve attributed to being Wake manifesting pregnancy trauma stuff (there’s possibly some of Harrow’s conception trauma here, too) seeping through, for the purposes of this line of speculation. 

This isn’t nearly all of it, but some things that stood out to me as possibly comparing Canaan House 2.0 to a functioning reproductive system:

(ch. 21) a “collection of large, rusted pipette needles” -- turkey basters?

(ch. 35) “great, slithering, pulsing tubes” which contain “whitish-pearl bubbled globules”-- this perhaps recalls ovaries/fallopian tubes, with the ‘globules’ being follicles produced by superovulation for insemination, or corpus luteum that supply progesterone to maintain a pregnancy.

(ch. 45) “stretched webs of organ [...] like nets of sticky venous spiderweb” --uterine walls, maybe; it’s all over the windows, totally encasing them in Canaan’s rooms, and arguably even contracting like a uterus would: “every so often they would tremble uncertainly and erupt in floods of bloody, foamy water.”

in the next pgh we get some more of the tools Wake would have used to conceive/upkeep the pregnancy: “pipettes, broken glass-fronted containers filled with dark fluid,” skeletons sitting atop piles of “capsules or pills” perhaps hormones/supplements. (also holding Drearburh tools, the way Wake’s skelly would have been doomed to do)

(ch. 43) “from that hole emerged a clattering pile of plex scope slides, the type you would preserve a cell sample between“ -- Wake would’ve had to carry out the IVF process for implantation, this also seems like apparatus for that

(ch. 47) there’s the “libation” Abigail uses to summon Wake which is... well. It’s a “thin, milky, whitish liquid pooled at the base, sluggish in the cold,” and the summoning involves a bunch of ‘come’ commands, which I think might be Muir making a very elaborate jizz-adjacent “silly buggers with the emissions” joke. 

Just a note, cause I’m hopeless about Pyrrwake: the Seconds’ quarters are almost completely preserved from the leaky body horror (though it’s still cold in there)--as if they represented a sanctuary in Wake’s subconscious. There are also letters in the nonagonal coffin room which spell out an anagram of “PYRRHA” (ch. 47).

So with all that in mind, I’d posit that the fake-ghost deaths are all metaphorical “rebirths” of various characters arcs for ATN. I haven’t delved into what this imagery might mean for Harrow or Gideon specifically because I know there’s a LOT and it’s probably above my theoretical paygrade (I would love for someone to tack on with that though!!) but I can talk about ‘side’ chars on a very big-picture level.

Judith’s simulacrum gets knocked off first (ch. 18); shot through the heart (both atria) while she and Marta’s ghost are trying to complete the winnowing trial. The Sleeper shoots her 7 more times after that, I guess partly just ‘cause she can, but Ortus notes that it seems like there was an element of "Anger” to it. It’s possible Wake wasn’t pleased to have someone messing around with Pyrrha’s lyctoral trial, infuriated that anyone would be attempting to replicate G1d/Pyr’s original downfall. She then ignores Marta entirely and climbs back in the coffin (now with the sword) once Judith’s out of the way.

[Marta’s] scarlet necktie looked redder too—by the time they’d gotten hold of Judith Deuteros the blood had dried hers nearly black.

Cohort red-and-whites being stained black with blood, like a certain high-collared BOE uniform... could be another little clue to Judith’s "heart” for the Emperor (and for Marta, and pretty much everything else she knew) being lost and her realigning--though not willingly, at least at first--with the other side.

Cam and Pal’s simulacrums are plainly executed (ch. 21), they have their “faces obliterated” each by a single gunshot, and it’s as if they just stood there and let it happen. In the bubble, “Harrow had never seen Sextus or Hect except from afar.” These simulacrums totally avoid having their features revealed to Harrow. I’m willing to bet their faces being obscured and then exploded is one of the clues we get to their eyes being swapped around the next time we see them in the epilogue and in ATN.

Regarding the twins: They are essentially non-extant in the bubble. Ianthe never appears because she’s still kicking and, in her own words, “doesn’t live alternate histories” (GtN ch. 15).

Coronabeth’s simulacrum scene (ch. 37) is SO vivid and cryptic. It fascinates me because it definitely is, in part, trying to tell us something poignant about the initiation of Corona’s “worse twin” arc in ATN.

[Corona] was turned away from Harrow, and her riot of hair—half-caught in a fillet, half-escaping—was soaking wet, a dark and crinkling amber in the rain. She was not fighting or arguing. She was still as a statue, and ready and waiting as a dog.

Sounds like the fake ghost preparing for that major shift in allegiance. Silas is the one to ‘dismiss’ her, with his “may the blood of your blood suffer,” which perhaps is a really Templar-y way of saying ‘now go wreck ianthe’s SHIT.’ When Harrow accuses him of sending Corona to her death, Silas asks “Death?”--as if he sees that what’s really just happened, at least metaphorically, is (re)Birth.

[Harrow] thought she saw, absurdly, a sudden gush of watery blood, as though the fog itself had been knifed; but it was gone almost as soon as she had seen it.

Sounds a bit like amniotic fluid/water breaking? Coronabeth doesn’t ever seem to hit the ocean (bodies of water=necromancy and that’s not her deal), she instead just kinda poofs, and Silas says she would have ended up “on her feet.” Coronabeth is ditching her family ties and is out for blood, and I think her charisma, willpower, and sheer desire for revenge will move her a long way in the ranks of Eden--probably even to the point of echoing Commander Wake’s ambitions and actions. I could delve into that damn portrait mirroring Ianthe’s obsession w/ Cyrus’ paintings on the Mithraeum... but that is a whole other post!

So all of these are fairly baseline observations and I think there’s a LOT more to be expounded on, if y’all wanna reply/reblog/DM with additions I would freaking love that, every time I open a page of this book I find something I missed before and it’s such a delight. Thanks for reading if you got this far!!

[themadamespod]

The Great White Gripe

A lot has been said about the “social commentary” within The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. 

“Since when is Marvel a bunch of SJWs? I don’t need this shit.”

“All this race stuff feels SUPER forced.”

“Oh here we go Marvel tryin to be all woke to get the libs on board.”

If you personally know anyone who spews this brand of ignorance, we’re sorry. 

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: there is no social commentary on TFATWS. Showrunner Malcolm Spellman and director Kari Skogland simply show the reality of life in America. It’s not their fault that so many (white) people (men) don’t like looking in the mirror.

And some people claim they have no problem with film and television addressing politics and social change.

“Just keep it out of my comic book movies. It doesn’t belong there.”

They could not be anymore wrong, even if Chandler Bing himself was lecturing them. 

If you asked 100 people to name the top ten movies of all time, you’d get 100 different lists. But one thing we can all agree on is that film has power. It has the power to move us, to divide us, to unite us. Entertainment can lead to the kind of discourse that prompts action and positive change.

And that’s why The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the conversations it’s sparking are so important.

One World, One Reality

“Marvel has always been and always will be a reflection of the world right outside our window.” - Stan Lee

There are two takeaways from that statement:

One: Stan Lee didn’t say that in the 1960s, 1970s, or even the 1980s. He said it in 2017.

Two: Our window, not your window, is a subtle but important distinction, particularly as it relates to TFATWS. The Flag Smashers, led by Karli Morgenthau, live by a simple creed: “One world, One people.” The core message of the show is that white Americans and Black Americans experience the world very differently, but there’s still only one world, one reality. 

It’s just a matter of people opening their eyes and seeing it.

TFATWS is an extension of Marvel’s early support of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, Stan Lee created the X-Men as an allegory for the ongoing struggles of the African-American community. Though he didn’t explicitly base Professor X and Magneto on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, there are ideological similarities.

Five years later, following the assassinations of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy, Stan wrote the following:

“Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today. It’s totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race—to despise an entire nation—to vilify an entire religion. Sooner or later, we must learn to judge each other on our own merits. Sooner or later, if a man is ever to be worthy of his destiny, we must fill our hearts with tolerance.”

In 2021, Stan’s words still resonate. Racism in the United States is as virulent and damaging as it’s ever been. Black Americans are facing deadly policing, Jim Crow 2.0 voting laws, mass incarceration, and countless other roadblocks to mobility that most white people have never encountered.

Through the journeys of Sam and Sarah Wilson, Lemar Hoskins, and the heartbreaking Isaiah Bradley, TFATWS shows the unvarnished truth of what Ira Glass might call Black American Life. And through John Walker, the writers nail home the message that’s really making certain people squirm:

White men are the greatest threat not just to Black Americans, but all Americans, because TFATWS is as much an indictment of toxic masculinity as it is of bigotry. 

As aggressive racism has spread like wildfire since 2016, so has hostile sexism towards women of all colors. John Walker is the embodiment of the hyper aggression that the Proud Boys applaud. The clearest example of this comes when Walker dares to clap the shoulder of Ayo, one of Wakanda’s Dora Milaje.

Her swift and, ahem, pointed response had women the world over screaming like they’d just won the lottery. 

One could also argue that Walker’s dogged pursuit of Karli and displaced peoples supporting the Flag Smasher cause mirrors the Trump administration’s war on immigrants. 

There are plenty of parallels to draw. The point is, none of them are forced or manufactured or exaggerated. And whether we’re talking about a fictional road in Latvia or a real street in Minnesota, white Americans need to stop avoiding conversations that make them uncomfortable.

The Politics of Comics 

In 1938, Americans were still reeling from the Great Depression. Enter Superman, the everyman hero, who made his comic debut while the nation was facing widespread unemployment, rampant poverty, and blatant corruption at every level of government.

Superman could have faced off against any number of supernatural villains. But Siegel and Shuster went a different route, setting a precedent for comic books that has prevailed to this day:

They got political. 

Throughout Superman’s earliest adventures, he fought against evil politicians, apathetic bureaucrats, aggressive police officers, greedy businessmen, and even a Washington lobbyist. 

Then in 1941, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby introduced Captain America just in time to fight the nazis and free the world from fascism. A couple decades later, Kirby and Stan Lee would tell the tale of the aforementioned Erik Lehnsherr, who survived the horrors of Auschwitz. These comics endured because their passion and nuance transcended entertainment. So what was the secret sauce?

Like Siegel and Shuster, Simon, Kirby, and Stan Lee were Jewish. Representation matters, folks. 

Later on, the X-Men weren’t the only conduit through which Marvel supported Civil Rights. In 1966, on the heels of the “March Against Fear” from Memphis, TN to Jackson, MS, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby unveiled Black Panther. When African-Americans were fighting harder than ever, Black children could suddenly read a comic book about T’Challa, the noble warrior king of a highly advanced African nation. 

Marvel has never been shy about critiquing foreign policy either. Tony Stark and Iron Man debuted in 1968 as the conflict in Vietnam was escalating. And let’s not forget, Tony made his MCU debut in a film that is a clear indictment of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We could do this all day, but you get the idea. 

Comic books have always reflected the politics of our times, and so has the MCU. Fanboys can’t start crying now just because they’re on the wrong side of history. And when they do, we defer to the great Jon Bernthal when asked about alt-righters appropriating the Punisher symbol:

“Fuck them.”

Life Imitates Art

In 1986, American men felt the need for speed. After Top Gun was released, applications to U.S. aviation forces increased by a staggering 500%. 

Two years later, Errol Morris exposed police corruption in his film The Thin Blue Line. The documentary prompted a new investigation that eventually exonerated death row inmate Randall Adams for the murder of a police officer.

That same year, the Polish government ceased all executions after leaders were swayed to do so by A Short Film about Killing.

Following the release of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine in 1999, Kmart bowed to public pressure and stopped selling handgun ammunition. 

And 5 years ago, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif changed the law on honor killings in response to the critically-acclaimed film A Girl in the River. 

Like we said earlier, film has the power to spur social change. Even if the effects aren’t always so direct and immediate, television and movies have always contributed to the process in America. 

Seeing the Ricardos sharing a bed allowed some Americans to start relaxing their prudish ways. 

The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Maude empowered women as they fought for reproductive rights.

The Jeffersons and Good Times facilitated calmer discussions about race relations.

And The Ellen Show led to greater representation of queer people on screen and greater acceptance of queer people in society. Though Ellen herself has become a problematic figure in the last year, that legacy still remains.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is hardly the first show of its kind. And given the impact film has on society, we believe Hollywood has a moral obligation to produce content that exposes society’s ills and fosters productive debate. 

Stan Lee would be very proud of the team behind TFATWS for bringing the stark reality of American life into people’s living rooms. The next time you see someone bitching about it, remind them what Stan himself said just a few years ago: 

“Those stories have room for everyone, regardless of their race, gender, religion, or color of their skin. The only things we don't have room for are hatred, intolerance, and bigotry.”

[lime-bloods]

Actually, I’ve been thinking about something a lot in the past few weeks that comes dangerously close to straying outside the focus of this blog, but it’s so pertinent to this epiphany I’ve just had that I absolutely need to write it down. It’s about my experience making and playing with fantrolls, but it easily applies to working within the pre-established world of any work of fiction.

There are essentially two extremes I’ve come across when it comes to the development of fantrolls (and it’s worth stating before anything else that, because this is the world of original characters, where any kind of originality should be held above all else; there’s nothing wrong with living in extremes if you prefer it that way, but the existence of extremes will always indicate the existence of a middle ground, which is where I prefer to stay).

The first extreme is the “canon-defiant”; the fantroll who has no intention of ever living in the real, “canon” Alternia. The highblood who works a job at Wal-Mart to pay for food for his two pet dogs. What’s been built here is all windows and no bricks; a glasshouse is perfect for keeping various kinds of plants alive, but no human would ever want to live in one.

The second extreme is the clone of a canon character. The author has observed the canon Alternia, noted its character archetypes - strong, cultured bluebloods, messy, jovially bellicose clowns, and nervous workmanly lowbloods - and attempted to build characters out of these existing pieces. This is a house made totally out of bricks, with no windows; it’s a woodshed, great for keeping inert stacks of firewood out of the elements, but totally inhospitable to living things. Many criticise Hiveswap’s underwhelming cast as being made up totally of this kind of character.

A great case study in avoiding these extremes can be found in the practice of making “sessions” of fantrolls that was once popular in the scene. I think a great example for proving this point would be a session based on horror movies. We’re making six fantrolls, just to keep things simple - rust, gold, jade, cobalt, purple, fuchsia - so we choose six horror movies; Hellraiser, Alien, The Conjuring, Stephen King’s It (the original miniseries, counting it as a movie for the sake of this exercise), Friday the 13th and A Quiet Place. So which movies go to which castes?

No doubt your immediate thought is to make a purpleblood based on Stephen King’s It; but in doing that, we’ve created a woodshed character. We already know purplebloods are clowns, and we’re creating a character based on that established fact. So we need a way to assign these movies to castes of the hemospectrum without our existing knowledge of the canon biasing our decisions. What do we do?

We do exactly what Andrew Hussie did with his trolls; we put them in order. So for the sake of the this exercise, let’s use their release dates.

Alien came out in 1979, so it’s rust

Friday the 13th came out in 1980, so it’s gold

Predator came out in 1987, so it’s jade

Stephen King’s It came out in 1990, so it’s cobalt

The Conjuring came out in 2013, so it’s purple

A Quiet Place came out in 2018, so it’s fuchsia

By creating these “random“ but natural associations between our sample group and the castes of the hemospectrum, we’ve instantly opened up a million new creative pathways to ourselves, simply by working from our own ideas into the existing canon, rather than trying to build straight up with the canon as a foundation. Knowing what we know about the purple caste, what would a troll inspired by The Conjuring be like in that role? How could aspects of the film A Quiet Place be applied to the ruling class of the Alternian empire? We’ve reached a middle ground where the idea isn’t already written for us, but there’s plenty of room for us to use what has already been written for us as pieces to build something unique.

In this sense, the canon trolls of Homestuck are a perfect set of fantrolls; an absurd assertion on its own, but Andrew’s use of the zodiac as a springboard to create a new world is genius on the same level found in Mindfang’s journals. Picture how the trolls would be if, instead of laying them out in order, Andrew had created Alternia’s class hierarchy by putting the signs in the order they “seem” like they should go; for example, since Aquarius is depicted as a manual labourer, it might go at the bottom, while Gemini represents Castor and Pollux, heirs to Spartan royalty, so it goes at the top. For starters, the sea dweller/land dweller divide we know would not exist. There would be no neutral caste in the middle of the spectrum responsible for the species’ reproduction. Archery and nude art of anthropomorphic animals would not be the staples of upper class artistry. Alternia would be a boring world where everyone does exactly what we expect them to do, because it would be built purely on preconceptions. Just like the world built in Mindfang’s journals, the strength in the whole concept of Alternia comes from the fact that it was “shaped and confined by the ideas already spread out on the table.“

[x0401x]

Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun: Ghost Hotel’s Café (Part 2)

Revealing the secrets of the menu, such as “crushing muffins so they will look like earth”! Interview with the staff of Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun GHOST HOTEL’S CAFÉ.

GHOST HOTEL’S CAFÉ, the collaboration café of “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” – an on-going manga from Monthly G Fantasy (Square-Enix) by Aida Iro-sensei –, was held in Ikebukuro, Tokyo at AniPara CAFÉ for a limited period from December 5 to February 11. Here, we have carried out an interview with the staff behind the planning and production of “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun”. We have discussed things in detail, from the background of the collaboration café’s presentation to the public to the secret stories behind the development of the food and drinks that reflect ideas from the author, Aida Iro-sensei!

Interviewees

Square-Enix café organizer: Ookubo Kana-san

Square-Enix editor in charge of “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun”: Imanishi Chiharu-san

Grounding Lab café planner: Andou Minako-san

Grounding Lab café planner: Nakayama Natsuko-san

Andmowa café menu creator: Aizawa Kanto-san

AniPara CAFÉ manager and menu creator: Shirato Kouhei-san

The collaboration café of “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” is entirely supervised by AidaIro-sensei!

——How was it decided that “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” would have a collaboration café?

Ookubo: The cue was that, while the café planning members were talking about what café to hold next, we were introduced to “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” as the most highly recommended title of our company.

Andou: There are a lot of young people in the staff of AniPara CAFÉ and most of them knew “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun”, so by the time SquaEni-san talked to us about it, we gave them the one-sentence reply of, “By all means!” and asked them to let us do it. *laughs*

——This is the third time that “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” earns a collaboration café, so how were the fans’ reactions?

Imanishi: Since this is the third time, there were many reactions of concern about the very concept of “how will it turn out next?”. Thankfully, the responses were good and we received many warm messages such as “it was fun”!

——How was AidaIro-sensei’s reaction when it was decided that yet another collaboration café would be held?

Imanishi: They were very pleased. An event that the readers can enjoy is a rare opportunity, so they were hyped about many things, such as, “I wonder what we will do~!” and, “How about this?” (laughs).

——The theme of the collaboration café is a “ghost hotel” this time. How was it conceived?

Ookubo: This time’s theme was proposed by AidaIro-sensei.

Imanishi: In the first time, I think it is orthodox that the characters are made into café waiters, but since this is the third one, Sensei suggested that they felt like displaying them in yet another a different light, and that they wanted to make it so that both the people who would be attending for the first time and the people who had already attended before would be able to enjoy it in a brand-new way.

G Fantasy carries out a project of giving away color spreads as presents every year along with the commemorative issue of its launching, and the theme for the color spread of “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” on the 25th anniversary was “ghost hotel”. There was also the fact that the readers’ response to it was very positive, so Aida Iro-sensei decided, “Let’s go with a ghost hotel this time!”.

When it comes to “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun”, you cannot miss out on ●●●!

——Did you get any menu or decoration suggestions from Sensei?

Ookubo: They granted us the base ideas of the menu and supervised the whole thing. They also chose the names of all the menu items. Writing “holy” in English was one of Sensei’s ideas. *laughs*

——The shop’s interior has a wonderful decoration perfectly fitting of a “ghost hotel”, with spider webs and mini characters hiding everywhere.

Andou: When we were thinking about how to reproduce the worldview depicted by AidaIro-sensei, we thought it was perfect... so we left it there (laughs)!

Ookubo: That spider web is amazing, isn’t it? The first time I looked at it, I thought it was a perfect fit for the café’s mood!

——The BGM that plays inside the shop is also a perfect fit for a “ghost hotel”.

Ookubo: We choose after listening to lots of tracks, so hearing that makes me happy! This time, Sensei gave us proper suggestions regarding the worldview, so the interior design parts were easy to picture.

Imanishi: There is a fun to it that is similar to riding on a horror attraction, even if you are inside a café. I think we were able to create this atmosphere exactly because its worldview is solid.

Ookubo: Also, since this is “Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun”, we would like everyone to check the toilets, by all means! I want people to see at least this with their own eyes.

——The toilet is a checkpoint that people cannot skip. The illustrations for the café were made by AidaIro-sensei this time too, but do the numbers written on the keys of each character have a meaning?

Imanishi: In this thematic setting, the employees (the characters) live and work in the ghost hotel. The numbers on the keys are the numbers of the rooms where the employees live, and they increase like 1, 2, 3... when you see them lined up in order, you will know who is whose neighbor and which of them are in the floors below or above. This is linked to the nature of the characters’ relationships, so please give it a check.

——Sensei did not just write the story but also story cards.

Imanishi: There might be people amongst the readers of G Fantasy who know about the 25th anniversary illustration, but I believe most of them will be seeing it for the first time. Since it could be difficult to understand what the story of this ghost hotel is and what the characters are doing, so we introduce them in the story cards and in-store PV. This method is easy even on people visiting for the first time, so we would like them to come hang out with friends here (laughs).

Aizawa: Quite a lot of the people who come to the shop are young, and on Sundays, it is not rare for families to fill up the seats. Amongst them, we have received a call from a father who had never been to a collaboration café before, telling us, “I want to make a reservation for my daughter; how do I do it?” and we have also been asked, “My daughter wants your goods; are they still not sold-out?”.

Andou: We have also been told, “I’ll save up my allowance to go there!”. Hearing things like these makes me think that it is great that we managed to implement a wonderful café, and I want people to enjoy it by any means.

“We crush the muffins to make them look like earth.” “The pot-au-feu is always chamfered.” – The secret stories behind the cooking of the collaboration menu are revealed!

——You have quite a quirky menu, with things such as the “GHOST HOTEL’S CAFÉ Afternoon Tea”, which comes with a written invitation to the Ghost Hotel; Hanako-kun’s favorite food, the “Hanako-kun Floaty Doughnuts”; the shinny “Mokke’s Delightful Candy Cake”, which is modeled after candies, Mokke’s stable food.

Andou: “Mokke’s Delightful Candy Cake” is quite a painstaking piece of work...! Of course, it is delicious, but I think being able to have fun taking pictures of cute food is a point that everyone looks forward to in a collaboration café, so we prepared a menu that everybody would be able to enjoy from their eyes too. When we were planning it out, we had about thirty suggestions for the menu in total, and from there, the team narrowed them down through discussions until the menu took the form it has now.

Nakayama: When it comes to Mokke, I think the image that comes to mind is of candies, do after a bit of devising, I came up with a cake that looks like candy. I am happy that, thankfully, the fans also had positive reactions to it!

——The “Edible Plots of Nene from the Gardening Club” shows quite a bit of uniqueness. Having a dessert inside a vase had a lot of impact.

Ookubo: The “Edible Plots of Nene from the Gardening Club” consists of muffins in flower vases, and the sight of the vases lined up in rows in the kitchen is quite surreal (laughs).

Shiratsuchi: We crushed chocolate muffins for them to look like earth and made them dirt-like. As a cook, I am also conflicted as to whether it tastes good to eat it like that, so while obsessing over the reproduction of its appearance, I break muffins into pieces every day, in order to combine them with a definite deliciousness.

——(Laughs) “Nene’s R•A•D•I•S•H Pot-au-Feu” is a warm and comforting dish, perfectly fitting for this time of the year.

Imanishi: This is actually the menu item that requires the most work out of the other collaboration foods.

Ookubo: The radish used in “Nene’s R•A•D•I•S•H Pot-au-Feu” is not a ready-made one that we warm up, and instead we cook the radish in the shop every day. On top of that, since the ingredients do not absorb the taste when cooked in the normal way, we chamfer (thinly scraping a vegetable so that it will take a round shape) the radishes one by one, so this is a menu item that takes up a lot of time. It costs 880¥, so when people ask, “Is this the quality of a collaboration café?”, I think it is in the good sense (laughs).

——My! The people who visit the shop should totally try this out, then.

Aizawa: We want them to! This desire is quite strong in us, but since it is a hassle to prepare that menu item, it would be a problem if too many people ordered it (laughs).

Shiratsuchi: While I was happy that everyone said, “It’s delicious~” during the sample food meeting, this item made me think, “I might’ve created something terrible (in a laborious sense)” (laughs).

All: (Laugh).

Ookubo: The cooking team really created the collaboration menu with a lot of passion. We make the crust for the “Clock-Keeper’s Tart ~with fruits~”, which is from the latter half of the menu, by hand every day in the shop. We fill it up with layers of berries, chocolate cream and wiped cream one after another... It gives us so much work that it could make people think, “Are you really serving this at a collaboration café?!”. I believe that even people who have only ever been to regular cafés and never to a collaboration one can also enjoy it.

Imanishi: The menu for the latter half of the collaboration has quirky and cute items, such as the “Mad-Risky Soup”, as in a “pretty dangerous” soup, and a limited number of the “Pipe Dream Cake”, so I think anyone can enjoy it, be it the people who visited during the first half or the people who are visiting for the first time during the latter half.

By the way, AidaIro-sensei’s top recommendation was “Kou’s Specialty Omelet Rice”! This rice omelet has caponata (boiling of fried eggplant) inside, so the flavor is unlike that of any other collaboration café. The fact that these secret gems exist is part of the wonderful levels of consideration from the cooks’ side.

——All the foods looked delicious, and every drink was wonderful too, so I was indecisive about which ones to order.

Ookubo: “Nene’s Welcome Cocktail” is also in the story that AidaIro-sensei posted on Twitter before the café’s opening. I recommend it as the first drink to the people who are visiting the collaboration café for the first time.

——By the way, are there any menu items that were rejected?

Nakayama: There was a legendary menu item named “Hanitarou Sandwich”, right?

Imanishi: There was! There is a character named Akane-kun who uses a haniwa as a protection charm, and I suggested a meal based on him – a “haniwa” coppe bread.

During the planning stages, I thought it was possible and tried reproducing it, but the cost turned out pretty high and its appearance was a haniwa through and through (laughs), so I wondered if anyone would order that... There was also the fact that Akane-kun is not much of a “haniwa stan”, so it became a legendary menu item (laughs).

Andou: I had suggested “Hanako-kun’s Doughnut” with the image of a school cap at first, but then the talk turned into, “Rather than a hat, I want it to have the appearance of a cute and tasty-looking doughnut”, so the cap version was rejected.

Ookubo: I also tried to produce a book-shaped cake, with the image of Tsuchigomori-sensei’s Four O’clock Library, but it seemed the price value would be too expensive, so it was unfortunately rejected.

——So there were menu items that were cast aside as “legendary” ones! This means you have created quite a number of items, but how do you come up with those ideas?

Nakayama: We were already collecting information from Instagram and Twitter and analyzing what the costumers were after. We deepened the conceptions from there to plan out the menu a lot.

Andou: Also, we think first-thing about what will be suitable for the costumers’ age range. In these occasions, rather than thinking about it as the menu of a collaboration café, we tried coming up with tasty-looking stuff as a regular food and drinks menu, and from that point, we created many things that drew close to the characters.

——It seems you were very conscious of the “showiness” of several menu items this time, so is “showiness” an indispensable element for your needs?

Andou: That’s right. Of course, the menu has to be delicious, but I think that, if it also turns out good for taking pictures, it will be posted on Instagram and Twitter, and become a cue for the fans to interact. The people who know the series will obviously do that, but I would be happy if this menu could become a trigger for even the people who don’t know it to talk about it, like, “That’s wonderful”, “What series is this?”.

Ookubo: We believe that the collaboration café’s menu is important for the original work’s side as well, so we take many requests, such as, “I want you to make this kind of dish” and, “I want to put this illustration card on it”, and the side that plans out the cooking does their best to give them form, so a wonderful menu is birthed every time, and as a result, it turns out as something that the fans can enjoy.

——It seems the people who will visit the store are quite young, so have you devised anything for the flavors?

Aizawa: We added a bit more variety to the taste of “Nene and Mokke’s Broccoli Gratin XD” during the planning stages, but we reviewed it in order to make it match the palate of young people better.

Ookubo: The “Mokke Curry”, which appears in the latter half of the event, was a green curry at first, but we changed it into a normal curry so that it would match the young ones’ tastes.

——On the topic of creating menu items that suit the customers’ age group, were there any difficulties or things you obsessed over?

Aizawa: The biggest hardship in making the menu of a collaboration café is the items’ appearance. Even if we deepen their image, we often worry about how to bring out their colors.

We repeatedly have conflicts such as, “I have to use this ingredient for bringing out this color, but this ingredient doesn’t fit this menu. Then how do I reproduce this coloration?” so it’s a relief when we eat the finished products and calm down with a, “It’s surprisingly good now that I’ve given it a try!” (laugh). Also, when we are feeling confident, the ideas soon flash into mind, but when we are in a slump, we get distressed.

Shiratsuchi: There was also a difference of views between the cooks’ side and the original creators’ side, so there were times when we thought, “We’ve made something really good!”, the original creators would say, “This won’t do!” (laughs). In regards to the menu, it is purely an insight race, so it made us happy when good flashes of inspiration took form and received approval.

——Anything from this menu that gave you an especially hard time?

Aizawa: As expected, that would be “Nene’s R•A•D•I•S•H Pot-au-Feu”, which we talked about earlier (laughs).

——Lastly, please leave a message for the readers.

Imanishi: New menu items will be added in the latter half, so I believe it has turned out as a café that people can enjoy no matter how many times they come. We want them to eat, drink and have fun. Also, the coasters that they can earn by ordering foods and drinks have wonderful designs, so I hope people will take them as a memory, by all means. I think you will definitely enjoy it, so please come over!

Aizawa: There are many attractive menu items, so do not forget your cameras!

——Thank you very much!

[crossoverworldtree]

Space Cyborgs

In the depths of space, the fusion of biology and technology often results in horrors...

Recovering Cyberman (4-Point Quality) The Cybermen, also known as the Borg, are one of the most dangerous species in the galactic cluster. They are, simultaneously, the worst parts of communism and capitalism. On one hand, the individual is completely subservient to the state ("The Collective"). On the other, they consume everything and everyone in their path. And the worst part of all that is, they genuinely believe they are helping others when they "Upgrade" them. But some manage to escape the living hell of being a cog in the machine. One way or another, people have recovered from being cybernetically altered by Cybermen. However, sometimes those rescued from the Cybermen cannot have all their technological components removed easily. This leaves them in this half-state of being returned to normal, but still visibly and technically Cybermen. They start out with the Robot quality, however, they can recover 1/2 their life points from normal healing roles. The rest needs to be 'repaired'. Other cybernetic enhancements (See All Tomorrows Zombies for some examples, as well as other various powers depending on how they are justified) can be applied to the Recovering Cyberman. They all start with Data Jack, allowing them to connect with machines directly. However, they don't need a proper interface to do so. Any "Port" in a machine will serve their needs. They can gain more abilities over time. However, the more 'abilities' they have, the less human they look. Even with mostly human appearances, they have little signs that they were once encased in metal.

They have Attractiveness -1 (and can get worse if more 'bits' are added). Their time in the hive mind Collective has rendered them cold and distant emotionally. This saddles them with the 1 Point Emotionless drawback. Finally, because the Cybermen are so hated (and the Cybermen themselves are kinda, sorta massive jerks), they have Adversary 4 from both the Cybermen themselves and their victims who see Recovering Cybermen as an easy target for their revenge.

Tekkaman (40-Point Base Quality)

In deep space, there are horrible space-born monstrosities. Heterodyne, Crystalline Entities, Great Old Ones, and the Uchuu Kaiju, also known as the Dholes.

The Dhole reproductive cycle is a parasitoid one on a planetary scale. To find hosts for their offspring, they have the Pretenders. Parasitoiding a Cybertronian colony world apparently gave them the idea of creating the "Pretenders" of their own.

Tekkamen are the heralds and scouts of the Dholes, part of their organic systems to find inhabited planets for them to reproduce in. They are relentless, cruel, and often weaken the defenses of any civilization the Dholes wish to consume directly. Think of them as 'cells' in a sponge, as much part of the whole as a living thing unto itself.

But some manage to escape the thralldom of the Dholes. They often work to fight off the Dholes and prevent them from parasitizing planets.

These free Tekkamen look and act like normal members of their species, but can transform into their Tekkaman form. In this form, they gain +5 Strength, +4 Dexterity, +3 Constitution. They have an Armor Value of 15, which doubled against Direct Energy Weapons (Beam, Plasma, Fire, Electricity), are Vacuum Sealed, and have Advanced Flight capabilities.

On the negative side, even though they are reformed, they have a lot of enemies. Those looking to exploit them and their power, as well as their former Dhole masters and their Tekkamen. This counts as Adversary 5. They have the Dual Form drawback, and in their Tekkaman form they are rather scary (even when heroic), having -2 Attractiveness. Tekkamen can only maintain the shape for 30 minutes each day, limiting what they can do. Each 'hour' un transformed restores 1 minute of the transformation. They also need an object to trigger their transformation. Sometimes it's a crystal, other times it's a bulky machine they must step into to change.

Tekkamen have blades that grow from their bodies. The Blades are usually either two 3 x Strength Slash/Stab damage or one 5 x Strength Slash/Stab weapon. These are both AP 5 to fight the foes of the Dholes. Some have both weapons, but this increases the cost of the quality by 16.

But some Tekkamen have more abilities than that. Primarily, the powerful Voltekka. The Voltekka is a powerful blast of plasma energy, dealing 100 Plasma damage. This adds 46 points to the total quality.

Tekkamen are very good at defending themselves.

[iamtheempress]

Cold Blooded

A Dragon Ball Horror Fic {Part 11}

☆☆☆

Frieza’s slow. Patient. Methodical. With every step his little smile returns to his face as he sees the lab with which he made his first realization he felt something towards her. Its almost sentimental to him. 

From within the sterile lab the petrified scientist looked for anything. Anything at all to defend herself, then ran to the opposite door. The only one used to escape by the incinerator. So much for that. With the power out and backup generator fried the only thing working is this horrible white light blinking on and off in the lab…

Shes fucked. SHes fucked and she knows it.. No goodbye to Vegeta or anything. Her tomb is her laboratory. A place of creation. “Dammit...DAMMIT!” she shouts and her eyes meet with the vials of liquid that could potentially save her life... 

The corrosive material. The same which she used to pierce his membrane.

“Perfect…” She whispered out, only to be taken from thought fromthe door creaking open. 

“If theres anything that is perfect here, my dear Carlie it is you…” Hes more clear here, hes golden… this is his form he was talking about right. Its nightmarish and sleek.

“I hate to make things so short but i must inform you my dear… this is your last time on earth… from here i have a fleet at my command waiting for OUR arrival. You will never return to this wretched dirtball again for as long as you shall live.” He promises crossing the room with both arms locked prim and proper at the base of his spine he now easily towers over her, whereas before he was exactly her height.

Shes cornered. The position shes put herself in is foolish at best. Caught between Frieza and a concrete wall and a counter top with 50 vials of liquid.

“And if your moronic primate and his little friends find it necessary to hunt you down…” He raises his hand to her cheek and she flinches, his thumb grazes her bottom lip. Solid scarlet red eyes focused on her mouth and then her eyes as he leans closer. “Ill kill them one by one… and ill make sure that you watch. As my empress you will see that your former friends perish appropriately…” Carlie pipes up as Friezas now mere inches from her lips. 

“And i have no say in any of this… your just going to fucking take me..” She chokes out a cry, tears threatening to spill down her flush cheeks. “OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOOOO!! Carlie Carlie CARLIE!!! You never had a choice… you accepted me like a true friend… instead of cowering in fear of me… and you assume I WOULDNT take the opportunity to snatch you up??? Your a prize to be won… and one i wont let go to waste for the likes of that brutish little runt of a monkey…” He comments, absolutely preening with success and excitement. 

Carlie reached behind her and grabbed the rack of vials and brought it over her head into the crown of Friezas head, smashing it and pouring the corrosive material all over the Emperor and onto his flesh. The human woman bared her nails and threw any and all caution to the wind. 

“What in the-you…” Frieza backed up adn looked at his shoulders and didnt notice the human girl lunging at him with nails digging into his neck and dragging down harshly. Cutting clean into his flesh leaving a deep scratch like a wild cat.

“You made the worst decision, Carlie…” Frieza lulled grimacing. The scientist reared back and punched the emperor in the face square in the teeth. A tooth came out… he got some of the acid in his mouth too. Carlies minor victory was short lived. With blinding speed Frieza snatched the humans neck and gripped it. Forcing her to the ground. 

“Out of every smart thing you have done, Carlie. That was certainly the stupidest thing any human has ever done. So yes. A job well done is in order. You have infuriated the Emperor of the Universe to the point where i wlll not take pity upon you..” While choking under the golden tyrants grip she used all the strength she had inher not to pull his hand from her throat but to scratch and mangle his chest and any exposed area. With reckless and careless abandon. Shes mindlessly fighting back to achieve a hollow victory.

A very hollow victory. 

“F-Fuck you! Fuck you and y-your damned offer to be a fucking empress! Im Vege-AAAAH!” SHe screams loudly when the worst pain entered her stomach. A fucking death beam straight into her stomach and out her back. 

“You are a filthy mouthed little whore. You were coppulating with the primate, do you truly think id want my reproductive organs anywhere near your own when that monkey has slavved about inside of you…” Friezas fingers tighten more around her neck, her eyes wide and blood shot. 

“Tut tut now… I wanted to actually see this serum your so proud of in action.. Dont go dying on me n-” She reaches her arms up and scratches hellishly at his neck gasping for air that will never reach her pretty lips. He lifts her head abit and moves her head… Like its some sick fantasy to see someone teetering on the edge of life and death so callously.. 

Her eyes wept as she now kicked and scratched as the grinning tyrant… who bit his lip ensuring shes getting closer to death.. The blood she was laying on was her own but the blood that dripped on her from him was cold..

Friezas just as cold blooded as the life fuel that runs through his veins… “You feel that? That is because of you you wretch.. I offered you my blood for your hoidy toidy experiments. I know you done amazing things with it.. You can SEE me as you take your last breaths..OH THATS RIGHT!! I almost forgot.” He smiles and takes a needle and shoves it into her neck as the vision slipped and she was just about to cusp into the otherworld. 

With that very press of her serum coursing through her veins she understood how potent and strong it truly was… She felt alive. Rejuvenated. Her heart pounding and face dark blue from him squeezing the air from her lungs. “See? It worked! And you got to see it yourself… You should be sooooooo proud…” 

Carlie closed her mouth and looked right up at Frieza with petrified eyes. Shaking and feeling the life slip slowly from her body. “I will remember that when i see Vegeta again… that i was the last thing you ever seen… not that he would give a damn…” He sunk down and pressed his lips firm against the cold girls lips, molding them to hers, for several seconds Frieza felt euphoric… eyes closed and reveling in his first and her final kiss.

Before he could pull away he crushed her throat beneath his grip and felt her go limp beneath him. His lips smack as he pulls away from the body of the woman he wanted to call his empress… Frieza stared at her.. At her corpse.. At her hand and then at the ring.

Then up at the window to the viewing room.. HIs neck and chest was ruined.

Scratched and mangled to high hell. Carlies last stand displayed on his neck. Permanently.

The emperor knelt down and took the ring from her corpse and pushed hair from her face, and exited capsule corp out the back and into the night. Emotions very unclear in Friezas head, he was silent. Brooding. Depressed.

Several minutes pass. Capsule Corp was silent.. A dome with a lone corpse inside waiting to be found.

Bulma had returned with Goku and Vegeta who opened up Capsule Corp from its power shut down. Lights thrown back on and the search was on. Vegeta tore up everything. Bulma said nothing and allowed him to search for her. 

“Do you think Frieza escaped with her??” Goku questioned following Vegeta to the door to Carlies lab. Vegeta remained silent, his heart pounding in his ears. He stopped dead in his tracks upon finding the mangled door to the lower lab. 

“No…” The prince burst down the stairs to the most grizzly scene he had ever bared witness too. Despite destroying entire planets and killing millions in his time while working for Frieza.. 

No death had affected him so horribly then her own.

Bulma started weeping, as Vegeta lifted her in his arms. Kneeling in a pool of her own blood. It felt like an eternity before he spoke..

“Kakarot.. Bulma.. Get the Dragon Balls.”

☆☆☆

@dragonblobz @lilfriezatyrant @gallickingun @kamehamethot @gonuclear @memevember @msgreenverse @lizardhipsdontlie @thotful-writing @supremeleadershitlord​ @memevember​ @dragonball-hcs-or-sum-shit​

[porschekittisawasds]

simply cannot believe i made a supernatural fic rec list in the year 2020 but here we are

When Worlds Collide

When Zachariah dies, the illusions he’s created die with him.  But before they collapse completely, sometimes they collide. That’s how Castiel goes from cradling Dean Winchester’s broken body one moment, to finding himself face to face with Dean Smith in the next.

note: basically endverse!cas’s world collapses right after endverse!dean is killed by lucifer and he gets thrown into the it’s a terrible life verse. drama and love and a whole lot of fuckery ensue. it’s tagged as major character death but it’s not really

Broadway Musical

This is the day that marked the Holy and Blessed Union of Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle.

The merging of prominent bloodlines is always a grand occurrence, but breeding pedigree hunter families like Winchester and Harvelle is something to be rejoiced. It is also something to be meticulously planned, which thankfully the Host is very good at.

note: an AU where dean and jo are destined to fall in love and have two sons who will bring on the apocalypse and be the vessels for michael and lucifer. only problem is cupid’s arrows don’t make them fall in love with each other and heaven promptly starts freaking the fuck out so cas slips into a vessel and tries to do some matchmaking to get the whole end of the world thing back on track. it’s tagged as unrepentant crack and that pretty much sums it up, but it’s also a very funny and enjoyable read

a turn of the earth

Dean’s your typical half-orphaned, monster-killing 22-year-old until a trenchcoated stranger crashes into his back windshield one September night, claiming he’s an angel that knows him from the future and that he’s on the run.

Frigging fantastic.

note: listen i LOVE a good time travel fic

How (thanks to Gabriel) Dean and Castiel (accidentally) raised each other (and Sam)

In which, Gabriel meddles with the time line and Castiel becomes Dean's angel rather sooner than intended.

note: after lucifer stabs gabriel in hammer of the gods, gabriel uses his very last bit of grace to travel back to the beginning of time and decree castiel the angel of thursdays and dean winchester. fast forward a few eons and castiel hears mary’s dying cry. he shows up too late to save her, but he decides that a human life is very short in the grand scheme of things so he can play guardian angel to dean (and by extension sam) while also fulfilling his duties to heaven. not only is this pretty much my favorite supernatural fic, it’s also one of my favorite fics in general

The Shattered One

When it struck Castiel, he was in mid-flight. It dropped him out of the sky like a sparrow buffeted by gale-force winds. Castiel set down the first place he could find. He ended up standing in a field in Switzerland, swaying on his feet and staring down at his body, dazed by what it had just done.

note: okay so listen. this is tagged as mpreg but that’s kind of a stretch imo. it’s not like... mpreg mpreg in the sense that it deals with angel reproduction and has nothing to do with sex or pregnancy. angel reproduction goes like this: a section of an angel’s grace will suddenly and randomly break off and begin to grow on it’s own. after a certain period of time, another angel has to offer a piece of their grace and the two pieces will combine to form a new angel. that new angel is a fully developed, fully functional angel and is considered a new brother/sister instead of an offspring.

cas’s grace shatters which means he’s fucked because this takes place in season 5 after he’s defied heaven. no other angel will offer up a piece of their grace so his own is basically going to rip itself apart, killing him in the process. when dean and sam find out cas is going to die, dean offers up part of his soul in place of another angel’s grace. what results is a new angel that has just enough human in it that it takes the shape of a human baby and sends pretty much all of their lives into a tailspin.

ALSO just a heads up this is definitely more pre-destiel despite the relationship tag. there’s a sequel where im pretty sure they do get together but i haven’t read it so i cant’s say for sure.

Kiss You When It’s Dangerous

When his partner Uriel, betrays him, Federal Agent Castiel Novak is saved from becoming a ritual sacrifice by brothers Dean and Sam Winchester.

note: FBI!cas gets thrown headfirst into the supernatural. tagged as major character death, but again it’s not really

My Roots Take Flight

After forty years in Hell, Dean’s more than willing to accept the offer: become a guardian angel and earn his freedom. But his new ward seems destined to hunt alongside Sam, and there are secrets in Heaven that the angels don’t want found out. Dean’s going to have to choose between his duty and the people he loves- and to work out just where Castiel fits in.

note: season 4 au where dean is an angel and cas is a human except it’s way more complicated than that

Peace and Good Luck To All Men

Christmas in the Milton household was difficult enough without the added complication of guests- and if Luke and Gabriel placing bets on who can get with Sam first wasn’t bad enough, then Cas developing a ridiculous crush on his sister’s boyfriend definitely is. 

note: the one where michael, lucifer luke, gabriel, anna and cas are all human siblings but michael and lucifer luke are still trying to kill each other, gabriel is still Like That and cas is still super into dean which is pretty inconvenient considering he’s with anna.

Asunder

Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Matthew 19:6) 

note: it’s been a very long time since i read this, but from what i remember it’s an AU where they’re all human and dean brings his friend/co-worker cas as his “date” to sam and ruby’s wedding for moral support. when sam was in college, he met ruby and they started using drugs together. after several failed attempts at helping him get clean, dean eventually cut sam off and it’s been years since they’ve spoken. even though sam and ruby are now both sober, dean blames ruby for everything that happened and the only reason he’s even going to the wedding is because bobby and ellen basically force him to. again, it’s been years and years since i read this so i can’t remember a lot of the details, but i do know that despite this being a dean/cas fic a lot of the focus is dean rebuilding his relationship with sam and that’s what i remember really liking about it.

Hanged, Drawn, and Quartered

Death brings Sam back — sort of.

note: a general fic involving only sam and dean. sam’s soul is so damaged from its time in the cage that when death brings it back, it shatters into pieces and so does sam. like literally. there’s four different sams now, each representing a distinctive part of his personality. sounds cracky but it’s actually surprisingly angsty and focuses on how the sams and dean are adjusting to their new reality and each other

Point Pleasant

(okay so this fic was deleted but i’m putting in on here anyway because the author has since turned it into a novel and had it published. im sure old pdfs of the fic are floating around but i highly recommend reading the novel version. if you know it was based on a destiel fic then it’s really easy to see those influences in the writing and the characters but it can stand up on it’s own. also!!!! it has pretty much the coolest take on the mothman’s origin story that i’ve ever heard.)

Ben Wisehart (Dean Winchester) grew up in the idyllic town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. An early encounter with the supernatural shaped his worldview and served as the catalyst for his career as a bestselling horror writer. Thirteen years after abandoning his home, Ben returns to the town to investigate the apparent reemergence of the terrifying creature responsible for his childhood nightmares. In Point Pleasant, Ben is confronted not only by the town’s resident monster, the Mothman, but also by his former best friend, Sheriff Nicholas Nolan (Cas Novak). Together, Ben and Nicholas (Dean and Cas) uncover the mystery of the monster in the woods and discover that the ghosts that haunt us are sometimes made of flesh and blood. And sometimes, they lead us home.

Sympathy for the Devil (and Dean Winchester)

this is not so much a rec as it is a request.

basically an au version of season 5 (and kind of the whole series really). when god cast lucifer out of heaven, he tore out his grace. lucifer’s grace was put into the cage, but lucifer himself fell to earth and spent thousands and thousands of years reincarnating as a human. his latest reincarnation? dean winchester. so when sam opens the cage, lucifer’s grace is released and dean realizes that he’s lucifer. part of him still kind of wants to start the apocalypse but the other part of him has a whole new appreciation for humanity considering he now remembers every human life he’s ever lived. it’s made more complicated by the fact that dean (/lucifer) doesn’t really want to tell anyone that he’s apparently the devil so he has to keep his now angel status on the dl and also because despite heaven wanting the apocalypse to start, michael went missing from heaven shortly after lucifer was cast out and no one has any idea where he’s at.

this fic was deleted, but if anyone happens to have a pdf copy let me know. i would be highly appreciative!