#mother iconoclasts

[dbcoatl-art]

I've wanted to make a few Iconoclasts comics for a long time, but never got around to making them...until now.

And of course I had to start this off with the "Blows Up Pancakes" meme, but with Royal and Mother. Poor Royal just can't seem to catch a break, can he?

I'll probably draw a few more comics if anyone's interested. Additionally, I'm also currently scripting a longform Iconoclasts comic, starring my favourite character in the game, ever.

[decibelcoatl]

Despite only getting back into the Iconoclasts fandom after so long, one personal headcanon still persists in my mind...that Mina - a pirate girl from another culture - acts as more of an authentic older sister figure to Robin than Elro - who is Robin's actual biological brother. And I'm sure there are other people who think that way as well.

But in all honesty, Elro...isn't actually a "real" brother. At least, not to me, in a sense. Not in a way that matters, anyway.

As far as relationships go, Iconoclasts does its best at showing off relationship dynamics, and how they affect other people. Grey went out of their way to court Black for a whopping 187 years, breaking down her barriers with utmost love, care and patience (up until Elro killed them, that is, and that's something I will never forgive him for). Royal met someone who also held an appreciation for flowers, which he loves the most (especially since Robin's nickname is "Sunflower"). Mina decides to stop running away, and turns over a new leaf to become a better person and secure a future that she can share with Samba.

The same can be held true for familial relationships, especially in instances where blood doesn't always make a family or even siblings. It's especially true when you compare how Elro acts around Robin to the way Mina treats Robin, or even how Mother treats Royal, her adopted "son".

With Robin and Elro, there is little warmth in how they interact, especially after the deaths of Henetta and Ella. I'd argue that there is very little love between them, either. Elro claims that he cares about Robin, but that "care" is relegated to how she should stay home where he thinks she'll be safe, even despite the fact that she's practically an outlaw and staying home will result in guaranteed Penance for her. Before he died, Polro wasn't much better off, either, insisting that Robin live a safer life as a farmer, like her mother and maternal grandfather. Robin literally finds more comfort in the machines she makes, and that's heartbreaking! And it is only after Robin kills God himself and restores the planet that Elro finally gives in and tells her that he won't tell her what to do anymore.

Robin and Elro may be siblings, but Elro sure as hell doesn't present himself as a kind and loving brother in a way that all older siblings are meant to. At least, not after Polro's death. Even Black sees Elro as a piece of garbage, though that's only due to him being responsible for the death of the first person she came to love.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Mina. Robin just met Mina, and the two don't know very much about each other. And they only end up getting together when the One Concern attacks Isilugar, and then when Black kidnaps Samba after White dies.

And yet, within the short timespan...you can tell that Mina and Robin's relationship is far more genuine compared to that between Robin and Elro. There is love, care, respect, and protectiveness. Mina encourages Robin to go out and make her mark on the world, instead of sitting at home doing nothing. Like Elro, Mina worries for Robin's well-being; however, unlike Elro, Mina also acknowledges that Robin is her own person, and that she perfectly capable of handling herself, especially after Robin solos Black in the detritus sand pit. They may not share the same blood, but the feelings they exhibit are so real despite Mina not necessarily having the purest intentions at heart compared to Robin. Not to mention the way they work together during boss fights, with Robin incapacitating the opponent and leaving them wide open for Mina to make the killing blow (the Inti boss fight is a perfect example of their teamwork, especially when they high-five one another). Mina is able to establish a warm place that Robin can call home, and acts like a "real" older sister.

I might be looking a little too deep into this, given that I'm a huge sucker for the "found family" trope, and I like seeing how two unrelated people can develop familial or sibling bonds compared to "official" or "real" families/siblings. Kinda makes me want to write a thesis paper about it, lol.

[incorrecticonoclastsquotes]

I got bored and decided to boot up Cassette Beasts just to mess around with the character customization and replicate the four main characters, including Black.

Note that they’re not exactly 1:1, only the closest I could get to the original character designs. Elro definitely got the closest, though.

- Mod dBCoatl

[lconoclasts]

Shout out to this robin pony I made back in the day

Please excuse her human skintone nobody on Pony Town will fucking talk to you unless ur a human horse

[bombcollar]

there’s virtually nothing out there exploring the dynamic Royal and Mother must have so I took it upon myself to create the content I want to see. there’s an awkward dinner party!

[hirokiyuu]

hello my beloved friend. consider the following: mina/samba. the quiet moment that comes after yet another serious talk you'll learn nothing from

"I mean, this one's a really promising lead!" says Mina, and she's already got her head tilted towards the ladder, the promise of somewhere else one Samba's starting to feel she can't quite compete with. "Like--"

"I know," interrupts Samba, who's already heard the spiel a time too many, and doesn't have it in her to hear it again, "but... I'm gonna miss you while you're gone, y'know?"

"I..." Mina starts, eyes dragged back towards Samba for once, and as she says, "I know," the but, at the end is a silent addition they can still both hear.

[ghnbear]

Indie rpg games (/--)/

hey!today i brought some of my favorites games!!! mostly (or all of them) are rpg and have an pixel design. those are my favorite kind of game, but they aren't very famous....... I would appreciate some recommendations as well. (´ﾟωﾟ｀)

1. Limbo

Sensible... and have a lot of puzzles, but it's fun.

2. Heartbound

this one isn't complete yet, but the uncompleted version have a lot to offer already. I love the history and the characters, also the universe its very beautiful. I love the office part and the character in the office (ToT) I love this one, and I am very excited to play the complete version

3. Iconoclast

this is a very long game. you can spend like days playing, and really put a effort to it. I love the characters as well. if it was a book, it would be my favorite. the history is very good as well. IT not requires a high processor, so you can install in every computer. (　・３・)

4. Papers, please

this one isn't a rpg. It acctualy have a very interesting context, so, briefly, you are a employee working in a border of a country. there a lot of politics issues going on, so if you made a mistake and allow an entrance of a danger person, you gonna die or have drastically consequencs. Also, your family suffers with you choices. I love this one so much! it's fun, and take a lot of effort to do the right choices. your actions have real consequences, and you can achieve different ends as well. ( *´・ω)/(；д； ).

5. undertale

undertale is pretty famous. It's an rpg where a child falls in to the underground, where lives "dangerous monsters" but when you start exploring and understanding that place, you figure a lot of things. there's 3 possible endings (I guess) and it's also a game of "actions have consequences" I played this one so many times. (*´；ェ；｀*)

6. Shovel Knight

Love this one! it's the most simple of this list, but is also pretty long. rpg, and in pixel, the proposal of this game is explore, fight and win against some enemies. you can play with different characters, and the world is very big, so exploring it its fun. Takes time to finishing it, and it's very comfortable to play. (゜o゜)＼(-_-)

7. Hotline miami

violent and have a awesome soundtrack. there are two volumes, both are great, but the first one hits different. It's nice to play when you got a frustrating day, to overcome you anger and.... you know... (-.-)ノ⌒-~

8. one shot

I love thiissss, but the last time I played was several years ago, so I don't remember very well. bur I do remember that it felt great. ( °∇^)］

mother 3 or earthbound

the last of the list... the first of my heart.

this is a nitendo game, so you can play on your phone if you install a emulator to snes. The room is easy to find online ＼(^-^)／ love the characters and it have a great history. I played more then one hundred times, and I always cry (even though it's not a sad game)

this is it!!! thanks for reading ＼(^_^)／

(;_;)/~~~

[saintvainglorious]

Fics I Enjoyed in January

I was putting together a list of the best fics I read last year and was reminded of two incredible ATLA fics I read in February 2023 ((Never) Forget Who You Are by mindbending and up in the city (until the stars lost the war) by Madseason). Those two fics are absolute perfection and sent me down an Avatar: The Last Airbender rabbit hole this month.

I read an insane amount, for me, even more than I did last year in September/October, when I was chowing down Drarry longfics like a starving dog. There's approximately 993k words of fic in this rec list - if you assume the average novel is 90k, that's about 11 books!

half in the shadows, half burned in flames by r_astra Avatar: the Last Airbender | Gen | 4k | Not Rated

“They say you tried to kill the Firelord,” Hakoda says. "Why?" Zuko doesn’t know how to answer. Because I hate him. Because I love him. Because he wants to see the world burn. Because he knotted one hand in my hair and cupped flames against my face with the other. Because my mother is dead. Because my uncle is dead. Instead, he shrugs tiredly and says: “Someone has to.”

i am through finding blame by sokkaesque/@sokkagatekeeper Avatar: The Last Airbender | Gen | 6k | Teen & Up

Sokka was fourteen the first time he realized people didn’t apologize to him very often. Or, Sokka during The Southern Raiders.

a nation, held by snowdarkred/@snowdarkred Avatar: The Last Airbender | Gen | 6k | General Audiences

It doesn’t take long for the rumors to start. The Fire Nation prides itself on its civilization. It isn’t like the other, lesser, nations who throw their children away by sending them into war. They are to be protected, because children are the future glory of the nation. The crown prince is thirteen when his father burns his face in front of an audience of hundreds.

The Iconoclast by ranilla_bean/@ranilla-bean Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Suki/Zuko | 21k (WIP) | Explicit

After a protracted civil war, the victorious new Fire Lord sends a call for a new bodyguard across the four nations. A Southern Water Tribesman and a warrior from Kyoshi Island respond.

Life in Eden by WitchofEndor/@a-witch-in-endor Avatar: The Last Airbender | Gen | 14k | Not Rated

In which Ursa tries to be a better parent to Azula, and it doesn’t change very much. And then, quite abruptly, it changes everything.

While Mighty Oaks Do Fall by WitchofEndor/@a-witch-in-endor Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 181k (WIP) | Teen & Up

The newly-crowned Fire Lord Ozai offers his firstborn son to service in the temple. This turns out to be a catastrophic mistake.

where the stars do not take sides by WitchofEndor/@a-witch-in-endor Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 60k | Not Rated

When Azula is nine, she becomes an only child. She hears the Fire Lord call for Zuko's life, and in the morning, her mother and brother are gone. Azula may be young, but she isn't naive. She knows what happened to them. Which makes it all the more surprising when Azula tracks the Avatar down and fights his group of peasant friends, only to find herself staring into an eerily familiar face.

War Crimes by Lovely_Elbow_Leech/@lovelyelbowleech Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 90k | Mature | Part 1 of All's Fair

Book one ends with two major differences: 1. Sokka went on the mission with Hahn (it did not go well) 2. Zhao survives the North Pole and that proves unfortunate for everybody (except Zhao, obviously). Imprisoned on Zhao’s war ship, Sokka and Zuko have to work together to survive. They are not very enthusiastic about this prospect. And they argue. A lot.

War Games by Lovely_Elbow_Leech/@lovelyelbowleech Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 443k (WIP) | Mature | Part 2 of All's Fair

Sokka is aware that being friends with the enemy is going to bring complications, but he probably should have guessed that being friends with Zuko in particular, was going to be a bit like dunking your head repeatedly into a bucket of angry Fire Ferrets.

Below the Sun by CSHfic and VSfic Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 25k | Teen & Up

Sokka is washed overboard while working on the fisherman's boat during the storm. He wakes on a deserted island. Or... mostly deserted.

Will We Last the Night by CSHfic and VSfic Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 143k | Teen & Up

Chief Arnook never assigns Sokka to protect Princess Yue, so he goes to fight the Fire Nation with the other men. When the moon dies, and the ocean spirit takes its revenge, Sokka is caught standing on the deck of a Fire Nation ship. Sokka should have drowned… and he would have drowned, if not for a certain Fire Nation raft fleeing the North Pole. [An enemies-to-lovers season 2 rewrite, where Sokka is separated from the gaang during the Siege of the North, and travels the Earth Kingdom with Zuko instead].

[justforbooks]

Donald Sutherland

Commanding and versatile actor known for his roles in MAS*H, Don’t Look Now and The Hunger Games

Donald Sutherland, who has died aged 88, brought his disturbing and unconventional presence to bear in scores of films after his breakthrough role of Hawkeye Pierce, the army surgeon in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970), one of the key American films of its period. It marked Sutherland out as an iconoclastic figure of the 60s generation, but he matured into an actor who made a speciality of portraying taciturn, self-doubting characters. This was best illustrated in his portrayal of the tormented parent of a drowned girl, seeking solace in a wintry Venice, in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), and of the weak, nervous, concerned father of a guilt-ridden teenage boy (Timothy Hutton) in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (1980).

Although Sutherland appeared in the statutory number of stinkers that are many a film actor’s lot, he was always watchable. His career resembled a man walking a tightrope between undemanding parts in potboilers and those in which he was able to take risks, such as the title role in��Federico Fellini’s Casanova (1976).

Curiously, it was Sutherland’s ears that first got him noticed, in Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967). During the shoot, according to Sutherland, “Clint Walker sticks up his hand and says, ‘Mr Aldrich, as a representative of the Native American people, I don’t think it’s appropriate to do this stupid scene where I have to pretend to be a general.’ Aldrich turns and points to me and says, ‘You with the big ears. You do it’ … It changed my life.” In other words, it led to M*A*S*H and stardom.

Sutherland and his M*A*S*H co-star Elliott Gould tried to get Altman fired from the film because they did not think the director knew what he was doing due to his unorthodox methods. In the early days, Sutherland was known to have confrontations with his directors. “What I was trying to do all the time was to impose my thinking,” he remarked some years later. “Now I contribute. I offer. I don’t put my foot down.”

Sutherland, who was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, was a sickly child who battled rheumatic fever, hepatitis and polio. He spent most of his teenage years in Nova Scotia where his father, Frederick, ran a local gas, electricity and bus company; his mother, Dorothy (nee McNichol), was a maths teacher. He attended Bridgewater high school, then graduated from Victoria College, part of the University of Toronto, with a double major in engineering and drama. As a result of a highly praised performance in a college production of James Thurber’s and Elliott Nugent’s The Male Animal, he dropped the idea of becoming an engineer and decided to pursue acting.

With this in mind, he left Canada for the UK in 1957 to study at Lamda (the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), where he was considered too tall and ungainly to get anywhere. However, he gained a year’s work as a stage actor with the Perth repertory company, and appeared in TV series such as The Saint and The Avengers. He was Fortinbras in a 1964 BBC production of Hamlet, shot at Elsinore castle and starring Christopher Plummer. He also appeared at the Criterion theatre in the West End in The Gimmick in 1962.

In 1959 he married Lois Hardwick; they divorced in 1966. Then he married the film producer Shirley Douglas, with whom he had twins, Kiefer and Rachel; they divorced in 1971. Kiefer, who grew up to become a celebrated actor, was named after the producer-writer Warren Kiefer, who put Sutherland in an Italian-made Gothic horror film, The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Christopher Lee played a necrophile count, while Sutherland doubled as a dim-witted police sergeant and, in drag and heavy makeup, as a witch.

In an earlier era, the gawky Sutherland might not have achieved the stardom that followed the anarchic M*A*S*H, but Hollywood at the time was open for stars with unconventional looks, and Sutherland was much in demand for eccentric roles throughout the 70s.

He was impressive as a moviemaker with “director’s block” in Paul Mazursky’s messy but interesting Alex in Wonderland (1970), which contains a prescient dream sequence in which his titular character meets Fellini. In the same year, Sutherland played a Catholic priest and the object of Geneviève Bujold’s erotic gaze in Act of the Heart; he was the appropriately named Sergeant Oddball, an anachronistic hippy tank commander, in the second world war action-comedy Kelly’s Heroes; and he and Gene Wilder were two pairs of twins in 18th-century France in the broad comedy Start the Revolution Without Me.

Sutherland was at his most laconic, sometimes verging on the soporific, in the title role of Alan J Pakula’s Klute (1971), as a voyeuristic ex-policeman investigating the disappearance of a friend and getting deeply involved with a prostitute, played by Jane Fonda.

Sutherland and Fonda were teamed up again as a couple of misfits in the caper comedy Steelyard Blues (1973). It initially had a limited distribution due mainly to their participation together in the anti-Vietnam war troop show FTA (Fuck the Army), which Sutherland co-directed, co-scripted and co-produced.

Sutherland always made his political views known, although they surfaced only occasionally in his films. In among the many mainstream comedies and thrillers was Roeg’s supernatural drama Don’t Look Now, in which Sutherland and Julie Christie are superb as a couple grieving their dead daughter. Despite the dark subject matter, the film was notable for containing “one of the sexiest love scenes in film history”, according to Scott Tobias in the Guardian, the frank depiction of their love-making coming “like a desert flower poking through concrete”. The actor so admired Roeg that he named another son after him, one of his three sons with the French-Canadian actor Francine Racette, whom he married in 1972.

John Schlesinger’s rambling version of The Day of the Locust (1975) saw Sutherland as a sexually repressed character – called Homer Simpson – who tramples a woman to death in an act of uncontrolled rage. Perhaps Bernardo Bertolucci had that in mind when he cast Sutherland in 1900 (Novecento, 1976), in which he is a broadly caricatured fascist thug who shows his sadism by smashing a cat’s head against a post and bashing a young boy’s brains out. “And I turned down Deliverance and Straw Dogs because of the violence!” Sutherland recalled.

In Fellini’s Casanova, the second of his two bizarre Italian excursions in 1976, Sutherland coldly calculates seduction under his heavily made-up features. The performance, as remarkably stylised as it is, still reveals the suffering soul within the sex machine.

In 1978 he appeared in Claude Chabrol’s Blood Relatives, a made-in-Canada murder mystery with Sutherland playing a Montreal cop investigating the murder of a young woman. More commercial was The Eagle Has Landed (1976), with Sutherland, attempting an Irish accent, as an IRA member supporting the Germans during the second world war, and as a chilling Nazi in Eye of the Needle (1981). Meanwhile, he was the hero of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), who resists the insidious alien menace until the film’s devastating final shot.

In 1981 Sutherland returned to the stage, as Humbert Humbert in a highly anticipated version of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, adapted by Edward Albee. It turned out to be a huge flop, running only 12 performances on Broadway. Both Sutherland and Albee played the blame game. “The second act is flawed,” Sutherland said. “Albee was supposed to have rethought it, but he never did.” Albee told reporters that he had scuttled some of his best scenes because they were “too difficult” for Sutherland because “he hasn’t been on stage for 17 years”.

Continuing his film career, Sutherland played a complex and sadistic British officer in Hugh Hudson’s Revolution (1985), and in A Dry White Season (1989) he took the role of an Afrikaner schoolteacher beginning to understand the brutal realities of apartheid. In Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), he held the screen with an extended monologue as he spilled the conspiracy beans to Kevin Costner’s district attorney hero Jim Garrison.

After having made contact with young audiences in the 70s with offbeat appearances in gross-out pictures The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) and National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), the latter as a pot-smoking professor, he was cast as an unconvincing bearded stranger in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992).

On a more adult level were Six Degrees of Separation (1993), in which he played an unfulfilled art dealer; A Time to Kill (1996), as an alcoholic, disbarred lawyer (alongside Kiefer); Without Limits (1998), as an enthusiastic athletics coach; and Space Cowboys (2000), as an elderly pilot. By this time, he was gradually moving into grey-haired character roles, one of the best being his amiable Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (2005).

The Jane Austen novel was also featured in the television series Great Books (1993-2000), to which Sutherland lent his soothing voice as narrator. Other series in which he shone as quasi baddies were Commander in Chief (2005) – as the sexist Republican speaker of the house opposed to the new president (Geena Davis) – and Dirty Sexy Money (2007-09), in which he played a powerful patriarch of a wealthy family.

Sutherland continued to be active well into his 80s, his long grey hair and beard signifying sagacity, whether as a contract killer in The Mechanic, a Roman hero in The Eagle, a nutty retired poetry professor in Man on the Train (all 2011), or a quirky bounty hunter in the western Dawn Rider (2012), bringing more depth to the characters than they deserved. As President Coriolanus Snow, the autocratic ruler of the dystopian country of Panem in The Hunger Games (2012), Sutherland was discovered by a new generation; he went on to reprise the role in three further films in that franchise, beginning with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013).

He played artists in two art-world thrillers by Italian directors: in Giuseppe Tornatore’s Deception, AKA The Best Offer (2013), he was a would-be painter helping to execute multimillion-dollar scams, while in Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019) he was on the other side of the heist as a reclusive genius targeted by a wealthy and unscrupulous dealer (Mick Jagger).

Aside from James Gray’s science-fiction drama Ad Astra (also 2019), in which he co-starred with Brad Pitt, Sutherland’s best late work was all for television. In Danny Boyle’s mini-series Trust (2018), which covered the same real-life events as Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, he played J Paul Getty, the oil tycoon whose grandson is kidnapped; while in The Undoing (2020), he was the father of a psychologist (Nicole Kidman), reluctantly putting up bail when her husband (Hugh Grant) is arrested for murder.

For the latter role Sutherland was in the running for a Golden Globe, having already received an honorary Oscar in 2017.

He is survived by Francine and his children, Kiefer, Rachel, Rossif, Angus and Roeg, and by four grandchildren.

🔔 Donald McNichol Sutherland, actor; born 17 July 1935; died 20 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[nyantry]

The Great Escape?

[ @iconoclast-infidels from X ]

Nova confirmed she could see, and therefore also hear, both Nico and Dmitry, and then after Dmitry's suggestion of an escape, she'd become a fighter. She was so much like Nico it was stunning to Dmitry. All that time, he knew Nico felt all sorts of complicated feelings regarding her, but one thing was always clear - the halfling missed his mother, and seemed to idolize her to some extent. It was only fitting that he took after her, too. That fighting spirit was something striking.

Dmitry held back a grin at the nickname Nova called Nico by.

That was a new one. He'd have to ask about it later, for sure, especially with Nico's reaction. "I'm Dmitry," he answered, helping Nico support Nova so they could get out of there. At least through the veil no one could see them or stop them from breaking out.

But Nico was right. Getting out of there had to be done. Dmitry didn't like it there either, not after his own experiences in such places. Were there good things to remember? Sure, maybe a mere handful. Black construction paper for origami cranes was something he suddenly decided he needed again. But for the most part, the time there had sucked and he wanted to forget. Forgetting was not easy.

"Let's go home," he said to Nico quietly.

[austinkleon]

Adolph Dehn, The Great God Pan (1940)

Over at the Philadelphia Museum of Art site you can see the multiple layers of this screen print by Adolph Dehn of some nuns painting the god Pan. Pretty great.

This lithograph is also great:

I'd never heard of Dehn's work before — he was a friend of the great Wanda Gág, whose book Millions of Cats I read to my kids “millions and billions and trillions” of times.

He did a lot of nun pieces:

Here's a biography of Dehn from The Smithsonian:

Dehn's satirical prints of European and New York scenes were the product of an unconventional Minnesota upbringing and an iconoclastic eye. The son of a feminist, socialist mother and an atheist, anarchist father, he was not destined for a quiet life. He studied at the Minneapolis Art Institute and the Art Students League in New York, after which he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War I. On his release Dehn took odd jobs and made his way to Europe, where his work as a magazine illustrator supported him and his Russian immigrant wife in their travels. While in Europe Dehn was a critical observer of the social scene, especially in Vienna and Berlin, and a light-hearted painter of park scenes and landscapes. In 1930, after his return from Europe, his work, on both European and New York subjects, was shown at the Weyhe Gallery in New York City. The critical response was good, but sales were only moderate. In the mid-1930s, Dehn began to paint watercolor landscapes, which proved immensely popular. As a result, new commercial opportunities opened, including travels through the United States, Mexico, and Venezuela. His fame led to offers to teach and then to work for the Navy during World War II. Throughout the forties, fifties, and sixties, Dehn and his wife traveled around the world, doing commercial work and lithography. His work became less satirical and more fanciful, and he experimented with new graphic techniques. He died of a heart attack in 1968 while planning new trips, beginning a book, and organizing a retrospective.

See more of his (non-nun) work here.

[disasterbiwriter]

Okay, so first, if you're not reading @sarabethsilver's Everglow, you absolutely should be.

Additionally, a hat tip to her because her Mo Willems name drop in the latest chapter inspired this goofy little headcannon that I just came up with: namely, Jess Mariano is anti Mo Willems.

Setting the scene: Rory is pregnant, Jess is supportive. No plot, just vibes!

Enjoy!

“Overrated.”

Rory’s jaw falls open. “Get out.”

“I’m just saying.” Jess gently lays There is a Bird on Your Head! in the pile to his left.

Rory snatches it up again and presses it to her chest. “Iconoclast. Contrarian. Meanie!”

“Excuse me, did you call me here to ask you to sort Cletus’s library or not?”

She pouts up at him from her spot on the floor. “I did. I think I also threatened you with violence if you didn’t stop calling my unborn child Cletus.”

“Did you? I must’ve missed that.”

“Jess,” Rory whines. “Mo Willems. He wrote for Sesame Street. You watched Sesame Street four times a day when you were little!”

Jess leans forward in the chintzy glider Luke and Lorelai brought over earlier that week and flutters his fingers towards the low modular bookshelves lining one wall of the nursery. “And you have two other Mo Willems titles on the shelf already. I let you convince me on Knufflebunny—”

“This is the new version, with the updated dedication to Trix!”

“—and begrudgingly accepted that We Are in a Book is a solid introduction to metaliterature—”

“Begrudgingly?!”

“—but I’m putting my foot down here. Do not let the weed of Elephant Gerald choke out the rest of your literary garden, Mother Gilmore.”

“Oh, okay, let’s just add a threat of violence for using the phrase Mother Gilmore to your account.”

He laughs and shudders. “Yeah, I kinda squicked myself out on that one too.”

“So, should we consider the rest of your argument moot then? I think we should.”

“Rory, you have no more space. Are you telling me with a straight face that you’re not buying any more books between now and when the kid finally makes an appearance?”

She starts to answer him, but gives a funny little strangled yelp instead.

Immediately Jess is kneeling next to her. “What?!”

But Rory’s laughing. “Nothing, nothing. They just kicked. Hard, too.”

She doesn’t wait for permission, rather grabs his wrist and presses his hand to the lower right side of her stomach. They mutually ignore the jump of their pulses.

They wait a beat, and then:

“Oh shit!”

“Right?!”

“Mia Hamm in there.”

She smiles. “Hand me the little notebook off the nightstand? There should be a pen too.”

He unfolds himself from the floor and crosses to the other side of the room. “Counting kicks?” he asks her as he hands her both items. “Isn’t it a little early?”

Rory squints up at him and flips open the cover. “And how would you know?”

He feigns offense. “Hey, I have known upwards of two pregnant people.”

“Soooo, your mom and… me?”

“Among others.”

She laughs and makes a note on the page. “Twenty-eight weeks is when they suggest you start, so I’m right on schedule.”

“What are you supposed to record?”

(In eight months, on the phone during one of her late-night feedings when she can’t sleep and he’s the only other one awake, he’ll confess he had been reading baby books for the duration of her pregnancy. But that’s eight months away.)

“Oh, you know. Number of kicks, time since the last movement. I’m also trying to track down what the stimuli might be.”

Jess nods. “Very complete.”

She waggles the notebook at him and grins. “It’s not every day you get to record baby’s first objection to a bad take on a book.”

“Oh for…” Jess rolls his eyes and grins. “So you’re just going to, what? Buy another bookshelf for this tiny room?”

She beams at him and holds out her hands. He hauls her to her feet. “See, that’s the kind of outside the box thinking I keep you around for, Mariano.”

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Please let us be a part of your thoughts about francis childhood! 🥹

To begin, before the haute frogs get on my case for something, as always my takes are historical fiction or even more accurately historical fantasy and is me fitting together as many of my niche interests into a plotline as possible. It's not me slapping some iconoclast label on myself coming to destroy European values or whatever someone's going to put in the box this time. Yes they probably suck, yes I know I'm some uncultured turnip fucking inbred North American peasant. No, I don't really care. Just keep scrolling and let me post one thing about France without getting a six part message in the box.

So in 52 BC, little baby François pops into existence to his 'mother' (I don't do bio parents but they mimic human relationships) Parisii. She's a somewhat more minor figure, existing as a client-kingdom to the larger Senonii. Some dingbat working for a municipal archive mislabelled a coin as having a nymph-like feature on it and I had the absolutely brilliant idea to link maman up there with Mélusine from whom a lot of noble and royal families would claim descent. Rome, Lucius, has taken Greece, Hélène, to wife and wanted to claim François and continue expanding his role as pater familias. The representative of the Arverni or Gaul, whom I'm now thinking of as a somewhat more rugged version of adult François was trying to build a coalition to coparent the world's most high strung child kick out the Romans. But Lucius won, and Papa Gaul spent the rest of his life chugging Roman wine and being bitter. Parisii (really need a name here) and her bouncing baby boy became a favoured mistress and one of Lucius' favourite protégés.

He grows up the quintessential Roman boy. Bright, brutal and pure bonhomme. He's a handsome, fair boy. The spitting image of Arverni/Gaul but sleek and fair. He could throw a spear, recite Homer and picked out the most stylish sandals from Rome. He was perhaps the best debater of all the sons of Rome, a politician and social butterfly.

And he's a bitter disappointment to Arverni. François has always been able to ride a horse, fight and meet the metrics of cultural masculinity but his heart lay in the abstract and artistic. The arts, philosophy. His mother might be getting railed by his stepfather but François doesn't mind at all because Helene is regaling him with stories about Strabo, Plato, and Diogènes. He had a crush on the memory of Alexander the Great. But in all things, he was sociable. All the sunniness of his Mediterranean shore around people. He could charm his way out of the colleseum if he'd needed too. He's a leader in that way the charming and polished those following hardly notice until subjugated are.

[incorrecticonoclastsquotes]

Royal: Y-you said I could trust you, Mother! You said you were a GAMER! Mother: Royal... I only play mobile games. Royal: NOOOOOOOOO!

[lconoclasts]

Can't add the exact timestamp (it's at the end) but they just??? Jump off screen???? Do they not die???

My general consensus with this fight is that it's just extra content and... in-between canonicity. They don't show up in the credits (in a scene) regardless if you kill them or not, and the pupils are alive(?) or possibly some other ones are alive as they could just look similar/be reused sprites

long speculation under the cut

Fitzroy is lore for sure which contradicts some of the implications about trancending that we get but like. Royal is kind of a dumbass AND is being told all of this from mother/one concern. There's multiple implications of the "ancestors" (both isi and Him followers) coming from somewhere else/resetting the planet and leaving instructions/tech for their respective people to use. Fitzroy seems to fit in the between stage before the concern has studied the tech, but AFTER the Ancestors arrived/reset the planet. In The Tower and the Bastion there are images of famous earth landmarks (taj mahal, new York, pyramids I think) implying that some sort of Earth was destroyed/minerals drained (more connections to the themes about environmentalism) and that humanity was "reset". RIGHT BUT CANONICITY. Fitzroy is more lore... If u want him to be. The true past of humanity is still foggy ESPECIALLY with conflicting views from Him followers and the Isi. The concern claims to have longer records of history, and has aforementioned images, but they shape it to their beliefs and leave out certain parts intentionally as well as only educate people deemed more faithful (concern staff) and censor/mysticize parts for the common folk and ESPECIALLY city one residents. Cough cough 'merica haha but not really I doubt he was thinking about Americans specifically. This is more likely a commentary on religion specifically they larger ones and how they shape societies views and history! (Remember when we used B.C?) I'm not going to say this is an effective commentary or a scathing remark on Christianity (I believe that Christianity is used as a reference as it's the poster child to westerners for what "religion" is. He probably intended for this to be about religion as a whole but like. Come on. It's definitely Christianity with a few changes to make it a "generic religion" especially with the focus on punishment and ascension to a "good place". They also use sin/sinners a few times but that may be for familiarity especially since he had a whole npc for explaining terminology) that aside. Canonicity. Again. The history behind the Starworm followers vs the Isi is intentionally left a mystery! Fitzroy and Leticia are real as fuck (if u think they're canon) and provide some ideas for what actually happened in history but who knows! I should get back to my conversation I got distracted haha.

[necronomeconomicism]

I've been accused of not being a Jew a lot on this website. By Zionists, of course, so I don't address it. This morning I got such an accusation from someone who seems, at least uninvolved? I don't want to reblog because its off topic for the original post.

What's interesting to me about the reply is conjecture about the Shema and religion and respect. It should be obvious I am not a religious Jew. More than that I am extremely irreverent. In general and in my relationship to Jewishness. When I wrote this

my message was iconoclastic and deeply personal, perhaps too personal for social media, honestly. It is also poorly written! I don't know Hebrew well, nobody in my family really does. I am an American Jew and this is pretty common. I don't have a Hebrew keyboard either because why would I? So the Hebrew is copy pasted. I did not do so without intention or context or double checking to make sure it looked right. The intention and context however is personal enough that the meaning can't consistently translate well.

I learned the Shema prayer when I was younger, but did not internalize a real translation of it. For me my frame of reference for Israel was English. This is a problem because Israel is a very very loaded word. In the prayer, as I understand it most would say Israel is supposed to mean the People of Israel, as in the Jews in general. A responsible reading of the Shema would separate out the State of Israel from the People of Israel, and I was not taught responsibly, I was taught by American Zionists. The background idea was that Zionism and Judaism were linked, to be actually Jewish you had to be Zionist, and when you believe that, the People of Israel starts to mean the People of the State of Israel. People who we were, even in America, because there was only one place we could ever really belong.

Throughout my childhood nobody bothered to correct that understanding of Israel. That monstrous conflation in the many ways it arises in Zionism is much of what I attacked in that post, and what I decried in my curse. The prayer even is addressing, it says "Hear", its meant for ears, and so in my curse I perverted this. Because what does the Shema mean to the person saying it? What does it mean for it to be received? Where do the thoughts and feelings of the speaker go when this prayer delivers them? This comes across better when the word Israel is read as multifaceted. When the whole curse is read as poetry rather than literally. Because, by one interpretation, the curse is basically "Hear me Jews, you should all die" which is obviously not what I meant.

If I had a better understanding or mastery of Hebrew I might have found a way to convey that better. Instead I just posted that part of the Shema out as I remembered it looking in the book. So I'm going to edit it, removing the Hebrew characters, leaving some notes and a fundraising link, and then pin that on my blog.

All of that is just explanation of the curse and not a direct response to anything in particular. This is.

Me and my mother have had to avoid neo nazis in an Arizona gas station. I've been bullied for my hair. I've hidden bacon at the back of the fridge to look better to visiting relatives. I have been sat down and given first hand account by my grandfather what it was like to flee Nazi Germany to China as a child and run directly into the Japanese invasion. Then years later completely fell out with him over his Zionism and now struggle to maintain a relationship with my grandmother.

The literal meaning of Israel is "one who struggles with G-d" and I've struggled with God plenty enough to be included in the People of Israel. My experience with the culture and languages and faith is no less valid than any other Jews' experience. Neither is my choice to wield the Shema as a weapon any less sacred than another Jews' choice to make it their last breath. I am not confused, or lost, or fake. I know exactly where I stand, what I stand for, and why.