#one of the most haunted places in canada

[brain--rott]

century manor insane asylum

[astonmartinii]

knives out | lewis hamilton social media au

pairing: lewis hamilton x rosberg!reader

2016 saw the murder of brocedes right before our very eyes, but who got y/n in the will?

MASTERLIST | TIP JAR

- part of the brother's best friend series -

yourusername

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tagged: nicorosberg

yourusername: back in barcelona! nothing has ever happened here, right? RIGHT?

view all comments

user1: when i'm in a victim of brocedes contest and y/n rosberg turns up

user2: nico was like "oh, lewis has had a good qualifying... here comes the curse"

user3: he's the hater we should all aspire to be

nicorosberg: barcelona is a beautiful place but you should pick your company well!

yourusername: great advice nico, i should've left you at home

nicorosberg: snore! i'm great company you just can't keep up with my great personality and wit

yourusername: what ever you need to tell yourself old man

nicorosberg: i'm two years older than you?

yourusername: how was the industrial revolution?

user4: i hope they never grow up and always argue in public

user5: omg the argument on sky about lewis v seb in canada... and jenson just stood there with the biggest shit-eating grin ever

lewishamilton: my trauma is not your joke

yourusername: it was my trauma too i was the one who had to listen to him complain for the next TWO WEEKS

lewishamilton: trying to find where i care...

yourusername: you complained first ??

lewishamilton: rightly so!

yourusername: do not tussle with me about this, by now i thought you'd know that us rosbergs don't play about complaining

lewishamilton: believe me my therapist knows that

user6: i know nico sat on his hands forcing himself not to comment back

user7: alternatively, celebrating that he still lives in lewis' head

lewishamilton

liked by georgerussell63, charles_leclerc and 2,305,899 others

tagged: yourusername

lewishamilton: @yourusername i may love you but if that man ever takes a picture of my car i'm putting a hit on his head

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user11: we got a relationship reveal and a death threat all in one post

user12: lewis saw yall ready to make a brocedes edit using this race and made sure you knew that he doesn't care about a his old haunts

user13: he was like yall shipping me with the wrong rosberg

yourusername: let's refrain from threats for now

lewishamilton: we're gonna have to get rid of that last name, no more curses

nicorosberg: RIGHT THAT IS IT IF YOU DARE GET MARRIED DOUBLE-BARRELLED OR ELSE, ROSBERGS ARE ELITE AND YOU WISH YOU HAD THIS NAME

yourusername: he does have a point

lewishamilton: i'm for real going to lose my mind that we haven't spoken in years and this is where he drew the line

nicorosberg: you told the world you're dating my sister at the same time as me

lewishamilton: stop cursing me then 🤨

nicorosberg: i don't curse you my devilish good looks just sent your engine into cardiac arrest

user14: i know toto wolff just fell to his knees in the mercedes garage seeing them bicker in instagram comments after making merc a literal warzone for years

user15: and yet this is the most brocedes way to go about it

georgerussell63: even if you're dating his sister, i'm still your favourite teammate right?

yourusername: valterri exists buddy soz

georgerussell63: *clutches my pearls*

lewishamilton: and that is exactly why valterri is my favourite teammate

georgerussell63: whatever 💁🏻‍♀️

charles_leclerc: not for long xx

yourusername: whoever can bring me the best coffee can get the crown?

lewishamilton: stop exploiting my teammate and future teammate

yourusername: that's what they're there for?

yourusername

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tagged: lewishamilton

yourusername: anything happen this week?

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user19: y/n ruining her brother's week - anything happen this week?

user20: more like year

nicorosberg: more like life

yourusername: drama queen

nicorosberg: as i should be !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yourusername: got enough exclamation marks in there buddy

nicorosberg: no open the door i need to scream directly in your ears

yourusername: if it's any consolation, the relationship started after 2016

nicorosberg: so he got me out of the way so he could go for my little sister 🤨

lewishamilton: yep!

nicorosberg: no i'm serious let me in i need to yell

nicorosberg: I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE I CAN HEAR ROSCOE

nicorosberg: fine i'll just abseil from my apartment give me a sec

user21: y/n please let him in he's so serious about that i can feel it

user22: anyone from monaco here and want to keep us updated?

danielricciardo: Y/N LET HIM IN HE NEARLY KICKED MY POTTED PLANT OFF THE BALCONY

yourusername: lol

danielricciardo: THIS IS NOT A LAUGHING MATTER PLEASE

lewishamilton: fine, you people are such bores

nicorosberg: i nearly lost a birkenstock

yourusername: and my inheritance nearly doubled

lewishamilton: *our

user23: i think lewis is having way too much fun with this

nicorosberg

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tagged: yourusername

nicorosberg: we're back at the track and i've got a sneaking feeling that the red bull might be fast around here

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user24: nico said babe won't catch me posting lewis on my instagram

maxverstappen1: sure thing buddy he's dating your sister, but there's NO NEED TO TAKE IT OUT ON ME

nicorosberg: i said you're going to win?

maxverstappen1: i DON'T NEED YOUR BAD JUJU GIVE IT TO LEWIS HE'S THE ONE YOU'RE ANGRY AT NOT ME

nicorosberg: i'm not angry at lewis

lewishamilton: really?

nicorosberg: OF COURSE NOT

yourusername: he'll get over it soon lewis don't worry

lewishamilton: really? he's still holding a grudge from 2016 - that was EIGHT YEARS AGO

yourusername: yeah sorry that's a rosberg trait ❤️

user25: not the grid becoming victims of the brocedes fall out eight years later

yourusername: you're so shady why did you crop lewis out?

nicorosberg: outfit wasn't on par with the rosbergs

yourusername: oh no

lewishamilton: HOW DARE YOU

yourusername: you queens can take this out on each other i'm not getting involved in this one

lewishamilton: i know this birkenstock wearing primadonna is not dissing my custom mcqueen

nicorosberg: it's custom because no one would want something so ugly 🫶🏻

user26: someone take nico off the parc ferme interviews lewis might just run him over

user27: he should just let roscoe at his ankles

nicorosberg: that vegan dog can't do shit to me

yourusername: leave the kids out of it nico

nicorosberg: you birthed that? my condolences to your reproductive system

lewishamilton: DO NOT FAT SHAME MY SON

roscoelovescoco: kill yourself @nicorosberg

user28: WTF IS GOING ON

lewishamilton

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tagged: yourusername

lewishamilton: he may have won the battle, but i won the war

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user29: bro you're going to be subjected to boho chic Christmases for the rest of your life

user30: guy is going to get poisoned via christmas nut roast by nico 😭

yourusername: this is corny but i love you

lewishamilton: i love you too i'm going to pretend you didn't just call my super thought out caption corny

yourusername: it was corny and that's what i love about you

nicorosberg: you need better standards

yourusername: for someone who had so much homoerotic tension with the man that you retired you're being very rude about the subject of such tension

nicorosberg: that's not how that went

yourusername: sure, jan

nicorosberg: stop trying to rewrite history

yourusername: i saw it with my own two eyes... are you jealous that i ended up with lewis instead of you?

nicorosberg: nO

user31: i feel like this is definitely not the argument i thought i would see on the internet today

user32: lewis hamilton got passed around the rosberg house ... this your goat?

user33: both rosbergs are hawt as hell so yes!

charles_leclerc: oh great, keep stoking the flames lewis! if you invoke his wrath upon ferrari next season i will personally sacrifice you to the gods

lewishamilton: excuse me?

charles_leclerc: i don't know if you know this but i kinda don't have a world championship yet ... I DO NOT WANT THE ROSBERG CURSE ATTACHED TO ME

lewishamilton: do not minimise my trauma charles

charles_leclerc: you haven't joined ferrari yet, you don't know trauma. be nice to him, i can't finish my career with max having more championships than me

maxverstappen1: skill issue

user34: do these people ever stop arguing?

yourusername: no! and i can assure you it's worse in person

user35: worst brocedes tussle since nico found out?

yourusername: i was making a list of people to invite to my birthday dinner and nico was angry that i wrote lewis' name before his

yourusername

liked by charles_leclerc, lewishamilton and 1,304,277 others

tagged: lewishamilton, nicorosberg

yourusername: still a victim of the brocedes nuclear fallout all these years later

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user37: bro nearly lost her bf to her brother

user38: lewis couldn't have nico and went for his sister instead

user39: insert larry stylinson theory here that y/n is just the beard and toto wolff is simon cowell

yourusername: i'm blocking all of you

nicorosberg: still yapping about this ... and i'm the dramatic one

yourusername: babe we can all see all of your comments on previous posts where you're the literal definition of crashing out

nicorosberg: BARCELONA WAS LEWIS' FAULT WE ALL KNOW THIS

yourusername: when did i bring up barcelona... you just proved my point IDIOT

nicorosberg: make me sound insane all you want ... TOTO IS THE REAL VILLAIN HERE

yourusername: ???

nicorosberg: he notebooked us

yourusername: riiiiiiiiiiight

nicorosberg: i wrote lewis a letter when i retired and toto never gave it to him

yourusername: you're telling me i had to hide my relationship for so long because you trusted that austrian big foot fraud to be your messenger pigeon ?

user40: did we just get insane brocedes lore on a random tuesday?

user41: you're telling me it was toto's fault the whole time?

lewishamilton: well yes it would've been helpful to have gotten the letter, you have to admit the sneeking around was hot

yourusername: you're right 🤭🤭🤭

lewishamilton: hiding in your bathroom while nico came over to bitch about me was a personal highlight

nicorosberg: excuse me?

lewishamilton: i know we're trying to be better, so here's a compliment: you're very creative when being mean about me

nicorosberg: why thank you 😝

yourusername: nuh uh we ain't doing this shit

lewishamilton: don't worry y/n you'll always be my favourite

nicorosberg: but you'll never have our trip to greece :P

yourusername: i will strangle you britney

user42: y/n got brocedes to talk again, but at what cost?

lewishamilton

liked by nicorosberg, charles_leclerc and 4,677,309 others

tagged: yourusername

lewishamilton: got y/n's hand in marriage in the will (after i murdered her brother's career)

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user43: y/n can't escape brocedes even on her engagement post

user44: she (and them) will never get rid of it

yourusername: i love you baby, here's to the rest of our life (even if that includes you arguing with my brother for the rest of time)

lewishamilton: i love you even more, i'd go through all of that psychological warfare again and again if it means i still end up with you

yourusername: we've always had an invisible string

lewishamilton: and there's no one else i'd want to be cosmically tied to <3

user45: i might cry they're so cute

user46: that comment thread called me single in about 100 different languages

charles_leclerc: congratulations you two! also congratulations to me - no more rosberg curse!

yourusername: really? on this POST?

charles_leclerc: hold on girlypop, it was mr hamilton-rosberg that brought up your brother first not me

lewishamilton: you better get all this attitude out now charles

charles_leclerc: what? you gonna marry my brother?

yourusername: lol i'm not threatened by them

arthurleclerc: why am i being shaded?

user47: 2025 HURRY THE FUCK UP

nicorosberg: i guess you're finally getting the rosberg name you've always wanted ...

lewishamilton: yes... i have always had a crush on your sister

nicorosberg: GASP! PERVERT 🫵🏻 i have known you since we were 12 you GROSS MAN

lewishamilton: WELL YES I WAS ALSO 12 I'VE NOT ALWAYS BEEN 36 MORON

yourusername: well doesn't this just get me excited for christmas

user48: i know a monopoly board hate to see these three coming

yourusername: @nicorosberg can i have an actual congratulations???

nicorosberg: i'm happy for you, i'm glad you're happy (also he's loaded so slay)

yourusername: i'll take it!

lewishamilton: sure whatever thanks nico !

fin.

note: lol finally finished this one! i have been very in and out on here, i have a lot going on x

[gollancz]

Guys. Christmas is coming. Consumerism is in the driver's seat and GAWD don't I know about the existential ennui of all these faceless corporations trying to schill you their wares. It's cold. Impersonal. Bleak.

So I, a fellow tumblr user, will instead try to schill you MY wares, so that when you purchase these items you can say "Hey, that person from tumblr worked on this", and feel the warmth of HUMAN CONNECTION in a way that is completely normal and not parasocial at all. We really are friends. I promise. Yes, you. Love you, bestie. Remember the boop war? Good times. Fond memories.

THIRTEEN STOREYS and FAMILY BUSINESS by Jonathan Sims

Tumblr's favourite Nightmare Factory @jonnywaistcoat has two novels out and they're phenomenal horror that also punch you in the throat with SOCIAL COMMENTARY and FEELINGS. He's so adept at tapping into the specific part of my brain that feels fear like a small child - not the adult creepy scared that I normally get around horror, but specifically the kind of fear that almost freezes your limbs and vocal chords with a terror you don't quite understand because there is so much in the world that you don't know, but you know that somehow this thing might be quick enough or smart enough or sneaky enough to get you before you can get to the safety of your parents sort of fear.

THIRTEEN STOREYS is a haunted house novel, but set in a refurbished block of flats. Each chapter follows a different resident being haunted in a different way, with a style to match the flavour of ghost. It's all tied together phenomenally and brutally.

FAMILY BUSINESS is a story about ghosts in a different way, following a woman who joins a post-mortem house cleaning service while grieving the death of her best friend. But as she removes the stains from the houses of the dead, she begins to suspect something else is removing even more.

Both of these titles are available from Gollancz worldwide!

THE LAST UNICORN, THE WAY HOME, THE INNKEEPER'S SONG and A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE by Peter S. Beagle

Obviously Peter's work needs no introduction, and our editions aren't available in the US and Canada, but I've had a wonderful time working with Peter and his team to bring these beautiful books back to the UK. Meeting him at Worldcon this year was such a magical moment, and he was jet-lagged and I had gone through sleep deprived into hyper and was bringing an Extremely Weird Energy to every interaction I had that day, resulting in this photo:

THE LAST UNICORN and THE WAY HOME are a matched pair of wonderful fairy stories. THE WAY HOME has two novellettes in it, and the first - 'Two Hearts' - won the Hugo award. It will also destroy you.

A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE was Peter's first ever novel, and it's wistful and romantic and so beautiful.

THE INNKEEPER'S SONG is his epic fantasy quest, it's an adventure story that reads almost lyrically. Also there's an orgy in the middle which caught me by surprise when I was reading it for the first time on the train into work.

HIGH VAULTAGE by Chris and Jen Sugden

It's possible that someone on this website doesn't know I was involved with this book but don't worry, I will HUNT THEM DOWN AND TELL THEM. This is the first book I took all the way through the editorial process from end to end and I am SO PROUD of it and Chris and Jen and their wonderful world of @victoriocity. Officially one of the seven funniest books published in the UK this year, shortlisted for the Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. It's a chaotic, bonkers murder mystery set in an alternate Victorian London which is the most gleeful dystopia I have ever encountered.

Featuring:

Grumpy Sunshine besties

The Victorian Equivalent of the Chuck Norris Meme

A robot who undertook a course in People Management

An indefatigable beagle

This is another book that you can get from Gollancz all over the world, and you SHOULD because it's amazing. Go into your local bookshop and ask them to order it into stock. It's a great Christmas present. It's my firstborn book baby (like that's a completely normal thing to say when I didn't even write it). Also if you're a fan of the podcast, why not tell the Guardian how great it is, and make a nuisance of yourself until they review. (I would, but the form asks for your name and then they'd know I didn't suddenly discover Victoriocity this year. Either that or think I was a very careless editor.) If you've not listened to the podcast yet, you absolutely should. It pings all my Douglas Adams receptors in the best way. If you like HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE, if you like CABIN PRESSURE, VICTORIOCITY is the perfect addition.

HAMMAJANG LUCK by Makana Yamamoto

SLIGHTLY cheating because HAMMAJANG LUCK isn't out in North America until January (pre-orders make great Christmas presents guys), but it IS out in the UK and the rest of the world next week! This is my second big editorial project and it's a Big Gay Space Heist ft. disaster lesbians, trans characters, and a tech billionaire getting put in his place. It's joyous and energetic and crammed full of Hawaiian pidgin as a love letter to the diaspora. @makana-yama is a phenomenal writer and this is their love letter to their communities, families both born and found, while also a statement on the victims of gentrification (and how those are disproportionally BIPOC communities). PLUS:

friends to enemies to cautious allies to lovers

trans cyborgs

Suck It Space Elon

You know that One Scene in Charlie's Angels where Cameron Diaz is in the white body suit and breaking into the safe and has to stretch out to hit two buttons at once? Yeah. That's the vibe.

Being able to work with Makana is a delight, and HAMMAJANG tapped into all the feelings I got watching LEVERAGE for the first time, so I went to watch it again while I was editing. Also OCEAN'S 8.

DEEP BLACK by Miles Cameron

So, barring Branderson, Miles Cameron may be one of our most prolific authors. He writes a minimum two books a year, one SFF and one historical fiction (as Christian Cameron) and he is... An absolute phenomenon. He IS the Chuck Norris meme. I'm obsessed with him. He's former US military intelligence turned naturalised Canadian Hippy, has written over fifty novels, can turn his hand to any genre and write it fantastically, is a practical archaeologist - running large scale re-enactments from a variety of periods ranging from Bronze Age right the way up to the Victorian era, using traditional techniques to allow academics to study how the practicalities of weapons, clothes, food etc. would have worked in practice. Two years ago he won a medieval combat tournament in Verona, a clear ten years older at least than the next oldest competitor, he teaches Historical European Martial Arts, but ties it into the history of martial arts globally. He can make his own clothes, ink, leatherwork. He's a ballet dancer. I once took him for a day out and he ended it in a different shirt and shoes from the ones he'd started in. I asked him for an author photo and he sent me this:

DEEP BLACK is the sequel to his critically acclaimed SF debut ARTIFACT SPACE, where he has taken his research and experience of global historical cultures and extrapolated to create an interplanetary future where the best of all are celebrated. And then Aliens Happen. And then, in reaction, Capitalism Happens (which is covered in the short story collection BEYOND THE FRINGE).

He's such a thoughtful and erudite speaker, if you're curious about his work, I'd recommend listening to his episodes on the Friends Talking Fantasy podcast, and also his appearance on The Publishing Rodeo.

If SF isn't your bag, he's also got:

Arthurian fantasy

Bronze Age fantasy

Medieval Mages fantasy

A CURSE OF CROWS - Lauren Dedroog

I actually inherited Lauren when a colleague of mine departed for fresh pastures, which gave me the great opportunity to work on this series which is so vastly different from my usual fare. It's epic, sweeping, romantic and lush, with such detailed description and complex political machinations, while also being brutal, dark and heavy (tw: for sexual assault, torture etc, etc.). If you like Sarah J Maas and Cassandra Clare, this should hit the sweet spot. Lauren is an ICU nurse when not writing, and this was somehow created when she was putting in a million hours in hospitals during COVID. The feat boggles my mind.

A CURSE OF CROWS is out now in the UK, Australia and Europe, and it won the People's Choice for Standaard Boek's Book of the Year award in 2023, in her home country of Belgium. It will be hitting shelves in North America next September! A DANCE OF SERPENTS is where I get to pick up the editorial mantle, and that has just landed in my inbox this week so I am excited to dig in.

Featuring:

Harold, they're lesbians

Murder baby is actually a cinnamon roll

Sensitive wings are sexy

For serious, though, I'm lucky enough to work with a lot of authors I'm genuinely obsessed and astounded by. And yes, I do get to work on Joe Abercrombie, Brandon Sanderson and Andrzej Sapkowski, but they're not MY authors - they're led by the incredible Gillian and Marcus who I'm not 100% certain sleep. There are so many people on the Gollancz list who I could recommend for DAYS (and will, if you so request), but this is my stable of superstars.

[shiftingwithjaidyn]

🎞️ ⋮ writer/fame dr

★┊ BASICS .ᐟ

timeline:

this dr takes place around late august of 2022 due to the fact i intend to be part of one of the films i work on right from its beginning

locations:

los angeles, california (main)

vancouver, canada

new york, new york

san antonio, texas

london, england

notes:

i scripted out a lot of things that occur in this reality (due to the fact i scripted the timeline of everything somewhat similar)

some movies in my filmography are book adaptations that do not exist in this reality however exist in mine and most tv-shows in my filmography are cancelled shows in this reality so i decided to make them continued in my dr (just incase of some confusion hehe)

★┊ ABOUT ME .ᐟ

name: lilian maricel villaécija

nicknames: lily, lia, celia, mary/mari

gender & pronouns: demigirl || she/they

birthday: august 11th, 1980

height: 5’6”/167 cm

zodiac sign: leo

mbti: enfp

nationality & ethnicity: american || filipino-chinese

occupations:

screenwriter

script supervisor

production designer

director of photography

make-up artist

storyboard artist

aesthetic:

★┊ CAREER .ᐟ

movies:

center stage (2000)

in the mood for love (2000)

uptown girls (2003)

eternal sunshine of a spotless mind (2004)

pride & prejudice (2005)

the devil wears prada (2006)

black swan (2010)

if i stay (2014)

la la land (2016)

lady bird (2017)

the glass castle (2017)

to the bone (2017)

the greatest showman (2017)

oceans 8 (2018)

crazy rich asians (2018)

always be my maybe (2019)

little women (2019)

all the bright places (2020)

pieces of a woman (2020)

last night in soho (2021)

everything everywhere all at once (2022)

one last stop (2023) [film adaptation of the book by casey mcquinston]

tv shows:

grey's anatomy (s2-s13) || 2005-2016)

rupaul's drag race (s5-s14 || 2013-2022)

rupaul's drag race: all stars (s2-s5 || 2016-2020)

anne with an e (s1- || 2017-present/ongoing)

the marvelous mrs. maisel (s1-s5 || 2017-2023)

pose (s1-s3 || 2018-2021)

instinct (s1-s3) (2018-2023)

the umbrella academy (s1-s4 || 2019-2024)

the haunting of bly manor (s1 || 2020)

bridgerton (s1- || 2020-present/ongoing)

yellowjackets (s2- || 2023-present/ongoing)

★┊ RELATIONSHIPS .ᐟ

╰┈➤ FRIENDS

(i have a lot of friends due to the fact i've been in the industry for quite a while now, but these are just my closest)

trixie mattel

shea couleé

katya zamolodchikova

kate walsh

emmy raver-lampman

sandra oh

nicola coughlan

gemma chan

simone kessell

a huge special mention as well to @ixzotica a.k.a. aaliyah sinclair in my dr!! the one and only best friend, neighbor, sister, and platonic soulmate of mine in every single universe <3

╰┈➤ PET

name: mari-pusa (Mariposa)

nicknames: mari, choco butternut,

gender & pronouns: female || she/her

birthday: january 15

zodiac sign: capricorn

mbti: istj

breed: tortoiseshell

╰┈➤ S/O

gonna keep him a redacted for now as i am not yet comfortable sharing much about my dr but i just wanted to let u guys know he's an actor, he's a libra, and that he exists HSHJSHDSHKJHL

★┊ EXTRAS .ᐟ

links:

patter banner || gradient divider || star divider || heart divider

note:

feel free to ask me about this dr or any shifting related thing in general!! i'd really appreciate it! : ]

[unhonestlymirror]

I am horrified by how often I see people writing, "Well, we shouldn't take Holocaust into account when talking about Israel-Palestine war." Of course we SHOULD, and that's why:

"October 7 is getting rewritten and certain social media users are an active of the campaign to erase the atrocities.

I was barely awake on October 7th when news of the atrocities that were committed by Hamas began to trinkle in, horror by horror. With sleep still in my eyes, I had hoped it was a nightmare I could erase by burying my face in pillows and returning to slumber, but alas, reality was insistent. Hamas had butchered over 1,200 people, amongst them infants, pregnant women, the handicapped, and the elderly. Even dogs were not spared.

But Hamas didn’t just murder them in cold blood, they had tortured, raped, desecrated their bodies, and took hostages. Their depravity was limitless. And they were so proud of their crimes that they used GoPro cameras to record them, later releasing the sickening spectacles to the public as a form of psychological terror. Add to that the live streams, cell phone recordings, and CCTV camera footage, and you’ll probably have the most documented massacre in history—with a reported 60,000 video clips collected.

I’ve seen some of these videos, including those not circulating quite so widely in public. They will haunt me for the rest of my life—and that falls far short than the 47 minute “film” shown to select journalists and diplomats worldwide, a number of whom broke down and/or fell ill during the screening.

But as shocking as all of this deranged butchery was — which was entirely the intention — what stunned me in the aftermath is the world’s reaction.

Putting aside disputes of land and politics, it was jarring to hear such a blatant reframing of narrative. It started with calling Hamas the “resistance” and justifying the unjustifiable. A number of BLM chapters had put out “heroic” images of Hamas terrorists descending on parachutes. I half-expected them to release action figures of Hamas fighters too. Maybe they did?

And then came the "BUTs." Sure, some folks condemned Hamas, but it was always followed by a "BUT," justifying the unjustifiable. I've been asked, ad nauseam, "What would you do in their situation?" Well, my response remains steadfast: not commit random acts of murder, torture, and kidnapping. Call me old-fashioned. (For the record I’ve called many colorful words for my stance, but oddly that was never one of them).

It was a wake-up call for many, especially those of us in the global Jewish community. Overnight, the illusion of safety shattered, much like the dreams of anyone who's binge-watched a horror series alone at night. But now we were all collectively trapped in that nightmare, and couldn’t wake up no matter how hard with pitched.

The history of the Holocaust is taught in many schools around the world. “Never forget” and “never again” are sentiments that are echoed within that curriculum. Yet, while some might scoff at the persistent advocacy for Holocaust education, insisting that it’s hitting them over the head, a nationwide survey in 2020 reveals that the under-40 crowd seems to have missed the memo. Shockingly, one in ten respondents haven’t even heard of the word “Holocaust,” let alone being aware that as many as 6 million Jews perished in it.

Further, nearly a quarter of those questioned said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, had been exaggerated or that they weren’t sure. Meanwhile in Canada, one in five young people (under 34) either hasn't heard of the Holocaust or isn't sure what it is. And in Britain, one in twenty adults flat-out deny that it ever took place. Ah, the privilege of blissful ignorance.

Most who underestimate the number of Jews killed in Holocaust have neutral or warm feelings toward Jews.

But it's not just ignorance; there's an entire industry that has been propped up and dedicated to Holocaust denial, complete with books, “movies,” and groups. To make matters worse, alarmingly, fewer Holocaust survivors are around to share their firsthand accounts and counteract the flames of denialism.

Nearly half of the 1000 people surveyed had stated that they’ve seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online.

I’ve always thought that denials of genocide—such as the Holocaust —were something that happened over time, with history slipping away and being re-written.

However, I never expected to be observing this in real time.

While initially the so-called “resistance” was celebrated by a subset of society, this soon turned into full-fledged denials of Hamas’ actions on Oct 7. Despite overwhelming evidence in the form of videos captured and shared by Hamas themselves and shared on Telegram channels and elsewhere, I would read and hear people claiming that they had only targeted Israeli military. Absurd claims emerged using supposedly ‘leaked’ footage where an Israeli helicopter shoots at Nova music festival goers. That video was viewed over 30 million times on X alone. The video, which was actually originally shared by the IDF on Oct 9, was showing their attacks on specific Gazan targets—certainly NOT indiscriminate bombings of music festival attendees in Israel. (Here’s a great thread that details how this piece of disinformation spread and geolocation information that further confirms that the claim is fake).

I’ve heard countless denials of the rapes of women (and men), despite overwhelming evidence in the form of physical evidence, forensics, and a number of witness testimonies. Women’s rights groups, meanwhile, remained silent—thus offering a vacuum for denialists to fill. Proponents of “me too” also stayed silent. Worse, the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre’s director signed an open letter calling Hamas perpetrating “sexual violence” an “unverified accusation.” It took UN Women nearly two months to issue a lukewarm condemnation of the brutal attacks. “We are alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks,” they wrote, following a letter writing campaign urging them to speak up. Better late than never though, right?

The roughly 40 dead babies claim was debunked as a lie. At least that’s what people on social media now declare as fact, citing a Haaretz investigation.

“Haaretz investigation EXPOSES all the ISRAELI LIES from October 7th just like I predicated (sic),” reads the post of one particularly large disinformation account.

These claims persisted despite Haaretz directly addressing that post and calling it “blatant lies” and insisting that it “absolutely no basis in Haaretz’s reporting.”

The denials continued regardless of the fact that a group of 200 forensic pathologists from all over the world had confirmed that babies were indeed murdered and that some babies were found decapitated, though it was unclear whether this was done before or after death. First responders also corroborated that they witnessed beheaded infants. Regardless of decapitation, these were babies, murdered.

The forensic pathologists also confirmed that humans were executed, bound and burned alive. Israeli police have over 1,000 statements related to the attack.

When some of the hostages were released, Hamas supporters claimed that the hostages enjoyed being held by them, that they hardly wanted to leave. That this was like a pleasant vacation for them, that’s all. Like sipping piña coladas by the beach. In fact, they would state that they were more concerned about their safety in Israeli hands. They even concocted stories of love affairs between a hostage who was shot in the leg and a Hamas captor. A sick and twisted take on reality where up is down, cats are dogs, and denial is truth. They dismissed the reality that many of these hostages watched their loved ones get murdered in front of them, and still had relatives being held in captivity. The hostages were also administered Clonazepam by Hamas, a mood-enhancing tranquilizing drug, before handing them over to the Red Cross, so that they would appear “happy.”

Meanwhile, the Yale Daily News published a correction of an opinion column stating that the “allegations had not been substantiated.”

The denials go on and on, and I can’t help but feel like I’m watching a version of Holocaust denial, except this time it’s happening in real time—not years after the fact. And this time, it has a Wi-Fi connection and a social media account.

The conditions for this were ripe. Moral relativism is why just several weeks ago, Gen Z embraced Bin Laden's 'Letter to America.' It has been building up for years across college campuses, a breeding ground for ideologies that support violent means to achieve political gains.

The perceived power dynamics play a role here too. In the eyes of many, the Israelis are seen as a superpower whereas the Palestinians, and by extension Hamas, are seen as underdogs. In their view, the underdog is always right because it is the victim, and the “power” is the oppressor. So how can the oppressor be a victim?

Israelis, despite the majority of the population being Mizrahi Jews, as well as 20% Arabs (who were also victims on Oct 7), have been framed as “white colonizers,” vs the Palestinians who are seen as “POC” in the context of this conflict. Never mind that Jews, including Ashkenazi Jews, can be traced back to the land through DNA, archaeological evidence, and historical documents.

An overall distrust for media is another factor, which has resulted in individuals taking the word of random influencer accounts as gospel over traditional media outlets. According to Gallup polls, Americans’ trust in media is near a record low. Only 34% of US adults have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence as of 2022. This is a major hindrance to our sensemaking abilities.

And then, of course, there’s cognitive dissonance. When a group identifies so closely with the perpetrator and they commit heinous acts, confronting that fact happens to be uncomfortable. So, in an attempt to reduce that discomfort, they rationalize or deny the evidence. This means that they accept only evidence that supports their existing beliefs, while placing unreasonable demands on the other side.

But none of these factors would have gained as much traction if it weren’t for something that didn’t exist during the Holocaust: social media. This is the engine that helps drives this real-time historical revisionism and denialism. According to 2021 data from Pew Research, over 70% of Americans get their news via social platforms. A Reuters Institute report from 2023 found that 30% of respondents use social media as the main way to get their news.

We have a society that consumes sound-bites of information, both truth and lies (as well as lies based on grains of truth).

Social media algorithms—combined with human nature—tend to amplify outrageous untruths, which spread widely. Corrections, never make it as far as the original lie. They are just a faint hum.

Throughout the Israeli-Gaza war, we’ve seen AI generated images and bots used to paint a specific narrative—for evocative, emotional effect. But technologically sophisticatication isn’t a prerequisite for painting false narratives. Many “influencers” have taken to using existing images or videos and attaching misleading headlines to them—including sharing content that captures events in Syria while presenting it as taking place in Gaza. These networks of influencers have large reach, and can turn even the most blatant lie into a revisionist truth.

Researchers for Freedom House, a non-profit human right advocacy group, found that generally at least 47 governments have used commentators to manipulate online discussions in their favor, either via humans or bots. They’ve also recruited influencers to help spread false and misleading content, and have created fake websites that mimic actual media publications. Then there’s always Russia’s propaganda arm RT, and various other publications like Al Jazeera and Quds who have direct ties to Hamas and/or other Islamic regimes.

All of this has contributed to narrative confusion, and the erasure of unspeakable acts of brutality, and the denial of the facts of October 7, right before our very eyes.

If we cannot even share a common reality, how can have any hope of resolving anything?

“Never again” is happening now."

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Kentucky Route 0, One of Three Games About America

Script and Thumbnail below the fold!

Kentucky Route Zero is a magical realist point and click game of what I’d normally call Narrative Adventure, which came to kickstarter in 2011, then came out in 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2020, because you can’t have nothing for free, even things you pay for. The game is a text-driven game without any of the trappings of your typical point-and-clicker where you jam a ladder in your pants and try to work out why you want to put green dye in the water fountain. Instead it follows the haunted mind of Conway, a trucky driver and his interactions with small handful of people on a part of the Kentucky Interstate, while he to find the place he needs to do his delivery, despite being utterly lost.

I enjoyed what of Kentucky Route Zero I played, but the thing that stands out to me in hindsight is its sound design. It’s a beautifully defined game, audio-wise, with all sorts of thoughtful foley for its environments, and the way that even the pieces of the interface that Conway interacts with have their own sort of specific authentic sounds, chonks and thunks and ch-zzzzses.

It’s also visually splendid, beautiful in what it tries to represent in the heightened reality of its setting but also the format of a videogame. These places look good from the angle that’s chosen, creating lines of artwork and bars of cages, depending on what you’re focusing on, and by being a fixed-camera story of its type, Kentucky Route Zero takes on traits of theatre, with blocking and careful positioning and timing all making up part of how the story unfolds.

A story I haven’t finished.

See, I don’t feel like playing Kentucky Route Zero Act V.

Sit down, traveller. Let me tell you a story.

There’s a chance you’ve heard this story before. I’ve anonymised it here, not because I think you shouldn’t be able to work out who it is, but because the idea of focusing on the who runs the risk of ignoring the what. Plus, I don’t want to direct anyone to a person who said something stupid and encourage fights. That’s not the important issue.

This is the story of when someone perfectly represented something, and probably never realised it.

You will sometimes hear me talk about the take that ‘there are three games about America,’ with a tone of utter revulsion and derision. This is from an incident back in 2020, when a game developer and advocate for inclusive games, had an opinion, on the internet. This advocate is well-established and has a big audience, but also, he’s crucially, not a white guy, not a Christian guy, and not an American guy. These are factors that play into what he said, which was, in summary, that while Kentucky Route 0 was no doubt phenomenal, he wasn’t interested in playing it right now.

To this, an actual adult responded with:

This is legitimately the worst take you’ve ever had. There are only about three games that are actually American, and this is one of them. Everything else is designed for export. Kr0 is a precious and valuable thing. It is of immense and intense personal importance.

Now, resisting the urge to argue with a tweet, which is just generally a bad practice that leads to doing things like wanting to be on twitter, and setting aside this tweet conflating ‘this is of personal importance to me’ and ‘this should be of importance to you,’ this position describes the idea that there are only three games that are ‘actually American.’

What does it mean to be ‘actually American?’

America is a pretty pervasive presence, if you’re not aware of it. Most people in the world have to know about what’s going on in America. We know about your Presidents and your Senators and your Constitution, to the point where people can be more aware of how your country’s laws work than their own country’s laws. I’ve often seen it held up as an example of how poorly educated people in say, Canada and Australia are that we believe we have, say, a ‘first amendment right,’ but the thing is you have to ask why there is that.

We watch so much American TV.

We listen to American music.

We try to make our news broadcasts look like yours, because that’s what real and legitimate news looks like. We try to retell your stories in our local languages because that’s what real media looks like. Our children sing songs in your accents because that’s the culture that a multi-trillion dollar economy has pumped into the whole world.

America demands we attend their wars and surrender our living to become their dead and when we are done America sells the survivors a cheeseburger.

This is not a remarkable or controversial statement. You must know, this is not even vaguely challenging to know about. Everywhere in the world is replicating parts of the American empire, because America exports and enforces the vision of the American empire. McDonalds may sell curry in India, but it’s very important that the curry being sold is McDonalds curry because that is how you know it’s an American style curry.

What this means is when someone tries to assert there are only really three games about America, that’s a kind of specialised brain rot that requires you to consider games that are very much about America as not being really about America. And thus we see the other thing about America, which is it’s not enough for America to be the most important place in the world that everyone else in the world needs to recognise, but also, most of America is inadequately America for this vision of America. You saw this in the wake of 9/11, and the election of Barack Obama: huge amounts of American media resurged in extolling the values of ‘real’ America, as opposed to the parts of America where the vast majority of Americans lived, which just so happened to paint a lot of marginalised people living in the cities as ‘fake Americans.’

I am not bringing you unique information. This is just obviously true things if you don’t live within the boundaries of an environment that flatters you as the most normal thing in the world. The vast majority of the world is not America. There are eight billion people in the world, more or less, meaning that America is about 4% of the world, and yet, it is catastrophically, overwhelmingly, deleritously the common touchstone for how things are ‘supposed’ to work. This is through media imperialism, which is mostly supported by American companies exporting all their media to foreign markets extremely cheaply.

‘about three games that are actually American.’

This fascinating piece of doofusry still, even now leaves me agog. ‘Actually American.’ Kentucky Route 0 is actually American, you see, as opposed to… what? Is America’s Army one of them? You know, the game financed by the American Army? What about Call of Duty, a franchise that is in part subsidised by American military complex manufacturers? What about Grand Theft Auto, a videogame that tells the rags-to-riches story of American excess in criminality, setting aside the way it’s made by a Scottish company. Actually American, because American doesn’t mean America, it means one tiny little pool of ‘America’ where the speaker can imagine there’s a realness and an authenticity to the America-ness that doesn’t involve all the messy realities of what it is to be America. It’s the towns of hard-working people, that suffer under your particular description of oppression, whether that’s cities full of nonwhite people or corporations bleeding the country dry, always eliding the social cruelties and terribleness of these places, as if giving people money stops them from being bigoted (for example).

This is then used to recruit these poor, superior Americans, the you know, America Americans, whose sufferings are noble and whose authenticity cannot be impeached and they are then used as a defense against criticism of, you know, America. It’s the same speech Charlie Daniels gave about how foreigners may think they could push around Barack Obama (a dude who bombed a lot of shepherds with the most elaborate and brutal military ordinance in the world) but they were going to have a harder time taking on Americans who wrestled alligators, who at this point have exactly zero recorded drone strike kills.

This is because America America isn’t real.

‘Real’ America is a nebulous nothing that you can project whatever you want onto, and which is also not responsible for anything terrible that America does. It’s not the American Empire, it’s not the exporter of culture, it’s somehow purer, better, a sort of individualised folk who are to be protected and extolled, shriven of all the things about America that make it anything but its perfect idealised form of America.

I could go on.

I really could.

This is something that defines the world I have to live in. I speak English. I’m white. I’m from a coloniser state. I should be able to integrate easily and smoothly into the white supremacist capitalist hierarchy of American culture, but we are told, that no, we are not acceptable. We are only valid as long as our differences are invisible. We, a real people, do not get to have opinions on America, because we do not know True America. When you spell colour wrong in a chat message, when your accent isn’t quite right, when you don’t know the difference between junior and sophomore year of high school, then you are shown, you are evinced, and you are made very aware that you are other, you are outside, you are wrong.

And really, there’s no good reason for it. We send our soldiers to America’s wars, we buy America’s submarines, and we sing your songs. Our currency mimics America’s, our culture permeats with America’s, we even have such a crushing inferiority complex about the empire that there’s an academic term for what we feel about our own media compared to the media of the truer, proper empire to which we are vassal.

The term is ‘cultural cringe,’ and it was coined by Henry Lawson, who you, odds on, have never heard of. In 1894, he wrote:

The Australian writer, until he gets a “London hearing,” is only accepted as an imitator of some recognized English or American author; and, as soon as he shows signs of coming to the front, he is labelled “The Australian Southey,” “The Australian Burns,” or “The Australian Bret Harte,” and lately, “The Australian Kipling.” Thus no matter how original he may be, he is branded, at the very start, as a plagiarist, and by his own country, which thinks, no doubt, that it is paying him a compliment and encouraging him, while it is really doing him a cruel and an almost irreparable injury. But mark! As soon as the Southern writer goes “home” and gets some recognition in England, he is “So-and-So, the well-known Australian author whose work has attracted so much attention in London lately”; and we first hear of him by cable, even though he might have been writing at his best for ten years in Australia.

This is imperialism. This is a way in which we have been induced and brought by the empires around us to accept their ways as correct, as the normal, as default. And that is the mindset you must have if you want to look at the breadth of videogames, with their American ideas like health insurance, readily available guns, the importance of freedom, the ubiquity of air travel, the branding and iconography of types of food and the sports metaphors and then say ‘yeah, this doesn’t have anything to do with America, not really.’

Anyway, this thread, this incident, was a big deal at the time, in that there were a lot of people from within the community of game developers and journalists who seemed very happy to line up and get mad at a brown foreigner for being inadequately enthusiastic about the possibility of playing a videogame. But don’t worry, after a day or two, an apology was forthcoming for all of this fracas, by which I mean, the original developer apologised for being so thoughtless as to, again, express honest lack of enthusiasm in a videogame.

For me, this was a kind of break point, where I started just blocking indie devs on sight. I don’t want to know what they’re involved in, I don’t want to promote their work, and I will hold tiny grudges against them that I do not seek to transfer or encourage in others. This was one silly incident in which a lot of people said something silly because they don’t know better, or they’re arseholes.

None of this is fair to Kentucky Route 0. It’s a game with its own intentions and its own perspective. It’s not trying to make this conversation happen. Kentucky Route 0 has been choked and gripped by this position around it, where to talk about an American game, someone put a cross on it that made it the avatar for All Things America. The wild thing to me is that I had, prior to this point, played two episodes of Kentucky Route 0. I thought it was pretty good, and I liked what it did with the negative space of dialogue options – when a character you’re controlling makes excuses, the excuses you choose show you other things you could be making excuses about that you, the player, didn’t know beforehand. That’s some good Narrative Storytelling Design, I like that a lot. But now I can’t really engage with Kentucky Route Zero because the main thing it makes me think about is how this final chapter, meant to round out the game’s story and present a conclusion and a point, became this flashpoint for a lot of people to be very casually racist.

Which kinda poisons the whole thing for me. It’s an authentic thing, I’m sure, it’s a thoughtful thing, too, but the people stepping up to say I should care about it did so in a way that made me hate them.

Any time you see me say ‘three games about America’ I’m talking about this, and the attitude of a particular kind of American that America is, as always, exceptional. It’s real easy to not realise when you’re just voicing your self-centeredness and how easy that is to ignore the opinions of people around you and what they’re saying. This is what I’m talking about when I mention ‘the three games about America.’

[fade for credit text]

By the way, the three games about America are Crash Bandicoot, Sam & Max Hit The Road, and Bust A Move.

[outlaw-apologist]

Home For The Holidays (Logan x Reader) Holiday Hurt Comfort

Summary: Haunted by what was and what could've been, this time of year is always really hard for you. Logan knows this feeling all too well and he's not shy about reminding you where you belong. Tags: Hurt with comfort, fluff, seasonal depression, Thanksgiving at the X-Mansion Note: If you enjoy this please consider re-blogging! Likes are appreciated but doesn't show other people the story. Thank youuu xoxo

As the weather grew bleaker, so did your mood. It wasn’t on purpose, of course. Seasonal depression? Maybe… Or perhaps it was the fact that you, like most of the other X-Men, had ghosts. You had stood outside in the same spot every morning for the last few weeks, watching the leaves turn from green to a crisp gold, feeling the cool air lick at your cheeks until it grew bitter and whipped with an icy sting strong enough to cast a rosiness upon your skin. The leaves browned, curling in on themselves before laying bare the skeletons of trees. You understood how nature felt. Wanting to wither away yourself. Wanting to find a nice burrow to spend a long slumber in until spring. To escape the faces that haunt you, the memories that plague your dreams with their sneering reminders that you are alone. Nothing ever lasts. You’ve had family. You’ve lost family. You’ve had friends; you’ve lost friends. Death was a fickle mistress, as they say. But what is worse? Knowing the laughter of the one you love will never ring out in existence again? Or the fact that they could be laughing with anyone but you? It was an internal struggle you could never decide on. Did you miss your lost loved ones more, or the ones who decided to go through life without you?

It had been days since most of the students had packed up and left, excitedly chattering about their trips home, the families they'd be seeing, the familiar places they'd return to. You'd watched them go with a tight, forced smile, the kind that didn't quite reach your eyes. Now, with Thanksgiving just around the corner, the empty halls of the X-Mansion felt quieter than ever. And that silence only made the weight in your chest heavier.

This is my new home, you thought. These people… they’re my family now. You wanted to convince yourself of that, but fear gripped you like a starving snake, desperate to squeeze any light out of its victim before consuming it. They’ll leave too. They always do. And if they don’t leave, they could die. Being a mutant was dangerous, and everyone here had lost someone precious to them. You hated it. It made you sick to your stomach—to want to be loved so badly yet know the consequences were worse than the prize.

“There you are.” Heavy, musky words filled the silence of the wind. You felt a familiar presence make its way to your side, radiating warmth. “Turnin’ purple, I see.”

Your lips twitched up as you spared Logan a glance. “I haven’t been out here that long.”

“With that look in your eyes, I’d say you don’t even know how long it’s been.” Following Logan to a nearby bench, you reveled in the warmth of his company. “I can see you from my window, standin’ out here like a damn statue,” he continued. “What’s got you upset?”

You gave a small shrug. “Life.” Of course, Logan simply laughed. He knew all too well what you meant. Despite his rough exterior, Logan had always been quite soft with you. There had always been a silent kinship between you—a knowing that life was full of hurt and daggers. Or, in Logan’s case, claws. “Holiday blues, huh?” He eyed the twirling branches of the same tree you had been admiring day by day. “If it makes you feel any better, Canada’s Thanksgiving was last month and nobody said a damn word about it.” There was humor in his words. Logan didn’t really give a damn. He’d lived in America long enough to celebrate their Thanksgiving, but it went beyond that. Logan was born before Canada even celebrated a Thanksgiving. His original family long dead, buried by history and heavy snow.

“I know it’s stupid.” You licked your cold, chapped lips. “You’d think by now I’d be used to this. Being alone… Thanksgiving is a dogshit holiday anyway.”

“In my experience, most holidays are dogshit holidays. But that doesn’t stop you from missin’ what they could’ve been. Or the people who should be here right now. Commercialism be damned. We just wanna come together during the bleak months. It’s mutant nature. It’s a way to survive.”

Something in Logan’s words moved you. Hot tears stung your frosty cheeks. “I hate this so much, Logan. I hate how I miss them. How I’ll never get that back. It’s gone forever, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Logan hummed thoughtfully. “Yeah, but you don’t wanna live in their past, sweetheart. Trust me, it only destroys you.”

“I know. But I can’t help but feel like it’ll happen again.”

“In our world, it will,” Logan admitted. “And it never gets easier. But you gotta choose what’s gonna make you happiest now. No sense in worrying about a future you don’t know about, or a past that’s let you down.”

Logan had a point. The last few days, you’d been so caught up in your own misery that you’d turned into a ghost yourself. The hours passed by in a blur, and you hardly remembered if you’d eaten or what you’d accomplished. You were lost to the sands of time. What was the point in that?

“I know I ain’t worth two pennies, but I’ll be here. I’ve lived this long. I reckon I’d make it another hundred years.” Wrapping an arm around you, Logan pulled you close, and you snuggled against him, resting your head on his shoulder.

“You’re right.” The sigh escaped your lips. “I don’t wanna get so caught up in missing everyone else that I don’t appreciate having you here now.”

You felt a gentle kiss pressed to your hair. “You don’t gotta appreciate me, darlin’. But the others… They care about you too.”

Charles, Ororo, Jean, Scott, and Hank… Your new family was odd, but they were warm and welcoming.

“C’mon. I originally came out here to tell you dinner’s ready.” As he stood, he reached out a large, paw-like hand. No was not an option.

You became aware of just how frigid your ears and face felt once inside the cozy mansion. Glorious scents of cranberry, mashed potatoes, and turkey wafted through the halls, decorated with leaves and other seasonal touches.

“There you are!” Ororo beamed, her warmth filling the room as she opened her arms in welcome. “We didn’t want to start without you.”

A long table stretched across the dining hall, covered in dishes of every kind, steaming and glistening under the soft golden light. Platters of roasted turkey, buttery mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes topped with toasted marshmallows, and freshly baked rolls still warm from the oven filled every available inch. Bowls of cranberry sauce sat like jewels among the spread, and there were even dishes you’d never seen at any holiday meal before: rich, savory casseroles from Hank’s family recipes, and an assortment of pies lined up along the table's edge, waiting to be sliced.

The sight was almost overwhelming. Your eyes widened, your heart swelling with a strange mix of awe and gratitude as you took it all in. Never had you seen a holiday table so full—so abundant and brimming with care. Each dish seemed like a personal invitation, lovingly prepared and carefully placed. And gathered around it all, eager to share it with you, was your new family.

Logan caught your gaze, a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. He stepped forward and pulled out a chair, nodding for you to sit. His hand lingered on the back of the chair, silently making sure you were comfortable where you were.

“Who would like to share what they’re thankful for?” Kurt asked, his voice gentle yet bright, his eyes flickering with the light of the candles.

A soft murmur rose around the table as everyone shifted in their seats, and for the first time in a long time, you felt something different settle in your chest. It wasn’t the emptiness you’d known for so long—it was hope. Taking a breath, you allowed a small smile to spread across your lips, feeling the warmth of their gazes surrounding you like a soft embrace.

Chest tightening with warm emotion, you couldn't help but to say: “I’ll go first."

[aphfanficwriters]

Monthly Members' Fics — Jul 2024

Life for a Life by dysphoriahighschool (America/Canada) Matthew travels to Scarlet Hollow, North Carolina for his aunt's funeral and to comfort the cousin he'd never met. Matthew's mom had left the town years ago and hated the place as much as she missed it. As he gets closer to uncovering the town's secrets, Matthew thinks he's understanding why, but a deal with a ghost might end up putting a stop to his investigation.

The Next Me by Anonymous (Germany & Prussia) This is important, listen, listen now—I don't care about how late it is.

Witch of the Wood by Skoati (Ketzexi) (nyo!America/England) Amelia gets accused of witchcraft.

Don't think twice it's alright by Mossy_man (America/Canada/Russia) Meet your nemesis and fuck? Sounds like good idea.

Take me in your mind, love by Mossy_man (Russia/Turkey) Ivan follows a beautiful stranger home.

Making Up for Lost Time by Delgumo (nyo!America/Canada) After being separated as small children, Matthew and Amelia reconnect.

Breaking the Dragon Head — Chapter 4 by NashTea (Fishandnear) (China/Russia) Set against the backdrop of illegal and deprave scientific advancement, where debauchery runs rampant; Ivan Braginsky, inner circle member of a secret criminal organisation dubbed as "World Meeting" have finally made his move onto the founder, Wang Yao. Ivan seeks to crack apart everything Wang Yao strive to hide and destroy in his past, haunting him as the ghost he have forgotten. Disgruntled associates forcibly recruited under Ivan's team have started stirring too, waiting for just the right time to bring Ivan down. Mafia AU - Rochu

fly a diamond night by Tentaculiferous (France/Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein/Switzerland, one-sided France/Switzerland) In the Kingdom of Diamonds, everyone's role, whether a lowly two or the highest King, is set in stone by fate immutable. So is one's innate nature as a submissive, dominant, or switch. Basch, with his prickly personality and dislike of following others' orders, is a poor choice for a sub. The fates must have been drunk when they assigned his nature. But when his hoarder tendencies get to be too much, his submissive nature may prove useful for once.

And the crown tumbles down by Tentaculiferous (America/England) Political power lost, shackled to an obnoxious and despicable king, Arthur spirals a bit. But a mind can be a terribly fun thing to lose.

Up there came a flower by Tentaculiferous (America/England, Canada/England) One of a Queen's most sacred duties is to provide their kingdom with little princes and princesses. But Arthur has passed year after year without managing to conceive a child. He's sick of the gossip and snickers and sneers, and of his flat belly. He's had enough: his barren years are ending now. If King Alfred can't provide an heir, maybe his brother can.

[winwintea]

Hehe I got a few questions ( idk how many but lesssgaurrr)

01. Name a song that makes you want to climb up a mountain and scream on top of your lungs

02. What country or place do you want to live in if you were given the chance?

03. What is your biggest fear?

04. What is the funniest/most awkward interaction you've ever had?

05. If you could meet a fictional character, who would that be?

almost heaven........... west virginyaaaaah blue ridge mountaaain shenandoah ribbber

2. finland. like theres nothing there but why does everything about finland sound so much better than everywhere else. canada is ok too i would say australia but racism there also kinda bad

3. being exactly like my parents (the mommy and daddy issues are real ok)

4. TOO MANY TO COUNT??? i do a bunch of random stuff. but for one example is when i saw my friend post one of her friends in her story and i told her that he looked cute. so she gave me his insta. and i proceeded to dm him. THEN I CHICKEDN OUT AND DELETED THE MESSAGE. AND HE SAW APPARENTLY?????? according to her. and he still follows me like 2 years later and sees my stories and we've never interacted. still haunts me to this day.

5. situweilian (jkjkjkkkkkkkk) ummmmmmmmmmmmm actually i can't think of an answer to this one probably "jimbotron" from mouthwashing so i can kill him die die die ide

[mediamixs]

Top 10 most haunted places around the world

1. Poveglia Island, Italy

Poveglia, located in the Venice Lagoon, is infamous for its grim past. In the 14th century, it served as a quarantine station for plague victims, and later as a mental asylum where brutal experiments were conducted on patients. Visitors report feeling an overwhelming sense of dread and hearing voices and screams, making it one of the most haunted locations in Italy.

2. Alcatraz Island, USA

Once a maximum-security prison housing infamous criminals like Al Capone, Alcatraz is known for tales of torture and abuse. The isolation and harsh conditions led to numerous deaths, and many visitors claim to hear disembodied voices and footsteps echoing through the abandoned halls.

3. The Tower of London, England

With a history spanning over a thousand years, the Tower of London is notorious for its executions and dark events. Ghostly figures, including Anne Boleyn's spirit, are frequently reported by visitors who wander its haunted grounds.

4. The Banff Springs Hotel, Canada

This historic hotel in Alberta is styled after a Scottish baronial castle and is said to be haunted by several spirits, including that of a bride who tragically died on her wedding day. Guests have reported seeing her dancing in the ballroom with flames trailing from her dress[1][2].

5. Myrtles Plantation, USA

Located in Louisiana, Myrtles Plantation is reputedly haunted by the ghost of Chloe, a former slave who was allegedly hanged for poisoning the owner's family. Visitors often report strange occurrences and sightings of apparitions throughout the plantation.

6. Bhangarh Fort, India

Known as one of the most haunted places in India, Bhangarh Fort is surrounded by legends of curses and ghostly apparitions. It is said that entering the fort after sunset is forbidden due to numerous unexplained disappearances.

7. The Paris Catacombs, France

Beneath Paris lies a labyrinthine network of tunnels lined with the bones of approximately six million people. Visitors often describe feelings of unease and have reported hearing whispers and strange noises echoing through the dark passages.

8. Monte Cristo Homestead, Australia

Regarded as Australia's most haunted house, Monte Cristo Homestead has a tragic history involving multiple deaths within its walls. Visitors have reported encounters with various spirits, including that of a young child who met a tragic fate.

9. Hell Fire Club, Ireland

Perched atop Montpelier Hill near Dublin, this former hunting lodge has a reputation for debauchery and devil worship among Dublin's elite in the 18th century. It is said to be haunted by spirits angered by their activities.

10. The Whaley House, USA

Located in San Diego, California, this historic home is built over the site of a former gallows. It is famously known for its paranormal activity linked to the tragedies experienced by the Whaley family who lived there.

These locations not only attract thrill-seekers but also those intrigued by history's darker side, offering eerie experiences that linger long after departure.

[tomorrowusa]

Until this month, Bibi Netanyahu was a HŪGE fanboy of Hamas. Their relationship goes back decades. This is not some wacko conspiracy theory. Much of the information about this comes from mainstream Israeli media and high ranking Israeli former officials.

Here are excerpts from an in-depth article at the CBC – Canada's public broadcaster.

Israelis don't agree on much, especially lately, but polling shows they mostly agree that Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is to blame for leaving Israel unprepared for Hamas's onslaught on October 7. The accusations aimed at Netanyahu go beyond merely failing to foresee or prevent the Hamas attack of October 7, however. Many accuse him of deliberately empowering the group for decades as part of a strategy to sabotage a two-state solution based on the principle of land for peace. "There's been a lot of criticism of Netanyahu in Israel for instating a policy for many years of strengthening Hamas and keeping Gaza on the brink while weakening the Palestinian Authority," said Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group. "And we've seen that happening very clearly on the ground." "(Hamas and Netanyahu) are mutually reinforcing, in the sense that they provide each other with a way to continue to use force and rejectionism as opposed to making sacrifices and compromises in order to reach some kind of resolution," Zonszein told CBC News from Tel Aviv.

Bibi and Hamas could be called "frenemies".

Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013 that "if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas's strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister." In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah." The logic underlying this strategy, Barak said, is that "it's easier with Hamas to explain to Israelis that there is no one to sit with and no one to talk to."

The Bibi-Hamas relationship goes back almost 30 years. In some ways, Hamas helped put Bibi in power in the first place.

Netanyahu first came to power in the 1996 election that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist opposed to the Oslo Accords. Early polls showed Rabin's successor Shimon Peres comfortably ahead. Determined to sabotage Oslo, Hamas embarked on a ruthless suicide bombing campaign that helped Netanyahu pull ahead of Peres and win the election on May 29, 1996. Today, some of the same extremists who called for Rabin's death hold power in Netanyahu's government.

A reminder that the current Israeli government led by Netanyahu is the most far right in Israel's history. Netanyahu filled it with extremists, religious fanatics, and virulent ethno-nationalists in order to stay in power.

Just two weeks before Rabin's assassination, a young settler extremist posed for the cameras with a Cadillac hood ornament he said he had stolen from Rabin's car. "Just like we got to this emblem," he said, "we could get to Rabin." Today, that young man, Itamar Ben Gvir, is 45 years old and has eight Israeli criminal convictions — including convictions for supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism. Once he was rejected by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for his extremist views. Now, Israel's police must answer to him as Benjamin Netanyahu's minister of national security.

Imagine how a second Trump administration would be and you get a hint of what Bibi's pre-October 7th cabinet was like.

The Bibi-Hamas connection only gets worse.

Netanyahu's hawkish defence minister Avigdor Liberman was the first to report in 2020 that Bibi had dispatched Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and the IDF's officer in charge of Gaza, Herzi Halevi, to Doha to "beg" the Qataris to continue to send money to Hamas. "Both Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas and planned to cut ties with them. Suddenly Netanyahu appears as the defender of Hamas," the right-wing leader complained. A year later, Netanyahu was further embarrassed when photos of suitcases full of cash going to Hamas became public. Liberman finally resigned in protest over Netanyahu's Hamas policy which, he said, marked "the first time Israel is funding terrorism against itself."

Yep, Bibi actually had a bag man deliver cash to Hamas.

The Palestinian Authority's Ahmed Majdalani accused the Qatari envoy of carrying money to Hamas "like a gangster." "The PLO did not agree to the deal facilitating the money to Hamas that way," he said.

Netanyahu fancies himself as a clever Machiavellian playing one side against the other. He has even bragged of this to members of his party.

On March 12, 2019, Netanyahu defended the Hamas payments to his Likud Party caucus on the grounds that they weakened the pro-Oslo Palestinian Authority, according to the Jerusalem Post: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel's regular allowing of Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza, saying it is part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separate, a source in Monday's Likud faction meeting said," the Post reported. "The prime minister also said that 'whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for' transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."

Of course Bibi was ultimately being too clever by half.

Netanyahu insisted that neither the money nor the construction material given to Hamas would be diverted to military purposes. But today, the IDF finds itself showing how Hamas has done exactly that — by diverting and converting civilian funds and materials to warlike purposes. The military tried to warn him at the time, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot told the Ma'ariv newspaper. He said Netanyahu acted "in total opposition to the national assessment of the National Security Council, which determined that there was a need to disconnect from the Palestinians and establish two states."

A lot of radical chic Hamas fans in Western countries will undoubtedly try to obscure the fact that they are cheering the same group which a far right Israeli politician (until recently) has been lavishing with tons of cash.

And the Bibi-Hamas connection is a reminder that while far right politicians in many countries like to portray themselves as tough on security, they will usually put their craven lust for power above all.

[ludinusdaleth]

hi I’m from Australia and I’m just wondering if you can explain the phenomenon of people from “blue states” seemingly wishing death on people from “red states/southern states” cause alot of people I follow are queer/bipoc communist folk from the south and I keep seeing “do not dehumanise us just because we are a red state” and “do not celebrate the hurricane just because it’s happening in the south” and like… do people do this??? I’m almost scared to ask. Cause here in australia even when it takes place in the most conservative part of idk, deep north queensland, something like a bushfire is nationally mourned as a tragedy and people rally to fund rebuilding and rescue efforts. I don’t think ive ever seen someone say “those damn liberal-national voters had it comin” so im so lost at the concept that this is something that apparently happens in USAmerica. Can you possibly explain this? What makes supposedly “progressive” folks so cruel? All the love to you by the way I hope your friends and any family in hurricane affected areas are safe, totally understand if you don’t want to answer the question at this time ❤️

yeah, ill try to explain. thank you for the well wishes, though i am currently fine. im in texas (and not on the coast), so i barely get any hurricane brunt at any time, but i have close friends in the current affected states who i am sending all the love & support i can to. ill put this under a read more because there's a lot to cover.

all americans im sure are the exact same to non americans, but basically due to the civil war about a century and a half ago, there is a big cultural rift between the north and south states - mostly in the east, but western blue (liberal) states definitely fit the northern mindset, and some more northern states along the appalachian mountains are considered southern. because of the grip of slavery on the south before that war, we in the south have never really escaped that history (many songs cite the south as being full of ghosts of history, and god, it is). we are also stereotyped presently as racist dumb redneck hicks. combine those two and you do not garner sympathy.

the thing is that the south is the most diverse area in the entire usa, and there there are a multitude of factors that lead us to being "less advanced" than the north, many of which hinge on that fact. the south has always had a more conservative grip due to the slaveowning elite just evolving to be right wingers nowadays. because we had worse building blocks to start with than the north with its better weather and an economy not built on slaves, we had work to do anyway, but conservatives in office refuse to fix or change any infrastructure. because they want to stay in power, our politicians purposely cut any and all educational funds and preach evangelical teachings so many of us grow up deeply propoganized - though some of us dont or work to break free of that thought process. we are not a monolith. you will find some of the most stalwart leftists here as well as the most violent ring wingers, almost like, we're a massive & diverse group of people. what we believe barely matters though when our politicians gerrymander and ensure county/town lines are drawn in such a way that priveleged votes always matter statistically more than oppressed ones do.

that's where the whole cruel progressives thing comes in. folks in blue areas, the north & canada especially, are blue, yes, but generally neoliberal when it comes to others beyond their purview. there is a smugness that they were born somewhere not haunted by a history of enslavement (ignoring the norths own racism - everyone i know who's moved north says their bigotry is highly noticeable, and slavery is legal everywhere in the country due to an exploited loophole in the 13th ammendment), and born in an area not as "punished by god" (a phrase used by southern pastors often) by natural disaster. every time there is even a modicum of news about a tragic event in a red state - a tornado, a hurricane, a shooting, things that can all happen in their lives too if less often - you will not be able to go near any comment section online or some northerners in reality who will not mock it. we deserve it for choosing to live here (as if we are not the poorest area of the country or as if the south is not also beautiful) and for choosing to vote red. there are occasional times this reverses - southerners love to jump on california's hypocrisy about this when they have earthquakes and fires - but it's not an equal balance. especially not when northern blue folk, who claim to be leftist & therefore compassionate, actively cheer on the deaths of those who could not evacuate because they were poor or desperate, and who make up our largest bipoc & queer populations in the country.

that is where bitterness, anger, and begging others to see southerners as human stems from. there is a lot more history & nuance to it than i can comprehensively express early in the morning, but that is the beginner gist of it. feel free to ask more if something wasnt clear or similar. my home is a mess, and i love it all the same, and my heart aches for my neighbors, and burns at others dehumanization of them and us as a whole. i know it will only get worse as climate change does and i wish we could all stick together instead rather than still drawing these boundary lines like our leaders want us to.

[archivist-crow]

The Haunted Atlas

Deane House - Calgary, Alberta, Canada

51°02′43″N / 114°02′44″W

Haunted manor home with a violent history in Calgary, Alberta. The Deane House began as a luxurious private residence and is now a historical site with a restaurant.

History

The Deane House began as the vision of Superintendent Captain Richard Deane of the North West Mounted Police. At the turn of the 20th century, Deane was sent to the rough frontier town of Fort Calgary, located at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers. The existing superintendent's home at the fort was not good enough for England-born Deane and his wife, and so in 1906 he had a new home built. Construction cost was $6,200. When finished, the new home was the best residence in existence for someone in the mounted police.

Tragically, Deane's wife never got to live in the house, or even see it. She became ill and died in Lethebridge, Alberta. Deane lived in the manor home and performed his duties until the fort closed in 1914 and the land was sold to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Deane went back to England. The railway company demolished all of the fort buildings except the house, turning it into a residence for the rail station agent. Within a year, the company moved the entire house to a different location on the property.

In 1929, the rail company sold the house to C. L. Jacques, an entrepreneur who moved the house again, across the Elbow River. The engineering job was remarkable for the time, and the move was featured in the media. In its new location, the Deane House became a boarding house and descended into seediness. The violent chapter in the house's history began.

In 1933, a suicide occurred there. A 14-year-old boy who suffered from epilepsy became despondent at the tauntings of his schoolmates and ended his own life in the attic. He lived in the boarding house with his father. During World War II, the house became infamous for prostitution, and military personnel were ordered to stay away from it. Jacques sold the house in 1943 to Alex Brotherton, who continued its operation as a boarding house.

A gruesome murder-suicide took place there in 1952. A man stabbed his wife to death in front of their two children and then killed himself. There are unconfirmed reports of other murders. A man was supposedly shot and killed on the front porch, and another man was said to be murdered inside.

Natural deaths occurred at the house too. Brotherton's daughter, Alfena Cunningham, died there in 1965 and Brotherton himself in 1968.

The house deteriorated, and in 1973 the city of Calgary stepped in and purchased it with the intention of restoring it in time for the city's centennial in 1975. A studio for artists and a teahouse existed there until the early 1980s. It then became what it remains today.

Haunting Activity

Stories of ghosts had been associated with the Deane House and grew during the 1960s and 1970s. An exorcism was performed in the 1990s, but ghost stories persisted.

The parlor of the house, now a bar, is one of the most active areas. The smell of pipe tobacco has been reported, even when no one is smoking. It is believed to be a sign of Brotherton, who used to like to sit in the parlor and smoke a pipe. Some visitors have seen his pipe-smoking apparition sitting in the bar. A nonworking telephone in the bar rings by itself.

Also active is the attic, where the epileptic boy committed suicide. Storage cupboards have a stain on them that resembles blood, which cannot be washed away.

The ghost of a Native American is seen in the house; no one knows his identity. He appears wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a vest; his long hair is tied in a single braid. One visitor saw the apparition in the basement. The man told her she should not be in the house because the site was sacred.

An apparition seen during the 1970s was that of a man in a black cloak, visible to the knees, who walks down the stairs and out the front door.

Other phenomena include an antique piano upstairs that plays by itself, the sounds of footsteps, strangely moving currents of air, as though someone is walking past, and objects that move about on their own.

Text from The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits, Third Edition by Rosemary Ellen Guiley (Checkmark Books - 2007)

[cheerfullycatholic]

The Wreck of The McIntosh

If you work on the water for long enough, you start to see things. If you decide to stay on the job afterwards, you start to accept them.

I was young when I joined The McIntosh’s crew, a cargo ship transporting logs from Canada to Michigan over Lake Superior. The other men on the ship told me their ghost stories at night, but I never believed them until I started seeing things for myself.

The McIntosh is named after the man who designed her, Fredrick Vaughn McIntosh. He spent the last half of his life making her the fastest, most efficient ship on the Superior. Stories say he loved her more than his own wife, Marianne. The first night she set sail after her completion, Fredick died on the bow. They say the crew found him with a glass of wine still clutched in his hand, head turned toward the sunset. When I saw him for the first time, standing in the same place he died, watching the horizon, I hadn’t realized who he was. When I questioned how he got on board, he just smiled and said, “Isn’t she a beauty?” before fading away. I was terrified, running to the bridge as quickly as my legs could take me. Everyone laughed after I told them what happened.

“He’s harmless, don’t worry too much about him, yeah?” The captain said, patting me on the shoulder.

“Yeah,” another crewmate said, “it’s that old weeping widow you gotta worry about!”

The crew burst out laughing again as I demanded her story. Twenty years ago, one of the crewmembers, a man named Henri Tautou, died during a storm on their way back home. A wave hit the side of the ship and the giant cedar logs came loose, sending him into the water. His wife, Angela, so overcome and distraught with grief, snuck onto the ship and jumped overboard, joining her husband at the bottom of the lake. Some say you can still hear her moans of agony during storms, late at night, and if you’re not careful, she’ll take you with her to their watery grave.

After a while, the ghosts that haunted the ship stopped scaring me. What I saw on the Superior is a different story.

When you hear sailor stories, they’re usually about beautiful women singing their siren song, but all I ever heard was screaming. The first night I heard it, I ran to the side of the ship, searching frantically for its source. In the distance, illuminated by the full moon’s bright light, I saw a figure standing on top of the water, reaching their hands out towards me. I only got a glance before hands were pulling me back, my name being cursed.

“You must never pay heed to the demons of the lake, boy!” A crew member, an old man with an angry face only ever called Haggard, yelled as he roughly pulled me below deck. “They’ll swim off with your soul, do you understand!?”

Despite Haggard’s warning, I was intrigued. Any moment I could spare, I was at the bow, gazing into the water. I learned that there was a whole world under the surface. Humanoid creatures with fins and long, stringy hair would inspect the boat, banging on the metal with stones to listen to the echo. Some would spot me and wave with their pale, webbed hands. Others would screech and dive below the surface, never to be seen again.

Occasionally, Fredrick would join me. He did and said the same thing each time, like a broken record, perhaps reliving his last moments on earth. My Ma always warned me about meddling with the dead, but I didn’t consider it meddling. I never spoke to him, we just watched the sunset, and he’d say his line; “Isn’t she a beauty?”

A year and a half into my time on The McIntosh, I started smuggling extra food onboard to feed the creatures. The merpeople had their own language that I couldn’t understand, but they learned my name, and I theirs. With a basket tied to a rope, we’d pass each other trinkets. They loved most dearly the jewelry I would bring them, and I adored their shells and agates.

The creature I was most taken with was what I could only describe as a mighty dragon. The first time I saw her, I thought I was dreaming. I was gazing over the side of the ship, like I usually did, when a darkness overtook the water. I had looked up, thinking a cloud had shielded the sun, but that wasn’t the case. The great mass in the water was longer than The McIntosh, its sleek, scaled head, peering up at me from just below the surface. I stared back in absolute shock, horror, and wonder, pondering if this was my last moment on this earth. However, she only stared at me, her shining, amethyst eyes piercing my very soul. I gave her that name, and told her as much. She looked wholly unimpressed, seeming to roll her eyes at me before swimming off. Yet, she came back the next night, and all of the ones after. She became my closest friend, and I loved her, but the time I would spend at the bow had been noticed by the crew, and they were unhappy.

On the third night of The McIntosh’s last sail, I stood at the bow, a pistol in hand.

“You can’t hurt her, she’s peaceful, and my friend.”

“That thing is a beast! You’ve brought death onto this ship, and if you don’t move aside and let us take care of it, you will be cut down, too!”

The crew yelled in anger, torches and petrol cans in hand as I pleaded with them, but they were too overcome with fear to understand that the lake and its creatures weren’t what we thought they were. For so long we lived afraid and unwilling to accept the world as it is. In that moment, I worried that it was too late for change.

“Amethyst, you must leave. Never return to the surface!” I cried behind me, at the beautiful sea dragon in the water below. With a look as sorrowful as she could make, she disappeared into the inky depths, and my heart sank with her.

“You were never meant for life on the water, boy,” Haggard growled, moving to the front of the crew. “I knew that as soon you stepped on deck. You’re weak. You got no guts.”

So overcome with grief, I didn’t act quickly enough to stop him from driving his filet knife into my stomach.

As if a siren went off, all around us, the lake wailed in agony. I saw the crewmembers cover their ears against the noise, before a large, black mass shot out of the water and landed on the ship as I went overboard.

As I sunk deeper into the lake, icy, webbed hands stroked my face and hair. Through blurry eyes, I saw the merpeople gathered around me, weeping as they pulled the knife from my stomach. The pain faded as I looked up at a great, yellow light on the surface; fire encasing the sinking ship as the crew jumped into the water, dodging debris and spears as the creatures of the lake attacked.

Amethyst swam under me, allowing me to rest on her back, as my eyes slid shut, and water filled my lungs.

[cursedwithwords]

teddy is the KING of side quests. give him 2 and a half years and bro has probably achieved and experienced everything life has to offer.

he was mastering muay thai in thailand and became a part of an elite martial arts force temporarily. he was volunteering at a soup kitchen and became best friends with a local druglord in the usa. he did some odd jobs in india that had him mastering specialised forms of curse breaking. he taught english at a primary school in japan for a bit and became every school kid’s reference on their resumes that he still gets calls for years later. he visited ethiopia and roomed with an old lady who taught him how to cook all the best dishes and now he’s a beast at ethiopian cuisine. he was snorting coke in a gay club in bali where he befriended every drag queen and even performed himself because his stage presence is unmatched (they’re obsessed with his metamorphing powers). he met the prime minister of canada on the street when they were walking their dog and they exchanged numbers before teddy even knew they were the PM. he got subsequently arrested and bailed out in australia for possessing illegal drugs on him. he tried out for the paraguay national football team and got rejected but not before charming one of the players mothers so much he ended up hooking up with her and becoming opps with an entire national soccer team. he broke into an abandoned, haunted psych ward in the netherlands and covered it in so much of his street art that the place looks like a work of art now instead of something to be feared.

he also got blackout drunk one night and got a stick and poke tattoo of his ballsacks ON his ballsacks in nicaragua and had to go on a whole journey to remove it four months later himself with ancient magic he learned in the most historically reverent parts of greece. all just to remove his ballsack tattoo. he never told anyone about this. the secret (and the ancient magic) dies with him. i like to think he accidentally made himself one of the most OP characters in the HPverse because of this learning curb.

This was a fucking rollercoaster to read and my favorite part about it is YOU KINDA AINT WRONG 😂😂😂😂😂 he 100% accidentally made himself OP because he was trying to figure himself out while traveling.

[myhauntedsalem]

The Gray Cat Ghost at Fairport Harbor Lighthouse

Even though the Fairport Harbor Light on Lake Erie was given the nickname “The light that shone for 100 years”, it actually doesn’t live up to its name. The current lighthouse didn’t earn the nickname alone. Its predecessor, which was built in the same site, shone for the first 46 years. What makes this lighthouse one of the most haunted places in America is its paranormal claims about a gray cat.

The original lighthouse was built in 1825. When the population of the town reached 300, the Painesville Telegraph issued a notice asking for lighthouse bids. Collector of Customs, A. Walworth, signed the proposal. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave the detail-planning to the potential builder. He specified the height of the deck, depth of the foundation, number of windows, materials to be used, etc. in his proposal.

Builders Hiram Wood and Jonathon Goldsmith received a contract to the lighthouse and keeper’s dwelling for $2900. Everything went smoothly with the construction at first, until it was realized that there was a mis-communication concerning the cellar. The construction of the cellar wasn’t included in the builders’ plans. It wasn’t until after the construction of the lighthouse that an upset Walworth contracted Goldsmith and Wood to complete the cellar for additional money. In 1841, Goldsmith applied for the keeper’s job for the lighthouse he had helped build but someone else received the job.

Fairport Harbor Light on Lake Erie wasn’t just used as a hub of commerce, it was also the final stop for the Underground Railroad. The lighthouse acted as a beacon of freedom to slaves. The town, along with the captains and seamen who sailed there, was completely anti-slavery. The ships in the area would help transport escaped slaves to Canada. Many of them were kept hidden in the lighthouse itself until a ship was available.

The original lighthouse began to wear and tear just a few years after its construction. After a decade, the foundation had settled to the point where it needed a replacement. Within 30 years, wire hoops encircled the lighthouse to keep it from falling over.

In March 1869, Congress finally approved a proposal to replace the original tower and keeper’s dwelling. The new project cost an estimated $30,000. Not wanting to make the same mistakes of their predecessors, the new builders contracted engineers to help them. They scouted the area to find the best foundation point.

In 1871, the new Berea sandstone tower and brick keeper’s dwelling were finally complete. Minor improvements have been made over the decades. The harbor itself grew considerably as new piers and a foghorn were installed.

The original lighthouse was set to be destroyed but the citizens of the community protested due to its historical value. After WW II, it was turned into a museum. Now, visitors can walk through the very same corridors as the runaway slaves more than 150 years ago.

The most interesting paranormal claim coming from the lighthouse doesn’t involve the underground railroad or even humans for that matter. The most talked about ghost around the lighthouse is the gray ghost cat. The story of the cat starts around 1877. Captain Joseph Babcock was the Head Keeper of the lighthouse in 1871. He and his wife Mary had two children, Hattie and Robbie.

Unfortunately Robbie died at the age of 5 of diphtheria. Mary became depressed and was eventually bedridden. To help comfort her and keep her company, the Captain gave her cats. After Mary’s death all the cats disappeared over time except this one gray cat.

In 1989 the curator of the now lighthouse museum first reported seeing an apparition of a cat playing in the kitchen and also felt it jump on the bed. Visitors soon started to report small puffs of gray smoke and the sightings have continued ever since.

In 2001 the lighthouse got a new air conditioning system. While crawling in the basement, workers came across the mummified remains of a gray cat. This gray ghost cat, who’s remains are on display inside the museum, makes Fairport Harbor Lighthouse one of the most haunted places in America.