#or whatever the fuck is a “hague”

[nando161mando]

George bush should be in The Hague

[chonideno]

literally where can the zelda franchise go after totk. this is it. we've reached it. the pinnacle of video game entertainment. the whole dev team should just pack their stuff and enjoy a long and comfortable retirement. whoever decides their team has to follow-up on that with the next zelda game should answer for their crimes at the hague. what the fuck. I haven't even beat the game yet but what the fuck.

and how are AAA video game devs everywhere not losing their minds. how the hell did nintendo do any of that? and on that console?? you mean to tell me I can stack 15 differently shaped objects on top of each other and they don't vibrate violently into the skybox?? you mean to tell me the physics engine gladly accepts whatever I throw at it and holds it all together without dropping a frame while running on a machine that was outclassed two generations ago??? this is not witchcraft it's a grandiose demonstration of mastery over every aspect of game development that casts an immense shadow over every other AAA studio. fuck. fuck!!!!

everything about this game is crazy to me. the visuals are crazy. the soudtrack is crazy. the complexity of all systems and how they interact is crazy. the sheer amount of non-repeating content, NPCs, quests, dialogue, puzzles, environment variety - all crazy to me. every time I boot up this game I am humbled by the monumental effort and obvious love that went into every facet of the resulting experience. no cut corners anywhere. mirror-perfect chrome polish.

it's so rare we get something like that, in any field. I'd understand if nintendo never made a zelda game ever again because how do you follow that. god I hope everyone who worked on this game got the fattest check and the sloppiest head. I'm so happy I get to live in shigeru miyamoto's world

[archtroop]

So, the government in SA is on the brink of losing it all, and the state is failing. They choose to arrange the biggest distraction out there that would utilize the trendiest topic circulating atm for clout.

And while Jews are Not Surprised (tm), the biggest irony in this is that, once more, the Palestinians are used by a third party for local political gain.

Since whatever Hague decides has zero affect on the wellbeing of any Gazan anyway, the farce we are witnessing going down in Hague right now pretty much boils down to a country half a world away from the war, using dead Gazans for internal PR.

Basically, if the court dismisses the case/determines that there is no Genocide, we are going to witness the cynical reception of the news by those who back SA's claim, that are wishing for there to be a Genocide.

If the court does accept the claim, we will witness SA waltzing back home over the equator, doing fuck all at all with this win, and Gazans are abandoned once more, for they have fulfilled the needs of SA in this matter.

It is cynical, hollow, and perverse.

[mwexodusofficial]

Chapter XXVI: Chaos

(Music: "Headlock", by Imogen Heap)

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The journey to Inferis Station was almost complete. The Argonaut II and its fleets were at the final stop before they arrived- and it would be in the nick of time as well, as the Remnant heading for Inferis was nearly there. Hawkes was in a short pre-check meeting with Elise, Sammy, Danny, Lonnes (his chief Cartographer, rarely seen outside his office), Faulkner, Annie, and Garrison Captain Chevalier. The round table meeting was a final briefing on everyone's roles once they went to battle against the Remnant.

Lilia, due to the immense stress she suffered and being reunited with her family, was permitted to sit out this mission and stay in the Panic Room with the other families. Hawkes looked around the table of long-familiar faces, resting on Faulkner in irritation as he noticed the old man was still reveling in his revitalized body; flexing his musculature to enjoy the sight of it.

"Hey, Narcissus. Pay attention, you have a pretty integral damn role, here."

"Of course, of course, Admiral. But surely you'll let me get in just one more flex."

Hawkes groaned, still immensely irritated at Faulkner for having helped Jimmy escape his grasp. Still, at the end of the day, he was thankful that his friend was still alive- though when Hawkes found Jimmy again, Faulkner would be shot in the face and thrown into space if he tried to pull the same shit twice.

"Let's rehash the basic summary. Sammy, Danny, you two will be operating the Argonaut while firing on the horde. I'll be boarding with the EVA team and using the floppy disk with override codes to activate the P-1 War Machine once we reach it. Elise will be using her French drones-"

"When did my drones become French, Captain?"

"-to distract and taunt the Gaiters around the station instead of through it. We'll be evacuating the personnel on-station with small transport vessels, because as you know, if we try to dock the Argonaut and evacuate them we'll just end up drawing all the Gaiters straight into the evacuees. Lonnes will be coordinating the transport vessels, Faulkner and Annie will be on triage standby while Captain Chevalier's officers fortify themselves across the ship. We all clear here?"

"Captain," Elise asked. "Are you sure you have to board? The Magna Caedes is already boarding separately, that alone seems enough to-"

"I do have to, Elise. I'll be frank, I don't trust anyone but myself to get that War Machine started up. It's our only chance of decisively beating the Remnant hordes without risking our annihilation or the wholesale destruction of the station. If I send someone else, no matter how capable, and they fail? We're completely fucked. I can't have that playing on my conscience. So yes, I'm heading on."

"In your Ryn-Hague Chassis, I assume?" Sammy muttered- which prompted Hawkes to turn and stare questioningly at Sammy.

"No, Sammy, I was planning to run in buck-naked and kill the Gaiters with my swinging ballsack."

"Alright, noted."

"Is it true they really stripped their evacuation ships for extra scrap metal?" Lonne muttered. "And that's why we have to send in our own rescue vessels?"

"Yes. And I will be kicking the whole ass of the people who did that shit once all this comes to an end."

"Captain Hawkes." Chevalier suddenly chimed in assertedly; and Hawkes turned his gaze to meet hers. Eyes full of die-hard loyalty, yet creeping skepticism at his intentions. "I understand-"

Chevalier suddenly just stopped speaking, instead electing to simply stare at the Captain; which immediately threw him off his kilter in confusion.

"Wh.... uh, okay? Alright... just gonna... brush past whatever the fuck that was..."

Hawkes looked around the table once more.

"Are we clear now on the brief, everyone?"

Everyone nodded in unison. Hawkes returned the nod, standing up from his chair.

"Meeting adjourned, it's go-time."

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(Music: "Knee Deep", by Jason Graves)

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The Argonaut II and its fleet entered Inferis Station space. In the far, far distance opposite where the Argonaut was located, the Remnant horde and its dozens of city-sized space sacs (known as Predator Moons) were slowly wandering toward Inferis like malevolent, fleshy, mammothian marbles. Remnant hordes were break-offs from the Terror that had pollinated throughout the galaxy after its defeat at the hands of the Omerta Squadron. Nobody knew how many of these Remnants were out there, pollinating- procreating- multiplying.

"Such crude fucking creatures..." Hawkes muttered, staring with disgust out the bridge window. All Canari-born citizens were taught deeply on knowledge about the Gaiters and the Terror's Remnants- the entire planet of Canaris, after all, had initially been turned into a Fortress World when it seemed the Terror was going to bring an end to humanity violently.

Haxel and Sal, who had been permitted onto the bridge to gauge the situation for the scenario they had to flee, were less aware of the intricacies of Remnants and Gaiters. Sal craned his head towards Hawkes in curiosity as the crude comment was muttered about Gaiters.

"I mean, crude sure, but there's a number of other words that come to mind when I see that horrible sight and hear about those demons."

Hawkes giggled, a reaction which unsettled both Haxel and Sal- it was not often they heard people, even battle-hardened veterans, laughing so casually at the atrociously terrifying sight before them.

"Did you know? When Gaiters are released from those bulbous sacs through space to land on planets or stations, they excrete hydrogen and ignite the gas with an internal ignition gland for short, intense bursts of speed across small oceans of space. They literally shit to fly. It's. Fucking. Gross."

Sal keeled over, laughing until his face turned red- while Haxel looked more disgusted and horrified at the same time.

"The fuck?!" Haxel muttered with a shaky voice. Hawkes grinned bitterly; only now noticing that he could see a visible trauma in Haxel and Sal's eyes, the same as the Tulpar crew. Hawkes had a small, terrible epiphany- why was he continually being forced to send these souls into further hell, when they were already trying to cope with their past ordeals? Why was he putting them through what had been done to him? Why did this cycle of abuse-

SHUT THE FUCK UP. THERE IS A MISSION TO EXECUTE.

"So yeah, crude fucking creatures." Hawkes growled, the anger more directed at himself than anyone else; yet being noticed with slight fear by the two Numia crewmates to his side.

"This universe..." Haxel muttered, staring back towards the Remnant hordes across the vast distance. "It's... mankind has been so ignorant to so many things... our conception of God, our understanding of the universe... I ask myself... why did God create those things? Were they created by Him, or is evolution truly the defining marker for the free will He is granting to all sentient beings?"

Hawkes stared with dead eyes at Haxel; no longer feeling bad for shoving this dope into the fray. "Great question- can you save that for after we win? I'd prefer not to have the last thing I talk about be a comparison between humans and those antique farting lizards. I'm heading down, you should head to your stations, as well."

Haxel and Sal nodded with nerves on edge, leaving the Bridge with Hawkes; who was practically rushing to his quarters to put on his armor set before stomping toward the Hangar Bay; where transport vessels were preparing to evacuate the residents of Inferis Station, and gunships were loading their ammunition for a massive fight against their antediluvian mortal enemy. Hawkes spotted his EVA crew, then noticed the Magna Caedes was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's Theseus?" Hawkes asked Wally, his EVA leader. "Did he already head over to board?"

Wally nodded, reaffirming his gear as he responded. "He said he had a really bad feeling and decided to make a quicker exit."

Hawkes sighed; this sounded in-line with the characteristically impatient Magna Caedes, who were practically their own free agents when issued on missions alone and without being attached to a leadership hierarchy. He felt a bit bad for the people onboard the station who'd be seeing that hulk walking around for the first time in their lives without warning.

"Well, he might have the right idea," Hawkes stated through his helmet. "Keep your cutters ready, it's likely we'll be facing some structural problems once those Gaiters arrive. Let's get moving!"

Hawkes and the EVA team boarded the transport vessel, its doors closing with a hiss as it levitated into the air and shot out of the Hangar Bay, rocketing toward Inferis Station with urgency. Sammy and Danny, meanwhile, were watching the lone vessel heading for the station's docking entries- having already witnessed Theseus' ride carry him toward the station's right side.

"I'm starting to think the Admiral has a death wish," Sammy muttered. Danny hardly responded, extremely nervous over this upcoming battle; the very few times he'd faced Remnants onboard this vessel, he never wished for such encounters again. Facing hundred-million-year-old creatures that varied in size from cars to tanks, with different adaptations and semi-sentient leaders directing them- again, there was only so much any human could realistically bear in terms of horror. And these creatures checked every box for him.

"I'd agree," Danny mumbled. "He's braver than me, at least."

Sammy chuckled nervously. "Do you think this Remnant will have bio-artillery? I read about one in the history books that did."

"Is that really something you want to discuss?"

"...Yeah. Kind of."

The two of them fell silent and continued staring out the window, nervous as their eyes strained to focus on the Remnant thousands of miles away.

...

...

...

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(Music: "The Hive Mind", by Trevor Gureckis)

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FWWWWWWWW-BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"WHAT THE FUCK?!"

"HOLY SHIIIT!"

Sammy and Danny stumbled and crumpled back in visceral horror as they blinked their eyes and the Remnant hordes had immediately short-warped the vast distance, appearing only a few hundred miles before Inferis Station; the Predator Moons overshadowing and dwarfing the research station by at least twice its immense architecture.

They were frozen, for several seconds, along with the rest of the bridge officers paling in horror; they had never seen this happen before- FTL short-warping at this distance was unheard of, and yet their mortal enemy had just pulled it off as if it was natural. It shouldn't have even been theoretically possible because of the temporal contortion and gravitational distortions that would likely occur in such a small area of space... how had they done it?!

"P-P-!" Danny stumbled and stuttered; his mind frozen in dread and horror for even more precious seconds, before he finally surfaced words to his quivering mouth. "P-PAGE HAWKES, ALL CANNONS BROADSIDE FIRE NOOOOW!!!!"

As he and Sammy stood up in horrible fear from the event, they could see the sacs begin to open up their thousands of highway-sized fleshy slits; allowing Gaiters to pour out and accelerate in short bursts through the outstretched cosmic proving grounds, several thousands of them unavoidably slamming into the station in their pathway and burrowing through to unknowable havoc, the rest of their millions-strong-mass rocketing towards the Argonaut II and its fleet with terrible fervor. And with a singular, furtive command from the second-most influential individual in this entire armada- the cannons opened fire.

The void erupted.

KRA-A-A-ACK! KRA-A-A-A-ACK! THWIP! THWIP! KRA-A-A-ACK! V-WOOOOOOOM! VRMMMMMM-BWOM-PWSH!! BOOOOOOM-BOOM-BOOM! B-WOOOOOOOOOOM! D-HKHKHKHKHKHKHKHK! BWOOOOOOOOOOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! KRACK-AKAKAKAKAKAK! DW-WOOOOOOOOSH! VRMMMMMM-BWOM-PWSH!! BZZZZZ-BWOMMM!!! D-ACKAKAKAKAKAK! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! SZW-VSHHHHHHHHHH!!! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! KRA-A-A-A-ACK! THWIP! THWIP! KRA-A-A-ACK! V-WOOOOOOOM! VRMMMMMM-BWOM-PWSH!! BOOOOOOM-BOOM-BOOM! B-WOOOOOOOOOOM! D-HKHKHKHKHKHKHKHK! BWOOOOOOOOOOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! KRACK-AKAKAKAKAKAK! DW-WOOOOOOOOSH! VRMMMMMM-BWOM-PWSH!! BZZZZZ-BWOMMM!!! D-ACKAKAKAKAKAK! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! SZW-VSHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Three hundred battle cruisers—each a hamlet of steel, rage and fire—turned their decades-bred wrath upon the abyss. Gun decks ignited in grotesque yet brutal sequence, a muted symphony of annihilation, millions of armaments cycling, locking, firing, and rapidly transforming the blackness of space into a kaleidoscope of mind-rending devastation.

**Missiles, gauss rounds, plasma lances, rail slugs, graviton torpedoes—**every conceivable super-weapon in human history, every machined nightmare war had ever wrathfully birthed, was being unleashed in a single, blinding, blackening, sun-blotting mass-coordinated volley of pure and unfettered hellfire.

The darkness bloomed with a thousand newborn stars.

And still, the Gaiters came.

The horde stretched beyond eyesight as they came in range, an endless tide spilling from the Predator Moons and their immense hovels, grotesque forms slithering and twitching in the void. To the mere bystander, they did not fly—they crawled through space, some massive, armored flesh-things moving like celestial horrors beyond imagination; others small, squirming and devilishly-fast hissing nightmares that twisted through the chaos like swarming insects.

They felt no fear. They held no hesitation. It was nothing but pure instinct which drove them.

THWIP! KRA-A-A-A-ACK! THWIP! THWIP! KRA-A-A-ACK! V-WOOOOOOOM! VRMMMMMM-BWOM-PWSH!! BOOOOOOM-BOOM-BOOM! B-WOOOOOOOOOOM! D-HKHKHKHKHKHKHKHK! BWOOOOOOOOOOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! KRACK-AKAKAKAKAKAK! DW-WOOOOOOOOSH! VRMMMMMM-BWOM-PWSH!! BZZZZZ-BWOMMM!!! D-ACKAKAKAKAKAK! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! SZW-VSHHHHHHHHHH!!! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! KRA-A-A-A-ACK! THWIP! THWIP! KRA-A-A-ACK! V-WOOOOOOOM! VRMMMMMM-BWOM-PWSH!! BOOOOOOM-BOOM-BOOM! B-WOOOOOOOOOOM! D-HKHKHKHKHKHKHKHK! BWOOOOOOOOOOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! KRACK-AKAKAKAKAKAK! DW-WOOOOOOOOSH! VRMMMMMM-BWOM-PWSH!! BZZZZZ-BWOMMM!!! D-ACKAKAKAKAKAK! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! SZW-VSHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Their flesh boiled, ruptured, vaporized under the onslaught, entire swathes of the swarm reduced to molten ruin—but the horde did not thin.

For every Gaiter torn asunder, a hundred more surged forward.

The first kinetic impact alarms blared across the fleet. They were closing within boarding range.

Canaris had thrown its greatest weight, its technology, its sheer military excess at them. And it was not enough. It had vastly under-anticipated the rapid evolution of these individual Remnants. And it was going to cost them dearly.

Because this was not a battle.

This was a collision of whole species.

A war which never found end, a reckoning measured in billions of body counts and cosmic gravesites.

And this night, as these three hundred battle cruisers filled the void with their fomented, generational hatred—

The Terror watched.

The horde did not stop.

Hawkes, standing in the transport vessel that carried him and his team to the station, was bearing horrible witness to the apocalyptic calamities unfolding before his very eyes, along with the rest of his team; suddenly heard his receiver buzzing and slamming it on with utter desperation.

"SAMMY, WHAT THE F-"

"HAAAAWKKESS!! THEY'VE FUCKING SHORT-WARPED!"

Hawkes felt his face pale- WHAT THE FUCK?! This went from dangerous to "Fucked Up Beyond All Repair" in an instant. Panicked and horrified to waste any further time, he responded aptly with a strained and urgent intonation.

"START DIRECTING THE FLEET TO SPREAD OUT AND ENCIRCLE THE REMNANT!"

"YES SIR! AAAAAAAAAAA-"

Hawkes felt beads of sweat dripping down his face as everyone in the transport vessel overheard his receiver, and simultaneously witnessed the events unfolding through the glass port-windows. In little time, they immediately shat their pants in pure terror, muttering or silently sobbing to themselves, praying or panicking in expectation of sudden death; only the enemy of mankind could produce this form of horror in those who'd remained undaunted by man-made atrocities for years upon years of their tenure to the Argonaut.

"THEY WHAT?!" Wally shouted, losing his composure over the realization that-

ZZZIIPPPP!!!

"WOAH!" "FUCK!"

The transport vessel veered hard to the left, narrowly dodging a massive bone quill shot by one of the Remnant Sacs, half the size of the vessel carrying Hawkes and his team; and immediately everyone was officially in PANIC mode.

"AND ARTILLERY!!!!!" One of the EVA team cried out in horror. "WE'RE SO FUCKING DEAD!"

"SHUT UP!" Hawkes chastised the junior EVA member. "STICK BY ME, GOT?!"

"Very encouraging, Admiral!" Wally muttered in abject fear. "Very encouraging, FUCKING hell!"

"I get it, but we have a job to do!" Hawkes insisted, trying to downplay his own raised fears over the deluge of awful events unfolding one after another. "Stick by me and we're gunning it for the Head Researcher's office!"

The transport vessel continued to dodge a number of bone quills launched by the Remnant Sacs, swiveling and swerving to and fro as the artillery projectiles narrowly missed the vessel and throwing everyone onboard into a frenzy of pure panic, before eventually arriving hastily at the port entry of the station and docking with great urgency. Hawkes and his team rapidly stepped into the pressurization chamber.

How the fuck are the transport vessels going to keep a steady chain of evacuation going, Hawkes thought nervously. When they have to deal with an accelerated timetable and ENEMY ARTILLERY?! Fuck that, we can't risk evacuating these people until that War Machine is activated! It's THEIR FAULT they scrapped their own damn rescue vessels, so FUCK 'EM!

"Pressurizing," A robotic voice said over the speakers, hissing harshly as the room filled with pressure and oxygen. 

Worse yet, even though the Remnant would be focused on the Argonaut fleet, the Inferis Station was still in between the two like a billion rocks and a 300-cruiser-strong hard place. It was going to be inevitable that the station itself would receive a large brunt of collateral damage as a result of this eye-boggling battlefield.

Ssssstt!

As the doors to the inside of the station hissed open, Hawkes stormed inside, barely being followed by sprinting EVA members as Hawkes was immensely faster than them and was almost forgetting to let them keep up, alarmingly urgent to find the Head Researcher to lead them to the War Machine.

They had entered a grand departures and arrivals area, where several scientists, researchers, roboticists, and station personnel were running around screaming for their lives, hiding, looking for people to help, or generally doing their own things during this crisis situation. As badly as Hawkes wanted to help these poor citizens out, he had to focus on getting the War Machine activated- every wasted second was another small victory for the Remnant as they wreaked havoc across the epic cosmic battlegrounds.

BSSSSHHH!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!! 

RUMMMBBBBBLLLEEEEE!!

BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

The station began to shake and quake violently as Gaiters and artillery slammed into the back of the station, tearing apart infrastructure with wild ferocity, creating pandemonium throughout the massive complex and obliterating several key operating systems within minutes.

Hawkes, by this point, was running and stopping at random points through the hallways and corridors, checking for Gaiters while waiting up for the EVA team to catch up.

BWOOOOOSH- "HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...."

As if on queue, a Gaiter burrowed and blasted through several layers of metal, bursting into the hallway where Hawkes and his team was, leaving a massive hole in the station that created a momentary vacuum into the emptiness of space, before it was cut off by metal frames shuttering across the exposed opening. The Gaiter quickly recovered from its landing, hissing like a primordial, cosmically-colored alien reptile from its snub archosaurian jaw and stumbling with webbed feet, long clawed fingers, and two bone impalers jutting out of its midriff, its face covered by two chitin folds that resembled the vertical, slit-shaped pupils of a crocodile.

"GET BEHIND ME!" Hawkes ordered his team, unhooking his Riveter and blasting the Gaiter's limbs off -KRAK! KRAK!-; shooting its legs off and hindering its movement (its head was highly resistant against projectiles), watching the Gaiter crash to the ground before unsheathing his blade and stabbing the point through its skull. SHCK! As the Gaiter fell limp, Hawkes escorted the team forward, continuing to look around in watchful readiness as they moved toward the department where the Head Researcher would be located.

"HHHHHHH..." "AAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"

Hawkes noticed a Gaiter as he passed by a cafe, which was grabbing station personnel, dragging them in range, and stabbing them repeatedly with their bone impalers whilst tearing chunks out of them with their maws. KRAK! KRAK! Hawkes swiftly dispatched the Gaiter's legs, running over and stomping on its bone impalers before executing it in the same fashion as the last one.

"Fuck, we can't delay anymore!" Hawkes muttered, utterly despairing that he was going to have to pass by several more people who'd die horribly so he could accomplish his task. "I swear, I'll revive all of you once we get this shit dealt with! Except maybe the JACKASSES THAT STRIPPED THE FUCKING EVACUATION SHIPS DOWN TO NUTS AND BOLTS! YOU DUMB FUCKS TRAPPED YOURSELVES!"

DOOOOSH. DOOSH. DOOSH.

Hawkes and his team suddenly stumbled as heavy, monstrous footsteps resounded deafeningly from around the corridor that led into a wider lobby area; and as they comprehended the threat their ears were communicating, it was too late- they rounded the corner.

"Oh..." "Oh FUCK!" "Naw, we're cooked."

The EVA crew made their final comments in despair as a fifteen-foot-tall, muscle-bound Gaiter hissed from its armored maw, wreaking horrific pandemonium throughout the lobby as it stampeded, crushed, and slammed furniture and station workers alike; built with the arms of a gorilla and the back legs of a rhinoceros, it was akin to an armored, story-tall deranged gorilla being thrown into a china shop. Hawkes, foreseeing death in the chaos of this atmosphere, immediately waved back the EVA crewmates.

"I'LL HANDLE HIM!"

His sword is steadied, held diagonally to the ground as he readied himself to launch upon the behemoth that tore across the wide and vast metroplex lobby with indiscriminate violence. Hawkes lowered his stature, grounding his feet and using his superhuman agility to pounce several feet into the air, stabbing his sword through one of the Gaiter's hulkish arms and activating the hilt, which extended four sharp proboscises and drilled into the exposed flesh to anchor the blade to flesh.

"HHHHHHHH!!!!" The Hulk Gaiter roared, swinging its mass around and decimating through infrastructure, sending debris flying across the expansive metroplex while Hawkes swung around like a ragdoll in the air, holding on with great might onto his greatsword while unhooking his Riveter with his other hand, leveling it at the roaring Gaiter's armored face and unloading upon it.

KRAK-KRAK-KRAK-KRAK-KRAK-KRAK-KRAK-KRAK!

The barrage of massive shells slammed into the Gaiter's features with the force of a propelled sledgehammer, cracking apart the armor and eventually penetrating into squishy flesh. The Gaiter fell onto its side as the shells delivered a near-fatal concussion to its skull, causing it to fall unconscious and stumble-crash to the ground. Hawkes unlatched his sword, hopping onto the Gaiter's massive face and slamming the tip of the blade through its exterior.

SCHHHHCK!

The Hulk Gaiter was dead, right as more lesser Gaiters arrived with stumbling gaits, hissing and seeking after defenseless station crewmembers. Hawkes grimaced atop the Hulk Gaiter's corpse, looking back and gesturing for the EVA team to follow whilst taking pot-shots at approaching Xenos.

"WE HAVE MORE WORK TO DO! MOVE IT!"

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Swansea, Daisuke, Theseus, and the Patriarch's Agents, termed 'Praetores', had just exited their transport vessel and were hurrying through the ominously silent and empty departures/arrivals area they had entered; and within minutes of navigating through the station-

BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSHHHHHH!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!

The station was slammed into by hundreds of Gaiters and bone quills, sending electrical power surges across the station's infrastructure before thousands of bulbs exploded from over-surges; then followed darkness, then emergency lighting as the backup generators kicked on. Alarm sirens rang ominously throughout the station, and distant screams could be heard echoing throughout the complex from ventilation ducts and long corridors leading into pitch-black hallways. Theseus and his team had docked at the opposite side of the station, where there was less human traffic and thus a less-crowded path to zero in on the Head Researcher's office.

"I'm regretting agreeing to this fucking bullshit!" Swansea cursed plentifully through his helmet, in a constant state of horror as Infantriere Theseus led Daisuke, Swansea and the Praetores through the eery and grim environment that was rapidly descending into chaos the further they headed into the massive space station. Daisuke, who had been given a serious amount of mental training and fortitude lessons from Theseus himself (Swansea refused the training), was steeling his mindset and locking in with the narrowed eyes of a hunter.

"This way." Theseus muttered laconically, using his internal mapping routes to lead the flock to the Head Researcher's office.

"We'll get through this." Daisuke said with confident affirmation, receiving a temporary look back of approval from Theseus. "The Achilles Series was made from researching the armor of Xenos scum, and these EXOVA suits were created from the adaptive, bio-metallic chitin of those Hive Leaders and their armored exteriors. We are merely fighting fire with fire. We will cleanse this station, without a doubt in my mind."

Swansea's helmet craned back, very slowly, with nonverbal and intense worry and dread; the complex diction and serious attitude simultaneously assuaged Swansea's concerns and frightened the hell out of him- what exactly had Theseus been putting in this kid's head?!

"When we return, I'm unwinding you by about a thousand."

"W-What?"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'W-What??'?! HAVE YOU HEARD YOURSELF, SHRIMP?!"

"I see no issue," Theseus muttered to himself, stomping along as he led the path to their objective with his hulking demeanor and looming, completely awe-inspiring presence.

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(Music: "The Corrupted", by The Day We Died)

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It wasn't long before their trek through the barely-lit hallways and increasingly blood-filled corridors led up a set of stairs to a wide and expansive room filled with botany and fauna, held behind reinforced glass frames and hued with underframed lighting— the Hydroponics Deck, where food was grown, harvested, and fed to the station's attendants.

Several hydroponics workers suddenly flooded through the room from the rightmost entrance, screaming bloody murder as a swarm of Gaiters followed behind them and tore into a few of the laggards; and without a further iota of hesitation, Theseus bolted into action. The ensuing scenes of pure carnage and slaughter were nothing short of the art of war; the apex of martial prowess darted into the fray as if it called to him instinctively; his next actions the very embodiment of DEATH FORGED INTO MAN.

KRAK-KRAK! KRAK-KRAK! KRAK-KRAK! KRAK-KRAK! CRA-A-ACK!

Without wasting a breath, he unhooked and leveled his Riveter with his left hand, aiming instinctively at the legs of the nearest Gaiters and blew them off with apex precision whilst palming the frontal skull portion of an ambushing Gaiter, wrenching his fist inward and crushing its cranium completely; then launching forward with such force that a massive gust of air caused several of the crewmates to stumble backward; accelerating at near-terminal horizontal velocity, he lowered his shoulder plate at the incoming Gaiters-

CRHHHHCCCHCHCHCCKKKK!!!!

-At the point of contact between armor and Gaiter flesh, their bodies exploded outward as Theseus SLAMMED through them, splattering several parts of the room, crewmates, and other Gaiters with the gore of Xenos. Whilst three Gaiters stumble-sprinted towards him, he unholstered the monstrously sized double-edged battleaxe magnetically attached to his back with his right arm, bringing it up and over his head, rotating his torso to gather greater torque, waiting with refined calmness until the tip of the shaft had reached the very edge of the maximum reach of his arm's length, before unwinding leftwards and whipping the plasma-rimmed blade like a whip-

VVVRRRRRRRRRRRR-M!

-Not so much slashing, but utterly d-e-c-i-m-a-t-i-n-g with a cut condensed into precise nonexistence; its blade cut like melted butter through limb-head-limb-limb-head-limb-limb-head-limb. The solid core beneath the plasma-rimmed edge created an immense kinetic force that, when wielded by a hulking superhuman like a Magna Caedes, ended up imparting the effect of a small meteoric impact.

CRRSHHHCCCCKKSKSSSHCCHCHHKK-SPLAT-SPLAT-SPLAT!

As the cleave swung clean through the upper torso section of the three Gaiters, their lower bodies crumpled lifelessly to the ground as their heads and uppermost limbs flung through the air and rolled across the ground. As another Gaiter lunged for Theseus, he jabbed the blunt edge of the pommel into its throat -CCHKKCK!!- impaling it mid-air before letting the handle slide through his gauntlet and slamming the Gaiter onto the ground, right as Theseus' boot raised over its face and -SQUELCH!- crushed its skull inwards, sending gore spewing out from the underside of his boot.

I am extremely sorry for all the crass comments I made behind your back, Swansea thought in pure dread- now realizing why the Patriarch was so confident in allowing Swansea and Daisuke to simply 'stick' with Theseus if they chose not to fight. A one-man army that drilled through the terrifying car-sized Gaiters like it was nothing- an absolute beast that operated with the same force of nature as solar flares, tornados, and hurricanes.

"WATCH OUT!" Daisuke called out, seeing a pack of Gaiters creep up to ambush Theseus from behind-

SMACK- Theseus rotated on his heel and delivered a fatal blow to the nearest Gaiter's thorax, blasting his gauntlet clean through and sending its innards spraying through the air, before wrenching -SCHGLB!- his way -CCKCKSS!- through its upper cavity, shoving his massive gauntlet up the esophagus, until his plated digits used the Gaiter's crocodilic maw as a deadly close-weapon accessory. As a swarm of five Gaiters, along with the two earlier, closed in on and surrounded Theseus, he wrenched his arm upward to tear the corpse's head and spine from the rest of its mutilated body, sending gore and offal in every conceivable direction, before immediately swinging around and slamming the flat end of the axe horizontally into three of the monsters, then used his makeshift Gaiter maw fist to clamp down on an approaching Gaiter's head and crushed it inward; their teeth able to chew through steel and their own reinforced bone, as Theseus had just discovered whilst he gripped his gauntlet so viciously against the Gaiter's skull that it slowly cracked inward, shredding brain matter and causing the Gaiter to spasm horribly with flailing limbs and twitching bones until the -CHRCK!- head was crushed completely. The body fell from his gauntlet in its semi-obliterated state, and such a disturbing death had phased even the collective conscience of the flooding, stumbling Gaiter hordes for a few moments- granting ample time for station crewmates to flee and Theseus' team to move away and pursue their goal even while the Gaiter hordes snapped out of their dread and continued their attempted blood-making.

Daisuke and Swansea, meanwhile, were being led through the Hydroponics Deck by the Praetores leader, Spartacus, as the other squadmates tore, with great delight, through the rapid swarm of Gaiters attempting to pursue the vulnerable station residents and their own assets from behind.

BRRRSSSCCHHH!!!

A Gaiter crashed down from the ceiling and slammed directly into Spartacus, its metal fragments and debris immediately being sucked back upward toward the opening into outer space, until the dynamic nano-insulation plates shuttered over the perforation, leaving a hissing Gaiter standing atop a dazed Spartacus and directly staring down Swansea and Daisuke. As Daisuke expressed sheer horror at the daunting size of the Gaiter (vehicle-sized) and its horrific look-

PWW! PWW!

Swansea fired the Plasma Cutter at the Gaiter's legs, sending it falling and slamming into Spartacus a second time as gravity delivered another punishment onto his bruised body. The Gaiter hissed, having no interest in Spartacus and instead clawing its way over toward Swansea in a fit of barely sentient rage. As it propped itself up from the ground and pounced at him, he felt a moment where his vision tunneled- as if he was tapping into that same rage and deathly readiness he'd first experienced aboard the Tulpar in his attempt to kill the b-a-s-t-a-r-d himself.

With his free hand, he launched forward to meet the Gaiter in close combat, managing to slam the palm of his hand into the Gaiter's neck and digging his sharpened plated fingers into its armored skin, before slamming it into the ground and raising his magnetic boot to -STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!- until its head was mush and half-developed brain matter.

"That..." Daisuke muttered, viewing the now head-mushed corpse of the Gaiter. "Was... Fucking... SIICK!"

"CAN YOU LOCK THE FUCK IN AND MOVE?!"

As they helped Spartacus back up onto his feet and lent him to one of the other Praetores for medical aid, Swansea vocally spoke his intent to lead the way with his holo-map, practically jog-running with Daisuke at his side and the rest of the group in tow, the Praetores directing the surviving station residents into a nearby safe room and closely following the Tulpar crewmates, blasting and slicing away at the approaching hordes of Gaiters tearing through the hallways.

As they were running, Daisuke took a moment to glance out the long port windows allowing exterior view of the cosmos, and noticed something quite leviathan in nature looming over the station and nearing closer, raising some inconceivably massive tendril over the corridor they were sprinting through-

"Uh, Swansea, what is that?" Daisuke asked, much to Swansea's irate irritation.

"CAN'T YOU SEE I'M BUSY?!" Swansea shouted with adrenaline pumping through his head, glancing in mere curiosity to see what Daisuke was referring to. "WE CAN'T- ah fuck."

BWSH------!

As the tendril came bearing down on the station infrastructure, it completely split the hallway in two and almost immediately drained the sound from their environment, sending Swansea and Daisuke flying toward the opening until the dynamic insulation plates shuttered rapidly over the gashes; and the two of them slammed into the repaired wall, falling to the floor in a daze; cut off from the rest of the team.

---------------------------------------------------

As he stood up groggily from the brunt impact, Swansea panicked as he began to realize they were, in fact, stranded by their lonesomes in this Xenos hell carnival; left in a barely-lit hallway with occasionally beaming, orange-hued emergency lights blaring from the small entrenched horizontal slits inlaid within the heavily damaged corridor infrastructure.

"Fuck! FUUUCK!" Swansea whisper-screamed in undeniable horror, realizing that he and Daisuke were suddenly cut off from their only source of protection and guaranteed safety from this absolute horrorshow they'd been launched into. With quickening awareness, he steered to Daisuke, gripping his Plasma Cutter in the right hand while gripping Daisuke's gauntlet with his other hand. Even if he'd rejected the mental 'training', he'd still undergone the loathsomely fatiguing yet enlightening and useful combat regimes Theseus forced them to take on.

"Daisuke, you're gonna stick by me. This is a horror movie, and we're prime rib for the Gaiters. Keep your eyes up and around. I'll take the vanguard, you take the rearguard. Don't stray."

Daisuke nodded, and the two of them slowly proceeded down the hallway, their boots heavily echoing against the haunting and pitch-dark passageways fraught with the derelict debris inflicted by the Xenos menace.

"You remember how we shoot their limbs, right?" Daisuke muttered hauntingly to Swansea, who leered as if he'd been slapped in the back of the head.

"Are you MOCKING me, you little shit?!"

"Wh-What do you mean, boss?!"

"NO SHIT, I KNOW HOW TO USE A FUCKING PLASMA CUTTER! JUST BECAUSE IT'S SPRUCED UP DOESN'T MEAN IT'S-!"

DDDDD-RK!

A Gaiter burst through the upper ventilation, falling onto the alloyed floor and groaning in a daze as it had slammed head-first from the crawl-space above. Watching the Gaiter struggle to get up, Swansea craned his head to Daisuke; almost as if defying the sanity of the situation to make a viscerally-Swansea-like point to him.

"Well, go ahead, bopper," Swansea snickered through the armored helmet. "Show me your expertise."

BSH! BSH! BSH!

Swansea, in fact, watched the expertise of Daisuke as he aimed his Plasma Cutter and shot three beams at the legs and head of the Gaiter, executing it entirely, before proceeding to walk down the hallway. Swansea clicked his tongue, groaning internally before begrudgingly following behind.

"Fuckin' showoff."

As Daisuke proceeded monotonously along the bloodied and battered corridors, Swansea regularly checked his holo-map to ensure the coordinates kept them on the right track, their magnetic-soled boots trodding along with the auditory impact of an artillery shell being loaded into a Howitzer. The atmosphere crept up on them slowly, attempting to pinch away at their psyche the same as it did upon the Tulpar; and the familiar engineering and infrastructure of the outdated station did not assuage the concerns or traumatic revisitings happening to each of them at this point in time.

Yet still, they plowed on. Undeterred by mere existential horror (somehow), and with the sheer confidence to trust in one another after all the previous hardship they'd endured, it felt to each of them that they had a duty to deliver-

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

The lights affixed to their plasma cutters suddenly jolted in pulsating terror as the sounds of metal clashing against the ground rang out through the empty, haunting corridors; with recovering conviction, Daisuke and Swansea turned their lights upon-

"H-huh?!" "CKREIST OHN AN' 'ATCHET!"

The boarish, swarthy Scotsman cried out in terror as their lights shone across his demeanor, seeing a number of wounds, stains, and other detritus amalgamating his unkempt, blonde, and wild-eyed appearance.

"Nearly blew mah fookin' 'ead off, fer fook's sake!" The Scotsman cried out, pushing himself back onto his feet and dusting himself off, his eyes darting around in subtle dread. "Can't geht the fookin' lecky to work, so now we're skulkin in the fookin' shadows with the Gai'ers!"

Swansea stared in utter disgust, realizing he was now forced to try and reconcile the words of a Scot amid an absolute hell-swarm of Gaiters. "Shut the fuck up and follow us!"

The Scot, in clear dread and trepidation, shook his head and clutched the monkey-wrench in his hand until his knuckles were white. "Nae, ah can't, ya fook! Nee'ta find mah cú, Rex, or t'ere ain't a point in livin', damn it!" He sobbed, seeming determined to charge past Swansea and Daisuke.

"Alright, enjoy that," Swansea remarked rather uncaringly, much to Daisuke's horror.

"Swansea, why would you say that?!" Daisuke implored naively. "We have to help him out!"

"Are you, perhaps, just a little dense, Daisuke? If we don't activate this K-5 thing to kill the Gaiters, it is GAME OVER. I am NOT risking that any further than needed for this shitfest!"

Swansea straightened his shoulders and growled as he tromped forward, with Daisuke following closely behind him in deep disappointment as they both watched the Scot traversing along in search of his pet. P-1 was within short distance from here, and Swansea had every intent to activate it before the whole station collapsed into calamitous, fiery brimstone.

------------------------------------------------- Read the whole story here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60303202/chapters/153895822

[jewish-sideblog]

MIZRAHI JEWS AREN'T ALLOWED TO LIVE IN ISRAEL YOU TARD

this is a troll, right? this has gotta be a troll. if you take twenty seconds to google this shit you'll see that 61% of Israeli Jews are Mizrahim, and 70% of global Mizrahim are Israeli. those aren't, like, "IDF statistics" or whatever. those numbers come from demographic studies done by the ISS in The Hague.

like, we can talk about historical and current income and power disparities between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim. would love to go over that if you wanna go over that. there's a lot of good information about it in the ISS demographic study if you had bothered to google. but it's fucking wild that you're coming out here and suggesting that 61% of the country apparently isn't allowed to live... in the country. who told you that. where did you get that from

[tinky-dinky]

So I was thinking about Galidraan again, and I noticed something. Either I missed something, there was yet another Jedi fuck up, or the way the Jedi do things doesn’t make any sense.

At the start of the massacre, Dooku tells Jango to surrender and be taken to the Republic to face justice, right? Or at least something along those lines. The Republic is definitely mentioned.

But after they’ve slaughtered the Haat’Mando’Ade and captured Jango, they don’t bring him to the Republic. They hand him over to the Governor of Galidraan.

It was my assumption that people who committed war crimes or other large atrocities and were arrested by the Jedi would go to the Galactic equivalent of the Hague, presumably on Coruscant.

But do they instead get handed over to the leaders of whatever planet or people they wronged without caring what consequences that might have?

In Jango’s case, he was sold into slavery, which is horrific and the Jedi are absolutely partially to blame for that.

They’d also be partially to blame for handing someone over who was then killed. Or, worse, handing someone over who was then released and committed more atrocities.

I’m fervently hoping this was just another gigantic fuck up on Galidraan alongside the colossal fuck ups of not doing any basic research on Mandalorians, not considering how approaching their historic enemies with their weapons drawn and saying surrender and we’ll take you to the Republic, the people who massively bombed their planet would go and not even attempting to calm the situation down before launching into the slaughter.

Otherwise, the Jedi and the Republic are even more corrupt, incompetent and useless than I already thought, and the Empire begins to look even more tempting.

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

honestly my flu or covid or whatever the fuck this illness is should be tried at the hague for making me miss Sabrina Carpenter

[fireflowersims]

Ppl be like "Israel has a right to self-defence"

And like yeah, sure, whatever. But in what fucking world are you living that BOMBING HOSPITALS and shutting off water is considered self-defence???? This is not self-defence. Far from it, this is plain evil, this is war crimes. I hope to see the ppl behind this tried in The Hague, even if that won't bring back the many lives already lost to these vile attacks.

The Palestinian ppl deserve basic human dignities, they deserve to go wherever they want, they deserve to live in peace and not have to be afraid of bombings. The thought that there are an unimaginable number of children who have to be worried about their family and friends dying in a bombing instead of just worrying about their grades, is breaking my heart 💔

[atopvisenyashill]

i know they cast an older actor bc they wanted to pretend like tommen is 18 now or whatever but like, he still looks like 14 tops, and also, i REMEMBER natalie dormer saying between seasons that she hadn’t read the books but she knows margaery isn’t going to have sex with tommen bc she’s smarter than that & also that’s icky (not in those words, but that was the gist - she didn’t want to do a statutory rape story basically) and then next thing we know tommen is recast, margaery is fucking him, and natalie is like “oh haha yes i promise i love this story” anyways this was such a wild fucking change i think d&d deserve the hague

[onetruesirius]

If Harris gets in, we have a shot, just a shot, at bugging these assholes enough to stop.

We buy ourselves a bit more time to even be listened to at all, to pressure the dickheads in power to stop bombing Gaza, to make our dissatisfaction more-than-known, but felt, at every layer of governance.

We have to get the Dems into office and THEN we crucify them at every single turn until they fucking stop sending bombs. We have to get people into office who will maybe have a 10% chance of listening to us, and THEN we get to scream at them for 4 years. If the people in office won't listen to us at all, there are no more chips in the game.

And before you even fucking think it, get "violent revolution" out of your mouth. The Second Coming of Christ Karl Marx isn't happening, I don't care what Fred from work said. There is no shining garden on the other side of an apocalypse—there is only day after day after day after day. There is only taking care of each other, there is only doing what we can, every single day.

ONE of these ghoulish fucks has a CHANCE of being able to be bargained with. The other does not.

We will not be listened to whatsoever under Trump. Trump has said, on record, he wants Netanyahu to "finish the job". Fuck's sake—what do we even think that means here??? He is going to accelerate the flow of weapons to Israel, and he is not going to listen to anyone if they tell him to stop, he will not listen to protests even the tiniest little bit this time, and we have to acknowledge that reality.

I've heard a lot of "no lesser evil when it comes to genocide" lately, encouraging people to split the democratic vote and get Trump into office, just like Nixon and Reagan. My frustration with these individuals is both unceasing and empathetic, because I do get it.

I understand. I do, deeply. The desire to sit down and cross my arms over my chest and withhold my vote and play chicken with the Republicans and teach the Dems a lesson runs deep in my soul as well. I swore on my life that I wouldn't vote for Biden and I was sticking to my guns about that, because fuck it, what he's thrown himself into wholeheartedly should be enough to get him tried at the Hague. Kamala has time to change her mind, even if it's after the election. I resent what's happening, I hate that my government is bankrolling the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. I'd would stop it if I could. I would ease it if I could. That also means I would do whatever I could to prevent it from intensifying further, even if it stings my pride and offends my sensibilities.

With the things that Trump is more or less promising to do to Gaza? I would never be able to forgive myself if I did nothing to stop him, and he got into office. My inaction would be complicity in the intensified violence at home and abroad. There were candidates in the past that we COULD play chicken with to make the Dems quake in their boots. That is not the 2024 cycle. Trump is not a man to play chicken with—he is in a cement mixer and you are not going to win against a cement mixer.

If there was actually a 3rd party candidate who was opposed to the genocide entirely, and who I thought could actually win in the General Election, I would vote for them in a heartbeat.

But I don't have that right now.

A viable 3rd party candidate this late in the game is a pipe dream, and there are no dreams here, no wishful thinking, there is only what is—what is right in front of me. The list of things I would change and the list of things I dislike will always be at least a mile long and I can't act on any of it in any meaningful way right now. There is no grand scheme, there is no Revolution coming to save me. There is only day after day after day after agonizing day. There is no "I don't want-", there is only what I DO want. Tempering that, there is only what I can actually GET, reasonably. I can't get everything I want right now, which sucks because I want world peace. I want my friends to stop being in danger when they go back to their ancestral lands, to stop having their family killed, to stop being at risk of violence right here in their own country for the way they look... and that's not happening right now. All I can do for now, is pressure my representatives and make sure that me not getting my way isn't going to cause me to hurt other people in my frustration and hurt my cause. As a person living here, exercising civic rights, I'm already a part of this. I'm already conplicit. I can't afford pipe dreams, I have to give my friends a chance to be listened to.

It would be an unimaginable luxury for me to simply sit down and cross my arms over my chest to pout because I'm not god-emperor of everything, and in so doing allow even more harm to come into the world, just so I can have a slightly-cleaner conscience while everyone suffers.

I will be very begrudgingly and very resentfully placing my vote behind Kamala Harris with both my whole chest AND a promise to keep fucking shit up until she listens to the voice of the people.

For fucks sake don’t vote 3rd party.

I would LOVE to not have a 2 party system. It’s a cancer on our country and we need to take action to dismantle it, but just pretending like the bad thing already doesn’t exist anymore and making decisions based on that is a TERRIBLE idea. It won’t change shit and it’ll just prevent us from making actual headway. Trump will win if Kamala doesn’t, that’s the system we live in, the notion that that 200 year old monster of a problem is gonna change in 100 days is absolutely absurd. So let’s just establish that before going any further.

I see people all the time saying to vote 3rd party because “Kamala is just as bad as Trump, democrats just wanna LOOK progressive.” (And before that it was Biden but you get my gist.) because of Biden’s deplorable refusal to stop arming Israel. Respectfully, no tf she’s not, even by just a hair. Kamala isn’t the one with a laundry list of straight up legal atrocities she’s publicly planning to commit if she wins. Being genuinely scared of project 2025 and worrying about ourselves because of that isn’t proof that someone calling for a free Palestine is performative. Genuinely, GENUINELY, what the hell do you think is gonna happen to Palestine if Trump wins? Letting our own country possibly be set back several steps and many of our own citizens’ lives be destroyed to “take a stand” for Palestine when it won’t do shit to help them is just as performative. Actually it’s infinitely MORE performative.

[negotiumcrucis]

If we slow dance

Joe/Nicky, Football AU, Explicit, 8,4k

Joe didn’t know exactly what to expect when Booker convinced him to hire a male escort. In retrospect, it had been Joe’s own fault. He shouldn’t have talked to Booker about his plans for his first free weekend. But after one month of intense training with the new team, he wasn’t thinking straight. And Booker might be Joe’s best friend, but he’s also his agent and didn’t take it lightly when Joe joked about ‘hitting the nearest gay club and finding someone to take home.’ Booker didn’t laugh along; instead, he looked more serious than Joe ever remembered. Booker had been sympathetic following Joe’s breakup. He stayed sober while Joe drank himself to sleep, and after pushing a mug of well-sugared coffee into Joe’s hands the following morning, he told Joe his transfer had finally come through. ‘You will be way too busy to mope now,’ he said with a sad smile, adding with a touch of solemnity that Joe couldn’t be a rising star footballer with a boyfriend, no matter how discreet he and Markus had been for the past years. “You’re Champions League now, Yusuf,” Booker reminded Joe last week. “There will be time to romance pretty guys in the future, preferably after you bring home at least one World Cup. Until then… there are professionals we can call for you, so lemme help, please?” Joe had reluctantly agreed. And though he did look forward to not having to pretend to be into women for at least a little while, he couldn’t bring himself to peruse a catalogue of strange men’s headshots and choose someone to fuck. So he had left the picking to Booker, trusting his friend to know where his tastes lie. Booker had, after all, introduced him to Markus when he was still playing for his club in The Hague. But whatever picture Joe had conjured up in his mind in the days leading to the appointment made by the escort agency, that image didn’t even remotely resemble the young man currently standing in Joe’s hallway. First, he hasn’t dressed in the sort of clothes Joe thought a sex worker would choose. Not that Joe had much, if any, experience with that sort of thing. But well, people made assumptions. If pressed upon, Joe probably would have guessed a pair of tight-fitting dark jeans and a fancy dress shirt, maybe some jewellery and hair slicked back with way too much gel. But instead, the man in front of Joe looks… comfortable. Like a young journalist or maybe a student on his way to the university. Joe is certain he would probably look past this man if he encountered him on the street if it wasn’t for the most striking pair of eyes he has ever seen. Joe hasn’t had a chance to properly sketch since his new contract brought him to England, but suddenly he can feel his hands tingling to unpack his charcoal kit and draw those eyes framing the large roman nose, along with the half-smile on this stranger’s sharp, angular face. “Hello, Joe,” the man says, his accent going straight to Joe’s core. He feels his face heat up at once. “I’m Nicky.”

(continue reading on ao3)

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Agreed...we all watched EVERYTHING in real-time. My point being we (the general public) don't really know what procedures have got to be followed, what agencies have to coordinate (not only our own agencies, but those of our NATO Allies and the "Five Eyes" intelligence agencies) in order to "cross all the t's and dot all the i's" for the case to be rock-solid and air-tight, so there is no chance T could NOT be convicted of...wait for it...TREASON.

They're not just going to go after his petty larceny (which the hotel/ss stuff is in the big picture). Jack Smith is from The Hague. That is no joke or laughing matter. The reason they called Smith in is to pull ALL of his crimes together into a High Treason charge, Crimes against Humanity...all that happens internationally at The Hague.

Yes, we've watched and seen EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING HE'S DONE SINCE BEFORE 2016...I've been right there with y'all, seeing it all...there are many of us who've stuck with this to see it through to its inevitable end: Trump convicted of treason and Crimes against Humanity. It's been beyond frustrating, but I still firmly believe we will be victorious in the end. Whatever machinations have to be satisfied on the international law end of it have to be finished before we can see that victory, and I am pretty sure that is where we are.

[finxwrites]

I am having fun with the Bridgerton au

There were so many fucking people. There must have been at least a hundred in just this one huge room. Maybe a third of them were dancing under the enormous chandeliers, while the rest stood in little clumps gossiping about the dancers, or else ambled around bumping into each other and making small talk out of it. All the men were in black or dark blue; all the women were in the most extravagantly colored assortment of dresses Dustin had ever seen in one place. 

Steve would be on the dance floor, right? That was where you went to chat with babes without any parents breathing down your neck. Dustin craned his neck, trying to see faces in the swirl of movement as all the couples waltzed or polkaed or whatever they were doing. 

Dustin saw a few people he recognized—Nancy was dancing with some loser in a cravat so stiff he could barely look down to talk to her—but no Steve. He peered at the buffet table through the shifting walls of dresses and coattails—maybe Steve had gone to get a girl drinks? But no, no dice.

Every second Dustin spent tucked against the heavy door curtain made him feel more exposed. He wasn’t all gross or anything, it had been a pretty chill crossing from the Hague and a quiet enough trip up the Thames to London, but he was most emphatically not in a fancy tailcoat. He wasn’t even wearing dark colors, he had on his tan traveling clothes. He’d barely stopped at home long enough to splash some water on his face before dashing back out and hurrying here.

Oh god, what if Lady Wheeler was here? What if she saw him? What if she saw him and pinched his cheek?

[faintvibes]

Bakery AU: Electric Boogaloo

drops this

Explanation under the cut!

Every now and then, as is the circle of life, I inevitably come back and redesign/generally remake my bakery au, so I humbly offer its latest reincarnation.

The general premise is that a bunch of dead nations (incl Prussia, because he doesn't live through the cold war this time round) try a risky experiment that's meant to bring them back to life- and it does! But they get reincarnated as humans, with no memory of their lives as nations. The remaining Nation Energy they have joins them together in their new lives through a telepathic link.

The story mostly centers around Beilschmidt Bakery- a business in Magdeburg that Almaric's (Germania's) parents decided to purchase above other candidates because of the coincidental (or so they thought) name match-up. In reality, this is a business Prussia established in the 1880s that he largely left up to locals to run, but would take Germany to as a young boy as an escape from politics. (Germany has not visited it since Prussia's death- but once he does, he's in for a surprise!)

Almaric and Gilbert work at the bakery full-time, with the plan being that Gilbert will one day inherit it. Kallisto, Navid, and Ixchel (Ancient Greece, Ancient Persia, and Thule- an Inuit culture originating in Alaska that spread across Canada for 600 years). Jules and Hazael (Knights Templar and Hospitaller) are Gil's friends from high school, who work part-time at the bakery to help pay for their education to become a music therapist and paramedic respectfully.

**I'm aware, by the way, that Ixchel isn't an Inuit name, but rather a Mayan one! There is a reason for this, both in her nation life and human one!! It's difficult to explain without going into my whole perspective on Indigenous Nations in the Americas- so I'll just say that in her human life, she's named after someone her parents were friends with but lost contact, and this is similar but not the same as the story about her name in her prior life. Hopefully that makes sense :)

Of those not working at the bakery: Romulus (Ancient Rome) is a Roman archaeologist and as a result travels a lot, Lotte (Ancient Gaul) is the Director of the Royal Archives in the Netherlands, and so lives in the Hague, Ephraim (Ancient Judea) works as a history conservator at the Jewish Museum Berlin, and Nermin (Ancient Egypt) travels the globe searching for answers on why they're Like That.

As for why Prussia dies: I'm running with the theory that Prussia becomes East Germany in canon- and that he does not in this au, but everyone assumes he does since he doesn't die/fade/whatever immediately upon becoming dissolved. In reality, his survival is due to being used to changing nature (another headcanon of mine, but I'm of the perspective- first of all, that Prussia was originally the Baltic Prussians- that the representative of the Baltic Prussians, rep of the Teutonic Knights, rep of the [independent] Prussia, and rep of the Prussia that's part of Germany all required reps of entirely different natures. Baltic Prussia/Old Prussia was a collection of tribes operating under one culture but never one organisation, meaning the representative would be more like the ancients typically were, residing over a culture but not one specific nation/tribe/organisation of people. Holy orders like the Teutonic Knights organised in small pockets within countries and territories, so being the representative of that is, again, different. And then, of course, being an independent, fully-fledged nation is another form of representative. And being a representative of territory within a nation is different again. So Prussia (the person) is clearly an adaptable little gremlin and hard to kill, even when he probably should have been- long aside over!) which means that even though he no longer represents a territory, people, or culture, he exists anyway because fuck you. Rather, he adapts to being your average everyday human, losing his immortality and boosted healing factor- but this isn't something immediately noticeable. It IS noticeable, however, when he dies and doesn't eventually get back up again. And starts decaying away.

Russia buried the body and never told a soul what happened. The rest of the world continued thinking Gilbert, as East Germany, was just trapped behind the iron curtain. This fell apart with the Berlin Wall, when Russia just would not cough him up. It became quite clear Russia did something- but no one knew what. Even the other Soviet states hadn't a clue, just that he'd disappeared years ago and no one ever saw him again. Most of them thought he probably escaped, though Russia didn't react as though he'd escaped, because it seemed like the most reasonable explanation. Now, it was clear that Russia had done something- and, they believed, still doing something, because it's not like nations die permanently when they still represent something. The reunification of Germany was partly out of the hope that it would put him out of his misery- though the thought that he might be alone and suffering, somehow managing to survive, continues to haunt Germany.

As a funky little bonus, here's the last time I made a reference for this au:

Left most of the lads as heads this time because I knew that I don't have the energy to do all of them rn.

*Ixchel has the funky little aura thing going on because in this version they all had individual powers, and hers just happened to project outwardly. Mithridates (to memory) is Navid- except the name felt a bit too on the nose, and I didn't realise Ancient Persia had a rep until I came back to the project this time around, so a lot of changes on that front. (Same with Ancient Egypt!)

[mewlabu]

Anyone else kind of tired of UN and NATO and big western nation leaders acting all shocked at Russia's complete disregard for international and conflict law when they've visited Ukraine? Or try to talk to Putin one on one?

We've been, writing, talking, screaming about it for years and extra hard in the last two months! Why are you so shocked?

It honestly makes me so mad seeing that. It's so patronizing and dismissive and disrespectful to all those countries that fell to Russian brutality and lost so much and have been telling the world over and over that you can't do normal business and politics with Russia.

But the west keeps treating us like children and like they know better. Like we're just silly poor little nations who simply don't know how to do politics and diplomacy.

The latest being the UN visit. The one that went to Putin first then Kyiv and was all "oh my! Can't believe Putin bombed Kyiv while I was there!"

What made you believe he wouldn't?

Russia hasn't even been that invested in hiding it's contempt for all the institutions and laws, they were there in the UN asking for an agreement on humanitarian aid for a crisis they were in the process of creating. How do you take these people as serious, good faith actors?

And still the west keeps talking and acting like it's fine. And keep trying to call Putin and keep trying to make talks happen because oil and gas and a belief in their own superiority as mediators and world leaders.

As if Zelensky just doesn't know how to negotiate or is too stubborn or whatever and not that negotiation with a Russia is useless because they lie and do whatever the fuck they want. Regardless of what they may have agreed to.

Russia doesn't respect anything but it's own ambitions. Not the UN not the Hague not the ICC not human life. They do not engage with any bilateral or multilateral process in good faith. Never have.

I just hope this means now they will stop treating nations surrounding Russia as if we're paranoid, irrational and hysterical and start listening.

[inthefoxholes]

ALSO (and I’m sorry to be piling on an already long post) I would argue that the mcu has, by definition, a problem with depicting responsibility, culpability, and blame, as seen in the whole CA:CW fiasco. By definition, because it is a us-based multi million dollar franchise that relies heavily on the depiction of imperialist tropes (war as necessary, our heroes reluctantly intervening in so-called third world countries, not because they want to, no, they have to, because something something technologically advanced yadda yadda).

So the premises of CA:CW (do we need oversight over us-based superheroes? Who could provide that and how?) and even that of TFATWS (who even are the bad guys here?) are interesting and worth considering. But they can NEVER even be fully considered inside the mcu because they need to stay inside their lane.

Questions of responsibility would have to be considered in the broader context of us imperialism, of interventionism, of the military-industrial-complex. That can obviously never happen, and so we got the laughable concept of the us secretary of state (or whatever the fuck Ross was, I don’t wanna look it up) spearheading UN oversight over US citizens, when in reality there is such a thing as the Hague invasion act. And in TFATWS, instead of dealing with the mess of endgame, of what the fuck it really means to have half the world population reappear after five years, we get the appearance of nuanced thought and intellectual exercise by looking at the moral value of kids’ taking the serum, when they are obviously only reacting to a fucked up world. The same goes for Bucky, it wants to give the appearance of asking the hard questions, but it never asks them, because it cannot look at the structural level. So instead we learn that the young man who was drafted into WW2 is somehow personally responsible for what regimes and shield-sponsored hydra did to him. Ok cool.

I've been reading through the posts and anons regarding Bucky's characterisation in FATWS and I couldn't agree more with your responses.

I think the deep dives and theories from some of the anons on how the writing for Bucky could be spun if we really wanted to are interesting and well intentioned but when I look at what was actually presented, I finished FATWS feeling like I was supposed to view Bucky as a reformed villain who was looking for redemption and that I was supposed to root for him now that he was on the right path and making choices to atone for his sins and make right for his life of crime ---and, considering Bucky was a victim, that did not sit right with me at all. I find it hard to believe that someone could have watched Bucky's story from the beginning and not rooted for him the whole way through.

I actually found the attempts to villainise him a disgusting narrative choice.

This was not an arc about a victim healing, it was an arc about an assassin looking for redemption.

So I think that even if the attempt was to show the shadiness of the government or to portray it as Bucky's misplaced guilt being the driving force, it ultimately doesn't matter because that's not how the narrative presented it. Bucky makes a lot of statements that signify his own feelings of guilt and low sense of self worth 'the power I gave her' 'I know crazy because I am crazy' the conversation he has with Sam about why he has to be the one to talk to Zemo--and none of these statements are shot down, not even by Sam who is supposed to be our hero and experienced PTSD therapist. In fact, Sam even encourages Bucky's negative self image at points with lines like 'even him, and he's killed everyone he's ever met' (which is why I'll also argue that Sam is mischaracterised in this show too)

That's because the narrative wants us to take Bucky's guilt at face value, they want us to see this as a matter fact and something that Bucky has to redeem himself from in order to reach his goal of feeling worthy and human again. They want Bucky's guilt to be a point both he and the audience agree on.

While the narrative leaves space for us to counter its perception of Bucky and his level (or lack) of responsibility for things that The Winter Soldier did--it does nothing to counter its own assumption that Bucky should be considered complicit in the things he was forced to do by Hydra.

We are told some form of this by everyone from Zemo to Sharon to Karli to Raynor to Isaiah to even Sam.

Even when Bucky finally breaks and openly admits that he's beginning to question Steve's faith in him, there is no response to counter his lack of self belief. Neither Sam nor Raynor argue the matter.

During the one moment that the writing could have explicitly made it clear that the narrative viewed Bucky as a victim of Hydra instead of the villian he believes himself to be, we got blank space instead. They could have expanded on the scene between him and Yori and used the father of one of The Winter Soldier's targets to make the point that Bucky was a victim too but instead, we got the implication that Yori was yet another person seeing him as the same monster that Bucky believes himself to be.

So when we take the writing as it actually is, we are left with Bucky believing he is responsible for the crimes that Hydra committed using The Winter Soldier. We are left with no one countering his belief, we are in fact left with both our protagonists and antagonists equally reinforcing Bucky's guilt and self-portrayal as a reforming villain and we are left with Bucky learning that he has to pay for what 'he' did by living in service of those 'he' hurt.

That is what the narrative tells us about Bucky Barnes in FATWS. That is what the character of Bucky Barnes tells us in FATWS, that is what the other characters tell us about Bucky Barnes in FATWS--and we have nothing within the narrative of FATWS that leads us to believe otherwise.

Hello lovely! I’m not sure how I missed this post although I did have a lot of personal stuff going on a few months ago and maybe I shelved it for a time I could reply properly, so apologies for the delay!

All excellent points up there.

Back during the height of the TFATWS discourse (mostly stemming from the fact that several of us were trying to write fix-its and just couldn’t make the canon make sense), one of the key points of contention was between fans who felt the narrative fell short in addressing Bucky’s lack of agency and therefore lack of liability for the Winter Soldier’s crimes, vs other fans who felt Steve’s one line in CACW “it wasn’t your fault” was enough and hence his lack of agency did not need to be raised again in TFATWS.

But you are absolutely right. The narrative frames Bucky as guilty and volatile, and it does nothing to dispose the viewers otherwise. None of the characters treat him in a way that suggests any empathy for his status as a prisoner of war, only something bordering on derision that he’s been spared punishment.

Which, I think, accurately reflects how most of the MCU writers have spoken of him.