#rachel x paul

[bangtanmix73]

Horny Wolfpack + imprints rambling ahead so good luck😭❤️

Enjoy the random photo <3

BUT LIKE

You, Emily, Kim, and Rachel (if you aren’t Paul’s imprint) do something against their orders because they’ve been ignoring you or working too much so you all just “fuck you, imma do exactly what you don’t want us to do for the fun of it”.

You get back to Emily’s house and they’re all pissed off.

Smut ensues :).

In the house.

In the living room.

Next to each other.

OR

You are passed around between everyone in the pack.

Maybe including the imprints, not sure though🤔

Don’t have much on this one because it’s pretty straight forward lmao.

The last one I have (for now) is:

You somehow pissing off Embry, Quil, Paul and Jared.

First you think they’re just pissed and are going to ignore you or bully you for a while.

But no.

They fuck you until you’re crying.

Or passed out.

Whichever comes first I guess.

Idea from this picture 👆🏼

I might make these into fics tbh🤭.

[xmenshitposts]

jp's icon is by tepkunset

akihiro's icon is by clacefall

original under the cut!

[rei-ismyname]

X-FACTOR 2020 Highlights 1

The Krakoan X-Factor was a fantastic little book, though it unfortunately was cancelled at short notice due to factors outside creator control after only 10 issues. On the positive side, those 10 issues were excellent. This post will be all issue #1 because it's one of the best team building issues I've ever read and lays a very solid foundation for what comes next. It's also a very queer book.

Issue one is all about building the team and the premise. Wasting no time, the first page is a splash of Northstar sensing Aurora's death via twin telepathy. He immediately flies to Arbor Magna and demands the Five bring her back, pissing off everyone in the process.

He follows Hope's advice and learns the last place she was seen was the Green Lagoon, but hits a dead end. Fortunately Lorna overhears and throws in, neo-noir style. Daken happens to be lying on the floor and joins the team too, though they aren't very happy to have him. The three put the word out via flyer and the band assembles!

Rachel Summers, the recently resurrected Prodigy, and... EYE BOY round out the squad bringing the number up to 6 + Amazing Baby, Rachel's warwolf that Betsy gave her in the pages of Excalibur. Prodigy uses his superpowers of common sense and deduction and they're off to Bellingham, Washington.

Rachel uses her oft-forgotten Chronoskimming to see Aurora's most recent moments in a motel room she rented while Daken 'interviews' the guy at the front desk and the team start to explore how their powers interact/pick up clues.

By their powers combined they track down the barrier Aurora smashed through into the water. Eye Boy earns his keep by narrowing down which of the many underwater cars it could be and Polaris pulls them out of the water. Plates are matched with the motel rental receipt and voila! Interestingly it's Daken who pulls Northstar back from searching for his sister's corpse directly, signposting his arc will be one of emotional and social growth. He has the skills, he just hasn't been using them.

Northstar rushes off and *ahem* presents proof of death to the Five. Luckily the Five understand he's going through some shit and his team has his back. The best X-Men stories are about found family and soap opera, and this ad hoc team has plenty of both.

Daken and Northstar's clash of personalities starts to soften a little and the rest of the team get their CSI: Krakoa on in front of the Quiet Council. Despite Emma's scorn, their impressive display turns out to be a job interview.

Turns out there's a lot of missing and dead mutants or just people lacking proof of death. Resurrection protocols stress avoiding resurrecting 'dupes' and so far the labor involved handling it informally is disrupting The Five's workflow. They're swamped. The team's actions demonstrated a need for X-Factor and their suitability for the mission.

The Quiet Council approves and X-Factor is (re)born! Lorna, despite having lead X-Factor before, knows she's not in a space for leadership right now, nominating Northstar and unofficially becoming his XO. In a nod to Polaris' inconsistent characterisation over the decades, she renders Magneto speechless by asking him to describe her personality. Lorna's arc is established as one of self actualisation and coming to terms with the difficulty of being Lorna Dane AND Magneto's daughter - no dancing around the fact he's been a shitty parent. However, he is trying to be better. Krakoa is a fresh start for all.

Lorna calls back to Giant-Size X-Men, speaking directly to Krakoa about their long history (she yeeted it into space if you didn't know.) Together, they build The Boneyard, X-Factor's headquarters and living space. The Five drop by with a gift and Forge shares his invention of fleet seeds, allowing anyone to submit a case to X-Factor. The Boneyard immediately fills with pink bubbles/cases and they realise they have a lot of work ahead of them - validating their commitment and giving them all purpose.

As I said in the intro, X-Factor #1 is one of the best team building issues I've ever read. Aurora's death is the inciting incident on page one and the team is formed by page three. Instead of stretching the investigation out into the first arc/five issues, it's resolved in 1 and we get to explore the team dynamic and workflow in real time. They don't need to grow into individual competence because they're already there. It's a strong statement that the investigations are a backdrop for character work and growing into an unlikely team/family unit.

Two of the issues are part of X of Swords. An event crossover usually threatens to knock a limited series off course but the connectivity inherent to The First Krakoan Age (plus X-Factor's links to the Five and Quiet Council) instead provide opportunity to explore existing themes and put the characters through the wringer. But I'm getting ahead of myself - that is a subject for part 2.

Next time - war, murder, and ACAB. Plus, Aurora's back!

[smartiequeen]

Akihiro is a master in cookand I wil stand b that till I die. He is so tired of themall being failues in the kitchen

[mjsparkour]

I’m really growing to appreciate that once we got Dune two and actually saw Florence Pugh take on the role of Irulan the paulirulan tag grew in size over the last couple of months. I’m glad I’m not the only one seeing the (potential) fail marriage of the century vision here. Denis can’t let me down the material is really all there.

This is not to say that I don’t like paulchani but the way Villanueve has changed certain aspects of Chani’s character (for the better in my opinion) has shifted how I feel about that dynamic. I’m not really sold on the passionate all consuming young love fest of it all, especially with how it’s played up in the books. Don’t get me wrong there are some beautiful lines but I can’t help but think about the missed opportunity with irulan (as a character and her relationship dynamics).

I also had my brain warped by Florence and Timothee’s chemistry in little women so I’m part of the apparent minority (?) that believes they’ll likely have better chemistry than paulchani. (Note: I have also seen racist stans on twitter praise their chemistry over zendaya and timothee on account of Zendaya being biracial which is disgusting and stupid, and definitely not a reason I prefer Timothee and Florence’s chemistry).

I could write a whole separate meta on what I like about Denis portrayal of Chani but it honestly boils down to her having more agency and actual principles. We as an audience know she comes back to Paul obviously, we just don’t know when and what changes her mind. Which is very intriguing because I’d like to know what Paul gets up to in that time of separation and how irulan is involved. I also think, if Denis were to go this route, Chani could play a key role in forming a resistance against Paul’s rule (something she could end up abandoning when she goes back to him, also interesting to study motivations there. I feel like that can get really dark with Paul involved). Then the two would be on opposing sides in the similar way I imagine paulirulan would be on opposing sides vying for power in different ways as they rule together (like Paul promised in Dune part two, another key difference from the book alluding to a more interesting complex dynamic).

All of this is to say I want a real love triangle that’s not really a love triangle bc everyone is doomed by the narrative and it’s all really dark and gross, thus making it romantic.

[man-me--a-sand]

x factor (2020) but it’s an 80s/90s sitcom

[frantic-babbling]

thinking about the scientist by coldplay

except it's about darry and paul

except it's the glee cast version

so it's about darry and paul's overly dramatic breakup

choose your fighter: rachel/finn, santana/brittany, blaine/kurt, tw: mr schue--will/emma

[sga-mcshep-4ever]

"You okay, sir?" "I've been better. Been worse. My shoulder's a little sore." "Do you want me to take a look at that?" "I’ll take a rain check there, Doc." "We should leave this area. More Genii will be on their way." "I couldn't agree more."

[unladyboss]

ACADEMY MUSEUM GALA and SYDNEY ADAMU/ AYO EDEBIRI. THE BEAR

Sydney/ Ayo Edebiri , Quinta Brunson and Rachel Sennot and Paul Mescal. Kaia Gerber

She looks gorgeous and flawless

[amageish]

Thinking way too hard about the queer possibilities of X-Men ‘97

When X-Men ‘97 was first announced, I’ll admit I was kind of ambivelent to the entire project... It felt very nostalgia-focused and was just less interesting to me then an all-new X-Men cartoon that could do its own thing without being burdened with established canon...

...and then I listened to the X-Men 60 Uncanny Years event earlier this year and hearing the executive producer of the series discuss what the X-Men meant to him as a kid as a gay black man in Florida basically changed my mind about the entire project. Now I’m excited for it!

The X-Men are so fucking queer. Even ignoring the ways that the mutant metaphor have been used to discuss queer issues before queer issues could be discussed textually, Marvel’s merry mutants just have... so many queer members and even more when you expand the list to include sub-textual and intended queerness.

So, with all that in mind, I did a little thinking and decided to take some guesses about who could make for queer representation in '97... Let’s dive in!

Part One: The Comic Canon Gays

Let’s start with the characters who are explicitly no-subtext-required queer in the comic books themselves. These are a few of the characters Marvel uses in Pride events and generally parades around every June.

Northstar

Jean-Paul Beaubier may seem like the vanilla ice cream of this rainbow sundae, but there’s far more going on with this character then the “Marvel’s first explicitly gay superhero” title that he is so often boiled down to. A French-Canadian superstar athlete, he’s lived never being entirely sure if his skiing career success was a result of his talent or his mutant abilities.

While his depiction in X-Men The Animated Series just had him be painfully French-Canadian with an on-the-nose accent and French exclamations, there’s a mean catty gay under the surface that is just waiting to be unleashed. They could also adapt his famous wedding arc, wherein he married his husband Kyle Jinadu...

Also he hates cops, so y’know... Maybe Marvel did nail the queer experience on their first try?

Iceman

Bobby Drake is arguably the most famous queer character at Marvel. A member of the original five X-Men, he was famously confirmed as gay when his teenage self was transported to the present and, with some unsolicited help from a teenage Jean Grey, questioned why his older self remaining closeted, even in a world that was (comparatively at least) accepting of queer desire.

In the original show, he showed unrequited interest in Polaris, as he had in the comics before his coming-out. This reboot could potentially give a more grounded and less fantastical take on coming-out then what he had in the comics... or maybe time travel will be involved again - who knows really!

Prodigy

David Allyene, aka Prodigy, is one of the most notable bi men at Marvel with one of the most distinctive coming-out stories. His mutant powers cause him to instantly learn things that other people know, hence the name Prodigy, and, through his powers, he also learned his own sexuality. How’s that for a crazy journey of self-discovery.

Prodigy is a newer character who did not appear in the original animated series at all, so there’s no continuity concerns there...

Mystique and Destiny

Destiny, also known as Irene Adler, met her lover Mystique when he was presenting as male and operating as a consulting detective in Victorian London.

Yeah uh. This is implying what you think it is.

The two of them have been lovers for centuries now, though both took other partners at different points during their relationship. Their love is something special though and together they raised Rogue as a child - as well as maybe sired Nightcrawler together? That was once intended to be Nightcrawler’s origin, but it was famously scrapped due to Marvel editorial not wanting to depict a child that is a product of a queer relationship at the time... but now this November a new comic will explore the “true” origin of Nightcrawler, so maybe Mystique/Destiny having a biological child is back on the table!

Mystique was, of course, in the original series. I’m not sure the actual odds of her relationship with Irene being acknowledged in ‘97 - partially just because I imagine Marvel would be concerned about backlash to queer villains... but also they’re adorable and good to me so I’d like them!

Captain Britain and Askani

Betsy Braddock and Rachel Summers are two incredibly complicated characters to summarize. Rachel is the time-displaced daughter of Scott and Jean from a hypothetical alternate feature, while Betsy Braddock spent like 30 years of her publication history trapped in the body of Kwannon, a Japanese assassin. While these two characters are some of Marvel’s most actively in-your-face unquestionably queer characters - the last Betsy story had a surprising amount of implied sex for only five issues - they’ve never really had a chance to shine in a multimedia way (well, at least not with Betsy in her own body and not being merged with Kwannon).

In the original show, Rachel cameoed briefly as a prisoner of Apocalypse while Pyslocke appeared without being named - assumedly they didn’t want to bother explaining the body-swap storyline. Personally, if they were to be in the show, I’d suggest that Betsy should be introduced as having inherited her brother’s title of Captain Britain, with Pyslocke of the original show being revealed to have been Kwannon in her own body all along...

Part Two: The New Mutants

There’s so many queer New Mutants that I’m just giving them their own category here... plus, with Sunspot being in the main cast, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the time got (Sun)spotlighted as well!

Note that the sapphics of the first generation of New Mutants can also be mixed and matched when it comes to shipping. I present them based on the pairings that are currently canon/teased in the present comics, but Dani/Xuan, Xuan/Kitty, Kitty/Rahcel, etc. are all valid too and could be within the cards for the show.

Karma & Galura

The first explicit lesbian of the X-Men line, Xuân Cao Mạnh is a refugee of the Vietnam Boat Crisis, a thing which makes no sense when you consider that she is still canonically like 20-something years old in 2023. Her coming-out was a much lower-key affair then Jean-Paul’s, with her friends just casually running into her at the Exploding Person festival (i.e., Burning Man) with a shaved pink haircut and already travelling with her two “girlfriends”.

After the musical festival, she proceeded to fall in love with her roommate Kitty Pryde and then her co-worker Dani Moonstar, both of which were never (textually) requited. Recently, she’s started dating the winged mutant Galura and finally gotten to do stuff like “kiss a woman on-panel regularly” after two decades of being a lesbian denied a girlfriend...

She has cameoed in X-Men ‘92-related media with a design that is truly terrible IMO, but I think she could be rebooted and appear in this series in her full glory... especially after the New Mutants movie left her out entirely!

Mirage and Wolfsbane

Introduced in the original New Mutants run, Dani Moonstar and Rahne Sinclair share a unique telepathic connection, helpfully described as them being “soul-mates.” The Comic Book Code prohibited depictions of queer people, but uh. This first run is incredibly not subtle, even as Rahne nominally has interest her male teammate Cannonball.

Unfortunately, post-Claremont, their relationship was more or less abandoned for a few decades (coinciding with a massive downward spiral in Rahne content in general) climaxing with Rahne being killed off entirely in an allegory for transphobic violence... Thankfully, she recovered from her death and has recently been written by a non-binary author and now a trans author, both of whom have leaned back into the idea that these “soul-mates” may, in fact, have romantic feelings for each other.

Oh, also they were explicitly gay in the movie. So. Good for them for that!

Magik and Shadowkat

Another classic pair of X-Men “roommates,” Illyana Rasputina and Kate Pryde are another Claremont-created “soul-mate” duo - albeit without the telepathic bond. After decades of queer-coding, both were able to do queer-adjacent things explicitly for the first time in the Krakoa era, with Illyana asking a group of people of various gender presentations to make out with her and Kate kissing a tattoo artist who looks suspiciously like her bestie on-panel.

Pryde famously lost the spot of “Teen X-Men PoV character” to Jubilee in the show, but maybe X-Men ‘97 could give her a second chance... plus Illyana is one of the most popular X-Men characters not given a full spotlight in the original show, in spite of her more or less being an A-list X-Men in 2023. I don’t know if Marvel is brave enough to make this one canon, but I do think these two are two of the most obviously missing characters from the ‘97 line-up.

Escapade

Shela Sexton, aka Escapade, is a transgender sapphic who debuted in Marvel Pride last year and has since then had a starring role in the most recent New Mutants series. She has the incredibly unique power of the ability to “steal” things from people - including everything from stealing physical objects like their wallet to stealing abstract concepts like their emotional or physical state. Her character also generally has embodied the intersectional approach to mutant identity which has become more and more prevalent in the modern era - her mutant identity and trans identity are both important to her character, but neither are allegories for the other.

I think she’s probably too new to be added to the X-Men ‘97 cast pragmatically, but maybe they could have snuck in a cameo at the last minute? Idk. I figured I’d include her on the list.

Part Three: Let’s Get Wild!

Okay. Fuck it. Let’s talk about some comic book justifications that could be used to queer up the actual main cast from the original classic X-Men The Animated Series.

Jubilee

Jubilation Lee, the teen PoV lead of the X-Men, has been written as queer a handful of times, but never explicitly in 616. Most notably, she was gay in an AU Runaways story (written by N.D. Stevenson), where she dated a bisexual version of Pixie as well as an ice-powered sapphic named Frostbite. Monet also had a crush on her in the X-Men ‘92 animation-inspired comic book series. In terms of 616 content, her relationship with Laura Kinney has often been read in a sapphic way, especially in Liu’s X-23 series where Laura notably breaks up with her boyfriend only for Jubilee to be waiting back at her apartment to go out with her.

Storm

Ororo Munroe, aka Storm, famously has had a subtextual Sapphic fling with the bundle of chaos that is Yukio. They two met for the first time when Ororo went to Japan and their time together was almost immediately followed by her famous punk Storm era, which is very queer when you consider that context. Yukio was also later made explicitly queer in Fox’s Deadpool 2 movie, though the movie character doesn’t share much of the personality and thrill-seeking antics of her comic book counterpart...

Storm is the central protagonist of the original Claremont Uncanny X-Men and will be central to the ‘97 series as well. It’d be really bold to confirm her as queer, but I’d say this is the kind of move that would be worth it if they want this to stand out among X-Men adaptations.

Wolverine, Phoenix, and Cyclops

Finally, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, and Logan were implied to have been in a poly relationship throughout most of the Krakoa era - though they have fallen on hard times recently in the run-up to Fall of X.

I’ll be blunt: I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that Marvel corporate would approve this being textual... but I’m willing to be proven wrong, I guess!

WHEW. Okay. That’s my list. This is nowhere near definitive of course - I didn’t discuss Shatterstar’s bisexuality, Deadpool’s pansexuality, Gwenpool’s aroace identity, et al - but also basically every X-Men character is either textually queer or could be justified as being queer based on comic book lore. This entire brand has a queer poly energy that even the straightest writers weren’t able to fully shake off of it... so, while this is my list, they could really do anything they wanted (and that Mickey Mouse lets them do, at least)... We’ll see what happens!

[PS: In light of the strike and the general shitty way that megacorporations in entertainment have been treating their workers for years now, I’d be remissed if I made this post and didn’t encourage people to consider donating to the Entertainment Community Fund as well!]

[splooosh]

“only 35”

Paul Smith

[bangtanmix73]

Being best friends with Paul Lahote

Warnings: Gn!human!reader, platonic, swearing, dog jokes, slight mention of sex (not with reader), Rachel (Paul’s actual imprint), might make one for each of the pack members, I have more for a whole part 2

Chaos duo.

He’d take you cliff diving, even if you’re scared of heights. If you refuse to, he pick you up and jump with you.

You poke fun at other pack members together.

You jokingly insult each other, none being taken to heart. Of course, if you have boundaries, he wouldn’t cross them. He can be a dick, but he’s respectful <3.

Just randomly texts you “you wanna go raid Jacob’s kitchen?”

You’re friends with Rachel. She was iffy about you at first, but once she realized you and Paul have the ‘everyone thinks you’re a couple, but you’re not’ friendship with no romantic feelings on either sides, she warmed up to you.

Dog jokes.

“You should phase so I can play tug of war with you” “ok, first of all, fuck you..” “or maybe fetch”

Rachel definitely calls you when she doesn’t know what to do with him

He’d talk about his ‘fun nights’ with Rachel and you’d just sit there like “this is the same guy I made slime with 15 minutes ago.”

Coming up with weird nicknames for each other, mainly insulting.

“Wolf boy”, “ratatouille built bitch”, “dense prick”, “bland pork chops”, “godless thot”.

Absolutely goes to a random fast food restaurant at 2am with you.

Can be protective of you if you’re into guys, only because he knows how they think and how the world is :/.

He’s fine with you dating, he’s not your dad, but if they’re toxic? Hell no, he ain’t tolerating it. Break up now.

Don’t even think about going near the Cullens. He doesn’t 1. Want you to get hurt, turned, or killed. 2. He doesn’t want to lose his best friend to one of them.

If you ever go missing, it’s probably his fault. He drags you out of bed at 8am, into the woods, just for his entertainment.

“If I got a cat, would it piss you off?”

When it snows, he drags you out early in the morning with the pack. You go on a drive, not just any drive…someone drives, someone holds the rope, at the end of rope is a sled, and someone’s on that sled.

One word: wrestling.

Now he’s not very rough with you like he is with the others, but that’s only because of his super strength.

Having deep conversation late at night then laughing at whatever was said and making jokes.

If you’re upset, he’s not very good at comfort, but he’s good at listening. Sometimes you’d have to remind him to listen and not go beat someone’s ass.

If you have your period, again he’s not good at comfort, but he’ll buy sweets and drinks at the first sign. He’d throw them like grenades then duck and hide. It’s entertaining to watch really.

Since he imprinted on Rachel, the three of you have spent a lot of time together. Which means, (if you have your period), yours and hers are in sync.

You and Rachel are the only people he’s actually scared of. 

One time you fell while climbing a tree, he won’t admit it, but he was worried about you.

You were doing something you parents told you not to do once and he threatened to snitch on you. It didn’t work well for him, you took off your shoe, throw it at him, he fell and you dragged him outside and left him there.

You get along well with the pack. You’re not fond of Bella because she hit Paul. You can’t lie, you probably would’ve punched her if you were there.

You think Jacob’s fun when he doesn’t go on and on about Bella.

When Paul has time off from patrol, he’d take Rachel and you on dinner dates.

Always together. People ask where’s the other when they’re not there.

“The coffee shop guy asked me where the ‘ripped gang dude’ was because ‘I’m always with you.”

Rachel’s Halloween idea was her as Lilo, you as stitch, and, for her entertainment, Paul as the big sister, Nani.

If you’re shorter than him, he makes fun of you for it all the time.

“Aww does Y/n need help down?” “Hey Rachel, I hope you didn’t want Paul alive.”

Probably has copies of your baby photos for blackmail.

In marko polo, you yell “Paulo” instead of polo.

Two hot best friends

[mxrvellous]

X-Factor (2020) #2

[twilight-moodboards]

2/3

Moodboard of Paul x Rachel.

Requested by: anon.

[badger-with-a-boa]

Me and the homies investigating a murder