#so bad why does so much nazi stuff end up here

[07170]

> regular comes in

> “i just went to a great garage sale and bought a bunch of german postcards to donate”

> gets excited because i love postcards and german because it reminds me of my omi

> looking through them

> nazi tourism post card

[weirdmorefics]

If you're comfortable with angst, can you write poly ineffable husbands with a human SO they've been with a very long time and is now succumbing to old age and dementia? (the time period is up to you!) I just think the idea of immortal/mortal lovers has so much room for angst and big raw emotions with stuff like that!

Death Comes for Us All

Aziraphale X Reader X Crowley

3rd person point of view

A/N- I do love writing angst! I can also tell this request is absolutely going to break me, but it's a very good idea so we are going to have a love-hate relationship now lol.

Reader Pronouns-They/Them

Word Count- 1.6 k

Summary- Crowley cannot accept the reader's fate, the reader does not even know their fate, and Aziraphale is the one thing keeping them steady.

Aziraphale and Crowley met Y/n on the same day it was however very unfortunate timing for Y/n. Timing has never been Y/n's strong suit in general but this day turned out to be particularly bad. Y/n had received intel about the location of multiple Nazis. Y/N had snuck in an hour prior to the trade deal time the informant had told them and hid behind a pew.

Y/n listened to the deal intently and took notes in shock that this whole deal was about books with prophecies you don't even know are true. It was a huge waste of money in their opinion but once the man in the pale coat handed over his books they pulled a gun on them. Y/n prepared to intervene when another British intelligent spy entered the scene which was even more confusing to them because they thought they were the only one assigned to the case it was strictly on a need-to-know basis.

She thanks the man for the introduction and the man says how she recruited him which can't possibly be true the agency just heard the intel three days ago!

He says the building is surrounded by British agents but we definitely do not have the force for that right most staying back and evacuating towns to prevent fewer bombing deaths.

He quotes an American saying, "Played for suckers." Y/n instantly facepalms. This gentleman has most certainly been conned. He starts shouting for people to start taking the group down and they'll start laughing and the man gasps in shock. Y/n rolls their eyes and starts to come out of their hiding spot to protect this sorry fool and hopefully get him out of here without any harm.

Y/n pauses with a look of utter confusion on their face as another man enters the scene hopping from foot to foot. The two men start to bicker like an old married couple.

"What a pity you both must die," one of the Nazi spies wickedly smirks.

Y/n scoffs at this why did these two civilians have to come to ruin my entire mission. Reluctantly Y/n stands up from behind the pew gun pointed, "You will not be killing any civilians today!"

Crowley smirks joyously and gushes, "They think we are regular civilians how quaint."

Y/n makes their way to the front of the church, "This ends now!" They turn back to the two men, "Get out of here I will hold them off."

The gullible man in the pale trenchcoat shakes his head, "Absolutely not!"

One of the Nazi men smile widely, "Agent L/n we had no idea we would get the pleasure of killing you as well tonight. I certainly would have made your death grander as a message to the other agents. Oh well too late now." He shrugs and points his gun at Y/n's face.

The strange babbling-jumping man seems excited to jump back into the conversation, "Speaking of a grand death!" He gestures his arms out widely, "In a few moments a bomb will be landing directly on this church but if you run very fast you may not die."

The man starts rambling about the unpleasantries of death and the opposing force looks at him with doubting glares. They argue about the bombs' location but Y/n just wants to get the civilians out and is getting progressively more annoyed.

Y/n points her gun at the ceiling and shoots a warning shot into the sky. Pieces of the ceiling and dust fall to the floor and all eyes are on them.

"Everyone out if you want to live! I will escort the peculiar civilians and you will leave us be or I'll shoot you before the bombs get to you first!"

The strange jumping man smiles, "Ooo they're feisty! I like them."

Y/n rolls their eyes and walks backwards keeping their eyes on the Nazis directing the odd pair out.

"My books," the man in the trench coat shouted.

"Quite an odd thing to be worried about when we are on the verge of being killed." Y/n sourly responds.

The jumping man seemed to look directly back at the other man, "Yes it would take a divine miracle to save us and the agent." The two seemed to be having a conversation with their eyes even though one was wearing sunglasses even though it was the middle of the night.

The agent assures them that they are protected and that they will get them out.

The jumping man looks up at the sky, "It's a little too late for that sweetheart."

With that last sentence a bomb falls upon to the church and Y/N tries to cover the civilians with their own body, knocking them to the ground just making the jumping man laugh. The church crumbles around them but Y/n finds themselves completely unharmed.

They jump to their feet in utter shock and stutter out, "H-how did you do that!"

"I think you are in shock darling. I am Aziraphale and this is Crowley. Are you all right?" The gullible one says expecting Y/n's face.

"I am fine! Especially for someone who should be dead! That bomb should have killed us all!" Y/n shouts pacing back and forth.

Aziraphale ignores the question, "I am quite glad that you are all right. It is such a shame about my books though."

Y/n starts laughing uncontrollably, "We just survived a bomb and you are worried about books!"

"I think you broke them, angel," he says sauntering over to a pile of rubble. He pulls the bag of books out of the hand of one of the dead men under the rubble, "A little demonic miracle of my own."

Aziraphale smiles brightly, "How nice!"

"Shut up!" Crowley groans. "No paperwork," he rationalizes and starts to walk away Aziraphale not far behind.

"Wait! You must tell me what just happened!" Y/n chases the two beings and never leaves their side after that night.

Sixty Years Later

Y/N, Crowley, and Aziraphale have been inseparable since they first met. They have had many dangerous adventures together and quiet nights reading and drinking hot cocoa. Crowley was befuddled at Y/N's stubbornness to protect them when they were the ones who were immortal. Aziraphale loved Y/n's stubbornness they were the only one who seemed to be able to beat Crowley in a game of wills. Y/n's stubbornness never seemed to fade with age, unfortunately.

Aziraphale pulled the curtains open, "Morning sunshine!"

Y/n tossed and turned but they did not wake up they kept mumbling. They seemed to be having a nightmare their forehead glistened with sweat. Aziraphale walked up to them and brushed Y/n's hair away from their face.

"I don't want to leave you," mumbled Y/n.

"It's alright, I'm here," Aziraphale whispered.

"I'm not ready," Y/n groaned.

"You don't have to get up darling, but I do think it is best you have something to eat or at least some tea." Aziraphale tries to bargain with Y/n.

Crowley enters and slowly takes his sunglasses off, "That's not what they mean angel." He puts his hand on Aziraphale's shoulder filled with sorrow.

"What are talking about Crowley? They will be fine once they wake, mornings are just the worst time for them." He rationalizes trying to avoid the obvious that Y/n is near death.

Crowley has been warning Aziraphale that he knew it was coming soon. As Y/n fell deeper and deeper into the memories of their long past together. Crowley longed to be stuck in those happy memories with Y/n and Aziraphale together. Sadly, he was stuck on the outside watching Y/n relieve everything the good and bad while Aziraphale lived in denial.

"Angel, please just look at me," He begged.

"I know what you're going to say Crowley and no it is not their time yet it never will be." He said venomously.

"I am upset as you are! You knew this was bound to happen we were destined to outlive all of humanity," Crowley says back trying to fight back the anger rising in him but failing miserably.

"Aren't we supposed to be not on Heaven's side or Hell's, but our side!" Aziraphale passionately states with his hand to his chest.

"Believe me, angel, if I could do something I would," Crowley looks back at him sorrowfully.

Crowley's heart aches at the look Aziraphale shoots him one full of disappointment and fear.

"I suppose you are right.. nothing ever lasts," Aziraphale responds almost emotionless like he had a mysterious switch in his head and it was flipped in an instant.

"Angel, don't say that," Crowley says back in disappointment but Aziraphale does not respond and leaves lightly shutting the door behind him.

Crowley sighs and sits on the bed next to Y/n. He gently cradles their face, "I will be with you Y/n no matter where you go and you will always be in my heart wherever ago. Rest assured darling we will meet again." He says these last words like a spell that he knows will come to fruition and seals it with a kiss on their forehead.

Even though Y/n has been unaware of most of what is going around them for almost a year now they seemed to smile at this statement and their eyes filled with tears that Crowley wiped away. Y/n knew they were safe and they shut their eyes for the last time.

[allwormdiet]

Hive 5.9

Don't worry everyone, dragons are notoriously easy to defeat with little harm done, right?

Taylor's attempt at bravado is very humorous, if dramatically misplaced

Also Sundancer I'm so sorry you have to catch up so fast on Skitter stuff, but this is what you deal with in Brockton Bay

I dunno Taylor, I get that the objective here is that the ABB gets taken down, but are you sure the correct answer here doesn't involve Kaiser getting his stupid pointy ass cooked inside that armor?

Snark aside, this isn't a fully incorrect complaint to have about a teammate who's like. Not fighting. On a mission where you kinda all gotta fight. Like I know why Sundancer's not doing it, but that didn't get explained in much detail to anyone else

Skipping the part where Kaiser does his thing because he's a fucking Nazi and he doesn't get called "cool" or "interesting" he gets called a fucking Nazi

What I'd give for the shoe to be on the other foot here, but alas

Taylor, I love the noble intentions thing, your dedication remains as admirable as ever, however: he's a fucking Nazi. You're not spinning the "it's bad to murder people" idea this time.

Yeah yeah yeah! There we go! Use the friendly fire power while the Nazis are in the blast zone! Perfect! Sundancer I forgive everything, you're great

please don't make me eat those words later

Jesus fucking Christ that is hot

Guess that's proof Lung isn't totally immune to fire though

Yeah that

Fucking Nazi scumbag idiot.

Kaiser dies, right? There's no way he comes out of this story in one piece. I hope it's undignified. I hope his own spikes pin him in the Family Guy death pose.

What a great fucking sell on this moment, Jesus Christ

Oh no.

Ohhh no.

Taylor you are so fucking brave and that is a problem

Ho-ho-holy fuck this is so dire, it's great but also horrific.

See, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the mistake that's gonna keep getting made here, and I'm pretty sure Lung's not even gonna get the worst of that. He's, y'know, still alive by the end of this.

Totally forgot about Newter's hallucinogen the first time I was reading this fight. So fucking cool as a detail.

So I joked back in Arc fucking 1 that either Lung was going to keep getting his eyes fucked up or Taylor was going to keep going for the eyes. I didn't expect to get more data for those at the same fucking time, but here we are I guess

God that's nasty, also incidentally not how eyeballs would come out, learned that by hanging around discussions of Naruto's plug-and-play magic eyes

(Short version is that the eye tissue would give up before the optic nerve would, so any eyes you yanked out would be. Less than whole.)

Oh thank God, I'd wondered about that actually

Nazi capes fuck off!! You tell em Taylor

If this isn't the vibe of Taylor interacting with other capes outside the team, I'll eat my hat.

Current Thoughts

Hoooooooly shit what a fucking chapter

What a fight, what a display, what an interwoven dance of stupid and clever and desperate and resolute

Taylor is only getting more brutal over time and I think she's gonna notice the blood on her hands (literal or otherwise) even less as she goes

Leaving it here for tonight, finish the arc tomorrow and keep this train a-rolling.

[batsplat]

BWV 1: Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern

BWV 2: Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein

BWV 3: Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid

[master post]

the fun thing about how the bwv is structured is that the pieces are grouped by type rather than chronology. which means I get to start with a short and quick 224 cantatas before I hear a single bach piece that isn't a cantata lol. which! good! I think it's an interesting way to experience a body of work, where your immediate reference point is a bunch of structurally similar pieces. it's also good I'm starting off with cantatas since I have a bad habit of not engaging enough with vocal music. so we're diving in the deep end here

since this is the first time, just on the off chance anyone is interested and for my own purposes, I'll give the sparknotes on why I even want to do this. I have a reasonably okay western classical music education from baroque to today but... well, in all honesty, when I was actually receiving said education, my type of music was very much edgy teenager 'nineteenth century romantic sturm und drang'. minor key, much drama, very angsty. I also liked early to mid 20th century music, partly because my favourite school subject was history and I was like... very engaged with the role of music in that period of european history. read 'the rest is noise' and really liked it, read about wagner and the nazis, that kind of thing. my favourite composer then and now is shostakovich - who my piano teacher properly introduced me to, she eventually also gifted me a massive biography of the bloke (by elizabeth wilson, very much recommend). big draw of the struggle between the artistic and the political, the tension between the art he wanted to make and what he was allowed to make, how he navigated those tensions and the personal toll it took etc etc... very much up my street. I also liked neoclassical, vibed with early flirtations with atonality, scriabin my lil freak, mahler... did lose me a bit by the time you get to the second viennese school, but this is such an annoyingly normie opinion that I have listened to a lot of schoenberg. maybe initially more out of spite than actual enjoyment but I swear if you listen to this stuff enough, it does eventually do something to your brain. idk if it's a good thing but it does something

anyway, the point is that I was a bit too disinterested in anything pre-beethoven, just felt too light and frilly for my dumb teenage tastes. even mozart I thought of as kinda boring, which is luckily an opinion I was dissuaded from with a sort of tag team effort. and I have gradually warmed up towards pre-romantic music, having grown up and become 2% less of an idiot. since leaving school, I have very much Communed with handel, he has entered my life, I have Let Him In. I enjoy my clementi, my rossini (if he still counts as pre-romantic), my scarlatti (domenico) and so on. and I enjoy bach! I get it now! I listen to the textures he weaves with his music and I do feel like I am having a teensy bit of a spiritual experience! but. but. I feel like I fundamentally have not engaged with him enough. I need more context, I need to engage with the breadth of his work, it's bach, not really having a comprehensive understanding of bach feels like such a gaping hole if you want to understand western music history. and I do also want to READ more about bach this year, I'm coming up with a lil reading list for myself, but... it's music. you've got to listen to the music. and this feels like a fun little project, a neat way to approach it. it also stops me from like,, just engaging with his keyboard music a bunch or listening to three fugues on repeat. if left to my own devices, I tend to also not really seek out overtly religious music that much (unless it's requiems), which obviously is a horrendous way to engage with bach. so. 224 cantatas coming right up to try and save my damned soul

right then. off we go. given that, again, 1080 pieces to get through, there will be a few pieces I probably only have time to passively engage with. BUT I do want to start this off on the right note, plus you need a bit more context to get into the swing of things. I've found that the bach cantatas website is invaluable in giving me a bit more to work with for each piece - here they basically have... I think extensive forum discussions for every single piece...? context notes, discussions of the music, of recordings, it's a genuine treasure trove - some of these posts are basically essays in their own right. it's more than I have time to read in full for each of these, but it's great to know there's a place where I can always easily find out more about individual pieces

and it's a pretty invaluable guide icl. even within the sub-sections of the bwv sorting system, the presentation is not chronological. which means that bwv 1 is the last of the... traditional (?) bach cantatas - he abandoned his established structure for the later pieces. possibly due to the death of his librettist, possibly because he just got tired of the format and couldn't be bothered finishing the cycle project (real). here:

I also did some reading to re-familiarise myself with the structure of a cantata. it's all fairly straightforward for most of these, with the opening chorus followed by a couple of recitatives and arias apiece and rounded off with a chorale (x):

and more explanation of how the bach cantatas work (x):

when I was copy pasting the names of the first few cantatas into the master post thingy, first thing that jumped out at me was... quite a few of these have real downer titles, more than I was expecting. 'where should I flee' 'dear god when will I die' 'my sighs, my tears' 'who knows how close my end is'..... right, okay. one's just called 'crying, complaining, worrying, fearing', which, who amongst us. bwv 1 has a title that translates to 'how lovely does the morning star shine', so more on the opposite end of the spectrum (some discussion in the forums about whether morning star relates to a star, jesus, lucifer... I don't have enough background knowledge to be able to critique translator notes but it was interesting to read anyway)

here is some more description of like,, the vibes:

bach is obviously all about texture, about creating this rich musical tapestry that he can weave better than anyone. a lot of notes, no clutter. being able to bring together all these different melodic lines without having them clash against each other - it's very intricate music. (this is 1 out of 1080 so these observations will gradually be getting less normie than 'bach is when many notes'. that's the hope, anyway.) the chorus feels particularly grounded by its strong rhythmic sense, makes it very easy to nod along to - not quite dance-like, but buoyant and hopeful and almost celebratory. syncopation go brr. also agree with this description of the arias/chorale:

my favourite bit was the more contemplative first recitative by the tenor - it's quite short, quite slow, but still forceful and like... aggressively hopeful in how it was conveyed in this performance. helpful notes:

(conversely, the chorale didn't do much for me. not to critique mr bach. but to me that did feel like the bit of the piece where the music went 'okay, time to feel happy again'. which... it's fine. just felt kind of straightforward and abrupt after all the other stuff)

I've definitely listened to a few bach cantatas before but as I think we've established by now, it generally isn't a form of music I'm super familiar with. so I was doing some reading about the form while listening

'notable contributor' you don't say, wikipedia. anyway, initial thoughts... I was thinking while listening about just how much bach demands from his vocalists, not really in terms of vocal range but in terms of how precise they have to be with the sheer number of notes they're hitting. trilling and frilling as much as any instrument. bach to me is as close as it gets to tapping into the emotional appeal of religion - it's not a pomposity necessarily, something about the regality.... the fullness of the emotional experience. all this polyphony tugging away at you, there is something of the divine to it. but also! it's fun! works best when it's fun! not as fun as the chorale, but the other bits were the right amount of fun. I had fun. good start mr bach

bwv 2.... okay bwv 2 slaps. I ended up listening to this bad boy twice in full and a few sections a couple more time, which is the kind of thing I've got to stop doing if I want to get through all 1080 works but well. day one. anyway, this is based on a lutheran hymn based on psalm 12, and quite frankly the text of the hymn also slaps:

here's the text from the actual first recitative:

'they teach vain, false deceit' just like my blog then. also a big fan of 'display pure obscenity'. this one is obviously a lot gloomier than bwv 1. unsurprisingly, forum posts for this one include plenty of discussion of the meaning of the text, what luther was getting at, what bach was getting at, what god was getting at. and so on. stuff like this:

basically they need to stop corrupting god's word, that seems to be the general gist. I was really enjoying this cantata because my tastes are basic and I like things that sound lament-y and pained when I read this:

'may not have the immediate appeal or movements of arresting beauty that so many other cantatas do have' get bach again from me?? not sure I agree, I think the second recitative in particular (y'know, the one about how the poor are fucked without god to show them the way) just kinda gets you with the sheer drama of it all. early speculation that I am very much a recitative person, generally when they end I feel like I could've done with a bit more of those. also vibed with this commentary:

I agree, it's not sorrowful as much as it is 'life is tough and faith is hard'. strings are doing a lot of good work in this cantata, just pulls the whole thing along and make it angsty without being morose - I particularly liked the violin melody in the second aria. has a certain drive to it, grounding but in a hypnotic rather than dull way. the chorale... you do strongly get the sense the chorale is the 'here's what emotion you should be taking away from the whole piece' bit of the cantata. but I liked this one! at the start I wasn't quite convinced because it felt a bit one-note (very much not literally), but once the vocalists chirp in it immediately becomes compelling. counterpoint between the organ and the vocalists is very nice, bit of drama from the organ is an immediate win in my books. it's still more of a coda than really doing anything 'new' but... I liked it. and I will probably just persistently have a bit of a bias towards cantatas in a minor key, it's a bad trait but I can't help it! yay angst

speaking of angst, bwv 3!! 'oh god, how much heartache'. so this one immediately got me rooting for it the moment the camera zoomed in on an oboe player. I love oboes!! oboes are like the cellos of the woodwinds where I always wish more stuff were composed for those guys. this one's got quite a distinct vibe to the previous one... helpful summary of the different movements:

I really like the oboe-heavy opening chorus obviously, it's a very rich sound that is pleasingly morose with the gently wailing oboes - but it does feel like it's a bit more of a prelude than a proper statement. the statement is left to the first rectitative, where (unlike with the previous two) you've got several soloists singing in succession in counterpoint with the chorus + instruments. I LOVED the first aria about the pain of hell, and maybe specifically because of this recording. it goes 'although I may feel hell's anguish and pain' and then just... has the singer repeat that line a bunch, really teasing you with how exactly they're intending to turn that particular sentence around. now, in the end the answer to that is letting joy into your heart, but because the notes are frenetic and the singer is doing so much (including with his face), you don't feel exactly?? at ease?? with heart's joy. it's very neurotic joy. over-caffeinated 'handed in an essay after an all nighter' joy. then he goes back to anguish and pain for a while before switching it back up

also vibed with the opening harpsichord... flourish...? of the recitative. my main complaint with this one is that it's way too short, feels more like a sigh (a very moody one) than its own part. icl I don't personally... quite get describing the second aria and its duet as "perhaps the finest in the cantatas" - though I did read the following, about how bach wrote the vocalist music to sing the word 'kreuz' (as in cross) on only sharp notes:

writing music around a pun instantly elevates it for me. in general, I like the oboe/violin interplay, it's more the vocal stuff that's... well, the whole thing is very ponderous. I liked this description of the aria:

I'm not sure I felt the 'exuberant bliss and overwhelming conviction' they describe here, but I do like it as a description! the final chorale is very brief, more like a full stop than a music passage in its own right. while the structure is the same as the first one I listened to, it did feel like the emphasis was placed in different parts. the opening chorus here (maybe my favourite section) did feel like it was very much setting up the expanded and more elaborate recitative. the second recitative feels more like a comma, and then the second aria is the last main vibe you're left with - since the chorale is just putting a bow on top of the experience. which... it kind of annoys me I didn't vibe with said second aria more, like I'd currently be more inclined to relisten to parts of this than the whole thing. and I did really love the first aria lol. I haven't put all the much thought into cantatas before... uh, today - or certainly the last time I did was years and years ago, so I've realised I don't necessarily know what to expect in terms of the weighting of different parts. I imagine the bwv 1-2 is more common and that this one is a bit more unusual in the phrasing. anyway, I had fun. put more oboes in things 2k25

[wirewitchviolet]

Have I done any serious Lovecraft bashing in the last year or two? I feel like I’m overdue.

I’m almost positive I’ve sat down and written at least one big long post on the general subject of how there is nothing redeemable or interesting about H.P. Lovecraft, but I’ve also definitely seen another like hundred examples of people misrepresenting his influence and talent since, so, here’s another one.

See, there’s this popular myth that H.P. Lovecraft, despite being one of the all-time most virulent racists and quite open about it, was some kind of grand visionary who made all kinds of super important contributions to the horror genre, and... he just didn’t. Honestly I’d kinda want to burn down his legacy even if he did, because no for real, the racism was absolutely astounding. People’s jaws were on the floor about it even when he was alive. I feel pretty good about just completely throwing the whole output of right wing extremists in the dumpster like nazi game devs and such, so I don’t see why this should be different, but also for real, nothing of value is lost in doing so.

Like, first of all, he’s just a really bad writer. Really formulaic structure to all his stories, they all have basically the same protagonist and he sucks, tons of purple prose setting things up and then just kinda glossing over the main events, and dude really did just abuse the hell out of a thesaurus. And the subject matter’s not great either! In pretty much everything he ever wrote the big scary thing is kind of always just privileged white dude anxiety. “What if I’m not the center of the universe? What if I’m not actually a pure and noble white guy but I’m secretly the product of the dreaded race mixing? What if, like, a trans woman was kind of into me? What if I ad to deal with some other culture doing stuff I’m not comfortable with? There’s a couple that are more “starfish are just creepy” but it’s not a huge element in those and also I mean that’s just true.

There’s still the big influences though, right? Well, not really, no. Evil cults trying to bring back evil gods/monsters was totally ubiquitous way before Lovecraft. Super advanced space weirdos were too. Big freaky monsters doing sexual stuff with tentacles simply does not happen in any of his stuff. There’s no cool monsters really. Or people doing cool magic rituals. Just glancing at things and running away really. Like, guy wasn’t just unpopular in his day because he was a white supremacist scumbag, he also just couldn’t write well. I’m always pointing this out, but you realize Cthulu isn’t even actually much of anything in Lovecraft’s actual stories? The Call of Cthulu is mostly just this all build-up kind of story, with a couple people piecing a few random incidents into a vague semblance of an investigation, and at the end some big goofy sea monster starts to wake up from a coma and then... promptly has a ship plow into its head causing it to pass out again. That’s it. That’s the whole story. No big evil plans or minions or eating 1d6 investigators, no referencing in other stories. Basically everything in the pop culture “Lovecraftian” bubble is fan fiction, mostly tracing the route of “someone made a tabletop RPG vaguely inspired by other authors’ playing with this guy’s stuff which ended up being popular enough in Japan to be name dropped in some porn VNs, and people just kind of assume tracing that all the way back must lead to something good.”

This all made a lot more sense before/in the early days of the internet, where there was a sort of weird nerd elitism in knowing certain bits of obscure trivia and catching the right references. A lot of actually really talented horror people back in the day kind of got in the habit of referencing some memorably weird terms this one old racist tossed into stories that sometimes showed up in one of the oldest horror magazines one could find copies of if they really looked. In particular people found it really fun to keep referencing “the necronomicon” as like a pokedex for weird ancient monsters and occult stuff and made it enough of an in-joke to mislead people into thinking this was a real book. But the whole idea was you had to have access to this magazine from the 1920s to really be in on the joke. Stuff just kinda doesn’t work that way anymore. Wikis kinda killed being in the know on weird trivia connections.

The other thing though is people used to just do a little name drop of a book or a monster while doing their own stuff, and that’s fine, but now you have so damn many people doing “Lovecraftian” stuff where they more directly reference his better known stories, and there’s kinda this whole subgenre where people just run down that checklist. There’s dozens of “Lovecraftian horror” games where ooh, you’re some reedy nerd or detective and you go to this town called Innsmouth and people are suspicious and oh no they’re like fish people and they chase you around and you pass out or maybe find some weird idol and somehow or other you’re on this big mystery island and we’re directly quoting that “even death may die” line without context, and whispering voices tell you to poke at 7-pointed star symbols and oh no, you woke up Cthulu and he comes and eats you, credits. And like... it’s just running through the same checklist every time. It’s never informing a more original work, or putting interesting twists on things. It’s like how you used to have nerds just quoting whole scenes out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail or quoting catch phrases from Austin Powers or Borat. Just so incredibly tedious and pandering to people who don’t ask for anything more than having the references they know quoted back endlessly.

Anyway, point is, we really wouldn’t lose out on anything if we just freaking buried this one old racist hack. If you want to do some referencing and name dropping to weird spooky stuff that’s maybe from space or the ocean or whatever, there’s plenty of stuff you can shout out that’s actually good, and isn’t giving a certain kind of people to start grinning smugly and referencing what this guy named his cat. Like for real, any time you feel compelled to drop in some kind of Lovecraftian reference somewhere, just namedrop Junji Ito instead, or directly reference a short story of his. It’s all way more interesting and fleshed out and you’re just throwing a spotlight on someone who as far as I can tell is just a really nice talented artist who likes cats. Cats with names you can say out loud, even.

[aeltri]

Do you really think famous people are sending you asks?

Even if all you say is true, isn't it a bit far fetched that every mean anon is them ?

Genuinely asking, like how do you even know ?? I love the theorizing and the whole "Ben Cumberbatch is a MKU tool" is funny but why and how does a random civilian such as you and others on here know this stuff ?!

All your links bring me to those antisemitic illuminati ThEy ConTroL thE bAnkS QAnon and adjacent bullshit and the other half is weird transphobic stuff, it's kinda hard to believe the rest y'know?

(I do believe that the 1% does control things because with that much money how could they not, but the whole illuminati shit is ugh, billionaires are right there shitting on us but y'all are obsessed with an old conspiracy theory it's WEIRD man !

Have a good day!

(also out of topic but where does your pfp come from, the character is so familiar but I can't put a finger as to why lol)

LOL, one of my relatives is a "famous person" with millions of fans. NEWSFLASH: Celebrities aren't demigods, they're people who won the fame lottery. Most are rather ordinary outside of the public sphere. "Mean Anon" has been doxxed, her name is Joanna Blake and she works at the University of Sussex. UoS just so happens to be a Tavistock center. Tavistock is basically the RL Ministry of Truth and is deeply involved with brainwashing techniques such as MKUltra. All of this is very well-documented and talent alone is rarely enough to get you to the top. Especially in politics and showbiz, having a certain pedigree and MKUltra programming gives you a leg up. How do I know what I do? Thanks to extensive research and leaks from inside contacts. I was selected from among the top 1.5% for GATE, if my parents hadn't been overprotective I could have been MKd. At least two of my friends were subjected to TBMC and are going to need therapy for the rest of their life. One of them had a grandfather who came to the US via Project Paperclip, the whole family spoke German. Before you start accusing others of "antisemitism" you may want to take a look at how the ADL is faring. Many groups have been the victims of genocide but only one keeps using it as a free pass to lord over and censor others. If Zionists were singled out by the Nazis why did they turn around and behave just like them towards the Palestinians? Because they are two sides of the same Saturnian coin, Black Cube/Black Sun. I've talked about how many modern Jews aren't Hebrew or even Semitic, being mostly descended from converts. The most destructive schism in Judaism was the Sabbatean-Frankist heresy that arose in the late 1600s. Rabbi Antelman explained how it took his people down a very dark path that has dire implications for all of humanity. Turns out an antinomian doomsday cult hell bent on bringing about the end times has a bad influence on society. Who'd a thunk? This subject is of particular interest because of our ancestral ties to Moises De Leon, author of the Zohar. It is considered the greatest Kabbalistic treatise of all time but I'm pretty sure he would be horrified by modern "mysticism". Many of the bizarre beliefs espoused by occultists like the inversion of everything (not just gender) are a deliberate corruption of what he taught. As for the world power structure? Most politicians you see are just frontmen, it's all optics to pacify the plebs with an illusion of democracy. The same ol' ruling families hoarded so much wealth that they're still running the show BTS. It should also come as no surprise that many behave like the Borgias 🙄...

PS: Aeltri is the name of a Light Elf from Marvel's Thor. My PFP is based on a LOTR comic strip about Noldor grudges, hence the Burn Book.

[watching-pictures-move]

Put On Your Raincoats | Blue Ice (Marshak, 1985)

This is another film in the Film Noir genre that I watched because it’s Noirvember, the month in which we watch films in the Film Noir genre, but I have to lean less heavily on technicalities because this is a lot closer to the real deal in that there’s a genuine private detective element, plenty of sinister characters and even a femme fatale. As far as the protagonist goes, Herschel Savage ranks below my favourite porno private dicks, lacking the streetwise swagger of Wade Nichols in Punk Rock and sarcastic charm of Ras Kean in Expose Me, Lovely. But he has a nice reactive quality to his performance, looking convincingly weary and dumbfounded to the insanity around him. The fact that he isn’t especially forceful as a presence works in his favour here.

As far as sinister characters go, this one has Nazis as the villains so it does pretty well in that department. You get Helga Sven doing a pretty good knockoff Ilsa routine, and some non-pornographic help from the likes of Reggie Nalder’s pockmarked face and Richard Bulik’s teeth gnashing. And as far as the femme fatale goes, you get Jacqueline Lorians playing varying degrees of mysterious and sympathetic to keep you guessing. A lot of the narrative potency of the movie depends on her specific allure, and I must say that the movie cheats to make me like her by putting her in a cape, although it undoes some of that goodwill by cutting to newsreel footage of Hitler. This is directed by Philip Marshak, who also directed Dracula Sucks, and while both movies have similar levels of production values, this hangs together much better as a genre-inflected porno. There’s some pretty nice style here, particularly in the later sections when we get some frosty and hazy lighting, as well as the blue phantasmagoria of the conclusion when the movie goes off the deep end. It definitely delivers on the title, is what I’m saying.

And as a porno, while this is shot on film, the visual style feels informed by the SOV productions that were taking over. I’m thinking in particular of the scene between Herschel Savage and Danielle in a sauna, where the handheld camerawork has a looseness and fluidity that feels closer to something you’d get with a video camera, not to mention the use of dissolves. And as far as the sex goes, I will put it delicately that the Boingoingoing factor is quite strong with this one. The Nazisploitation element lends itself to certain exploitative framings, but for the most part it eases off the sexual assault, and the particular dynamics of these scenes, with male and female characters teaming up on another female character, on top of the fluid visual approach, make them feel more, uh, dynamic than these things often can be. It’s a credit to the strength of the first of these scenes that the cutaways to Reggie Nalder reaction shots don’t undo its power. It probably helps that Helga Sven is rather forceful in these scenes, although I did find it weird that the one act of explicit sexual torture she performs is giving a handjob and blowjob to Paul Thomas, who for some reason is covered in bloody scars. Maybe all the really bad stuff happened offscreen, but it wouldn’t have killed the movie to throw in some whipping.

The only bad sex scene here is the one where Savage’s sex worker roommate Shanna McCullough is raped by Ron Jeremy. There are the obvious reasons why it’s unpleasant (rape and Ron Jeremy are two terrible flavours that go terribly together, although the movie at least acknowledges how off putting Jeremy is as a presence). But even on a narrative level if feels totally superfluous. If you wanted to throw in a rape scene, there are more organic ways to do it in a thriller (and indeed, the movie has a similar such incident later, even if it doesn’t actually show the rape). There’s an interesting character moment after the scene concludes (which includes not just the rape but attempted karate by Ron Jeremy; this is not the first Ron Jeremy karate scene I’ve witnessed), but I think the movie would have been better off without it.

[talesfromsiteredacted]

Confessions Of a Type Green: Or, Just Your Friendly Neighborhood Bixby

Not a lot is known about the average reality bender, we know they can and often do fuck up reality, but no one really knows what life is like for one. Do Type Greens put on their socks one at a time, sort of stuff. Lucky for you reading this, there just happens to be one available for commentary. For the record, I can't speak for other Bixbies, but I still do one at a time. Surprise, your average reality bender is a lot like everybody else.

I still need an alarm clock to wake up. I still need to eat, sleep, drink, and relax like a normal person. In fact, a lot of benders just... do things the normal way most of the time. A type green raised with a loving family to provide a strong moral compass avoid using their powers at all, except when not doing so will get them killed or worse. A lot of it is instinctive, there's no Unseen University for this stuff. Thus, our "gifts" tend to be unpredictable. But, with careful training, we can become pretty good with control. It's a bit like riding a bicycle, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. But, much like riding a bicycle, it's important to do things safely.

Establishing boundaries early on in any relationship is important, so it's best to pick a few basic guidelines. Like, try not to kill anyone on accident or reflex. No using your abilities too quickly either, so build up to moving the mountain. No time travel, it never ends the way intended. Also, no warping people. No matter how much you'd like a certain coworker to forget a certain sea shanty. Do not call attention to yourself, just in case someone suspects what you are. So, as awesome as it might sound... no superhero suits. The Foundation boys are rough, but the GOC (much like Wu-Tang Clan) ain't nothing you want to fuck with.

Also, be very careful whom you tell anything to. People talk all the time, and especially about the weird shit they see. Why do y'all think Clef lies like a bad toupee all the time?

Now, onto the really boring, practical stuff (yes we HAVE to do things like this, unless you want to be unalived by a 50 caliber to the head). Tip one, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, even a common cold can mess with your powers. So, take care of yourself. No matter how small or grand, using your powers can and does take it out of you, especially at first. Stay fed, stay hydrated (yes coffee counts, but water is still a better option), get good sleep, and... chill. Bad self care does not directly kill, but it will suck if not done properly. Only a vacuum likes to suck.

Two, if you must alter your reality... think long and hard about unintended consequences. Clef did after the 2020 election. Big oops is right, Boss. No one wants to deal with Nazi Necromorphs because you ran late, decided to keep that traffic light green for just three more seconds, and almost get slammed by a guy in a self-driving electric car whose car did not know to stop. Yes, I exaggerate, but only to show the level of WTF that can go wrong here.

Three: as tempted as you might be, helping your friends out of every bad situation is a bad call. There's too much downside potential for it to go horribly wrong. If you cannot resist the urge to help, stick to plausible stuff. Like, say... your pal Ed owes this jerk a grand in cash, he's $100 short... and finds a c note in the jacket he borrowed off you, or just floating in the wind. That's relatively harmless. Or your grandmother finds the exact piece of carnival glass she missed out on at the church rummage sale for $1 or such. Little things.

Lastly for now, just try and not be an asshole. This world has too many as is. Be kind, be careful, don't overextend yourself. That being said, goodnight and good luck, fellow greens.

[the1975attheirverybest]

I know you probably don't want people to vent to you, but I just had a close friend put me down for liking Matty and it's kinda messing with my mood. They said it was "kinda fucked up" that I liked him. They are a good friend and this kinda came out of nowhere and now Im sad. I know he says some bad stuff sometimes, but my life is so chaotic rn and my enjoyment of this band and Matty is kinda a reprieve from my life. I just don't want them to think I'm a bad person. I don't believe that Matty is bad, but some people don't see that and only assume the worst, and then I feel like the asshole.

- 🦝

Hey, listen, you can ALWAYS vent to me! Promise!!

Also, like, who else are you supposed to talk to? People who don’t know Matty/the band kinda won’t get this sort of thing. Only other fans do! So, this is totally fine.

And, yeah, to be honest, I used to get that a lot. From my sister even! Like, she’s really into punk and emo music. Like really hardcore shit. She does NOT like the 1975, lmao. Even though I’ve told her a thousand times that if she likes punk, she’d love Matty. Cuz he’s legit more punk than whatever bands she likes these days…the genre has devolved into a parody of itself, you can’t really do punk in punk anymore…BUT I DIGRESS!! My point is, she gets all of her impressions of Matty from Twitter. And, we all know what Twitter thinks of Matty. Like, when the podcast shit was going down, she was texting me screenshots everyday like “this is your Matty Healy?” It made me really sad.

It’s difficult cuz it’s not the same type of thing as when people make fun of me for, like, liking Harry Styles. They just think Harry isn’t a “real musician” (whatever the fuck that means) but, with Matty, some people actually think he’s a Nazi!!!!! Like my sister and I got into it a bit cuz she was like “If you’re fine with Matty Healy…I feel like you’re the type of person to end up in a toxic relationship cuz you’ll just let men say shit.” BUT, my thing is, she’s my sister. She knows me. She knows the millions of ways that I stand up for my students when our department policy is discriminatory against some of them. She knows my personal politics and who I am. So, if she can’t give me the benefit of the doubt and/or realize that, if I like Matty, then there must be something about him that PERHAPS! Twitter isn’t showing her??? Then we are in a sorry state as a society. You know?

Besides, I know lots of people say they wish Matty would tone it down for the sake of the rest of the guys and/or the band’s general image, but, I think that’s exactly why he doesn’t what he does. He’s asking for a little more nuance and real thought in debates around art. He doesn’t want art to become sterilized, corporate-friendly, performative activism, cuz art is where real thought and real resistance happens. And if there’s no space in it for push-back, then we lose as a society. So, the way I see it is, the fact that not everyone loves him, that he’s not another Harry Styles or whatever, is proof that he’s right and it’s working. You could try and explain that to people? Some people will get it, some, like my sister, will be like “yeah, sounds like you’re being brainwashed by a dude” … her loss honestly, cuz Matty has given me so much courage and joy and if she wants to dig in and miss out on it cuz punk Twitter can’t candle that Matty is more badass than them…then alright. She’s my sister and one of my best friends but she’s objectively wrong here lmao.

Bottom line is, they don’t have to love Matty but they love you. And if they do, they’ll understand who you are as a person is proof enough that you’re not a homophobe/Nazi/whatever the fuck the world misunderstands Matty to be. If they can’t see that, then, sorry but you may need a new friend? Hope that makes sense?

YOU CAN ALWAYS FANGIRL WITH US THOUGH 💗💗

[pbaintthetb]

more boys s4e2

s

A-Train again!

oop and his brother's showed up, here's some good shit then, yeah I thought they might be the nephews oh god I love his family it's great it's awful it's great

"I won't watch you kill yourself, out run this"

also back to starlight for a moment, the idea of starlight being a hopeful symbol, but a bad one to Annie

Nathan saying A-Train never saved anyone (and oof, yeah)

but also like, poor A-Train but allso also "out run this" and tbf this is the secon dattempt at reconciliatoin so

was gonna say that I appreciate that Butcher pegged Kimiko was drunk without even speaking to her btu actually consdiering Butcher's... everything yeah why I am I surprised?

FRENCHIE DON'T ASK KIMIKO TO HURT YOU

oh the two of them :-((((

OMG A-TRAIN IN THEIR OFFICE, yes I love it when A-train shows up on them. Massive end of s2 energy when A-train gave Annie and Hughie the lowdown on Stormfront's nazi past (and present lbr) because he knew he wouldn't be able to get back in as a black man

like he's very self serving, um but he's really interseting like and it's what I said last ep is that he's so sick of playing vought's tune at this point, like his heart attack made him see some things, but not so much regret as how weak his position really is and how much he dgaf

like, oh A-train's arc is always so fucking good

Annie "Thank Hughie. I would have blasted the shit out of you, and you would ahve deserved it." A-Train "[beat]. Yeah I agree"

I'm also particuarly interested by A-train's past with Sage and his off the cuff line about her being a genius but not knowing when to shut her mouth... lik ews he just being a generic dick and she said stuff he didnt want to hear or is this more meaningful- like Sage is smart but Homelander is deranged and powerful and wants her to be helpful but hates being "put down" like is she gonna say the wrong thing... or is she gonna piss off vought? or is she gonna be the new top dog...

lmao, homelander ruining all of vought's plans and sage's advice since the second he grew up

and oops. They killed the stunt guy. "you saved me"- that strangled voice, ryan's horrified stare, honey get butcher back in your life, cna't believe I said that- actually do what Butcher said (possibly a worse statment) get Mallory back in your life while Butcher fucks off again

oop that was a set up for them

"Your rifles are garish and vulgar"- frenchie istg I know you're like an ex weapons dealer/smith but lmao, also him being called a "surrender monkey"

uh... boys, I know Kimiko's immortal and all, but did you just lock her in with teh splinter clones in your escape

DECEASED at the photo booth pictures of Kimiko and Firecracker fighting

Frenchie's little smirk at butcher showing up vs mm's rage when telling him to fuck off.... i mean i know the circumstances are different but it's like... Butcher's always had a very different hold over frenchie vs mm. Indeed, Butcher has a hold, over frenchie and that is the source of a lot fo s3 tension.

And MM still comes through for Butcher where it counts, of course

uh, I mean Idk I don't want to advocate for murder but also... tey just let Firecracker go? damn the boys (sans kimiko perhaps) goign soft in their old age * I'm not truing to say Kimiko is soft, lord knows she is and can be violent, it's more that she's not for sensless violence against randos unless they pose a physical threat or were connected to her trafficking etc (reasonable) where as butcher is supe/blood hungry and frenchie's just... curious

HOMELANDER ISTFG don't pull out your supreamcist bs rn, or maybe do and perhaps ryan will realise what a pos you are, like pls tell me you can't reverse becca's teaching that quickly

"they're only human"

frenchie snorting drugs again

anyway s4 does feel a lot more like s1 but in a good way unlike d3 whch was like "what if we reversed all character growth"

Cherie! and uh she looks better than she has in thepast, she also looks uh, more with reality

OH FUCK COLIN AND FRENCHIE HAVE A PAST oop oop oop

oh frenchie ffs, does explain teh issues though, they were personal!

"I spent a week standing by the front door telling dad y ou'd be back" oh fucking god, oh hughie :-(

oh does the former Mrs Campbelll feel sad? cry me a river mate, you left, hughie has every right to be mad, and even if you're justified, hughie dont' know that and you hur thim. he has every right ot be mad.

[mebiselfandi]

How does it feel being a real Madrid fan when so many liverpool fans don’t like madrid?Dont the two clubs have a super different ideology and stuff? Is it ever hard to support madrid because of their history?

Hi anon!

Well technically, I was a bigger real fan before I was a huge poolie fan. But first and foremost, I should clarify I don’t support real as an institution specifically because of their history and their links to fascism (I just really love the players and their footy). Which is exactly why I’d never ‘banter’ someone on real vs barca because the way real got on top is sick. It’s also why I stopped watching Madrid this season. Complicated relationship with the club especially the way they continue to pretend nothing ever happened but the damn UCL drew me back in and I like to see the boys happy.

I had plans at some point next season to start watching real again but really I don’t think I’d be able to. For time, for the club itself, etc. They’re like an ex I have mixed feelings about. Basically if the whole rma squad left real rn, I’m leaving with em. If the whole Liverpool squad left my bitch ass is staying there😞 (even if I’d spend 1,000 nights crying over my beautiful team). Ethically, ideologically, emotionally, Liverpool’s my team🤷‍♀️ nothing could change that. And once we’re in the UCL next season, I don’t think you’ll even catch me rma posting at all😭

It’s also extra worse that Spanish people are insane. It’s bad enough your club is questionable, why are you Nazi saluting?? Bro. Everytime I’m like maybe? I change my mind and go never mind. Every big football club is questionable/morally grey in some way (oil money, ties to zionism, inherent racism woven into the foundation of a club/team, large cover ups, etc.). There is never much of a ‘correct’ team to support but the lack of accountability from the rma fans is so 😵‍💫🫨. And they’re fueling it too? End them all fr. Not to mention how racist they are.

As for how it feels, idk. Is it supposed to feel a certain way? I suppose if I’d been a bigger poolie earlier like 2018, I’d probably pray for the club to burn every day but I wasn’t a poolie (or even a footy watcher) in 2018 which I how I ended up here in the first place.

Anyway, idk what else to say but yeah🤷‍♀️ hope I answered all your questions anon

[regularfrankiefanamelia]

My favourite RH characters from least fave to favourite!

So, I decided to make this official ranking of my the characters! I like nearly everyone (except for last place) and this list is mostly subjective with a few exceptions. HERE I GO!

The Usherette is not included because all she does is sing a mid tier song.

10th place: Riff Raff

Sorry fans of the ‘Raff, but this man is my least favourite character. This is mainly for personal reasons since personality wise he acts like a guy I’d rather forget, but him killing Frank didn’t help him. As a CHARACTER he is amazing and one of the better written ones and I think he and Magenta should’ve been the protagonists but otherwise…. I dislike his personality and his creepiness. You’re allowed like him, I don’t.

9th place: Eddie

Eddie did nothing. Nothing. I don’t care about him. At least Hot Patootie was good. Will I be executed if I say the 2016 remake version was my favourite Eddie? Still don’t care.

8th place: Narrator

Depends on the narrator. But they do their job well! :)

7th place: Magenta

Wish more could be done with her and that she did more. She is aggressive against Frank. That’s it. She also just joins Riff in whatever. She had potential but SOMEONE had to kill her in revenge of the old queen -_-

6th place: Rocky

Rocky is such a good character omfg! I know in the movies he doesn’t do much but in the stage versions he is allowed do shit and just… His relationships with Frank and Janet is outstanding and Sword Of Damocles was amazing!

5th place: Dr. Scott

Dr. Scott is an underrated character and y’all are sleeping on him. Yes, I know he’s a nazi, I am NOT defending that. As a CHARACTER he is great. Plus, he may have indirectly saved Brad and Janet at the end so…..

4th place: Columbia

Columbia is just so good. Seriously. But she’s also interesting and mysterious to me. Where did she come from? Where did she go? Where did she come from Cotton Eye Joe? /j Why did she live with the aliens? This woman was used and manipulated by Frank and even after she calls him out… she still sacrifices herself to save him. Idk, a part of that resonated with me. She’s my darling and deserves a life away from Frank.

3rd place: Brad

OH BRAD I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! Why the fuck does everyone call him an asshole?! Even after Janet cheats on him, he forgives her and defends her from Frank. HE LOVES JANET SO MUCH AND BRANET IS MY FAVOURITE SHIP IN THIS MUSICAL! Also Once In Awhile is my favourite song.

2nd place: Janet

Janet is a great character and I hate Richard O’Brien for doing her dirty in the unmade sequels. She is the first person to treat Rocky like a human and show basic empathy, the woman is on a case of self discovery, and THE FUCKING HUG AT THE END OF SUPERHEROES GETS ME! SUBJECTIVELY she is my favourite character because of how sweet she is and also because I feel so bad for her.

1st place: Frank

Frank is an amazing villain and character and he is so cruel and in the movie is played amazingly by Tim Curry and I wish they glamorised him less and showed him as the monster he truly is. I like when he is revived so he can do more evil stuff. I want DRAMA! I want him to FUCK SHIT UP! He has to exist, otherwise we have no musical. Frank IS the musical. Frank is amazing, but I wish fans knew him in the right way.

[griseldagimpel]

Steps AO3 Can Take to Minimize Racism in the Archive (Version 2)

There is a previous version of this post that’s gone viral, so if it seems familiar, that’s why. This version has expanded content, less spelling errors (hopefully), additional links, and a Read More cut. (I’m so sorry the original didn’t have this. I wasn’t expecting it to go viral.)

Before I begin, I want to emphasis a few things. This is a post on general areas where AO3 could improve. Even in cases where I offer additional information, this isn’t a step-by-step guide accounting for every nuance. Furthermore, none of these things are censorship. They are intended as alternatives to either doing nothing or taking down fics. Finally, none of the solutions below will single-handedly fix racism on AO3. They approach the issue from different angles and are meant to supplement each other. I am also only including in this write-up solutions that I feel confident in my ability to speak to. There are other solutions out there that aren’t discussed in this post. Just because I don’t push for something here doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea.

If you feel the urge to respond, I implore you to consider the following before you do so. Are responding not to what I wrote but to the strawman you've imagined I wrote? Are you assuming the most uncharitable implementation possible? Are you saying the exact same thing several other people have already said? Are you, in general, behaving like Miette the Cat? Please, think of the children my tumblr notifications. But otherwise, constructive feedback is welcome!

Alright, let’s begin.

I wanted to summarize some of the suggestions either I’ve proposed or other people have proposed that work toward the goal of decreasing the amount of racism on AO3. I also wanted to talk about some of the challenges that are involved with this. Note that while minimizing racism is the focus of this post, a lot of these solutions could also be worked to, say, minimize ableism. That this post focuses on one thing should not be taken to mean that it precludes other things. And again, that it talks about some solutions does not mean that it is saying that other solutions are automatically bad. These are just the ones I feel most comfortable speaking to.

Let’s start with some big picture stuff.

First, AO3 was built to be a sort of dumping ground for all fan fics, to preserve them so that they wouldn’t be lost, due to the history of fan fic purges on various other sites. But AO3 is not a static archive by any means. It’s a hub for fan interactions. While not social media in the same way Twitter and Tumblr are, AO3 has the option for a comments section on every fic, challenges, a gift feature, and fic meta-data. All of these involve user interaction with each other, in the broadest sense that one user generates content that another user then sees.

And to that end it runs into the Paradox of Tolerance, also called the Nazi Bar Problem. To summarize briefly, if you run a bar and let Nazis patronize your bar, then before long, what you have is a Nazi bar, and other patrons leave. Because AO3 is a site where people read fics in addition to post fics, minimizing racism on the site has the benefit of making the site more usable.

Second, racist fan fics - not fan fics that depict racism but fan fics that are racist - have a stochastic impact. However, AO3 archives far too much content to be monitored individually. Additionally, determining if a fic is racist or not is hard to construct boundaries for and involves some degree of subjectivity.

Third, there’s the Judgement Day problem. Back during the era of the Comics Code Authority, the creators of the comic Judgement Day (a comic denouncing segregation) wanted to get the comic republished. But the racist piece of shit in charge of giving it the CCA seal of approval objected to the comic having a Black hero, claiming that it was, err, offensive to minorities? Yeah, it was a bullshit objection. So that’s the Judgement Day problem. Any anti-racist policy or practice is only going to be as good as the people tasked with enforcing it.

Taking the above into account, here are some things AO3 could do to minimize racism on the site. They have different pros and cons, but I don’t want to let perfection be the enemy of good here. And again, they also aren’t mutually exclusive with each other. We’re Swiss cheesing the solution here.

Blocking/Muting: Nothing really to say on this one. AO3 is working on this already, and it will help once it’s implemented.

Anti-Racist Writing Resources: This is honestly probably the easiest solution AO3 could implement. Have a link on the front page that says something like Guide to Not Being Racist In Your Fan Works. Have that go to a page of links to stuff like the Jim Crow Museum, which is not only informative but has been a stable link for at least a good decade now. See, a lot of resources already exist. Eventually, it would be better to have those resources in house (so as to avoid reliance on outside links) but as a starting point, just linking to existing material would help.

There are two goals here. One, there are writers who haven’t unlearned the racism they’ve learned from general society and who are coming from a place of ignorance. Having a readily available resource means that those that aren’t coming from a place of malice can improve themselves. People are more accepting of information they discover for themselves; having it be a resource they can consult gets past people’s knee-jerk rejection of anything that feels like criticism.

The other goal is that it sends a message that Not Being Racist ought to be something that writers posting to AO3 strive for. If you put a No Nazis Allowed sign at your bar, there’s nothing to actually stop Nazis from patronizing it, but they won’t come in with swastikas on, you know? It’s about generating a culture of anti-racism.

Follow up post: https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/667117169378787328/improving-ao3-whats-a-racism

More Mandatory Warnings: I want to note firstly on this one that mandatory warnings aren’t about passing judgement on how a fic handles a topic; they merely note that it is contained within a fic. Plenty of authors - myself included - write about heavy topics, but if any reader doesn’t want to engage with that content when they encounter a fic, they should be informed enough to make that decision. For the purpose of mandatory warnings, it doesn’t really matter how well or badly the author handles the content; mandatory warnings are merely about the presence or absence.

I’m not going to provide a complete list of what warnings should be added here (although I have some suggestions linked below), as I think that’s an issue that would need to be studied and analyzed before a final decision was made. Any one user of the site is only seeing a small portion of the content on the site, so generating the best list would be a group effort. You’re looking for a list that covers a lot of territory without being massive, which is a bit of a balancing act. The cons of this one is that it wouldn’t apply to existing fan works and might be tricky to code. The pros of this one is that it would better allow users to filter out fan works they don’t want to see and that it would again contribute to AO3 having a culture of anti-racism, as what the mandatory warnings are indicate what the priorities of the site are.

I have some follow up posts on this one:

https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/668374905594740736/improving-ao3-what-makes-a-good-mandatory

https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/665867199433539584/proposed-ao3-mandatory-tag-spotlight-hatefic

https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/665951985879728128/proposed-mandatory-warning-spotlight-depictions

https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/667507857486495745/improving-ao3-new-mandatory-warnings-existing

Improve Filtration Based Upon Bookmark Information: You know how some authors are never going to be able to recognize the issues with their own work? That’s where user-added tags come in. This is a feature that already exists on AO3 via the bookmark tags.

The existing information associated with bookmarks is the user who made the bookmark, the text of the bookmark, the tags of the bookmark, whether or not the fic is recommended by the bookmark, and what (if any) collections the bookmark has been added to. There are users who already uses bookmarks to warn readers about fics (as well as, alternatively, to recommend fics) but the current ability to filter on that information is limited.

For this to be workable, the search options would need to allow users to only include/exclude based upon bookmarks from specific users and/or collection for the search, include/exclude based upon all bookmarks except from specific users and/or collections for the search, and to include/exclude based upon all bookmarks.

To use examples, if you want to exclude all fics marked with the “Florida” bookmark tag, but the only bookmarks you want the exclusion to be based on are the bookmarks made by the user MimesRUs, there should be a way to do that. And if you want to exclude all fics marked with the “Dogs” bookmark tag, but the user IHateDogs207 has bookmarked all fics in the fandom with the “Dogs” tag even if it doesn’t apply, you should be able to exclude IHateDogs207′s bookmark tags from consideration for your search.

Same as filtering based upon bookmark collections. Give readers the maximum amount of flexibility feasible with the information AO3 already captures. User bookmark information is going to be highly subjective, so users need to be able to decide whose bookmark tags they want to apply.

Anyway, this creates a space for critical commentary of fics (which the authors don’t get notifications about, thus preventing harassment) and user-added tags and information (that are kept separate from the author-added tags and information), all while making use of infrastructure that AO3 already has implemented. All that would need to be added is the additional search functionality.

More Restrictions on Meta-Data: This is titles, tags, icons, and fic summaries. The reason there should be more restrictions here is that this is the stuff users see when deciding whether or not to read the fic. (Note: there are specific, existing restrictions for icons already.)

As you may recall, thanks to someone’s excessive Sexy Times tagging, AO3 recently added a restriction on the meta-data in that the number of tags one may use is now limited. But the overall lax rules here means that it’s a point of vulnerability. Specifically, a single user can render large portions of the site unusable by updating regularly a fic with hostile meta-data. There’s also occasionally been instances of authors negatively mentioning other users in the tags.

I have a follow up post on the challenges inherent in this, as even something as innocuous as “Don’t put racial slurs in the meta-data” gets complicated real quick in the implementation.

https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/668954058497949696/improving-ao3-what-should-additional-metadata

[avintagekiss24]

Hi! I don't want to start anything on here and am always willing for civil conversations. At this point there's so much I've found out about Seb (besides the video he liked, the tommy lee thing, and the girlfriend thing) that I feel so guilty if I would continue to support him. I love him sm but it just doesn't look good rn. He is associated/follows an organisation (for helping veterans) that has posted a blue lives matter flag picture and who's co-founder has sexual assault allegations against him, and worked with him in 'The last full measure'. His friend Paul Walter Hauser has done blackface in the past, and when called out on it he just listed a few people that also did blackface. There's more, I found a discussion on here that I can link. I seriously don't support "cancel culture" bc I don't think it helps anyone but there are just a lot of 'mistakes' and shady people that can be linked to Seb, I wish it wouldn't be that way. I honestly don't know what to think about it anymore.

Hi! I’m also open to having civil conversations and I don’t believe you’re trying to start anything. I really do think this situation of dragging up a four year old video and taking it completely out of context is harmful not just to Black people, but to fandom/activism in general. This is gonna be long because I’m going to take your points one by one, and I want to preface this by saying that I will not answer any derogatory, sideways asks pertaining to this subject. I will delete every single one and will block your silly ass. I’m not going to argue with people who think I’m blindly supporting Sebastian because I’m just trying to get fucked by him, or people who think I hate myself and am trying to appease some white man.

So, on with the discourse!

The video he liked - this video was taken completely out of context and that is my main issue with this whole situation. It was not a video of a white man saying that he thinks he should be able to say the n word as everyone claimed it was. They were quickly debating on whether or not it's okay to say in rap lyrics. He was told no, that's not okay, that's never okay and they moved on from it. That's it. End of story. That somehow was twisted into a click bait style headline of "Sebastian Stan likes a video of a white man defending his right to say the n word" when that is absolutely not true. My other issue is that people are more upset that Sebastian liked the video than they are about the white man in the video literally saying the n word. So, do you really care about the use of the n word like you're claiming? Cuz if you do, you'd be more upset at the white man that said the word than you would be about the white man simply liking the video. Or, are you just using this as an excuse to grandstand against a white man you don't like?

The Tommy Lee thing - Sebastian Stan playing Tommy Lee does not make Sebastian Stan a bad person. Is Charlize Theron a bad person for playing Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who started murdering men? Is Leonardo DiCaprio a bad person for playing a slave owner? Is Edward Norton a bad person for playing a nazi sympathizing racist? Actors play bad people. That doesn't mean that they themselves are bad people. 1990's Tommy Lee was a bad person, but that should have no bearing on who Sebastian Stan is or his character as a man.

The gf/Paul Walter Hauser thing - Why are we holding Sebastian accountable for what the people around him are doing? Again, why are we more upset that Sebastian is associated with people who have done questionable things than the specific people themselves? I'm not going to speak on the kimono wearing -- I'm not Asian. It's not my place to say whether or not its offensive because it's not my culture, but she posted that picture and attended that party before she started dating Sebastian, quite possibly before she even knew him. Same with Paul. I think that black face thing was long before he knew Sebastian. Now, if Sebastian was defending these actions, going around saying "I think it's okay for white women to wear Kimono's" "I think black face is fine" "I think white people should be able to say the n word" then we'd have a different story, wouldn't we? But that's not what we have, and that's not what he is doing. He is not responsible for the things his friends do or have done in the past just because he's more famous than they are, and he is not required to speak on them. Let's put it this way -- would you be comfortable having to be responsible for something a friend of yours did before you knew them? Would you want to have to be forced to answer for your friend when you yourself had nothing to do with the questionable behavior?

The organization that supports the military/blue lives matter - Sebastian cannot control what message that foundation puts out and it does not mean that he is or is not pro-police himself. There is not enough concrete evidence -- if any evidence for that matter -- that Sebastian is a blue lives matter supporter. Did Sebastian donate before they put up the blue lives matter post? Or after? I don’t know, cuz I don’t follow him that closely, but if he donates before they come out with a particular stance, that means he should be held accountable for that? I know I donated to an organization once and they turned out to support something that i’m 100% against. That means I’m a bad person because I couldn’t see into the future? Another point, how can we be certain that Sebastian saw the blue lives matter post in the first place? I know I’m not online 24 hrs a day, I miss posts all the time and I’m just an average person. I make three or four tumblr posts a day, and I’m gone. I have to play catch up on social media, and even then, I still miss stuff. So I’m sure the same happens to a working actor. As for the co-founder, I don't know who this person is and would rather not get into any allegations against them because I don't want to trigger anyone who comes across this post. If Sebastian knows about these allegations, is a willing participant/supporter of this person then yeah, that's pretty shitty, but we don't know the inner workings of this friendship/acquaintance/work relationship. We don’t know how close they are or if they even still speak.

I’m a pretty big fan of Don Cheadle. He’s a stand up guy, he’s a great actor, he’s funny, he’s political and stands up for what he believes in and in a very public way. I support him. Don Cheadle is also friends with Chris Evans, RDJ, Mark Ruffalo, and Letitia Wright (just to name a few). Chris Evans has a bipartisan forum that highlights/promotes right wing politicians, RDJ defended Chris Pratt during the whole “he’s the worst Chris in Hollywood” crap, who’s technically done black face, and who once said to a female reporter “nice tits” when she walked into the room, Mark Ruffalo just walked back his support of Palestine, and Letitia Wright retweeted/supported an anti-vaxxer/anti-trans Pastor who equated an ingredient of the covid vaccine to the devil because it contained some parts of the word Lucifer. Does that mean Don is now a bad person because he’s friends with these people? Why isn’t he getting any heat for his friendships with them? Why isn’t he being held accountable for what they’ve done and said? Oh right, because he’s not a white fave. So people don’t care one way or the other, which brings me to my next point. 

I can guarantee you that if Sebastian’s gf or Paul or this co-founder were not associated with Sebastian in any way, nobody would give a shit about her wearing a kimono, about Paul doing black face, or about the co-founder/organization being blue lives matter supporters and in that lies the actual problem. Being critical of people and their actions should be consistent and should happen all the time -- not just when they interact with your white fave. That’s when it becomes performative and looks like you just want to be able to show internet people that you follow/support/stan unproblematic celebrities, when really, you don’t care.

I think the moral of this post is that I think it's unfair to hold a complete stranger to a standard that I cannot hold myself to. I also don't view celebrities the way most teenagers/twenty somethings do, and that’s because when I entered fandom we didn't have social media, so I grew up with a wall between myself and said celebrities. There is no wall now with the presence of social media. "Fans" nowadays have a weird ownership feeling over celebrities because they can read their personal thoughts or view personal pictures and think that they have this personal quasi-friendship with them. I can't get on board with that. I prefer having the wall and I still keep the wall.

If supporting Sebastian makes you uncomfortable, then by all means, stop supporting him. Just make sure you are making this decision for yourself based on credible sources and concrete evidence and that you're not letting this fake woke activist mob make you feel uncomfortable. Internet activism means nothing unless you put your money where your mouth is in your real life and 90% of the social justice internet warriors do not. Real activism is bigger than changing your avi to a black square.

[compartmentalisinghmpf]

Why I’m so weird about (some forms of) guilt in fic (maybe)

I don’t want to write a big general meta here, just add some personal context to my (no longer quite so) recent “Complicated Feelings” post. Again, just very personal stuff, not a general statement of any sort at all. Warning: going on a very weird detour here - but my feelings on all this are coming from a very weird place, or at least I suspect they do.

This was kinda sorta prompted by my asking myself “why do I respond differently to Bro Strider than I do to various other characters who’ve also done bad shit; and arguably worse shit?” - but it’s really (mostly) not about that at all - though I do come back to it at the end.

In about a quarter century in fandom I think I’ve liked only four or five characters very strongly, in the fannish way (not necessarily always in the “ fan crush” way; but always in the sense of a strong fascination), who have not done terrible things. Other than that handful, it’s pretty much a parade of literal mass murderers there - though one may quibble with the exact term, in some cases. I’m using the word in a very broad sense, here. Ironically, some of them didn’t turn into, or turn out to be that until fairly late into proceedings, and I fell for them well before that, so it’s almost like I have some weird sixth sense. I didn’t know Cooper would get possessed. I didn’t know Methos was a Horseman of the Apocalpyse. I didn’t know John Crichton would start blowing up PK bases. Hell, Ramse started out as the walking conscience of the Ramse-Cole duality!

All of this is to say: these days, I’m really more surprised when a character I am fascinated by does not turn out to have massive amounts of blood on their hands, than when it turns out that they do. It just... keeps happening!

And oh my fuck, I’m German - second generation post-war, old enough for all my grandparents to have been adults during it, which means they probably Did Shit, even if just to the degree of looking away. And yes, this means I don’t actually Know, nobody ever talked about it, especially not the one I suspect saw or did the most, who barely ever talked at all about anything, and died earlyish, after years of dementia. The only one who told me anything at all ever was one of my grandmas, a tiny little bit, the last time I saw her before her death.

Ever since I began to understand German history a little bit, I felt a kind of distance between my grandparents and me.

And still it took me 22 years to realise that there’s quite possibly Something German going on with my obsession with guys who kill a lot of people.

For what it’s worth, the fictional mass murderers I attach to are usually about as far removed, in motivation and execution, from nazis as they could be - with the possible recent exception of Bob Howard, who operates - with great qualms, but also loyalty - in a political context that is beginning to resemble that, though still lacking the genocidal aspect. There’s other important differences there, too, but the differences - like the fact that his actions can, in the books’ universe, actually be justified - bother me even more than the similarities.

See, the characters I tend to like so strongly are usually Good Guys, of some description. Take this with all the usual reservations about terms like “good” or “bad” as applied to actual people; I’m talking about narrative functions, here.

They are, usually, Good Guys gone (or going) catastrophically wrong, in situations where doing something terrible begins to look necessary and justifiable. Maybe, sometimes, is necessary and/or justifiable. (So you might quibble also with the assessment that it’s “wrong”. But I’d argue that it still is, and that that’s important.)

(Notable exception to all this: Methos. He is... always and forever... a special case.)

So. If you make the mental link between these fictional Good Guys making “hard choices”, and my family history (and general German history), it’s all beginning to look... pretty skeevy.

There’s supposedly a  phenomenon among younger Germans, where basically everyone thinks their relatives were in the resistance, and of course, actually almost nobody was. Well, I know mine weren’t, and I never told myself that they were. But what I’m wondering, and what’s making me incredibly uncomfortable, is this: Am I subconsciously trying to tell myself, in this maximally indirect and convoluted way, that they may have felt it was all necessary and justifiable? Is that what’s going on here? I really, really hope it isn’t, because that really, truly, isn’t how the whole nazi thing worked - but it’s hard to be sure what’s going on in your own subconscious, because, well. It’s subsconscious.

Whatever really lies at the root of my fascination, though, I have always been slightly wary of it - long before I even began to suspect that there might be a legitimate reason to be uneasy. I’ve always felt like I was putting my empathy in the wrong place, I guess.

Perhaps as a consequence, I have always been incredibly picky in how, exactly, I like the topic of characters’ guilt dealt with in fiction. And make no mistake about it, I do like to see it dealt with in fiction. I keep coming back for it. (Again: German much?)

But at the same time, there are ways of handling it that are so strongly upsetting to me that it could count as a squick, and this has been the case since my very first contact with fic back in the late 90s.

My preferences do vary slightly, from character to character, and from situation to situation. Methos, who has a surviving victim (one out of tens of thousands) who confronts him, is a different story than John Crichton, who bombs military bases and ships and doesn’t ever meet any survivors other than Scorpius, who is also his torturer and thus hardly qualifies straightforwardly as a victim. And of course Methos and John also had fundamentally different motivations for what they did, and also did fundamentally different things, even if their overall body count may be similar. By modern morals, Methos has stooped considerably lower than John ever did. John is an actual Good Guy, who made the proverbial “hard choices”. We don’t know if Methos ever was that, but he certainly wasn’t during the Horsemen days.

But, to generalise as much as I can here, one of the central things to me, with guilt of the magnitude I’m talking about, is that there really is no way to “remove” it. Or to make up for it. Ever. Yes, I’m being very German, I know. But this is really important to me, in fic that deals with these topics.

The concept of forgiveness makes no sense to me, in this context. And any story that focuses on getting the characters to a place (mentally etc.) where they can receive it, is a story I probably do not want to read. Forgiveness cannot be the goal, here.

Which doesn’t mean that I am interested in punishment or revenge, instead.

Or that I take issue with stories that focus on victims, survivors, for their own reasons, getting to a place where they can forgive.

Remember that I’m talking about mass murder here, though; and that I’m talking as someone who - regrettably, disturbingly, inevitably(?) - keeps getting really invested in characters who have committed it. I read from the perpetrator’s POV. Or with an emotional focus on them, anyway.

With this constellation, it is important to acknowledge that there is no one who can forgive these characters, in a sense of actually relieving them of their guilt. There can’t be. Even if there are survivors, they can only ever possibly forgive a small part of the deeds; they cannot speak for the dead. (They also shouldn’t have to.)

(Yes, the same is technically true for any murder, even just a single one, and arguably much of the same discussion I’m having here could also be had about that. I’d still argue, probably, that there is usually something of a qualitative difference, but I’m not going to do another super weird essay on morally ranking different kinds of murder here; I did enough of that already, last year, and weirded out even myself in the process.)

So. Back to the topic at hand. The guilt is, and has to be, perpetual, and fic that doesn’t have that awareness built into its very bones, is fic I usually don’t want to read.

And yet I also don’t want to read about anyone wallowing uselessly in inescapable guilt, either. (Yes, I know, picky, picky...)

What I do want to read tends to be fic about characters who grapple with that inescapability in some way, who have to integrate that into their sense of self - accept it - without being paralysed by it, without letting it define them entirely, without becoming trapped and unable to move forward. In the end, it’s all about moving forward - without resolving that central tension, because that is fundamentally irresolvable.

(I sometimes wonder if this is psychologically unhealthy, this insistence of mine on the impossibility of forgiveness. But also, perhaps sometimes the most psychologically beneficial thing isn’t also the most moral thing. Perhaps some kinds of pain are worth carrying forever.

Also, perhaps the distinction between acceptance and forgiveness is academic, in this context. And acceptance? That feels pretty healthy.)

I think that fictional mass murder, especially in sf&f and in fan fiction, is used as, sort of, the safe terrible thing. Nobody (or at least almost nobody) puts a content warning for mass murder. It’s too big to be real, perhaps. It doesn’t feel personal. (Again, especially the types that occur in sf&f - the Death Star blowing up Alderaan, etc.) I suspect that - especially in fiction that deals with themes of guilt, redemption, forgiveness etc. - it’s often a stand-in for all sorts of other things that can cause feelings of guilt, including, I suspect, a lot more “harmless” ones - the kinds where forgiveness makes a lot more sense. So a lot of fic that ostensibly deals with mass murder... often doesn’t actually deal with mass murder.

(I think.)

Conversely - and now we’re finally getting back to Homestuck, yes, we’re finally here - child abuse, is too real, too personal. It’s not a stand-in for anything, it’s not a safe terrible thing to play with to explore something else, it is just itself. And just in being itself, in fiction it carries a sense of enormity and irrevocability and unforgiveability that - probably - surpasses that of (science-fictional) mass murder.

And I think that with my tendency to see even the customary Safe Terrible Thing as carrying all or at least a fair amount of the weight of the real thing (for whatever reason), I’m transferring/projecting all of my attitudes and ideas about guilt and (non-)forgiveness in fiction wholesale onto this, because to me, on some level, if feels similar. Not the same, but similar enough.

(Which is actually bizarre, because really it’s very different. Not least because - at least in the particular situation that prompted these weird musings, i.e. the situation described in, you know, The Fic - nobody’s dead, and everybody’s still dealing with each other, which means that all sorts of things are possible.

But there is still an enormity to it, and irrevocability.)

For whatever reason, I am also reading this particular kind of situation far more from the abused person’s POV than from the perpetrator’s. (And the fact that that is strange for me again makes me ask myself: why is mass murder so much more... identifiable-with? Side-eyeing my subconscious with great suspicion. --- Though probably some of it is simply that I’ve been a child who was subjected to some amount of violence, though not from parents/adults; I remember sensing, even at the time, how that was warping me, away from the person I could have been, turning me into something that I still think is probably lesser. And in that case, maybe there’s nothing particularly suspicious at all about where my sympathies lie, here.)

Which doesn’t mean that rng Bro isn’t fascinating to read about, or that I don’t empathise with him, because I do - quite a lot, actually. But he hasn’t made it onto my list of people whose “hard”, arguably terrible/murderous choices fascinate me near-obsessively (or just plain obsessively) - even though his motivations and choices would actually make him a fairly good fit; even though the way he dehumanises himself is not so very different from Bob Howard’s.

[vdlest]

The Roommate

Characters:

TFATWS!Bucky Barnes x Neighbor!Reader

Summary:

Bucky Barnes as your neighbor is a good thing, especially when you need company. You two instantly became friends ever since he heard you listening to classic songs, and that you prefer "old but classic" stuff. To make the long story short, you fell for him, but when you confessed your feelings for him, he avoided you. And you thought that's how your beautiful start would end.

Warning:

Fluff

This is why you sometimes hate Sundays, you have nothing to do, and you're bored as fuck.

There's nothing to watch on Netflix, you have no new books to read, and no new episode of a podcast to listen to. So at the moment, you are just lying on your bed, staring blankly at your room's ceiling.

If only you're still living with your ex-roommate, Ana, the two of you must've talking gossips and having conversations about life nonstop. But she's not here since she moved to a different State last week already for a new job opportunity. She didn't want to leave you but she can't say no to a job opportunity, and you can't keep her from achieving her dream as well. So here you are, hoping that your next roommate will be just like Ana.

You were about to grab the remote control of your television inside your room when your phone vibrated, signaling that you have a text message.

Hey, I saw your post on the internet and that you're looking for a roommate. I'm interested and hoping we could meet today somewhere so we could discuss it.

You frowned a bit when you noticed that the sender of the message didn't mention any name nor introduce himself/herself.

Just when you're about to reply to this text, you received another message from the same number.

I'm Sam by the way.

Now that this sender finally introduced himself/herself, your confusion vanished, and decided to meet with this potential roommate of yours. Although you're still not quite sure whether this Sam is a guy or a girl, nonetheless, that's not important. What's important for you is that he or she is not a bad person and a heartbreaker.

You agreed to meet with your potential roommate in a nearby coffee shop in an hour. So you got up and went your way to your shower to prepare for this unexpected meeting.

The moment you entered the coffee shop you and your potential roommate agreed to meet on, you grab your phone and dialed the number of the person you're meeting, Sam.

Well, at least, you're not gonna die out of boredom. ───────────────────❥

"Hello?" you began when you heard that Sam already accepted your call, "This is Y/N. I'm already here in the coffee shop. Can you like raise your hand so I could see you?" you asked.

You roam your eyes around as you wait for Sam to answer in the other line.

"I'm right behind you," a familiar voice spoke on the other line.

Your heart skipped a beat when you heard that familiar voice.

You slowly turn around and see for yourself if your hunch is right about that familiar voice.

Hell, you are right.

It was him. It was Bucky.

It was the man you fell for.

Your eyes met his blue eyes when you face him. He was still holding his phone to his hear when you two face each other.

Seeing him now made you remember how you told him that you like him and that you're starting to fall for him already, and at the same time, you remembered how he walked out of your apartment and broke your heart into pieces. He left without any words. He just left and avoided you from then on.

Well, not until this day came.

"What the hell are you doing here?" you asked him straight on his face as you end your call with your supposed to be a potential roommate and put your phone inside your bag, "And what kind of sick joke this is?"

Bucky took a deep breath as he moves a step closer to you, "You have every right to be mad at me, and I won't question it. I've been a jerk, an asshole, I get it. But I was hoping you'd listen to me," he said.

You scoffed, "Listen to you? Listen to the guy who walked out on me on the night that I confessed my feelings? That's a bit absurd, don't you think?" you sarcastically smiled at him as you ask him. You shook your head, "This is going nowhere. So long, old friend."

You were about to walk past him when he gently grabbed your wrist to stop you from walking away from him.

"Please, Y/N. I'm begging you," he made you face him again, "I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to avoid you as much as I didn't mean to love you."

Love you? He loves you?

He nodded, "Y/N, that night you told me that you like me and that you are actually falling for me, I was the happiest man alive. But that happiness faded away the moment I remembered who I am, and who I was. Instantly, I realized that you don't know me that well for you to love me that easily," he explained.

"Let's say you really do love me and that there's still I need to know about you," you pull back your hand away from him and crossed your arms in front of your chest, "Why tell me now? Why confess to me right now?"

"Because I fucking love you damn much already," he answered back immediately. He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes for a second before he started talking again, "I tried my best to forget you, to forget what I feel for you but it's fucking too impossible. So I thought that if I'd let you know who I really am, who I was, I'll leave you the choice whether you still want to be with me or not."

You can't believe that this is happening right now.

A month ago, you realized that you don't have every time in the world to take your time to confess your feelings for Bucky, so you did confess to him. However, he broke your heart. And now here you are, you are very tempted to kiss him right now but you fought the urge to since you are curious about who he really is.

Bucky extended his hand towards you, "Come with me."

You took a glance at his hand before you look at him again, "I don't know, Bucky," you looked down and shook your head, "You already broke my heart and I don't think I have enough trust in you to come with you."

He chuckled, "You have a swiss knife on your bag, you have a pepper spray, if I do something vile to you, use it. I won't fight it," he assured.

Despite the heartbreak he gave you, you won't deny the fact that he's still charming to you. So yes, you ended up saying yes and coming with him.

➽──────────────────❥

"What the hell are we doing in the Smithsonian museum, Bucky?" you ask him as you both walk inside the museum.

It was a long drive from NYC to DC. You fell asleep the whole time you two were on the road. You wanted to ask him why does he have to take you to DC, but you were too tired to give a damn. So you let him take you to the place that will show you who he really is.

But you never thought you'd end up here in the Smithsonian Museum.

He didn't answer you, instead, he leads the two of you inside the exhibit made for the legacy of Captain America, Steve Rogers.

You chuckle and shook your head as you both walk inside the exhibit, "If we're planning to steal Cap's shield, I hate to break it to you but there's a new Captain America already," you joked.

"Yeah, I know," he casually answered, "I know him."

Your brows furrowed as you look at him, "The former Captain America or the new one?" you asked him, not sure if he's kidding or not.

"Both of them," he sighed and stopped walking. He faces you, "Before we proceed," he grabbed your hand and sighed again, "I want you to know that I love you, I really do. I also want you to know that I'm sorry for breaking your heart, for hurting you, but there's a lot of reason why I had to do it."

Your heart melted the moment he told you that he loves you. It wasn't the first time, but it feels like it. You wanted to tell him that it doesn't matter who he was and who he is because, for you, love is love. It doesn't give a damn about anyone's real identity. But you two have come a long way to back out now.

"Ready?" he asked you.

You nodded, "Yeah. I'm ready."

You and Bucky walked a few seconds more, but your body froze the moment you saw his picture inside Captain America's exhibit. He was beside Captain Steve Rogers.

"Battle tested, Captain America and his Howling Commandos quickly earned their stripes. Their mission, taking down HYDRA, the Nazi rogue science division."

"Bucky?" you murmured when your eyes landed on the picture of the guy standing next to you. You took a glance at Bucky and he was just looking at you and what your reaction will be. You look over Bucky's shoulder and saw a portrait of him plastered in a glass. You automatically walked there and check it for yourself.

"Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country."

There's both so much and too much to see in this exhibit, not the Captain America part, but the part where you realize that your neighbor, the guy you fell for is actually not the man you thought he is.

Beside Bucky's glass mosaic, you saw a video presented near it. It was Bucky and Captain Rogers.

"You weren't really kidding when you said that you knew the former Captain America," you said when you saw Bucky on your peripheral, looking at you, watching you.

"He's my best friend, and even he's gone already, he still is," he said.

You and Bucky walked around the exhibit more. He also showed you around Captain America's exhibit and even showed you the uniform he wore during his Howling Commando days.

You have no idea what to think or feel at the moment, but one thing's for sure, your love for him didn't fade away even if you knew who he really is and who he was, not even after he told you that he was the infamous Winter Soldier. You still feel the same for him and you have no idea why. Maybe because love is love.

After you two went ou the Smithsonian Museum, you two walked around the National Mall.

"Why did you think that showing me these would change my mind about you?" you asked him, breaking the silence between the two of you.

"Because I--"

You cut him off, "Because you assassinated people in the past?" you stopped from walking and faced him, "Or because you are a hundred and six years old man?"

"Y/N, you know---"

You cut him off again, "No, I don't know, Bucky. So tell me," you chuckled and shook your head, "Does these things supposed to change my mind? My heart? What I fucking feel for you? Well, sorry it didn't! Because even after I found out that you are Cap's best friend, that you were one of his Howling Commandos, that you were the Winter Soldier, and that you are an Avenger, I still feel the same way for you, I still see you as the guy I fell in love with, I still see you as my neighbor who likes Marvin Gaye so much that he listens to it through night and day, I still see you as Bucky Barnes," you told him.

The whole time you two were walking around the museum up to this scenic place in DC, you have nothing in mind aside from the fact that you were actually fascinated about who he really is.

Finding out that he's an avenger, that he's making this world a better place and saving it from going chaotic made you love him even more. Even the fact that he's a hundred and six years old man doesn't bother you at all and doesn't change how you see him.

"And if those things you showed and told me why you broke my heart, then I must tell you," you wiped your tears away, "You just wasted your time because it didn't change the fact that I love you. You told me that you're giving me the choice whether I still want to be with you or not, and I made my choice now, Bucky," you walked closer to him and held his right cheek, "I want to be with you."

Bucky held your hand that was on his cheek, and your eyes landed on his gloved hand because now you know why he was always wearing a leather jacket and covering his hand with gloves.

So you grabbed his hand and slowly remove the glove he was wearing, when you look at him, he was surprised by what you did.

"This is the hand that I will always hold onto, the hand that I will always choose to hold," you smiled at him.

You finally felt his vibranium hand on your cheek as he wipes your tears away, "I'm sorry if I had to hurt you that way. I'm sorry for breaking your heart, but I'm already here and I will not leave you," he pulled you closer to him and kissed your forehead, "I got you now and there's nothing else I could ask for," he pulled you again and this time it was the tip of your nose he chose to kiss, "I love you," he said before he finally claims your lips with his.

His lips dance with yours, and with every sway, you felt his longing, his love, and care for you. As cliche as it sounds, it was truly like your love for each other. It was pure and true.

"Who's Sam by the way?" you asked him after you two kissed, "Wait, Sam Wilson as in the Falcon?"

He nodded, "Yeah, the new Captain America. I asked him if I could use his name because I know you won't answer my calls," he said and sighed, "Anyway, you might have to take down your post about looking for a roommate."

You frowned, "And why is that?" you asked him.

"Because I'll be moving in with you," he revealed, which made your eyes widened in surprise, "Only if you want to of course."

You chuckle as you nodded, "I would love that."

"Just to be sure, you're my girlfriend now, right?" he asked you.

"For a hundred and six years old man, you're the most slow-moving one," you joked and run your fingers through his hair as he wrapped his arms around you, "I'm yours and you're mine, Bucky Barnes."

-v.dl