#yes i also read kgb

[bl0ss0mlily]

Hiruhiko hair colors!

which one is your favorite?

[grisha-brain]

Six of crows as adults

Nina and Matthias:

-They don’t know where to settle because she wants ravka and he wants fjerda and they both also want to stay in kerch

-they stay in kerch for a while and matthias learns to make waffles and other desserts

-they open up a shop

-very cheap (but good) dessert

-cheap because matthias didn’t want to rip people off

-even though it’s literally ketterdam

-when nina becomes pregnant they move away from ketterdam and settle down in the mountains on the fjerda-ravka border

-they stay there but travel to ketterdam a lot

-also they have TWINS

Nina and Hanne/Rasmus/Ilya:

-Ilya and Nina marry and become king and queen eventually

-They start off as Mila and Rasmus, but by the end Nina’s chosen a new name (it’s just Nina again) and Ilya has a saint name which he uses instead of Rasmus

-Then they decide to get Genya to start tailoring her back, really subtly

-They start with the eyes over the course of a few months

then start making her hair darker and wavy

and finally the face structure

it takes a few years but its totally worth it

They are the king and queen of Fjerda, and have to have enough kids to have a worthy heir

They have 4

Their eldest is Matthias, supposedly named after Sankt Mattheus

We all know who he’s really named after, but Fjerda is fooled.He’s basically Matthias reincarnation. He has blue eyes blond hair (from Yvla) which he wears long, and a similar personality (the first to die vibe. except he doesn’t die. He does not inherit grisha abilities

-The second is Hanne. Nina absolutely insisted on it. Named after the queen’s old friend who died. Totally not named after her father.She’s bold and loves combat. Also otkazatsya. She has russetish hair (no-one know where that’s from) and green eyes.

-The third is Joran. He’s a healer, and he plays a key part in the Drusje revolution (basically the fjerdans coming to accept grisha) He has brown hair and green eyes.

-The youngest is Ylva. Ilya chose this name. She has blonde hair and copper eyes and is a alkemi. She loves working with poisons and such.

-In this version (my main headcanon. i’m sorry but my mind just doesn’t like undead matthias. it’s heartbreaking but its so beautiful to read i can’t just undo that) she ends up dating Addi van Eck after many trips to Ketterdam spent with her.

-yes the royal fjerdan family take regular trips to ketterdam to see some of their *criminal* friends. Nina and Ilya grow old but don’t, because they’re grisha and both live to well over 100.Everyone knows theyre grisha and love them for it because they have that much influence.

-when they do die, they pass fjerda onto matthias and his partner (his partner is agender. why? because I say so) and the grimjer line stays strong for centuries after that

Kaz and Inej:

-They don’t think physical intimacy is too important

-They try to heal, but it’s not the main goal

-They do get married, though

-Kaz signs off all his letters and stuff as KGB and no one actually knows what it means

-Kaz stays in ketterdam and becomes a really successful gang leader. He establishes a new gang, the Silver Crows, instead of taking over the dregs

-Meanwhile Inej hunts slavers on the wraith and absolutely heeds kaz’s advice to make herself a legendpeople fear her and love her

-she stays anonymous the whole time though, only the crows, the crows kids (when they’re old enough) and the crows parents know.

-They never have children

-Eventually they decide that she spends 3 months on the wraith and 1 in ketterdam and it works really well.

-After a few years in this schedule, they decide to end pekka rollins once and for allthey start by destroying the dime lions, which is easy because they’d already shaken the foundations and had weakened them quite a bitthen move on to rollins

-They know that killing him is too merciful

-so they buy the house that was a hertzoon household and lock him in there.

-just stuck in that house.

-they even get him a silver dog like the one hertzoon had and get it to attack him regularly

-badly

-in the end, pekka rollins kills himselfyes i just grinned while writing that

-Inej dies first (sorry I have to write this)and it’s like criminal romeo and juliet

-because kaz brekker no longer has a reason

-and the rumors of him not needing a reason are false.

-so he dies while waiting at the harbour for her to come back from her travels (yes he just sat there waiting not eating or sleeping)

Jesper and Wylan:

-They get married before they even reach adulthood. it’s legal.

-Jesper Van Eck

-Yes they keep Van Eck. for the sake of business.

- Colm is a bit disappointed but gets over it.

- jesper jokes its to disgrace the name

-Wylan is a successful mercher. he does everything but jesper reads for him

-jesper helps wylan write letters full of insults to the van eck in his prison cell

-and they burn all the responses without reading them

-they really want children but they want to adopt the perfect one

-and they find her

-just before the wraith eneded the menagerie, the zemini gave birth to a girl. the father was some anonymous kaelish client

-the girl was put up for adoption and it was like they knew as soon as they saw her

-yes, jesper is also kaelish-zemini, but it showed a lot more on the baby.

-she had skin too light for zemini or suli but too dark for the other races

-and bright red hair

-she actually looked like she could be their child.they named her Aditi (Addi) Van Eckshe grows up to be tall and pretty and there’s a bunch of boys who try to get her to date them.

-but she turns them all down

-because wesper ain’t raising a straight girl

-she’s a really good fighter and a tidemaker and she joins the silver crows as soon as Kaz lets her

-wylan and jesper don’t let her but jesper’s a bit too scared to say no to kaz and wylan secretly think she should definietely learn to fight

-In my slightly more canonical universe where matthias does die, she ends up dating Yvla Grimjer.in the one where matthias lives, she ends up dating *trans* alby rollins (lol redhead couple)

-yes i definetely headcanon alby as transfem (but she keeps her name because it’s kind of androgynous)

-Jesper dies first (yes i am going into this sorry guys(

-and it’s so wrong because jesper is grisha and should outlive wylan

-when it’s just wylan and addi wylan doesn’t see the point any more and quits his job

-they move to lij and stay there

-addi stays with wylan to support him even though she has a life with yvla

-when wylan dies, yvla and addi live in that property and stay in Lij for the rest of their lives.

[sgiandubh]

On curating my dash

One of the things I saw while I was reading and trying to make sense of this corner of the Internet was "oh, and curate your dash". I sadly do not remember who wrote that or when, but I think it was in response to somebody who just got insulted by an Anon. Or confused to bits by what she read on another blog, because this is no ordinary fandom and we are no ordinary, happy-go-lucky fans.

A truer, more useful and insightful piece of advice has never been given to anyone, and now I know what it means.

Over these first 72 hours, a steady trickle of sock accounts made its way in here, adding this humble page for future reference. Out of curiosity - I am a chronically curious person, with an overdriven bullshit-o-meter-, I checked their follows or likes, when available. No posts, but a whole list of people you follow or a private list of people you follow: normal as hell, right?

Some of these lists gave me the impression of a typewritten KGB list of enemies of the people: almost the entire community of shippers, or at least the vocal ones, and for good measure, a spoonful of antis. It's not rocket science to figure out why. Some of these could be the dreaded anons making the rounds with the noble task of informing the sopranos on the other side:"lookie, lookie here what the newbie said".

I do not give a hoot about who you are, but if you come in here on this horse, it's block and jingle all the way, baby. I'm also going to immediately block any of you who follows the Negationist Trifecta of P*rv, Dutch Woman and BIF. As a side note, my mind boggled when I saw an empty account follow Paul C, that strange form of life.

I do not have the slightest intention to entertain on my list, even by proxy, people who peed in our lochs and shat on our glens.

This fandom has always been, if my understanding is correct, a deeply fractioned, insecure place. People have been hurt, insulted, ridiculed and doxed for the mere joy of seeing something extraordinary about two complete strangers and sticking to their truth. I did not come here - and thought hard before deciding to step in - to add my footprint to the shitshow or write the script or further expose - how did C put it, in that infamous VF interview? - "the sliver" to the Mean Girls community. I came here to bring to this potluck table my take on things and yes, my modest Victorinox skills.

I am no Miss Congeniality to the undeserving. But for the rest of you, I am here to stay, for what it's worth.

For all of you that want to reach out, my DM is always open. It is a joy to get to know you. Onwards!

[pinkhellhasademon]

Ok, I'm new to your tumblr page and I have to thank you for keeping the Regular Show fandom alive through your art. I've been reading about your Nicholai OC and I have to say, I'm loving it.

I had a couple of questions about it, if it's not too much trouble. The first one is about Nicholai's mother: why did she abandon her son? And how did she decide to adopt her nephew so easily?

And the second one is about Dmitri: How did he and Nicholai meet and discover their relationship?

I thank you again for the beautiful art you post, greetings!

Thank you for the questions! And yes I'm a regular show simp lmao

⚠️ (Triggering/family deaths, edgy lore, alcoholism)

Nikolai's mother abondon her son because of poor financial status (at her time Nikolai's father was a useless alcoholic.) . Nikolai's mother choose KGB and thought it'll be safe "terrible choice"

However after some time (toddler)Dmitry and his family (his mom and dad and a little baby sister) died in a car accident .

Dmitry's family property like the house was passed into Nikolai's mom as an inheritance (and also because she will be parenting Dmitry)

After finally getting home and at least basic opportunities to work Nikolai's mom feels immense regret and guilt but couldn't find her son Nikolai.

Yulia born after some years however the father died from "alcohol coma" And that's basically it. Dmitriy hates Nikolai's father and also used to have big hatred about Nikolai. However their relationship is getting better

Pls keep in mind that ... I'm not a writer , I don't have any basic fundamental skills about writing. This is just my ocs around canon Nicholai from regular show and the story is still building but i think that's the basic idea

Have great day! :)

[asnowperson]

Eroica vol. 28 - Turkey references (1/2)

Basically, each page in the Byzantine Meiro (Byzantine Labyrinth) arc is a reference to real life, but I'm having my best life reading this, so I'll list some of them as I read along. Mostly İstanbul stuff, because even I haven't been to other Turkish cities in this story, lol. Just a general remark: The architecture and the backgrounds are spot on. She even got the behavioral patterns of the random Turkish people in this story right. And the cats. Those are best and most accurate Turkish stray cats one can ever see in manga. Keep an eye out for them if you read this story!

This is one of the reasons why I love Aoike: She does her research well, and does not write solely based on her impressions (or she just has the right impressions, lol) and does not use second-hand knowledge. For instance, she could have just set this story in İstanbul, because that's the city people think of when you say "Turkey", right? But since this story has an ex-KGB agent, things kick off at Trabzon, a less known Turkish city for most. But that's where many Russians settled in after the fall of the USSR, so that choice makes perfect sense.

Okay, here is my list.

1. Mehmet Ali Ağca. He is real, and I knew him even as a kid.

2. "Handsome Turkish football player in the 2002 World Cup," whom Mischa's daughter became a fan of: It's got to be İlhan Mansız. No doubt about it. I was roughly Anna's age in 2002, and I can attest that all the girls at my school were going crazy over him. He also gained popularity in Japan.

3. Turkish greeting: Yes, Turkish men do hug and kiss each other as a form of greeting. Of course, it's exaggerated for purposes of comedy in the manga (and ngl, there are weirdos like the Pekel brothers; and old ladies would be more likely to give you a smack on the cheeks), but we don't actually use our lips to kiss the person we greet. You just brush your cheeks against the other person's. But the big hug is very real. Especially if you are happy to see the person, you go hard at hugging them. Searching for images for this made me feel weird, so make do with this picture of a famous football player and a coach. If Klaus was more willing, he'd be locked in a hug like this with those brothers.

4. Beko: Actual home appliances company.

Continued in part 2...

[dogslayslaw]

I found this book on one of our bookshelves at home. I like looking through the shelves because there's always a mysterious book I've never seen before. Lately I've been spotting Soviet histories/literature. I found a biography on Stalin, which I found interesting, but not as much as this. I only got a few pages into that to know it probably wouldn't go into a lot of the atrocities. Personally, I like viewing the events through the eyes of the common people, the victims. You don't see that much in history textbooks! So I picked this one up (The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn), the word "gulag" catching my eye:

So I flipped it over and opened it, finding an interesting hand written note/warning by a woman who I'm not even sure is alive anymore and an author's note on the back which was also intriguing.

Now I had to read this! Yes, I'm very much in the right frame of mind right now, so Elaine's warning doesn't mean that much to me right now. If you can't read it, I did make alt text for every image I put here.

The book itself is partially researched and partially an autobiography to describe what it was like to be in the Gulag (and how it was to be arrested and such).

This is apparently the first of 3 volumes, though we only have this one. I haven't gotten far in it either; I'm only 10 pages in. But let me say, Elaine was right... Currently it's describing the arrests of citizens, which is traumatizing enough. Knowing the Gulag was even worse is just an eerie experience. I might update my thoughts as I read on, but no promises.

ANYWAY I recommend this book for anyone interested in stuff like this. Even if you're not, you should look into it anyway because I think it's important to learn about just how bad totalitarian governments are (FUCK THE KGB AND FUCK STALIN)

[a-tale-never-told]

Like I think a good first question is what is the USSR. Most people reading this either weren’t alive when the USSR collapsed, or were too young to remember anything about it. Yes their parents would have remembered the USSR but depending on the relationship with their parents, it’s not a question that would get asked.

//The USSR is certainly something that has to be talked about in a certain capacity, as I don't think any dictatorial regime of any kind has more of an effect on how our politics are shaped today than the USSR. It's so much so that I can't cover Soviet History in a single post as there is far too much lore to cover at once.//

//The fact that most people in Russia and the former Soviet states, in general, don't really ask their parents about what the USSR even was is certainly understandable, given they were mostly likely infants by the time the Union fell, or their parents don't want to explain or talk about it because it brings back... uncomfortable and disturbing memories to say the least. I can see why given that some of the former Soviet states are run by former ex-KGB burecrats and agents, Vladimir Putin being the most notorious out of all of them for the very wrong reasons.//

// I do have a USSR post on the back burner, but I didn't post it yet because I thought people wouldn't really care for that sort of stuff about the history of the Soviet Union. Well, it appears that my hand has now been forced and I'm making that post about the USSR regardless.//

//Either way, the USSR and Russian history in general, is certainly fascinating and interesting, not only just of how they shaped a lot of Eastern European politics, but also because of the fact that Russian history is certainly an underrated part of history that I like to focus on.//

[theoutcastrogue]

Bret Devereaux or Roman CIA/FBI equivalents

“Were there pre-modern equivalents of such government institutions as the CIA (for spying) or the FBI (for crime investigation)?

So I cannot answer for every society here, but for the Romans I can provide something of an answer, which I would frame as “No, but.”  I think the key issue here is both the degree of centralization in what these organizations do and also their purpose.

Sending individuals into another country to get information on it – even in a clandestine manner – was not an unheard of thing to do in the ancient world, though given the limited control ancient states had over the movement of peoples such ‘spying’ often consisted simply of sending a few trusted members of court to go visit the other country’s court as ‘diplomats’ or as guests of local notables and report back everything they saw.  But that’s not really what we mean when we think of the CIA – we imagine a centralized bureaucracy with an official head that reports to the government, gathers large amounts of data on foreign countries and writes reports.  That the Romans did not seem to have had.

We do hear, once in Ammianus of ‘areani‘ (or arcani; the reading here is unclear) whose job was to travel and inform Roman generals of what was going on in neighboring countries, but these seem likely to be scouts and are only attested in Roman Britain, so this might just be a special unit of scouts that ranged north of Hadrian’s Wall to keep tabs on the people to the north.  There’s no sense of a larger or more pervasive intel operation and keep in mind we have the writings of senior commanders and senators (e.g. Seneca, Pliny, Cassius Dio) who would surely have been aware if there had been such a state organ.

Meanwhile when we think about the FBI, we imagine an internally directed organization whose goal is to detect and investigate crime.   Ancient societies (including the Romans) generally had no investigative police of any kind.  In the imperial period, Rome did have a sort of police force (though their primary job was as firefighters), the vigiles, who in addition to putting out fires kept a night watch and might respond to cries of alarm for things like burglaries, or do riot control.  But as far as we can tell they didn’t investigate crimes.  The Roman legal system lacked a public prosecutor in any event: if someone did a crime against you, you didn’t wait for the police to investigate and the state to charge, instead you went to a magistrate (here this might be the tresviri capitales or a praetor (either the praetor urbanus or praetor peregrinus, depending on the issue) and laid the charge yourself (and then you or your representative or patron, would prosecute).

What we do see emerge in the imperial period are what we might call ‘state security forces,’ but these are less the FBI and more akin to the KGB: their role wasn’t to investigate crimes but to detect threats to the state and the rule of the emperor (which means yes, ‘secret police’ predate modern investigative police by centuries).  Emperors used various formal and informal networks of spies and informants to try to root out conspiracies against their rule and almost any kind of official who moves around the empire but reported to the emperor (instead of a governor) might be suspected of being a way for the emperor to spy on the most dangerous (to him) people in the empire: his own legates who held military commands.

And so we get, for instance, the frumentarii, literally ‘grain guys’ (after frumentum, grain) whose job ostensibly was to ensure the food supply to the legions and deliver messages from Rome, but who rapidly got a reputation as the emperors spies (against his own subordinates), secret police and even assassins.  Likewise, Roman generals in the imperial period had bodyguards called speculatores (‘look outs,’ – they’re not praetorians anymore because these are legati, not praetors or consuls), who served also as scouts and message-runners and thus naturally as spies the emperor might use to keep tabs on his generals or on the loyalty of a province.  And later we hear of agentes in rebus in the Late Empire who were official couriers who – wait for it – emperors used as spies and informants against their subordinates in far-flung provinces, particularly after disbanding the frumentarii, whom the agentes in rebus replaced doing essentially the same job.  And this was doubtless alongside of other informal domestic spies.

– Bret Devereaux, Referenda ad Senatum: January 13, 2023: Roman Traditionalism, Ancient Dates and Imperial Spies

[connectinglines]

To help Palestinians you should support Israel because this is the only power in the region that does anything good to them. But the 1st thing you owe to them and to yourself is to educate yourself. And I’ll give you the first hint 1. Zionism the way you see it is what is described in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which was fabricated by KGB who are the real enemy of Arabs 2. “Palestians” is “Hobbits”. It is a fabricated term that has nothing to do with Felistimlans from the Bible and diminishes everything about the actual people who live in the Middle East, including those who live in Gaza. 3. Leaves are heavier than branches. So if people support terrorists they will share terrorists' faith. And if they don’t understand who’s their enemy it is all their fault - they choose not to educate themselves. And they deserve to experience the consequences. This is why 53 of 63 Arab Countries recently voted NOT to take any refugees from Gaza or the West Bank and the rest voted to not take even one refugee from there. Because they know that the only difference between Arabs and Palestinians is the readiness to burn whatever city they moved to, to the ground. Yes. This is also both me and you will probably burn in the WWIII nuclear confrontation. Too many of us choose to be emotional and keep scrolling but not to educate ourselves. This is why I'm spending time writing this. I hope, maybe one of 100 who reads it will open some of what I mentioned. OK, the last. Let not be hypocrites. Read Ion Pacepa “Desinformation”. You will know…oh well here is a little snippet Russian Footprints | National Review

[x----tine]

We Thought You’d Died

By Allie Rowbottom

July 12, 2024

Goodnight Sweet Thing by Cristine Brache

“WE DREAMT OF / Flowers and listening to women / Still, every time / we go to bed / we go to war.” Thus begins the titular poem in Cristine Brache’s latest collection, Goodnight Sweet Thing (2024), a rich, layered, lyrical meditation on mortality, embodiment, womanhood, and the various performances therein. It’s a poem I heard Cristine read for the first time at New York’s KGB Bar in late 2021, when our friendship was new, yet somehow still familiar. Now, several years and many conversations later, when I read “Goodnight Sweet Thing” to myself, I hear my friend’s voice in my head—“Sleep / drowns in the arms of a fallen angel. / Maybe she’s been nauseous since January / like me”—and am reminded that listening to women is not just a gift but a source. Of friendship, yes, but also of art.

Cristine is a multidisciplinary artist whose visual work has been exhibited internationally at galleries and institutions such as Berlinische Galerie and ICA Miami and critically reviewed in places such as The New York Times, Artforum, The New Yorker, and, of course, the Los Angeles Review of Books. Goodnight Sweet Thing is her second collection, but it includes her debut, Poems, previously published by Codétte in 2018. I spoke with Cristine about her artistic practices, the influence of Playboy Playmates, the intersections between visual and written work, near-death experiences, and adapting Goodnight Sweet Thing to performance art, on a blanket in Central Park on the last temperate summer day in New York. I hope you enjoy listening to us.

¤ ALLIE ROWBOTTOM: Let’s discuss your relationship with Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. She plays an important role in this book and is influential in your visual art as well. Where did the fascination with her begin for you? How has she made her way into your poetry?

CRISTINE BRACHE: I had known about Dorothy as a cult figure representing lost potential, because she died so young. And because she was poised to be the first Pamela Anderson, who started with Playboy and successfully transitioned to Hollywood. Dorothy was supposed to be the person who could represent Playboy as a truly feminist enterprise, where the women are all treated well, and there’s some upward mobility. She died super young, which was also fascinating to me as well. But I got really interested in her when I found out that she wrote poetry. In the documentation of Dorothy’s life, she’s always smiling, but then the words she’s writing are sad, self-aware, full of pain and disappointment with Hollywood. That duality is endlessly fascinating to me. On top of the fact that she just wrote good poems.

In Dorothy’s poem that functions as the epigraph of your book, she equates people with games. Which makes me think of what you were saying last night about near-death experiences, that studying them on YouTube has made life feel more like a game to you.

When I was 13, my friends and I would take Freon out of the central AC unit in my house in Florida. We would fill whole garbage bags with it, tie the end with a rubber band, and inhale. My lips would turn blue and I would pass out. The passing-out part is what remains interesting to me because I realized later that I was having near-death experiences, especially because I remember that my periods of unconsciousness felt very long. I would be in darkness, but I had an intuitive knowing that I was talking to entities. It felt like I was standing before a tribunal of three judges or deciders. Each time I would go, they would have to convince me why I needed to go back to earth. And they would replay potential scenarios of my future. It was almost like a VHS cassette, with them rewinding and forwarding, going through brief moments of me running around a pool with one of my neighbors, laughing. The reasons were not profound. When I woke up, my friends would be huddled over me saying, “Oh my God, we thought you’d died.”

When you were with the tribunal, did you want to go back to earth?

I don’t remember having a strong feeling of yes or no. I didn’t answer your question. What was it again?

I didn’t really ask one but I meant to! What relationships do masking and games have to your work?

Well, all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players.

Shakespeare was, like, highly evolved. He was like his last life incarnation.

Totally. He was like, “Alright, now I’m on my last life, it’s time to write it down.” I remember the first time I heard that quote, I was in fifth grade and I was just like: Damn, it is a stage, isn’t it?

In Dorothy’s poem, the use of the word games has a negative connotation to it. There’s this implication that she’s being played, but when we talk about near-death experiences and spirituality, I’m thinking about it like, if this plane that we’re on is a kind of fractal of the unison that we experience on other planes, then life as we know it is simply a slower way to process what the beauty of oneness is. It’s not really about how much you achieve materially, but how much you can enrich your sense of presence. I don’t know, I feel like I’m rambling.

No, that’s cool. Because that feels like the point of poetry in some ways. To enrich one’s sense of presence.

I see a poem as a snapshot of presence. Poetry ties the outer world with the inner world and points at extremely specific sensations that we all experience in life.

Most of your poems do seem to explore the relationship between tangible, material elements and the emotional, spiritual, conceptual realm.

I’m a very emotional, very classically confessional poet. I see poetry as a space where I’m really holding my own, where I don’t have to account for anybody. It’s a very protected space for me where I feel I can express myself without feeling bad about what I’m saying or thinking or how other people might feel.

Do you want to talk a little bit about the relationship of your older work to your newer work? Placing them side by side as you do in this collection makes for an interesting exercise. I have observations about the differences that I see.

I’m curious to hear your observations.

Should I tell you now?

Yeah.

It feels to me that in Goodnight Sweet Thing, there’s a heightened sense of dissociation at times, as if we have a disembodied speaker who often observes herself from outside herself. But in Poems, we get more visceral embodiment, comparative to the first part of the book. There’s more sex, for example.

I wrote the first book, Poems, when I was younger. Those poems were more directly about my immediate experience, whereas the poems in Goodnight Sweet Thing are more existential for me. I started writing Goodnight Sweet Thing during COVID-19 lockdown. And I was contemplating death in a way that I really hadn’t before. I also think having some distance from my youth allowed me to reflect more on what is all this. Generally, the new book is about the meaning of life and aging as a woman. And then also notions of performance, which for me is often filtered through the lens of being a woman.

Culturally, we’re enamored with youth, so when you’re young, it’s easy to perform certain kinds of ideal womanhood (even if you, the performer, still feel like a girl). Then you get older and start to see yourself from the outside more; you start to examine that performativity.

One hundred percent. Which also goes back to Dorothy’s poem, and this notion of lost potential, or a false promise. In Poems, my earlier work, the question was how can I reflect on my own youth when I’m still young? But in both books, a fraught relationship to objectification persists. There’s a poem in Goodnight Sweet Thing where I’m like, the only thing I’ll miss is my skin.

I remember you saying that in conversation before. I think you said it on New Year’s Eve. When we were leaving that party, remember?

I probably wrote it down the next day. One way I come up with lines is through conversation. Others start as tweets. Years ago, when I lived in China, I would just tweet one line at that time. And then go back and build poems around those lines or combine them. That’s like the best use of Twitter. I wish more people used Twitter that way.

Yeah, now it feels like people are just on there for the hate. I would like to hear you talk a little bit about the relationship between your poetry and the performance you recently directed of Goodnight Sweet Thing.

Last year when I was starting to put my book together, I was like, I want to adapt this to theater. It felt like a fun exercise. And then I thought, Well, performance art is sort of like the poetry of the stage. And then I was like, Well, what would my poetry look like visually? And I had these flashes in my head of two women mud wrestling, and of Victorian psychoanalysis and the medicalization of women’s emotions, and of hypnosis and mesmerism. So I reached out to Sigrid Lauren, who is an amazing performance artist, and she co-adapted the book with me. She choreographed the performance, and we co-directed it together. I broke apart the book, the poetry, and recontextualized it as dialogue for the performers. So basically 90 percent of everything they said was broken-up poetry, recontextualized to suit what the performers were doing onstage. For example, the two female Jell-O wrestlers became two parts of the same mind. One of the characters expresses the part of the self that is dutifully performing to survive in society and culture. And then the other performer is the part that believes it’s insufferable to perform because you’re betraying yourself. And then the male referee, who later became the mesmerist, plays the part of the patriarchy, the arbiter.

Have you experimented with hypnosis and mesmerism yourself?

I did get hypnotized once. I had gotten really into past life regression. So I went to see this acclaimed past life regression lady from Toronto. It was fucking expensive, like $400, and she didn’t even give me the full hour. I thought it was a rip-off at the end.

Did you have a past life memory?

I don’t know. I did have memories, but how can you tell what’s real or not? I find it interesting that there’s this exploitative side of hypnosis. You can take advantage of someone but what you find in their subconscious could also be true. I like that duality where you don’t really know which one it’s going to be, and that duality shows up in my artwork a lot. Because I feel like in navigating culture, or just interpersonal relationships, you often have directly opposing needs. It’s fascinating to hold space for both of them and not just write them off.

Tell us a little more about your visual art and maybe specifically your recent work influenced by Dorothy Stratten.

I started working in encaustic work. And I made a series inspired by Dorothy Stratten and, more broadly, Playboy Bunnies. I was looking for candid images of them, and then also images of them in relation to men. These images tie to the themes that we’ve been talking about throughout this entire interview, conceptually, and practically, and—what’s the word?—materially. The candids were done with a thicker encaustic process. So the women in the images look like they’re stuck under a frozen lake.

If you had to pick one poem of yours to pair with your paintings, which would it be?

Last Night I Felt Afraid to Die

Remember to turn off the lights wherever you don’t want to see.

Remember, I am a feather in love and this world is a thief.

How sick must it make us? Mop me up and send me the bill.

In another life, I find my fantasy where the void respects me forever.

What hope is there, if feathers can no longer fall to the ground with grace?

LARB CONTRIBUTOR

Allie Rowbottom is the author of the novel Aesthetica, published in November 2022 by Soho Press and named a best book of 2022 by Glamour Magazine, NPR, and Vanity Fair. Allie’s memoir, JELL-O Girls, was a 2018 New York Times Editors’ Choice. She holds a PhD in literature from the University of Houston and lives in Los Angeles.

[bl0ss0mlily]

he's so cool

[talenlee]

Christian Martyrdom and Suicide Denial

Oh boy howdy are we going to need to content warning this one.

Content Warning: SUICIDE. I am going to talk about suicide a lot! I’m going to talk about it and martyrdom but really, importantly, I’m going to talk about suicide and also, suicide denialism, which, you may think that’s not a thing but it really is. I also mention some transphobia and climate anxiety.

Christians love martyrs.

We love Martyrdom, absolutely love it. I mean it stands to reason, our central figure was a dude who could do anything and he came to earth and got himself killed. Given that he was an extension of an immortal invisible god only weiss it stands to reason that he like, didn’t have to do that, and therefore, he was kinda choosing to die, but the point is that martyrdom is a super important part of Christian lore. We looked to the martyrs for our historical significance, and that meant that martyrdom was vital to the narratives we accepted.

Everyone got martyred.

Daniel was a martyr, even though he lived through it both times. Tyndale was a martyr. All the disciples, all of them, were martyrs. All the church fathers were. As a direct result of this, there’s a shocking amount of stories I read as a kid, kid’s stories with kids’ presentation that concluded with our hero fucking dying because that was part of god’s plan, where he could go on to live forever in heaven. There was a very clear vision of how there was no proof of greater character than a willingness to die for your cause. No matter what, no matter how much or how little. A whole life could be thrown away into the grinder if that saved just one person.

As a fundamentalist, we loved to emphasise martrydom and you might think, if you’ve been boiling your brain in Umberto Eco the Dolphin spinoff fanfic the past few years for some reason, that yes, it is weird to have an entire cultic space dedicated to a vision of death and glorious immortality, like some sort of fascist thing, and yes, that is coincidentally important but that’s not the important thing here. The important thing was that we absolutely, absolutely, absolutely valued martyrdom as an inherent validation. It didn’t matter in what circumstances, we would restructure any story where a Christian (as we saw it) died, as martyrdom. We would invent people to be martyrs, telling stories of the millions of dead Christians in Soviet Russia at the behest of the dreadful Stalinist regime, oh all those people were martyrs. Did we have names? Oh no, but we’d make them up. Literally, I read stories about entirely fictional Russian Christians, invented as part of a narrative, who just wanted a way to worship god, and were willing to be disappeared by the KGB into a work camp for it.

The willing submission to death was, vitally important to our history and our worldview. Nobody, nobody would submit themselves to death without an awareness of the truth of life eternal, and we knew that because only Christians did it.

It isn’t true, by the way. Most of the names they mention aren’t even verifiably martyred for the reasons they cite. Tyndale was executed because he was politicking against the king, and that’s bad but his belief he was executed for was not believing heresy was good. It was believing the king shouldn’t divorce his wife and everyone who agreed with him should act on that. Most of the stories of the Disciples aren’t verifiable. And of course: A bunch of these people were just made up.

Perhaps as an obvious throughline to this idea, we were very invested in ideas of Muslim martyrdom being fake. This is an idea that didn’t last very long as the stereotype of the Muslim sucide bomber became a thing, and I think the last time I saw the idea being countenanced seriously was somewhere around oh, uh, September 10th, 2001. But then we pivoted from ‘only Christians do it’ to a new position that Muslims were only able to do it because they were fooled, often by demonic influence.

In 2001, I was well out of the Christian Fundamentalist church, but I was also living with someone who had that prison in his head and you’ll bet we got to hear some words about that at the time. I’ll spare you, but there was a sudden shift that Muslims were only committing suicide in the name of their god because they had been duped, they had been fooled and that it always came with a specific promise.

You know the promise right? Yeah. It was always the seventy virgins thing.

I have no idea if that’s a thing. I doubt it. It probably isn’t, because nobody is as clueless about what’s in the Qu’ran as Christians who are confident about it, and I’ll leave the counterapologetics for Muslims to the people who actually have to contend with that worldview. I’m not Sam Harris here, leaping in fear at the Potential Global Endangerment of What I Am Pretty Sure I Could Imagine Islam As Being.

What they did wasn’t martyrdom, it didn’t count.

But there was another thing that came up – a thing that was brought up as a rhetorical point around this narrative about who owned, in some way, the rights to describe their own deaths. The deaths of the apostles, the martyrdoms of Christians were always more heinous, more terrible, more dangerous, and nobody,

nobody

would willingly go to the fire that wasn’t Christian.

I considered putting a picture here of Thích Quảng Đức, in the process of self-immolating. I really did consider it. It was the image that got burned into my brain as a child, found in a ‘secularist’ encyclopedia made in the 1980s about the war in Vietnam. If you don’t know the name, if you don’t know the story, Thích Quảng Đức was a Vietnames Mahayana Buddhist Monk who, in 1963, sat in the middle of a busy Saigon road intersection, doused himself in petrol with some assistance, and set himself on fire.

What Quảng Đức was protesting, by the way, was the treatment of Buddhists in his space. I didn’t know that. What he cared about, what he thought, and what about him mattered, both within his faith and outside of it, had to be erased, because of what he did. The reason is almost immaterial here; the reason he had for doing it was immaterial to my childhood space. What was very important a thing to learn, a thing to be told when I was only eleven years old, was that this was a fake photo.

That only Christians, only Christians, willingly went into the fire.

What Quảng Đức was an act of violent self-harm that was so immense, so intense that it shocked the very senses. It’s generally seen as a natural fact that nobody commits suicide for entirely sensible reasons, because killing yourself can’t possibly be done rationally. I don’t agree with that – I’ve heard very good cases about it, and I tend to think of suicide, now, as a byproduct of a lack of better alternatives, and that, over a long enough timeline, anyone can wind up in that situation. But even beyond that, accepting death immolation is an act that my entire childhood set up as a true example of an ideological power, that it was a legitimising act, that burned witches deserved it and burned martyrs were more powerful because of their willingness to accept that end.

Since learning about Quảng Đức, I have learned four more names that did this. One was Malachi Richter, a music fan who realised he had had a chance to kill Donald Rumsfeld before the invasion of Iraq and didn’t do it, resulting in him eventually self-immolating in 2006 in protest for the Iraq war. Another was David Buckel, the lawyer depicted in the movie Boys Don’t Cry, who self-immolated in protest of fossil fuels, as part of the climate crisis. Wynn Bruce, in 2022, also self-immolated for the same reason.

The fourth name is Chloe Sagal.

Chloe Sagal was someone I kinda knew. I was kinda friends with her, in a kinda way. I was in the space around her, I tried to talk to her kindly, I tried to help her, in the vague and general way of a boy in 2014 talking to a trans woman on the internet who was absolutely under fire, but was very much discouraged from doing so. She was subject to an extensive transphobic harrassment campaign and wound up commiting suicide through self-immolation.

I think about people who did this, this incredibly violent, terrible way to end, a thing that screams of a desperate need for something to be heard and something to be done even if it isn’t being done enough and even if it doesn’t fix things for me, it needs fixing, badly.

And I think about how many of these people suffered because of real things that really happened and were really done by real people. My childhood invented people who never lived and claimed they were willing to go to the fire, that nobody did this, to literally deny the most obvious truth of how these people died. My adulthood shows me people who really did, were really willing to do it, and their doing it is in response to some of the greatest crimes ever done.

LESS THAN JAKE: Malachi Richter's Liquor's Quicker (Demo)

Watch this video on YouTube

I think about how in every case, the wrong people died.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[lovestuckyhatemarvel]

All right. Here it goes with season 4 episode 2. As previously stated, this is still not 100% a rewatch but also I’m not new to this material thanks to steddie compilations and also fanfiction.

1.) God, these episodes are longer than most of the episodes have been before. And yet I know going into it, thanks to episode 1, that the Duffers still just go go go go go in every episode.

2.) Oh, we’re opening on a flashback of Hopper about to ‘die’. Except this time we’re seeing Hopper running. YEAH THIS WAS A MUCH LONGER MOMENT THAN THE ACTUAL CUT TO BLACK WAS, YOU MOTHER FUCKERS. Hopper did not have enough time to run in that initial episode!! ANd even then, getting to another layer when everyone inside the room was fucking VAPORIZED doesn’t GODDAMN MAKE ANY SENSE. PEOPLE WEREN’T KNOCKED OUT, DUFFERS. THEY WERE DESTROYED. Like !!!!!!!! I’m even further convinced they could save Eddie just through sheer bullshit editing in season 6. Will it make sense? No. But neither does Hopper being alive and they did that shit.

3.) Max my angel, you can’t keep medicating like this. Damn they sent 4 police cars to the Munson place? I didn’t even know they had 4 police cars in Hawkins. I didn’t know they had more than 2 cops.

4.) Damn Chrissy’s. Body is like a pretzel. A sad, sad pretzel. Oh, we’re back to eavesdropping.

5.) Airports pre-9/11 meant meeting at the gate! Also why are Mike and Will so awkward together? “Yeah, this is kind of awkward, man.” Yeah, Argyle, you did make it awkward. How did they walk past Murray? That bald bastard is so fucking obvious.

6.) Family Video crew. I love the hopeless romantic crew. B-B-B-B-ONKERS HOT got interrupted by a report about a murder.

7.) Benny’s burgers is an abandoned place? That’s so fucking sad. I can’t believe y’all would treat Benny’s this badly. Damn. I didn’t realize the basketball team is like, hanging out there. And now the cops are at Benny’s.

8.) Oh, Barb got mentioned and we got a flashback of Barb getting pulled into the pool which is weird because Nancy never found out about that. Like she never saw that. And no one ever told her where Barb’s body had been or where she died.

9.) Dustin’s mom giving lots of kisses to the cat because of stress is very funny. Max went to Dustin for help. Max going, “We can’t rule it out” is Steve and Max solidarity. Well, not yet, but yeah. Max mentions alllllll the lights flickered that night and then Eddie ran out of his place and drove off while looking terrified.

10.) Wait, was Dustin wearing a literal thinking cap during this conversation? Yes, he was. Oh my god.

11.) I’m glad Murray and I both agree it reads like a bad ransom note. Even Murray points out he evaporated. “These people are the worst of the worst.” We literally dealt with gun wielding secret agents who shot Benny because he laid eyes on an escaped child and tried to call social services. They could have just pretended to be social services and given him a bullshit number to call to tell him they found her family but instead they fucking SHOT HIM AND FAKED IT AS A SUICIDE. How are the KGB the literal worst of the worst?

12.) I still think Hopper surviving makes no goddamn sense. You’re telling me the American soldiers never fucking looked in the burnt out area? We saw Owens look at the crack on the wall!

13.) Russians love to ask who you work for according to this show. Also Hopper oils so bulky in that chair. Like just a beefy beefy man being tortured.

14.) Have fun third wheeling, Will. Will is here to try to break down El’s lies. Also Will is right to be like ‘why are you lying’ because she’s gotten really comfortable lying for a kid whose favorite sentence for a bit was ‘friends don’t lie’. Oh and a glimpse of the bitchy popular kids.

15.) Cops are interrogating Jason without a lawyer. “No, she’s straight as an arrow.” Not according to fanfiction. That woman’s a lesbian. I think it’s extremely stupid of the cops to handle the interrogation the way they did. They made it seem like Eddie hurt Chrissy even though they had no information to suggest that.

16.) I don’t know what it is about Jason Carver’s breakdown, but I do not care.

17.) “We could take turns”. Best friends who strangle rugrats together, stay together.

18.) Nancy is so bossy. I love it. And Nancy actually comes up with a good lie. Oh, Fred Benson is losing it. Oh damn, he was involved in a car crash.

19.) Okay. Jonathan is hitting golf balls into bad cars and was relieved Nancy didn’t show up. Also I’m shocked Jonathan isn’t mentioning NYU in this discussion about college. I know that’s also far away but it would make it seem like the Duffers actually remembered that Joyce insisted he’s been talking about going to NYU since he was a kid. Okay Argyle is also not really helpful if his only solution is weed. Hopefully he’s got another part to this plan to get him to talk to Nancy.

20.) Oh, Angela’s like, evil. And Will is very worried. Damn, who the fuck is this fucking DJ to help a bunch of high schoolers gang up on Jane? Mike tried to get the DJ to stop but all that happens is that she gets hit with a milkshake. Wait, sorry, did the Duffers watch Glee too much? My poor baby El was so upset. :(

21.) Having a phone booth be the place to call seems like a terrible idea. It’s not a friend and it’s not KGB. I do not actually know anything about Enzo because I read steddie fics and people don’t actually talk about the Russian side. Also, I need to remind everyone that some part of this plot was filmed in a like, holocaust spot that they turned into an Air b&b.

22.) Jason goes from no information to ‘satanic cult��� with nothing. Lucas tries to defend Hellfire without admitting he’s part of it. Lucas is being a coward now actually. And Jason is a moron. But also he is now kind of a cult leader.

23.) Steve literally works in a video store and makes movie recommendations. Why do people think he’s got no movie knowledge now? Steve points out the cops probably know who he is. Robin figures out they can look up Rick. I do love that they narrow down the Rick based on movie cliches. Also they definitely like, locked a customer in there, right? A punk walked in.

24.) Nancy, why did you think going door to door in a fucking trailer park would get people to talk to you? She then does get distracted by a dog only to see Wayne Munson. Wayne is not interested in talking to any reporter. Wait, there’s a guy left alive at the Hawkins Post? Oh right, only like, two died. AND OH BUDDY, YOU’RE NOT DOING WELL, FRED. Wayne believes in Eddie. <3 And mentions Victor Creel and how he murdered his family and is in Pennhurst Asylum. Because all the Duffers have are cliches. Fred’s hallucinations aren’t as fun.

25.) Shave Hopper. Shower Hopper. Shove Hopper into a line. I just realized that Russian gave a whole ass series of instructions Hopper could not understand.

26.) Joyce is trying to hear indistinct Russian that is a plot device so they know Enzo is a guard and Hopper is in prison.

27.) How the fuck is Joyce gonna pull 40k from Jane’s fucking trust?

28.) Will and Mike are fighting. “What about Us?” Will is so jealous. But also Mike has a point. If Will also didn’t reach out, that’s not all on Mike.

29.) Poor El is crying in the employee area. And she can hear the bullies. But also, “She looks like she shit herself.” Hey, ma’am??? You threw chocolate milkshake on her chest. How does that look like shitting yourself? Stop letting people shit on your chest. Oh damn, Angela did the dead dad card. Fuck her up, El. Hitting her with a skate is so good. I think that’s CGI blood. Also, how did it do a thin cut to her face? That looks hilarious. And suddenly El is remembering the ‘what have you done?’ Because Mike is freaking out. IDK why though.

30.) Dustin, Steve, and Robin have arrived at Rick’s and Dustin sucks at ringing doorbells. Max wanders off to find the boathouse. IDK why Steve calls it a dump, tbh. It’s just messy. Steve poking with the oar is actually very smart.

31.) Eddie was super fast on the jump and does have a firm grip on Steve. I know a lot about this interaction because it gets written out in so many steddie fics. Eddie gets checked on by Dustin while Robin and Max went to Steve. Max’s ‘try us’ gets a whole expression from Eddie though.

32.) How long has Fred been surviving his fucking hallucinations? It’s fully dark out. Like that’s a wildly long time, right?

33.) I still think the death animation of Chrissy is extremely funny. It’s cartoonish violence. Anyway, sorry to Eddie that you had to see that. Also, this explanation from Dustin is 100% not an explanation. There’s another world that bleeds in sometimes? Max’s there are things worse than ghosts doesn’t help either. Okay yeah, Fred’s is cartoonish too.

34.) Vecna is ugly. An ugly lad in an attic.

[hetalia-club]

The Cold War era was honestly the cause of so many hilarious things that sound fake but are 100% real. It’s one of the reasons the Cold war is my favorite history era. (I know a lot of horrible stuff happened in that time but let’s focus on the goofy stuff okay?)

Top funniest moments include:

1. Russia thought that they were building a top secret office in the center of the pentagon and pointed nukes directly at it but KGB spies confirmed it was actually a hot dog stand. 2. America was going to nuke the moon as a fuck you to Russia. But decided that might be a bad idea.

3. America had a plan to strap listening devices on cats and turn them lose in Moscow and try and get them to sit in windows and listen in on conversations but then after sinking 2 million into the plan someone was like. “but how do we get the cats to do that...” and they threw that idea out the window.

4. After a big ‘ol woopsie Russia ‘accidently’ ‘allegedly’ almost nuked the USA because someone read the screen wrong and said that the US had fired 5 nukes onto Russia and they were on the way. Luckily the guy in charge was like ‘nah, that ain’t them they wouldn’t do us like that.’ He basically diverted a nuclear war on a ‘gut feeling’. Because the computer systems said it was a go.

5. America built a bunch of rail ways that went nowhere and spent a ton of money on advertising for them basically saying how important that these railways were. They let the info slip to Russia incase they did nuke them they would nuke the useless railways. I can’t decide if that’s a 200 IQ plan or stupid. because Russia of course took the bait.

6. Russia at the same time had the exact same plan and built a couple fake cities in Russia and let some advertising slip about how cool and groovy(it was the 60′s) and also very important these cities were. America of course took the bait. EVEN THOUGH THEY HAD THE SAME PLAN!

7. Russia commissioned America to make fake maps and the only difference was that Russia was bigger on the map than usual. Wow amazing truly astounding.

8. The time America tried to train bears to fly planes... Because they thought it would be super sick and the Russians would be so jealous of the bear pilots. Didn’t work out. 

9. Russia tried to use psychics yes you read right the were looking for someone with psychokinetic powers to train to divert missiles. Yes really, they were doing this. America got so jealous of this that they wanted their own super hero program and they also started looking for someone who could make objects float and also read minds they sunk about 20 mill into that one.

10. (don’t remember who) In the 50′s the current leader of Russia came to America for a meeting which was in California. He toured the Hollywood studios ad really really wanted to go to Disney Land like so fucking bad. The current president of the US was like ‘dude that is a horrible idea you are the leader of Russia you can’t just go to Disney. He flipped his shit he was so fucking mad. He was like ‘why can’t I go? Is there some secret launch base there? Is there something I can’t see? This is so stupid I want to go!’ he even threatened to unalive himself at one point. I don’t think they ever did let him go because they would of had to empty the entire park for him because it was a crazy security risk for him to even be on his GT of Cali in the first place. Apparently the CIA agents with him had a 70+ page book on how to keep him safe. Frank Sinatra was even there to try and keep him happy. though i don’t exactly remember how he got roped into being there.

That is just 10 things there is so much more. So much bonkers shit. I didn’t even get into things Germany and England did. 

[hexiva]

I have now read every single one of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, except for Live and Let Die, which I had to stop once I hit the chapter title which includes the N-word. Here’s a list of things you will encounter in these books:

James Bond throws up due to trauma at least once per book

Racism

No, really, more racism than you’re expecting

Yes, even for the 50s

At one point Bond writes a letter in his own pee

“All the real hep-cats smoke reefers!”

Many comments on the nature of American culture, including the “exotic pungency” of American road signs

Extended passages of James Bond being racist against various ethnicities you didn’t even know one COULD be racist towards

No seriously, James Bond inexplicably despises Bulgarians

A lengthy passage in which Bond shares his opinion that homosexuality is caused by giving women the right to vote

Bond gets tortured for the first time and immediately comes over all political and philosophical like, “Maybe communism is good actually, and also the Devil is a good guy?”

At one point Bond gets brainwashed by the KGB into trying to kill M

Bond is a grade-A Karen who delivers all of his restaurant orders with lengthy specifics as to how the food should be prepared, and gets pissy if it’s not up to his specifications.

“a gay, happy little crocodile” 

Bond is very excited to learn that in New York there are places where you can watch porn with sound AND color.

James Bond is The Most Boring Man in the World. His hobbies include golf and complaining about food.

Late in the books, Bond’s fiancee is killed right in front of him, and he starts showing PTSD symptoms and, instead of being all macho-man “I don’t need no help,” immediately starts going to every doctor available trying to get treatment

At one point the government tries to offer him a knighthood or some such and Bond messages back that he refuses the knighthood and that “My principal reason is that I don’t want to pay more at hotels and restaurants.” When told that this is too rude, he amends it to, “I am a Scottish peasant and I will always feel at home being a Scottish peasant.”

At one point the Bond girl is tied down by the villain of the book to await being eaten alive by crabs. Bond is terrified for her, but she, being something of an amateur zoologist, knows perfectly well that crabs aren’t gonna eat a living human, so she just chills there on the beach and waits for them to go away.

There is literally a damsel in distress tied to the actual train tracks, presented without irony

An MI6 agent speculates, in an official report to headquarters, that the target may be homosexual because he can’t whistle. Apparently men who can’t whistle are gay.

Bond is drafted to act as the villain’s secretary not once, but two separate times in two separate books. 

When Bond is at a boring party at a hotel conference room and is ordered by his employer to liven up the party, he accomplishes this by ORDERING THE HOTEL BAND, who were previously singing a censored version of some song, TO PERFORM A STRIP SHOW FOR HIM AND THE GUESTS WHILE SINGING THE DIRTY VERSION. This is his second idea, after he previously livened up the party by using one of the girls in the hotel band - the same one he wants to strip for him - as target practice by balancing a false pineapple on her head and shooting it. 

Bond exchanges a look with a fellow secret agent that is said to be “the recognition that exists between crooks, between homosexuals, between secret agents.”

“A hand-painted sign said ‘SNAX’ and, underneath, ‘Hot Cock Soup Fresh Daily’.”

The backstory of the villain of The Man with the Golden Gun is as follows: there was once a circus elephant who got REALLY HORNY and then went on a rampage and was shot by the cops, and then came back to the circus to  pathetically and tragically attempt to perform its circus act one last time. The child who was supposed to ride the elephant in the circus act witnessed all of this, and when the cops shot the elephant dead while performing its tragic act, the boy grabbed a pistol and SHOT ONE OF THE COPS in revenge for HIS ELEPHANT DYING. And that boy grew up to be a deadly, womanizing, hired gun, with three nipples, whom MI6 speculates must be gay because he can’t whistle. And that’s the villain of the book.

These books will make you hate the British as much as every single villain seems to

Waaaayyy more casual drug use than you would expect

like, seriously, at one point Bond is AT DINNER WITH HIS BOSS in his boss’s fancy-ass club, and he orders an envelope full of benzedrine from HQ and just casually pours it into his glass to drink with his champagne.

M lives with the man who used to be M’s Chief Petty Officer on his last naval posting, and who had followed M into retirement, and I am pretty sure they are boyfriends.

When Bond sleeps with the Bond Girl of Dr. No, she orders him to “Take those off and come in” and “You owe me slave-time. Do as you’re told,” proving once and for all that James Bond is a switch, I rest my case your honor

[ynscrazylife]

Spoilers

Not sure if you write for Melina from Black Widow but if you do could you please write a Melina x Reader where they are both locked in the cells in the red room and confess to each other and kiss

Destined to Lose | m.v fic

Summary: Melina recalls the love that she once shared with a Red Room agent years ago.

Authors Note: Thanks for requesting! Also, as the Red Room focuses on girls, the reader will be female.

Warning: Implications of some malnourishment. 

Request to be on a taglist (or multiple) here! (Taglists are at the end of the fic)

MCU Masterlist #1 | MCU Masterlist #2 |  Main Masterlist

PSA: Do NOT copy, steal, translate, plagiarize, republish, etc any of my works on Tumblr or any other platform. Also, do NOT claim any of my works as your own. All of these works are either requests I’ve gotten that people have wanted me to write or original ideas I’ve had for works. If you happen to take inspiration from anything I’ve written and want to write something inspired by that, please a) ask me first and b) IF I say yes, credit me as inspo in your post by tagging me and link whatever work of mine that inspired you. Thanks.

Ever since the Red Room had been stopped once and for all, there seemed to be the fragrance of calm in the air, washing over Mother Russia . . . or maybe it had just washed over Melina, Alexei, and Yelena, as everything had been shifted now. They were all free and had the opportunity to work on their shattered relationships - and to work on their shattered selves. Each one had coped in their own way, discovering and rediscovering their interests and who they were outside the Red Room, outside KGB.

One of the ways that Melina chose to heal was to take time for herself, and that included reading. More often than not, she’d be curled up in an armchair in the living room, entranced as her eyes swept over the ink printed on every page. The stories, whether they be fiction or non, always captivated her, and she soaked in every word.

That is the precise reason that despite being a highly trained and experienced spy, she didn’t notice that her youngest daughter was in the room until she piped up and spoke.

“Melina?”

Instantly the brunette was tugged from the faraway world she was in and her head snapped up, eyes holding a gaze of alarm for just a moment before they stilled. Melina took in Yelena’s state. The younger woman was standing confidently but her face told a different story. She was concentrating on something, Melina could tell from the way that her muscles were pulled, and there was an inner dialogue going on, troubling her.

“Yes, dear?” Melina said, carefully turning over the corner of the page and closing the book on her lap, as she could tell that this conversation wouldn’t be over in a minute.

“I had a question,” Yelena began, pausing for a moment and then sitting in the armchair across from her mother. She continued when she was comfortable. “-which you don’t have to answer.” She reeled in her worried gaze and made it more neutral.

Melina allowed her shoulders to slump into a relaxed posture and drew her bushy eyebrows together, her chin jutting down ever so slightly. “What is it?” She asked, the curiosity gnawing at her, since this wasn’t Yelena’s typical behavior.

Yelena seemed to be collecting her thoughts and, when she was finished, spoke in a delicate manner. “When I was looking at the Red Room’s files that Natasha got, I . . . I came across yours. It had said that you had been through the Red Room five times and . . . It mentioned someone named Y/N Y/L/N? I was wondering-” she cut herself off abruptly when she saw the solemn and serious look on her mother’s face.

The moment she heard that name, it struck something inside Melina. The memory, the feelings, it all came hurtling back with a force that had been absent for years. Y/N.

Y/N was the name that caused her stomach to twist and turn as the wound was ripped open. Y/N was the name that put a smile on her lips through the tears and reminded her how far she came when she was sad. Y/N was the name she thought of as a battle cry when she jumped into a fight against those Red Room agents. Y/N was the name she focussed on, like one would stare at a point on the wall to keep focus, as she got through the hardest times in her life, motivated her to push through with all her might.

With all those thoughts running through Melina’s head, she finally looked up, met Yelena’s gaze with her own, and parted her lips to tell her a story.

Melina had long since given up keeping track of the days at this point. There was no use, for by this time the days had all blurred into one. She could only differentiate the day and the night because every night is when someone with a deep frown on their face would walk in and give her a tray of food, and every morning was when someone else would arrive and take said tray away. She had barely moved from the position she sat in: back against the chain wall that seperated her cell and the one right next to hers and her knees drawn to her chest. She’d tune in to any sound she could hear and fixate.

She had been thrown into this cell because of her attempt to escape the Red Room. It wouldn’t be the first time she tried to escape, nor would it be the first time she sat in this cell, but it was the first time that she had gotten as far as she did, since she had help.

Melina could only wonder why she was here and Y/N wasn’t, and those wonderings always ended up with her conjuring thoughts and ideas that frightened her.

She ended up having the endless questions crawling at the back of her mind come to a halt when she heard pounding footsteps one day. Despite being in a tired haze, Melina snapped right out of it and became alert, watching and waiting with anticipation as their footsteps got closer, and closer, and closer.

The person - or people - belonging to those footsteps came into sight and Melina couldn’t stop the gasp before it escaped her lips when she saw what was happening.

A man, a Red Room agent, was practically dragging Y/N who was thrashing about, doing her best to put up a fight, but ultimately losing it when he carelessly tossed her into the cell next to Melina’s, locked the door, and walked away.

Only after his receding footsteps could be heard no more did Y/N look up from her tears, only for her eyes to widen and for her to lurch towards the chain wall, fingers grasping around it, when she laid eyes on Melina. Melina did the same and, after a little struggle, they managed to hold hands in a steel grip through the chain.

“Mel,” Y/N breathed, but her hoarse voice caused her to cough.

“Y/N,” Melina whispered, tightening her grip and scooting as close to the chain wall - as close to Y/N - as she could. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

Y/N let out a shaky sigh, alarming Melina, and rested her forehead against the chain. “I wasn’t thrown into the cell immediately because you’ve been through the Red Room five times now, but I haven’t. They wanted to train me more and they did their best, but when I kept on fighting them they decided to put me in here.” she answered tiredly.

Melina thought this over and let out a sigh of her own, but this was a sigh of relief. She was glad that she no longer had to worry about Y/N and thankful that Y/N was with her so she could make sure that nothing bad would happen to her.

After a couple moments of the silence beginning to creep in again, Melina decided that she needed to tell Y/N something. “I have to tell you something, love.”

Y/N looked up, a beautiful glint in her eyes telling that she was intrigued. God, Melina had missed seeing that look on her face.

“Don’t feel pressured to respond, just, after I’ve been away from you, I really, really have to say this: I . . . I love you,” Melina confessed, bravely meeting Y/N’s gaze.

Y/N blinked, but that glint did not go away. In fact, it seemed to get bigger, making the smile on her lips reach her eyes, and she squeezed Melina’s hands as best she could.

“I love you, too.”

Those four words were probably the softest words she had ever spoken, but they were beyond true.

Melina leaned forward and Y/N after a moment did too. They did their best and managed to meet each other with a kiss. The two cherished it - the kiss was sweet and simple and not over-the-top. Perfect. They each leaned back.

Then, the silence came again, but this time, to Melina, it was more comfortable.

“I have something to tell you, also”

Melina looked up, expecting the smile to still be on Y/N’s face, but it was faltering. She tilted her head to the side.

“I insisted to them that you not be put through the Red Room a sixth time. I’m not sure if they’re going to do anything, but I wanted to stop what they were doing to you and-”

“That you did. They’ve listened.”

Both looked up to see a Red Room agent standing outside Melina’s cell. He unlocked it and she instantly scurried back, but couldn’t do anything to prevent him from grabbing her and yanking her up. “Y/N!” She yelled as she was half-dragged, half-carried away.

Y/N sat up, banging on the chain. Tears started streaming down her face. It was happening far too fast. “MELINA!” She yelled. “I’M SORRY!”

There was fear in her voice. Oh, god, what had she done?

Melina paused for a moment, eyes focussed on Y/N as they went down the hall. She then said calmly, but with a firmness, “Don’t be!”

“And that was the last time I saw her,” Melina concluded her story, not meeting Yelena’s eyes, but with tears threatening to spill.

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