#you ARE the nazis in this scenario.

[wingsofhcpe]

Also the Macabi hooligans invaded private property (a common zionist sport I am told) and tore down people's flags AND interrupted a minute of silence for the victims of the Valencia floods, mocking their deaths and disrespecting them because Spain ceased weapons' deals with Israel. Of course the locals took kindly to exactly NONE of these offensive, criminal acts, and fought back. I thought self-defense was okay?? Or is it only when zionists use the term to massacre palestinian children?

And it wasn't even a pogrom in any way shape or form, a bunch of very specific individuals started shit and then those very specific individuals got consequences for their actions. That's called fucking around and finding out, not pogrom.

Yall love to hurt people and then flop over and play victim when they don't take your shit lying down SO much, but we're not falling for your crocodile tears anymore. Zionazis eat shit and die :)

a pogrom? in early november? in europe? how original. surely something like this didn't famously happen in 1938. you know, the totally normal year of 1938, certainly not one of the last years leading up to a massive genocide or anything :))))))))

antisemites thought they had a good, solid reason to attack jews then too. they also thought it was reasonable and the jews did something to deserve it. just in case you think you're different, you're exactly the same. hateful disgusting people always have their "reasons."

[irhabiya]

there's few things i hate more than people watering down what it means to be antizionist. it's in the fucking name. if you believe there's any capacity to reconcile palestinian liberation with the existence of israel you're not an antizionist, you might as well take that watermelon emoji out of your bio.

it is not enough to be "pro-palestine," we're over a year into a live broadcasted genocide, recognizing and denouncing the genocide and siding with its victims is the bare minimum and should be the standard at this point. after 15 months of live streamed genocide, you'd think that would prompt people to investigate what led us to this point, how we all failed palestinians, and what it means to truly stand by them, but no not really. some dumb fucking cunts really think they're well and truly antizionist by advocating for a ceasefire and politely asking israel to pull their rabid, bloodthirsty settlers out of the westbank. as if the settler colonialism started in '67, and the ethnic cleansing that preceded is always either left not acknowledged or outright justified.

palestinian liberation means the abolition of the settler colonial, apartheid nation state that is israel, and giving the land back to its rightful owners, nothing less, not even an inch less.

[carnivorousyandeere]

Woke up to an interesting comment, since deleted it— should’ve taken a screenshot of the whole thing, but didn’t think about it at the time—

I’m not sure whether this is a genuine account or a troll. Regardless, please don’t bring up Nazis and Nazism on my blog anymore. I’m doing my best to make this blog a safe space for people of color, people of different religions, queer people, etc, including myself, to escape the constant horrors of everyday life by diving into fictional horror.

This is not a wholly apolitical blog, and I am an antifascist myself, but bringing up fascism and Nazism in this way, historical or current, just comes across as insensitive and even a bit cruel. I live in fear of rising Christofascism in my country and am reminded of it every single day offline. Please let me have this bit of escapism online. Please save the history lessons and current event lessons for people who are truly ignorant of everything going on in the world.

Bringing up racism, antisemitism, queerphobia, etc in the context of an ask, ie, “X Character comforting Darling about experiencing y type of bigotry” is perfectly fine.

[smokedbeans]

Potentially the last day ever of peace (talking to parents this weekend)

[nyarmand]

some people reeeeaaaaaaally need to stop throwing words around because they know it'll get people's attention. thanks

[cattatoir]

My opinion on being against the death penalty and other state killings is that the STATE does not have the right to kill anyone. The second they have it they will abuse it like they always have, like they do right now.

Got permanently banned from a subreddit for saying law enforcement shooting someone dead in the street was still a bad thing even when the victim was a violent right-wing fanatic.

Gotta say, I did not expect that to be such a controversial statement. So repeating it here: law enforcement shouldn't kill people. Even violent assholes have a right to be taken in alive, and it's a failure of practice and policy when someone is killed in the process of an arrest.

[thathomestar]

played a half life mod series called timeline where you're trying to stop nazis from altering the flow of time. g-man teams up with hitler, it's a wild time, whole thing goes crazy

there's a bit where you get sent to a pocket outside of space-time, and jumping in a portal takes you to a random unwinnable scenario in history, one of which is

[13thpythagoras]

this is me on Christianity, I see it as a gnostic, I see it as something the Romans persecuted, and didn't stop persecuting just because they claimed to have converted. Real true Christians have always been in the vast minority, compared to the fakes wearing the clothes but still planning to sin without apology...and i don't mean "sin" like be gay and rob Walmart (when if you're gay then God made you gay for a reason and Walmart steals from workers every day), I mean sin like truly harming human beings, that is a crime, a sin, and something the ruling class does to us. I am a Christian socialist and I see this as an extension of Christianity, feeding all people, loaves and fishes, tuna melt sandwiches for all / whatever you wanna order. That word "Christian" can mean so many things, and that day-and-night difference in the definition of sin shows you just how deeply invested in darkness the main bible-belt church is, they are the romans to today's Christians...but I don't even adhere to the Nicene Creed, that is the unenlightened oppressive man's work in my view, the Nicene Creed which struck out reincarnation from mention in the bible (and reincarnation plays a huge part of indigenous spiritual traditions worldwide), these fake christian roman-catholic-style oppressors erasing truths so they can better control people, replacing it with mentions of the devil and satan which are just men like themselves, who refuse enlightenment like a vampire refuses the sun because they seek to suck the energy of the living people instead...but me I like vampires because they dress well. Big difference

[spiderbitesandvampirevenom]

ok this might be an L take or whatever but i really think a lot of the "you cant be friends with people you have disagreements with on fundamental issues" gang 1. are mostly interacting with others on the internet, and 2. imagining the scenario as like. meeting a nazi at a bar and going "oh hes an alright chap" and not the much more common scenario of finding out your best friend from high school is, like a libertarian who is maybe a little too fond of ayn rand or something. "oh where is this mystical cishet man who says slurs but is an ally" i hate to break it to you but thats like any white boy who grew up in a mildly racially diverse community. none of you are familiar with the special form of brainrot that emerges in white boys when they spend all day at school making friends with the black and brown kids but going home to white suburbia.

[incognitopolls]

Scenario:

A big, famous department store has four portraits of Hitler as decoration on a wall. Two of the portraits are hanging behind a small statue of two hands making a heart. The portraits are lifelike, but in bright colors. They are replicas of work by a famous artist, and art critics think the artist was probably criticizing Hitler. Neo-Nazi politicians dislike the originals and, when a museum included them as part of an international tour, called for the originals to be specifically excluded from the tour.

There are no plaques or anything explaining any of this history, paying tribute to Hitler's victims, or even naming the artist-- anon found out who created the original works by Googling it. (If you know the store/artist/portraits anon is talking about, please don't spoil it.)

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[ceilidhtransing]

Having spent pretty much the entire year immersed in studying Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and genocide more broadly, my heart is bursting with the need to stress how much you should take Project 2025 seriously. This is a long post but please stick with me.

Don't take this post as an attempt to concretely predict anything. We can't ever fully know the future and I think it's silly to say with total certainty “if Trump wins then America will become just like Nazi Germany” - not only because the future isn't written yet, but also because Germany under the Nazis was a very specific regime with its own quirks and peculiarities and I don't think that even a worst-case-scenario Trump regime would look exactly like Hitler's Germany. No two regimes ever look exactly alike: it would use the same colour palette as all far-right dictatorships but be constructed from a different medium, like what a watercolour is to an oil painting.

But just because Trump is a very different person from Hitler, and a worst-case-scenario Trump dictatorship would not literally be “Nazi Germany all over again”, that doesn't mean that what happened in Germany isn't instructive here. Forget the specifics of whether or not Trump as a dictator would organise a state identically to how the Nazis organised Germany or whatever; on a far broader and more relevant level, there is a distressing number of similarities. And too many people are falling into the same thought traps as they did then.

Please don't assume that Trump is “way too incompetent” to achieve what's in Project 2025 or Agenda 47. They said the same thing about Hitler. They said that there was no way this showman could govern effectively - holding big rallies and making speeches that get people riled up isn't the same as being good at running a functioning state and achieving what you want. The New York Times even wrote after he became Chancellor of Germany that this would only “let him expose to the German public his own futility”. And in many ways Hitler was pretty incompetent. But that didn't end up mattering. The greatest crime of the Nazi regime, the Holocaust, was masterminded mostly by a whole load of people besides Hitler, who were delegated the nitty-gritty task of actually orchestrating it. Hitler's personal incompetence didn't prevent war or genocide.

Please don't assume that Trump is “just a wacky nutcase” who “can't possibly be a real risk”. They said the same thing about Hitler. The mainstream media gave constant coverage to all the crazy extreme things Hitler said as if he was merely a bit of a joke and not a massive threat. The Nazis were quite happy with this. To quote Goebbels repeatedly in his diary, “The main thing is they're talking about us.”

Please don't assume that being in power will “moderate” Trump and that “of course he won't be able to do all the crazy stuff once he actually has to govern”. They said the same thing about Hitler. It was a common sentiment in the early 1930s that all the sensible politicians around him would force him to moderate his stances. Fritz von Papen, the last Chancellor of Weimar Germany, persuaded President Hindenburg to make Hitler the Chancellor by assuring him, “In a few months, we will have pushed [Hitler] so far into the corner that he will squeak.” It turns out that power doesn't “moderate” people who are openly talking about a dictatorship.

Please don't assume that there's any truth to the whole “Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025 and trying to link it to him is just liberal hysteria” line. They said the same thing about Hitler. People repeatedly asserted that Nazi street violence wasn't really representative of the party leadership; it wasn't representative of Hitler. He was even subpoenaed by a very brave lawyer in 1931 in a bid to prove that recent violence by Nazi stormtroopers was committed with the knowledge and encouragement of the party leadership, with part of the prosecution's argument hanging on a pamphlet by Goebbels that promised a violent overthrow of the state if the Nazis couldn't come to power legitimately. Surely no legal political party could be publishing that. In a successful attempt to escape criminal charges, Hitler repeatedly lied that the pamphlet was not official Nazi Party material and that he didn't know anything about it. No Trump didn't write it, no it isn't an official GOP manifesto, but the links between Project 2025 and Trump, the previous Trump administration, and Trump allies are extremely well documented. Just the other day, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought was caught calling Trump's disavowals of the document “graduate-level politics” and saying, “what he's doing is just very, very conscious distancing himself from a brand ... he's in fact not even opposing himself to a particular policy.”

Please don't assume that “there's no way something like that could happen here; we're way too educated and advanced”. They said the same thing about Hitler. The Germany of the 1920s and 1930s was one of the most educated and most scientifically and industrially advanced nations in the world, and its cities were some of the most progressive in the world. People were stunned and horrified that it was in Germany of all places - Germany, land of music and art and science and literature! - that fascism took root. Germany's economic and social advancement didn't stop about 40% of its voters choosing the Nazis. It didn't stop them taking power.

Please don't assume that Project 2025 is “just a wishlist” and “not actually a serious plan”. They said the same thing about Hitler. As is hopefully very clear by now, plenty of people did not think that the Nazis were capable of, or would dare to try, putting into actual practice the horrific ideas about race that undergirded so much of their ideology. “I like Hitler; he talks sense economically and I think all this stuff about Jews is just bluff and bluster.” “Every party has a loony wing, right? You have to understand they're not serious when they talk about this stuff; they're just telling their base what they want to hear.” “God have you heard this crazy race science shit about head shapes and stuff? It's hilarious! I'm sure none of them at the top really believe that; there's no way they'd be that nuts.” When a group of people like this tells you what they believe and tells you what they want to do with power, believe them. No matter how ridiculous they seem, they're not joking.

In the words of Hans Litten, the lawyer who subpoenaed and cross-examined Hitler in that court case in 1931, “Don't listen to him; he's telling the truth.” Litten was arrested on the night of the Reichstag fire in 1933 and spent the rest of his life being tortured in concentration camps before dying in Dachau in 1938 at the age of 34.

A tyrannical dictatorship can often be seen coming a mile away. I don't want to imply for a second that what the Nazis did came as a surprise to everyone and couldn't possibly have been predicted. There were people who saw this coming in the 1920s and 1930s and tried to sound the alarm while they still had a chance. But they were too often in the minority, taking the threat seriously while others had convinced themselves that there was no need for concern because the Nazis wouldn't really do all the things they repeatedly talked about wanting to do. Everyone should have seen this coming, but too many people wanted to believe it couldn't be true.

Don't let this scare you. Let it energise you. Talk to the people in your life about Project 2025 and Agenda 47. Push back against people who assert that “they'd never actually do all that stuff” or “Trump didn't even write Project 2025” or “it's not a real plan, just a list of crazy shit to get the base riled up”. Have conversations with folks you know who are on the fence about voting or about who to vote for and who seem persuadable. Make sure you're registered to vote, and keep making sure, especially if you live in a red state where people keep mysteriously dropping off voter rolls.

Now, again, please don't read this as some confident prediction that Trump will be a Hitler figure. I want to stress that is a worst-case scenario. If a Trump presidency is what happens, I would much prefer the best-case scenario: that he spends four years fumbling around and not really accomplishing anything and then gives up power at the end without much of a fight. But it would also be a folly to be smugly overconfident that the worst-case scenario “won't” or “can't” happen. It could. It has happened before. There is no reason it couldn't happen again.

[natalieironside]

(icon by @neladoesart)

Hi! I'm Natalie. I'm trans of gender and ace of sexual and I write dark fantasy and dark sci-fi adventure stories full of boners and thud-and-blunder action violence wherein no swash remains unbuckled, nor pot unboiled. I also blog about books and history and languages and I write essays and poetry sometimes, and don't forget about the many exciting Age of Empires 2 scenarios available at Natalie's Cool Website.

You might have heard my short story The Wishing Tree on the Tales to Terrify podcast! (now available as a zine from Grinning Kitten Press). Other stuff I’ve published to date includes:

THE LAST GIRL SCOUT: A post-apocalyptic wasteland adventure story and transbian romance about two women who fall in lesbians together and fight Nazis and draculas in the bombed-out ruins of Old America

LEAD AND ROSES: LOVE SONGS AT THE END OF THE WORLD: A collection of short fiction set within 23rd-century post-nuclear wasteland we’ve all come to know and love

IN THE COURT OF THE NAMELESS QUEEN: A collection of dark fantasy f/f erotica about sexy swashbuckling swordswomen (both cis and normal) and a giant scary monster lady in a far-off realm of adventure and dark magic.

If you're curious I'd really like it if you'd check out my Patreon because there's even more fantabulous treasures on there and you can subscribe for the low, low price of just one American dollar. Your one American dollar will go toward the ever topical "Natalie can make rent and doesn't starve" philanthropy fund.

I'm gonna stay here on Tumblr until they forcibly remove me from the premises, but I'm also on Pillowfort, Bluesky, and Cohost

:)

[apas-95]

Why are liberals constantly likening themselves to fascists, constantly creating hypothetical scenarios to voice their support for Hitler? Don't they care how they sound?

No, they dont.

Fundamentally, there is an absolute limit to any sort of referential argument - of saying 'the zionist settler-occupation of Palestine is like the rhodesian settler-occupation of Zimbabwe', or 'the logic that justifies this type of transmisogynistic statement is the same logic that justifies this type of racist statement', or, yes, 'you are literally comparing yourself to Hitler'. That limit is precisely in the fact that you are relying on the argument against the referent to already have been made for you.

Plenty of people were and are fine with the colonial occupation carried out by Cecil Rhodes - including the founders of the israeli occupation state. Plenty of people still wholeheartedly agree with racist logic and hold racist views. These are not problems that are 'solved', squared away in the records of history to be referred back to - it was the prevailing opinion among liberals in the 1920s and 1930s that Hitler and the Nazis were basically great guys, opposing the authoritarian menace of the communists. It should not be surprising that the liberals who - right this moment! - send donations to neonazi militias in the Ukraine, to buy more sonnenrand patches, are fine with comparing themselves to Hitler!

Referential arguments are not enough. An actual, substantive argument, built of Marxist theory, is what is required in all cases, and simply hoping one has already been provided cannot do. You are watching, in real time, as the liberal position explicitly reverts to 'fascism is an acceptable alternative', and you can do nothing but guffaw and say 'but that's fascism!' as if they don't know. It cannot do. Study, discuss, and come to a proper understanding of the matter. Lives depend on it.

[thebiggerbear]

"Sleep. I'll keep you safe." - Soldier Boy Prompt Response

Summary: You're tired of running and you go to Soldier Boy for protection. He agrees to do it but not without a price.

Pairing: Soldier Boy x Female!Reader

A/N: Prompt from @thelonelyempath. The original character I wanted to respond to this prompt with before deciding to make it multi-character. This scenario immediately popped into my head reading the line and I just had to write it. Hope it's okay.

Thank you to my beta @rieleatiel for her services. You rock, girl!

Sequel

Warnings: violence/murder; implied assassination attempts; sexual propositioning; Soldier Boy being himself; starts out as a blackmail type dynamic that appears as if a little dubcon at first; language?

Word Count: 2528

Taglist: @avada-kedavra-bitch-187

SB Taglist: @heartlessdelusions; @nancymcl; @brightlilith

Jensen Taglist: @samanddeaninatrenchcoat

You can also read on AO3

"Sleep. I'll keep you safe."

Beau version ✨ Dean version ✨ Jenny version ✨ Tom version ✨ Jason version ✨ Anael version ✨ SDV Alex version

You never thought in a million years that you would be seeking out one of the most dangerous Supes in the world for protection. Then again, you never would have thought that a multi-billion dollar corporation would be after you, intent on seeing you torn apart and scattered to the four winds. You didn’t exactly blow the whistle on them, but you didn’t exactly tow the company line either—something Stan Edgar was less than thrilled with and now the evil son of a bitch wanted you dead.

It was no secret that Edgar and Soldier Boy had a falling out of sorts after the truth about his being handed to the Russians had come to light. His old team may have made it happen, but it was Edgar pulling the strings all along. Surprisingly, the Supe who had been so focused on revenge hadn’t hunted Edgar down after this revelation, which made you wary about going this route. However, after narrowly escaping the latest death squad sent after you, you decided you had no choice but to take the gamble. There was nowhere you could run that Vought wouldn’t find you and you just hoped this would be more of an ‘enemy of my enemy’ situation rather than a ‘handing you right over to your enemy’ situation.

Once you had managed to track him down in Hong Kong while you were busy running yourself, he had shockingly agreed to a meet, and even more shockingly agreed to help you. Not without certain stipulations, of course.

“Let me in that sweet pussy of yours and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

You should have known, especially from the way he had been eyeing you up ever since he caught sight of you. Screwing your face up in disgust, you flat out refused. “Not happening.”

He shrugged and began to walk away. “Then you must not need my protection that badly.”

You scoffed in disbelief. “You’re seriously turning me down because I won’t fuck you? Whatever happened to the ‘Soldier Boy is America’s son’ bullshit? The OG superhero who fought Nazis and protected people?”

Soldier Boy stopped and slowly turned back towards you. “I’d be putting myself on the line to protect you. For that, I deserve one hell of a payment.” 

You rolled your eyes and crossed your arms. “So now you’re blackmailing me into sleeping with you? Unbelievable.” You had heard he was more like America’s Asshole than its Son, but you still couldn’t believe your ears. You had even offered to help him take Vought down with what you knew, so long as he kept you safe. You knew he’d want that kind of information. Why else was he hopping from continent to continent in the last few months, trying to shake Vought just like you were? Instead, his dick was taking top priority. Typical. 

“It’s the least you can do, doll.” He faced you fully again, shield hanging off of his arm as if it weighed nothing. “Like you said, I fought for this country, fought the Nazis, and now you’re asking me to play bodyguard while taking on Vought for you. I deserve something worth all that trouble.”

You ran through all other options in your mind. You still had a contact that could possibly put you in touch with someone that wouldn’t mind tapping into Vought’s offshore accounts that weren’t supposed to exist. You were already on Vought’s kill list; what would a few hundred thousand dollars of theirs matter? “I could pay you,” you offered.

“I’m not interested in money.” His eyes roved over you as he approached. “Besides,” he murmured as he came to a stop in front of you. You tensed as he reached up to tuck a strand of your hair that had gotten loose from under your ball cap behind your ear. ”I haven’t had a looker as pretty as you in a long time. Been locked away.” He gently gripped your chin in between his thumb and index finger, his eyes intent on your mouth before lifting to meet yours. A hint of a smirk started to appear on his handsome face when he most likely heard your heart beat starting to increase.

He released you and even took a step back from you, allowing you physical and metaphorical space. “Your call.”

You bit your lip as thoughts chaotically swirled inside your head. On one hand, you refused to be manipulated or pushed into sex with this asshole. No matter how physically attractive he might be, you weren’t willing to get on your back just so he would help you. But on the other hand, the cold hard truth was that you were tired — tired of running, tired of little-to-no sleep, tired of the paranoia that came with such a flight. Hell, at present, you hadn’t slept in almost two days and you were running on fumes; there wasn’t enough caffeine or energy pills in the world to get you through another day with no rest. Your reaction time was already dragging if your last narrow escape was anything to go by. If you continued this way, you’d be dead before the sun started to warm the sky; you were certain of it.

Soldier Boy stared you down. “What’s it gonna be?”

You didn’t answer. Instead, you glanced behind you at a small noise far off down the street. Thankfully, it was an old woman tossing something out onto the pavement, but you couldn’t deny it put you further on edge. You turned back to the Supe whose eyes stayed trained on you. You took a deep breath to steady your nerves and readied your response. His lips began to quirk upwards into a smile; he knew what your answer was going to be before you even said the words.

Vought Tower had been completely demolished. Luckily, it had been mostly evacuated before the destruction occurred. A fight between Soldier Boy and the now-dead Homelander had caused most of the damage, but the C4 that had been carefully lined throughout the infrastructure is what ended up bringing it down. 

Before it went boom, Soldier Boy had approached Stan Edgar, who refused to cower in a corner. The Supe respected that, but it didn’t change what he’d come here to do. He gripped Edgar by the throat and lifted him in the air, choking the older man and ignoring the fingers that desperately clawed at his hand.

“I thought we had an agreement,” Edgar rasped out.

Soldier Boy shrugged. “She made me a better one.” He then snapped the man’s neck and tossed his body aside like a rag doll. 

“Oi! We ought to get out of here,” Butcher warned after seeing Stan Edgar lifeless on the floor. “Frenchie’s about to blow this place to fucking hell.”

He glared over at the Brit and picked up his shield. He still didn’t trust him, not after what he and his merry band of assholes had tried to do the last time they’d teamed up, but he’d made a deal with you and he was intent on keeping his end of it. The only conditions Butcher and Captain Lesbo had given this time around was: no civilian casualties and Ryan was off limits. He did his best with the first and he could give less than a fuck on the other. As far as he was concerned, the kid was Butcher’s problem as long as the kid didn’t come looking for some payback once he got older, which Butcher assured he wouldn’t. That, and there better not be Novichok gas waiting at the end of this mission for him. They’d reluctantly agreed, knowing they had no other way to kill Homelander and take down Vought all in one swoop.

“After you.” Soldier Boy gestured for Butcher to leave first. The man scowled but obliged, keeping a wary eye out as he moved. Smirking, Soldier boy followed. The Supe might have enjoyed the reaction—or even tried to settle the score from Butcher’s previous betrayal—if he didn’t have you to get back to. He needed to let you know that you no longer had Stan Edgar or Vought to worry about. He’d kept up his end of the bargain you’d both made — now, finally, you were free.

You woke up to the sound of someone moving through the darkness in your room. You grabbed the gun from beneath your pillow and bolted upright as much as you could, trying to get your eyes to adjust so you could get a good shot.

“Relax, it’s just me,” Soldier Boy assured you. 

Recognizing his voice, you slowly lowered the gun and focused on his location. When your eyes finally adjusted, you realized he was near the foot of the bed, completely nude, his hair damp from a fresh shower. “Ben,” you breathed out in relief. “You scared me.”

Through the beams of moonlight shining into the room from the window, you saw him give you a smile and lay his shield down on the floor next to him. “Didn’t mean to.”

You slipped the safety back on the gun and stashed it into the drawer of your nightstand. You hated having it under your pillow at night; it was super uncomfortable and you only needed to do that when Soldier Boy — Ben, as he’d asked you to call him instead — wasn’t around. “Everything go okay?” 

“Better than okay.” You glanced back to see a smirk adorning that handsome face of his, with an all-too familiar gleam in those green eyes. You watched as he slipped on some sweats and then made his way to the opposite side of the bed. You moved onto your side to face him, smiling as he climbed in next to you and sat up against the headboard, turning to grin down at you. Within seconds, he had his arms wrapped around you, pulling you up against him, and he was kissing you a proper hello. He only pulled back when you needed air and tenderly rubbed his nose along yours, nuzzling you. “How about you, doll? Everything go okay while I was gone?”

You nodded and snuggled into his bare chest, letting out a relieved sigh when you felt his warm hands stroking your back. “Everything’s fine,” you assured him, closing your eyes. You’d never admit it aloud, but you felt so much better when he was around. Not only did you feel protected but you just felt better in general. You’d have to be under the pain of torture to admit to him (or yourself) that you actually missed him when he had to leave.

He pressed a kiss to the top of your head and let his lips linger there, continuing to rub your back just the way you liked. “Edgar and Vought are gone,” he murmured. “The Caped Cunt, too. You’ve got nothing more to worry about.”

Your eyes snapped open and you lifted yourself up to meet his gaze, your brows furrowed. “What?” You asked in shock.

“You heard me.” He stroked your cheek with his thumb, his grin now a smug smile. “You’re safe, baby.”    

Your eyes widened when the realization hit you. “That’s where you went?”

Your only answer was the lengthening of that smile. 

“Jesus, Ben.” So many thoughts and emotions swirled within you all at once. You were free, truly free. You no longer had to worry about Vought death squads hunting you down, Homelander coming for you, or Stan Edgar sending after you any ragtag Supes he could scrounge up. You were free. Although, Ben hadn’t told you that he was about to go on his most dangerous mission yet. He might be America’s original superhero and he might be tough to kill, but that didn’t mean he was completely invincible. He’d admitted as much to you over the last few months. “What if… What if you didn’t—”

He kissed you, effectively cutting you off. “I did,” he hummed against your lips. “Told you I would.”

You nodded, gently tracing his facial features with your hands before gliding down to his shoulders, dipping down the warm expanse of his back and then slowly returning to his chest. As always, he remained patient whenever you did this ritual of checking him for any wounds or injuries, knowing you wouldn’t find any but needing to assure yourself just the same. Truthfully, this man had come to mean more to you than you’d ever imagined would be possible. Hell, there had been a time when it wouldn’t have been possible at all.

When you were done, you met his gaze head on. “Do I want to know?”

Ben remained silent, but his eyes said it all: no, you didn’t want to know. You and Ben may have planned for the downfall of Vought and the ends of Homelander and Stan Edgar, the very same bastards that had put a target on your back in the first place, but that didn’t mean you wanted to hear the gory details of their deaths. You were just grateful Ben had come back to you alive and unharmed. 

You gave him a thin-lipped smile in understanding. “Thank you,” you whispered. 

Ben studied you for a moment, then pulled you in and kissed you again, his fingers slipping through your hair until he grabbed the back of your neck and urged you to meet him more fully. Just as you were getting into it, he broke away and chuckled. “You’re real eager for me, aren’t you, sweetheart?” You shot him a look and the smirk was suddenly back on his face. Without warning, he picked you up to rearrange you in the bed how he wanted you. “Too bad that you need to get some rest. We’re blowing the fuck out of here tomorrow and you’re gonna need to keep up.”

As if he would leave you behind if you couldn’t. “I thought you said Butcher would leave us alone after this.”

“I don’t trust that dicksucking Brit and I trust his bitch of a boss even less.”

You rolled your eyes, smirking when you felt him settle in behind you, knowing how much he enjoyed spooning you like this. “‘Kay,” you agreed. He had successfully protected you this far; you’d follow his lead on this one, too. You shut your eyes and snuggled into your pillow, content to feel his hands on your back caressing you once more.

You were just about asleep when you heard him murmur in your ear, “Sleep. I’ll keep you safe.” You smiled when you heard the words he’d been saying to you every night now for many months and your heart lightened when you felt his hands trail from your back to cup protectively over your rounding stomach, rubbing gently. ‘Safe’ is exactly how you felt right in this moment, and the little girl moving to meet her father’s embrace—like she always did when she sensed he was near—only cemented the knowledge that this was the first night neither you nor she were in danger any longer. It gave you a sense of peace you hadn’t known in a long time.

dividers by @firefly-graphics

[alexanderwales]

There's a beautiful model of time travel called hypertime, which so far as I know was invented by qntm. You can read about it here.

The general idea is that there's an infinite stack of universes, possibly with a "prime" universe, each temporally offset from each other by some small amount (or just being continuous). You can imagine all of time on a chart where a properly sloped diagonal defines a specific time (e.g. January 1st, 2001), every horizontal line defines a single universe from its past to present, and every vertical line defines multiple universes that are "initially" arranged so that they're equivalent to "down" being backward in time and "up" being forward in time.

My plan was to write a fanfic of the NBC show Timeless using this model, rather than the one they use in the show. I see now that this was hugely more ambitious than Timeless ever deserved.

The big thing that keeps drawing me to this idea like a moth to flame is that there are cool things you can do with it. Here's one of them: a person goes to what they think of as "back in time", which is actually "down" on the time sheet, and ends up in a past that's different from the one they remember. How cool is that??

You intend to go to the past to see what's on Nixon's missing 18 minutes, and instead find yourself in a universe where the Nazis won WWII. And if you're operating under the assumption your time machine works like the one in Back to the Future, you're suddenly extremely confused. So you go back in time again, heading to just before the outbreak of WWII, and ... it's completely normal, with no sign that anyone has been monkeying around.

This is my white whale of a scene: the revelation that it all actually does make sense, the unfolding implications, the machinations of all the major time traveling factions and their goals.

I'm not actually sure that such a scene can be written in such a way that the majority of the audience would get it. Hypertime is hellish. Diagrams would help, but I'm not sure how much, especially because one of the things that (this subset of) hypertime assumes is some level of determinism and the inability to talk about "when" things happen except using reference frames.

As an added bonus, hypertime makes it possible to have diverse scenarios such that you can be wrong about how time travel works multiple times. You start out thinking that it's a stable time loop, you eventually see that contradicted and realize that it must be branching timelines, you see that contradicted and decide that it's ripple effect, and you see that contradicted and end up realizing that you're in this stupidly complicated hypertime setup. It has the potential to be the most complicated time travel story of all time. It has the potential to have the greatest number of explanations of time travel in a story, many of them incorrect.

I am at the point where I have an almost intuitive understanding of hypertime, but it took me drawing a lot of diagrams to get there, and I'm not sure I possess the writerly ability to explain it properly, especially if there are misdirects built into it.

A man can dream though.

[thehmn]

I love how many stories there are from WWII where people survive encounters with nazis, even the gestapo, simply by bullying them and claiming to know important nazi members.

I’m listening to the podcast A Very Secret Life where a man tells his dad’s story. He was part Danish, part German, and worked as a spy for England. He was very valuable to the Brits because being part German and being able to speak perfect German meant the nazis trusted him. He almost got caught during a mission in Germany but managed to escape simply by yelling at the German police and saying he had some very important stuff to deliver to their superiors so they better call their damn office and then they’d see who was in trouble!

When he finally escaped to Denmark the gestapo showed up at his mom’s apartment looking for him and she did the same thing. She was full blooded German and stated shouting at them about her important cousin who outranked all of them and she even chased them all the way down the stairs and started kicking their cars until they left. That meant nobody suspected her of secretly being a nazi supporter after the war despite being German because everyone remembered her chasing the gestapo away.

It’s such a classic scenario when you base a system on fear. I’ve heard of western soldiers in the Middle East who backed out of a situation because someone threatened to get them in trouble with their superiors. Will any military ever learn to stop being so mean to their people they end up spending more time trying to avoid their own bosses than anything else?