#and I believe they had some kind of interview with him about the torture

[glitteryinknotes]

There is a level of deep, bitterly poetic and cruel irony in Astarion's death and his eventual fate as a vampire spawn. Laughable, even. Lamentable.

Where do I even begin. I once posted here my thoughts on who Astarion was before Cazador took him; and all my thoughts were based on what we can assume to be canon from scraps on information in - game and interviews with Neil. That Astarion Ancunin who was laid into the ground at Baldur's Gate cementary was a corrupt magistrate, a shining example of power abuse, indulgence, hedony, existence in privilege without any service to the world around.

We also know for a fact that Astarion is not a good person in a moral sense. Again, Neil Newbon himself talked about it. He has capability to grow, mature, open himself up, soak in the positive influence and feel for others, but he never will be the default upstanding type. That is simply not at his core.

This is why (I am aware we're talking a fictional character, headcanon is free to all in whichever way they think it suits and pleases them) I cannot for the world believe in all the fanfiction based on the notion of the tragic, tortured soul unjustly attacked and turned into a vampire, because to me - it misses the entire depth and essence of Astarion's personality and arc. He was not a "worthy" persona before Cazador; in fact, the beating he got from the Gur was well - deserved and the near - death experience... Probably so as well. Maybe if anything, this would open his eyes and force him to reflect at least a bit on his choices in the position he was occupying. (But given that he mentions begging Cazador to turn him to be able to take revenge, I highly doubt that.) So yeah... The man got what was coming to him. He deserved it.

But what he got in the end once Cazador allowed him to drink his blood and had him in his hold? Two hundred years of misery and abuse beyond description, being completely stripped of any identity and personhood? No one deserves that. Such fate should not be thrust upon anyone. Ever.

It is the cruellest, most wicked twist of fate that it took that kind of ordeal to change a corrupt little elf's view of the world and force him to even acknowledge the existence of evil deeds and abuse of power - something I am quite sure he never gave any thought to before. It took being transformed into an utterly helpless victim to make him truly see that there is good and bad and perpetuating the bad leads to pain and misery for the innocents (and you can never be sure if not for you as well), and only then, at his most pathetic, most vulnerable, after centuries of torment, it took meeting, trusting, admiring, being grateful to, befriending / loving and being influenced by a genuinely good and kind person (probably the exact opposite of who he was before) to shake and cause some shift in his inner moral compass, or rather the way he was choosing to use it. The full circle, a poignant, unwilling journey from the one abusing power, to the enslaved puppet of someone with considerably more power abusing it in the most inhuman ways possible, and this time to his own woe, to the one person able to break the abusive cycle given the right influence.

Isn't that simply poetic in the most sickly sense? A tragicomedy, if you will.

Forget about Astarion Ancunin. The grave was good for lovemaking and sharing an important moment, but whoever was laid there was not anyone worthy of your time (just like "Ascended Astarion" )The one who stands by your side now is. Your Astarion. The new Astarion, the same "lovable rogue" with a taste for theatrics, drama, debauchery, beauty, murder mayhem and loose morality, but - a better person all the same.

[follow up post here

https://www.tumblr.com/glitteryinknotes/733162725841289216/a-little-follow-up-to-my-previous-post?source=share]

#astarion #baldur's gate astarion #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 astarion #baldurs gate astarion #bg3 astarion #astarion bg3 #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #astarion analysis #astarion ancunin

[zombie-bait]

The Death of a Vampire

Lestat as a protagonist just works so incredibly well and a very significant aspect of that is him being Anne Rice's self-insert. Lived experience can be critical when it comes to writing a good story and many memorable novels will feature elements of that. Anne is built different, though. Lestat (book 2 onwards) is basically Anne's journal for dealing with her grievances and trauma, which, on its own, is a very questionable method of writing. More often than not, it causes him to be characterized inconsistently between books because Anne's own opinions have changed. But it also makes him so real.

You follow his struggles with religion, you see him yearn for forgiveness from a god that has seemingly abandoned him a long time ago and you feel it. The passage I will never get over is in the early chapters of The Vampire Lestat, when Lestat has a breakdown over his mother's (and frankly his own) mortality. He struggles and he cries and he can't get out of bed because there's nothing he can do. Eventually he starts to live again, forces himself to.

But.

"I wandered into the church and on my knees I leaned against the wall and I looked at the ancient statues and I felt the same gratitude looking at the finely carved fingers and the noses and the ears and the expressions on their faces and the deep folds in their garments, and I couldn’t stop myself from crying. At least we had these beautiful things, I said. Such goodness. But nothing natural seemed beautiful to me now! The very sight of a great tree standing alone in a field could make me tremble and cry out. Fill the orchard with music. And let me tell you a little secret. It never did pass, really."

I think about those last two sentences a lot. I think about them even more since Anne Rice passed away.

Every page of Interview is spent talking about death and yet (imo) it's only in TVL that you really feel it. Louis in book 1 welcomes death quite readily because, besides his toxic boyfriend and their traumatized daughter, he doesn't have much to live for. He's basically given up by the time Lestat appears. The greatest torture, to Louis, is the knowledge that he can live forever on the suffering of others.

But Lestat is the complete opposite. He wants to listen to music, to explore Paris, to perform on any stage that will take him, to embrace the man he loves and to send his ailing mother letters of his accomplishments. Death matters most to those who are desperate to live and god is he desperate. He's haunted by his mother's sickness, by the wolves on the mountain that threaten to end his life before he's even lived it, the witches place that reeks of meaningless suffering. And in a way, the dark gift provides opportunity to escape that. But it is still death. It takes away Nicki in a very literal way and takes away his mother in a more personal one. Magnus, like death, chose Lestat arbitrarily. He sees the cellar of blonde corpses and knows that he was only one of dozens to meet an untimely death with no explanation.

Lestat also really wants you to know that he is, truly, a good person. He must be. He swears to only hunt criminals and then goes back on that two pages later. He reshapes stories to present himself as the noble protagonist and the audience has no choice but to believe him. He wants, desperately, to be loved for all that he is, man and monster. He wants to be the hero.

He's this awful, fascinating, very human man so clearly born out of the internal struggle to find meaning and love in a cruel, unpredictable world we all tend to share. He's made up of incredibly basic and powerful human desires hidden behind a mask of bravado and I can't recalling seeing another protagonist like him.

(Quick mention: This isn't some kind of "wow Anne Rice is an incredible author who can do no wrong" piece. She's written a lot of fucked up and bad shit that cannot be easily brushed over. But I don't think I'll ever get over reading TVL for the first time. To read someone bare their soul in such a way creates a truly unique experience. A lot of characters in a lot of pieces of media face death, but it's rare to see a character face mortality in such a personal way.)

(Also odds are I've written similar posts to this before but shhhhh these sad gay vampires are all I have)

#iwtv #interview with the vampire #vampire chronicles #lestat de lioncourt #iwtv spoilers #louis de pointe du lac #the vampire lestat #vampires #mortality #literature #this is all book stuff btw #not super relevant to the tv show as far as ive seen #but only time will tell #the vampire lestat spoilers #i was gonna make a joke about how i should write an essay exploring mortality in tvl #but i think i just did that #so hmmmm #how do i convince ppl in my life to read this book without them thinking im a little freak #cuz like Gabrielle <3 but also Gabrielle :// #iykyk

[luna-rainbow]

do you think Bucky ever tried to kill himself?

Thanks for the ask Nonnie. Trigger warning for suicide discussion.

I once saw an interview excerpt of Sebastian saying — along the lines of — it’s the thought of Steve that stopped Bucky from killing himself in the 2 years he went on the run. My headcanon is pretty similar to his.

TL;DR - I think Bucky would have had frequent thoughts of suicide, but did not make an attempt, because he would have succeeded. I also think that even though Bucky did not attempt it, he nevertheless engaged in risky, self-sabotaging behaviours that could have killed him.

In real life, while suicide attempts are more frequent amongst women compared to men, deaths from suicide (ie successful attempts) are far higher amongst men than women. This is usually attributed to the fact that men frequently choose more lethal methods. Coupled with the fact that Bucky knows he’s a super soldier, and my view of his personality (efficient with his missions and ruthless towards himself), as well as the one canon mention of a male super soldier attempting suicide (Bruce “I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spat it back out”) I think he would’ve chosen a very deadly method if he made an attempt.

But I think what often happens with men (and women too) is that...sometimes people knowingly engage in behaviours that are unhealthy or highly unsafe. They might not intend to die, but they wouldn’t mind if it kills them. The social norms Steve and Bucky grew up with is that men are not allowed vulnerability and weakness. There was no word for PTSD in those days, nor was there a word for depression. You just kept getting more “melancholic” until it’s bad enough to be classified as “insane”. And when you take that into the eugenic context they grew up with, it is likely their attitude is to cop it on the chin for as long as it takes to avoid a mental health review or diagnosis. But…that means the sense of distress and self-loathing keep building up and need an outlet.

In real life, people sometimes turn to drugs and alcohol, often with full awareness the harm it’s doing to their bodies, and I am partial towards headcanons of Bucky engaging in highly risky behaviour in the immediate aftermath of escaping Hydra. This might be drugs and alcohol, or it could be taking on risky missions with minimal attempts at self-preservation. You could argue the same about Steve after Bucky’s death: Steve jumping across the fire because Bucky yelled at him vs Steve putting the plane in water despite Peggy pleading with him.

When TFATWS first introduced Bucky breaking the law and jeopardising his pardon to terrorise former Hydra agents, that felt real to me. He was self-sabotaging and self-destructive, and his snarl that “if he’s wrong about you then he’s wrong about me” means his identity is tied up with someone who wasn’t there anymore and he was never going to get the approval he needed again.

I think, the other thing to consider too, is Bucky having survived 70 years of Hydra torture suggests an incredible mental and physical resilience. We know he’s not hopelessly optimistic — in CATFA he’s the one trying to dissuade Steve from joining the war — but there must be…a certain kind of faith and relentless hope that keeps him going. The fact that he has had not one, but at least two (or three, if you count Endgame) villain origin character beats and still does his best to fight for the good side, suggests he has an indomitable love for people and the world despite how much hurt it caused him.

So I tend to think that while suicide may have frequently been on his mind, and he may have frequently engaged in highly risky or harmful behaviours, he hasn’t attempted to take his own life because there is something (whether that be Steve or some other thing) that keeps him going and keeps him believing there’s going to be a better tomorrow on the other side.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes meta #tw: suicide #tw: drugs #asks

[fantastic-nonsense]

also before anyone gets the wrong idea about my Jason response, I wasn't trying to say that Jason doesn't care about women and kids or that a well-characterized Jason wouldn't respect women. The point I was trying to make is that while Canon!Jason is perfectly happy to shoot rapists or abusers or drug dealers dealing to kids because he thinks they're scum, he's not shown as someone who like...specifically sets out to protect the unprotected or thinks it's his actual mission to do so.

Post-Crisis!Jason had exactly two life goals as Red Hood: make Batman's life a living hell by creating chaos and prove he's "better" at crimefighting than Bruce. Even taking over Gotham's gang scene was largely a means to an end for him. He kills all those guys because he genuinely thinks the world is better off without them, but his primary goal is not actually to clean up Gotham for the sake of cleaning it up or to protect other people from suffering his own fate; it's to fuck with and piss off Bruce by showing him that his way (killing people and becoming a crime lord) is a "more effective" way of solving crime. And in doing so, he often fucked over or blatantly used people he would have previously died to protect when he was Robin.

And whether or not you agree with that characterization, Judd Winick has been very open in interviews about how Jason's hypocrisy is something he genuinely enjoyed writing, so it was clearly a deliberate choice on his part to portray Jason that way even disregarding the various awful OOC characterizations of Jason we had to deal with in other post-Crisis stories:

As we saw in the original run, he’s also comfortable controlling crime and even becoming a part of it. He can’t kill everyone, nor does he want to. So, along with handing out his own brand of justice, he does believe that crime can be controlled. Batman had said it makes you a crime lord. Jason doesn’t think it makes him a crime lord at all. He thinks it makes him a much more effective Batman. Yes, Jason sees what he’s doing as making himself into a better Batman, the Batman that the world actually needs today. But some of that is just Jason fooling himself. The truth is, all of it is based in the fact that Jason is just damaged and tortured and angry with Bruce. And this is a constant revenge upon him..... ......I also like the fact that Jason’s actions aren’t black and white. Sometimes he functions in that gray area, and it gives you the license to be somewhat hypocritical, because he is. I used to do that with Oliver Queen in Green Arrow, and people would go crazy, because I thought it was interesting to explore that sometimes he’s a bit of a hypocrite. I find that likable about the character. And in Jason’s case, he professes that he’s trying to be a better Batman and he’s trying to rid the world of evil, but then he’s also just trying to stick it to Batman. It’s very much a man-child thing going on. [x]

Warning for victim-blaming Jason for his own death in this one:

Jason can do a certain level of good in one arc and a horrible in the next, and none of that would be out of character. He’s very unpredictable. Maybe that’s what makes him kind of interesting. He’s someone who is tortured, he’s someone who is damaged, he is someone who has been through a lot and is still just trying to find his way. You could say he’s a good man who does very, very bad things, and it’s not always the case that he’s doing bad things for the greater good, sometimes it’s doing bad things just for the bad. Killing villains in his opinion isn’t a bad thing. There is somewhat a message and methodology to what he’s doing, but at the same time he lets his emotions get the better of him. It’s what got him killed. It’s the sort of thing that Jason, in a way, wouldn’t surprise me if he is viewed as somewhat heroic for a fashion, but then falls back on bad behavior, which could happen from year to year, you don’t know. From anti-hero to villain to back again, I don’t know. [x]

So that's the opinion of the man who brought Jason back to life, wrote his debut arc as Red Hood, and also wrote the one other post-Crisis story Jason fans universally like (Lost Days).

Meanwhile post-Flashpoint!Jason is generally too busy dealing with his own trauma and his teammates' issues to actually dedicate any significant, consistent effort to protecting and saving vulnerable populations like sex workers, abused women, and orphaned children. Wanting to save them is usually his response when he stumbles upon something happening, but reboot!Jason generally does not consider it a core moral mission to seek out opportunities to protect or save these groups. Writers other than Scott Lobdell occasionally gave him stories featuring him doing so, but they were incredibly few and far between since Lobdell was Jason's primary writer for nearly a decade. Not to mention Lobdell's blatant misogyny led to a Jason that repeatedly objectified women and engaged in casual sexism on a depressingly regular basis...which despite being theoretically antithetical to Jason's childhood and Robin-era characterization is a characterization he maintained throughout the majority of his post-reboot appearances. So like...that's also a thing to consider.

DC finally seems to be moving a little more in the direction of matching Jason's motivations with his pre-death characterization (where he DID consistently showcase a genuine respect for women and desire to protect vulnerable children), but until that becomes a more consistent aspect of his character now I can't in good conscience pretend like fanon's interpretation of Red Hood!Jason as this incredibly pro-woman guy who has a core character trait of respecting and protecting women and wanting to keep children out of the crossfire actually exists in canon. That's the point I was trying to make in my original post about Jason and Helena. Nothing more, nothing less.

#long post #jason todd #jason todd meta #dc comics #queue

[mythserene]

Call him “Epstein” – How far is Mark Lewisohn willing to go to force a false narrative?

 “I don’t care what you think of Klein, call Klein something else. Call him ‘Epstein’ for now, and just consider the fact that three of us chose ‘Epstein.’”

John Lennon to Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone, May 14, 1970 

I keep asking “Why do you want me to believe John —(or George or Paul or or or)—said this?” And I keep asking because that is the question that keeps coming out of my mind, my mouth, and my keyboard.

It's the obvious question. (Spoiler: audio below of Lewisohn answering it for this quote.)

When you’re going to so much trouble to quote shop and quote twist, you have a purpose that you are torturing all these words to back up. You are trying to prove a point and there’s no real quote to support your position, so instead of changing your position, you act like Beatles’ words are appetizers in a buffet.

THREE OF US CHOSE EPSTEIN.

This premeditated and purposeful OBSCENITY has been sitting there for ten years. Two ladies with a podcast found it.

However, John remembered Paul’s attitude to Brian being very different. John was always emphatic that Paul didn’t want Brian as the Beatles’ manager and presented obstacles to destabilize him, to make his job difficult … like turning up late for meetings. “Three of us chose Epstein. Paul used to sulk and God knows what … [Paul] wasn’t that keen [on Brian]—he’s more conservative, the way he approaches things. He even says that: it’s nothing he denies.”(72)

I will never—NEVER— get over this one. There may be more shocking things to come, but it was this revelation that made me look at every one of Mark Lewisohn’s “author interviews” differently.

This is when I realized that there is nothing I would put past him.

Listening to that part of Episode 7 is so funny to me now. Daphne and Phoebe kept trying to stick to the outline and ask “Does this quote back up Lewisohn’s thesis?” but it was very difficult because they were in such total disbelief at Mark Lewisohn’s deception. (My label, although it’s a pretty inarguable one.) It is genuinely almost unbelievably dishonest. AKOM had a whole show filled with whoppers to get through, and they kept trying, but it took them awhile to move on because air-quotes-Epstein was like a magnet that kept pulling them back. So yesterday, to get out of editing some of my own mess, I put together a few of the times that the shock sucked them back in.

“I find that kind of shocking, really.” Tiny compilation of Phoebe and Daphne in disbelief over Mark Lewisohn’s purposeful misrepresentation of a quote of John Lennon talking about Allen Klein to attempt to show that John thought Paul was trying to thwart Brian Epstein. (Episode 7)

And most of us strongly suspect where Mark Lewisohn is going with this. He wants to rehabilitate Allen Klein because John can literally never be wrong—or perhaps an even stronger motive—he wants Paul to be very, very wrong. But whatever his motives, we can see what he’s doing. And we don’t have to just suspect, because he has already told us that he is going to use some of his most unforgivable lies to shape that narrative.

And there’s only one reason to do that: because there are no real quotes to back up the narrative he wants to push.

It tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the narrative he wants to push is quite literally unsupportable.

To make it work, Lewisohn has to lie about what John Lennon actually said.

*This post was first going to be about both the “quotes” that Mark Lewisohn references here, but in the end I couldn’t not give “call him ‘Epstein'” its own post. Which means I have actually shortened a post. (Please clap.)

Every ‘quote’ in the “spanner in the works” section is bullshit. Every. Single. One. I’m not going to the thesaurus for a fancier word. They are bullshit. Complete and utter, doctored, twisted, bullshit. The man is lying. And what really chaps my ass is that he is flat out telling us that he is going to use those same lies to push his bullshit narrative of the breakup. Like damn, that takes a lot of nerve.

Here is Mark Lewisohn telling us, straight out, that it’s these same bullshit quotes that he plans on using again to fool us. And he should be a laughingstock when he does. Not in some quarters. In all.

He must think we are such dupes. Although he’s gotten away with it so far, so up until now he hasn’t been wrong.

(There’s a bit more to this part of the Q & A and it’s all bad, but for this post I decided to leave it at Mark Lewisohn telling us that he is going to use the exact same sources he used for the “spanner” section to push this lie in the upcoming books.)

Fool me twice…

Would John and George have seen the parallel between Epstein and Klein in 1969?  LEWISOHN: ❝Yes. I’m sure the answer to that is yes, because John mentioned it in interviews, probably in Wenner’s, maybe the one with McCabe and Sconfeld— Schonfeld. Yes.❞ (📍Nothing is Real)

Transcript:

Q. In Hornsey Road you were talking about the three-to-one Allen Klein split, and I was saying to you that it seemed to me that it paralleled what is mentioned in Tune In about, uh, the appointment of Brian Epstein. That- that Paul was sort of holding back or was not keen to move forward with Brian Epstein. And I suppose my question was, is there a direct parallel there? And would, in 1969, John and George in particular have been conscious of that parallel?

LEWISOHN: Yes. I’m sure the answer to that is yes, because John mentioned it in interviews, probably in Wenner’s, maybe the one with McCabe and Sconfeld– Schonfeld. Yes. John recognized that.

Nothing is Real Podcast • October 16, 2019, Episode 15 • Mark Lewisohn, Part II

---

And just remember that this is only one half of a hellacious Frankenquote.

(But I kept it short. 🎊 )

----

Even though I have given you zero reason to go there, it's also on my blog.

#the beatles #mark lewisohn #akom #fine tuning #tune in #beatles #historiography #brian epstein #allen klein #john lennon #paul mccartney #air-quotes-epstein #footnote 72 #spanner in the works #lewisohn #call him “epstein” #Spotify

[sillyfluffs]

As promised… a little bit of lee Veneer ;3

Velvet is embarrassed and big mad at Veneer so he pays the price for it lol

Velvet was ANNOYED.

And Veneer had been incredibly annoying all day.

So she wanted to seek out some revenge.

Especially for what he pulled earlier that day.

Velvet and Veneer had an interview again, and Veneer was being a cheeky lil shit, and tickled her and caused her to squeal and laugh pretty loud during the interview and it made her highly embarrassed.

Kid Ritz couldn’t help but laugh at the two siblings, and Orchid (who had been watching was absolutely squealing and fangirling at this info about Velvet LOL) but after the interview a very red in the face Velvet had shoved her brother down on the couch in the dressing room.

“VENEER! How DARE you embarrass me like that?!”

Veneer couldn’t help but laugh nervously.

“Eheh… I-I was just playin Vels… s-sorry??”

“You WILL be sorry for what you pulled on me back there!!”

She wasted no time in digging her fingers into his sides and causing Veneer to squeal and bust out laughing.

“EEEAHAHAHHAA VEHEHELS!! IHIHM SAHAHAREHEEE!! MEHEHERCEHEHEE!!”

Velvet was enjoying torturing him already and just kept at it, making sure to get his ribs as well.

“I don’t think you’re sorry enough yet!”

“IEHEHE AM HEHEHHEE!! NOHO WAHAHAHIT-!!”

Veneer was very much so a drama queen when it came to this and was whining in between his laughs. You can tell he didn’t mind it though, he enjoyed just goofing around and playing with his sis, and he definitely knew he had it coming!

Velvet smirked and just kept teasing now scribbling along his stomach.

“Don’t think you didn’t have this coming! I’ll decide when you’ve had enough.”

Veneer just kept giggling like the goober that he was, honestly he was having fun despite how torturous it was for him. Veneer also just wanted to let his sister let out whatever steam she had on him. He could take it, or could he? He screamed when she went for his armpits.

“AAAAHHAHAAHA WAHAHAHAIT!! ANOOHOANOTTHEHEHERE!!”

Velvet grinned in satisfaction and just kept at it.

“Can’t take what you dish out huh baby bro~? You knew what was going to happen if you kept provoking me didn’t you?”

Veneer was red and absolutely in hysterics. Yeah ok, he did know what would happen! Maybe he just liked bonding with his sister and seeing her happy, and getting to play and have affection given to him. It kind of felt nice. Even if it tickled so badly.

“NYEHEHEHHEE—!! IHII SAHAHAID I WAS SAHAHAREEHEE VELHEHELS!!”

Velvet scoffed and rolled her eyes.

“Like I believe that.”

She then went to his hips and squeezed, causing Veneer to squeal and jump.

“AHH—!! OHOKAKAHAY IHIHI GIHIVEEE!! PLEHEHEASE!!”

Velvet shook her head.

“Let’s see, not only did you tickle me at this interview, but last I checked, you CONSTANTLY bug me and get ALL my spots, I think it’s only fair I do the same to you for being the bratty little brother that you are!”

Veneer snorted and smacked at the couch, kicking wildly as Velvet went for his thighs.

“VEHEHEHLHEHEHE!! IHIHI WOHOHONT BOHOTHER YOHOHOU ANYMOHORE!!!”

Velvet snorted a laugh.

“Yeah right!”

Veneer kept trying to plead his way out but it obviously wasn’t working, so he just threw his head back and kept laughing his head off. He was in tears now and just let his sister continue on.

He screamed when she went behind his knees.

Velvet smirked as her brother smacked the couch wildly and kept cackling like crazy.

“This is what you deserve~”

“AHAHAHA VEHEHEHELS!! PLEHEHEASE— OHOHOGOHOD—!!”

She immediately went for his feet straight after, causing him to snort and smack the couch even more.

“OHAOHOKAHAHAY IHIHI GIHIHIVE!! PLEHEHEASE VEHEHELVS!!”

Velvet kept going.

“Hm idk… whats in it for me~?”

Veneer snorted and tried to bargain.

“IHIHILL LEHEHEAVE YOU BEHEHE AHAHAND WEHEHEE CAN GOHO SHOPPING AHAHAFTER THIS- IHIHIL DRIHIVE UHUHS— HEHEHE!!”

Velvet looked intrigued and immediately stopped.

“Ooo that sounds fun actually! Let’s go now!”

Veneer panted and laid there trying to catch his breath.

“O-ohakay… p-please give me a sec… oof…”

Velvet was already running out the door shouting at Veneer to hurry up, and Veneer, lightheaded stumbled onto his feet to go after her. Living with Velvet was a handful. But he loved his sister dearly and would do just about anything for her, even if she was a lil brat at times.

Veneer would definitely give Velvet a break for now though.

#lee!veneer #ler!velvet #trolls 3 tickle

[ejzah]

For @anonkp, who wanted a continuation of my previous story, “Shattered Beyond Repair”. (I originally said the companion fic was a different title, but that is incorrect).

***

We’ll Make it New

The past three weeks has been miserable. While Deeks had officially ended their relationship, he hadn’t left NCIS or LAPD. At least not yet. Apparently he’d handed in his resignation, but told both Bates and Hetty he would stay on until they found his replacement.

It was a unique kind of torture. Seeing Deeks every day made her chest ache with longing, yet she coveted every moment they had together. To make it a little easier on her, Sam and Callen had taken to splitting she and Deeks up more days than not.

Thankfully they’d refrained from making any comments so far. Small favors, she supposed.

Today, started out with a debrief in OPS as usual on a suspicious double murder. Instead of standing next to Kensi as he once did, Deeks took position near the back of the room. As though he was physically distancing himself as much as he was emotionally.

“What do you think, Deeks?” Callen asked after Nell and Eric had gone over all the current details. Everyone turned to face Deeks, unusually quiet these days, and he considered the question for a few seconds.

This new version of him was quieter, more serious, more prone to deliberation. Like so many things recently, she regretted ever wishing that Deeks would less talkative, less the jokester…less him. She regretted not appreciating what they had.

“I think it’s suspicious that Lt. Anderson knew both victims and just rolled back into town two days ago,” Deeks said eventually. And that was it.

“Ok, then Sam and Kensi you can go talk to the Lieutenant. Deeks and I will interview his immediate superior,” Callen decided.

***

“How you holding up?” Sam asked as they drove to the Lieutenant’s home.

“Barring my father’s death and the times I’ve thought Deeks was dead, these have been the worst weeks of my life,” Kensi answered truthfully. “And I know what you’re going to say: I told you so,” she added with an exhausted sigh.

“Actually, I wasn’t. I don’t take any pleasure in your or Deeks’ pain,” Sam replied. “I do think you have some considerations to make.”

“Like what?”

“Well, you two are clearly both miserable. Deeks wants out, you don’t. I’d say you need to figure out if there’s a way that you can make both of those happen while existing as a couple?”

“Well, if it were that easy, I wouldn’t be single or searching for a new home.” She didn’t mean to snap, but she was on edge and feeling judged.

“I never said it was easy.” Sam chuckled dryly, shaking his head. “Believe me, Michelle and I had this “conversation” more than once.” He smiled softly. “When Michelle got pregnant, it was a big surprise. She was the one who decided to resign from fieldwork, but we argued a lot about whether I should stay in or not. In the end, we decided that me staying would work.

“I wouldn’t say that I regret that decision, but I missed out on quite a few bedtimes, school events, and all over the years. Those are times I can’t get back. And I can’t get back the missed date nights with Michelle. Or the days when she had to be the only parent to our kids.”

“I’m getting mixed messages here,” Kensi said with mild annoyance.

“Sorry. Basically, if being an NCIS Special Agent is what does make you happy, then that’s fine. If not…maybe it’s time to reconsider,” Sam said. “Work will always be there, people won’t.”

***

Kensi found herself rethinking Sam’s advice for the next several days. Somehow, once he’d laid it all out for her, it did seem amazingly simple. She wasn’t happy or content, even if she didn’t find some amount of pleasure in her work. It all seemed dull and worthless without Deeks by her side.

Which is why four days after talking with Sam, she found herself walking up the cracked sidewalk to the address she’d convinced Nell to give her. She knocked on the door before she chickened out and waited, heart pounding.

When Deeks opened the door a few moment later, he blinked in apparent surprise at finding her on his doorstep.

“Kensi, what are you—?”

“I quit,” she blurted out before Deeks could even voice his entire question. Which was not what she’d planned on saying at all.

“You quit?” Deeks repeated slowly, shaking his head slowly. “As in…?”

“NCIS. As of this morning, I’m not an NCIS Special Agent.”

Deeks’ face lit up for the briefest of seconds before he sobered, his expression shifting to one of disbelief. “Why?”

“Because I want you,” Kensi said reaching for his hand. She didn’t let his lack of response dissuade her.

“That didn’t make a difference before. At least not enough of one,” he reminded her. Kensi dipped her head, acknowledging his comment with a short nod.

“Yeah, well, I had a talk with Sam and he gave me reconsider some things.”

“He’s pretty good at that,” Deeks murmured softly, with a hint of his usual humor.

“He is.” She lifted her head, tears pricking the back of her eyes, as she took a step closer. “And I really missed you. More than any position, or mission could ever make up for.”

“But Kensi, you love field work. You love everything about helping people, the intrigue, and danger of it all. I can’t live up to that.” Her heart ached at the quiet hope tinged with resignation in Deeks’ voice.

“Yes, you can,” Kensi insisted fiercely, grasping his hand and pressing it to her chest. “Because I love you. More than anything. I can find ways to help people and fulfill my inner daredevil that won’t put me in danger the way that fieldwork does.”

“Are you sure?” Deeks whispered, his thumb gently rubbing over the back of her hand.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Yes, I want to be with you.”

Deeks made a sound that was a cross between a gasp of relief and a sob, drawing her into his arms. Kensi cupped her hands around his jaw, almost desperate in her need to kiss him.

“I love you,” he whispered, burying his nose in her neck. She felt him shudder against her, and held him even tighter.

She’d come so close to losing this, him, forever. She’d never make that mistake again.

“I love you too,” she repeated. “So much.”

***

I hope that was alright.

Thanks for the prompt!

#ncis la fanfiction #marty deeks #kensi blye #densi #make up fic #angst #then romance #au post to live and die in Mexico #ejzah fanfiction

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The alleged presidential campaign of Ron (Three-Fingers) DeSantis is having so much trouble gaining altitude that you'd think Elon Musk were behind it. (Too soon? Don't care.) He seems to be extraordinarily unlikable, but he makes up for it by proposing policies that are extraordinarily unpopular. He has picked a fight with Mickey Mouse. But there's another devil in the unpleasant details of the DeSantis CV. From the Washington Post:

Hundreds of “enemy combatants,” held without charges, had gone on hunger strikes. As pressure grew to end the protests, DeSantis later said, he was part of a team of military lawyers asked what could be done.

“How do I combat this?” a commanding officer asked in 2006, as DeSantis recalled in an interview he gave years later to a local CBS television station. “Hey, you actually can force-feed,” DeSantis said he responded in his role as a legal adviser. “Here’s what you can do. Here’s kind of the rules for that.” Ultimately, it was the Pentagon’s decision to authorize force-feeding. Detainees were strapped into a chair and a lubricated tube was stuffed down their nose so a nurse could pour down two cans of a protein drink, according to military records.

Force-feeding is torture. Among other things, it is a stench in the history of England in Ireland going back centuries. There are no "rules" that make it less so. Only alibis.

The Post's story came out in March. As far as I can tell, it got buried in all the other stories about DeSantis' fight with Disney and about the dysfunction in his campaign. But it's now sprung back to life. DeSantis is in Israel, pretending he's a world leader. At a press availability, a reporter dogged him about his work at Guantanamo. Whereupon, DeSantis blew his cork. From The Hill:

“No, no, all that’s BS,” DeSantis told reporters at a press conference in Jerusalem. “No, totally, totally BS...How would they know me? OK, think about that. Do you honestly believe that’s credible? So, this is 2006. I’m a junior officer. Do you honestly think that they would have remembered me from Adam? Of course not.”

“They’re just trying to get into the news because they know people like you will consume it because it fits your preordained narrative that you’re trying to spin. Focus on the facts and stop worrying about narrative.”

"Narrative" is one of the newest conjuring words that conservative politicians use to obscure the obvious. And the only "pre-ordained narrative" I'm aware of concerning DeSantis is that he's a not-very-bright lightweight who's punching way above his weight class and who's running the 1962 Mets of presidential campaigns. This Gitmo business is way beyond both of those.

Mansoor Adayfi, a former Guantanamo detainee, alleged in an Al-Jazeera op-ed earlier this month that DeSantis was present when he was force-fed during an effort to break a hunger strike at the prison. Many international groups have said force-feeding amounts to torture. “As I tried to break free, I noticed DeSantis’s handsome face among the crowd at the other side of the chain link. He was watching me struggle. He was smiling and laughing with other officers as I screamed in pain,” Adayfi said in the op-ed.

He's going to need a better answer than "Narrative!" for this one. It would be a very sad irony if the only American politician to suffer politically for the torture regime created in 2001 were Ronald DeSantis, as a potential presidential candidate in 2023. History has some formidable teeth.

#us politics #news #esquire #2023 #gov. ron desantis #florida #2024 elections #2024 presidential election #2024 presidential race #guantanamo bay #forced feeding #the washington post #the hill #torture

[arcielee]

Interview With a Writer

Here is part 3 of my Interview With a Writer series. You can go to this post to review the other amazing authors I have spoken with ♥ Just a BTS of some of the talented minds on Tumblr and ao3.

Name: inthedayswhenlandswerefew

Story: North to the Future

Paring: modern Aegon Targaryen x Reader

Rating/Warning: Sexual themes, substance abuse, acts of violence, and there is a serial killer, so murder.

So when did you start writing?  I can remember working on pieces of stories as far back as elementary school, but I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer. Then in 2010, when I was 15, I got my first vivid, all-consuming, lightning bolt of an idea. It took over my life in the best possible way and I wrote a novel over 9 months. 

Now, to be clear, the novel was very bad. But you have to read a lot and write a lot before you start getting good at it, and that experience was absolutely transformative for me. 

I had a lot of chaotic life situations and a bit of a crisis of confidence, and I wrote only sporadically during college and for several years afterwards. Then in 2018, I saw Bohemian Rhapsody and it became my only personality trait for a while. 

As I was reblogging a million gifsets on Tumblr, I stumbled across fanfiction for the first time, and I was like…wait…other people make up self-insert stories every time they get obsessed with a movie/show too?! It was so exciting, I finally felt like I had an outlet to put my ideas and characters out into the world. I’ve been writing pretty consistently since February 2019, and I would consider that the point when I really became a writer.

I think it is safe to say every writer has that first, all-consuming novel. Does it still exist? Oh yeah, it definitely still exists! I have a Word Doc, and also a paper copy that I had printed and bound at Staples back in the day. It’s a dystopian story about a man who has to pretend to be a true believer in an oppressive regime in order to rise to the top and change it from within, but by the end of the journey he’s become sort of genuinely evil. I keep the paper copy in a box under my bed. Poor quality notwithstanding, it has a lot of sentimental value.

Okay, where did the plot for North to the Future come from? What inspired the story? Towards the end of writing my Aemond fic—Have You No Idea That You’re In Deep?—I started feeling this fascination with Aegon as a character, and I could kind of sense that there was a story about him ready to be excavated from wherever ideas wait to be discovered. 

I kept picturing him in an unassuming little bar filled with Christmas lights as snow fell outside: sad, drunk, wearing all black. But I didn’t have a story yet, just a vision. And the songs I kept hearing when I thought about this tortured modern Aegon were 90s songs: Everlong, A Long December, Drive. 

Then one day out of nowhere, the plot showed up. 

The first real idea I get for a story is always the very end, and I saw Aegon and the protagonist barreling down the Pacific Coast Highway in a red convertible. I knew that Aegon was sober and going back home to face some terrible past, and that the girl he loved was experiencing California for the first time, and that they were both finally free of demons they’d been running from their whole lives. Once I knew the ending, the rest of the details started falling into place, and within a few days I had an outline and chapter list.

Explain your interpretation of Aegon. What drives him? Why is he the way he is in NttF? Aegon is a talented and intuitive person, but he’s clearly not suited for running a venture capital empire or corporate work in general. So his earliest, most formative memories are of his parents (and grandfather) being disappointed in him. He experienced abuse, both emotional and physical, and developed extremely harmful coping mechanisms that at a certain point he no longer knew how to function without. He was suicidal in part because of his self-loathing and the futility of his situation, but also because the only time he received even vague compassion from his parents was after he had swallowed a bottle of pills or stabbed himself with four of his mother’s EpiPens. 

Of course what Aegon overlooked was that he did have people back in Miami who cared about and wanted to help him, although they were too young to effectively communicate it: Aemond, Helaena, and Daeron.

After the accident that claimed Aemond’s eye and three innocent lives, Aegon can’t cope with reminders of what he’s done because he’s fundamentally not someone who ever wants to hurt others. He directs his destructiveness inwards, not outwards, and even when striking out in self-defense he runs away as soon as the opportunity presents itself. That’s the real difference between Aegon and Jesse. When Dadtini talks about Jesse, he mentions bruises and kicked down doors. That’s not Aegon. Jesse gives bruises, Aegon gets them.

Was there anything in specific that inspired your Reader portrayal? I didn’t consciously have anyone in mind when I was writing Appletini, but most of my Readers tend to be snarky, studious, and guarded (yet reluctantly hopeful), so that’s probably my own personality bleeding into the characters! I envisioned someone who was well-intentioned and ostensibly responsible, yet under the surface struggling in a way that she felt she couldn’t share with anybody else. I think most people have felt like that at some point in their lives, so it’s just a matter of being able to take the essence of that feeling and shape it to fit with the story’s narrative. Honestly, the most difficult part of writing Appletini was her relationship with her extremely supportive and functional parents, as that’s not something I have much experience with. I was really relieved when people connected with Momtini and Dadtini as characters because I wasn’t sure if I was doing them justice. In what ways do you feel your Reader compliments Aegon? The defining characteristic of the Aegon/Appletini relationship is that she wants him to become the best version of himself, and truly believes that he has the capacity to if he’ll work for it. She knows he’s brilliant, she knows he’s a genuinely good person under all of his issues and mistakes, she knows he’s fine af, and she knows she loves him. But none of that is enough if he’s not sober.

Someone like Heather or Joyce wouldn’t see value in Aegon, and someone like Kimmie wouldn’t push him to change. The story is in the war that Appletini fights to prove that Aegon can and should conquer his demons. Similarly, Aegon wants Appletini to break free of her suffocating obligations in Juneau, and it causes him genuine pain to see her not living the life she wants. They really want the best for each other, even in their worst moments.

Was there another character (OC or canon) in your story you enjoyed portraying? (And why?) Firstly, I really enjoyed writing Kimmie because she’s a twist on the trope of the attractive, overtly-sexual, not terribly intellectual girl always getting killed in horror movies. Kimmie is the “hot friend” and she loves to party, but she’s also deeply loyal and affectionate, and she notices certain things that other people don’t. I wanted the readers to underestimate her, and then hate her, and then come back to realizing that she wasn’t a villain after all. She could use a better sense of boundaries, but she’s a good person. I feel like by the end of NTTF, it’s clear why Heather, Joyce, and Appletini are friends with Kimmie despite all her…peculiarities.

Secondly, Trent was a super fun character to write, because he’s unnerving without being completely unrealistic. He reminds me of a lot of the frat boys I went to college with…superficially pleasant yet entitled, less malicious than willfully ignorant about anything that doesn’t fit with what he wants in life. He’s a product of the “boys will be boys” era that he grew up in, especially with Alaska being more old-fashioned than the rest of the country, so the 1990s there feel like the 1960s or 70s in some ways. Also, I can’t lie, I loved all the dumb horse boi jokes.

Finally, I absolutely adored Aemond as a character and I was just as impatient as the readers were for him to finally show up in Chapter 11. He’s so stoic and fierce, but he has a tremendous amount of love for Aegon and this blind faith in his ability to change for the better. Aemond’s personality is a lot like Appletini’s, which is why they end up having this tacit respect for each other. I think they end up as close friends eventually, probably even closer than Aemond and Aegon.

Was there an OC character that reflects the author? Out of all the NTTF characters, I am definitely the most like Heather! I’m that friend who is snarky and judgmental on the surface, but also ferociously protective…which can be tough when you’re watching your friends make questionable decisions, like our poor beloved Heather was forced to throughout the series. I know she was thrilled to see that everyone ended up happy. That’s all we really want, us Heathers of the world.

You mentioned your retirement from fan fiction, so what is next? What’s next is writing a novel, which I am super excited about! I’ve had the plot figured out for a few years now and have written bits and pieces of it already, but now I’m determined to dive in without any creative detours and get it written, hopefully within a year. 

I do have some trepidation about the project—What if the idea isn’t good? What if I can’t do it justice? What if I can’t keep to a schedule now that I don’t have an amazingly wonderful audience expecting weekly updates?—but I’ve come to realize that if I never try to be a “real” writer, I’m going to regret it my whole life. I’m trying to be logical about it and tell myself that even if my first book isn’t perfect, I can always write others, so it’s not like my whole future is contingent upon this one project. I’ve had the idea for so long that the characters feel real to me, and I just want to tell their story well.

#interview with a writer #iwaw3 #bts #of their brilliant writing #i hope you all enjoy #♥ #aegon targaryen fanfic #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon ii fanfic #aegon ii x you #biiiiiiitch

[la-hannya]

So raisin’s long awaited Shiina Sessrin chapter finally released and it confirmed that Shiina seems just as dedicated to butchering Sesshomaru’s character as Sunrise/Sumisawa did. I can’t believe the fandom is still simping for PedoShiina when he’s aptly demonstrated through this chapter alone that he makes the characters just as OOC as Sunrise did. Between Kagome “being jealous” of Sessrin and wishing Inuyasha was a more romantic husband like Sesshomaru (as if she herself hasn’t always been Inuyasha’s single biggest fan and would never dare to make him feel small by comparing him with Sesshomaru, his racist brother who tortured him in his youth, also rather than “envying” Sessrin she would be the first one in line to shoot an arrow through Groomermaru’s Pedophilic ass) and now him actually having Sesshomaru be the one to make the first “move” towards Rin and say incredibly sappy OOC stuff like “Rin is my everything” - it’s clear he doesn’t understand these characters any better than Sunrise.

Also his incessant need to continue making callbacks to “child Rin” during the “Sessrin” chapters and having Rin outside say she worships Sesshomaru like a God… 🤢🤢 At least it proves something the entire fandom has always been knew: They were not and never will be equals. Rin isn’t some strong girlboss ~QUEEN~ who wears the pants in that relationship like her fans self-inserters claim. she is an infantile child who was groomed by her guardian who she will forever hold up on a pedastal as a literal God and can see no flaws within him because he was the first/only person who ever gave her a sliver of kindness, and thus she feels she literally can’t say no to him.

Heya! @sweet61 beat me to most of what I wanted to express first, so you should check her answer before the things I'm gonna add to that here ^^ cause I share her sentiments.

Shiina's take on SR is him taking a bandaid 🩹and trying to stop a leak💧on a dam with it. Cause it's pretty obvious he knows about the backlash with all his statements. We went from anime loliconmaru using Rib as a creepy experiment cause he was curious about what was like to love and being a dad to "he made advances on her but actually Rib was the one who started it by seducing him with "Did Rin grow up? 😉😊" Stuff like that. Including him BLUSHING which was like a big no no for the rules RT has for his character. OOC and if he actually ever does that blush it would actually be microscopic as hell. You would need to get your 🔍 to actually see it. I understand Sesshomaru can be awkward but by the gods... WTF

BUT

He's still no different from the anime hny cause he still doesn't give a fuk about them kids really, has inukag on deep-freeze along the kid wife in this supposed masterplan along his mother because he doesn't really know WTF he is doing.

Congrats, you just made the infamous "Aristocratic Assassin" lord of the west a complete dumbass with creep still sprinkled around 🙄

I've already talked about this in the Sesskik Discord but Rin believing Sesshomaru is a God/Kami—Shiina took that from the wide-ban volume interview RT did about Rin and Jaken. Which btw, as you can see she makes clearly here what Rin was meant to be (and it's not what the romantic kind. This was before the Hogosha one)

And another call back to the "child". Interesting how Rin is supposed to be an adult, all we getting on this thing is references and personality of her being said child 😑.

I'm not surprised. Since "adult Rin" seemingly doesn't exist. Manga "adult Rin" doesn't even look like herself. It's like Shiina took his mouse, clicked cut on Kagome, took her to Photoshop and then called it a day. I'm sure the Sesskag Fandom had good laugh about that.

I'll say this. I'm not gonna name or whatever but I'm gonna say it. If you love this fandom and don't want it to finish going to a Oblivion like it has recently these past few months... Don't Support this. Stop giving it ratio. Just cause it's giving you some crumbs of said characters' daughter. And I adore said character mind you. Plus the villain. Hells, he even called pedomaru out for bad parenting and being awful. He had potential. But really think about it.

Like at this point I barely even see even stuff from my favorite characters. Because most of it is a constantly barraged out of the algorithm with unwanted CP SR in various positions unless I block it cause that's all they think about their ship while simultaneously constantly making week celebrations just to be able to trend cause they can't even make the official polls without bots...

Don't give your time on that. There's a ton of people in this fandom. Who are amazing and can do better content in a day that even Shiina, or Pedosawa, or even RT will. From Sesskik, Sesskagu, Sesskag, SessSara, SessNara or just Sessh himself while also being a cool single dad cause that's also valid and fits his character completely. As well as content about the other Inuyasha characters. The twins don't even look like their own "mother" so you can even imagine the mother as someone else.

Even a little ❤️, like, or comment for any of those content creators is enough. By showing support to the original series and people who truly love and understand these characters, I swear you'll be happier in the long run as well as peace of mind. We already got that anime fanfic cancelled. Plus don't let sinners try to censor you with lies, or try bully you into accepting their ship in social media. If they want to ship it that badly they can stick to their corner and stop harassing peeps who have the minimist disagreement about it or ship something else. They constantly diss other ships and make up stuff to attack others, yet they expect us to stay quiet about theirs and their antics 🙃

....double standards

That being said if you're ever feeling like shit about this just remember. Even Shiina knows "it's not canon". This is his "doujinshi" of that original animation. Yes, it's an official product but it isn't part of the main continuity that is the original Inuyasha.

The og series ended in June 18, 2008, with an ending that had enough openness to interpret whatever you like on what happens next

And that's the canon ending.

Yashahime is just one these. It's a bad one. OOC. An insult to the original. Destroyed the development of main characters. I know. RT didn't even write it. But in the end you choose. I already did and I announced it back for my pairing's weekend so look forward to it once I'm able to publish it, hopefully. if you're interested it on my imagination about it.

Phew! That was more than I expected to write.

In the meantime, take care of yourselves.

#asks #anti sessrin #anti rinsess #anti Yashahime #antisessrin

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Ik your probly tired of hearing about the mcu and its fans but I just remembered that some on Twitter argued that it was ok that peggy carter or cyintha glass to exist in the mcu because that's one less nazi.

Like how do you miss understand a very important part of history and not understand why it's problematic to have a character who was a nazi be good this is the whole reason I don't like mcu zemo and peggy carter because I feels like it's ignoring a part of history.

Uugh. Twitter.

To say MCU Peggy is one fewer Nazi is uhhhh. Incorrect.

Because: they didn't JUST take the character design of Cynthia and leave all her Nazi behaviour in the comics.

MCU Peggy's Nazi behaviour is NOT just a one-off retconned thing from the WS movie, and exhibited nowhere else. She is linked to the hiring of multiple foundational Hydra members in SHIELD.

(Arnim Zola, shown three times if we're including other universes so it's definitely an intrinsic part of her character; she, alone, job interviewed Werner Reinhardt; she, personally, alone, hired Johann Fennhoff when he was pretending to be good, because she is The World's Most Rubbish Spy... (Fun fact, that means if you killed Peggy off in 1945 then Bucky would never have been turned into the Winter Soldier, since she hired both Hydra members responsible for his torture/mind-control!) ...Mitchell Carson, and since the Winter Soldier program seems to be linked with the early Red Room, then her buddy Dorothy Underwood the Black Widow also counts! And as the saying goes: if you have 10 people at the table and one Nazi, then you have 10 Nazis.)

...And now they've bought the comics and changed comics-Peggy to match comics-Cynthia/MCU-Peggy, their solution to all this is to claim Peggy simply didn't know Hydra were in SHIELD.

W o w.

IIRC, new-comics Peggy calls Bucky "insane" for questioning her integrity (right before she viciously attacks him of course, like an innocent person?? uhh… authoritarian much?) and she describes the mere suggestion of her knowing about Hydra as being "unthinkable".

(Well now, to be fair, everything is unthinkable when you're an idiot.)

So that's the MCU's retconned fix for this: not even claiming she didn't do it, just saying she was incompetent and oblivious for decades before. Which is also: nonsense.

Because Zola was in her bunker. Her photo and office were 1 short elevator ride away from his. He was on the front page of the news. Even if she were illiterate, he was still in the photo!

Who did she think Howard was talking about all those years, whenever he mentioned Arnim?? Where did she think he was getting all this tesseract-based innovation from, the fairies??

Most damning of all, in CATWS as soon as Steve comes sniffing round, telling her he's having second thoughts about SHIELD, her response is to laugh at him, tell him he's being melodramatic, and then that he should not focus on the past (eg. which "we" rather mucked up, she admits… that's the Royal we!) And days later Zola is free to try and kill Steve for the second time. Even when she's supposed to be demented, she's still conveniently covering her own ass!

The problem goes right back to the comics...

It was a colossal tin-eared giant oozing dick of a move to pair off Captain America, the Hitler-punching Jewish Golem, with a Nazi character in the first place.

That, and giving a Nazi character a chance to 'redeem' themselves, is directly antithetical to what Steve was created to represent, and so disrespectful of a choice for a Jewish creation (let alone one created with the specific purpose of encouraging anti-Fascism) that it's bordering on antisemitism imo. No one in their right mind would believe this specific set of Jewish creators could be cool with that.

Also, the belief (you can kind of tell they had in the Cynthia comic) that a Nazi killing another Nazi somehow makes that killed Nazi less of a Nazi?? Like, Red Skull killed her so she must be okay?? Uhh, no??

(The Agent Carter s1 book also tries to push the idea that Cynthia died to save Steve, which is - again - nonsense. If you look at the panels, all she did is throw Steve his shield in Red Skull's presence, and Red Skull shot her because he was annoyed. She didn't leap in between them or anything!)

And, to draw on that Nazi character at all, when there are multiple Cap love interests they could've used - many of them brunette too, if they were stuck with brunette casting - including at least one Jewish woman?? MCU were drawing on the Ultimates run, where iirc his love interest was a Betsy Ross (brunette!) who could easily have been swapped out for the Betty Ross from the Hulk movies who they already had on-tap, as it were.

Picking Cynthia was just an unnecessary, unethical move. That character should've been avoided at all costs, not seen as inspiration fodder (doubly so, to avoid associations with Julia Koenig, another brunette Nazi villainess - AKA Kreigerfrau - who was also was present in Project Rebirth in the comics and stole superserum for herself, like multiple villains and MCU Peggy!)

And if they were that desperate to have Steve's love interest 'know' him before the serum, then they should've A) had her actually deign to speak to him in the movie, B) just picked a damn character who actually knew him before the serum! Like his fiancée Gail Richards!

But they wanted to water down Steve's motive for fighting Nazis (because he hates them and what they represent, which makes Disney uncomfy), and water down the homoerotic undertones of his devotion to Bucky (which makes Disney uncomfy; only gay villains, pls!) So they replaced it with 'wanting to be big so he can get a girl', so that MCU Peggy could seem important to him.

Then assuming (as that creepy dead-eyed fuck Kevin Feige heinously continues to do) that being short and disabled somehow therefore precluded Steve from having a lover is so... ugh, ableist and incel-y and again completely ignores the actual character of Steve, for whom women are not and never have been the main drive.

#toAyourQ #cynthia glass #long post #antipeggy #antisteggy #p*ggy meta #steggy is hydra trash party #mcu critical #julia koenig #mcu meta #meta #more on cynthia in the comics under the cut #my salt on this subject appears to be neverending lol #old ask #dat's me #also still suspicious that you get no results when you search my blog for eg. julia koenig #kreigerfrau #steve rogers #steve meta

[riley1cannon]

Trick or Treat! Thank you 🎃🎃

Yay, thank you! Here you go, a little bit of a BBC Sherlock/ACD canon mash up fic I started once upon a time, and occasionally think about completing. It was meant to be for Halloween, in fact, with thrills and chills (so I hoped), so it seems appropriate:

Sid sat up straighter and reached for the pile of documents he had deposited on the table among the tea things. “They are, yes. Don’t you see, Dr. Watson, these faux societies modeled themselves after the Société des Corps D'elite. The Société des Corps D'elite is who the Illuminati and all the others aspire to be. Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson,” Sid earnestly appealed to them both, and there was something so authentic in that gravity of manner that Sherlock almost wished he could believe him, “I realize what I’m telling you sounds fantastic but if you would only look at my evidence,”—here came another sheaf of papers, some typed, some handwritten notes, all stapled and clipped together—“you would understand. Here,” he pulled one document free and held it out, “just look at this. It clearly shows the connection between the Society and the Hellfire Club--”

“No.” Sherlock held up a hand to forestall him. He had heard enough now. “No. We have gone from cryptids and sacrificial rites to Spring-Heeled Jack and the Illuminati, and now arrive at Sir Francis Dashwood and the Hellfire Club? No, enough.” He extended a long arm, finger pointed at the door. “Leave, now.”

“Mr. Holmes--” Sid stood and began to gather his papers and books. He dropped some, and then dropped some more as he stooped to retrieve the first batch. “Mr. Holmes, you are making a terrible mistake. This is real. You must look into it.” He continued to implore even as Sherlock escorted him to the door. “Culverton Smith and Grimsby Roylott are the Society’s most treacherous agents but Baron Gruner’s up to his neck as well, and--” He broke off then as though he finally grasped his failure to make a convincing case. Disappointment and a kind of fatalistic resignation crept over his expression as he murmured, “I expected so much more of you, Mr. Holmes.”

Unaccountably stung by that last comment, Sherlock shut the door firmly as Sid Persano took his leave at last. He waited a moment and then crossed quickly to the windows where he plucked aside a curtain to watch as Sid emerged from 221 and stood, hapless and forlorn, on the sidewalk. As John came over to join him, Sherlock asked, “Is this where you tell me that was a bit harsh?”

“Thought that could be taken as read.” John peered out at Baker Street where Sid still lingered, shifting his bundle of papers and books. “He does need help.”

“Consulting detective is not a term synonymous with psychiatrist.”

“And just because someone has an irrational obsession doesn’t mean they can’t be in real danger.”

No, no it didn’t. And Sherlock couldn’t deny that the one thing that had rung crystal clear and authentic throughout the entire interview was that Sid Persano was profoundly afraid.

And because I feel extra generous (and am bemoaning that once again I didn't have anything to post for Halloween), here's a preview of a fic I dearly do want to complete one day:

~Vampires of Gotham~

Klarion the Witch Boy was infuriated...

“Pfft!” He spat at the television screen as the local news carried on with its coverage of Casey Stirling’s appearance in Gotham City tonight. Author of the inexplicably popular Grymwood Chronicles, this Stirling woman was scheduled to do a book signing at the Page Turners book shop where her latest volume of hackneyed paranormal twaddle would make its debut.

Would Eden Cordray, tortured vampire with a soul, finally proclaim her love for dashing adventurer/inventor Ransom Wingate? If she did, how could Eden ever resist the temptation to turn Ransom and keep him at her side forever? What of brooding and beautiful Father Alexi, torn between devotion to God and the charms of that femme fatale of a sorceress, Isidora Thane? Had the twins, Verity and Jack, finally unearthed the truth of who had murdered Professor Farradine two books ago, and why? And could the true mastermind behind everything be quiet and unassuming Cecily Dillane, everyone’s best friend and confidant, keeper of all the secrets?

Not that Klarion cared a whit. He had neither read any of the novels nor watched the equally successful films based upon them. His knowledge had been gathered as he lurked on fan sites filled with endless chatter on these and many other matters. The sheer minutia of these fans’ obsession often came near to driving him mad. To gain some relief, he sometimes responded to their postings anonymously to correct misconceptions about sorcery, vampires, or the djinn, or simply to point out how thoroughly feeble minded they all must be, always in an ultra-supercilious manner so as to guarantee the most dramatic hissyfits and demands that he go be a troll elsewhere.

This amusement had its limits, however, and as he watched the zealous acolytes of Casey Stirling lined up outside the bookstore, many of them costumed so as to mimic a favorite character, Klarion felt a powerful urge to do something far more profound.

 “What eldritch horrors should we unleash upon them?” he murmured as his cat, Teekl, curled itself around his shoulders and purred a suggestion into his ear—a perfectly wonderful, awful idea that made Klarion rub his hands together and smile with a glow of pure malevolence. “Yes,” he said as he warmed to it. “They dote upon these romantic incarnations of supernatural terrors but how would it be, eh, if the real thing walked among them?” This could make for glorious mischief indeed!

 “Come, Teekl, we have work to do…”

 ~*~

“Spoilers, Master Timothy,” Alfred warned as the boy persisted in skimming through The Necromancer’s Notebook. “We shall uncover its secrets soon enough,” he added and hefted his own copy as they edged ever closer to the front of the line.

Tim closed the book with noticeable reluctance. “I know I’m right about Cecily,” he said.

“We shall see.” 

Tim flipped to the back of his copy again, this time to check the page count. “Eight hundred and seventy-five… You know I can’t go online again until I’ve read the whole thing,” he said, a fretful note in his young voice.

“We shall apply our best efforts to the endeavor, never fear.” Where some books with such an inflated page count could easily be trimmed by at least a third and be none the worse for it, Miss Stirling was the rare author who truly delivered what was commonly known as bang for the buck. Alfred would not find it a chore to keep pace with Tim’s literary marathon.

“I still think you should have dressed up,” Tim said as he tugged at the collar of his own neat cassock, a twin to the one worn by the tortured priest, Alexi. “With your chauffeur's livery and a really cool pair of goggles you’d be just like Zedekiah Zane.”

Alfred appreciated the comment. Zedekiah was, after all, the most trusted confidante of Ransom Wingate. “Alas, I fear my cosplay days are long behind me, Master Timothy,” Alfred said and cast a look about at the colorful array of steampunk gothic adventurers, vampires, scholars, sorcerors, and others too numerous to catalog, “Besides, this family dresses up quite enough as it is.”

#hallowe'en #bbc sherlock #acd canon #dceu #klarion the witch boy #tim drake #alfred pennyworth #and yes there would have been eventual superbat in case anyone wonders

[rodeoromeo]

What gets to me is that everybody knows how close George was with his mom. She died during the making of ATMP and he watched her slowly get taken away by cancer. It doesn't occur to anybody he was only 26 and was grieving. Even Pattie wasn't very sympathetic in her book. He was also scarred from Beatlemania to the point where he was scared to go to the pub. Pattie seemed more annoyed by that than anything. Some of the things she complained about...it was like she had no concept of the weight on his shoulders.

god. yeah. he really was only 26……

I mean, I’ll be totally honest here for the first time with this. I don’t really… care that much for Pattie? I don’t know a terrible amount about her and certainly haven’t read her book, but honestly just got very weird vibes from her in Living In The Material World, and from some quotes and interviews with her I really don’t like the way she speaks about George, and their time together…. there’s a kind of detachedness and at the same time a certain control over the narrative that I don’t feel inclined to believe. this is never to excuse George for any infertility or inattentiveness he had towards her, and the hurt that he caused, but I feel she doesn’t actually get tough enough of a rap for her part in their relationship. like you I also have gotten the sense that she wasn’t really supportive of him through all of those things he was dealing with, and that she didn’t particularly involve herself with or understand the journey he was going through spiritually. that’s partially on George, because his personal journey taking away from sharing his life with his wife is something that like. in a marriage you do have to compromise. but again, they were SO young. part of it is just growing apart. but I don’t like the way Pattie talks about it even now, just being annoyed with and distasteful about his tendency to disappear into the garden and disappear into himself, instead of like…. talking to him and working through it. I think George is really a little more of a tortured character than people act like he is. he struggled with what friends near to him would call a kind of ptsd from the experience of beatlemania, he clearly had difficulty connecting to and relating to and dealing with this world. I don’t think Pattie was equipped to deal with it.

#sorry for the discourse fam … #george harrison #op #b talks

[alovelyburn]

Saw some of your Berserk meta and really like it - wondered if you had already written about or had any thoughts about this: Do you think Miura regrets the Eclipse, and Femto? Not giving Griffith power, but the lengths he had to bend the story - basically break it - to undo the drastic abuse he put Griffith through after Guts left the Band of the Hawk? The reason I get this vibe is that we don't actually see a whole lot of Femto after a certain time, but we see a HELL of a lot of Griffith - healed, healthy, powerful Griffith. I always kind of got the vibe that he felt like he had written himself into a corner after Guts left and Griffith crashed and burned - and he needed a way to fix that and get the story back on track. While I'm sure that something like the Eclipse was a key event in his plan... it felt to me like Miura took some steps to walk it back during his lifetime, and shifted NeoGriffith's focus on mostly being that 'angel' and half Moonlight Boy and all... because as Femto is, there's no way for human Guts to really effectively counter him, and that kind of punches a big hole in the story's logic.

Hello hello, thanks much for the compliment! So this is a bit of a yes and no.

Yes - There is reason to believe Miura may have regretted at least some of what went on in the Eclipse, but not for the reason you're suggesting.

Basically, he said that when he looks back at it he found it disturbing and was distressed at his own abnormality. He also said he couldn't do it again.

And Mori had mentioned that the reason the Eclipse went so hard and got so extreme was because he (Mori) had told Miura that only something extreme that truly destroyed Guts's life would really work to make the guy from the Golden Age turn into the guy from the Black Swordsman arc. But after he did it, Miura called Mori a bit upset and it kind of depressed them both.

It's also been noted that despite the sheer length and prominence of the rape scene with Femto, that is actually very rarely referenced in the series afterward - a bit at first, like when Guts has his flashback in Godo's cave, but as time goes on it seems like most of the weight of Casca's trauma is relocated to the mass sexual assault by Apostles - that's what she flashes back to when she remembers the Eclipse almost every time.

So yeah, he may have regretted at least some parts of the Eclipse, although I would argue that the Eclipse conceptually was obviously present since near the beginning - thus the brand, but more importantly, thus the Slug Count's backstory in the BSM arc.

But, do I think it's because Miura had written himself into a corner and was trying to get back on track? Not really.

I mean we have to understand that the whole point of the Golden Age, per Miura, is to give the reader insight into why Guts is so upset at Griffith. In that sense, everything in the Golden Age is leading up to the Eclipse and the birth of Femto, which is all we go into the Golden Age knowing for sure is going to happen. Guts's departure, the torture and the breaking of Griffith, none of that is stuff he spontaneously did and then had to figure a way out of, that's stuff that was done specifically in order to create a situation wherein the Eclipse would be narratively justified.

In other words, it's not that he had to break the story to get out of a situation, it's that he broke the status quo of the story in order to trigger that very situation. Griffith was always intended to become Femto - he even shows up as Femto before he shows up as Griffith.

One of the things Miura mentions in the interview at the back of the Berserk guidebook is that originally Femto was meant to be Guts's enemy in his, well, Femto form but he found that Griffith stood out too much as a character during the Golden Age to let go of, and so he decided to bring his original appearance back. He then noted that the other thing is that if he were acting as Femto he would be back in the Astral Plane. So basically, the reason we see Griffith as he is rather than as Femto is a combination of Miura just liking Griffith's human self/design and wanting to bring it back in some form, and the worldbuilding having evolved in such a way that a full-Godhand isn't normally walking around the world in their purest form.

That said, there isn't that much of a difference between NeoGriffith and Femto. You can make an argument (and I do routinely) that NeoGriffith is a different aspect of Griffith's personality/persona than Femto (Hawk of Light vs Hawk of Darkness) but their powers aren't any different as far as we can tell - Griffith dominates apostles on sight. He can still brainwash people with his Od. He can still casually knock the walls off a mobile palace without moving. He's still impossible to hit with a weapon. Being in his presence alone still puts Schierke in danger of losing her astral form due to his overwhelming strength. A lot of what Griffith does in his NeoGriffith form - the army building, the having people fight beside him instead of just going in and curbstomping the monsters on his own, is just pretense of humanity stuff that seems designed to prevent people from feeling like they're being herded by some overwhelming inhuman force. He acts like he needs help because he wants them to feel needed and helpful not because he actually does need help.

Basically, if Guts can't counter Femto he can't counter Neo-Griffith either, which we see when he completely fails to land a single blow even though Griffith is just standing there naked, looking at him. That only hurts the story logic if the assumption is that Guts is meant to be able to counter Griffith effectively and I would argue that he is not.

Guts is, for all his strength and determination, ultimately a human being trying to fight what amounts to a demon god/archangel. While he can hold his own against apostles (and overpower some of them), Griffith brings Apostles to their knees just by showing up.

He even has Skull Knight/Gaiseric still tilting windmills at Void after 1,000 years to make the point that there's no conceivable way that a human can realistically take down a Godhand. There's no reason this battle should seem anything other than completely impossible.

#ask #anonymous #ariel talks about berserk

[purposefully-lost]

From a transcript of Drew Reimes' podcast By the Day, interviewing Alexander Prescott:

D: So, after all of that, I have one more question for you. Why now?

A: Why now?

D: The book. It's been 20 years, almost to the day, since Jonathan died. You could've told the truth 20 years ago, or-

A: I would've been arrested 20 years ago.

D: Or you could've carried it to the grave. Gone down in history as the man who killed Jack Rabbit. You were an inspiration for a long time, you know. The victim who killed his killer.

A: I wasn't the first. Or the last.

D: Certainly not, but one of the most notorious. So why tell this story right now, when it would ruin your reputation and drag you back into the spotlight? That's a big question on everyone's minds, I think.

There's a long pause, broken only by Alex clearing his throat.

A: I don't think you're gonna like the answer.

D: I haven't liked any of your answers.

Alex laughs abruptly at that.

A: I guess.. I could lie to you, and say that I had good intentions in telling this story now. I could tell you that I- I wanted to humanize him because no good can come from forgetting that bad people are still human, right? Is that what you'd want to hear?

D: Ideally, but that's not what you're going to say.

A: No, it isn't.

He pauses again.

A: I wrote that book because... I don't know. I think in some way I just wrote it for him, and only him. ..You have to understand, Jack died when he was 31 years old. That's young, but that's also three decades. Three decades of his life, and I don't know that anyone ever loved him before I did.

D: There might've been someone.

A: There wasn't. He would've told me about them. And yet for the one year that I knew him.. I didn't tell him. I sure as hell don't think I showed him. So that's what the book is.

D: A love letter?

A: As much it can be.

D: That still doesn't answer the question. Why wait so long to write it?

A: For 20 years, the world's most exploitative journalists and documentarians and true crime TV shows have pulled apart Jack's life. They've invaded all of it, they've ripped up his cabin, they've broken into his childhood home and exposed every part of the records on his crime. And yet they still didn't have the facts right. Someone told me once, just a few years ago, that they'd recently learned of an obscure detail about the case. A dead bunny had been at the original crime scene, they said, right there with all the Bakers. Is it any wonder, then? Jack started like they all do, he tortured animals. And everyone pats themselves on the back for figuring it out, for digging into the psyche of Jonathan Stone. It's such bullshit.

A: Jack was a good kid. I firmly believe that. Even as an adult, with everything in his head all fucked up, he loved animals. He loved music. He was out there all alone for half of his life, with all his missing pieces, and he built a home he loved. He took care of it, he kept himself clean. There was a good man in there somewhere.

D: Some would think that's an awful thing to say.

A: Is it? Jack wasn't an inherently bad man. What happened, what he did, didn't start with him. I was tired of the narrative getting twisted and I was tired of being seen as some kind of strong, relentless survivor because I'd killed the man I loved. I shot Jack as a mercy. It's the biggest regret of my life. I was ready for someone, anyone else, to see the person I knew. I can't give Jack the love he'd needed for his whole life. But I can clear up the facts, at least. I owe him so much more than that.

Another long pause.

D: Well, I think that's all I've got time for. Thank you for coming on the show, Alex. It's been a very interesting discussion. Honestly, I might be interested in having you back sometime.

A: Maybe. Thanks for having me.

#drabble #alex prescott #hunted // rabbit #ANYWAY... #prey animal

[paperandsong]

If you haven't already, would you consider making a list of the anachronisms in the Leroux? I would be very interested to read about them!

Hi @snarkoftheopera! This is a great ask. I’m not sure that I can list all of the anachronisms in Leroux’s novel on my own - so if anyone knows of more details that should be on this list, please add them to this post!

In the introduction, Leroux’s narrator tells us the events he is about to relay happened “no more than thirty years before.” But before what? The first installment of the story first appeared in Le Gaulois in September 1909. Thirty years before that would be 1879, so it can’t be before that year. The action is also caged in by the fact that Erik promises Madame Giry that Meg will become an empress by 1885, so the story must happen some time before then. Leroux purposefully does not say in exactly what year the action takes place. By doing so, he probably thought he could exempt his story from the kind of scrutiny we give it now. Joke’s on him!

@fdelopera wrote a very comprehensive post about Phantom Chronology which discusses the internal timeframe of the events of the novel, as well as some details that don’t fit historically. I highly recommend. Some anachronisms in the post include:

1. The Persian confronting Erik about the chandelier before it crashes in  Interesting Vicissitudes. 

2. Christine says the Torture Chamber looks like the Musée Grévin, but the Hall of MIrrors wasn’t built until 1900, well after any plausible time when the events of the novel could have occurred. 

Another good place to find these kinds of details is in the footnotes of the Ribère  translation. Many people have complained about the quality of this translation - for me it’s enough to fill in the parts left out by Teixeira de Mattos  but the text has no energy. The footnotes, however, are great and carry lots of historical information:

3. There was not an interview with Mohammed-Ali Bey published in Le Matin in the days following a certain invasion of Constantinople. Not necessarily an anachronism, just straight up fiction posing as a fact of journalism, a technique Leroux used throughout the novel to sow belief in doubtful details. Interestingly, Teixeira de Mattos omitted these “narrator” footnotes from his translation of the novel. Maybe he was just tired of Leroux’s tricks. 

4. There really was a Sultan of Constantinople, Abdullahamit II, who had automatons made in his likeness. These were discovered when he was overthrown in 1909, so it was probably in the news as Leroux was writing his story. But it doesn’t make any sense for Erik to have been there while the Yildiz Palace was being constructed as Erik would have been in Paris at the time, working on a different palace, le Palais Garnier. 

I think there are many other small details that Leroux includes which reflect what was going on in the world at the time he was writing the story rather than the time when the story was set. An example of this can be seen in this lovely passage from Above the Trap-Doors:

“She knew unsuspected corners that were secretly occupied by little old couples...Those old people remembered nothing outside the Opera. They had lived there for years without number. Past managements had forgotten them; palace revolutions had taken no notice of them; the history of France had run its course unknown to them; and nobody recollected their existence.”

5. This fantastic image of old people living secretly in the vast Palais Garnier might make sense in 1909, when the Opera was already 34 years old. But it doesn’t really make sense if we’re talking about 1879-1884 when the Opera had been open barely 10 years. I could believe this detail was based on people Leroux actually met at the Opera in the early 1900′s. It might have been just too good a detail to leave out of his story, even though it wouldn’t have made much sense for the story itself. It certainly adds to the gothic atmosphere.

I hope this was interesting! Please, if anyone has more example of anachronisms to add to this list, put it in the notes!

#phantom of the opera #asks #musée grévin #le fantôme de l'opéra #gaston leroux