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loverhymeswith · 8 months

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hello🙈 i’ve been thinking about a mini story based on “exile” by taylor swift with one tommy shelby… former lovers. shelby sees her at a party with a new beau and gets jealous (“i can see you starin honey, like he’s just your understudy, like you’d get your knuckles bloody for me”) it’s a back and forth dialogue type song IDK i think it would be slay

Exile

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x F!Reader

Summary: A familiar figure stirs up feelings you'd rather not face

Word count: 2.4k

Warnings: Mention of drugs.

A/N: Thank you Anon! I love this song and it fits Tommy SO well. Also, I wrote this on a beach. No idea how the setting ended up being NYE. Thank you @a-reader-and-a-writer for the beta read and the ending ❤️

I've added my existing taglist but please note this is not part of the Let’s Be Alone Together universe.

Him

It's fast approaching midnight at The Savoy Hotel. The dawning of the new year is almost within reach. Tommy Shelby drains his glass of champagne, wishing for whiskey instead as he slowly scans the room.

Tickets for the party tonight had been akin to gold dust, a chance to rub shoulders with the upper echelons of London's elite. But Tommy would rather be anywhere else in the world.

Preferably, Birmingham.

He'd take a bottle of homemade gin, tucked away in the quiet familiarity of Charlie's yard in a heartbeat over this stuffy champagne-fueled ballroom. But no one ever said success was easy.

Tommy had come here tonight for one reason and one reason alone. If his plans to move into the world of politics had any chance of coming to fruition, he would need to mingle with the privileged crowd. To learn their weakness. Their darkest secrets. To take advantage of the liquor loosening their lips.

He's managed to withstand maybe a handful of hours at best before growing tired of all the posturing and arrogance, the not-so-subtle self-aggrandising and the congratulatory back slaps.

Looking for a way out but willing to settle for a distraction, his gaze continues to drift along the sea of tuxedos and expensive dresses.

Unexpectedly, he falters.

These days, it takes a lot to catch Tommy Shelby off guard - between France and his more recent ventures, it would be fair to assume he had developed nerves of steel - but off guard is exactly how he feels when his attention lands on the beautiful woman standing by the bar.

He'd recognise her anywhere. Sometimes, he thinks he searches for her in his dreams.

Tommy feels the muscles in his jaw clench before he's able to compose himself. A foolish sign of weakness that he can’t afford to display. Not here.

But it's difficult. A test of his usually unwavering resolve. Because she's not alone.

There's a man. Younger than Tommy; tall, dark-haired, and slim, the old-money practically oozing off him. Any closer and Tommy would be able to smell it.

Tommy grabs another glass of too-sweet champagne from a passing waiter. Something to occupy his hands, and just in time. Old-Money's arms are wrapped around the woman's body, a possessive gesture and one he recognises well.

Once upon a time, she spent her nights in Tommy’s arms.

Five whole years might have passed - evidently long enough for her tastes to change - but it feels more like five minutes since she walked out of Small Heath and out of his life, a hastily scrawled note declaring she'd had enough.

Three simple sentences. One for each year they had been together. At the time, Tommy had replayed the words over and over until they no longer held any meaning, but liquor and bloodshed had long since turned those memories to slush.

It all boiled down to his plans for the future. Her fear of the potential enemies and danger which those plans might beget.

Whoever said that love would conquer all?

Tommy doesn't taste the sparkling wine as he tips the glass back, draining it in one mouthful.

The champagne just won't do. He needs something stronger to take the edge off, but his path to the bar is blocked.

Biding his time, Tommy watches the couple. In fact, despite the sourness growing in the back of his throat, he finds himself unable to look away.

Old-Money leans in close, his lips brushing the shell of her ear as he whispers something that even Tommy’s lip-reading skills cannot decipher.

What is plain to see, however, is her lack of amusement. She tenses, discomfort evident in the clench of her jaw and the tightness of her shoulders. Her laughter, when it comes, is forced, never reaching her eyes.

A lightning bolt of unfiltered rage burns through Tommy’s veins, dulling his remaining senses like Arthur’s cocaine, but he quickly tempers it down. It’s not his problem. She's not his problem.

She's not his to defend.

Not anymore.

Her

It's almost midnight. Ever since your arrival at The Savoy, your attention has been drifting to the clock on the wall. Waiting for the bells to chime and free you from this misery.

The party had been his idea, your date for the evening clearly operating under the assumption that money makes a man more attractive. An assumption which couldn't be further removed from the truth.

Though The Savoy might be the hottest ticket in town, everything about tonight makes you miss Birmingham - Small Heath, to be precise. New Year's Eve at The Garrison. The excitement. The unpredictability.

The Peaky Blinders.

Your stomach involuntarily flips at the intrusive thought. You've come too far now to be thinking about the Shelby brothers. All memories pertaining to your former life belong firmly in the past.

Ignoring another pompous comment from your date, you glance up from your drink, desperate for an escape. Perhaps you can slip away in time to avoid the awkward but obligatory midnight kiss.

That's when you see him.

A ghost - a demon - from your past, seemingly conjured into existence by the power of your thoughts alone.

The very same piercing blue eyes that have long haunted your dreams now stare you down, unblinking, from across the room. His full lips are drawn into a hard line.

Thomas Shelby.

Despite your brain knowing far better, your traitorous heart still flutters.

He looks good. Too good.

Unfairly good.

The expensive dark suit is sinfully cut to his powerful body and his once-severe haircut has been allowed to somewhat grow out.

Clearly, he's come a long way since the days of bruised and bloody knuckles. In the presence of polite society, he looks like he belongs.

The last five years may have been kind to your former fiancé, but with a start, the realisation dawns that the same can't be said of you.

Because five years later you still haven't recovered from the incurable affliction of loving Tommy Shelby.

Despite what some might say, you hadn't walked into the relationship blind. You'd known the head of the Shelby family for long enough to accept that a life together would be full of surprises, and not all of them good. But for love, you'd given him half a dozen chances.

Honesty.

That's all you'd ever wanted. To be treated as his equal. His partner. To not be kept in the dark about decisions which could potentially put you both in harm's way.

Yet still he'd schemed and plotted. Twisted and manipulated. Deceived. He had told you it wasn't lying. That for your own safety, he was simply withholding the truth. As if that somehow made it ok.

Inevitably, after three years together, your patience reached its limit. Making good on a promise to yourself, you'd left, starting a new life for yourself in the capital, far away from the demons of Watery Lane.

But you'd been foolish to believe that any amount of miles could repair the damage done to your heart. Arguably, damage of your own making.

His name has followed you like an ever-present shadow. His handsome picture staring back at you from newspaper articles. Even in black and white, those beautiful eyes just added insult to injury.

And now he's here in the flesh.

Tommy's stare is unwavering, but he makes no move to come over. Still, it's only a matter of time before he seeks you out. After your cowardly way of leaving, it's easy to imagine he has some choice words for you, but you’re not ready to speak to him. Not here, where manners and decorum are all the rage.

Willing yourself to break eye contact, you notice a side door to your left. Relief washes over you. Freedom or at least a small reprieve. Anything is preferable to this form of slow torture.

Him

Tommy watches her leave - a recurring theme, it would seem - her hurried exit presumably on account of his unexpected presence here tonight. She definitely spotted him amidst the crowd and she did not look pleased.

He should let her go. She's not his problem. She's in his past.

Isn't she?

A minute passes before, not entirely of his own accord, Tommy finds himself following in her footsteps. He's always been inexplicably drawn to her. Apparently, even heartbreak isn't enough to change that.

When he finds her in the lobby, her back is turned but she whips around as he murmurs her name.

"Tommy."

The earlier surprise he saw flash across her delicate features has been replaced by a carefully rehearsed indifference. One he recognises all too well.

She's at pains to pretend his presence isn't affecting her. A feeling to which he can certainly relate.

"I didn't expect to see you tonight," she adds when he doesn't immediately respond. "I didn't think this kind of thing was your scene."

He doesn't miss the accusation in her tone.

What she really means is why are you here?

Slowly, Tommy inclines his head, lest she notice the falter in his gaze. Impossibly, she's even more beautiful than he remembers. It's surely a cruel twist of fate that brings her here tonight. Just when things were looking up for him. Just when he thought he'd put the past to rest.

"Likewise," he agrees.

"Business or pleasure?" She wonders aloud before scanning the lobby, keenly on the lookout for another escape route.

The words, driven by a lingering hurt, fly from his lips before he can check himself, his attention not so subtly shifting to the blonde woman entering the lobby. "There's no reason it can't be both."

Her

Of course, he followed you. It's a problem you could really do without. You're walking a thin line just by talking to him. Experience tells you there's only two ways this will play out.

Wondering whether there's any possibility of getting away unscathed, you offer him a polite smile and gesture towards the blonde woman now loitering in the corner. "Well, I'll leave you to your… pleasure."

He studies you carefully, his sharp features set into a cool mask of apathy, but you recognise the hurt hidden behind his icy eyes.

The hurt which you caused.

"I'd tell you the same, except I doubt your friend knows how to pleasure a woman. You looked miserable back there."

Despite the sentiment, there's no trace of concern in his cruel words.

"My choice of date for the evening isn't up for debate, Thomas," you tell him curtly, despite silently agreeing with his observation.

"Nothing ever is with you, is it?" he muses, his lips slightly pursing.

And there it is.

Clearly, he's not going to let you get away until he has aired his grievances.

Perhaps you owe him that courtesy at the very least.

Dropping your own mask of indifference, you take a step towards him and take his warm hand. To your surprise, he doesn't resist.

"I had to leave, Tommy. You were never going to turn things around. You were never going to change. But for what it's worth, I am sorry about leaving the way I did. I should have been better. I should have been braver."

Tommy shakes his head, keeping his tightly guarded emotions at bay. "You left without warning. You never even heard me out."

"Without warning? God, Tommy. How can you stand there and say that? How could you possibly have missed it? I left you so many signs."

Tommy looks away, his eyes rapidly searching for something just out of sight. The only indication he's feeling anything at all. "I guess I never learnt to read your mind."

"You never learnt to listen," you fire back. "Or communicate at all for that matter. Would it have killed you to be honest with me? To tell me what you had planned?"

A muscle in his jaw ticks. "I was trying to keep you safe."

The realisation that he's never going to change his tune stings more than it should. You drop his hand. "I wish I could believe that."

The truth, in your eyes, is that he never trusted you. He's never trusted anyone. How could you be expected to give your heart over to a man who would never let you into his own?

There's a beat of silence. Enough time for you to regret letting this conversation play out for so long. Nothing good can come from digging up the past. You should go your separate ways before any further irreparable damage is done.

"Was it worth it?" Tommy asks finally, a bite of frustration slipping through his calm facade. "Leaving everything behind for this?" He gestures around. "Are you happier now?"

"Yes," you lie, but your resolve is rapidly weakening under the intensity of his blue gaze.

The door to the ballroom swings open and a small gathering of revellers spills into the lobby, saving you from admitting the very thing you've been afraid of.

That leaving Birmingham had been a mistake.

Tommy reaches for your arm, tugging you away from the crowd and into a recess by the cloakroom. As a result, the two of you have infinitely closed the distance.

His chest, broad and still so inviting, is now inches from your own; his calloused hand is still wrapped firmly around your wrist, his thumb pressed against your pulse point.

Can he feel how fast your heart races?

"For all your talk of honesty, you won't face the truth yourself, will you?" He sighs lightly, something like disappointment coating his words.

"What's that supposed to mean?" You scoff, feigning ignorance as a last resort.

Before he can respond, a loud cheer erupts from within the ballroom, saving you once again.

"That's midnight," you murmur just as Tommy glances down at his elegant gold pocket watch.

"Midnight," he agrees, his eyes flicking back up to your own. "Happy New Year."

You stare at him for a long moment, taking stock of his defining features. Long, dark eyelashes, the kind that would ordinarily be wasted on a man - but not Tommy; razor sharp cheekbones and a jawline to match. Crystalline blue eyes you could so easily drown in.

Almost imperceptibly, he shifts closer, large hands finding your waist with ease.

"Do you still believe in tradition?" He wonders, but it's a rhetorical question. You both know he doesn't need an answer.

Your last sensible thought before he leans in to kiss you: God damn Tommy Shelby and those ocean eyes.

Taglist: @a-reader-and-a-writer @crysxtal @shynovelist @amberpanda99 @globetrotter28 @dragonsondragons @butterfly-lover @sunshineyourethebesttime @iwantmyredvelvetcupcake @breezy2and2freezy

#tommy shelby #cillian murphy #peaky blinders #tommy shelby x reader #peaky blinders fanfic #Thomas shelby

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kaelio · 1 year

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I’ve been loving your IWTV stuff but I haven’t watched the show or read the books. What is it about Anne Rice’s writing that makes it so insane?

Okay, I'm going to do a relatively long post probably.

First off, I want to make it clear that my love of her writing is completely unironic. I genuinely think that she is great. So I do want to lay that down because it's foundational to everything else I'll say.

Her writing is insane for a few reasons. The most basic of these reasons is that, I really think that she was intrinsically out of step with contemporary standards of mental wellness. On the other hand, I am not convinced she was as chemically or... neurologically?... insane as she's generally described. She had a lot of Experiences and those experiences fed into a perception of the world that is notable and characteristic, if borderline indecipherable, and it comes through in what she produced.

These books are steeped in very real trauma, and very real trauma that the world directly rewarded her for experiencing. I'm not sure if the rawness of that trauma was why she was so brazen about exposing it in IWTV, but whatever the reason, "story about how my child died and my marriage can't survive and I can't see any reason for living" made Anne Rice a bona fide recognizable author and commercial success. If "vampires are made from trauma", well consider that metaphor to have carried into the real world. Vampires did in fact give Anne Rice power and wealth (and furthermore, I'd argue, for her, they became essentially household gods).

There's that post that goes around about how Van Gogh made his best work (and really most of his work, period) when he was most stable. I'd posit that the world told Rice the opposite in explicitly material terms, and maybe there was a feedback loop there. Hard to say.

She did write shamelessly and almost aggressively. Her writing doesn't feel carefully tailored or polished for "an audience". It rejects many of the patterns you see in modern fiction (despite being wildly influential for several genres!). It highlights patterns you take for granted in other fiction because of how fundamentally it violates them. I'll splice together bits of a conversation I was having in another window:

me: And I do think that there's an interesting point to be made that the self-infatuation and the people-pleasing actually go hand-in-hand

Because there's a congratulatory aspect to having written something that you know will please other people

Like congratulating yourself ahead of time for the good person that other people are going to tell you that you are

3rd: and that also means you're afraid of writing anything that challenges or stretches the audience

which means you're writing pap

a friend and I were discussing R.F. Kuang whose book Babel was pitched as a 'response' to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and ... is not only not in the same league as that book but isn't even playing the same sport

This wasn't us discussing Anne Rice at all, she just feels relevant to it. We're getting increasingly streamlined stories which hit the "right" beats, but they're unsatisfying because they have no authentic skeleton. Why do people still respond to Toy Story but Inside Out is nearly forgotten? I despised Inside Out on its release because it perfunctorily landed all of its beats, but it's only pretending to have something to say. What it does pretend to say is... palatable. But it isn't interesting. It won't change you and it won't inspire a change in you, or give you the material to change yourself.

I go back to this comment over and over by @fofoqueirah because it's genuinely perfect. Peerless distillation:

But people often genuinely cannot write this way! It's overly revealing. We reflexively balk. How or why she didn't is hard to say, but it's gallingly, often horrifyingly, unapologetic. It's unapologetic for things it should probably be apologetic for.

Anyway, her writing is also maddeningly inconsistent, book-by-book, page-by-page, paragraph-by-paragraph, but it's thrilling in part due to its inconsistency. But when it's on, it's so fucking on. However, it's not didactic in any comprehensible way. There are quotes about how she trusted her meaning to come through in the end, which is hilarious because...?? I think you can derive more thematic meaning from a random pattern than you can from these books!! These books are less thematically straightforward than nonsense!

And she herself would regularly dump comments and lore and various things which made it all even weirder. God, I don't even feel like I'm scratching the surface here.

This woman had some kind of relationship with power, capitalism, BSDM, gender, family, religion, brain-eating, and dolls and God help us because she tried to tried to explain it to us and held back nothing and some times you're still. just. a wee babe in the woods.

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uncriticalbunny · 9 months

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me whenever I see people desperate for the writers to make sydney asexual and/or a lesbian.

long post ahead.

as a black woman who is ace, I don’t think sydney being asexual would be revolutionary or interesting. it would actually be so incredibly, hugely, profoundly... boringggggg. and people who insist on sydney being asexual get a massive side eye from me. especially white asexuals, because fuck your representation, and cishet people because who the fuck are y’all?

so rarely are black women in tv and film treated with respect and nuance, much less when it comes to romance. so rarely are we treated as a person to be desired. to be loved. openly. warmly. carnally. even less so when it’s a darkskin black woman. writers pick from one of two things when it comes to black female characters: hypersexualized vs desexualized. superficially, for all outward appearances, there are lots of asexual black women in media. that is to say, they are certainly almost treated that way. unintentionally. intentionally. maliciously. void of sexuality or sensuality. no romance because she’s a Strong Black Woman who doesn’t need a man. or a relationship so pathetic that it can hardly be called a romance. would it be nice to have an asexual black female character who has a storyline that treats asexuality with respect? yes, yes it would. but that’s not really the point of this increasingly wordy essay. if the creators/writers are to be taken at their word that sydcarmy is strictly platonic, and they had her reject marcus because he misread their interactions, then it just shows they’ve developed nothing for sydney romantically. all the shots of carmy looking at her like she hung the moon and the stars are simply because she's his #bro. marcus really only liked her for her personality and simply confused that for romantic longing. platonic connections and a one-sided pursuit with zero heat. how groundbreaking.

every fucking white character can have all of the romance-related things though. they can kiss each other, be shown as desirable, etc. etc. nat can be cuddled and cherished by pete. richie can go on dates in a nice suit with dirt caked under his nails, be loving with his then-wife, and ostensibly be wanted by jess. tiffany can still be yearned for by her ex-husband as she prepares to marry a new one. carmy can skip around like he’s in a romcom while neglecting his responsibilities to make out with claire and call her beautiful. claire can be shot in soft, dreamy sequences with closeups of her face and have a convo with her ass out for no reason other than to say she’s desirable and fucked carmy. claire and carmy can have screentime set aside for their relationship and a tender lovemaking scene. it’s expected for white people. it’s the norm. no romantic love for sydney though. because she’s driven. because she deserves better. because romance is unimportant. because she wants that star. because she can have no distractions. because asexual. because representation. [audience cheering]

sydney being a lesbian would also bore me immensely. too often are black female characters treated by writers as russian dolls with every diversity point they can think of. books, comics, tv, film, etc. she’s black, she's lesbian, she’s trans, she’s disabled, she’s poor, she’s this, she’s that. the diversity and representation everyone wants. why is every other character surrounding this ~pinnacle of diversity~ straight, or white, or a man? yes, because that’s who’s mainly writing and casting and greenlighting these things and maybe it’s silly to expect otherwise, but still, what the fuck? congrats on being represented by this fictional character. but it doesn’t feel genuine; it feels spiteful and lazy and self-congratulatory. like where's the other black women and diverse characters lmao. to be clear, I do want to see all the black lesbians in media because there's still not very many. and black women with one, or two, or all of those “diversity points” do exist in real life. we are lesbians, we are bi, we are disabled, we are trans. we're all of those and more. and we are loved and adored. on screen? maybe with a nonexistent or poor romantic storyline. or perhaps a decent and maybe even good storyline that eventually crashes and burns. there's a popular twitter thread right now about the disposable black gf trope and the examples that keep pouring in are bleak af.

the black lesbian character headcanon/canon increasingly feels like just another way to fridge us romantically. #notalllesbiantruthers but too many tbh. a black female character will simply exist without uttering a word and a slew of white women will be there to loudly proclaim her as the lesbian representation they want, need, crave, and adore. especially if there’s zero indication of the character being a lesbian. just stereotypes and vibes. hollow, insincere proclamations. bi black women don't even exist in their world. all these things I’ve observed with sydney. she's a bro, she's butch, she's a top, she's so husband-coded. babygirl is only reserved for the most woeful, pitiful white male characters. it's hilariously #coded. and no one will push back because after all, any gay representation is a good thing.

you’ll see hit tweets about how they know deep down sydney's a lesbian or how it will be so funny when the writers make her one. really, why is that? she can't be bi lest she actually gets with carmy. carmy can't be gay because they want to fuck him too badly. yeah I’m not so convinced all the lesbian sydney truthers earnestly want to see her loved, adored, cuddled, kissed, or fucked by another woman. because would that really be the writers’ objective or finished product? or will they just make her a lesbian and pat themselves on the back for doing only that. a throwaway line? maybe give her a cute romance built largely off-screen? lesbian sydney is a win for diversity and that’s enough. and who really wants to see sydney loved on loudly or be sexual anyway? that's not who she really is! she wears minimal makeup and oversized shirts and sweaters. let’s just focus on her working herself to the bone and getting that star. and I think deep down a lot of these truthers know her storyline possibly wouldn't be done justice. that's why it's going to be so funny to them when they make her one.

it all feels so shallow. fanfiction of sydney x fem!reader or original female character or nayia (the gorgiana black chef from s02ep03) is quite literally nonexistent [!!!]. sorry, y'all are not progressive or galaxy-brained. we get a black female character who’s multifaceted and fascinating, a deuteragonist even, in a show with a fandom that barely considers her as a person, and you’ve set your grubby paws upon her to be shelved romantically. bffr, the writers are already flailing romance-wise when it comes to sydney; they would not do an asexual/lesbian storyline justice. and even if they somehow make a halfway decent attempt, maybe they should have made it clear from the very beginning. not in season 3 or 4 or 5 or wheneverthefuck after they’ve given all the white characters romantic angles and developed her strongest and most important relationship with carmy, the main white guy or possibly because they hate the fact that people ship her with the main white guy. because then it just feels reactionary. and spiteful. and lazy. anyway, this ended up being way longer than I wanted. thanks for reading. fin.

#sydney adamu #the bear #no one has to justify their headcanons or whatever cuz who gives a fuck #but when I see your blog is filled with incestuous and other crazyyyyy romantic pairings #and you're desperate for sydney to be single #kill bill sirens fr #ok but the fanfiction thing gagged me so bad bc the sydcarmy sistren are going to work meanwhile #all their naysayers and supporters of other sydney ships/headcanons have vanished when it comes to ff #nobody wants to work these days #text

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sethnakht · 1 year

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there's an au in my head where vader shows up at jabba's palace before luke but after leia's capture on a tip call from boba fett. leia, captive on jabba's throne, senses his arrival well before she sees him; watching his descent into the throne room, she regrets conjuring the spectre of "powerful friends" to scare jabba. vader has strangled several guards by this point; jabba doesn't care; he receives vader as though they were old business partners, without a translator. vader interrupts jabba in the middle of a self-congratulatory overture - jabba is harboring the leader of the rebel alliance, he says, pointing at leia, and must surrender her immediately. this escalates; jabba offers han instead, vader counters that jabba will relinquish the princess or die, jabba reaches for the controls to his rancor pit, leia averts her eyes, unwilling to key vader into the trapdoor beneath his feet, and suddenly vader is gone and she and the whole throne retinue are sliding, lurching, falling; they're the ones in the pit, and when she looks up, she sees vader staring down at them with an ignited lightsaber, surrounded by poorly aimed blaster fire. she looks away just as he begins to deflect it.

vader has decided to pay boba and lure luke and punish jabba all at once; he leapt over the throne and pushed its occupants with the force, pickled frogs and leia included, into the rancor pit. he still fully intends that leia be made his prisoner - he doesn't want to kill his best line to luke - he simply assumes that since she's survived him, she can survive anything. as it happens, leia does escape the rancor because it feasts on the stunned jabba first, breaking the chain that connected her to him; dodging the panicking attendants, who also end up eaten or mauled, she finds the pit entrance and secures herself by bringing down the threshold gate. if vader's right about leia, though, he's wrong here about luke, who isn't provoked into appearing. becoming impatient - having slaughtered every guard who hasn't fled - vader deprives artoo of luke's hidden saber and decides to draw luke to him where he cannot fail to appear. stuck between gates in the dungeon, leia shrieks and missteps, slicing open her boot and her foot on a misplaced axe; vader has materialized silently, like a shadow that shouldn't be in the desert. he's in a foul mood; ignoring her limp, he pulls her out by the chain still attached to her neck (because he's petty and hasn't forgotten her comment about his 'leash') all the way to his private ship (the nubian j-type that symbolizes and effected his removal from tatooine, the ship he has in the comics). with usual bumbling luck (let's say his restraining bolt no longer works because jabba is dead), threepio trails them and ends up boarding too, commenting blithely about the ship's royal trappings.

well aware luke is on tatooine, vader doesn't leave the planet; flying in a way that leia first thinks is just intended to keep her off-balance, he heads for the lars homestead. lashed to the co-pilot's seat and without a sense of their direction, leia looks at featureless sand and can't help but call up the map in her mind to where obi-wan would have lived. it's popular fanon that vader can't read leia's mind owing to natural mental shields; I could see exploring an alternative where he can sense her strong emotions, where he does swoop in and catch the fish swimming right at the surface - only that what he catches is what she's chosen to sacrifice, or what she sees no reason to hide. what to him is a prize is to her an acceptable loss. so maybe in this au, there's this history between them: on the death star, she'd given up that obi-wan was part of her mission, anticipating that he'd be on alderaan and out of reach, while protecting the location of the rebel base; maybe that's why she survived her interrogation, because vader had gone so distracted with the bait that he'd lost interest in the fish. point being, vader is well aware that she's thinking about obi-wan right at this moment, and leia is chilled to realize, just from the quality of his silence, that she knows that he knows.

but this soon doesn't matter, because she realizes they're being pursued by what's left of jabba's guard and the millenium falcon. vader is possibly an even crazier pilot in atmosphere than in space, performing stomach-turning stunts like killing the ship's engines and going into a freefall dive to get each attacker but the more distant falcon to destroy itself; the falcon he shakes off by heading straight into a massive sandstorm. droid-like as he is, leia realizes he doesn't rely on the ship's instruments when the storm causes half to fail and they still make it past flying debris. after landing, vader orders leia to put on a flightsuit and helmet before they exit into the storm, lest she take unnecessary further damage. freeing herself of the mask the moment they're in an enclosed part of the homestead - which required passing through a courtyard open to the hostile elements - leia is first surprised by vader's choice of an abandoned hovel, then concerned when threepio reveals where they are. the more details threepio spills (the more the limits of his memory banks are revealed to vader), the more uneasy leia becomes. luke's family died because of the empire. but they'd still be alive, she can't help but think, had she not sent the death star plans to this planet. perhaps enjoying this dark turn to her thoughts, vader doesn't interrupt the flow of commentary. evidently unfazed by his own role in murdering luke's family, he prowls through their home as though it were his own castle. leia can imagine he's designing a trap for luke. silently, she implores him to stay away.

luke doesn't come. a massive piece of farming equipment, left unmaintained for too long and violently unmoored by the storm, smashes into vader's ship, taking out an engine. bounty hunters hired by angry hutts try to finish the job; vader kills them, but not before they've set his ship on fire. and vader starts to go slightly more mad than usual; the tatooine sand in his suit and smoke preventing use of his ship's hyperbaric chamber and luke's refusal to acknowledge his psychic pleading/threats and threepio's obviously mindwiped chatter and leia's scorching presence, her immense grief and scorn, her way of judging without having to speak a word - it all warps, and blurs, as he paces like the suit is cooking him from inside, and touches the wall disjointedly, and makes sudden disappearances to repair his ship with cheap moisturizer parts. for her part, leia is judging. she knows why vader wants her alive, and she's angry to be used again as bait, to say the least. and she's also judging her own chances: she's not eaten, not had access to water, she's lost a good deal of blood, her foot is bandaged with dirty cloth, and luke's lightsaber is hanging from vader's belt, tantalizingly near.

she tries to goad vader, to distract him from his ship repairs and the trap he's creating and the second lightsaber on his belt. he's become predictable, and luke won't come. she has no reason to hide her love for luke, so when vader lashes out mentally - jealously pilfering surface impressions of luke from her mind - he can remain blind to her intentions. only vader is paying real attention to her now that he's gotten to taste those memories, she's fed a hunger she hadn't known could devour, and she understands that he's draining her, taking from her, that she's shriveling up from thirst and regret and this connection. he's seeing her value as for the first time and isn't seeing her at all - and when threepio begins crying for help, drawing vader's attention away, leia is certain she is going to die.

vader wants to know when threepio entered her service. threepio is only too glad to answer exactly. leia is too depleted to care about what he shares - better that he spill the secrets of the dead captain antilles than having vader back in her head - she drifts into unconsciousness, and dreams. she's back at the palace in aldera, in the oval garden, where a stone statue of queen amidala had stood watch over beds of white asters. leia had liked to look into the child-queen's solemn face - her mother had often brought her here to tell her stories of amidala's adventures - but in her dream she is facing the statue's back, a meaningless circumstance that somehow chills her. she circles closer and yet can't get around to the front, and the harder she tries the more the details slip from her, until she can't even remember amidala's face. this too, she has lost.

anyway, that's the setup. it escalates from there. vader is paying enough attention to entertain new suspicions about luke's strong feelings for leia; amongst the many other threatening things he does, he finds desert cacti and makes leia drink the nectar. (for all she knows, it's poison, and the spikes on the surface cut her fingers and press against her face like needles.) leia, still certain she is dying, commits to saving luke as her final act, which she believes means killing vader. vader repairs his ship; leia ensures the self-destruct goes off while they're both on it. vader absorbs the blast, keeping leia alive at the cost of compromising his own life support; suddenly faced with the chance to fulfil her wish, luke's lightsaber in her hands, leia finds herself unable to follow through - because vader tells her to do it.

at last, a figure on the horizon. luke is come.

#darth vader #leia organa #long post #fic idea #this is 99% vibes with vanishing traces of plot and structure and substance #sometimes little films will play in my head #I can describe the framing and blocking and how the shots are edited #but can't for the life of me write fiction #or piece the little films together into a sensible composition #so am expelling them here to be rid of them

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daenerysstormreborn · 9 months

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@cleverelaena88 hi I was the anon in the post this is from. I wanted to start a new thread instead of clogging the notes of someone else’s post. I wrote up an essay explaining it under the cut if you’re interested but it boils down to this:

1. I started thinking for myself about her place in the narrative.

2. I let go of petty feelings coming from my wounded inner child.

3. I realized I could continue to think for myself and that liking this characters doesn’t mean I’m aligning myself with objectionable things other fans of the character have said.

The way I feel about Sansa changed for a lot of reasons. I walked back on my stance that she isn’t important because I realized I wasn’t really thinking for myself and was just going along with the things often said by other fans of my favorite characters. If I remember correctly, she has as many POV chapters as Bran. The Vale plot is important to the story and it’s clearly not just relevant to Littlefinger or else… why would Sansa be involved? She didn’t need to be a POV character for the story to work but she is because she’s important. If Sansa was just supposed to be a “camera” to show the viewer what’s happening in KL and later the Vale, why did start off as a POV character in places where other POV characters were as well? She’s the only POV character in the Vale in AFfC, but if that was her only importance, why was she a POV character prior to going to the Vale?

Currently, she does feel pretty “cut off” from the main plot threads—the IT, the Others, and the dragons. At least where I’m at, halfway through AFfC. And I think that’s what makes some people think she isn’t important. But I kind of thing that’s evidence that she IS. She’s away from all of these major plot elements and is not in close proximity to other POV characters who are involved in these three elements, unlike characters like Arya, who are technically disconnected from those three elements, but are in close proximity to other POV characters (i.e., Arya encounters Sam in Braavos). Given that, why on earth would George continue to feature her POV if her story specifically was not important?

As for why she’s become one of my favorites, that’s a bit different. This is a bit personal, so forgive me for it, but I think it’s interesting insight. I had to get past this wounded inner child aspect of myself, for one. I was an ugly duckling. I grew up being mocked for being a chubby, socially awkward kid with a snaggle tooth and a lisp. I internalized the idea very early that in order to be loved and socially accepted, I must be beautiful. I have auburn hair and amber eyes. I also received this message that to be beautiful, I should be blonde and more importantly have blue/green eyes. Seeing how just about every example of beautiful women in media were blonde with light eyes, and how the vast majority of female protagonists were beautiful, I developed quite the complex about this. It started sending a message to me that these stories were not for me. The romance, the fantasy, everything these characters got was not and never would be for me because I wasn’t beautiful like them. I resented any female protagonist for which their beauty was a huge focal point because of a deep envy. I wished more than anything to be beautiful. Every birthday, every star, every dandelion. What I really wanted was love and social acceptance, but I was too young to understand that.

Then something weird happened as I grew up. I became beautiful. I don’t want to sound vain or self-congratulatory, but it’s relevant here. The vast majority of people now consider me to be extremely good-looking. This started around age 16. I got what I wished for. People started treating me differently. I got what I wished for. And it sucked. I’ll get back to that. But I did and still do feel like that little ugly duckling. I’m slowly healing, but it’s hard. I still felt this deep resentment and envy. It is starting to go away but comes up now and again. And as petty as it sounds, yes, part of me resented this character for being beautiful. Of course, I think every single female POV character is called pretty or beautiful aside from Brienne. Daenerys and Cersei are also considered to be extremely beautiful, but it’s not as relevant to Dany because the whole dragon thing takes more precedence and Cersei’s envy and vindictiveness are more prominent me (plus she’s an overt antagonist, and I don’t mind so much when the character is one of the bad guys, for some reason). But for Sansa, her beauty and grace seem to be major focal points in how other characters see her.

I said before that becoming beautiful sucked. I resented everyone around me for treating me differently because I was beautiful. And I realized that it does NOT offer me the guaranteed acceptance and love and safety that I believed it would as a child. Men will behave in different evil ways to both ugly and beautiful women. Being beautiful started to feel like this curse. It became a performance that I have to maintain because deep down I fear that beauty is all I have and/or that it’s the only reason anyone really values me. I developed an eating disorder about it. I got exactly what I wished for but not what I wanted.

Here’s how that’s relevant. I started drawing parallels and antiparallels between Sansa and Dany. I think it’s very interesting to compare the two but I seldom see that discussed unless it’s to pit them against one another. As I started to make these parallels I realized that many of the reasons I connect with Dany also apply to Sansa and started doing some self-analysis about why I didn’t connect with Sansa in the same way. I started to sort out the whole wounded inner child thing and realized it had been preventing me from acknowledging and appreciating any depth in Sansa’s character and really feeling for her. I realized that she too wished for something so very badly when she was a naive kid. Something she thought she wanted desperately. And she got it, and it was horrible. I found that I can now really emotionally connect with this character. Perhaps she too fears that her beauty and grace are the only reasons people like her. And I can definitely relate to the feeling of being sexualized and objectified by adults and peers alike. I know how it feels to have to smile and nod and lie to appease poisonous men. I really can connect with her emotionally in ways I couldn’t before because of my own personal hangups.

Finally, I just stopped caring about what other fans think. I have seen Sansa fans saying things I find objectionable, like proclaiming that Daenerys and Arya’s arcs are patriarchal or excusing the way Sansa treated Arya (although I don’t think their relationship is as cut and dry as “they simply don’t love eachother”). Plus there’s just a lot of infighting between Sansa fans and Dany and Arya fans and it made me keep my distance. I also am not a Jonsa fan and it seems many Sansa fans are in fact Jonsa fans. I used to hate the ship but was just being immature honestly. I’m neutral now and I think it’s interesting to read Jonsa metas because they present an entirely different way to interpret the story. It is fun for me to see what other people take away from the text. I was also holding myself back because I’ve seen Jonsas misconstrue the text and omit parts of passages and important context in ways that seem intentionally misleading, which really bothers me. But I realized I’m biased. We all have our own confirmation biases when reading the series and I’m sure other fans do the exact same thing. I was just noticing it more with Jonsa because it’s not a theory I subscribe to. But enjoying Sansa’s character does not mean I need to align myself with every single other Sansa fan, which seems obvious when said so plainly, but we often subconsciously develop this sense of group microidentities that we fear betraying.

This is all very specific to me as an individual of course but I had fun with all the introspection and think it’s an interesting case study about why a person may resent a specific character and why they might change their minds. Thanks for reading!

#sansa stark #asoiaf #asoiaf fandom

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drivingsideways · 4 months

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Year-end discussion in the Indian film space was dominated by the success of controversial film maker Sandeep Reddy Vanga's latest offering of undiluted misogyny and rage, appropriately titled "Animal"; but the best commentary I've seen on failed fatherhood and violent, toxic masculinity this year comes in a 2 minute scene in Kaathal: The Core, where a wizened old man testifies quietly in a family court that yes, he always knew that his son is gay, and still coerced him into a heterosexual marriage.

Kaathal: The Core isn't a film without flaws; one could argue that it's the quintessential film made about queer people by straight allies- actually more interested in the reaction to queerness and the adjustment to queerness by cishets, than in queer lives; that it has a one dimensional view of the reality of queer living in India. It has its moments of what I call "educational speechifying" that feel tonally at odds with the rest of it, but again, this paternalism in Indian cinema of the self-consciously "progressive" variety isn't unfamiliar.

The ending feels a little trite, and some artistic choices- an actual rainbow in the sky appears as the two lovers drive off into the sunset of their newly liberated lives-feel particularly anvil-like- much like the ending of another of director Jeo Baby's films, The Great Indian Kitchen, which was an exploration of the brutality of Indian-flavoured patriarchy. In short: a movie filled with intricately and deliberately placed subtleties that occasionally - somewhat inexplicably-loses confidence in its audience, and chooses to remedy that by being a bit over the top.

But those are minor quibbles. This movie gutted me. The story revolves around a middle-aged closeted gay man from a small close knit village community in Kerala whose life- and the lives of those around him- is thrown into disarray when his wife of twenty years files for divorce citing his gayness as the reason for the breakdown of the marriage- a step she takes just as he's nominated as his party's candidate for the local elections. With this premise, you'd be forgiven for expecting the movie to be high decibel melodrama- and possibly a tragedy- from start to finish. Instead, it deliberately chooses the quieter route, the most tender one; while not flinching away from the grim realities of widespread homophobia, it portrays both individuals and a community who , in a moment of crisis, discover that they are better than they think they are. And it does this not from a jingoistic, self-congratulatory ethno-nationalist perspective- but from a place of genuine love- as a reminder and a beacon in these dark times.

All of this is anchored in some fantastic performances- Mammootty once more showing up to remind us why he's one of the greatest living actors in the world, and Sudhi Kozhikode as Thankan in what should be a multiple-award winning performance as his long time lover. I've rarely seen an actor make so much of their limited screen time. When I say that minutes 50-52 of this film are the most devastatingly tragic-romantic moments in world cinema, you'll think I'm exaggerating and perhaps I am, but I can also guarantee that you're going to want to rewatch that sequence at least ten times and cry about two old geezers in love. Lives were changed in those moments, no lie.

My one disappointment in terms of performances is Jyothika, playing Omana, the long suffering wife. Omana is one of the stand-outs in the history of female characters in Malayalam cinema, and Jyothika is- barely adequate. When you contrast it with a similar role - say Hsieh Ying -xuan's performance as Liu San-lian in Dear Ex (2018)- the flatness is even more jarring. Still, the sheer love with which her character and her relationships, especially with her husband, are written carry the film through.

Tl;dr: watch it on Amazon Prime or at a theatre near you! You will not regret it.

#kaathal the core #malayalam cinema #indian cinema #mammootty #jyothika #jeo baby

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kalinara · 2 months

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Oh for fuck's sake. Please don't tell me "warning" discourse is coming back.

Look guys, I don't fucking care if you decide to use warnings or not. If you're an author who chooses not to use warnings, I may or may not read your fic, depending on my mood at any given time, but that's not a value judgment.

But can you not be a pretentious asshole about it?

"Books and movies don't have warnings!"

Really? Movies don't have warnings? What do you think that big "R" is on the advertisement there (if you're American, anyway, but as far as I know, most other countries use rating systems.) It might not be an explicit, spell-it-all out warning, but you're generally not going to see a graphic rape scene in a fucking PG movie.

Books? Generally no. Though there are exceptions. And many bloggers or goodreads reviewers will happily warn for readers who are concerned. That said, you can draw some conclusions based on genre, publisher and imprint. A romance reader generally knows where to find the really hard shit. You're not generally going to find a lot of strap ons or ball gags in Harlequin.

"Warnings didn't exist/weren't common practice before AO3!"

That's a fucking lie. I started reading fanfic on the internet in 1997, when I was young enough that I had to lie about my age to get onto the good mailing lists. And you know why they were the good mailing lists? Because they had explicit stuff. Because they had passwords to the best archives.

And those archives generally did have warnings! At least for the really big shit. Rape? Torture? The phrase "non-con" existed long before fanfiction.net, let alone AO3 was a twinkling in anyone's eye.

Because here's the thing, it's common courtesy. Fandom is a community experience. Isn't that what everyone always says when the topic of negative reviews come up? We can't make the author feel bad! Traumatizing a reader though with something that they don't know to avoid though, that's perfectly fine.

What AO3 DID invent, as far as I know, is the brilliant "Author chooses not to warn" tag. That's a great idea. It means that a concerned reader can go through the no warnings needed tag with reasonable confidence that they won't be hit with the most common triggering subjects. And if they go into a "chooses not to warn" fic, then that's their risk to take.

(Personally, I've never read a "choose not to warn" fic and thought "god, I'm so glad the author didn't spoil this rape scene in the warnings, losing the element of surprise would have ruined the story!" but that's just me. There might well be one out there, and even if not, it's the author's call.)

I don't really have a point to this rant. I just really dislike people who decide to raise their lack of consideration for others into some sort of intellectual high ground while touting blatant misinformation to support it. I also never get tired of ranting about fandom hypocrisy, so there we go.

TLDR: do what you want, but don't be a self-congratulatory dick about it.

#fandom woes #this was admittedly mostly inspired by that “warnings didn't exist before AO3” line #someone seriously said that #can you please ask a fandom old when you're going to say nonsense like that?#we do still exist

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zarophod · 10 months

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V: 5 Demons and Angels literally confirms that Rimmer is queer.

i’m sure everything i’m about to say has been said before but i’ve been on Red Dwarf tumblr for approximately 2 days so have not seen it aha. i’ve been obsessed with this show for 3 years however and i am obsessed again and need to talk about Rimmer. (however i have not seen past the old seasons. i never watched the new ones, but i am this time around! basically don’t spoil anything please aha)

As we all know, the low/evil version of Rimmer in this episode is a pretty offensive portrayal of Rimmer as an evil gay man. The outfit, the attitude and everything he says points to the fact that he’s queer (he literally says he’s going to “have” Lister)

Kryten explains earlier in the episode that the two versions of themselves, the high and low versions, are both just parts of them as people if the opposite part didn’t exist. He only says it in regards to their higher selves, but we can safely assume that the rule is applicable to their lower selves as well.

With Lister’s lower self, the other characters’ lower selves explain to him all the aspects of him that make up Lower Lister; they’re all things he is and has done in his life. Everything they list we either know about Lister (“lusts for meaningless sex”) or is very plausible for Lister.

You get what i’m trying to say. If Lister’s lower self is made up of aspects that are entirely a part of him, everyone else’s lower selves must be too, including Rimmer. so why is Rimmer’s lower self queer?

Clearly, Rimmer is queer. when i first watched the show three years ago, i immediately thought he must be queer. this episode confirms that for me. Him being gay is a part of his identity, and so it manifested in his alternate self.

But why the evil self? that’s seems a bit homophobic surely? Well, possibly, the episode was made in 1992. but i’d take a different view of it.

Good and Evil aren’t objective. sure, there are some actions that are congratulatory or deplorable, but “good” and “evil” are just concepts created by society. in this episode, who decided what aspects of themselves went into their lower and higher selves? I reckon it was their own subconscious.

Lister views his desire for meaningless sex as negative, as lower, so that part of himself manifested in his lower self. We know that he wants love and wants to be committed, but obviously has some issues with it (we see this with Lisa Yates in Thanks For The Memory).

For Rimmer’s lower self to be queer, Rimmer himself must also be queer, but he views that part of himself as negative. this is unsurprising knowing what Rimmer’s childhood was like and what he thinks of himself now. Red Dwarf is great at showing how bloody traumatised Rimmer is, and this episode is no exception.

As for his lower self wanting to shag Lister, i’m not saying that’s canon. buuuuut… could be.

Maybe i’m reading too much into it. Red Dwarf is literally a scifi show where the stupidest shit happens for no apparent reason. but Rimmer being queer is something i’ve firmly believed since i’ve known the show, and Demons and Angels properly confirms this for me.

#could you tell i love Rimmer?#lmao i know i definitely not the first to have these thoughts please lmk who else has done this #the show has been around for 35 years ffs #anyways Rimmer is gay end post.#red dwarf #arnold rimmer

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rriavian · 7 months

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WIP - Bird Watching

So I'm not doing WIP Wednesday today because I'm so exhausted that I will probably be responding with sentences that don't make any sense. But! Still taking asks if anyone wants to send one :) just might have to reply tomorrow. I also had a hunt through my wips for something to maybe still post. So please enjoy this slightly silly little excerpt <3

The birds of the Dreaming are rotten little spies.

It was obvious that Dream had made them specifically to be pests. They’re enamoured with their creator, overjoyed at the chance to sit on his shoulder and coo softly in his ear, so fucking self-congratulatory at being allowed so close. They’re all gossips too, because if they catch anyone, and the Corinthian means anyone, doing something ‘worthy of note’ then off they go back to Dream to snitch.

Jessamy had been the leader of the pack.

Now it’s a new thing that calls itself Matthew.

As inexperienced as he is at just about everything in his new life the raven still manages to run this network quite effectively.

The Corinthian wonders if the top quality required of a mortal’s soul in order for them to be picked to be Dream’s raven is actually being an insatiable gossip rather than dying in one’s sleep. It makes sense, this the sort of incessant curiosity only a human soul could truly manage, far outpacing even the nosiest of the Dreaming’s residents with ease. Lucienne is evidence of that, her own dignified demeanour a thinly veiled guise for how she needs to know everything, her position as royal librarian merely additional evidence, and so she isn’t dissuading Matthew’s efforts at all.

In fact, the Corinthian is fairly sure Lucienne is the reason he has a dozen or so raven shaped stalkers.

It’s insufferable.

#the corinthian #fic progress #the sandman netflix #lucienne #matthew the raven #this is very silly but I'm loving the crack-y prompts atm

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olderthannetfic · 1 year

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Practical fandom advice question for you.

How do you/your followers deal with it when you write something that the antis seem to like? They keep following and interacting with my (rather loudly "censorship and fascism are bad and fiction is okay actually") fic blog and reblogging my stuff. It's in my bio and title that I'm anticensorhip, I reblog from other anticensorship people, I have my Fandom Philosophy in a carrd just like the antis do, I've written and bookmarked Problematic Filth...and they're still there, popping up infrequently enough to slip my mind between instances, but with enough regularity to be a pattern that's making me twitch.

I block the particularly noxious ones, but I'm still getting really tense about proliferating as a rec in those circles, because hahaha they're not going to be happy when I finally resolve some of the fifty bazillion plot threads I've been foreshadowing and also, more importantly, I don't want to reward awful behavior! It's nice that you liked the toy I made, but if you're going to use it to beat the other children, you can't play with it anymore!

I think they like my stuff because I write flangst with unreliable narrators who are young and prone to flattening issues of morality into simple b&w equations, which might, uh, resonate. I'm building to this being a BAD thing (and have been building for years at this point), but my points of view have no way of knowing that because they're not there yet maturity-wise, and it's taking me a while to get there for unrelated reasons and I don't know how to make it any clearer to these people that I AM THE THE THING THEY HATE SO MUCH.

I honestly debated sending this anonymously because it kinda sounds self-congratulatory to me, and I really don't want to come off like "boo hoo I'm popular" (especially since the idea of being fandom popular gives me hives). The thing is, I think the rrverse fandom in particular skews anti, and our antis can be extremely vicious, as evidenced by that flurry of anons you got a while back from people terrified of going off anon for fear of attracting the hordes. I ultimately decided I'd be contributing to the overall hostility if I went anon just because I was worried about my tone being misread on the How Dare You Say We Piss On The Poor website, lol.

Thank you for all you contribute to building a fannish community I'm proud to put my name behind!

Honestly, I'd probably just carry on as usual but be prepared to block a whole lot of people once the plot finally goes somewhere they don't like.

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thealogie · 7 months

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people comparing Taika to lmm have jumped the gun imo. Lmm fell out of favor because he is a genuinely bad person who helped get 200 public schools in Puerto Rico shut down by supporting austerity measures, and cheated his Hamilton coworkers out of streaming income, which is why his hearts and rainbows facade he promoted so tirelessly on Twitter comes off as insincere. Taika is a flawed, sometimes awkward dude married to a failed pop star, who can be thoughtless and who takes all the jobs/brand deals he can get partly because he made a public vow in 2018 to fund American Indigenous filmmakers. Not really the same

I agree with the point about lmm doing objectively worse things but I think the point of comparison stands because that’s actually not the reason lmm fell out of favor and most people don’t actually know those things about lmm. The reason he fell out of favor is this deep overexposure combined with a kind of self-congratulatory self-aware indulgence in the over-exposure (which taika also does) combined with the fact that his views are not as progressive as his pre-fame vibe (also true of taika who put his foot in his mouth during the George Floyd protests and also quietly supported Johnny depp).

I like most of taika’s work but I stand by my statement that he was simply at his best back when he was making small time art with his friends from home (part of why ofmd is good is that it has that vibe)

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whoiwanttoday · 1 year

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Hey guys, today is the 11th anniversary of this blog starting. I am not going to make too huge a deal out of that because I just had my 4000th post a couple of weeks back so it seems silly to go all over the top with stats and stuff when they just frankly haven't changed that much. What I am doing is posting Scarlett Johansson, who is the first person I ever posted on this blog. 11 years is a long time, some would say too long, to run a single blog but here I am, still doing it. The world has changed a lot in that time, as has my life, and Scarlett Johansson is emblematic of that in a lot of ways. I first noticed her in Ghost World, a movie that I dearly loved when I was younger (and still have affection for but I probably haven't watched it in 20 years at this point) because it spoke to me and who I was. I was way into her and got to cling to her as this obscure celebrity crush I had until a few years later when suddenly she was everyone's celebrity crush because they saw her underwear in Lost in Translation and if I am being honest here I never got the big deal about that movie and I thought she looked better elsewhere but maybe I was just bitter cause now everyone knew she was special and my libido no longer made me a special, unique snowflake. Anyway, by the time I started this blog I would say there was no one in the world I could think of as sexier and more desirable than Scarlett Johansson. These days she doesn't show up nearly as often and I have come to realize we are all very much products of the world around us. She doesn't show up on this blog for lots of reasons. I am still attracted to her but that smolder to her that I thought was inescapable seems to be gone. I feel like this is the product of being in Marvel movies. It's amazing you can put someone in skintight leather and have the camera largely focus on their butt in a bunch of movies and yet make the entire universe and world so sexless and sterile that there is nothing particularly sexy about it. Obviously others feel otherwise but it is amazing to me that someone who's very young teen years was spent largely fantasizing about superheroes can get basically no real vibe from any MCU characters. I guess that's what Disney sells. Also, aside from it sort of making her a sexless property, there is the fact that she shows up less now. This blog has taught me that, how well marketing works across everything. When she was the biggest movie star in the world, or one of them, she was constantly put in front of my face. That phase of her career is over and she shows up far, far less at red carpets and in photoshoots and whatever else makes celebrities something we can't avoid. As such she shows up here far less. None of this is about her of course, it's about me and my media diet and how we are sold people as products. I do think it encapsulates a lot of what I learned with this blog though. That and the fact that my first post was two sentences. Now look at this self congratulatory nonsense. Today I want to fuck Scarlett Johansson.

#Scarlett Johansson #blonde #Actress #whoiwanttofucktoday

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doctorhelena · 9 months

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Steggy Fic: A Stutter in Time, Chapter 17

I’ve created something for every day of Steggy Week 2023 over at @steggyfanevents! This is for Day 7 (Free Day). Previous Days: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6

Summary: 1945 Peggy Carter appears in Tony Stark’s lab, and immediately throws a wrench into everything.

Rating: PG

Read Chapter 17

Read from the beginning

Excerpt:

“And did they ever actually return your research?” Peggy asked Jane, taking a sip of her virgin mojito and then setting it down on the coffee table in front of her with an envious look at Jane's gin and tonic. All seemed well so far, Pepper thought, casting her gaze around the lounge.

Following Peggy’s request that Pepper please not fuss over her too much, the decorations were fairly minimal - mostly a few subtle sparkly accents and some Union Jack and Stars and Stripes balloons that had made Peggy laugh. Those had been Tony’s suggestion, and Pepper congratulated herself for allowing him to wear her down. The refreshment table along one wall held a selection of sweet and savoury hors d'oeuvres, a fruit plate, a cheese plate, a bowl of fruit punch, and a cake from Pepper’s favourite bakery with a congratulatory message that had, for security reasons, been added after its arrival at the Tower.

Sif was examining the food offerings with interest, gesturing at a decoratively carved pineapple as she asked a question that Sharon seemed to be doing her best to answer. The bar was self-serve but well stocked, and JARVIS was happy to provide instructions for making particular cocktails. Natasha seemed to be enjoying mixing drinks, handing one to Nicki with a raised eyebrow as if challenging her to find fault in it. Pepper suspected that, given Black Widow’s reputation, Nicki was likely to keep any complaints to herself despite the fact that she lived with a SHIELD agent.

Peggy had put her foot down at wearing a ‘Bride to Be’ sash or a veil, but she’d given Pepper free reign over the music and - with some trepidation - the activities. Although nothing she was wearing specifically designated her as the bride, she was radiantly beautiful in a pleated green dress that she and Pepper had acquired on their shopping trip a few weeks ago. The pleats, running from neckline to hem, were meant to subtly give her room to grow later on but, Pepper thought, also made her look a little like a Greek goddess, poised and powerful.

God, Peggy had really been at half strength, or maybe even less, for the first weeks Pepper had known her. She could easily see how this woman had defied all opposition to found and direct SHIELD, back when the odds had been even further stacked against her than they would have been if she'd tried it in the present day.

Read the rest of the chapter on A03

#fanfic #steggy #steggyweek23 #my fic #wip #peggy carter #steve rogers #bonus chapter this year!

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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The quran states multiple times that it has been made clear and easy to understand. e.g.

https://quranx.com/2.242

Thus Allah expoundeth unto you His revelations so that ye may understand.

Which means it's really weird then that many verses begin with nonsense.

https://quranx.com/2.1

'Alif Lām Mīm

This doesn't mean anything, even in the original Arabic.

https://quranx.com/3.1

'Alif Lām Mīm

https://quranx.com/7.1

'Alif Lām Mīm Ṣād

https://quranx.com/10.1

'Alif Lām Rā'

https://quranx.com/11.1

'Alif Lām Rā'

https://quranx.com/12.1

'Alif Lām Rā'

https://quranx.com/13.1

'Alif Lām Mīm Rā'

https://quranx.com/14.1

'Alif Lām Rā'

https://quranx.com/15.1

'Alif Lām Rā'

https://quranx.com/19.1

Kāf Hā' Yā' `Ayn Ṣād

https://quranx.com/20.1

Ṭā' Hā'

https://quranx.com/26.1

Ṭā' Sīn Mīm

https://quranx.com/27.1

Ṭā' Sīn

https://quranx.com/28.1

Ṭā' Sīn Mīm

https://quranx.com/29.1

'Alif Lām Mīm

https://quranx.com/30.1

'Alif Lām Mīm

https://quranx.com/31.1

'Alif Lām Mīm

https://quranx.com/32.1

'Alif Lām Mīm

https://quranx.com/36.1

Yā' Sīn

https://quranx.com/38.1

Ṣād

https://quranx.com/40.1

Ḥā' Mīm

https://quranx.com/41.1

Ḥā' Mīm

https://quranx.com/42.1-2

Ḥā' Mīm `Ayn Sīn Qāf

https://quranx.com/43.1

Ḥā' Mīm

https://quranx.com/44.1

Ḥā' Mīm

https://quranx.com/45.1

Ḥā' Mīm

https://quranx.com/46.1

Ḥā' Mīm

https://quranx.com/50.1

Qāf

https://quranx.com/68.1

Nūn

The quran also states that Allah protects it from corruption.

https://quranx.com/15.9

Indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur'an and indeed, We will be its guardian.

Many Muslims believe the Taurat (Torah) and Injil (New Testament), previous revelations by the same god, were "corrupted," and never consider why he would protect the quran, but not the torah or gospels. What the quran does say is that the quran confirms the previous revelations, rather than correcting them.

https://quranx.com/3.3

He has sent down upon you, [O Muhammad], the Book in truth, confirming what was before it. And He revealed the Torah and the Gospel.

Of course, if you were writing a bunch of nonsense fiction, you would probably stick something in there about how it was really, truly, actually true, and that you could know it was true because of the magic forcefield of protection that surrounds it. Any text that claims to be perfect and inerrant is the one of which you should immediately regard as unreliable; there's no reason to even say this unless you're trying to pull a fast one.

But this guardianship creates a problem for these nonsense verses, particularly since nobody in the authentic hadith ask about them or what they mean, suggesting they're later additions.

And the claim of the quran being clear and understandable is undermined by the fact nobody can understand them.

One reasonable possibility, considering the generalized trend of repetition across consecutive surahs, is that they're notations by scribes. But this is obviously unacceptable to the notion of Allah's revealed, protected word.

They've therefore taken on a mystical character, with entire fields of scholarship dedicated to understanding them. Hence the sardonic term "abracadabra verses."

If they are indeed just the annotations of scribes, this gives you an indicator of how completely stupid this religion is. imagine a theological domain dedicated to studying the margin notes written by an editor in a draft of a Harry Potter novel.

Among the theories are: some kind of mathematical miracle associated with the symbols; Allah's own notes, which is stupid for a revelation intended to guide humans; and abbreviations for Allah's qualities, along the same lines as the endlessly-repeated self-congratulatory statements such as "Allah is wise," "Allah is all-knowing," "Allah is just."

Then again, perhaps Muhammad Allah just got tired of starting everything off with "O, you who believe," "O, prophet," and the like. It still doesn't resolve the contradiction of the quran's claim to being clear and understandable, though.

#islam #quran #abracadabra #abracadabra verses #islamic nonsense #quranic nonsense #islamic scripture #religion #religion is a mental illness

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