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brunchable · 2 years

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No Other Way [Request] || Doctor Strange x BlackWidow!Reader

Word count: 2.8K WARNINGS: Angst. Unrequited Love. Character D**th. References: DS:MoM/Vormir (Endgame) [Request]: Dedicated to @romanvffa <3 A/N: Sorry it took so long, love. Tumblr had to fix my account. ***Strictly do not: claim, repost, copy, translate my stories anywhere else*** + GIF DOES NOT belong to me. All Credits to the creator.

Stephen fell to the ground after attempting to dream walk into his variant's corpse in your original reality, however he failed miserably. You stood vigilant with the Brazier of Bom'Galiath in one hand and a candle in the other. You began to worry for him internally as he seemed to be experiencing an episode that resembled a seizure. Since Christine was already caring for him, you felt some kind of relief. She was a doctor after all, she should know how to deal with people having fits.

"Come on Stephen, fight them. You are Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, show them what you can do. " Christine gave him a little encouragement while wiping away the sweat that was dripping down the side of his head.

This Christine acted like she hated Stephen, but now she’s acting like his stupid girlfriend. Your facial muscles formed a scowl. If it were possible, your eyes would be rolling 360 degrees—You and Stephen always got along well, you share the same humour and make a great team together. At one point you thought he’d notice that there was some chemistry between you, but you thought wrong. The imagination of wanting to push Christine out the window entertained your thoughts– you wanted to be in her position right now.

If you were being absolutely honest with yourself, you'd label the awful emotion that you were experiencing, as jealousy. "Doctor Palmer, please bring him back. I really don't want to remain here forever as a third wheel," you pleaded, making it sound like a joke with just a little bit of sincerity.

"I'm trying (Y/N)—"Stephen shot up with the loudest gasp, like he could finally breathe after being suffocated.

Both of you jumped when he snapped out of his seizures, and you watched them from the outside of the ritual circle. You saw how Christine was trying to comfort him, and you also witnessed how he responded to that: he held Christine as if she were the one who gave him his strength. Your instincts were telling you that you should go check on him as well, but you knew that it would mean nothing since he only sees you as a friend or sidekick on this journey.

You heard the sounds of crackling noises before you could even open your lips to speak, the ones you've heard in the past when America mistakenly opens her star portals, "Uh Strange, do you hear what I'm hearing?" You looked around the god-forsaken haunted house in an effort to find the location of the portal that would open up.

"Yeah… I am." Stephen stood up from the ground, holding Palmer up with him while he also tried to focus his hearing on the crackles in space.

"You might want to take that thing." You suggested and pointed at the Darkhold using the candle. Stephen stooped down to grab the book and shut it with one hand, he extended his arms out towards you, wanting to hand the book over.

"It might be safer with you, if it's The Scarlet Witch coming for us, I'm sure she'll look for it on me first." Stephen said and entrusted the book to your protection. You approached the circle of candles with some reluctance and then cautiously grabbed the book. You decided it was best to go back out since being so close to him while Palmer was there made you feel awkward.

Stephen turned to Christine, "Just in case anything bad happens after this, I better tell you this now…"

Christine did not speak a single word, and instead just gazed eagerly at the man. When you heard that Stephen was ready to confess something, your ears perked up, and you could tell from a mile away that it was his affection for her.

During the whole of your trip with him and in America, the topic of Christine and everything related to her continually came up. Now, you had a front-row, VIP seat to witness this couple finally understand one another, only to have their relationship disintegrate once again because the laws of the universe dictated it. You didn’t know why you felt a sense of relief that they could never be together. You made it seem as if you were pacing about and looking at antiquities that had no significance to you because what he had to say to her was so upsetting that you didn't even want to listen to it.

"I love you…. I love you in every universe," Stephen's eyes wandered to Palmer's visage, like he was printing it in his photographic memory, "And it's not that I don't want to care for someone to have someone care for me, it's just….I get scared."

You gave Stephen a sidelong glance; oh, how you wished those eyes would look at you like that; you wondered what it would be like to have the warmth of his hands against your skin; you were certain that he would be able to break down the barriers that you had constructed around yourself; you had no doubts about his ability to do so. However, this admission made you feel as if someone had ripped your heart out of your chest, trampled on it, and then ground it up in a grinder. You knew this would leave you with an ugly scar. You’ve never felt so out of place and rejected in your entire life. You see now that you will never be able to fill that space in his heart because no matter how much you try, you aren’t Christine; she’s got everything that you don’t have so how could you ever compete with that? You probably just imagined or misinterpreted the look in his eyes when he got worried about you after being injured by the witch.

"Face your fears, Doctor Strange.” You heard her say, while she placed her hand against his cheek, which he leaned against. They were too busy being disgustingly lovey-dovey that they didn’t notice the Star portal open up,

You cleared your throat to remind them of your presence, “Sorry to be the cockblocker but the portal?”

“Right…” Stephen furrowed his brows at you, his expression looking almost worried, “(Y/N), you may want to put that down.”

You looked at him confused, “What?” Stephen’s eyes stared pointedly at the axe of Angarrumus that you obliviously now held tightly in your hand. You looked down and chucked the blade away from you, “I don’t remember... grabbing that—anyway, we have to go.” You set the volts on your widow bite to its most lethal and highest limit of 350,000 volts of electricity. You’ve witnessed how powerful she's become and what she’s capable of. You have no choice but to be equally brutal, even if shooting her with this amount of electricity means permanent nerve damage or even death.

You all jumped out of the portal that America subconsciously opened out of fear as Wanda began to drain her powers. Without saying a word, you aimed at her thigh and shot her with that lethal amount of electricity. In almost an instant, her body went rigid as the electricity passed through her body.

Wong emerged from the entryway of the temple and was relieved to see that all of you were there in one piece.

“Wong, I could use some help restraining the witch. I don't think I can hold her off myself.” Stephen asks and, along with Wong, uses the spell to call for the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to tie The Scarlet Witch up as she fights off the pain and muscle spasms caused by your bite.

“You guys try your best to keep her at bay. We need to get the kid out of here first,” America fell on the sacrificial table, too weak to get up, so ran to her aid, “America, we’re here. We’re going to get you out—let’s go.” You patted her cheek to orient her a bit more.

“(Y/N)? How did you get here?” The kid asked weakly as her eyes fluttered open.

“Because of you, love. You opened the portal for us, you got us here. You may not realise it but all this time, it’s always been you. You got us exactly where we needed to go. You’ve got more control over your powers than you think, you just need to trust it and trust yourself”— You smiled at her lovingly and wiped the blood dripping out from her brows.

You and America came under Wanda's intense scrutiny as she wrung some power out of the knowledge that you had angered her. As she struggled to free herself from her confinement, she secretly energised her abilities, which resulted in an outburst of chaos magic. Stephen, Wong, and Christine were flung in the direction of the wall as the rush of force shoved their bodies aside.

You used your body to shield America as both of you got blown away by the energy. Wanda tilted her head, teeth grinding as she assessed the situation and chuckled, “Do you really think your little electric device would stop me?” She mocked, her accent becoming more audible.

The darkhold landed on the opposite side of the temple, close to where Christine was. You engaged in direct eye contact with her and then subtly signalling her to remain completely still by placing your finger on your upper lip.

“Stay down.” You whispered to America. You groaned while you got up to face Wanda, “No, but it was worth a try. I never got to use its limits and you were the perfect guinea pig.”

“You’re going to regret that.” Wanda's hands started to glow with a chaotic energy as she began to channel it.

“Wanda, look around, you’re destroying yourself! Do you think Vision will be proud of what you’ve become?” You tried to reason with her but instead she hurled the ball of energy towards you.

To deflect the assault away from you and back towards Wanda, Wong lent Stephen his sling ring, which Stephen then used to create a portal in front of you. She was flung about in the air by her own abilities, and this time she directed her attention on Stephen and Wong who were prepared to battle her together.

"Destroy herself?" Christine mumbled to herself as she tried to put the pieces together. While the masters of magic were fighting each other, Christine saw one of Wong's daggers near the sacrificial table and quickly made her way towards it while ducking and dodging.

While you were assisting the kid to stand, you saw Christine make a move to shatter the darkhold. During that brief moment, you noticed Stephen looking at Christine with wide eyes as he realised what she was going to do. You had no choice but to remove her from the vicinity of that book; attempting to destroy anything of such immense power rarely ends well.

‘He really can’t live without her huh?’ You reflected for a moment, then made the necessary adjustments to the voltage of your weapon, and then you blasted Christine away from the book. You released America, but she grabbed hold of you before you could get away from her.

“(Y/N)! Where are you going?” She tightened her grip on your arm, and with moistened eyes you smiled at her.

“I need to take care of the Darkhold America.” You ripped her hands away from your arm, “It’s going to be okay. I trust the strength that’s in you. Make sure everyone gets home safely okay?” While walking backwards, you pointed your hook at the book and pulled it towards you. Then, as you passed Christine, who was recovering from your bite, you ducked down and grabbed the dagger. In the past, Stephen has always been the one to protect others, and now you've decided to do the same by demolishing Mount Wundagore to protect him.

While he and Wong fought to keep Wanda under control, Stephen spotted you make your way towards the cliff of the temple while carrying the darkhold in your arms. As you sprang into the air and whirled your body around while hurling the book towards the stratosphere, the Scarlet Witch let out a horrifying scream that caused your blood to rush to your head. You used the last of your might to launch the dagger at the book, which resulted in a catastrophic explosion that was felt all the way up Mount Wundagore.

If Christine had ripped the book to shreds right then and there, things may have turned out worse for everyone else. The mountain grumbled, which was a sign that there was only a limited amount of time left before it collapsed completely on top of itself.

While running to you, Stephen tossed his cloak in your direction; however, a rock that had fallen from the ceiling caught the cloak and held it in place. You succumbed to your destiny by closing your eyes, a single tear escaping the inner corner of your eye when suddenly, you felt Stephen's tight hold around your wrist.

You gasped and looked up at him, “Stephen, let me go, they need you.”

Stephen turned around and saw that Wong was having trouble and said, "What about you?!" While he was attempting to pull you up, he yelled at you, "(Y/N), take my hand god damn it!" His veins on his forehead were bulging. “Don’t—”

You studied Stephen’s features and felt lucky that his face was the last face you’ll see, “It’s okay. I’ve done my part,” You smiled at him reassuringly as you felt your body stiffening, you were slowly turning into rock as the consequence of destroying the darkhold, “You can’t save me either way Stephen.”

You raised your other hand to show Stephen that it was beginning to turn grey and you passed him a little note, “You couldn’t think of another way?” Stephen asked, clearly frustrated with you for acting so impulsively.

“There is no other way.” You chuckled and repeated his catchphrase as his tears fell into your cheeks. You tilted your head to peer over his shoulder and saw that the mountain was beginning to crumble. You forced your feet up against the rock face, which prompted Stephen to release his grip on your wrist. While you were turning into stone, he yelled your name many times as you descended farther into the abyss.

▪︎ ▪︎ ▪︎

It had been a few weeks after the battle at Wundagore, and here he was standing in front of your gravestone leaving a tiny arrangement of flowers for you. He felt the gentle caress of the cold wind on his face, and in his mind, he believed that it was you greeting him. He was holding the folded up paper in his hands, but up until this point he hadn't had the bravery to read it. Stephen took it out of his pocket and with trembling hands he opened it and began to read. Dear Stephen, I don't know how to approach you or say this to your face so I choose to write it instead. The path that led us to friendship was not exactly the traditional one, but it turned out to be successful for us. I know that no matter what, you will support me. That is one of the reasons I believe I am beginning to develop feelings for you. I am aware that you do not have the time for a relationship at the moment, and I also understand that you may be afraid about making a commitment. However, I am patient. No matter what our relationship is like, you can count on me to stand by your side. Never before in my life have I felt such a strong connection to another person. It makes my day whenever we get to chat or even just hang out together. I am also aware that it is not easy to tell another person that you do not love them in the same way that they love you. So I ask you to please, do not ever be scared to speak your mind openly to me. I will always be your friend, regardless of what you feel about me. You should know I'll be patiently waiting for you. I don't need expensive presents or your undivided attention. To know you care is all I need, and I have no doubt you do. I appreciate all of your hugs and words of encouragement, and I just wanted to say "thank you" for all of it. In the time I've known you, I've come to love you as a friend, and I want to love you much more than that. Sincerely Yours, (Y/N).

He now understood why you always stood up for him and got angry whenever someone said something bad about him. It was finally clear why you got upset with him every time he took up a dangerous mission without asking for your help, it was clear why you gave him any time of your day whenever he needed an ear to listen.

Stephen found himself sobbing at the letter as he read it, he found himself on his knees in front of your gravestone, apologising, “I’m so sorry, (Y/N). I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

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#stephen strange #stephen strange x reader #benedict cumberbatch imagine #stephen strange x you #marvel x you #benedict cumberbatch x reader #benedict cumberbatch x you #doctor strange x you #doctor strange imagine #doctor strange x reader #doctor strange #dr strange x reader #dr strange x you #angst

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mckiwi · 2 years

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I love how the “the greatest threat to our universe is Doctor Strange” line got swept under the carpet so quickly when literally every version of Stephen has proven to be insanely dangerous if he wants to be.

Stephen Strange

-endures 1000+ loops of agony and pain by Dormammu to protect the Earth

-casually deals with two gods, Thor and Loki (tricking the god of mischief nonetheless)

-endures torture, lives and dies through 14 million possible outcomes, fights an intergalactic warlord with four infinity stones one-on-one, gets dusted, brings together an entire army in about ten minutes, fights in a massive battle… all in what was to him a few hours, without a rest

- selectively erases the memory of eight billion people, any record or mention of Peter Parker that there is throughout the entire world, including himself

-uses the Darkhold to dreamwalk into his own corpse. Proceeds to control and command the Souls of the Damned

-gains a third eye

-causes an incursion

Sinister Strange

-frequently uses the Darkhold to dreamwalk into variants of himself

-destroys his own universe as well as others

-gains a third eye

-causes incursions

Supreme Strange

-formulates a team to lead their universe

-creates Waypoint between universes

-causes an incursion

-uses both the Darkhold and the Book of Vishanti

-kills Thanos

Defender Strange

-captures powerful demon

-continues to keep control of demon even while severely injured

-gets impaled, uses spell to save America as his dying breath

Strange Supreme

-spends countless loops watching (and failing to prevent) the love of his life dying

-absorbs power from interdimensional creatures for centuries, with every creature actively fighting to escape him

-senses the presence of and converses with The Watcher

-manipulates the Time Stone into becoming a Reality/Soul/Time Stone merge

-brings Christine back to life

-accidentally destroys his own universe

-opens multiversal portals

-protects his teammates throughout the entirely of the battle agianst Ultron

-absorbs the energy of a destroyed galaxy with no effort

-withstands the force of all six infinity stones one-on-one for several minutes

In Conclusion: Stephen’s endurance and ambition is not to be undermined. If he wants something bad enough, he will get it.

#doctor strange #dr strange #stephen strange #defender strange #sinister strange #supreme strange #strange supreme #marvel #mckiwianalysis

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scvrletstrange · 2 years

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Unrequited | Stephen Strange

MoM spoilers ahead.

Summary: Stephen finds out that he loves Christine in all universes, meanwhile you happen to love him without expecting anything. Stephen x female reader.

Word count: 607

Note: this is my first x reader one shot I think, please be nice with me as english is not my native language. Thank you if you read this angsty thing.

You tried. You tried a lot to not fall again on this loop, but it wasn’t possible.

Not when Stephen protected you all the way when you fell on the portal with the girl. He never left your side, or hers. You knew it’s something natural on him, and you couldn’t help but feel your heart hurting because he would never see you like you did.

The trip became awkward at some point after you saw your most treasured memory. It was one of those nights where you couldn’t grant sleep and he was there too. Outisde the temple, on the training grounds, you saw Stephen comforting you.

You arrived some time before he did at Kamar Taj, even though he would think you’ve healed, that wasn’t the case. He let you cry on his shoulder that cold night, holding you tight and listening all the things your heart was keeping inside.

Now, America was gone because of Wanda, and once again, Stephen protected you from his own corrupted variant, who ended up under the effects of the Darkhold after Christine died on his universe.

Stephen always would love her. In all universes. This was his destiny. You remembered your variant, who was left on the Sanctum before you escaped from Mordo and his team. Probably she longed his love reciprocity as much as you did.

“Are you okay?” Stephen hurried to help you get up from the floor, waking you up from your thoughts. His variant now gone, the Darkhold was now the only option he had.

“I am,” you mumbled once you got on your feet. “Thank you.”

His trembling hand stayed a little too much on your arm. None of you moved. You could see on his gaze the worry, but still, he was attached to her. All across the multiverse. He knew it. So you had to make things clear again before something happened to any of you. After all, there might be a possibility you didn’t make it out alive.

“About today...”

“It’s fine.” Stephen cut you off. “Is it about your memory?” he asked after a long pause between both.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“That machine made us see things that we value. I am flattered that you keep that as your most precious moment... It makes me think I did at least something for you,” the grip on your arm never left.

“You did a lot for me, even today. So I’m grateful for that.”

Stephen smiled, setting aside a small strand of hair that was falling on the side of your face with his other trembling hand.

“You knew already,” you said. You wanted to continue, but you were not capable of pronouncing those words. They were too strong and Stephen wouldn’t feel the same way.

“I know it now, and it’s fine,” he reassured. “I do love you, but not in that way.”

You nodded gently, his thumb caressed your cheek softly, until his lips kissed your forehead softly. Just like he did in your memories. Slowly, he set aside, taking the black book from the floor while looking the mess that was created.

“Are you going to dreamwalk back there?”

“I’ll try.”

“I’ll protect you here.”

Stephen agreed silently and started the magic conjuration. You saved the urge to let a single teardrop fall from your eyes when he turned his back to you, this was not the moment. At least he was being honest with you, not giving any hopes.

But inside, Stephen was scared. He was afraid of taking another step beyond your relationship. He didn’t even had the minimum idea of why someone like you loved him with all your being. Even he could see on your gaze that you’d give anything for him, but he wasn’t worth it.

He was so unlucky. Love wasn’t for him, he thought. The last time he did love someone, she had to get over him. Now the question Christine asked before was present the whole trip. Maybe he could lie to someone else, but his truth was different. No, he was not happy.

GENERAL MASTERLIST | MARVEL MASTERLIST

#stephen strange x reader #doctor strange x reader #stephen strange fanfiction #doctor strange fanfiction #doctor strange one shot #stephen strange one shot #marvel fanfiction #doctor strange in the multiverse of madness #doctor strange spoilers #stephen strange x female reader #doctor strange x female reader #multiverse of madness #marvel one shot

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arthurdrakoni · 8 months

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Flag of the United Provinces of Markland

This is the flag of the United Provinces of Markland. It comes from a world in which the Norse colonization of North America was more successful. The Norse expanded into mainland North America. Most of the settlements were founded by Christians. However, some pagans also established colonies in hopes of escaping persecution in the Old World. Unfortunately, Christians had a numeric advantage, and forced the Pagans further into the interior of North America. Still, the Pagans made the best of things, and there was some trade between pagan and Christian settlements. Christian settlements tended to be based around agriculture and fishing, while Pagan settlements placed emphasis on fur trapping and hunting.

Knowledge of the Americas eventually spread to the rest of Europe, and other nations began to send their own expeditions. The indigenous peoples were exposed Old World diseases, but managed to recover their numbers by the time Europeans arrived in earnest. There are several independent indigenous nations, such as the Haudenosaunee and Lenape nations. Both nations are close allies of Markland. Christian Marklanders traditionally had a tense relationship with the indigenous peoples. By contrast, Pagan Marklanders were generally on more amicable terms with the Native Marklanders, and intermarriage wasn’t uncommon. This lead to a creation of a new culture of mixed race Marklanders. We might consider them akin to the Métis of our world. In time, Markland began to view itself as separate from Scandinavia. This ultimately culminated in a war of independence. The Markland War of Independence saw Christians and Pagans fighting side-by-side to defend their homeland. This caused Christians and Pagans to view each other not as separate cultures, but as a single people sharing in a common destiny. The United Provinces of Markland includes most of what would have been the eastern provinces of Canada, as well as the New England states, Long Island, and New York City. The United Province of Markland is governed by a bicameral legislature known as the Althing. The head of state known as the Speaker of the Althing. The Speaker is voted on by the people and serves a term of six years, and can be re-elected for only one more term afterward. The Constitution of Markland places emphasis on protecting the rights of minorities, such a pagans. All provinces can declare an official religion, but they cannot penalize other religions, or lack there of. However, Pagan majority provinces are granted more leeway with what they are allowed to do, in accordance with the Constitution. Some conservative Marklanders grumble about this. They feel that pagans wield a disproportionate amount of influence in the Althing; especially given that Pagans only comprise about twenty percent of Markland’s population. However, most Christian Marklanders are perfectly willing to give small concessions to the Pagans. Marklander Christianity is highly syncretic. Pagan Marklanders might bless a field by pulling a wagon with a statue of Freyr or Thor around it. Christian Marklanders would preform pretty much the exact same ritual, but with a statue of St. Olaf instead. The raven, rather than the dove, is consider the symbol of the Holy Spirit in Marklander Christianity. This symbolism extends to the flag. The flag is based upon the famous Raven Banner. It is a grey triangle pennon with two ravens. The ravens represent both Christians and Pagans, and symbolize how Markland is the product of both cultures. Some conservative Christians, however, note that two raven could also symbolize Huginn and Muninn, the ravens of Odin. Conservative Christians have tried, unsuccessfully, to get the flag changed to include only a single raven. However, most Christin Marklanders are perfectly happy with the flag just the way it is, and think it look very nice.

Link to the original flag on my blog: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2022/05/flag-of-united-provinces-of-markland.html?m=1

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doctorstrangeaskblog · 2 years

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(More) Stephen Strange Headcanons

Because you guys asked

Absolute music addict

Will hold his phone while listening to music on his bed, eyes closed, imagining movie scenes, his own dreams, for hours at night.

Many times will go to one specific music he wants to listen to and keep repeating the same dramatic bit over and over

Listens to tons of movies, series and animes OSTs

When he's alone at night, listening to songs, he will often sing along, but without any sound, he will just move his lips

Often imagines/dreams he can play more instruments and more skillfully and that he's famous and loved for playing

Likes to hug pillows a lot, he had a special pillow to hug UNTIL he met the Cloak

The Cloak needs to rest too, and when both the Cloak and Stephen need to rest, they cuddle

Stephen and the Cloak have a very deep, intimate, unique, special bond- the Cloak suffered with Stephen against Dormammu and Thanos- Stephen wants to protect that bond so strongly-that's why he doesn't like when the Cloak shows affection in public, but the Cloak keeps doing that because when in private, Stephen clings a lot to its affection

Since his father was so strict when he was a kid/teenager, once Strange went to live on his own, he started to try all sorts of things- movies, songs, clothes, food, visiting places, dating- eventually he settled down, but that made Strange be VERY OPEN MINDED about all sorts of things.

He sort of sees his sister in young people who are lost or need help, so his first instinct is to protect

He has a very very very lower self esteem most people imagine he has

Stephen has a very deep strong bond with Wong. Both went through so much together, rebuilding the Sanctum and keeping the stability of the Masters of the Mystic Arts after Kaecilius attacked and after Endgame. Now after DS2 (Wanda's attack).

All the pain and suffering Stephen went through only made him want to refrain others from going through the same.

He can be mean and will be mean if provoked, but he won't cause severe injury, what he did to Pizza Poppa is the limit

Will act mean to show off or to pretend he's a menace he's not supposed to be messed with

Strange is very very analytical and logical, however, he often makes mistakes because he is naive - because he always expects the best from people and gets distracted very easily (most of the times he lost a battle or got betrayed both in DS2 and No Way Home)

Due to his abusive father, Stephen has come to avoid anything associated with "father figures"- he doesn't want to be a father, is afraid that if he were a father he could be a bad father and his kids would despise him the way he disliked his own father, so even though he takes younger heroes under his wings (Peter, America), he will do what he can to not be associated with a father- however, he deeply cares and ends up sort of fathering- despite trying to keep his distance, despite trying to pretend he doesn't care.

He hates people who control things too much, however, ironically, he became like that, he is aware of that and trying to change, actively, and he has a very good insight of it- he's trying to be less rude, to yell less, to be more polite.

He's a good actor.

He's always looking at Wong to see his reaction

He admires Wong and knows Wong is waaaay ahead of him in wisdom, composure, knowledge, responsibility, etc.

Strange sometimes acts like a brat/dork/sassy irresponsible shit to call Wong's attention.

He often does risky things to prove Wong and himself that he is capable of great things- also to feed his low self esteem

Strange used so much alcohol as a cheap pain killer he doesn't get drunk anymore- he would need so SO SO MUCH alcohol to start getting drunk (he drinks a lot at Christine's wedding and he's still 100% sober)

I feel like his stomach is sensible- probably vomited a lot during med school (hidden, it's one of his secrets)

Has photographic memory, also, his imagination can be VERY PRECISE, he uses it to create stories, movies and clips inside his head- when he was homeless in Kamar Taj he kept doing that all the time when he had to sleep or take shelter from the rain

He got to meet and build strong bonds with many Avengers during the time he was living the possible outcomes, however, only Stephen remembers

Strange LOVES animals, he was raised in a farm, he loved the horses and other animals- he has only seen kindness in them, hurt an animal in front of Strange and he will be VERY VERY ANGRY

He started to have white hair when he was 24, so he dyed his hair for some years, slowly stopping to dye as he got older, naturally not caring so much anymore, taking longer to dye-

One of the reasons he doesn't want to be considered old is because in his head, he's getting more similar to his father.

The extent of abuses he suffered - unknown- physical for sure (I remember seeing comic panels of him being slapped- like Tony was, my memory could be failing me but it probably happened because Stephen has SO FREAKING MANY RED FLAGS of physical abuse- when you study anything related to the health field, specially medicine psychology, those red flags become easier to be seen and Benedict acts them VERY DAMN WELL.) Mora/psychological abuse for sure. I've talked to other fans who study the character a lot and they also had come to the same conclusion that Strange probably shielded his sister Donna and his brother Victor from his father's abuses.

Cries a lot. He cries. Tears might not roll down sometimes, he can drain them back inside, swallow his tears, not shed them despite his eyes being A POOL OF TEARS so so many times- he learned to do that because his father wouldn't allow the "older boy of the house" cry.

He helped to raise his sister Donna and his brother Victor, he knows how to look after kids, he knows how to cook the essential, he knows how to clean and dress and teach. He's a great teacher, despite his own way of teaching.

Will melt at sweet physical touch- caressing his hair/cheeks/face gently WAY BETTER caressing body parts/arms/legs seem to make him uncomfortable/triggered (red flag?)

Will follow your hands with his eyes if you intend to touch him

DO NOT TOUCH HIS HAIR if you're not intimate, he probably got his hair violently pulled a lot by his father

SQUINTS a lot

Eyes very sensible to wind and sunlight

Trips if he uses glasses

Him giving his hand to hold is an ultimate act of trust

Likes to hide his hands in warm places, will hide them under you if you're intimate

Always walks with hands in pockets or behind the Cloak

Accepted his scars but doesn't like when people stare

Loves customizing/fashion/style is pretty boy, so much self care

Want more? Just tell me/like/comment. :D

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shydaydreamer28 · 3 months

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DSMOM - PalmerStrange Rant

One finally I wanna let out. I only just watched this film for the first time last November, so the anger & rant-mode is still fresh in my system compared to folks who ripped this band-aid off 2 years ago when this film came out.

Imo, this movie utterly character assassinated Strange. But the biggest crime is the character assassination the PalmerStrange subplot did to him. And I wanna get out 1 big rant to cover all the cringe & issues I had with this regressive subplot.

First things first, we already see the garbage that is to come at the start of the film. Strange decides to go to Christine's wedding. This by itself is fine since the first film establishes that Christine still cares for Strange as a friend & loved one. Him going to support someone he cares for, perfectly fine.

The issue comes when you have our "hero" attempting to be a homewrecker at his ex's WEDDING RECEPTION!!!!! 🤬

Gotta show off & flex for her a bit first.

Christine has just told Strange that her husband is a big fan of his.

But why care about that when your first order of business is to try to steal the man's wife AT THEIR WEDDING? I am going to keep emphasizing the bold. Lmao

So Strange goes on his sob story about regretting their failed romance DURING HER WEDDING RECEPTION.

Christine is very patient with him on this nonsense. She never gets short with him and pollitely tells him their relationship was not meant to be despite the fact she is very clearly uncomfortable having to listen to that AT HER WEDDING.

Rather than let it go, Strange has to make things more awkward for both of them by insisting on an elaboration AT HER WEDDING - as if that's gonna change anything at that point.

Christine pollitely gives her answer he insisted on.

Now Strange gets to stand there looking (even more) awkward. But considering the tackiness of this exchange he insisted on, ever bit of his discomfort is deserved. Lol

Now that Christine has admitted she does not love him & never could, he realizes he ain't pulling her and backpedals. Having lost the exchange, he does the ONLY thing he ever should have to begin with & gives her his best wishes, very forcedly, with the fakest smile he could half-ass muster. lol

This entire scene made Strange look pathetic & tacky asf. We're already off to a bad start.

For me, it's hard to give af about rooting for a protagonist who is tacky & desperate enough to harrass his ex ON HER WEDDING DAY about their failed romance from 10 years ago and tries to bag her right after she JUST GOT MARRIED -trying to break up a family that's barely started. Now film opens establishing Strange as a desperate & tacky creep. Lets continue, shall we. 😁

Later in the film, he & America have officially started their multiversial journey in the 838 universe where we get the memory lane scene and his most important memory is his ex giving him a watch. Remember this. I will be coming back to it later.

After Stranges tries to comfort America about losing her mothers, she asks about Christine whom she knows from Defender Strange. Strange asks America if they were together - again, like that should matter to him. Log this away. It will also come back later.

After being captured by 838 Mordo, Strange comes face to face with 838 Christine who explains the situation. Having his priorities 100% straight, Strange asks the hard-hitting question -

Got a child in danger you claim to wanna protect & a murderous witch after you. But lets focus on what really matters. Anywho Christine gives her answer, which he again awkwardly does not like.

She makes a point to tell him that she doesn't care to know him & whatever she was to him where he came from is moot.

Again, not being able to let it go, his desperate creep ass asks her why.

I guess not being able to understand why a woman he just met doesn't care about his romantic interest. 838 Christine looks like our Christine. But at the end of the day, she isn't. Keep this in mind as well.

Strange gets taken away for judgement by the Illuminati. In this scene we learn that they executed their Strange after he royally screwed up. Xavier shows Strange exactly what happened. Again rather than focus on anything genuinely important, his only concern is he Christine knows - I guess hoping she didn't under belief that she'd enever work for his killers. No luck for him there. lol

No matter what he learns about his variants & potential wrong-doings he could fall prey to, the only concern he ever finds imporant is Christine - somehow he always loops everything back to her.

Lets skip ahead to meeting Sinister Strange where some of my earlier observations come back around.

He meets this variant who asks him to prove he's the real deal. This is where we hear Donna mentioned for the first time (only having this scene because Benedict insisted & knows how important Donna should be).

Strange is clearly upset thinking & talking about his sister's death & BC kills the performance.

Sadly, this scene gets undercut when the Memory Lane scene depicted his biggest thing as his ex giving him a watch 10 years ago. So I guess his ex giving him a gift & leaving him hurts him more than his little sister dying.

If that is the case, Strange's character has NOT been done any favors. His obsession with his ex overrides family tragedy, I guess. Benedict was right to insist on this scene. Waldron was wrong to make Memory Lane all about Christine. Have a scene of Strange & Donna playing together as children, then hit hard when Strange reveals what happens to her later.

What we got was disjointed asf and removes any sympathy you could have for Strange when the film makes CHRISTINE the only thing that matters to him in life. His most important memory is her - so if he barely gives a damn about his sister compared to his narcissistic desire to reclaim an ex, why should we feel sympathy? I would go further & ask why we should care about Strange at ail? I mean, if his priorities are so fucked up that an old flame dumping him is more traumatic than watching his sister die right in front of him, you have written a character that shouldn't be cared for or sympathized with - rather a character that needs to be put out of his own & everyone else's misery. Lets move on.

Strange talks with Sinister who brings up Christine & her wedding. He went the same route our Strange did, being asked if he was happy & lying about it. Our Strange seems to have the realization he is not on a good path based on the same events that lead Sinsiter to where he is now.

Another early point coming back around. Sinsiter says he used the Darkhold to find a universe where he had Christine.

Our Strange was doing this as well. He wasn't using the Darkhold yet. But anytime he was confronted about other universes, he felt the need to ask if he & Christine were together in them, showing his own fixation with that. Keeping in mind the similar paths our Strange shared with Sinsiter, it is important to note where he obsession was going to go.

Sinister bluntly tells Strange he can use the Darkhold in exchange for Christine.

This reveals Sinsiter has gotten to the point of his obsession that Christine is on the same level as an object to be traded. Again, he wanted her because he wanted her & didn't care what she wanted anymore.

Our Strange had not made it there yet since he refuses on the grounds that Christine would not want that. Our Strange has not gotten to the forceful "take what I want" part of his obssession yet. However, it's safe to say he would have given the similar path he was already on.

It would seem getting dragged into Wanda & America's chase changed the course for him & let him see the shittiness of himself.

Now lets move ahead to our final stretch. Even after seeing a universal pattern & learning how bad things went for Sinister in his obssession, rather than take that lesson in & learn, Strange has to try again to hook up with Christine. We come to the big (in)famous scene.

He wants to take her back to his universe. Worth noting both times Strange gave his crap sob confessions, both Christines look uncomfortable asf.

We got his cringe & unearned confession line.

Also worth noting that after he gives this big theatrical confession, all Christine does is smile & nod awkwardly.

Again, she does not love him. Maybe she loved her Stephen once upon a time. But the man in front of her is not her Stephen. So once again, she's got no reason to love him.

Anyway, we see Strange give a slight eyebrow raise & stand there like an idiot when she doesn't have much to say in response.

Almost reads as "Damn, I just poured my heart out & she still don't want me."

Christine once again, pollitely rejects him. To another point I made earlier. THIS IS A VARIANT! This is not the Christine he shared his history with. She is a different person who shares looks with his Christine. But obssession doesn't care. He's still allowing his fixation & inability to accept loss affect him to the point of trying to hook up with a lookalike if he can - but even the lookalikes don't want him.

Again, this scene makes Strange look pathetic. This was not romantic or sympathetic. It was Simp Pathetic. lol Sorry dad joke.

But closing out the PalmerStrange rant, the relationship subplot depicts Strange as an obsessive stalker. If he didn't destroy the universe first like Supreme & Sinister, then the latter shows how dangerous Strange's limerence was going to get. And Christine has no protection because who's gonna stop Strange when he kidnaps her? The police & Charles can't do anything - and that's only if the latter isn't killed by Strange before he takes Christine.

We have an interview from Walnuts where he says PalmerStrange needed closure & 838 Christine pushes him forward to move on & love again. Link

The problem? Derrickson already did that in his first film 6 years prior. Strange still had feelings for Christine & it's made clear.

The awkward kiss cements that they will not be lovers again but have repaired their friendship and can part ways on a loving note contrary to their bad fight in the beginning.

The ship served the purpose Derrickson wanted which was giving Strange a personal tether in his previous life that he would have to leave behind. This was a mature ending of the relationship where they both accept their different life paths, and Strange doesn't look sprung & obsessive.

Waldron's writing didn't give closure or porgress. He regressed the character to do his own shittier version of the story while gaslighting fans in interviews to believe that it was a needed development rather than crappie retread of an already nicely concluded arc.

Strange is written as someone who's desperate asf.

He can't seem to recognize that obssessive desire is not love and can't stand the fact or fathum the idea that Christine couldn't want him, making their relationship all about what he's feeling when he insists on conversations about their past & grilling her for answers & justifications for why he can't have her.

His feelings here are pretty much the same as Spike's feelings for Buffy in seasons 5 and 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I hated Spike and his toxic relationship with Buffy. When the real thing didn't want him, he had a sex-bot of her made. Strange is in that same boat when he loses his Christine to another man, and started eyeing up variants. That's sad as hell.

In addition to regressing & character assassiating him in his Christine arc, Walnuts also regressed another arc which was the Ancient One teaching him that everything is not about him - because again, he makes the basis for his entire relationship with Christine about him. He refuses to take no for an answer. People like that can become dangerous.

In BTVS, we saw the worst case scenario of someone who can't let go & take no for an answer. Buffy calls off the abusive relationship with Spike and tries to give him more respect than he deserves in ending it. LIke Strange, he can't take no for an answer and won't respect that she is finished with him. It all comes to a head when Spike finally tries to rape her before realizing why their relationship was problematic and he had some changing to do.

And honestly, with the way Strange is written & what we got from Sinister, the infamous Buffy scene was a real possibility for Christine as well. Again, Sinsister wanted to trade the Darkhold for her, so her consent was evidently not something he was worried about so long as he was satisfied.

On to Clea

youtube

Now we move on to Clea as a love interest. This film created a multitude of problems for that, as well as Walnuts' words in the above-linked interview not matching his half-assed writing.

He talks up Clea as being this great love for Strange and saying he needed closure from Christine before he'd be ready to meet his real love. There are a couple of problems with that statement. First is the aforementioned fact that Strange already got that closure with Derrickson at the end of the first film. Walnuts regressed that development. Next is how he can say that crap with a straight face despite his writing showing the total opposite - which I will get to now.

If Walnuts truly thinks Clea is the love of Strange's life, why the Hell would he write Strange as being obssessed over another woman for 10 years throughout the film, and professing multiversial love to her lookalike just 10 min. before adding Clea in a nameless cameo in mid-credits?

If Walnuts absolutely had to write something relating to PalmerStrange closure, here is a better scenario. Strange congradulates her at her wedding, wishes her happiness, then both acknowlege that they'll always share a bond & cherrish the friendship their lives led them to. Maybe have them share a hug, then let that be it. Short, sweet, and to the point without any inappropriateness & obssessive stalker tendencies on Strange's end.

After that, you bring in Clea for the rest of the film, to go with him & America on their multiversial journey. You don't bring in a variant of his ex that you already knew he didn't need to be with.

Also if one is serious about Clea being a great love to Strange, no writer worth a damn is gonna write him as a obssessive stalker over another woman throughout the film right up until the last 3 min.

"I love you in every universe" is not a line one writes to show that a character is getting over & moving on from someone. That's the line of someone who's still very much trying to get what they want.

In the following scene with Wong, Strange outright admits he is not happy after the film's events. Again, this is NOT writing him as a man who's moved on.

Strange talks to America, goes back to the Sanctum, now all of a sudden he's over Christine, smiling & happy with life?

NO! That's some terrible ass writing - a totally forced & unearned "happy" ending. Strange was unhappy, obssessed, and depressed right up through his scene with Wong. How did we get from that to magical out of nowhere happiness & acceptance? Clearly there was a time jump. But ultimately the film kept him static in his unhappiness & obssession with the "development" into happiness & moving on being off-screen. Lmao

This brings us to the final issues. This film forces PalmerStrange out of nowhere, and makes it into a bigger deal than it ever was in Derrickson's film. They were love interests but not the star-crossed great loves that MoM tried to sell.

We learn from Kevin Feige that he loved the Strange Supreme What If episode, and told Waldron to watch it. In that universe, Strange & Christine were together but tragically ended. And it seems Waldron used that as the basis for the ship in this film rather than what Derrickson already established in the film that this was meant as a sequel to - the version which dealt with our characters, not variants of them with a totally different & unrelated bond.

Gassing PalmerStrange up like he did knowing he wanted to bring in Clea (or so he claims) was terrible. Because now, he put too much emphasis on Strange's feelings for Christine to take Clea seriously. Again, Clea's introduction was very half-assed. She just randomly & namelessly shows up out of nowhere during the credits. That's not the kind of intro a good writer would give a character whom they genuinely believe to be important.

Christine got first billing with Clea tossed as an afterthought.

The MCU will have to work extra hard to sell & sail this ship since they decided to spend the last 3 years shoving Christine down our throats. As it stands with the horrible writing now, Clea looks like Strange's rebound chick since 2 versions of his first choice rejected him, and 2 others he finds out either married someone else or didn't talk to him anymore.

Their future relationship will need MANY defining moments to show she is Strange's great love & not a sex prop he gonna get off on while visualizing Christine. Sadly, the horrific writing gives the impression of the latter.

Christine got "I love you in every universe." It's a beautiful line made cringe by the fact it was wasted on the wrong relationship by a person whose feelings were toxic obssession they mistake for love because they're spoiled & can't take not getting what they want.

So what are they gonna give Clea? Will the next writer even make an effort with the ship & give them anything? Or are we gonna skip the developement & have them just already married in the next film they share? That really fuels the rebound interpretation when we skip from Strange obssessing over Christine for 10 years in "his" sequel to married out of nowhere to a random woman he met in credits of said film.

It would really take a couple of films to give the ship proper devotion & build while moving all the pieces of the bigger story. And I don't think we are gonna get that at this point. Strange probably only has 2 or 3 more film appearances before he gets killed off, including DS3 which is rumored to be a segue into other events, and we saw how much Strange mattered when it comes to transition solo films.

Overall Strange's character in general (not just his love life) needs extreme focus & development. He's been around for almost a decade with little to no development since his first film in 2016. When I look at the character in the comics vs. him in the MCU, it's enough to make me wanna scream at how one-note the latter has made him, and how dirty they have done him. MCU Strange is basically the biggest one-note loser there is. Cumberbatch is the only saving grace for the character atm.

#marvel #dr. strange #stephen strange #doctor strange #mcu multiverse #multiverse of madness #mcu #marvel mcu #marvel cinematic universe #Clea Strange #PalmerStrange #what if...?#christine palmer #DSMOM #doctor stephen strange

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xohachi · 2 years

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A Peaceful, Classy Evening

(Title is sarcasm.) Prompt: Josie Grant, Dr Strange’s partner in crime and bestfriend, invites him to a high class dinner party. What will he do when he’s forced to watch her flirt with some rich “lesser man” -(Strange’s words not mine.) all night?

Warnings: Smut. Like 3000 words of pure smut. Cussing. Angst and Fluff. Happy ending though.

“A dinner party?” Stephen groaned. His voice was laced with disapproval.

“Yes! I think it would be good for you. I know you know these all too well.” Josie joked, hinting at his luxurious past as a surgeon.

“I’ve left the high class life in the past.” She blew some dust of off the table to set her wine glass down,

“Yeah, Stephen, I see that. Look, just because we are famous, crime-fighting, universe protecting sorcerers, doesn’t mean we can't enjoy ourselves like normal people every once in a while.”

“Josie, I don’t know…” She sipped her wine before jumping at a timer on her phone.

“Yes, you do. As a matter of fact, I’ve got to go grab your Armani suit from the cleaners right now!”

“You dry cleaned my suit?”

“Don’t tell me you machine wash them?”

“Why would I machine wash Arman-” The mention of machine washing a suit was enough to get him to finally put the book down. His brows furrowed as Josie downed the rest of her wine and began to conjure a portal.

“See! You can take a man out of high class but you can’t take the high class out of a man!”

—

The two sorcerers met in the foyer at exactly 8:15pm, leaving them 30 minutes to get to the party. Stephen was pleasantly surprised to see that his suit still fit. Josie always had a thing about matching with her dates, platonic or not, and Stephen always wore his red tie with Armani so she was ecstatic that her little red dress still hugged her perfectly.

“Wow. You clean up nice.” He smiled, still adjusting his tie.

“Thank you, Doctor Strange, as do you.” She gazed up at him with star studded eyes as he put his arm out for her to take. The night air was cool, not too cold, not too warm. New York was always beautiful at night but with these two on the prowl? Suddenly New York wasn’t the best sight in America.

“I assume I’ll be driving?” She said, making her way to the driver's side. Stephen stepped in front of Josie holding a hand out to stop her.

“No actually, I think I’ll handle that part.”

“Oh?”

“I feel like a new man tonight.” His newfound confidence was striking, Josie knew he’d finally get laid tonight by some ravishing rich woman at the party and she was happy for him. He’d spent far too long pining after Christine.

“You look like a new man tonight,” She reached her hands out to adjust his suit, “If you’re not careful, I might fall in love with you, Stephen.” She joked

“Ew gross.” They laughed as they got into the car and drove off into the starry night.

---

Arriving at the party, the two sorcerers were entranced by the fancy mansion, beautiful lights, classical music, and most importantly, the open bar.

“Well, you know where to find me.” Josie smiled as she skipped off to the bar.

“Funny,” Stephen joked while he followed her, “Seems I won’t have to look far.” Strange took the seat next to Josie, earning a crazy look from her and some uninviting energy.

“Are you crazy?” He furrowed his brows.

“What?”

“I can’t get laid if you’re sitting next to me like my lover or something.” She turned to order a glass of champagne from the bartender before looking back at the clueless sorcerer.

“Get laid? And what am I supposed to do while you’re having sex with a random rich man?” Now was his turn to order. To no one's surprise, he ordered a martini.

“Or woman,” She winked, “And you should also be getting laid. Maybe in the room next to me so we can really solidify the best friends thing, you know.” She promptly stood up and moved three seats down from him.

“That’s ridiculous. I’m here for a peaceful, classy evening.”

“Is this seat taken?” A random man asked from behind Josie. He was tall and handsome with beautiful brown eyes and she knew she’d found her lover for the night. Flashing a quick smile at Stephen, she turned to face the man.

“Absolutely not.” Josie grinned.

Stephen Strange was cursed to watched the two flirt for an ungodly amount of time. Though, after checking his watch, he realized it’d only been five minutes. But something about the way he was inching closer to her, touching her knee with his, tucking her hair behind her ear, just wasn’t sitting right with Dear Mr. Strange.

“Oh man, I know that look.” The bartender said to him,

“Excuse me?” Stephen growled.

“You love her.”

“Absolutely not, she’s a colleague of mine.”

“Well everyone knows that, Doctor Strange, you two are famous. Frankly, we also know you’re both in love.”

“Alright, keep it in your pants,” The bartender shrugged and put his hands in the air, representing him backing down. Stephen turned his head back to Josie, watching her fake her laughs and sit her hand on the man’s thigh, “Does everyone really know? I mean, what indicators have you seen that she’s in love with me?”

“Just the way she looks at you man, maybe you’re used to all the ladies looking at you like that but for us common folk, that’s a rare look. The look of a woman in love, it’s something special.”

“She’s sitting right there, practically fucking this… rather disappointing looking man, in front of me.” He insulted, downing his second martini and chewing on the toothpick.

“You two are in the same boat, I’m sure she’s used to men looking at her like you do all the time.”

“So, what the hell do I do?”

“Go get her man.” Stephen pondered this for a moment. Go get her? What does that even mean? Eventually, he figured that if he sat and thought for too long, he’d miss his window. Strange downed his 3rd martini and graciously tipped the bartender before finally approaching Josie.

“Can you believe I just gave love advice to Doctor Strange?” The bartender turned to his coworker, who said nothing but proceeded to look at him funny and return back to his job.

Strange grabbed a hold of Josie’s arm, pulling her out of her seat with urgency. Shocked, she pulled back, refusing to get up.

“Stephen, what the hell are you doing? Can’t this wait?” Josie laughed, dangerously signaling that if he didn’t go find someone else to bother, she’d get pissed.

“Oh is he your-” The random man butted in.

“Absolutely not.” She spat.

“Josie, let's go. Now.” She turned to the man, who’s name she learned was Brandon, and apologized before getting up angrily and following the sorcerer who seemed to have lost his mind. They moved through the large sums of people, all gathered along the house. At least 20 ‘Sorry’s were muttered from Josie during their cascade from the bar to the stairs

“What are you doing? What is so important?”

“I just need to talk to you.” Strange still hadn’t let go of her wrist.

“You may have just cost me a rich husband, this better be important.”

“You really think you can stand to be married to a shallow rich man for the rest of your life?” He dragged her up the stairs and searched the halls for an empty room.

“What I think is that I would’ve liked to get laid tonight.” She spat whilst ripping her wrist free from his grasp.

“I’ve got that covered, don’t worry.” He smirked before regripping her wrist and snatching her into an empty room. Strange pinned her against the door, locking it with one hand and sliding his other one onto the side of her neck, pulling her in. In shock, Josie pushed him off of her.

“What the hell are you doing?” She yelled.

“I love you, Josie. I can’t keep pretending I don’t, especially if I have to watch you flirt with lesser men all night.” He slowly approached her once more, this time he was softer, more considerate.

“So because you love me, you’re entitled to me now?” She approached him back, angrily.

“What?” He shook his head, placing his hands on both sides of her neck once more. This time it was to guide her eyes up to his. He didn’t mean to be brash, maybe it was the martinis, he did always get them extra strong.

“I mean, did you even ask me if-”

“If what,” He couldn’t decide which of her eyes to stare into. Josie became nervous, her words getting caught in her throat like bugs into a trap. They could feel their chests inflate and deflate at the same time. His eyes darkened, filling again with lust.

“If I wanted to rip this stupid Armani suit off of you,” Their lips connected, “Or if I wanted to feel your skin on mine or” He picked her up with a swift swoop as she wrapped her legs around his waist, “Or if I wanted to make love to you so passionately that this whole miserable party would be doomed to listen to us and wish desperately that they had what we have.” She was now pinned against the door, his lips on hers, his hand running up her thigh as she felt him harden through their clothes. They could barely breathe, both of them refusing to break the kiss for air. Stephen carried her over to a brown dresser, perfect height for what they were about to do. With a free hand, he swept everything off of it in one sweep. His lips traveled down to her neck as she ran her hand through his hair, knocking her head back in pleasure.

“Stephen,” She moaned, “God, Stephen, what are you doing to me?”

“Say it,” He broke contact with her neck and now they were nose to nose, staring into each other's eyes, breathing still synced, crotch to crotch. His hands on the wall behind her, her hands on either side of his neck. He slid a hand to her cheek after a moment of silence, rubbing her skin with his thumb, “Say it, Josie. I need to hear you say it, even if its just once.”

“I love you, Stephen Strange, I do. I always have and god, I always will.” She smiled.

“That’s my girl.” Their lips locked once more in a ravenous fight of lust, the two were hungry for each other as if they’d been starved for years. Josie began unbuttoning his suit, ripping his blazer off of him and loosening his tie. Stephen slid his hand to her back, unzipping her dress and watching in pleasant surprise as it drops to reveal she’s not wearing a bra. He breaks the kiss to connect his mouth with her breasts but she stops him and tugs at his belt.

“Take these off.” She moaned.

“As you wish.” Stephen obliged, undoing his belt as Josie stood up, making her way to the bed. She sat as he turned around, allowing her to admire his imprint in his boxers. Truthfully, she always knew he was big, I mean with his ego? How couldn’t he be? She ran a hand along his dick and slid her lip between her teeth. His hand gripped her chin, pushing her head up so that she was now looking up at him.

“Can I?” She whispered as she slid off the bed and onto her knees beneath him. Stephens cheekbones shone in the moonlight, his tall, somewhat slender frame making Josie wetter by the second. Strange gave her a nod as he gathered her hair into his hands to keep it out of the way. She slowly pulled his boxers down to his feet, finding it hard to not stare in awe as his cock hung between his thighs. As she lightly licked the tip, Josie could hear Stephen inhale sharply. His precum dripped on her tongue. An enjoyable taste. Of course, the doctor kept a good diet. Josie began to run her tongue from his balls to his tip again. He shuddered beneath her touch and gripped her hair a little tighter with each sensation, she knew he wouldn’t last long.

“Keep it together, Doctor.” She laughed seductively, finally taking all of him in her mouth. He fit surprisingly well, the way his cock seemed to slide down her throat with ease. Moving her mouth up and down his long member, he groaned in pleasure, still gripping her hair tighter and tighter. Stephen peered down at her,

“You look so pretty with my dick in your mouth.” After a few minutes, he began to lose composure, she could tell he was close. So, she removed him from her mouth and started slowly pumping him with her hand.

“Should I let you finish?” Her voice was no higher than a whisper.

“You should.”

“No,” She smiled, flicking her tongue on his tip once more, “I’m not done with you yet.” And she removed her touch from him completely. Standing up, Jo placed a kiss on his lips while her hands ran up his chest, gripping his blood red tie and pulling him to the bed. She laid pleasantly beneath him, their noses touching once more.

“Doctor Strange? I have something to say.” She blushed.

“Mhm?” He smiled.

“I love you. I know I said it already but, Jesus, I feel like I could say it a million times, even shout it from the cosmos and never get sick of saying it.” Josie slid her lip in between her teeth again, smiling. He held his cock and ran it up and down her folds.

“Say it again.” He growled, his eyes grew darker by the second, if that was even possible. The two sorcerers were truly an ethereal sight. The aesthetic of the room, the moonlight shining gracefully upon them, their smiles big and bright.

“I,” She planted a kiss on his lips, “love,” another kiss, “you.” This time he went in for the kiss as he shoved himself inside of her. It was effortless, he slid right in as if they were always meant to be just like this, entangled in each other's arms, wrapped in a bubble of their love and nothing else. As he stroked, she felt herself struggle to kiss back, moaning in his mouth. Her voice danced through his ears as she swore every swear in the back, screamed his name, and confessed her love over and over.

Three loud knocks on the door ripped them from their fairytale.

“What the hell are you guys doing in there? That’s my mothers room!” The voice yelled from outside the door. Stephen covered Josie’s mouth with his hand before she could let out her laugh. He opened a portal beneath their clothes on the floor, no way he was gonna leave his expensive suit lying around. Then he took his hand from her mouth, motioning for her to be quiet and she obeyed, but not before magically unlocking the door. Stephen's eyes widened and he opened another portal beneath them, leading back to his room in the sanctum, right above his bed.

“That wasn’t funny.” Stephen groaned.

“It was a little funny.”

“And if they were to see us?” He always had a lecture planned, Strange had never been the type of man to live on the edge.

“We’d go viral,” She joked, “Doctor Strange and Josie Grant caught canoodling?! I can see the headlines already.”

“No no no, this?” His hands hugged her waist as he admired her naked body, “This is for my eyes only from here on out.”

“Whatever you say, Doctor.” He flipped her on top of him, his back to the headboard and her sitting perfectly in his lap. Sliding him back into her, they both let out a gasp. He used his freehand to lock his door as she bounced up and down him slowly. Her wetness dripped madly down his cock and thighs, spilling onto his white sheets. Their lips clashed again before she pulled away for a moment,

“Can I cast a quick spell?” Josie whispered, never ceasing riding him.

“Right now?” He asked breathlessly.

“I want to soundproof us. Wong’s probably asleep and,” She put a hand around his throat and lowered her lips to his ear, “You make me want to scream.” Stephen Strange may have never had sex with Josie Grant but he knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t dominant. She’d put up a fight for dominance but lord knows she didn’t want to win. He smirked before doing some shapes with his hands and orange runes danced along the walls for a moment before disappearing. He then slapped her hand from his neck and placed his hand on hers, squeezing ever so slightly and his other hand was on her hip, slowing her movement before fucking her from below.

“Stephen, I’m so close.” She moaned.

“That’s not my name.” His grip tightened,

“Doctor, please.”

“Not yet.” He guided her off of him before flipping her onto her back. Planting Josie's lips with a kiss, he began to trail his more of them down her neck, then around her breasts, then along her stomach, her thighs, and finally, right on her clit. She ran her fingers through his hair as he began to flick his tongue on her folds. Her juices were practically pouring out of her,

“Josie,” He said, his voice with a slight rasp, only making her pour even more, “All of this? For me?”

“Only for you.” Josie moaned, feeling his fingers enter her. He had large, rough fingers. They were something that he’d been ashamed of for so long but she loved them, always made him feel comfortable about them, showed him they were nothing to be ashamed of. In this moment, he felt he could finally repay her. His tongue continued to massage her clit and his fingers pulsed her g-spot repeatedly, still getting her wetter. Strange felt his beard go from moist to soaking. When she began to tense, he knew she was close and decided to play her game. Removing his fingers from inside of her, he did a spell to tie her hands to the corners of the bed.

“Damn you.” She muttered.

“You love me.” He smirked.

“I hate being tied down, you know.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you mean more than just during sex?”

“Because you’re delusional.”

“You don’t cum until I tell you to.”

“So you’ll let me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” Stephen resumed his previous activities, one hand inside of her, the other massaging her breasts while his tongue was busy on her clit. He went on for a few moments before stopping again, blocking her climax. With his pointer and middle finger, he wiped her juices from his lips and slid them into her mouth.

“Good girl,” He smiled as Josie licked them clean and proceeded to slide her tongue over her lips to get anything she missed.

“Let me touch you, please doctor, I’m going crazy.”

“Do you deserve to touch me?”

“I deserve to finally finish, you’ve edged me like 30 times.”

“Payback for edging me.”

“Like two hours ago!” She laughed.

“Fine,” He lowered his face down to hers and they connected lips once more, “But only because I love you.” Suddenly, she felt her hands were free and cupped his face.

“God, say it again.”

“I love you.” He whispered as he peppered kisses onto her neck,

“I love you.” He repeated as he bit down and left bruises in the same spot that he’d just left tender smooches,

“I love you.” He growled as he pushed himself deep inside her, again. The bed and floorboards were creaking while Stephen thrusted himself as deep as he could inside of her. If they hadn’t done that soundproofing spell, the whole cosmos would hear them. His thrusts began to get sloppy and her moans got louder and louder while they held each other tight, arms and legs entangled, hair aloof, their sweaty bodies soaking into each other.

“I’m so close, don’t stop, Doctor please.” At this moment, time seemed to slow down. Their eyes locked onto each other and he cupped her face in his hand while the other was pressed against the headboard. Her hand was in his hair, pulling and tugging. Her other hand was on his back, leaving long red scratches. He felt himself begin to release inside of her and their lips met once more, locked in one last passionate kiss full of all the ‘I love you's' that they no longer had the breath to say. She wrapped her legs around his waist and deepened the kiss. Josie could feel her core blossoming as she climaxed. Fireworks exploded around the two while they rode out their high.

Finally, Stephen slid himself out of her and they smiled at each other before he laid down right next to her. She adjusted her head on top of his chest and drew hearts with her fingers, but only for a few moments.

Josie finally gained enough energy to stand up and go pee but to her surprise, her legs gave out and she plopped right back onto the bed.

“I can’t walk.”

“The doctor will do that to you!” Strange arrogantly joked.

“Funny. Can you walk me?” He tried to stand but to his surprise, he plopped right back onto the bed as well.

“I can’t seem to walk either.”

“Josie Grant will do that to you!”

“Funny.” He waved a hand in the air for his cloak and guided it to Josie. The cloak flew her to the bathroom but she couldn’t help but giggle from embarrassment.

When she made it back, Stephen was already asleep. He was on his back, blanket sliding half off his body, showing his v-line and getting Josie all worked up again. Though truthfully she was too tired to do anything about it. Strange slept with one arm out, as if he wanted to save her spot in his arms and on his chest for her to sleep. Jo silently slid into bed and pulled the blanket over to fully cover them as he placed a sleepy kiss on her head. His arm wrapped around her, pulling her in closer.

“I love you.” He whispered groggily.

“What a sap,” Stephen groaned at her response, “I love you too, handsome.” And the two lovebirds drifted off into a deep sleep.

#doctor strange fic #doctor strange x you #doctor strange x reader #stephen strange x reader #stephen strange fic #stephen strange #doctor strange #smut #fluff #angst with a happy ending #marvel reader insert #marvel

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reasoningdaily · 2 months

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Neo-Griot

Kalamu ya Salaam's information blog

HISTORY: Indians, Slaves, and Mass Murder: The Hidden History

Indians, Slaves, and

Mass Murder:

The Hidden History

by Peter Nabokov

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 431 pp., $30.00

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 by Benjamin Madley Yale University Press, 692 pp., $38.00

Carl Lumholtz: Tarahumara Woman Being Weighed, Barranca de San Carlos (Sinforosa), Chihuahua, 1892; from Among Unknown Tribes: Rediscovering the Photographs of Explorer Carl Lumholtz. The book includes essays by Bill Broyles, Ann Christine Eek, and others, and is published by the University of Texas Press.

The European market in African slaves, which opened with a cargo of Mauritian blacks unloaded in Portugal in 1441, and the explorer Christopher Columbus, born in Genoa ten years later, were closely linked. The ensuing Age of Discovery, with its expansions of empires and exploitations of New World natural resources, was accompanied by the seizure and forced labor of human beings, starting with Native Americans.

Appraising that commercial opportunity came naturally to an entrepreneur like Columbus, as did his sponsors’ pressure on him to find precious metals and his religion’s contradictory concerns both to protect and convert heathens. On the day after Columbus landed in 1492 on an island in the present-day Bahamas and saw its Taíno islanders, he wrote that “with fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.” Soon the African trade was changing life in Spain; within another hundred years most urban families owned one or more black servants, over 7 percent of Seville was black, and a new social grouping of mixed-race mulattos joined the lower rungs of a color-coded social ladder.

Columbus liked the “affectionate and without malice” Arawakan-speaking Taíno natives. He found the men tall, handsome, and good farmers, the women comely, near naked, and apparently available. In exchange for glass beads, brass hawk bells, and silly red caps, the seamen received cotton thread, parrots, and food from native gardens. Fresh fish and fruits were abundant. Glints in the ornaments worn by natives promised gold, and they presumably knew where to find more. Aside from one flare-up, there were no serious hostilities. Columbus returned to Barcelona with six Taíno natives who were paraded as curiosities, not chattel, before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

The following year, Columbus led seventeen ships that dropped 1,500 prospective settlers on Caribbean beaches. As they stayed on, relations with local Indians degenerated. What was soon imposed was “the other slavery” that the University of California, Davis, historian Andrés Reséndez discusses in his synthesis of the last half-century of scholarship on American Indian enslavement. First came the demand for miners to dig for gold. The easy-going Taínos were transformed into gold-panners working under Spanish overseers.

The Spaniards also exploited the forms of human bondage that already existed on the islands. The Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, a more aggressive tribe, regularly raided the Taínos, allegedly eating the men but keeping the women and children as retainers. A similar discrimination based on age and gender would prevail throughout the next four centuries of Indian-on-Indian servitude. As Bonnie Martin and James Brooks put it in their anthology, Linking the Histories of Slavery: North America and Its Borderlands:

North America was a vast, pulsing map of trading, raiding, and resettling. Whether the systems were pre- or postcontact indigenous, European colonial, or US national, they grew into complex cultural matrices in which the economic wealth and social power created using slavery proved indivisible. Indigenous and Euro-American slave systems evolved and innovated in response to each other.*

Taínos who resisted the Spanish were set upon by dogs, disemboweled by swords, burned at stakes, trampled by horses—atrocities “to which no chronicle could ever do justice,” wrote Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, a crusader for Indian rights, in 1542. Against the Caribs the Spaniards had a tougher time, fighting pitched battles but capturing hundreds of slaves as well. Columbus sailed home from his second voyage with over a thousand captives bound for slave auctions in Cádiz (many died en route, their bodies tossed overboard). He envisioned a future market for New World gold, spices, cotton, and “as many slaves as Their Majesties order to make, from among those who are idolators,” whose sales might underwrite subsequent expeditions.

Thus did the discoverer of the New World become its first transatlantic human trafficker—a sideline pursued by most New World conquistadors until, in the mid-seventeenth century, Spain officially opposed slavery. And Columbus’s vision of a “reverse middle passage” crumbled when Spanish customers preferred African domestics. Indians were more expensive to acquire, insufficiently docile, harder to train, unreliable over the years, and susceptible to homesickness, seasickness, and European diseases. Other obstacles included misgivings by the church and royal authorities, which may explain Columbus’s emphasis on “idolators” like the Caribs, whose status as “enemies” and cannibals made them more legally eligible for enslavement.

Indians suffered from overwork in the gold beds, as well as foreign pathogens against which they had no antibodies, and from famine as a result of overhunting and underfarming. Within two generations the native Caribbean population faced a “cataclysmic decline.” On the island of Hispaniola alone, of its estimated 300,000 indigenous population, only 11,000 Taínos remained alive by 1517. Within ten more years, six hundred or so villages were empty.

But even as the Caribbean was ethnically cleansed of its original inhabitants, a case of bad conscience struck Iberia. It had its origins in the ambivalence of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella over how to treat Indians. In the spring of 1495, only four days after the royals advised their bishop in charge of foreign affairs that slaves “would be more easily sold in Andalusia than in other parts,” they ordered a halt to all human enslavement until the church informed them “whether we can sell them or not.” Outrage was more overt in the polemics of Las Casas, who had emigrated to the islands in 1502. He had owned slaves and then renounced the practice in 1515. After taking his vows as a Dominican priest, he helped to push the antislavery New Laws of the Indies through the Spanish legal system in 1542.

Slaving interests used a succession of verbal strategies for justifying and retaining unfree Indian labor. As early as 1503 tribes designated as “cannibals” became fair game, as were Indian prisoners seized in “just wars.” Hereafter labeled esclavos de guerra (war slaves), their cheeks bore a branded “G.” Automatic servitude also awaited any hapless Indians, known as esclavos de rescate (ransomed slaves), whom Spanish slavers had freed from other Indians who had already enslaved them; the letter “R” was seared into their faces.

In 1502 Hispanola’s new governor, Nicolás de Ovando, made use of an old feudal practice for ensuring control over workers’ bodies. To retain native miners but check rampant cruelty, Ovando bestowed on prominent colonizers land grants (encomiendas) that included rights to tribute and labor from Indians already residing there. Although still vassals, they remained nominally free from “ownership.” They could reside in their own villages, were theoretically protected from sexual predation and secondary selling, and were supposed to receive religious instruction and token compensation of a gold peso a year—benefits that were often ignored. Over the next two centuries the encomienda system and other local forms of unfree labor were used to create a virtually enslaved Indian workforce throughout Mexico, Florida, the American Southwest, down the South American coast, and over to the Philippines.

The story of Native American enslavement told by Reséndez becomes confused by the convoluted interplay of indigenous and imported systems of human servitude. Despite his claim of uncovering “the other slavery,” when speaking of the forms of bondage imposed on Indians he fails to acknowledge that there was no monolithic institution akin to the “peculiar” transatlantic one that would become identified with the American South, which imported Africans auctioned as commodities. Even the distinction some scholars draw between such “slave societies” and “societies with slaves” (depending on whether slave labor was essential or not to the general economy) only partially applies to the highly complex, deeply local situations of enslaved American Indians. For these blended a dizzying variety of customary practices with colonial systems for maintaining a compulsory native workforce. If Reséndez is claiming to encompass the full tragedy of Indian slavery “across North America,” he does not distinguish among the different colonial systems of Indian servitude—enabled by Indian allies of the colonizers—that existed under English, French, and Dutch regimes.

During the seventeenth century, as some Spaniards continued to raise the question of the morality of slavery, silver mines opened in northern Mexico, and the demand for Indian manpower increased. This boom would require more workers than the Caribbean gold fields and last far longer. Now the physical effort turned from surface panning or shallow trenching to sinking shafts hundreds of feet into the ground. More profitable than gold, silver was also more grueling to extract. Miners dug, loaded, and hauled rocks in near darkness for days at a time. Around present-day Zacatecas, entire mountains were made of the gray-black ore.

To meet the growing labor demand, Spanish and Indian slaving expanded out of the American Southwest, sending Pueblo and Comanche slaves to the mines, and seizing slaves from the defiant Chichimec of northern Mexico during particularly violent campaigns between the 1540s and the 1580s. From the beginning of the sixteenth century to the first decade of the nineteenth, twelve times as much silver was extracted from over four hundred mines scattered throughout Mexico as was gold during the entire California Gold Rush.

At Parral, a silver-mining center in southern Chihuahua and in 1640 the largest town north of the Tropic of Cancer, over seven thousand workers descended into the shafts every day—most of them enslaved natives from as far off as New Mexico, which soon became “little more than a supply center for Parral.” After the state-directed system for forcibly drafting Indian labor for the Latin American silver mines, known as the mita, was instituted in 1573, it remained in operation for 250 years and drew an average of ten thousand Indians a year from over two hundred indigenous communities.

As Reséndez shifts his narrative to the Mexican mainland, however, one is prompted to ask another question of an author who claims to have “uncovered” the panoramic range of Indian slavery. Shouldn’t we know more of the history of those Indian-on-Indian slavery systems that Columbus witnessed and that became essential for delivering workers to Mexican mines, New Mexican households, or their own native villages? Throughout the pre-Columbian Americas, underage and female captives from intertribal warfare were routinely turned into domestic workers who performed menial tasks. Through recapture or ransom payment some were repatriated, while many remained indentured their entire lives. But a number were absorbed into their host settlement through forms of fictive kinship, such as ceremonial adoption or most commonly through intermarriage.

Among the eleventh-century mound-building Indian cultures of the Mississippi Bottoms, such war prisoners made up a serf-like underclass. This civilization collapsed in the thirteenth century and the succeeding tribes we know as Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and others perpetuated the practice of serfdom; Cherokee war parties added to each town’s stock of atsi nahsa’i, or “one who is owned.” The custom continued across indigenous America, with child-bearing women and prepubescent males generally preferred. Their husbands and fathers were more commonly killed. Reséndez hardly mentions the subsequent participation of those same tribes in the white man’s race-based “peculiar institution.” They bought and sold African-American slaves to work their Indian-owned plantations. Once the Civil War broke out there was a painfully divisive splitting of southern Indian nations into Confederate and Union allies.

As with Carib predation upon the Taíno, it was not uncommon for stronger tribes to focus on perennial victims. In the Southeast, the Chickasaw regularly took slaves from the Choctaw; in the Great Basin, the Utes stole women and children from the Paiute (and then traded them to Mormon households that were happy to pay for them); in California, the northeastern Modoc regularly preyed upon nearby Atsugewi, while the Colorado River–dwelling Mojave routinely raided the local Chemehuevi. These relationships between prey and predator might extend over generations. Only among the hierarchical social orders of the northwest coast, apparently, were slaves traditionally treated more like commodities, to be purchased, traded, or given as gifts.

Indirectly, the Spanish helped to instigate the next upsurge in human trafficking across the American West. Their horses—bred in northern New Mexico, then rustled or traded northward after the late seventeenth century—made possible an equestrian revolution across the plains. In short order the relationships between a few dozen Indian tribes shifted dramatically, as the pedestrian hunter-and-gatherer peoples were transformed by horses into fast-moving nomads who became dependent on buffalo and preyed on their neighbors. In white American popular culture the new-born horse cultures would be presented as the war bonnet–wearing, teepee-dwelling, war-whooping stereotypes of Wild West shows and movie screens. Among them were the Comanches of the southern plains and the Utes of the Great Basin borderlands.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the Comanche military machine had put a damper on Spanish expansionism. Their cavalry regiments of five hundred or more disciplined horsemen undertook eight-hundred-mile journeys northward as far as the Arkansas River and southward to within a few hundred miles of Mexico City. The slaves they plucked from Apaches, Pueblos, and Navajos became their prime currency in business deals with Mexicans, New Mexicans, and Americans. At impromptu auctions and established crossroads, Native American, Mexican, and Anglo slaves were being sold, some undergoing a succession of new masters. Until the US government conquered them, the Comanches held sway over a quarter-million square miles of the American and Mexican borderlands.

Reséndez argues for continuities in this inhuman traffic right down to the present day. But his abrupt transition to the present after the defeat of the Comanches only reinforces our sense that his effort has been overly ambitious and weakly conceived, as if achieving the promised synthesis for so complex and persistent a topic has simply (and understandably) overwhelmed him. His treatment of the multinational practices of Colonial-period slavery is spotty, and the ubiquitous traditions of native-on-native enslavement seem soft-pedaled.

Reséndez loosely estimates that between some 2.5 to five million Indians were trapped in this “other slavery,” in which overwork and physical abuse doubtlessly contributed to the drop of 90 percent in the North American Indian population between Columbus’s day and 1900. But somehow little of all that torment comes across vividly in The Other Slavery. We are told that Navajos called the 1860s, when their entire tribe was hounded for incarceration in southern New Mexico, “the Fearing Time.” Aside from that hint of the collective emotional impact from the victims’ side, we get few testimonies that reflect the anxiety and terror behind Reséndez’s many summaries of human suffering, tribal dislocations, furtive lives on the run, and birthrights lost forever.

A more convincing sense of the racial discrimination and hatred that bolstered and perpetuated the slavery systems discussed in Reséndez’s book comes from even a melodramatic film like John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), while the terrors of surviving in the late-eighteenth-century West amid roving bands of merciless slave raiders are better evoked in Cormac McCarthy’s Grand Guignol masterpiece Blood Meridian(1985). Reading Reséndez’s account one hopes in vain for something similar to Rebecca West’s quiet comment in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), her chronicle of Yugoslavian multiethnic animosities: “It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of a skunk.”

Indian slavery becomes a contributing factor in An American Genocide, the UCLAhistorian Benjamin Madley’s extensive argument that genocide is the only appropriate term for what happened to native peoples in north-central California between 1846 and 1873. For American Indians, slavery in the New World took many forms that persevered over four centuries while changing according to local conditions, global pressures, and maneuvers to evade abolitionist crusades. Genocide—the elimination of entire groups—might seem easier to evaluate. Yet which historical episodes of mass Indian murder qualify as genocide has become a matter of debate.

Madley shies away from the hyperbolic accusations of genocide or holocaust often made in simplistic discussions of American Indian history. The definition that he invokes with prosecutorial ferocity is the one produced by the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, which defines genocide as, first, demonstrating an intent to destroy, “in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,” and, second, committing any of the following acts: killing members of a group; causing them serious bodily or mental harm; inflicting conditions that are intended to cause their destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures to prevent births within the group; and transferring children of the group to another group. Whereas the large unspecified “group” referred to in this post–World War II statement was, of course, defined by the Nazis, Madley’s is smaller and, even then, it is composed of many hundreds of indigenous units, each an autonomous, small-scale cultural world that was decimated or destroyed.

Madley has documented his charge of genocide by years of scrolling through local newspapers, histories, personal diaries, memoirs, and official letters and reports. These revealed what many indigenous groups endured at the hands of US military campaigns, state militia expeditions, impromptu small-town posses, and gold miners, as well as ordinary citizens who hunted natives on weekends. Most western historians and demographers could agree that genocidal behavior toward a North American Indian population occurred during the nineteenth century. But Madley has concentrated on the killing in California during the bloody years between 1846 and 1873.

Edward S. Curtis: Mosa—Mohave, 1903/1907; from Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks. The book is by Christopher Cardozo, with contributions by A. D. Coleman, Louise Erdrich, and others. It is published by Delmonico/Prestel and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography.

The factors that led to this American tragedy are worth recalling. Many Indian communities had already been defeated in their resistance to servitude during the Spanish Mission and Mexican Rancho years. The United States victory over Mexico in early 1848 opened the way to the last great American land rush. Until California became the nation’s thirty-first state in 1850, there were two years of lawlessness. The Anglo-American settlers whose wagons began rolling into the region carried anti-Indian attitudes imported from colonial times. The discovery of gold in early 1848 multiplied that immigration and aggressive settler colonialism. There was pervasive racism toward the state’s diverse and generally peaceful native population. They were denigrated as animal-like “Diggers”—a pejorative term based on their food-gathering customs. Political, military, journalistic, and civic leaders favored creating a de facto open season on its native peoples.

When the state’s first legislature convened, it passed a number of orders that, according to Madley, “largely shut Indians out of participation in and protection by the state legal system” and granted “impunity to those who attacked them.” The legislature funded, with $1.51 million, state vigilantism coupled with exhortations from top officials, including two state governors, to war against Native Americans. Near the beginning of this campaign, California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, pledged that “a war of extermination will continue to be waged…until the Indian race becomes extinct.”

At the time of first contact with whites, the native California population amounted to some 350,000, perhaps the densest concentration of Indians in the country. But they were divided into at least sixty major tribes that, in turn, were made up of scores of small, independent, autonomous villages that spoke upward of a hundred separate languages. After the epidemics, mission programs, land losses, and peonage of the Spanish period, about 150,000 Indians remained on the eve of the US takeover. By 1870 the number of California Indians had been cut to under 30,000, a population loss that would continue until it bottomed out at under 17,000 by the turn of the century.

When gold was struck near present-day Sacramento in January 1848, Indians were occupying some of the most desirable natural environments in North America. The size of these Indian groups ranged widely. The proximity of so many autonomous villages made bi- or even trilingualism not uncommon. But especially in the north-central region—with its abundant acorn groves, salmon-rich rivers, valleys plentiful in fruits, roots, and seeds, foothills teeming with game, plentiful marine life, wildfowl and associated plants along the sea coast and wetlands—their small, self-governing and self-sufficient villagers could thrive in their homelands. However, the combination of Spanish and American invasions would cost the Indians and their fragile ecologies dearly. Meadows bearing life-giving nutritious seeds and roots were put to the torch for conversion into agricultural fields and cattle pastures, streams were poisoned by the sludge from mining, and forests were cut for lumber.

To characterize these fairly self-contained worlds, the dean of California Indian studies, anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, coined the term “tribelet.” But when it came to describing the sufferings of these California tribelets during the Gold Rush, Kroeber wrote dismissively of their “little history of pitiful events,” which, as an ethnographer drawn to “millennial sweeps and grand contours,” he felt unable to comment upon.

That did not stop one of his colleagues, the anthropologist Robert Heizer, from doing so. Heizer’s revelatory They Were Only Diggers (1974), along with his other anthologies, compiled newspaper clippings and reports on the myriad killings and other brutalities experienced by the region’s Indians. Together with a state demographer, Sherburne Cooke, he began documenting the unpublicized story of the California Indian catastrophe. Now Benjamin Madley, building upon the ethnohistorical work of Heizer and Cooke, has delved more systematically into the outrages of the period.

His chronicle opens with accounts by Thomas Martin and Thomas Breckenridge, members of John C. Frémont’s early expedition, which invaded what was still Mexican-held territory. In April 1846, along the Sacramento River near the present-day city of Redding, Frémont’s troops encountered a large group of local Wintu Indians. With the command “to ask no quarter and to give none,” his troops encircled the Indians and began firing at everyone in sight. Breckenridge wrote: “Some escaped but as near as I could learn from those that were engaged in the butchery, I can’t call it anything else, there was from 120 to 150 Indians killed that day.” Martin estimated that “in less than 3 hours we had killed over 175 of them.” A third eyewitness account found by Madley raised that estimate to between six hundred and seven hundred dead on land, not counting those, possibly an additional three hundred, slaughtered in the river. “The Sacramento River Massacre,” he writes, may have been one of the least-reported mass killings in US history, and “was the prelude to hundreds of similar massacres.”

So begins Madley’s calm, somber indictment. One after another he describes the cultures and the histories of tribes that were victimized, and he profiles the victimizers. Many of the atrocities were committed not only by US soldiers and their auxiliaries but also by motley companies of militiamen that murdered young and old, male and female indiscriminately—and often with an undisguised glee that comes through in Madley’s abundant selection of quotes.

Rape was rampant, and natives were intentionally starved, tortured, and whipped. Under the new California Legislature’s Government and Protection of the Indians Act of 1850, any nonworking, publicly drunk, or orphaned and underage Indians could become commodities in an unfree labor system that was tantamount to slave auctions. The act’s impact on the young meant that ten years after its passage, thousands of California Indian children were serving as unpaid “apprentices” in white households.

For over a quarter-century, Madley shows how the region became a quilt of many killing fields. Of the estimated 80 percent decline in the California Indian population during these years, around 40 percent has been attributed to outright “extermination killings” alone. Yet each of these tribes and tribelets functioned as an independent cultural world. Each was knit together by strands of kinship and deep attachments to place, as well as oral traditions about both that were passed on from generation to generation. Strewn across California were not only human bodies, but entire worldviews.

At the start of the Gold Rush, the Yuki Indians who lived at the heart of the region had well over three thousand members; they were reduced to less than two hundred by its end. The same decline occurred among the Tolowa Indians to the northwest, while the Yahi people were practically wiped out altogether.

In the hateful rhetoric of many nineteenth-century military, religious, and bureaucratic hard-liners quoted by Madley, the word “extermination” was often used. Yet this outcome was considered no great tragedy for an entire people who were uniformly and irredeemably defined as savage and subhuman.

Madley’s nearly two hundred pages of appendices are the most complete incident-by-incident tally ever compiled of Indian lives lost during this terrible period. Asking for names would have been impossible; instead we get numbers of deceased and places where they perished—one or two with brains smashed on rocks on a particular day over here, thirty to a hundred shot to death and left floating in a river over there. This scrupulously detailed epilogue is the equivalent of a memorial wall that we are visiting for the first time.

#Indians #Slaves #Mass Murder:#The Hidden History #black lives matter #Black Indians #Neo-Griot #Kalamu ya Salaam #Black Global History

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aelaer · 2 years

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Multiverse of Madness: Spoilerific Review Ahoy!

It's all going under the cut! Everything! All the thoughts about everything in this film! It's very long.

So I'm going to likely see it again on Saturday so my thoughts may change between now and then. I'll just reblog and add more thoughts if they do, as part of my brain throughout the first thirty minutes was just processing the fact that OMG I'm watching a Doctor Strange film again after so many years!

A video on YouTube that someone on Discord posted, by ComicBookCast2, said it perfectly: this movie is a stepping stone, an Iron Man 2, an Age of Ultron, a movie that has to exist in order to expand the greater universe. Those two movies are usually panned as not being some of the greatest, but I'd say of the three there, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is definitely the strongest stepping stone movie we have. And I understand why Feige would want to use Doctor Strange as a character to open up this immense concept. Considering the importance of Iron Man and the Avengers in the overall MCU, that speaks to good things regarding Doctor Strange's future (especially as Benedict seems to continue to want to play him).

I'll start with all the side characters first:

America: I really liked America's arc in this film, how she basically started as not knowing how to control her powers to being forced to take control to save herself, and then getting a pep talk from the Best Strange to show Wanda what she was actually doing. That was a powerful climax, and a hugely emotional climax for the character. And in Kamar-Taj in the MCU, I think she has the capability to grow into the powerful comic book character that she is, and gain all the skills that she has as a young adult when we first meet her in the comics.

Christine: One of the first rumors I read about this film that completely bummed the hell out of me was that Christine was going to die on her wedding day, presumably from the creature that the toy companies call "Gargantos" but that really looks like a "Shuma-Gorath" but dies as easily as your Monster of the Week. As this didn't happen, I was bloody thrilled. I have no idea if that scene was actually filmed or not. I wasn't expecting to like her multiversal version as much as I did, though that she was also betrayed by her Stephen was definitely something else. It put Stephen in the same position as he was with his Christine, in a way. It made their last scene together all the more precious, I think.

Wong (and Kamar-Taj): I loved seeing Sorcerer Supreme Wong really lead the defense of the entire society, and I couldn't blame him breaking under pressure by seeing people he knew and cared for being tortured like that. In terms of who was Sorcerer Supreme, I think Wong really worked having the title here, because it let Stephen's job open to protect America (and explore the multiverse) as opposed to needing to stay with the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj to regroup once it fell.

It was also very enjoyable to see Wong's own badass moments, though I don't blame him at all for falling to Darkhold!Wanda. We got a good look at just how OP the Darkhold made someone who already had huge amounts of power. RIP Sara though, existing for just a couple lines only to burn to a crisp. Just like the London Master, Sol Rama, in the first DS film xD

I enjoyed the cameos by Hamir and Rintrah and I hope they survived the attack. It was also great to see the London and Hong Kong Sanctum masters. The little bowing joke was fun, as was that little payoff at the end!

Mordo: One of the earlier spoilers I read from this film was that Wanda killed our Mordo, and I was really happy to see that if it was filmed, it didn't make the cut, because our Mordo has the history with Strange that's important. I was totally tricked with Mordo. Like, I knew that he looked like the one that was sword-fighting him in the trailer, but then he was so nice and all and I figured "oh, this must be a different universe", and I honestly thought that the Illuminati universe was going to be another one.

Then nope! Here's Mordo and the Illuminati. His hand-to-hand fight with Stephen was just *amazing*. I didn't get Stephen's comments to him though, about him always hating him. That was part of the comic lore, but I definitely didn't get that feeling in the first DS film. It feels like something that happened behind the scenes between DS1 and IW, maybe things Mordo said to Wong, or if Mordo left behind writings--or something. Definitely seems like it's something untold that someone should write a fanfic for. Was very happy overall with his character though, even if I didn't get our Stephen's comments in the context of the MCU.

Loved Stephen's reaction to his first name lmao. Also found it very interesting that he called himself Baron here! I wonder if that will be the same case for our Mordo?

The Rest of the Illuminati: I'm glad they were just cameos and that they were the only cameos serving basically as obstacles for Wanda. I'm really glad. The only other cameo I'd have been fine with is Deadpool, and that's just because Deadpool's super amazing. I don't think it'd fit with the tone of the rest of the film though, so it makes sense he wasn't in it, despite rumors. Illuminati!Strange definitely fit with this gang, being about "end justifies the means", and them making the "hard decisions" that don't necessarily mean good ones. Illuminati!Strange in the comics, too, destroyed an entire Earth, though that was a "kill or be killed" type of situation the Illuminati dealt with in the comics. I like that this variant of superheroes exist, all with people who've made insane decisions somewhere in the comics or the MCU as part of it.

Black Bolt's death is one of the most gnarly deaths on screen ever, and you won't change my mind. That was insane.

Wanda: I don't remember where I said it--probably in a Discord chat--but I basically said that if the trailer of her attacking Kamar-Taj killed innocent people, that they really could not redeem this version of her as a hero in the MCU. And because she was so brutal and corrupted, because she hurt so many people, her destroying the Darkhold and (potentially?) dying was probably the best end that they could have given her.

I think I would have preferred a plot where she fought against the Darkhold's power earlier on, that someone had caught up with her earlier and that this movie was a path of redemption for her. But since they didn't go that route, I think the original MCU!Wanda staying supposedly dead is probably the cleanest exit they can give her because she at least realized the monster she had turned into and kept it so that others would not fall to the same fate ever again across the Multiverse. It gives her tragic fall a noble ending.

I do find it interesting that the Scarlet Witch is singular in the Multiverse (IIRC), but that Wanda Maximoff is not (as we saw). I'm not sure if they'll have people travelling across universes into the MCU to take the place of the dead characters we have if the actors still want to portray them, but that may be what we see with Wanda, especially since White Vision still exists out there.

I was very happy to see an non-corrupted Wanda too. I think it showed a great contrast of who Wanda was before the Darkhold (combined with her grief) corrupted her. My brother, who apparently really liked WandaVision (and went to see the film with me), said he really didn't like corrupted Wanda himself, and I wonder how many people were looking for redemption arcs in this film after that show, or how many were looking for Wanda to embrace the evil of the Darkhold.

Stephen: The one and only--only, not the one and only. I could see one of the re-shot parts immediately within the first few minutes with Defender!Stephen repeating nearly word-for-word what Stephen told Peter in NWH. And, honestly? Fucking brilliant. I was shocked he would be like that, but at the same time, he's had to make the hard calls before--especially in the name of keeping control. So seeing Defender!Strange look at America as, ultimately, a threat? Yeah, I see it.

But in having all other three Stranges--Defender, Sinister, and Illuminati Stephen--make the decision to sacrifice others for their own need for control was a great way to juxtapose how different our Stephen is. There was some loss of control with using the Time Stone, out of necessity as he saw no other way. But he continues to learn that he cannot control everything in NWH and even moreso in MoM, until we get to the finale where he goes against Wong's order and uses what he's observed, his cleverness, to tell America what no one else has told her. And his wisdom leads to the end of the conflict.

It wasn't an ending I was expecting, to say the least--but damn, it's satisfying that both the ending of DS1 and DS2 were not Stephen beating an enemy by hitting magic at it, but by using his head. Magic was still used (the Time Stone and the Darkhold, respectively), but the solution would not have come if Stephen wasn't clever about his creative thinking. And that's one reason he's so unique as a superhero--and more unique than his counterparts, who simply go for control and power.

So many other Stephen details and plot points I liked:

I'm glad we got clarification of Stephen's status amongst the normal people now. I feel like this happened after Infinity War in particular, when the Avengers had to tell people what happened and he started getting known. Then after Endgame it got really known.

The film seemed to clarify that Stephen was never Sorcerer Supreme because he never learned about the Book of Vishanti being real. That was a very, very appeasing fact to me. Yes, I love being right.

I loved that dreams were glimpses of alternate realities, because I have written this concept in fanfic (the Sherlock/Strange crossover). IMO it's not all dreams though, and I think some people are more likely to have these types of dreams than others.

I love that incursions (convergences in the comics) are a thing. I also love this because I have an unpublished fanfic that is leading up to this, so now I gotta really get working on that so I can publish it already.

I adored what little we got of Sinister Strange and could easily have an entire film about our Stephen and Sinister Stephen just outwitting each other in this epic adventure. Like, replace Wanda with Sinister Strange and there's a new favorite film xD But I get why they didn't do that lol. Still, it was great to get a glimpse of this unhinged, corrupted character. He's not the tragic, fallen hero of What If?; he's simply unhinged.

I'm still torn on the musical fight scene. My logic brain that has written thousands upon thousands of words of meta on magic and its inner workings went "this make no sense" but my visual brain went "omg look that's so cool and pretty!" So what I'll likely end up doing is writing that scene in fanfic with so much technical magic explanation that people won't know what to do with it. But that's not happening until the film's out on streaming so I can watch it over and over and over again. (And I get other pieces done first).

All the shots we have now of Stephen in everyday wear and formal wear makes me so so so happy. So happy.

So the film wasn't about Stephen- it was definitely more a film about watching things unravel from Stephen's POV. But I'm glad we got to know more of his character (DONNA FINALLY GOT A MENTION), and that he had a solid character arc and definitely an impact on the climax and ending. And that it wasn't a cameo-stuffed CGI monster battle. I'm happy it wasn't- I was worrying about that.

I don't know about how I feel with Stephen getting a literal third eye. I always saw it as something a lot more metaphorical, personally. But hey, it led to a verrryyy interesting ending hinting at a lot more Doctor Strange and, of course, a quick cameo by Clea! I am very glad Clea is not being played by Rachel McAdams. I would have liked an Asian actress but I figured that'd be a long shot.

Things I would have liked to see:

I think I would have still enjoyed Superior Iron Man. So long as he wasn't played by Tom Cruise. And knowing that he would die in the end lmao. But I get why they went with Reed Richards instead, new era of Marvel and all.

There was a rumor that one of the credit scenes was going to be RDJ coming back as a cameo as Iron Man and apologizing for having him die, and that Stephen would have been able to make a similar apology. A pipe dream, alas; I don't think RDJ's coming back for any cameos.

WHY THE FUCK WASN'T THE EYE OF AGAMOTTO EXPLAINED? WHAT THE HELL MARVEL? WHY DOES IT SUDDENLY WORK AS IT DOES AND DID YOU FORGET THAT THANOS CRUSHED IT IN INFINITY WAR?

Seriously, I'm still annoyed by this. I have to fix everything myself, I swear.

I think it could have been 15-20 minutes longer with some more downtime between the action, with more scenes between Stephen/Wong and Stephen/America, or Stephen/Stephen. The talk between the two Stephens was freaking amazing.

Uh yeah, actually, not a lot of complaints. I think the biggest one would have been a preference with Wanda not as the villain, but that would be an entire rewrite of the story and it's not that much of a deal-breaker to me since she got her alternate version as well as something of a way to make herself not terrible at the end.

When it comes to a rating, I think I'll need to sit on it a bit more. I think NWH still packed more of an emotional punch for me, but I still definitely enjoyed MoM. Maybe an 8? 8.5? I'll see it again on Saturday, I think, so we'll see how I feel then.

#multiverse of madness #doctor strange #review #stephen strange #mcu #spoilers #ds mom #wanda maximoff #wong #benedict cumberbatch #benedict wong #america chavez #karl mordo

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rabbitcruiser · 5 months

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Turtle Adoption Day

Turtle Adoption Day is a "day of action for the protection of endangered reptiles." Specifically, the day supports the welfare of turtles. It appears to have been created by a woman named Christine Shaw, who made a blog post on November 25, 2011, on the website of Found Animals, an animal welfare organization that works to find new homes for distressed and abandoned animals. The day was first observed two days later.

Having a turtle as a pet is a large undertaking and can be a lot of work. Turtles have a long lifespan, meaning having one as a pet is a long-term commitment. This may not be ideal for many prospective owners. Turtles also need specialized—and many times expensive—care when it comes to their food, water supply, and cages, which also may not make them ideal pets for many. Additionally, turtles are often carriers of salmonella. Generally, conservation organizations take the view that turtles belong in the wild, not in homes as pets.

Still, many people do get turtles as pets, and Turtle Adoption Day is about reacting positively to some negative decisions others have made in this regard. Some people who get turtles as pets treat them like throw-away pets: they purchase baby turtles, view them as mini-turtles, and give them away or release them into the wild when they grow. When turtles are released into the wild, their chances of survival are slim. Additionally, many turtles are endangered species and are hunted by humans and have threatened habitats. Turtles released in the wild can also become invasive species. They can multiply, and may then damage flora and fauna. But, some turtle owners take them to animal shelters when they get bigger and they don't know how to care for them, instead of releasing them into the wild. It is these turtles that Turtle Adoption Day works to protect.

Turtles live in almost all climates around the world, and are found on every continent except Antarctica. Most species are found in southeastern North America and South Asia. Only five species can be found in Europe. Turtles are part of the order of Testudines, an order that also includes tortoises and terrapins. Testudines are split into two suborders: Cryptodira and Pleurodira. Most turtles are Cryptodira. The main difference between the two is that Cryptodira retract their heads straight back into their shells, while Pleurodira fold their necks to the side when they retract their heads. However, sea turtles, which are Cryptodira, are unable to retract their heads into their shells. Turtles are then split into 13 families and 75 genera, and there are over 300 species in total.

Turtles spend most of their time in the water. Freshwater turtles live in ponds and lakes, coming on land to bask in the sun. Sea turtles spend most of their time in the ocean, coming onshore to lay eggs on the sand. Most of these webbed-feet reptiles have hard shells that protect them from predators. The top part of their shell is called a carapace and the bottom is called a plastron. The carapace is made up of about 60 bones, and is covered with plates made of keratin called scutes. Besides hard-shelled turtles, there are are also soft-shelled turtles and leatherbacks, which have a thick skin covering their carapace.

Turtles are not very social animals. They are most active during the day, when they spend their time searching for food. Most are omnivores, eating animals such as fish, insects, mollusks, crayfish, snakes, frogs, worms, clams, and other turtles, as well as grasses, algae, and other plants. Their diet varies depending on their species, with some subsisting on a mostly vegetarian diet.

Like birds, turtles have beaks and no teeth. They also are egg-laying animals. After digging a nest on land in sand or dirt, they lay their eggs and leave; they don't nurture their young once they are born. Turtles lay between 20 and 200 eggs at a time, depending on their species. Most of their eggs are eaten by carnivores before they hatch, and many are eaten after they are hatched, as the baby turtles do not yet have fully-developed shells to protect themselves.

Turtles vary in size, but some may grow very large. The largest freshwater turtle in North America is the alligator snapping turtle, which can grow up to 2.5 feet in length and weigh up to 200 pounds. The largest sea turtle is the leatherback turtle, which can grow to about 4.5 to 5.25 feet in length and weigh between 600 and 1500 pounds. The largest soft-shelled turtle is the Yangtze giant softshell turtle, which can grow up to 3.6 feet across and weigh as much as 309 pounds.

Many species of turtles are threatened, endangered, or critically endangered. Additionally, many turtles who were once pets have ended up in shelters because their owners weren't able to properly care for them. This makes it even more necessary that there is a day dedicated to caring for and protecting turtles. Today, on Turtle Adoption Day, we do our part to protect turtles by adopting those without homes.

How to Observe Turtle Adoption Day

The most appropriate way to observe the day is to adopt a turtle that was once someone's pet. Turtles can be adopted through Found Animals or Petfinder, or through a reptile rescue organization. They can also be found in local listings such as Craigslist, as well as at local animal shelters. By giving them a new and proper home, you can help preserve one turtle's life, and help protect turtles in general, many species of which face endangerment. If you can't provide a home for a turtle, you could donate to a reptile rescue organization.

Before you adopt a turtle, it is imperative that you are prepared to do so. You must make sure you know what type of environment turtles need in order to live in captivity, and you must have a large enough habitat for your new turtle to live. For example, turtles need at least ten gallons of water per one inch of shell, and for each additional turtle, you need another ten to twenty gallons of water. They need a dry basking area where they can crawl around and dry off, they need access to lamps that give off heat and UVA and UVB rays, they need a submersible heater to keep water at a warm enough temperature, and they need a water conditioning solution and a filter. When adopting a turtle you must also remember that having one as a pet is a long-term commitment, they can be a lot of work, they can take up a lot of your time, and they can be expensive.

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the1northlanderprincess · 2 years

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I love you in every universe...a Palmerstrange meta/analysis/review thing.

finally saw MoM Thursday night! Yes, I did spoil myself on Palmerstrange stuff, because I’m weak, but I was strong enough to stay away from most general stuff, as I said earlier. I will probably do a post on the movie overall later, but I want to just focus on the good stuff, aka Stephen and Christine. Because, wow, I underestimated just how much everything revolved around his feelings for her. But bear with me as I am having a little trouble remembering the order of details.

THERE BE SPOILERS BELOW (I’m not tagging)

Okay, so the main-universe interaction between them was...odd. First of all, Stephen appeared to be actually kind of spirited as he got ready for the wedding. He probably was excited just to see her. But when he did see her, he just deflated. It brought back feelings to the surface that probably weren't deep to begin with. Christine just felt like she was super dismissive. It seemed implied that she maybe reached out to him offscreensville after the first movie, but he shut her out in order to protect her; probably more so in the events leading up to and after the Infinity saga. That most likely pushed her to the breaking point of defending him or something. She does ask him if he’s happy, and he puts on a fake smile and says he is. She’s glad to hear this and says he deserves it.

Anyway, so, pretty much everyone knows about Stephen's feelings for Christine, even America, who later tells Stephen that Defender Strange and his Christine couldn’t make it work. Wong knew about the wedding. Then there's Wanda, who used his love to try to gain access "reasonably" (my favorite villain trope!). This means a lot of talking offscreen again, which is an issue I have with the MCU and its relationship development. Back to Wanda and Stephen. There is alarm and fear in his eyes. But he doesn't give her the satisfaction of addressing it. Stephen is smart enough to not give in, but a part of him knows the temptation is there. Not only that, Wanda is implicitly threatening Christine. He won't allow for that.

So next we have Stephen accidentally happening upon the memory bank, which affects him greatly; it’s the moment Christine gives him the watch. America sees it, and she knows the depth of his love. Poor Stephen. He loved reliving that moment, but at the same time, he wanted to nope right out of there.

After that, we get America and Stephen in 838 confinement. He begins to badger the lab technicians when one of them turns around, only to see it’s Christine. He’s shocked, and America can tell he’s caught up in her and nothing’s going to get done. Stephen is impressed by this variant, and tries to gain some answers, but Christine isn’t having it. She is very matter-of-fact and firm, almost cold. We’re not completely sure of the level of love 838′s Christine had for her Stephen, but can tell she must have cared for him a lot, but was hurt by him using the Darkhold. So she’s trying to steel herself from this other Stephen. As he is summoned to the Court, he pleads with Christine to protect America.

All heck breaks loose soon after, and Christine helps America get out of the lab. Stephen runs into them. America gives him his cloak, which has been repaired by Christine. He implores Christine to release the cuff. She reluctantly does, not fully trusting him yet, and they escape to the underground tunnels. After holding off Wanda, Stephen attempts to open the door to the realm holding the Book of Vishanti. Christine reveals it’s the watch from her Stephen that opens the vault. If that’s metaphorical, I don’t know what is. Stephen jumps through the door first, followed by America, then Christine, who tumbles and is helped up by Stephen. He makes it to the Book, but before long, Wanda appears, and it’s destroyed. He steps in front of Christine protectively and pushes her aside, which I can only describe as HOT.

A fight ensues yet again, and America falls into the hands of the Scarlet Witch, but not before Stephen and Christine are sent to another universe. They discover an incursion has happened there. They go to find its Stephen Strange. Along the way, Stephen again inquires about his relationship with Christine in 838. She basically says they didn’t know how to make things work, and he’s just amused, knowing that was likely the case.

Once they find the Sanctum, Stephen goes in alone. It’s very dark and unfeeling, and he hears a voice, seeing the other Stephen in the shadows. He is a shell of his former self, ragged and on edge. The two talk. Stephen notices that he has the Darkhold. Sinister Strange tells our Stephen about going to his Christine’s wedding and being asked by her if he was happy. He lied and said he was. As he looks out the window and sees 838 Christine, Strange reveals he searched many a universe where he and Christine are together. Newsflash: they aren’t. If I’m remembering things correctly, Strange suggests he could be with 838 Christine, and Stephen is like, oh, heck no. Eventually they begin an epic rap battle, and Strange is thrown out the window and is impaled.

Stephen grabs the Darkhold and uses it to find America. Christine comes in and they discuss what to do. She is horrified to learn that he’s going to dreamwalk, but realizes that it might be the only way to save America. He asks Christine to protect his body in case he is attacked by wraiths. And this begins where I have really no cohesive memory of the sequence of events, so please forgive me. He begins the ritual to inhabit the body of Defender Strange. Upon opening the portal to the mountains, he is immediately assaulted by said wraiths. This affects Stephen quite seriously in the outside world. Christine rushes to his side and holds his hand, telling him she’s there. His health is failing, and she impassionedly gives him a pep talk, saying he’s the Master of the Mystic Arts. This revitalizes him and he gains control over the souls, which begin to penetrate the outside. Christine is attacked. When she recovers, Christine finds the Brazier, knowing how to use it, and blasts them one by one. She goes back to his side, only to later be knocked across the room again.

Once Stephen awakens, he hastens to Christine’s side and helps her get to her feet. She asks how everything went and he tells her. Then he says that America and Wong are on their way to get them. While they wait in awkward silence, Christine asks what his universe is like. He turns to her and says it’s beautiful. It’s obvious that there’s double meaning to his words. He wishes he could show it her. There’s a hopefulness to his voice. She’d like that, but tells him she has to go. He understands, knowing the repercussions if she came and stayed. But Christine is regretful, thinking it’d be neat to see the chaos that’d ensue. She looks at him, and you kind of see she’s somewhat serious and wants him to ask her again. He straightens up and declares his love for her with a catch in his voice. Christine is taken aback at first, making me think her Stephen never told her. She’s incredibly moved. He reiterates, saying he loves her across ALL space and time, then says it’s not for a lack of want, but fear. She approaches him and places a hand on his face. He closes his eyes, savoring her touch. Christine replies that he should go confront his fears. They stay in close proximity to one another until Wong and America arrive.

Back in New York, we see the watch, which Stephen is replacing the glass of. He is pleased with his work and puts it in a small chest, signifying his moving on from Christine.

Soooo, what does all of this mean? Okay, it’s pretty much a fact that Stephen fears he can’t be with Christine because of his duties, and it might put her in danger; he’s too powerful and important in the scheme of things. My brother actually said this as much. It’s a lot like Peter in Spider-Man 2. And like Mary Jane in that movie, Christine spells out that he isn’t respecting her enough to make such life choices. I think he realizes this as the story moves along.

I do believe he respects her agency to a great degree in not forcing her to come with him after all is said and done. That’s where he differs from Sinister Strange. It’s my opinion that his universe is an alternate/what if reality of 616.

Now as for the big question...who exactly is Stephen confessing to? I’ve seen some say it was a copout that he told 838!Christine that he loved her, and not his. Yes and no. Yes, it was a bit of a bummer that he didn’t tell her. At the same time, though, he was saying it to all Christines. It did allow him to get it off his shoulders at long last. He was free at the end of the movie; it’s why we saw him act a bit brighter. However, I also think he was saying it to her specifically. They went on an adventure, and she did so many things to help him. It may be controversial, but it’s my belief that the 616!Palmerstrange didn’t deserve each other, but 616!Stephen and 838!Christine do. Which leads me to my second point...

Like everyone knows, Stephen fixing and putting the watch away shows us he’s getting over Christine. But, ah! Not so fast! Stephen’s cloak was mended by 838!Christine with a contrasting color from the rest of it. Essentially, he carries that Christine with him now wherever he goes. It’s a beautiful thing.

Finally, with the whole Clea thing, I’ve said what I thought they should have done earlier this week. I admit I’m not a diehard literal-comic-book fan. I watched X-Men and Spider-Man as a kid, and I’ve watched a whole bunch of comic-based movies. I also look up wiki stuff on characters to know the general stuff and originalities, but that’s as far as it goes. I really don’t care about comic book canon. After researching Dr. Strange several years back, I read about Clea, and it was my hope and belief at the time that Christine would be her, only under a different name. Well, clearly that didn’t happen. What I will say is this: if they wanted her to be Stephen’s love interest, they should have introduced her sooner, as @angryantagonist mentioned in a post reply. Why make the time to make a cartoon about their relationship, and have the plot of the second solo movie center around it, with many aspects playing a key role in Stephen’s success? Doesn’t make sense to me.

#palmerstrange #dr. strange #stephen strange #christine palmer

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