#lesbian vikings so how can we go wrong

[wherethewolfsbaneblooms]

What could possibly have Jarl Dimitrescu on her knees? Any guesses?

#resident evil village #lady dimitrescu x reader #lady dimitrescu #resident evil 8 #reader insert #alcina dimitrescu #alcina x reader #archive of our own #shield me #jarl dimitrescu #alcina dimitriscu x reader #lady dimitrescu x female reader #lady alcina x reader #resident viking au #alternate universe #vikings #historical au #lesbian vikings so how can we go wrong #capcom #chapter 7 #freeform reader

[shouldhavebeenpersephone]

AAAAAAAAAAH One Way by S.J. Jordan was SO GOOD! Going for the sequel next but pleasssseee do you have any show or movie recs??

AAAAAAAAAA I am so glad you enjoyed it! Feel free to scream at me about it ANY time. I think I may have to go and reread it now.

In regards to other recommendations... oooooh boy. I have so many. This took me a while because I was considering if this would be respectful to the strikes, but we haven't been told to stay away from any streaming services etc. yet, so after removing a scab from the recommendation list I decided to post it. Apologies in advance for the tangents I go on for every single recommendation. Some of these have been quite popular so you might know of them but it still felt worth mentioning.

Under the cut is a non-exhaustive list of media in no particular order that makes me want to eat glass. Take a shot every time I say heartbreaking.

Movies

Lord of the Rings 1/2/3 - I feel no need to explain myself. If you haven't seen this please for the love of god get your hands on the extended versions and watch them. Then read the books and watch the movies again. Rinse and repeat.

How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2 - You read that right, NOT the third movie. In this house the third movie doesn't exist. This is an animated movie and sequel based on the book it shares a name with by Cressida Cowel. The movie follows protagonist Hiccup who lives in a town of Vikings who hunt and kill dragons. He finds out that he can't kill a dragon he has caught, and is surprised when the dragon won't kill him either. His curiosity gets the best of him and he returns to watch the dragon in it's hideout, and a beautiful friendship emerges from a very messy situation. It doesn't happen often that a movie is better than the book, especially if the source material has been changed so drastically, but HTTYD pulls it off. The first movie was also my introduction to fandom, and both movies have an incredibly special place in my heart. Fun fact: I actually am the OP of a pretty popular fandom headcannon and it makes me giggle every time I see it be mentioned in the HTTYD tag.

Inception - Obligatory action movie. Heist movie except sci-fi and also everyone is queer and sexy (no it's not canon but it is canon to me). Conman Leo DiCaprio breaks into rich boy Cilian Murphy's dreams to convince him to give up his father's business in exchange for getting his criminal file wiped clean so he can see his kids again. I love sad dads and I love mind games and I love high stakes and I love time fuckery and I love mentally ill women. Watch it if you also do.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire - Perfect. Showstopping. Incredible. Does not pass the reverse Bechdel test. It is so incredibly hearthbreaking and soft and tender. Period drama with lesbians. Painter Noémi Merlant is hired to pretend to be a companion to Adèle Haenel while secretly painting her portrait to be sent off to a man she is being married off to. There is betrayal and trust and community and lust and it's so gorgeous to look at. The attention to detail is incredible and I want to kiss Céline Sciamma for bringing this movie to my screen. I cry every time I watch it. Queer heartache done right.

The Lake House - I don't know if this movie is actually that good but to me it is perfect. Contractor Keanu Reeves moves into a gorgeous lake house (my dream home) and starts receiving letters addressed to the previous owner and doctor Sandra Bullock. When he gets a letter from her with her new address and sees it's to a building that's still in development, the two skeptics come to the conclusion they are living years apart and their post box is some sort of portal. They fall in love, things go wrong, things go right, and there is a dog!

Series

Orphan Black - Listen. Listen. LISTEN. Tatiana Maslany. Wow. She plays a dozen (if not more) clones and I still have a hard time believing they weren't all different people. Trouble kid forced to be an adult because she is a mother sees herself jump in front of a train and uhhhh has issues with that. She then discovers there are so many others like her, that they were a part of a cloning project and that she is a bit of a special case. There is a lot of plot I cannot summarize but it's deliciously queer (one of the main character clones is a lesbian as well as two prominent gay side characters and other minor queer and trans characters). Found family, questions of what it means to love and of morality, some wonderfully written character arcs and a decently satisfying end. First few episodes can be a bit hard to get into, but Tatiana Maslany is incredible and the show is totally worth it.

Adventure Time - This is a big comfort show for me, not only because Marceline and Princess Bubblegum were one of my first queer ships ever, but also because I enjoy this show just as much as an adult. No real main story line, you could watch individual episodes and still follow it. There are some heavy themes, but they are always handled so wonderfully and with a true sense of childlike wonder, and it makes me have faith in humanity again. Finn the Human and Jake the Dog go on adventures together in a gigantic fantasy land and meet lots of interesting figures. Even the evil characters get attention, compassion, screen time, and dignity. It's heartbreaking and beautiful and so so so good.

The Mentalist - Sorry, there is a cop show in here. Simon Baker is an ex 'psychic' grieving father and husband working as a consultant with the CBI. His boss, Robin Tunney, is so in love with him she looks stupid. It's basically a man who is too smart for his own good running around, being charming or extremely annoying, and an exhausted tough-love type of woman running around fixing his messes. Oh and they catch killers. I am a Patric Jane kinnie, sue me. Jane and Lisbon are also very Griddlehark to me, kind of a what could have been if they had been friends from the beginning.

Russian Doll - Have I ever mentioned how much I love Natasha Lyonne? This is a kind of sexier Groundhog Day, where Natasha Lyonne keeps dying and waking up in the bathroom of her friend throwing her a birthday party. She loses her mind in the midst of gorgeous scenes, seriously beautiful cinematography, and in sexy ass outfits. If you like mind fuckery, cinematography, and sexy women this is the show for you. It sure is the show for me.

Arcane - Speaking of gorgeous visuals, Arcane is a beast of a show with such an incredible and unique look. Also so many hot and/or gay women. There are a few men too, they're okay, I do like me a pathetic little guy so it works. But WOMEN. So many powerful, intelligent, cunning, courageous women. I have to admit that I remember very little of the storyline, but I do know that they took 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl', said "yes and", and made a truly incredible and multi dimensional character with Jinx, with fully fleshed out motivations and morals (or lack thereof), understandable but still properly wrong actions, and such incredible story building around her progressing mental troubles. Must watch.

The Sandman - This one is not technically an obsession I have ever had, but it is a great watch and rewatch. I adore Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne and I adore Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer and I adore Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death. I also love pretty much anything that comes out of Neil Gaiman's brain so that helps. Great casting is what makes this show a winner for me. Morpheus/Dream gets locked up by some insane guy trying to capture death to bring back his son and he spends the rest of the show dealing with the consequences of being gone for decades. Tom Sturridge is a wet cat of a man and I do like that a lot as well. Very pretty cinematography seals the deal.

Misc.

The Magnus Archives - Podcast wildcard. Horror and paranormal and delicious. I love voice actors so much and archivists are hot. Becoming something you didn't choose and dealing with the repercussions of no longer really being human is so !!!!!!! I love it when people just go through the horrors. Everyone's voices scratch something in my brain that nothing else can reach. Brilliant piece of media.

What Remains of Edith Finch - Game wildcard. Semi-sandbox semi-railroad narrative. Gorgeous visual representations of so many difficult things in life. Particularly, the bit where one of Edith's family members loses himself to his own imagination is so gorgeous and heartbreaking. I have written essays on the cinematography of this game. It is so beautiful. Whether you lay it or watch a playthrough, you have to witness this.

MISSED RECOMMENDATIONS ARE HERE

There you have it.

I am sure there is more and I am sure I will be hitting my head on a wall after remembering something I forgot to include. Anyway- enjoy!

#Ash Answers

[diana-prince-s]

do you have any advice for world building for a story? especially for stories that take place in the past like your spartan au. i personally love folklore and fantasy but i could never write for that genre because i'm so bad at world building so i just stick to modern day, slice of life stuff

hmm world building really is something that's very elusive. I'm not really sure if I'm a good world builder. am I?

for the sake of me giving you advice, let's pretend like I am. to start, I've always been a huge fan of fantasy (even modern day fantasy, like modern witches, monsters, the Shadow Falls series and Trylle trilogy were defining moments in my life) and I love history. I had an amazing history teacher who taught it like a story. Every lecture was basically just a story with a few important dates scattered in there. so maybe that's where I got my world building bug.

(and let me just say, in your modern stories you’re doing world building!! we don’t all live exactly where your characters live, we don’t do exactly what they do! my girlfriend noticed in my fics that I write in characters drying their toothbrush after they brush their teeth, which to me is so normal I don’t even notice I do it in real life. she said she didn’t start doing it until she noticed I do it, and I’m sure not everyone does! world building at its finest)

I think the first thing you have to do is to live in your story or your world. you have to feel like you're there. If while you're writing you don't feel like you're in Queen Elizabeth's court, or on the isle of Sparta, then your reader definitely won't. The next thing is to do research. I'm not one to say that you need to have ten pages of typed notes about a particular place and time before you start writing; but while you're writing, if you need to look up what kind of food they ate or if they had mirrors (two of the biggest things you'll probably need in a fantasy/historical story), look those up!

If you're writing fantasy, remember every decision you make is up to you; there doesn't need to be a precedent, and it's believable as long as you stay consistent and say it with your whole chest. If the new Dune movie can be a blockbuster success with how little world building they did for audiences that knew nothing of the world (🙄) then you can make a believable and successful story. Just believe in yourself and your characters. And almost all the time fantasy is just a retelling of history -- every house in Game of Thrones was based on a historical European nation/ethnicity, and we all know where JK(KK) Rowling got her inspiration. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, but there are ways that you can make it uniquely yours.

If you're writing history, like I've said, pretend like you're living there. Consume other historical media and copy that. But also don't be afraid to change history! Every historical nation or civilization had some aspect of fantasy -- dragons and samurais and knights -- that have become part of the modern cultural consciousness. People eat that shit up. I wrote a TV pilot about vikings and it's about (surprise surprise) a lesbian viking princess who's going to become queen. My idea came from Beowulf and I infused it with stuff that I saw in the show Vikings, and then when AC Valhalla came out I learned a lot more about vikings and added some of that stuff in. I've literally never learned about vikings in school, it's all just my own research and my belief that, after watching a TV show and playing a video game and feeling like I could survive in viking times, I can successfully write a viking show even if it's not true to the viking world (yet).

Once again, this is still fiction. My viking show has a woman leader. Did that ever happen in viking history? We don't know exactly, but the modern legends of women vikings are fun and exciting! We're bored of the men being the defining characters in viking works of literature and media! And, correct me if I'm wrong, people will love it. Her love interest is Black, of African descent, and that's totally believable. You know why? Because even if I didn't have proof of this (which there is historical proof of vikings meeting with other cultures, particularly in Russia and the Middle East), I explain that her grandfather, a great viking traveler, traveled south to North Africa, met an African woman and now there is an African viking. And that's how world building works. You are in control of the story.

I believe that you can write a fantasy or historical story. You can even take what you have going with slice of life and mix it with historical themes or fantasy. Because at the end of the day, across time and space humans have similar goals and similar ways of living. We haven't been around for that long, and over the span of time some of the really important things (love, which you can see in stories and literatures from the past and present; sex, which once again, check the historical writings and art; scandal, have you read Chaucer? those stories in that book about the road trip are saucy) and the really bad things (war, we're still doing it and we're doing it better; religions, because what else?; colonization, which we still haven't grappled with or solved) have lasted millennium.

Fantasy and history aren't out of your reach. If you want to add a domestic cooking scene between two star-crossed lovers in the middle of the Hundred Years' War, you can. I'm sure it happened.

#this was an essay sorry #also lol I'm not saying samurais and knights weren't real but their stories became romanticized and fictionalized through time

[huntsman-ash]

RWBY V8E4 LiveThoughts

And were back at it again, this week with turkey and Italian preserved sausage as a snack! Lets see what RT has for us this week.

Oh, 20 minutes. Are they normally this long?

Oh, wait, the openings almost 2 minutes long. Thats more like it.

And now to Robyn and Qrow. Seems Robyns actually liking Qrow a little bit now. 

Guess the cells aren’t secured if a fly got into Schnee’s. This a “Fly on Mike Pence’s face” reference?

Qrow sounds more growly again. Did he get smacked back two seasons by Clover dying?

If by “darkness” you mean “Tyrian” then, yes. Also dude, its Clover. He was shit anyway. All the Aces are shit. Dont feel too bad about him.

And he’s got a point too. If Clover had thought with his head instead of his dick (yes, Im sure they were gonna fuck, Fair Games totally a thing), he probably wouldnt be dead now, and Tyrian would be the one with the sword through his chest.

But of course this is RWBY and V7/8 so things cant go their ways.

Ouch. Deep thoughts of Qrow. And some interesting stuff from Robyn too. I still think I’d prefer hopeandharmonizing’s Briar, though.

Marrows glare gives me life. Hare’s just a moron right now though, but thats no real surprise. She’s immature emotionally.  Honestly, shes...kind of like a less bad version of our current President. Always has to be the best at everything, fastest, leader, whatever.

Thats probably why this is grating on her so much. Even though shes TECHNICALLY the Ace’s leader now (I think? Seemed like she was Clovers lieutenant, so by rate of succession she’s in command now)

A glance at the little floating control pad... “Clerance access only”. Okay, that...seems weird. Shouldnt it say something like authorized personell only? Maybe it means access by clerance only or something.

Then Robyn’s name, and then process ID 4591-27. No idea what thats useful for but its there.

Also Marrow seems to be the only competent member of the Aces rn. 

Ah now we get to see some of the hills around Atlas. For those of you who have seen my headcanons on the Hunter-Killers and their base of operations, Fortress Academy, its out in these hills somewhere.

The music sounds like a boss fight.

The screen on Ren’s hoverbike reads “HVB Rhino” and “HD5800″ I can only assume HVB stands for “hoverbike” and Rhino must be its name, like how the dropships are Mantas. No clue what the number is. 

Also apparently the cold in Solitas is so bad it corrupts machinery?

Ahh, good, some action. Lets see what we get now. Ohh, teamwork. And again, signs that aura allows you to move faster and farther than a normal human

Heh, it really is like a boss fight, like the chase scene at the end of the first Viking level in For Honor.

Oh, and it can call for reenforcements literally out of nowhere? Or is the whole tundra of Solitas just CRAWLING with Grimm?

Yes, yes it did just call for backup, Yang. Maybe these are all forward scouts and ambush units from the Grimmstorm. They did say its the biggest...

Another banger from Casey Lee Williams...

What the hell happened in Solitas to cause this geography? Seriously, its a line of bridges over a gap in two cliffs...that cant be natrual, not that equal in distance.

Man, those bikes didnt even last half an episode...I guess thats fair, they are facing obsurd odds. Or maybe they just want Yang to be the only one with a bike.

And there goes the dropwall. Woops.

Also you can just kinda see it but they bounce off the rock and thats why they slow down. Useful.

Also this part with them falling off the edge reminds me of the ending cutscene of Halo 4s Forerunner level, where Chief flies out of a portal and almost goes sailing off a cliff in a Ghost.  Except here, the bike stays on the land and THEY go off the cliff.

I paused at just the right time cause YANGS FACE XD

Holy shit what are Ren’s weapons cables MADE OF? The one atop him is holding him AND the weight of his two teammates. And the one below has both Jaune and Yang. No sign of slippage or breackage at all. 

Ahhh there’s the whaleship (Monstra? Fuck it Im gonna keep calling it the whaleship). So yeah my headcanon now is the mountain its right next too is Menachite, where Fortress is. 

Oh hey back to the Schnee manor of all things! Does...this mean military invasion of the Schnee grounds. Hey Whitley. Lesbians are here. 

Someone make a video cut of Weiss banging on the door to the “Knock knock open up the door its real!” part of that one song.

Hehehehhe. Nice Weiss.

Also convenient about the house staff. Good thing RT doesnt need to animate them or Willow now...

I hope the staff took some of the silverware and some paintings on the way out.

Why is MAY the one carrying Nora.

Ah so now they’re stuck out there with no cell service. Hehe.

Ah okay so the cold in Solitas DOES eat aura. Good, my headcanon still kind of stands. 

I wonder, does wearing proper cold weather clothing (like bundled up stuff) help? Or does it cut right through...

Why is JAUNE the one hauling the bike? Isnt Yang the strongest? Or maybe they take turns.

Ahhh inter-team talking. Also, outpost. Hmm. Atlas one? Overrun if I had to guess. Unless he saw Fortress. Which I doubt.

I do love the circling shot here, with the light on Yang’s hair and the shadows on Ren. Its...really artistic and emotional. GREAT WORK RT. 

Rens got points. And hes saying stuff I myself have been saying for ages, which is good. I wonder why this is how Ren is now...working with the Ace Ops? Being afraid of loosing Nora? No one tell him what happened last episode.

Also, Jaune’s hair seems to have gotten less crazy in recent episodes. It looks less like a banana and more like a close tactical cut.

Yangs got a point.

Ahhh and now we get to see the inside of the whale. 

SALEM FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP SHOWING THE FUCK OFF. SERIOUSLY. WE GET IT. 

...this is gonna be a really criingy torture section, isnt it.

Someones gonna take that “hound didnt break you” line in the WRONG direction 

It is amusing the only thing holding Oscar down is the Hound actually. 

Ah so they’re still searching the remains of Beacon.

Also I like how Salem calls them “her forces” as if its anything but a random bunch of expendable monsters. Like, bruh, you cant search anything with THAT.

Ignoring the boring chat between these two, notice how the Hound’s shoulder literally flexes and shifts when Salem touched it. I dont think this thing is solid at all aside from the head and the bone claws...the whole thing is just amorphous Grimm material that can adapt to whatever situation it requires. A specialist unit. A...Hunter hunter.

Yo what the fuck was that. Magic? Huh. Did we actually SEE magic for once in the show? Only took us 8 FUCKING SEASONS...

Doesnt seem to be anything but an energy blast/pain never firing though. I assume his auras still gone, cause its completely singed his shirt, but it didnt do much else.

...Im not impressed.

She really needs to stop touching his face, its creeping me out.

HAHA SHE CANT DO IT HERSELF SHE HAS TO RELY ON HAZEL BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF HIM. I think we know where she stands now, doesnt she...say what you will about her letting Hazel have his vengeance (which is very valid, even he admits hit), but me? I think she A) cant actually beat up on Ozma herself because she still cares and B) shes almost out of magic too. Its weakened as the Gods have been gone and shes been forced to rely on the Grimm and on pawns. Basically, once she and Oz are both gone? That’s it for magic. Remnant will belong to the Grimm...and to technology. 

At which point without Oz around to hold them back Atlas is going to go fucking BONKERS and basically ensure the Grimm get pushed back into a corner and then finally permenantly STAMPED OUT.

More Whale insides. Seems like most of its empty grandious spaces. Or possibly muscle? Hard to tell. Either way theres a lot of open air in there...with tight corridors. If you fired a thermobaric warehead into one of the chambers the resulting blastc could possibly blow the doors off and send a raging fireball through the entire thing...Hmm. Filing that away for later.

NEO IS SO SHORT ITS FUNNY TO ME. I know its just positioning BUT SHE LOOKS EVEN SHORTER IN THIS SHOT THAN USUAL.

More note on the Hound; the “flesh” around its right shoulder spike actually sinks down when it stops moving. Its neck shifts and moves too, like the material isnt solid, but recirculating.

I also dont see any eyes. And it looks like it has some kind of...forehead mouth? Def looks like teeth down the ridge of its spine.

Oh boy yeah that...whole thing is basically melting in on itself.

I wont lie; hearing Cinder get berated by CORTANA (and yes, I still hear Cortana in Salem, espeically now that the two characters are kind of one and the same, both megalomaniacal leaders of giant armies, bar the fact that one of them is about a TRILLION times more dangerous than the other because one of them has access to Guardian Custodies and the other one is...well kind of lame and has to have beefy dudes beat up on small children etc) is pleasing to me. 

Get fucked, Cinder.

And THERE is Cortana again too.

Neo Marry Popins’s Ya’lling is fucking CUTE. And I love her little smirk.

Wait the whale’s that close?

..oh my...hold on.

...thats it. THATS ATLAS’S AIR FLEET!?!

12 AIRSHIPS? 12? EXCUSE ME!?

ARE YOU LEGITAMETLY TELLING ME THE BIGGEST MILITARY ON REMNANT HAS FEWER AIRSHIPS THAN THE SMALLEST NAVY ON EARTH HAS FRIGATES? YOUR FUCKING KIDDING ME RIGHT? THERE HAS TO BE MORE SOMEWHERE. THIS IS A JOKE, A STRAIGHT UP FUCKING JOKE.

...

No, thats...thats it. Thats Atlas’s airfleet. 12 tiny vessels. I swear it was bigger last season...

...HA! HAHA! HA! Oh, Ironwood, and Atlas as a whole...you deserve everything your about to get. I hope you die SCREAMING, and that when your bodies fall bleeding and shattered to Mantle, the people down there will realize that, no. You cant just assume Hunters will do all the work for you

THIS IS REMNANT. ITS KILL OR BE KILLED. YOU EITHER MAKE A FORCE POWERFUL ENOUGH THAT THE GRIMM RUN FROM YOU  OR YOU DIE INSTEAD. ATLAS FAILED. NOW THEY SUFFER.

Emerald stop simpin.

Also that is...the SHITTEST outpost...I have ever seen in my life. My overall thought process of Atlas is...sinking even LOWER than before. 

Though it seems more like a waystation. Bed, Dust, some dudes coat on it. Dead heater. Its probably a rest spot for Specialists out in the tundra.

Ren does the emo sit. Lol. Yang even says it. Brood himself to death.

Alright whats this now...something forcing itself out of the tundra?

And thats it for today! Cool ass concept art at the end there too. 

#rwby #rwby spoilers #spoilers #rwby v8

[mariephillipswriter]

Square Eyes

Do they still say that if you watch too much television you'll get square eyes? Or is that an expression that went out of fashion when kids started spending all their time in front of the internet? Putting aside the obvious riposte (televisions aren't square, they're rectangular) I can report that I have been doing extensive research in this area and have come to the scientific conclusion: no, you won't. I have been watching so much television. SO MUCH TELEVISION. I never believed that I could watch such an immense quantity of television. On the whole I don't watch it during the day except for sometimes when I am having my breakfast and also when having my lunch, but in the evenings, when I have finished pretending to work, I might start watching television at about 6pm, or 5pm, or 4pm on a bad day, and keep going until, say, 11pm or midnight. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE. HOW CAN A PERSON LIVE THIS WAY. Well it's easy enough, it turns out, if you're under lockdown in London in December and it's dark from 4pm and raining most of the time and you have the emotional resources of a gnat and reading is too demanding and talking on the phone is too exhausting and the light in the living room is not good enough for doing a puzzle in evening hours and you quit social media a month or so ago because it was driving you out of your mind with anxiety. I don't watch six or seven or eight hours of television every night. Don't be ridiculous. Some nights I only watch about three hours of television because I have a Zoom call or I'm cooking dinner or I've got stuck into a good cryptic crossword, maybe the Saturday Times Jumbo one because the Guardian ones are too gimmicky, or at last I've found a book gripping yet easy enough that I can't put it down (thank you Robert Galbraith, thank you Marian Keyes), but I would say that three hours is the minimum and my god that is a LOT. EVERY DAY. THREE HOURS. MINIMUM. But you don't need to me to explain that to you because you are all watching three four five six seven hours of television every day and when you are not watching television you are phoning your friends and first of all talking about the specific way that your own personal lockdown is terrible but then eventually saying 'what are you watching on television' because what else is there even to talk about? At the start of lockdown there was quite a small pool of television that everyone was watching (that thing about the Tiger King, which I didn't watch because by the time I got back from my early lockdown in Costa Rica you'd all seen it, and Normal People which I didn't watch because I was too embarassed to sit through all the sex scenes with my flatmates, and I May Destroy You, which I didn't watch because about five minutes of it was enough to send me into a massive panic spiral, but I hear was very good), but once we had all (other than me) got through that and Covid dragged on for months, our conversations began taking on the tenor of Vikings crowding around one another as a boat returns from a foray, WHAT IS OUT THERE, WHAT DID YOU FIND OUT THERE, IS THERE SOMETHING OUT THERE THAT I MIGHT DESIRE? And the Viking says yes, there is this thing called Schitts Creek but you really have to push on through the first season because I promise you it gets better and better and you will start to love that obnoxious family. And then we all watched Schitts Creek. (Including me, it's wonderful, you have to push on through the first series you will start to love that obnoxious family, Dan Levy is a divinity in human form and if you want more of him you could do worse than checking out the lesbian Christmas-themed romcom Happiest Season, which you can rent from Amazon Prime.) And now we are beyond even that and all our lives resonate with the screeching sound of a televisual barrel being scraped and now this is when things get really interesting (or put another way, VERY VERY BORING) because everyone has fractured and we are all watching different kinds of random stuff found in the dusty corners and unloved algorithms of our streaming services. There's the friend who has got into watching obscure French crime series on Netflix (The Chalet! La Mante!) and the friend who is watching every episode of Poirot on Britbox (thirteen series, 70 episodes) (though that pales in comparison with the friend who did a total rewatch of Friends from beginning to end (236 episodes) and finished it ages ago and is starving for more) and the friend who calls me up seemingly every week with a new old show nobody else has ever heard of (such as the early 1990s Nigel Havers and Warren Clarke comedy spy drama Sleepers, which he is watching old-school-style on DVD, and which apparently is like The Americans only with Nigel Havers and funny, and also, you should watch The Americans.) When I look back on the amount of television I have watched this year it defies comprehension. There were the things I would have watched anyway like the whole of Strictly Come Dancing and His Dark Materials, and the things that took me by surprise, like the stealthily hilarious Danny Dyer gameshow The Wall that was on straight after Strictly and drove me into a total obsession with the way that Danny Dyer says "Drop 'Em" (he's talking about the balls that are dropped down the wall, it's hard to explain, you can find it on iPlayer, but meanwhile if you only click on one link in this whole newsletter PLEASE click on that one), there were the things that were created especially to get me through lockdown (the wonderful David Tennant and Michael Sheen Zoom comedy Staged, which is not only extremely funny but allows you to see inside David Tennant's house which I'm not sure I am technically allowed to watch because of the restraining order? Anyway, new series coming on Monday, fellow DT fans) and the familiar things I watched to soothe me when it all got too much (Doctor Who, starting before Tennant even gets in on the action, right at the begining of the New Who seasons with Christopher Eccleston, because armchair space travel is the only kind of travel we are going to be getting for a while) and the exciting things I watched when I could no longer bear the tedious repetition of every identical day (Line of Duty, in which the famous-for-the-far-inferior Bodyguard writer Jed Mercurio delivers ludicrously compelling twisty-turny stories about police corruption that cannot be predicted for even a nanosecond) and the things that I watched just because I loved them (Fosse/Verdon, the Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon bio-series starring the breathtakingly charismatic Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams, which is one of the best-made pieces of television I've ever seen, Love Life, the Anna Kendrick romantic comedy series which was surprisingly touching and truthful about the relationships that make up a life and which didn't make me want to open a vein as a single person the way that many looking-for-love shows do, and Better Things, a sort-of-comedy sort-of-drama written, directed by and starring Pamela Adlon, which began as a collaboration with Louis CK and initially reflected the sensibility of his show Louie, but became far more experimental and interesting once, after CK's disgrace, Adlon took over completely - the fourth series is maybe the closest thing I've seen on TV to a representation of the rhythms of real life, with long scenes of Adlon just cooking a meal on her own, or contemplating the rain, of having arguments with her children that explode from nowhere and end just as suddenly with tears or laughter or nothing at all.) And this entire paragraph is just things that I have watched on the BBC. Not even everything that I have watched on the BBC. The BBC is INCREDIBLE and my license fee has been serious value for money, before you even count all that time spent watching the news [Munch Scream emoji]. But overall, it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of television that I have watched this year. Though while we're here, have you noticed that sometimes it's more relaxing to watch something bad than something good? Have you noticed that a vapid, cliched show like Virgin River (heartbroken city nurse with a secret moves to small town and falls in love with battle-wounded bartender with a secret), a show that makes This Is Us look like Succession, has the same effect on your brain that taking off your work shoes and putting on your slippers has for your feet? You can rest now, it says, there is nothing more for you to do. Have you noticed how easy it is to chug down, say, four episodes in a row of Designated Survivor - a show designed by a committee charged with taking elements of The West Wing, Homeland and 24, and making something similar but, crucially, much more ridiculous - without your mind even noticing that anything has happened at all? And if you're really ready for something utterly idiotic, might I suggest The Bold Type, in which three twentysomething girls in bonkers designer outfits "work" at an aspirationally "feminist" glossy magazine, and by "work" I mean constantly leave the office in the middle of the day to take care of personal business, and by "feminist" I mean "empowering women by for example having them post selfies of themselves looking perfect but without makeup on social media", a feminism so very feminist that they called the magazine's parent company Steinem in the first series and then had to change it to Safford, I can only presume because Gloria Steinem threatened to sue them. A couple of episodes of that is the televisual equivalent of having a nice relaxing full frontal lobotomy. Don't get me wrong: I love these shows. I owe them more gratitude than I can say. I would be unable to survive without them. I've managed to watch five hours of television just since starting this post24 hours ago (three episodes of Doctor Who, half a really cheap and very bad Sky Arts documentary about the musical Hamilton, and a travelogue in which Torvill and Dean go in search of a frozen lake in Alaska on which to dance Bolero but can't find one for almost the entire show because of global warming, which made me simultaneously and conflictingly want to give up air travel, fly to Alaska immediately, become obsessed with Torvill and Dean AND wonder how they managed to skate together all these decades without killing each other especially Torvill but also especially Dean). Five hours of TV, sounds like a lot, but with eight hours of sleep, that still left me eleven hours to fill in this boring boring boring boring BORING BORING BORING boring boring BORING boring BORING BORING lockdown. I think I am being incredibly restrained, all things considered. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some time to kill, having finished writing this post, and with at least five hours to fill before bed. I wonder what's on TV?

***

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[bpdanakins]

Name ten favourite characters from ten different things (books, tv, film, etc.) then tag ten people

I was tagged by the dear @gffa who clearly enjoys making these lists and seeing everyone else also struggling with just choosing ten. It’s hard but I shall do my best sdfk <3

1. Lara Croft - Tomb Raider Okay, let’s just get it out: I prefer reboot!Lara. idk I know some people think she sucks and the games suck for whatever reason, but I found the games and their mechanics super fun, and Lara’s story really compelling. She was a young girl who was determined to make her own way in the world, and instead went through something extremely traumatizing. She kept pushing through, kept getting back up no matter what the world threw at her. She went on this clear journey that was compelling and fun and messy. She wasn’t perfect. She pushed people away, she fucked the world up because she was determined to find the answers she felt would make all she went through make sense. Her survivor’s guilt was present really well in RotTR but most especially in SotTR. People were dying but she was so focused on finishing her personal mission. She was numb to it despite the fact it still horrified her. And her arc ended well. She finally was able to reach a place where she was able to let go of her losses and try to join society again. And I’m gay for her. So, you know.

2. Senua - Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice I cannot recommend this game enough. It’s tough to play bc it’s not just a horror game but you feel a lot of Senua’s anxiety, which is part of the point to the game. Senua’s a Celtic warrior who suffers from psychosis, and the game devs worked directly with both professionals and those who experience psychosis. There’s a whole mini doc to it which is great, even if you can’t stomach horror. You’re in Senua’s head with her throughout the game. You see what she sees, you hear all she hears, and she talks to you directly at times. But the beauty of the game is Senua’s true journey. She goes on a quest to try to rescue a loved one she lost to Vikings, but the real story is about a girl realizing she’s not a monster for seeing the world differently. That the abuse and ableism she faced weren’t her fault at all. There’s so many little things I can point to in this game that just made me so emotional, and it’s such a beautiful and necessary story to tell. Senua is great and deserves a hug.

3. Anakin Skywalker - Star Wars If you asked me at what point in my life Anakin became one of my favourite characters, to the point I frequently talked about him even on my main blog at random intervals, I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t the faintest idea; he just was. And if you asked me why he was a fave early on, I also couldn’t tell you lmao. It might partially be that I grew up on the prequels, and maybe at such a young age I didn’t really grasp at first that this was a story about a guy who was already revealed to be a villain, but I haven’t the faintest clue. He just is now, and I’m so passionate about his story. He’s complex and difficult and written so well. You want him to be happy, you feel heartbroken seeing a good character fall so deep, and you want to smack him upside the head a whole lot. You laugh at his silly dialogue (which he has as Vader too smh), you cry when you see him struggling, you become horrified by his actions. His story’s also a great inversion of the Chosen One trope - whereas usually we see Chosen Ones struggle, become imperfect and undoubtedly traumatized, they remain heroes the whole time. Anakin doesn’t. He becomes the bad guy, one of the worst in the series (Palps takes the award tho). But even then, when you think this guy has nothing to offer but an intimidating villain, he’s shown to have good. And then we see how much good he had all along, the good he forgot and was punished for and hated himself for. His heart that had good intentions but he chose the worst actions. He’s complicated and I love him. And more over, I love how many people who struggle or have mental illness can relate to him. I love that he wasn’t treated as a guy whose actions were glorified, but that were honest in both the good ones and the bad ones. Anyone can fall, and anyone can get back up, if they choose to. I just. Love him. He means a lot.

4. Commander Shepard - Mass Effect I know that Shep is technically the player’s character and can be any combination of person, but anyone who’s played Mass Effect would get why they were put here. The original trilogy for Mass Effect touched on so many things, and was a really emotional one. You had your great moments with friends, you had your struggles against both unknown horrors, and horrors close to home (so to speak). There are so many small moments that stick out to you, and idk how many people can say that playing this story didn’t impact their life in a meaningful way, bc I can’t see how it couldn’t. I’ve played the games many times, but even after all of this, there are moments that I not just still get emotional to, but take on new meaning as I go through my life. And Shepard’s the hero of the story. They’re not perfect, and they can downright be an ass if you play them that way, but their story is one of perseverance, of fighting on even when entire worlds are being lost and everyone is still looking to them. Everyone needs them to find a solution. But even then, it’s a story about friendship too. About tons of amazing characters that all have their own motivations, their own pasts and goals and hopes and failures. About how all these varied characters become a found family. And so Shepard’s the hero of the story, but their companions aren’t just there to be sidekicks, but end up with all their own accomplishments and arcs and you go on this journey with all of them. idk the whole series is great dsalkkljads

5. Lexa & Clarke - The 100 Let’s not talk about how terrible this show got and how messy it was because we all know. But it started with a really compelling story that was interesting, and to see two characters on screen who were flawed but understood each other, and to have them both be women - one who was a lesbian and one who was a bisexual?? It made me so excited and it’s a really flawed show but it meant a lot to me at the time to have a couple like that on a tv show, and so despite all its flaws, that relationship still means a lot to me. 

6. The BAU team - Criminal Minds Yeah, I put the entire friggin team down, and that means all of them. There was only maybe two or so characters that were on it I didn’t like so every iteration is put down. Criminal Minds isn’t exactly a complex show; it’s a typical crime drama, and its unique feature is that it looks into the behaviour and minds of criminals instead of finding the science, like we saw with CSI. But the episodes were compelling and entertaining to watch, and, what do you know, there’s a found family at the center of it all and naturally I’m a sucker for it. Strangely enough this show is kind of a comfort one to me, bc it’s entertaining but not always overwhelmingly emotional. I can put it on at any time and just have it on in the background, or when I’m not feeling well, and I’ll enjoy myself. Also strangely enough, I’ve seen almost every episode enough times that there’s a game in my house to see how long it takes for me to recognize the episode and its plot once a rerun is put on lmao. There’s a lot of good shows like this out there - I enjoy SVU a lot too - but something just draws me to the characters on this one. We’ve been with them for, what, 14 seasons?? And we’ve seen them go thru some shit, we’ve seen them grow and change and they’re all really unique. It’s not a complex show but it is good enough to just binge. A part that plays in it is probably the time in my life I started getting into it too, but I’m alright with standing by it.

7. Korra - Avatar: The Legend of Korra I probably don’t need to wax poetic about atla or atlok much at all. I just love her journey, as a brash and overconfident girl who realizes that being the Avatar is hard, the people expect so much and there’s a lot put on your shoulders. That, when things go wrong, people will blame you. She went and became this giant blue monster thing, but her struggles were all human. Her PTSD was shown really well, despite it being a kid’s show. She’s fun and her journey is lovely and it’s definitely true that Korrasami did it way better, and both characters are bi women too (◡‿◡✿) We Do Not Talk About That Dumb Love Triangle Nonsense Though

8. Chloe & Max - Life is Strange What can I even say about this game? I don’t know. If you’ve played it, you’ll know why it’s here. It’s.... way deeper than you’d think it’d get at first. I love the story, and I love the journey Max and Chloe go on together. I love their friendship, how Chloe was always trying to uplift Max and encourage her to follow her dreams, and Max just doing the impossible for Chloe. I love their relationship, because it was built on support and love and struggle. I love their complexities, their flaws, their strengths, their times together. I just fskljdjlksfd love them, I love this game and all its various stories and character arcs. It’s all so beautiful and raw and unique and yay, another pair of ladies loving each other is on this list.

9. Solas - Dragon Age: Inquisition Okay. There’s a TON of characters I adore in Dragon Age, and to be honest, I don’t know he’d be my absolute top one. But I do like his story. I love Dragon Age companions, because, like in Mass Effect, they’re all their own characters with their own stories and journeys. Solas is flawed. Like, really flawed. Here’s another guy on my list who went and fucked up the world a bit. His worst actions (and the consequences of them) were built on good intentions, on his desire to help his people. We can get into the way this direction BW went with the elvhen religion was icky, but it’s a different conversation. I adore elvhen lore and I love exploring theories on it all the time. For Solas, I just like that he’s complex. I mean, he’s still silly and kinda weird, and he loves to hear himself speak on topics and loves Lavellan for encouraging him to never shut up, but most of all I kind of like their relationship? A friendship with Solas is still great, but I like that it’s an asexual one (don’t fight me on this, idc, it’s how I see it). It’s soft, built on mutual respect, one with no pressures or expectations. Solas asks for time and Lavellan gives it. There’s no fade to black s.ex scenes that so many times aren’t optional in BW games. I just really like my asexual wolf god egg ok

10. Mulder & Scully - The X Files Okay, it’s super hard to choose characters for this holy heck. BUT I really, really, really love their relationship. Mulder is an idealist who believes in the supernatural, and Scully his pragmatic scientific counterpart. And we could talk about how Scully’s character as a woman in science meant to a lot of people, and how Mulder’s tenacity to not give up on his beliefs is a nice one (when it’s not getting him into trouble). Their relationship is the slowest of slow burns in television history, I think. But it’s good that way. Scully starts out thinking Mulder’s just a delusional guy, one who’s intelligent but wastes his accomplishments, and he knows that. Then they go through shit, they’re a team and many times it’s them against a whole bunch of unbelievable stuff (and their own government). What I loved most was also their son, and I’m literally deleting all knowledge of the new seasons from my brain bc I think it was gross and took away from the story, but I liked that they were so close, loved each other so much despite there not really being a romance yet, that Scully trusted to go to Mulder to donate to her bc he was the only one she could think of for this. It’s another asexual relationship on screen, and it’s built on a love that happens over time. I just fljksdfkjl could go on about it too.

-

This was hard lmao. I wanna give an honorary shout out to Peggy Carter since she had wonderful lines like: “I know my value. Anyone else’s opinion doesn’t really matter.” Which is *chef’s kiss*. Peggy was the true unsung hero of the MCU and they gave her and Steve a weird ass ending.  

idk who to tag bc I’m not sure who’d be into this, but if you’re willing, I’d love to hear from @sapphicfinalpam, @mariaromanovs, @vinterskald, @zombiefishgirl, @nb-aziraphales, @serkonans and anyone who feels like doing it. Feel free to obvs ignore this, or only make a list without rambles, idk. I am never too sure about who’s into this or not, but if I didn’t tag you and you wanna do it, you can just say I tagged you and I definitely wanna read what you have to say!

#liz.txt #long post #there are others who were left out bc this shit's hard!! jldskljf #thanks gffa (◡‿◡✿)

[douxreviews]

Cloak and Dagger - ‘B-Sides’ Review

"To Tyrone. My best friend. My port in the storm. My hero."

Oh, Cloak and Dagger, I apologize for ever criticizing your love of the theatrical framing device. It paid off with interest this week.

'B-Sides' picks up a visual metaphor from a few episodes back by continuing to represent the personal experiences of our characters as sides of a record. By placing the record on a turntable, you 'experience' the relevant moments of that character's life as recorded there.

This is just a wonderful conceit, and I'm glad that it's back again this week. Clearly we're intended to wonder whose gloved hands are playing the records, but I was so entranced by the elegance of the visual device that I wasn't really that concerned about that particular question. On some level I suspect I was expecting it would turn out to be Tandy herself, ruminating over all the 'could have been' possibilities of her life.

Because, really, that's what we've been conditioned to expect from this sort of format. We spend an episode looking at one or several 'what if' situations, before returning to the status quo as it was beforehand and continuing on with whatever the season long plot is next week. It's a nice way of exploring a character, it can be useful as part of a character's story arc as it lends itself to self-revelation, and most importantly it's super popular with the cast, as it allows them to play different variations on their established characters and do things that that character would never otherwise be allowed to do. Anyone who thinks that 'Superstar' wasn't Danny Strong's favorite episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to film is kidding themselves.

Now, I've gone on record as not being a big fan of 'what if' storylines. Usually they're nothing but a huge pause button that keeps the story from progressing, and it's hard to get invested in them when you know that nothing that happens in the alternate universe can possibly have any consequences. I struggle even to get through 'The Wish,' and that gave us evil, lesbian Willow. What saves this episode from feeling like that was the way that they managed to marry in the reveal of Andre as the real villain while raising a thousand other questions about what's been happening, then somehow taking me in with the exact same last second rug pull that wasn't even particularly fresh when they did it on Angel fifteen years ago.

What I'm really saying, I suppose, is that from an objective perspective a plot summary of this episode would read, 'Tandy takes an ambulance ride to a motel.'  In reality a lot more happened than that. What really happened this week is that we found out that Andre was also caught up in same Roxxon explosion that gave Ty and Tandy their powers. While Tandy got 'hope' and Ty got 'fear,' Andre got 'despair.' When looked at in that light, what we're seeing is exactly the same sort of power usage that we've seen Tandy and Ty use to 'go into' the hope/fear of whoever they're using their power on at that moment. The one thing added is that Andre isn't just going into his victims' despair, he's actively increasing it in his victims, because he needs to feed on the despair of others in order to stop the pain of his migraines.

I should note, I'm not a migraine sufferer myself, but I have enough friends who are that I have no trouble believing that someone would readily take that deal if it made the migraines stop.

Two things worth noting at this point. Excellent job of the show in giving us a completely abhorrent, and yet understandable and sympathetic villain. Andre has clearly made peace with what he's doing, and the fact that he helps nine out of ten women that come to him for help, only eating that tenth one, seems to keep the scales nicely balanced as far as he's concerned. Also, even more excellent job by the show in remembering that Tandy was guilty of this exact same thing during her lowest points last year, and not letting her off the hook for it. I'd been a little concerned that they'd given her a free pass on that one.

So we have three despair visions for Tandy this week, each symbolized by an LP played by Andre in the dark dimension. 'Perfect Life,' 'Fractured Family,' and 'All Alone' are the listed titles of the LPs in question. I highly recommend pausing the screen on the albums to read the track lists written on them, because they're a nice piece of prop detail work and tell interesting little stories in and of themselves.

Each of the three 'elseworlds,' for lack of a better term, attempt to break Tandy down into giving into despair, first through the idea of losing her idea of perfect happiness, then when that doesn't work through forcing her to confront inevitable catastrophe, and then finally through attacking her sense of isolation and loneliness. When none of these work, Andre/Despair realizes what's been fairly obvious to the outside observer from the get go; i.e. that Tandy is never going to be taken down by attacks on her sense of self because her sense of self just doesn't rely in any way on feeling positive about herself. That's just not who she is. Once Andre gets that, he makes the obvious play of forcing her to live through the loss of Tyrone, simultaneously tricking the viewer into thinking that that's what's really happening through the tried and true 'Aha, I've escaped from your twisted dreamscape and defeated you in the real world, oh, no, never mind this is still inside the dreamscape and I've lost now' trick.

Once Andre tries this tactic Tandy gives in almost instantly, as anyone who's been watching could have told him she would. And with that her body arrives at the Viking Motel, which is apparently the final destination for the kidnapped girls. Do all the girls have to have their hope violently removed before they arrive at the Viking? We don't know. But apparently it was necessary in Tandy's case. What's going to happen to her inside? We don't know, but now that she's given into despair it can't be anything positive.  Do all of Andre's victims have to be women?  No, that's probably just implicit sexism on either the part of Andre or the show.  Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's Andre.

I'm a big fan of answers that just leave you with more questions. Bring on the next episode, please.

Bits and Pieces:

-- In Tandy's perfect world, she's a ballet dancer with the Met, Ty's a cop, Connors is redeemed, Billy is alive, and even Duane is living his best life. It's strongly implied that Billy and Duane are a couple now, which was a sweet touch. If all of the 'perfect world' stuff was taken from what Tandy would want, then Tandy is a much bigger romantic than we previously knew.

-- What's the relationship between Andre's record store of despair and Ty's dark dimension? Because the record store we see here was clearly in Ty's dark dimension a couple episodes ago. Are they linked somehow? Is Andre... ahem... inside Ty?

-- The use of 'Sweet by and by' as the linking song in each alternate reality was used to nice effect when they used playing it as the reveal that the scene of Ty being shot wasn't real.

-- It's always nice to see Liam again, even schlubby everyman alternate universe Liam.

-- There's a really well done moment when Tandy is in the stolen car with Ty and begins hearing the ambulance sirens bleeding through into the fantasy and she starts chanting 'it isn't real' over and over again. It's a nicely judged moment, because of course she's talking about the siren noise which is actually real while trying to stay focused in the stolen car, which isn't. It's a small detail but I like a show that rewards closer attention to the little things.

-- I can't say how happy I was that in Tandy's perfect world, Ty was still dating Evita. Perfection, to her, did not involve acquiring Ty as a romantic partner. She was perfectly happy with them being dear friends. That was refreshing.

-- The effect of the record changing every time it was flipped over was just neat.

-- I'm happier than I can say that the resurgence of vinyl as a medium means that the kids of today can recognize that static popping sound of an LP that's run to the end. It's just such a useful sound cue.

-- In the perfect world illusion, all the framed pictures in the stairwell are of a veve I didn't recognize. I thought at first it was Andre's and that he must be a Loa or an avatar of some sort, but apparently he isn't. I'm sure that they'll tell us at some point.

-- There is a recurring Marvel villain called D'Spayre, who's sort of a demon/anthropological personification of elemental forces sort of thing.  I couldn't tell you if he's ever encountered Cloak and Dagger in the comics, but Andre doesn't seem to be related to him other than the coincidence of the name. I could, as always, be wrong.

-- My one real criticism of this episode is the problem you almost always get in alternate reality stories. In order to get across what's different in the universe in as short a time as possible, the dialogue becomes ridiculously expository. 'Well, Tandy, as you know the Roxxon explosion didn't happen when we thought it was going to and therefore your father has left town to go to Silicon Valley, leaving me to open a small transient hotel and get this cybernetic leg.'  I get why they have to do it, but it takes me right out of the drama.

Quotes:

Mr. Bowen: "Okay, fine, can we hook him up with some tickets to your ballerina-ing? Ballerama? Dance Battle?"

Ty: "Evita spilled some champagne on me. Might have had a little too much." Tandy: "I knew I liked her."

Ty: "One day, long ago, I saved your life. But every day since you’ve been saving mine."

Mina: "Yeah, I’m not explaining myself to structural engineering Barbie."

Liam: "That’s OK. Birds are people too."

Tandy: "Drive!" Ty: "Uh.. no, crazy white girl."

Andre: "Not misery, Despair. There’s a subtle but distinct difference."

Tandy: "Then I was wrong. I have one person." Andre: "I came to that same conclusion."

I really loved this episode, and I can't wait to see where this is going. Three and a half out of four crappy alternate realities.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

#Cloak and Dagger #Tandy Bowen #Tyrone Johnson #Marvel #MCU #Cloak and Dagger Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

[thatgothlibrarian]

Mind sharing some of your favorite m/m romance novels pal?

*CRACKS MY QUEER TRANS KNUCKLES*

ALRIGHT STRAP IN, FOLKS.

My BIG THREE authors where basically everything they write is literal chef kiss are:

1. K.J. Motherfucking Charles

2. Jordan L. Motherfucking Hawk @jordanlhawk

3. Cat Motherfucking Sebastian

The tl;dr: Think of England or Band Sinister (or any of her series it’s all fucking great) by KJ Charles, the Whyborne & Griffin series by Jordan L. Hawk, and the Captive Prince series by C.S. Pacat even though I technically don’t consider that one a true romance, just a series with romance elements. For trans specific, Peter Darling by Austin Chant. The sex isn’t really explicit in that one, so if you, like me, want to see your trans body being loved and appreciated in a sexy sexy way, The Burnt Toast B&B by Heidi Belleau.

There are more than what I’ve listed here, but those authors are my mains. If you want me to go in-depth about any of their books, just lemme know and I’ll be happy to do so.

MORE BENEATH THE CUT!

K.J. specializes in queer historicals, with some of those also being fantasy. With KJ, you will get SMOKING HOT SMUT AND ROMANCE as well as PLOT. She’s also very good at racial diversity and defends to the death people of color in historicals without making it tragic. In fact, I would say that the romance isn’t ever the main plot! It’s more character development. Also most of the time someone dies, but you are guaranteed a Happily Ever After. Most of her stuff is series, but she has some standalones if you wanna dip in your toe.

The standalones of KJ that I would recommend are:

1. Think of England. It’s Edwardian. There’s a disabled character. There’s a Jewish character (I think he’s Portuguese? Maybe Spanish. It’s been a while). There’s some good Voyeurism/”We Know We’re Being Watched” sex. Big Strongk Viking Manly Man who is very soft and sensitive as well.

2. Band Sinister. Regency. VIRGIN CLASSICIST. RAKE. HELLFIRE CLUB. SEDUCTION VIA CATULLUS. NEED I FUCKING SAY MORE. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Be merry with me?” BOY.

In her fantasy Charm of Magpies series, Jackdaw is my favorite. The main character Jonah even goes by Jay in bed and I’m. Cry. It’s so beautiful it made me believe in love again. If you’re into Holmes/Watson dynamics, Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal is VERY HOT and good and has another book in the same universe where it’s like, Green Man themed.

Her Society of Gentlemen series was the first I read. DANDIES. DANDIES. DANDIES. GOOD GOOD POLITICS. ACTUAL HISTORICAL EVENTS. WILLIAM BLAKE AS PILLOWTALK. BOY.

Sins of the Cities is Victorian Sensationalist Homage! There’s a nonbinary character!

You can’t go wrong with KJ. Sometimes her shorter stories feel rushed, but they still are In Love Every Time. Seriously. Even if you like rougher stuff, even BDSM, they are STILL IN LOVE WHILE IT’S HAPPENING. SO ROMANCE. SO GOOD.

Jordan L. Hawk is a nonbinary author! Their main series is Whyborne & Griffin which is TEN EVENTUALLY ELEVEN BOOKS LONG. It’s a fantasy historical set in America during the Victorian era, whatever it was called in America. Very Lovecraftian. Good good wizard boy and his dandy PI husband (YES HUSBAND THEY GET MARRIED BITCHES). The sex scenes in the first book are SO FUCKING ROMANCE BOY I DIE. As the series progress, they are Together so we get less scenes and more Plot. I mean, like KJ, the whole thing is Plot and romance is part of Plot, but yeah. They get dark too. Also there’s Dr. Christine Putnam who is the greatest character ever written. And a fish lesbian.

They don’t really have standalones? But if W&G is too big of an undertaking to begin, try Spirits or Hexworld. Spirits is mediums and all that jazz. Hexworld is witch/familiar dynamic that’s basically soulmate trope and also super interesting political climate. I didn’t think I’d be into the familiars being shapeshifters but it was good!

Cat Sebastian is my least favorite of the three because she has no External Plot Only Romance. But the Romance is always good! She only has series, but they don’t necessarily need to be read in order. Ruin of a Rake has an opera box handjob that is SWOON and It Takes Two to Tumble is basically Gay Sound of Music and has A SCENE WHERE A MAN OF THE CLOTH MASTURBATES AS ONE OF THE SEX SCENES. IT’S. HOT.

IF YOU WANT SOME TRANS ROMANCE UP IN HERE.

FUCKING. READ PETER DARLING BY AUSTIN CHANT. TRANSGUY PETER PAN. WITH CAPTAIN HOOK. IT’S SO FUCKING GOOD. YOU WILL CRY.

I read Coffee Boy by him and the sex was good but meh.

The Burnt Toast B&B by Heidi Belleau is THE good contemporary on this list because I can’t fucking STAND when authors use twink unironically and the rest of this book is so good I can ignore that it does that too. The trans sex is so good, I almost cried thinking that someone could view my body that way and them be excited by it. Seriously. The cis guy in it is like “oh huh I never liked deep throating or swallowing semen so blowing a trans guy dick is like, fucking perfect? Also two holes I am the luckiest fucking man alive??????? ALSO HE CAN PICK HOW BIG HIS DICK IS???????????????????” And she pulls all that off without it being like, fetishizing and gross! The dude is just like, oh hey, this is awesome!

There’s also EE Ottoman! I’ve only read Doctor’s Discretion by him, and the sex was SUUUUUUUUUUUPER good.

HONORABLE MENTION.

So, I don’t actually consider the Captive Prince series to be True Romance. Yes, there are Romance Elements, as it basically reads like a tropey fanfic. But it’s more like, a fantasy historical political thriller? It’s like, if Risk was gay and sexy.

I read romance novels all last year, and Captive Prince was the first one that made me realize that I have dated multiple people, and just had multiple people in my life in general, give me the impression that I am hard to love, that I have a difficult personality, that I’m Too Much somehow. And like, seeing how Damen, this beautiful, kind, lawful to a fault, beefcake of a man loves Laurent just the way he is and is like SO FUCKING INTO HIM AND THINKS HE HUNG THE STARS IN THE SKY AND LIKE CAN’T KEEP HIS HANDS OFF HIM AND SUPPORTS HIM AND SHOWS HIM LOVE AND CARE THAT LAURENT HAD BEEN DENIED HIS WHOLE LIFE.

I FUCKING CRIED. AND MY STANDARDS ARE SO GODDAMN HIGH NOW. IT WAS ONE KINGDOM ONCE. I THINK IF I GAVE YOU MY HEART, YOU WOULD TREAT IT TENDERLY.

FRIENDS. IS THAT WHAT WE ARE.

ALSJFLAKSJFAJAOIWJFOSNFSLFOWAIJFOWAIJFWLFJWOEFJOWFMOAWIEFJ.

(Warning with Captive Prince: pedophilia and incest are a major plot point but I feel like it’s handled as well as that could be. Also the first book is basically just Slave Kink: The Novel, but no sex really happens and you’re supposed to hate everyone and be uncomfortable even though you’re a bit turned on. Damen and Laurent invented love literally so it all works out.)

[uponthepages]

                         ｉ ｈａｖｅ ｌｏｓｔ ｍｙ ｗａｙ

                                               by Gayle Forman

- Hardcover - 304 pages - Published on March 27th, 2018 - Viking Books for Young Readers my rating: ★★★★½/★★★★★ (4.5 stars) I was sent a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. **if any, spoilers WILL be hidden** “They may be complete strangers, with different lives and different problems, but there in that examination room, they are measuring sadness the same way. They are measuring it with loss.” I Have Lost My Way by Gayle Forman follows three POVs: Freya, Harun, and Nathaniel. Freya is our main character who’s lost her voice while recording her debut album in order to build from her internet fame. Nathaniel is struggling personally and has just arrived in New York City with only a backpack and a map. Harun, a New Yorker, struggling with his identity and coming out to his family. Whenever one of them ends up literally falling on the other and one of them is a bystander, they become close in a span of a day and help each other understand the loss they’re all facing and how to cope with it. Gayle Forman is well-known, rightfully so, for If I Stay and it’s sequel. I was first introduced to her writing whenever I read If I Stay and nothing about it was memorable to me. I felt different about her writing while reading this book. It was incredibly detailed but the writing was beautiful. When writing about such heavy topics like she covers in this book, it’s perfect that she was able to side it with such a smooth and elegant writing style. I definitely have to say this book is perfect for binge reading. If you have a night where you can just get cozy in bed and read a book, you should pick this one. It’s short and it takes place across one single day but it’s never boring. Each character is so interesting and uniquely different that there wasn’t really a POV that I preferred. Somehow, the reader gets an in-depth background into each character so you actually end up knowing them by the middle of the book which is astounding for it’s pace. I actually did read this all in one sitting and I ended up staying up until like 2am in order to finish it. I’ve read a few books that take place throughout a day but this one was fantastically done. There was a lot going on within this book but it wasn’t too much. There was Freya’s POV and her music career, her relationship with her sister and her father. There was Harun’s POV with dealing with his sexuality, his boyfriend, and his family. Then there was Nathaniel’s point of view dealing with his concussion, his relationship with his father and his future. Alongside all of that, we get their relationship and their stories together. It felt like the perfect drama but it was also so thought-provoking and heartwarming. The ending was so beautifully done and this honestly feels like some of Gayle Forman’s best work. What I Didn't Like: I had one problem that I noticed very early on within this book that didn’t really affect my reading experience but I did realize it early on and was kind of worried. It’s definitely something someone else might bring to attention due to how important #ownvoices is now in the Young Adult genre. I believe it’s okay to write a character different from you as long as you’re not writing their struggles. For example, a straight man can’t write a book about a lesbian struggling to come out. In I Have Lost My Way, Feyre comes from a partially Ethiopian family and it’s very prevalent in the book due to her dad’s position. But, personally, I feel like her character and family dynamic seemed very well researched, appropriate, and respected. As for Harun, I feel like Gayle Forman walked the line. While it’s very clear she did research and is knowledgeable about Islam (from my understanding), I was uncomfortable reading her write about his struggles being a gay Muslim in a very religious family because it isn’t truly authentic. Here’s a few of the lines that I consider “walking the line” when it comes to writing the struggles of a POC character. “His older brother Saif started middle school on the day 9/11 happened, and after that he began calling himself steve and refusing to attend mosque.” But she doesn’t expand on this or use it as a plot point which is why I don’t think this book is bad. Continuing on, while talking about himself, Harun says: “And anyway, it’s not like any American carrier would be eager to hire a pilot named Harun Siddiqui.” which makes me refer back to why I believe a POC should write about their struggles before anyone else should. It just seems wrong and unnecessary??? Like I mentioned before, I feel like Gayle Forman did this in the best way that she possibly could. Harun's character was actually the most fleshed out within the book and every scene with his family was great. This is just a personal preference of mine. Other than that, this is by far my favorite book by her.

SEE THIS REVIEW ON MY GOODREADS.

find this book on book depository | amazon | barnes&noble

#book review #i have lost my way #young adult #booklr #book reviews

[kapanbenernya]

Va-11 Hall-A -- Waifu Bartending Action

Before we start, I wanna make it clear. I’m not that big on “weeb” culture, but I’m totally not against it. I’m quite down with it actually. I’ve watched a few animes, read quite a lot of manga, beaten my meat to 2D stuff, and now I realized I should’ve stopped talking at manga, shouldn’t I?

I feel the same way, self-inserted meme

That being said, I’m not down on the culture that centralizes on cutesy cutesy anime girls that makes your heart go doki doki. I’ve never been down on the waifu-ism thingy that spread along the weeb community like wildfire. So a game about waifus? You would’ve been right if you thought I’m not gonna be interested in the game, but then you’d be wrong because it caught my eye, all because it’s got style. If not for the cyberpunk, neon 80′s aesthetics, bartending simulator, and the game initially reminding me of Hotel Dusk, I wouldn’t have given this game a glance.

Now that the confession’s out of the way, let’s ramble about the game. 

Va-11 Hall-A or Valhalla, as all the other human beings pronounce the name, is a visual novel of sorts about the life of a bartender that works in Valhalla. No, not the Nordic afterlife where shirtless Vikings go to, comparing the size of their dongs while drinking mead on the glorious halls. It’s a dive bar in the questionable part of a town called Glitch City. What kind of decision leads the officials to name a city named after the term for electronic malfunction is completely beyond me. But this is set in a cyberpunk dystopia after all. As usual with popular media and cyberpunk future themes, it’s always a dystopia where the poor are asshole victims and the powerful are so evil and corrupt they eat babies for breakfast. I’ve never seen a cyberpunk story filled with holographic flower fields and government-issued cuddle robot bunnies.

I changed my mind, bring back the homicidal skeleton robots, please

You play as Jill, a bartender, naturally. We do work in a dive bar after all. Your job is to mix drinks from 5 different chemicals as shown on the recipe book available on the interface. The recipes might overwhelm you at the start, with every drink having their own demographic, taste, texture, alcohol content, and plenty of other characteristics. Fortunately, the game pauses every time you have to make a drink, which enables you to open and read each drink’s properties, fluff text, even opening the fucking wiki to stick it to the devs and cheat the system. Don’t lie to me, goddammit! I know the big fat homosexual pushed you over to the dark side.

And there it is, a segue to the other side of your job as a virtual bartender, the patrons. Part of your job is to know what your regulars like: their preferences, tastes, and their favorite drink. While you are not enforced to memorize all of them, it’s going to help you in the long run, take my word for it. 

Of course, the patrons aren’t always gonna say the name of the drink right away. Sometimes they just give you a description of  the drink they would like or cryptic orders that you have to decipher through the power of reading the fucking manual. Another case is when patrons give strange orders that conflicts with their usual thing or their personalities. And that’s when your knowledge of the drink and your patron comes into play, although most of them are heavily hinted by the game. 

no mind reading lessons required

There’s also a secondary objective other than keeping your patrons happy, and that is paying the bills. What, you think you get to ride a cool hover bike by the second chapter? Or maybe a voice activated gun that shoots lightning on the third? Nope, you just got stuck behind the bar, slinging drinks, paying bills, on repeat until it’s finished. It’s kind of basic really, with little to no replayability since your patrons are always going to order the same drinks each playthrough. But even considering all of that, I enjoyed the bartending part of the game. I like me some job simulator, especially ones that goes about like a routine. Perhaps why I also liked Papers, Please and Euro Truck Simulator 2. Something about doing mundane busywork just calms me somehow.

And that’s about all the game play of this game there is. That’s why I called it a visual novel of sorts, instead of say, a point-and-click game, or an adventure game (so no, this game isn’t like Hotel Dusk).

So if the game play’s pretty basic, what else is there? 

If you’re seriously asking that question, I’d say you haven’t been paying attention since I’ve mentioned that this is a “visual novel of sorts” twice already. So of course things are going to be focused on the story, characters, and the drama involving them.

Now, I am not going to discuss anything because I am not good with analyzing stories and characters, also this is the kind of thing that I personally think will be better the less you know about it. Except if you’re the kind of strange person that actively seek spoilers, but I won’t judge. All you need to know is that it’s not the deep philosophical kind, it’s about bartending waifus for fuck’s sake. 

with dialog like this, you know there won’t be a lot of big thonk required

There’s also something that’s bugging me about the whole thing. Why are there no dialogue options? I think this is a really big missed opportunity. I mean we know there are branching paths in the story, so why not implement it more? The one thing I can think of is because this is the devs’ first game, and maybe they just wanted to be safe, like how first-time parents put child locks on everything and go into panic mode everytime their child went near a vaguely sharp object.

But enough about the story, what about the characters? Well I can say they are quite varied and quirky of some sorts. Some patrons I wish I can spend more time with, and there are some that I think are quite confusing. For example, I still don’t know what role the one-armed lesbian schoolgirl ghost is supposed to fill, and she was featured front row and center. Another one is the balding private investigator whose pop culture references are lost on me, so that guy can go cuddle a robot bunny for all I care. I’m just gonna say it straight though, I liked most of them and cared enough to know what their favorite booze is and when something’s wrong with them. Although this pleasure is also robbed from you by very unsubtle hints, provided to you by the game. But maybe I’m just taking the hints for granted, and the game might’ve been much more frustrating without it.

In brief

Either this thing is a hit or miss is completely dependent on your tastes. As I have said, initially this game had nothing to offer but A E S T H E T I C S to me, but the game grew on me, and I liked it almost from start to finish. Maybe it’s the day to day bartending simulator, maybe it’s the characters and their quirks, maybe it’s the cyberpunk setting that’s dripping with atmosphere, or maybe I’ve suddenly gotten into waifus and didn’t realize it. If you like anime and cyberpunk themes without philosophical deep thoughts required, this stuff is tailored for you

It’s time for you to mix drinks and change lives

27/2/2018

#va-11 hall-a #pc games #steam #ps vita #ipad

[fysidsebabettknudsen]

The fictional Danish prime minister in Borgen may have had her detractors. However, nearly four years since Borgen was last shown on BBC Four, the actress Sidse Babett Knudsen’s thoroughly humane creation remains not only the best prime minister Denmark never had, but the ideal to which all robotic female politicians, from Hillary to Theresa, can but hopelessly aspire.

Yet in Crazy Diamond, a forthcoming episode of Electric Dreams, Channel 4’s free-translation of Philip K Dick short stories, Knudsen is cast as a genetically bred android. “The thing is,” she explains, “in this the robots, or whatever you call them, are more sensitive than the real human beings.”

A theme of the episode is the need to escape from the badgering of the state and commerce. When we meet I ask her what her exit routes are. “I run and I swim.” In a swimming pool? “Or the sea, if I can possibly. In Denmark we’re Viking-ish. We’ll go out when everybody else thinks it’s freezing cold. And then I’ve just tried that thing called a ‘holiday’, which is that thing where you go away.”

She is back from three weeks’ scuba diving in Bali. Since this is clearly a rarity, I wonder if she found herself agreeing with the philosopher Alain de Botton that the problem with holidays is that you bring yourself on them. She looks completely mystified. “I don’t know what that means, or what relax means. My brain never sleeps. I want to take myself on holiday.”

So she still thinks about her life and her career when she’s away?

“Yes . . . but without interruptions.”

Knudsen is clearly driven, and no less so at 48 than at 18, when she arrived in Paris to train at the Théâtre de l’Ombre with barely a word of French. Her parents, Ebbe, a photographer, who died five years ago, and Susanne Andersen, a teacher, were bohemians not hippies, she says, but the family spent a couple of years in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. “If anything, they were explorers. They met in South America on a ship. If there’s one thing I’ve been brought up with, it is that we’re here to see what there is. It’s not about finding a good spot and then staying there.”

At drama school she was considered extremely “natural”, with a more direct route to her emotions than most of her French contemporaries. The praise at first puzzled her, until she won an insight into cerebral French education by giving English classes to children. “I saw these tiny children, mini, mini, mini human beings reciting Baudelaire they had no possible way of understanding.”

In Denmark, rather than learn the great texts by rote, children are taught as individuals? “Used to be. I think it’s changing now because, like everywhere else, it has to be about results. It’s madness. We’re going to live longer lives now. Why do children have to find out so early what they want to do?”

She stayed in French theatre for six years and then returned to Copenhagen, where she quickly won awards for her work on film before she was persuaded, partly by seeing The Killing’s Sofie Grabol in a series, that television was not beneath her dignity. Still, in 2010 she was far from convinced that Borgen, centred so firmly on the corridors of political power, would work in Denmark, let alone become an international hit. “I hope you don’t ask me why it did travel because I still don’t know.” It is probably because of her, I say. “Let it be recorded I said nothing to that.”

Uncannily, Knudsen’s Birgitte prefigured by barely a year the election of Denmark’s first female prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt. I wonder if Knudsen thinks that the show helped to establish the credibility of female politicians. Britain now has its second woman PM, but journalists have recently become fixated on her fashion choices. Knudsen sighs. Has the feminist battle not been won? “It’s an ongoing thing. I’m a feminist in that I believe in equality. I’m not talking about us being alike. I’m talking about being equals. Men and women in the same room is the best recipe.”

Despite her fears, Borgen turned out to be, as she puts it, her “passport to the outer world”. Her most recent international recognition has been for another robot sci-fi satire, Westworld, in which she played the conniving corporate employee Theresa. The scale, she says, was so much greater than for Borgen. Whereas on Borgen the cast would meet to discuss the plot, she had little grasp on Westworld’s wider storyline. Although this was an expensive project for the American TV network HBO, the pressure was less for her.

One low reason to watch this highly intelligent series was the amount of nudity on show. “The set was very much glass. You could see all these rooms with all these naked people.” Yet prurient viewers hoping to see a little more of Knudsen would be disappointed. She has never taken her clothes off for a role. “Because that’s private and it’s me. Even though it’s a part, it will be my skin. I’m not a fan of nudity as a spectator, and I don’t really like sex scenes. I like sexual, and I like the flirt and I want them to go into the bedroom, but I don’t want to see it. And I know if I’m watching something I’m going to think, ‘Oh, her thighs look like that.’ I don’t want people to come out of the cinema and think, ‘So that’s how she really looks!’ ”

Yet in the extraordinary 2014 movie The Duke of Burgundy, which is about two lesbians in a sado-masochistic relationship, she actually urinated on her lover. No, her character did, she corrects me. “I don’t think I could wee on cue.” She thinks — and critics agreed — it was a telling story about relationships, and, anyway, she remained dressed.

In a way, acting is a paradoxical profession for Knudsen. She is veryextremely private, has never told the press who the father of her 12-year-old son is or whether she is still — or was ever — with him. In a television interview with the Scottish first minister she told Nicola Sturgeon that she could not understand politicians’ desire to take centre stage and expose themselves to criticism. Yet, surely, this is exactly what she does as an actress.

“On the contrary. I’m hiding myself actively. There is a big difference between standing up and saying my name and then something as myself. That’s really scary.”

Knudsen has always said that she never sees people she plays as men or women, but as individuals. It is probably why for a long time this Dane said her ambition was to play Hamlet. I wonder if it still is. “I am thinking more of Richard III now,” she says. And wouldn’t that be something? Electric Dreams starts on Channel 4 tomorrow at 9pm with the first episode,The Hood Maker

Sidse’s perfect weekend

London or Copenhagen? I’m home-grown, so Copenhagen, but I love London as well

Wine or water? Water. I don’t drink now. I don’t enjoy it very much

Free-range parenting or tiger mother? Tiger mother, I think

Festival camping or five-star hotel? Five-star hotel

Hygge or hullaballoo? We can’t talk about that because hygge has gone completely wrong. It’s been misunderstood and I’d need an hour to explain

I could not get through the weekend without . . . Strawberry cake, dancing and lots of sleep

#sidse babett knudsen #electric dreams #interview

[wherethewolfsbaneblooms]

The time is nigh! Chapter 7 of Shield Me is now live on AO3 🛡️

#resident evil village #lady dimitrescu x reader #lady dimitrescu #resident evil 8 #reader insert #alcina dimitrescu #alcina x reader #lady dimitrescu x female reader #archive of our own #shield me #jarl dimitrescu #resident viking au #alcina dimitriscu x reader #lady alcina dimitrescu #capcom #historical au #lady alcina x reader #re8 #lesbian vikings so how can we go wrong #chapter 7

[nikkidee]

the secret of the world

A commission for Pedro, who speaks French in a sea of bad-fic loving English speakers.

A carefully hand crafted summary of The Secret World, translated into Japanese, then into Italian, then back into English. Enjoy.

The French Version is here.

Ok, so how is the secret of the world, for these pesky monsters a group of dumbasses you're trying to hit them with a stick to finish a world or maybe something and the center of the earth in an avalanche of dirt? So, it is some random person just swallowed a bee during sleep with so you can go to sleep in the dirt monster fist fucking, you get super powers. You perverted capitalism, participated in the stoners exaggerated or imperialism of self-righteousness, they are forced to say what they want, maybe you will pay as you have 3 whole dollar.

    Not paid, your first job as an intern willing bee-based, is to go to the crappy town of New England is infested with zombies and zombie fish. The game is to roll long enough, so as not to be able to stop a name to drop in order to make sense of the old war between Wabanaki and Maya and the Viking I helped the Excalibur. Thus, the fish of zombies, dreamer when the drowning and the sword came to town again, citizens are trying to turn zombies Viking fish more fish, then, it is called into the sea, and died, after you have become a zombie, the total deaths impregnated and the zombie Viking has made them for the zombie fish. In addition, Loki, who end the world, anything so do not try sleeping there to stab the Rubik's cube in which what Gaia to keep the dream, but because it has a punch, he is total old girlfriend and stupid steals Excalibur, everyone does not see her boo HOO. OH the dreamer and I want to be to ensure that is located under the mountain, and the people is a mine has not, but I was still then someone was shot, then, the miners have been killed, it is a cluster full was still fucked. You have a story to the bird a pile of rocks, not only you can save the island, all of which is to die anyway very worried about going to go to Egypt.

    So why are in fact, the Egyptian cult worship except perhaps the date of darkness at the center of the Earth was a bit 'named the wrong side of you there is the cult that is the sun. All the followers of the cult that's kind of do not have super-sorry for killing people, he wants to do it again, there is also a purple man to send the devil goo box in Tokyo, is a man of this sexy plums. Thus, in collaboration with plums and handsome dance, to kick off the train a man, what a save and London.

In addition, since the neat about this is, there are archaeologists of some of the gay.

    So you killed her children and go near the cliff hell of the desert and turned them into immortal statues in order to keep the Black Pharaoh forever asleep, stole the Orochi shit from them and I now worship there are some old white man who could actually get their devil of a friend back. So, to help children around the large statue, then, the mummy was a punch to the penis, you must save a good job in Egypt.

    The following must go to save the Transylvanian vampire. Dracula's wife Mara, there's a super-boring Cuckold conspiracy to fall for some of the whiny emo bitch named Callisto. Mara of the back that has an army of vampires attacking a small village of magical creatures secretly. You and I egg him if I scream to bet a point behind Dracula in order to battle with his ex-wife, it is that here, you have no meaning in this context.

    In addition, there is a dirty ancient Romans and human wolves are fighting in both the vampire. In order to have the full report and its triangular shape and the castle suffering, its confirmation, there is a cost in the search for the most despised stealth mission throughout the game please enjoy your trip in Transylvania lesbian.

    Orochi is also there, they kidnapped the girl, was in abundance death. Orochi died in interesting things, like gremlin forest, wolf fur, are as good as accurate idea, we used the girl is to drill a hole in the dirt of the pocket that seems. And, even die dirt. You really just it, because I think working on something that role, and the war of vampires, even a vampire, you have to cover a great deal of non-war.

    In any case, this is not a new game, and I'm going to soon discover that behind Lilith of all, performs a push-up some nasty hip, then cut into our feet you. And you, everyone will go to Venice to study the bureaucratic hell of hate called the Venice of the parliament. Shocking, it is swollen and diplomat is incredibly damaged, have their dirty for a series of events related to waste and other secrets factions around the world are not supposed to be the story of two E 'was there was a little finger. But, also, gave a simulation in the cold computer to play the stall, I mean, leave in the form ready for release in Tokyo.

    When you finally go to Tokyo, the location is sexy plums were destroyed in the dirt bomb that contributed sent to the subway. You can pull your sprint hidden or rhythm percent of all those who, on behalf of the ultra-annoying monster. As a teenager pushed the morning light boy was perverted in the dirt, even bombs, actually the snake to begin tearing a hole, he is like something human dreamer? Lilith, the reality of destroying the world and ripping a hole, since it can kill God, you are trying to restore the old. Dragon Stoner loser, but to get the leader of the hot new faction and one of the other, for you, because he who asked the cause of that bank robbery eccentric supermarket, this time, man. Really Kirsten Gary, there is probably the hell you want to fuck a woman Sonnac warriors and hook-up to a point.

    Mr. Orochi is dissolved stuffed toy robots in human organs now, hang religious groups of the new era, they started to commit suicide pact for the children, 30-story tower is full of their different taste in their sexual relationship secret factory in the basement it is full is a monster in the dirt invasion and employees, are on the other hand, you have the same crappy life expectancy've done in the world.

    If you climb the tower, a predominantly Lilith complained of a dirt around for shoes, we fight. Then, kill the angels. You get the wing.

    The end.

#tsw #swl #secret world legends #spoilers #bad fic #my fic

[treehugginglibrarian]

Leave the Vikings Alone.

https://www.boredpanda.com/down-syndrome-iceland/?utm_content=inf_10_2558_2&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=socialedge&tse_id=INF_f653d190dc4211e7b926579f881108d6

The "comments" included in this article wreak of a desperate need for geography lessons and a firmer understanding of cultures that aren't Christian. But then, that latter was one I have been aware of for quite some time. 

Iceland is an island nation. A hotly, wildly, volcanic island nation. There is ONE (you read that right, ONE) road that goes all the way around the island. I'm not being facetious, or attempting to eradicate "small" roads in this count. There is ONLY ONE road that goes the whole way around the island. ONLY ONE. Do we get that? ONE. The entire middle of the fucking country is a series of god damn active volcanoes through which they cannot put roads. ONE. ONE road you can take to get from Reykjavik to Reykjahlith (directly across from it on the other side of the island), and you have to drive it all the way around the damn country. I'm sure if you drove straight across, it'd take an hour or two. Excepting the part where you'd get eaten by a volcano and, thus, never actually make it across. As it is, it'll take you half a day most likely. And that assumes the weather is good, the road has been cleared, there have been no mudslides, and there have been no avalanches. Point being, there topography is NOTHING like that in the United States. Combine that with a love of nature and a desperate desire to preserve as much wilderness as possible, and you get a country with a radically different approach to public roadways than our own. They take care of the ones that exist, but there aren't that many of them when you get out of the Reykjavik/Keflavik region. 

There are 15 hospitals in Iceland that readily populate a map if you're curious enough to search for Icelandic hospitals, which is actually a shit ton when you remember they're smaller than most states in the US. BUT, huge BUT, 11 of those are concentrated in Reykjavik and the generally surrounding regions. 1 of them is on an island off the "main land." An island that has been known to literally blow up. The other three are scattered in other more northernly regions. Of those 15 hospitals, only 3 of them are what would be considered major hospitals. Like the Cleveland Clinic, or University Hospital. Two of those are in the capital. There are a multitude of small towns, villages, hamlets, and generally “populated” spaces that have basically no access to a hospital, of any sort, without driving at least two hours. In many of these cases, winter weather will leave them completely cut off from these resources. Medical care is generally inexpensive for Icelandic people, as they are Scandinavian and, being the civilized Vikings they are, believe in actually providing care for their entire populace. That doesn’t mean care is easily accessible, though. High risk pregnancies, sick babies, or even adult onset illnesses WILL require moving if routine access to a particular hospital or specialist is required. 

We have college graduates in this country who aren’t employed in their field not because the work doesn’t exist, but because they refuse to move for a job. We have entire mining towns that are out of work because they both refuse to move AND refuse to be retrained. Yet we, as a nation, apparently think we have the moral high ground to strongly imply that Icelandic families should simply move to a location closer to a hospital if they are informed they are pregnant with a DS baby, rather than continue their lives as normal after an abortion. Oh wait, never mind, that implies that we as a nation know anything at all about Iceland and the one thing this fight has taught me is that the only people in this country who know a god damn thing about any part of Iceland are those that have gotten on a plane to go visit. 

“Wah, wah, wah, but what about the babies? Wah, wah, wah!” You mean the fetuses? Because that’s what SCIENCE says they are. They are not babies, they are fetuses. Since Icelanders are overwhelmingly scientific in thought, I have a hunch they’d look at you with a serious hairy eyeball if you asked them why they were murdering DS babies. They’re not. They’re eradicating genetically imperfect fetal material that could, if birthed, cause a great deal of heart ache and trouble for the parents trying to have a child. If you lack a religion hell bent on forcing the patriarchy down your throat and turning women into baby-making ovens, there’s nothing wrong with this completely logical thought process. 

Iceland is, technically, a Christian nation. I’m pretty sure Christianity was a Norwegian export of sorts that the Icelanders tolerated as a means by which to generally keep their independence. Major landholders at the time were made into “Priests” who, basically, continued doing exactly what they had always been doing. They were, essentially, Christian in name only. This is a trend that continues today. While a full 95% of the country is registered with a religious group, making it the most “religious” nation in the world, less than 10% attend church regularly. More than half never go at all. 18% of Icelanders are professed atheists, and only 31% will claim a belief in god. The rest? They’ll wave vaguely in the direction of the sky or the nearest volcano while muttering something generally unintelligible about being good stewards. Paganism is making a serious comeback in the country, and the humanists have a really strong foot hold. All of this is really important in understanding how Iceland operates, culturally. 

I won’t say Iceland is free from assholes, because it’s not. At all. They arrested a murderer there last year or the year before. There is the occasional rape, of course. I’m certain Icelandic men sometimes tell inappropriate or off color jokes. On the whole, however, people of both genders are happiest if they are in Iceland. A worldwide “happiness” survey done a couple years ago found that hairdressers in Iceland were the happiest people on the planet. I have some Christian friends who will object to this statement, but I attribute a lot of this to their overwhelming disinterest in sky fairies.** I have yet to meet a sky fairy whose over arching principles aren’t at least vaguely anti-woman and anti-queer, and a great many of these sky fairies’ followers are just as deplorable in their beliefs. Eradicate these maniacal creatures from the equation and you get a country that was legalizing homosexual activity a decade before England chemically castrated Allan Turing. You get a country where women are overwhelmingly equal because religiously based social constraints deeming them “less than” simply didn’t exist. So when women demanded equality, it was granted. They have had a lesbian President in the past. In fact, they had a lesbian President before America even saw fit to let queers serve openly in our Armed forces, let alone saw fit to let us get married. The American complaint that Icelanders are murdering babies just because they have DS is patently absurd to Icelanders, because science says pretty clearly that our American, religiously based, complaint is a load of bullshit. They are are murdering NOTHING. 

Our temper tantrum about Iceland is, I think, supposed to draw attention to the great things that DS individuals can bring to their world and the people in it. I won’t argue with those statement because I don’t have a child, let alone one with DS, and I’m not friends with anyone who has it or has a child with it. I’m sure they’re lovely people and I’m sure the families that CHOOSE to give birth to them are quite happy with their choice. Except for the part where the distressing number of DS babies in foster care in this country would seem to imply that, actually, a LOT of people in this country who have DS babies either aren’t happy about it or lack the safety net necessary to cope with it. Perhaps if getting an abortion for reasons such as this wasn’t a decision bound to socially and culturally ostracize the woman, we’d have fewer unwanted children in foster care. Our attitudes towards Iceland’s near eradication of down’s syndrome says remarkably little about Iceland, but it says A LOT about us. 

We lack respect for women, their autonomy, their bodies, their sex lives, or their choices. We lack respect for the men these women will be raising these children with. 

And we are arrogant beyond measure, applying the cultural attitudes of a theistic oligopoly to a secular, socialist, nation. We are, in this fight, precisely the type of American that most every country besides our own points to as the reason they lack respect for our country, and the reason our current President won. We are ill-mannered. We are uncultured. And we have no notion or concept that the world outside our borders may be dramatically, even completely, different than our own. Sometimes, that’s a really good thing. 

I love you, Iceland. Ignore the squawking from this side of the pond and just keep doing you.   

** Sky fairies are not to be confused with actual fairies, which Icelanders do believe in. Along with elves. This is one of many reasons I love Iceland so very much. 

[swipestream]

In All Their Looks & Words: Introducing Queer History To Your Games

**Initial note: the word “queer” has a complex history for a lot of people in the LGBT+ community. For some it’s a painful slur that brings up traumatic events, for others it’s a powerful reclaimed umbrella term for all sorts of identities and orientations. In this series I’ll be using specific terms when possible (“Bisexual” or “Lesbian”) but whenever I need to be general about multiple identities or orientations I will be using “Queer”.

Although it’s been a long running event at GenCon, this was my first year attending the Queer As A 3 Sided Die panel thrown by the Tabletop Gaymers organization. Last year was my first Gen Con ever and by the time I had my badge and registered, tickets for the panel had already sold out. This year, however, it was the first thing I registered for, in addition to another event run by that organization, Queering Your Setting.

The two events run by Tabletop Gaymers that I attended were some of the highlights of a life-changing Gen Con 50 for me.

I loved both panels so much, seeing people in respected positions in the gaming world such as Jeremy Crawford, Crystal Frasier, and Tanya DePass was inspiring and encouraging. It may be an access or reach problem, but I feel like I have to try hard to find resources talking about queerness in games the way this information was presented. Much of these panels were about how many big titles (I’ll steal the phrase AAA from video games) are starting to add more queer inclusion into their lore and setting with queer characters. Blue Rose was talked up for good reason, and Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons both were mentioned as making efforts to put more queer characters on the page. I think inclusion is great, obviously representation is important, but it got me thinking, especially after reading an article about how adding queer characters is a promise D&D is making, about what’s next.

So What Is Next?

A question I’ve been going over is “How can we make games more queer beyond simply including queer characters in lore?” Again, representation is a powerful thing, especially given roleplaying’s feet-dragging at getting to a healthy portrayal of queerness in its games. “Queer people exist” should not be the end of this discussion. To me, that’s baseline, a given, that’s ground floor. Still, I think inclusion is a great first step and I want to know what the next steps can be. Smaller, more niche games can center queerness and queer stories in ways larger games seem reluctant to do, so how do we start moving AAA game spaces towards centering queerness? 

I want to make it clear that I don’t have an easy or quick answer at the moment, and that’s the driving force behind setting out to write more, podcast more, and develop more about the role of queerness & LGBT+ issues in tabletop. Because I don’t have an answer to “What’s next after we prove we exist?” I want to keep mulling these points over. Part of my growth as a bisexual man includes teaching myself about queerness, since mainstream culture and our public education system has done kind of a subpar job at that. In the past few years after coming out to myself and others, I’ve learned so much that I would have never discovered. Maybe by teaching some of this awesome queer history, I will learn myself. Using history as a vehicle to incorporate queer elements into games seems an obvious choice. From Feudal Japan, to the Viking North, to Medieval Europe or any of the hundreds of analogues of these, tabletop has had a fascination with history. In this series, I’ll be highlighting moments, figures, and themes in queer history and exploring how to incorporate these into your games.

 “Queer people exist” should not be the end of this discussion.

While I don’t know that I have a great answer to my question yet, at least I can take the queer characters represented in games and put them at the forefront. Exploring the lives of queer history can not only help me learn about an underrepresented segment of history, but also give myself a chance to explore that history in play. By highlighting these historical events, maybe we can put the focus on their context and not only check the box of “Does this game have a queer person in it?” but learn why that’s an important box to check.

I’m In, Let’s Go!

I’m no expert at Queer Studies. I took as many classes as I could in college and I take an active role in seeking out info on the subject, but there’s still an ocean of information out there. I’ll do my best at laying out the information I find while reading and learning, and by tying it into games, let’s do our best to work through this process together. I’m bound to get something wrong at some point. If that happens, let me know & I’ll try to fix it, or if I can’t fix it, I’ll try to do better next time. If you have a subject or question you’d like to see addressed, let me know! Otherwise, let’s jump right in and see what we can learn. The next installment of this series will start to dive into what may be the first ever recorded instance of same-sex affection, from around 4,500 years ago. Stay tuned!

In All Their Looks & Words: Introducing Queer History To Your Games published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi

[wherethewolfsbaneblooms]

Chapter 3 of Shield Me is out now on AO3. Enjoy!

“Decisions are made, the jarl wants to get to know you better, and you go head to head with yourself in a way you did not expect at all.”

Note: I will be going through everyone’s comments on Shield Me and be sending replies. Thank you all for reading!

#resident evil village #lady dimitrescu x reader #lady dimitrescu #resident evil 8 #alcina dimitrescu #reader insert #lady alcina dimitrescu #shield me #jarl dimitrescu #resident viking au #alternate universe #alcina dimitriscu x reader #capcom #archive of our own #chapter 3 #lesbian Vikings so how can we go wrong